Top Tools for New MTG Players

Magic has tens of thousands of cards, with new ones coming out every year. When you’re new to the game, it can be hard to figure out which cards you need to build the perfect deck, or which ones are the most useful in your favorite format. Fortunately, there are plenty of online resources to help you brainstorm cards, see what other people are using, and share your decks with others. Here are some useful places to go.

Finding the perfect card

Scryfall is among the best places to go if you’re searching for cards to include in your new deck. Its versatile search function lets you filter cards based on everything from converted mana cost and format legality to artist and flavor text. It can be very rewarding to type f:commander t:creature (t:satyr or o:changeling) id:rg and find out immediately how many creatures are available for your Gallia of the Endless Dance deck.

Scryfall is also a great place to find newly-revealed cards. Their spoiler pages default to showing cards in the order they were revealed (handy for spoiler seasons that follow a story, like War of the Spark last spring).

Gatherer is the official Magic card database maintained by Wizards of the Coast. It’s very useful if you need to look up judge rulings for individual cards, and it makes double-faced cards easier to evaluate by showing both sides on a single page.

MagicSpoiler focuses on showing new cards as they’re released. They post new cards faster than Scryfall, but that means they sometimes include unofficial leaks. If you like to speculate rather than be surprised, MagicSpoiler will be your best friend during spoiler season.

If you want to focus on Commander or Oathbreaker, EDHRec and EDHRec Oathbreaker are among the best places to get deckbuilding ideas. It shows which commanders are most popular in each color combination, as well as which cards are commonly used both in specific colors and with specific commanders. EDHRec also has recommendations for popular archetypes, including a variety of creature tribes, and suggestions for tweaks to preconstructed Commander decks.

Managing Your Card Collection

Inspiration for a deck can strike while you’re going through cards you already own. Delver Lens for Android and Helvault for iOS let you build a digital record of your card collection by scanning your cards with your phone’s camera and export lists of cards to decklist-hosting websites. Delver Lens can be set to alert you if it sees a card whose resale value is above a certain amount, and you can adjust that amount based on what kind of value you’re looking for.

Sharing Your Decklists

Deckbox, TappedOut, and MTGGoldfish are websites where you can share decklists and get inspiration from other people’s decks.

Deckbox prioritizes collection management and lets you build decks straight from your collection. It also has a forum with support for trading cards with other users.

TappedOut makes it easy to search for decklists by format and archetype. Users can upload their decklists and easily share them with others. TappedOut also breaks down decks by color, card type, and mana cost to give you a snapshot of your deck and where you might need to adjust.

MTGGoldfish focuses on competitive decklists and hosts lists of the top decks in popular formats. But it’s also full of creative inspiration in the form of sample decklists and content. I recommend the Against the Odds video series, in which Magic content creator SaffronOlive builds decks around unusual and creative ideas and tests them on Magic Online and Arena.

Getting the Cards

Once you’ve got a decklist in mind, it’s time to buy the cards for it, and Card Kingdom is a great place to do that! Check out the online store, and don’t forget to use the affiliate code for your favorite Magic content creator.