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Originally Posted by Johnny Footstool
Yeah, my memory is fuzzy. I thought it was a 40 card minimum.
Still, you want to be as close to the minimum as possible. The more cards you use, the greater the chance that the one card you really need won't come up.
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40-card minimum is for sealed deck or booster draft tournament play. And you're 100% accurate about wanting to keep it at the minimum number in order to maximize card drawing probability.
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I believe you about tournament play, where card cost and card scarcity are not issues. I'm thinking more along the lines of recreational play, with decks build from common cards found in foil packs.
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Ok. Sure. You're right there, although there are cheap options for mono-Red (weenies/burn), mono-White (White Weenie/Kithkin) and mono-Green (mana acceleration into fat creatures) even in casual play.
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I played a couple of small tournaments and did well (2nd and 3rd). I gave up the game when I realized the game was less about creativity and more about economics. Building a deck from limited resources is a challenge and a lot of fun. Building a deck of "perfect" cards is a different game.
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It's an investment, that's for sure. I've played tourneys with decks worth well over $500.00. But I've also done quite well at tourneys with decks worth less than $50.00 and with almost no rares. Early versions of mono-Red "Sligh" (named for it's creator) used zero Rares and a very low mana-curve to dominate the tournament scene for quite a while. "Red Deck Wins" was a huge cheap uppercut to the MTG tourney scene when it won Pro Tour LA a few years ago. A cheap White Weenie deck with four (IIRC) cheap rares took a World Championship quite a few years back. I've made States top 8 with a mono-Red Goblin deck using exactly four Rares cards in the main deck.
Unfortunately, things have gone in the other direction more recently.
I think you'd really like the sealed Two Headed Giant format. That's a blast as you and a partner build two decks out of sealed product and then play collaboratively against another team. Unfortunately, it appears that format had a very short run (two years) as a sanctioned "State" tournament, but it's still pretty popular for weekend tourneys.