Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hm... I haven't really bought any new cards in the past year or so, my newest being from the original Kamigawa expansion. I just played earlier today during school hours just as an exhibition match. No real competition in any mediocre elf deck vs. a randomly assembled white deck. I lost... To a girl... Who had only played four times before... I guess that just says how my elf deck is decent for the piss-poor cards I have to work with. (Taunting Elf+Venom=win)

The best deck idea I've come into contact with is an expulsion deck with a twist. My brother has a red and black deck based not only around forcing your opponents to discard their hand and dealing damage with megrims, but it also contains Lavaborn Muses, so that either way they take damage. The true work of genius, however, is the addition of Dragon Mage and Underworld Dreams.

In the same deck, however, he has a strange back-up strategy. It involves Dark Ritual, some Djinn that lets you replicate any card an infinite number of times, and Skeletal Vampire. Basically, the combination allows him to create an infinite number of tokens, but I'm not really sure why he does it, since the other part of the deck seems to be much more effective...

Yeah, that's the one! Ever since Eighth Edition came out, there have been some horribly overpowered cards, no? And what the hell was up with indestructible in Darksteel? That was seriously the worst idea they ever had. I know! Let's make an already near-unbeatable card, and then make it indestructible! And then let's make it so that if by some fluke, it's put into their graveyard by discarding, it goes right back into their deck! That won't piss anyone off... God I hate Darksteel Colossus.

All of my deck ideas have been pretty standard. I have a Sliver deck that's better than average, but since it's slivers, I don't generally stand a chance against goblins. Most other creature decks are fine, but since goblins come out so fast... God I hate goblins too.

I have at least ten friends who play magic. As of late I have decided that I'll pick up a deck or two and start playing myself. Does anyone have suggestions on which strategy/deck I should go out a buy to get started?