As a Magic: The Gathering player, you must sift through mountains of data to make decisions at every point of the game. Even before you sit down to play, you need to make a deck! Everybody’s deck represents its own personal statistics problem, but we’re here to sling spells and summon monsters—not do college-level math. Over my twenty years of playing Magic, I have found a number of resources that help me in my day-to-day “MTG-ing.”
Archidekt – MTG Decklists
Sorting and organizing a physical deck of MTG cards takes time. With Archidekt, we can look at and sort our decks instantly. The Category System sets this particular deck builder apart from the rest. You can easily sort all the cards in your deck into custom sections based on what the card actually does. This helps you ensure you have enough of any particular resource, especially when playing Commander (or EDH, as I am still stuck calling it).
- Categories: 10 Ramp, 10 Draw, 10 Removal spells! Check!
- Playtester: Smooth and intuitive.
- Data: Color, card type, and resource breakdowns. There is even a Basic Land Optimizer that automatically tells you the correct number of lands to run.
Verdict: Archidekt is my #1 overall decklist website, but it also has an app!
EDHREC – Commander Resources
This is a very well-known website for Commander players, but let me break down some do’s and don’ts.
- Card Suggestions: EDHREC’s main feature suggests cards of all types for your Commander deck. It derives this recommendation data from the decklists of thousands of other players.
- Tread Carefully: This feature is amazing and has turned me on to cards I never would have thought of. The “High Synergy” and “Top Cards” sections are especially useful. BUT, these suggestions come purely from data collected from other players. As more players build decks based on EDHREC suggestions, the site’s suggestions become heavily skewed toward its own previous recommendations. Do not auto-add every card EDHREC suggests. Make sure you understand why you are putting a card into your Commander deck before you do it.
- Landbases: A newly implemented feature allows you to search for all lands legal in your Commander deck. Never forget your Shock Lands again as you sculpt powerful manabases with this feature under the “Cards” section.
- Honorable Mentions: If you really want to test your MTG knowledge, try Spellify or their newly added Crossword!
Verdict: EDHREC is my #1 overall Commander resource site, largely because it is essentially one of a kind!
Scryfall – MTG Card Search
This is one of many card search engines, but Scryfall sets itself apart in several ways.
- Advanced Search: The advanced search feature is incredibly intuitive. It constantly helps me round out my decklists as I search for obscure cards.
- Slight Jank: While the base features are often more than enough for me, you can use advanced syntax to get some REAL specific results. Unfortunately, in my experience, these functions often fail to work correctly. A workaround is to Google search something like “Scryfall search: [terms]” to find a direct link to the result.
- Card Sorting: Other engines just spit out a list of thousands of cards for you to sift through. Since MTG has hundreds of thousands of cards, Scryfall uses robust filtering that allows you to search for effective cards without scrolling through five pages of cards starting with the letter “A.”
MPC Fill (Don’t look at this)
This resource is the one they don’t want you to know about. Save money with this one neat trick. What you do in the privacy of your own home is none of mine, or WotC’s, business—and they agree with me here. I won’t go into specifics, but if you are looking for playtesting cards, tokens, or just want to print 15 duplicates of City of Brass so you don’t have to move your single copy to every deck, then MPC Fill is the tool for you.
Mythic Tools – MTG App
This one is an app for your phone, though they do have a website as well. What began as a simple, effective card scanning app has turned into the app that sits open on my table during every game. It tracks life, records game statistics (so I know that my decks suck), and calls you a noob when you lose.
- Game Recorder: Use your Commander as a background while your little life tracking section flashes red because it’s turn 4 and you pulled out your Heliod deck. Easily track Commander damage, poison, energy, and any other resource.
- Card Scanner: FAST and accurate. I scanned my entire foil collection in under five minutes. This acts as a fantastic way to keep a digital version of a collection.
- Data: Win/Loss ratio, game duration, and all sorts of other neat data that makes you realize you are a terrible Magic player!
Verdict: Mythic Tools is my #1 overall app!
Mythic Spoiler (Honorable Mention)
Unfortunately, this is not related to Mythic Tools. This is a spoiler site for keeping up with the latest MTG releases. Nowadays, spoiler season is… always. You need a clean visual site to keep up with all the Avatar, Ninja Turtles, and PlayStation cards… Why do I play this game again?
- Sortable: You can view entire new sets by release dates or by color/rarity.
- Tracking: Turn your cookies off on this website. My antivirus has cleared hundreds of tracking attempts by Mythic Spoilers, but that won’t stop me! Yarr!
