Magic: The Gathering – What to Know About Playing With Midrange Decks – CBR – Comic Book Resources

In Magic: The Gathering, there are many ways to divide thegame's vast wealth of content into various categories. The color pie is a good start, but there are also diverse formats such as Commander, Standard, booster draft Limited, Modern, Legacy, Pauper, Cube and more.Plus, there are also broad archetypes for how decks operate, regardless of format or color.

These archetypes include aggro, the cheap and fast one, as well as control, the slow one that dominates the late game. Combo and tempo decks are different, and midrange decks actas the meeting ground between more specialized deck types. A midrange deck isn't flashy, but it can be reliable and will have few major weaknesses. Midrange decks can handle any other archetype and stand a fair chance of winning.

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Unlike the other archetypes for Constructed decks, midrange decks do not focus all of their efforts into one extreme area. An aggro deck wants to attack with cheap, fast creatures and use removal spells to win fast or not win at all, while a control deck wants to drag the game out and win via unstoppable finishers and accrued card advantage. Acombo deck wants to set off an infinite combo to win the game around turn four, and protect that combo with counter-magic and other defenses.

A midrange deck can't beat any of those decks at their own game. In exchange, a midrange deck can do a bit of everything, and it won't completely fold to a certain strategy or deck type. Midrange decks diversify their portfolios. For example, a midrange deck is capable of going on the offensive early on and putting pressure on the opponent, and thus it becomes "on the beatdown" while the opponent must try to survive somehow.

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Midrange decks have creatures all over the CMC spectrum, and they can cast efficient creatures in the first four turns and attack with them slowly but surely. Midrange decks have some aggro elements, but unlike true aggro decks, they can go long and don't run out of gas, and their cards are nearly as good in the late game as the early game.

Midrange decks lack the unstoppable finishers of control, but their cards do scale well to the late game and stay relevant, especially their creatures and planeswalkers (if any). A midrange deck is rarely more than the sum of its parts, but those individual parts work well either together or alone, meaning midrange decks avoid the main weakness of combo and control decks.

Midrange decks don't have to play their cards "in order" or have the perfect opening hand. A combo deck that's missing one or two vital cards is helpless, and a control deck that can't find its finisher is going in circles. But midrange decks can always do something with the cards they have on hand. Put another way, such decks simply choose their color(s), then include the best cards of those colors. For that reason, generalist midrange decks like these are informally known as "good-stuff" decks.

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For many years, midrange decks have made their presence known in all major formats of Magic: The Gathering. In fact, it can be said that any deck which doesn't conform to the style of aggro, combo or control is, by default, a midrange deck.

Jund is a powerful midrange deck in the Modern format.Thanks to its colors, it has some aggro potential with efficient creatures like Tarmogoyf and Bloodbraid Elf, but it also has control elements with Thoughtseize, Lightning Bolt, Liliana of the Veil and Abrupt Decay.However, it lacks the counter-magic or late-game finishers of true control, and it doesn't have as many speedy, cheap creatures like a true aggro deck. Instead, it comfortably sits in the middle of that spectrum, and it can handle practically anything the opponent can throw at it.

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On the defensive, Jund can block with disposable creatures or use removal, and on the offensive, Tarmogoyf and Scavenging Ooze can hit hard,while Lightning Bolt can finish off the opponent's life points soon after that. Jund's hand control gives it some potency against true combo and control decks, too. It can even put pressure on the opponent's graveyard to slow down graveyard-oriented decks.

In the mid-2010s or so, there was another powerful Modern midrange deck: Abzan Good-Stuff. It was a variant of Jund, sharing its green and black cards while swapping red for white. This deck had Lingering Souls to create flying blockers and attackers, and it had Loxodon Smiter as a 4/4 for just 1GW that was immune to counterspells and hand control. This deck also used Kitchen Finks, which could gain life and was potent as an attacker and blocker. Birds of Paradise was a flying mana dork for this deck.

Standard usually has its share of midrange decks. Such decks have two or three colors and are, by default, any deck that doesn't fit the other major archetypes. During the era of Theros-Khans of Tarkir, for example, there was a green/red/X midrange shell that included Courser of Kruphix, Sylvan Caryatid, Xenagos the Reveler, Polukranos World Eater, Stormbreath Dragon and more. White mana could add Ajani, Mentor of Heroes and Fleecemane Lion, and blue mana added Temur-colored cards such as Surrak Dragonclaw. Abzan midrange was common, too.

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I graduated high school in Kansas City in 2009, then earned my Associate's in Arts in 2011 at MCC Longview, then my BA in Creative Writing at UMKC in 2013. I have a passion for creative fiction and I've studied and practiced my craft for over ten years. Currently, I'm expanding my resume and skill set with jobs such as SEO writing and journalism.

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Magic: The Gathering - What to Know About Playing With Midrange Decks - CBR - Comic Book Resources