Planeswalker Deck Guide for Core 2019

Wondering which Planeswalker Deck to buy? Thinking about upgrading it? Our Planeswalker Deck Guide for Core 2019  has all information you need. We’ll talk about how to make your cards better with cards from Core 2019 and all of them will be both cheap and good! But first let’s take a look at what you’ll get in a Planeswalker Intro Deck.

UPDATE: If you’re looking for the newest decks, check our Planeswalker Deck Guide for Core 2021.

Planeswalker Deck Guide for Core 2019

Each Planeswalker Intro Deck contains:

• 60-card, ready to play deck
• 1 Core 2019 booster pack (contains 15 cards, one of them rare or mythic rare)
• Learn to play guide
• Strategy guide (specific to each deck)
• Cardboard deck box

Improvements

Planeswalker Intro Decks are meant for beginners and therefore very low in power level. They are still good to play against each other, but honestly you’ll have a hard time winning against anything else.

However they are built this way so you can easily improve them. We can help you with that.

You won’t be getting a single list of which cards to swap – this could be hard for a beginner to follow and stifle creativity when deckbuilding. Instead we’ll highlight two major themes with each deck and how to build towards them. We won’t use any expensive cards, so it will be a very budget friendly advice.

In this Planeswalker Deck Guide for Core 2019  we’ll focus on cards from cards from the Core 2019 – obviously – but we’ll also mention some older cards. Still from the latest editions, though.

So let’s take a look at the decks!

White – Ajani

Go Wide

Go wide is a MTG slang for having multiple creatures in play.

More creatures you have, better Ajani’s first two abilities are. If you’ll look at the other Planeswalker Intro Decks you’ll notice that this deck has the largest amount of creatures among them.

High creature count is also good for a card like Militia Bugler, ensuring that you’ll consistently draw a creature. When you won’t draw Ajani, you only have Inspired Charge to take advantage of the large number of monster you have. Because of that you’ll want to add some more payoffs.

Life Gain

You have some cards that gain you life, such as Court Cleric and Dwarven Priest. Life gain is usually only useful when your opponent is aggressive.  But you have great payoff in form of Ajani’s Pridemate. This card is awesome and it can quickly grow out of control.

Upgrades

Best card in your deck that fits both themes is Ajani’s Pridemate. Therefore you should play the maximum copies you can. Fortunately you alredy have two, so only two more to go. 🙂

Problem with go wide strategies is often that you’ll quickly play all everything you have and won’t have any cards in your hand. So it can be great if you can go up to 4 copies of Militia Bugler and Mentor of the Meek. You’ll always have plenty of cards with cards like these.

In Core Set 2019 there are two Leonins that work well with both themes. One is Leonin Vanguard – very cheap and grows your Pridemates. The other one is a little bit bigger – Leonin Warleader comes with two lifelinking cat buddies if you manage to attack with it.

You’ll also need more removal. It’s a good idea to add some Hieromancer’s Cages.

When removing cards you’ll probably want to remove cards that don’t really work with both of your themes like Knight’s Pledge or Revitalize. You can remove some of more expensive cards, which are not too aggressive like Meteor Golem or Dwarven Priest. When you’ll do this you can also go down to 24 Plains.

Wrapping Up

When done, your deck should still have following things to work properly:

• At least 26 creatures
• At least 20 cards that cost 3 or less
• At least 24 lands
• At least 20 creatures with power 2 or less

If you want to add cards from older expansions, we’d recommend Oketra’s Monument and Sacred Cat.

Blue – Tezzeret

Artifacts

Tezzeret’s deck has only one theme – artifacts. Gearsmith Prodigy is a very efficient creature if you control an artifact. Skilled Animator makes you cheap artifacts into a big 5/5 monsters. One with the Machine is probably a great draw spell if you have a more expensive artifact in play.

The problem with this deck are the artifacts. It seems like they just aren’t good enough when you don’t draw your Skilled Animators. Tezzeret’s Gatebreaker is a really slow, Field Creeper is very fragile. Fortunately, there are some things that can be done about that.

Upgrades

So it looks like we have some work to do. You should get another two copies of Skilled Animator. When you start a game with a cheap artifact, followed by Skilled Animator, you can very quickly establish a dominant position.

Skyscanner looks like a fun card, and it’s actually very useful in this deck. It gives you an artifact, which you need and it replaces itself with another card. This is very good because the problem with this deck can be that you draw the “wrong half” of your deck. This means that you could draw only artifacts without any payoffs or the other way around.

Fountain of Renewal is cheaper version of Pendelum of Patterns. It’s true that you don’t get the life immediately, but you save so much mana, which is truly important if you want to win at Magic the Gathering.

Wrapping Up

Because this deck is very synergistic, look that you have at least:

• At least 18 artifacts (counting creature artifacts, non-creature artifacts and cards that create artifacts)
• At least 18 creatures
• At least 25 lands (you can maybe go down to 24 if you won’t play cards that cost 7 or more and you have a lot of cheap cards)

If you want to look at cards from older sets, take a look at cards from Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan, which make Treasure tokens. This are artifacts, which you can use either one time for mana or to animate them with Skilled Animator. Sailor of Means and Treasure Map are two fine examples of that.

Black – Liliana

Graveyard

“What is dead my never die” aren’t only the words of house Greyjoy but also applicable to this deck. Reassembling Skeleton refuses to stay in the graveyard. Gravedigger and Gravewaker will return creatures back from the dead. Liliana, the Necromancer is true to her name and also helps with this. A lot of your cards care what creatures are in your graveyard and this is the major theme of this deck.

Life Loss

In contrast to major theme of graveyard synergies, there is a softer theme with forcing your opponents to constantly lose a bit of life. Because of that they may quickly lose a game if they aren’t careful. Examples of this can be seen in Tattered Mummy and Vampire Soverign. Of course Liliana also helps with that.

Upgrades

Black is the color which easily deals with creatures. Therefore you really want to play the best removal spells and not conditional ones like Strangling Spores or 5-mana kill spells in form of Lich’s Caress. It would be smart to add another two copies of Murder to the deck.

Isareth the Awakener is a very efficient creature – 3/3 deathtouch for 3 mana is no joke. At it even has a cool ability, which works well with your graveyard synergies.

One idea you might like is focusing even more on graveyard shenanigans. To do so you want to get three or four copies of Desecrated Tomb. Then add another three copies of Reassembling Skeletons and you’ll have a nice interaction. Every time you’ll return Skeleton from your graveyard to the battlefield, you’ll get a flying Bat for each Tomb you control.

To get more Skeletons in your graveyard you should use Stitcher’s Supplier. This card will also work nice with the rest of your deck, giving you plenty of fodder for your Liliana, the Necromancer and Gravedigger.

Wrapping Up

When done, don’t forget to check if you have at least:

• 25 lands
• 16 cards that cost 3 or less
• 20 creatures

When looking through the older sets you must not miss Ravenous Chupacabra, it kills anything and is an awesome creature to bring out of a graveyard. Don’t be afraid to play 3 or 4 copies of it.

Red – Sarkhan

Dragons

If you love dragons, look no further – because this is the right deck for you. Demanding Dragon is a very powerful creature, which demands 🙂 an answer. And even if your opponent has it, you’ll likely still get value from it. If you manage to use the last ability of Sarkhan, Dragonsoul you can get all of your Dragons on the battlefield at the same time! How awesome is that?

Aggression

Dragons are usually aggressive so this pairing works really well. You have plenty of cheap and aggressive creatures like Viashino Pyromancer along with “burn” cards which can kill your smaller foes, or even target your opponent. Lightning Strike and Shock can do both.

Some card like Trumpet Blast really want you to attack. If you don’t, they don’t do anything. That’s the reason why you shouldn’t just add big Dragons to your deck and remove your cheaper creatures.

Upgrades

First of all try to get 4 copies of Lighting Strike. It’s very efficient, deals with small to medium creatures and finishes your opponent when they’re at low life. It’s a perfect burn spell for a red deck.

You can also upgrade a lot of your dragons. Lathliss, Dragon Queen is probably the best 6 cost Dragon you can get from Core 2019. You can also add some more copies of Demanding Dragon.

Great card to add to your deck and also a very flavourful one is Sarkhan’s Unsealing. Each dragon you’ll cast will be even more devastating for your opponent.

When removing cards look you should probably start with Hostile Minotaur, which doesn’t have very good stats for it’s mana cost. Goblin Motivators quickly become bad if you run out of card or if you draw them late. Maybe remove a Trumpet Blast because it’s only good when you’re already winning.

Wrapping Up

When you’ll be done check if you have at least:

• 25 lands
• 8 dragons
• 17 creatures (including dragons)
• 15 cards that cost 3 or less

If you want a dragon from edition prior to Core 2019, Verix Bladewing is the right one for you. He has very good stats as a 4/4 flyer, but that’s not all. If you get to 7 lands, he comes with his brother Karox Bladewing, another 4/4 dragon. How awesome is that?

Green – Vivien

Big Creatures

Green decks always want to have the best and biggest creatures and this one is no different. Aggressive Mammoth is a perfect example of this with Pelakka Wurm not far behind.

And if  your creatures somehow aren’t the biggest on the battlefield, you can always make them bigger with Vivien.

Ramp

Most decks only get mana through their lands. Getting mana through other means is called ramp. This is often very good strategy to use because you can play your better and more expensive spells sooner than your opponent, and it really gives you an edge.

In this deck ramp comes in form of Druid of the Cowl and Elvish Rejuvenator. It is something but you’ll probably want more.

Upgrades

There are plenty of big green creatures you might like. Probably the best one you can get from Core 2019 is Gigantosaur. It’s a 10/10 DINOSAUR for just 5 mana. The catch is that you need 5 green mana, which can be hard for multicolor deck, but you’re only playing green.

You should probably take advantage of having big creatures in your deck by adding two more copies of Collosal Majesty. With this enchantment in play, you’ll never run out off creatures.

If you want to get to your big creatures faster, there is one card you absolutely want to have 4 copies of. Most noteworthy green ramp card are small 1/1 Llanowar Elves. If you haven’t played much Magic the Gathering before, you’ll quickly learn that having more mana than opponent so quickly really gives you an advantage.

One thing to note about Llanowar Elves is that you can’t get them in Core 2019 boosters. You can get them from Dominaria or green Welcome Deck, which you can get for free from local game store.

For all the praise we sing to the Elves, you can still play Elvish Rejuvenator and do just fine but its better in addition to Elves rather than your main ramp card.

You also want to deal with creatures sometimes and Rabid Bite can be a very good removal spell if you build your deck correctly. You should probably just play 4 copies and remove cards like Plummet which only kill flying creatures.

Wrapping Up

When you’ll finish building your deck check if you have at least:

• 8 ramp cards
• 24 lands
• 8 big creatures or spells
• 12 creatures with power 4 or greater (if playing Colossal Majesty)
• 22 creatures

Outside of Core 2019 there are also plenty of awesome creatures. Territorial Allosaurus is both big creature and a removal if the game goes long. Trashing Brontodon is an awesome addition to any green decks

Planeswalker Intro Decks Ranking

This rating is based solely on how easy it is to upgrade deck. If you like a deck and it is on the bottom of rankings, don’t worry. When buying your first deck above all you should be looking for is what seems fun to you. But you can always use this rankings as a tiebreaker.

1. White Ajani
2. Red Sarkhan
3. Black Liliana
4. Green Vivien
5. Blue Tezzeret

You can also just get all of them. You won’t need to upgrade any of them if you and your friends will use these to play against one another.

Conclusion

Planeswalker Decks are great for any new player. And they are also designed to mash well with Welcome Decks. These are free 30-card decks which you can get at your local game store. If you want to know more about good products for new players you can check them in our Buyer’s Guide for New Players.

We hope you liked our Planeswalker Deck Guide for Core 2019 and that it will help you to upgrade your deck. You can find the newer Theros Beyond Death Planeswalker Decks here.

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Have an awesome time playing the best card game there is – Magic the Gathering.