I'm not an expert, but I've played enough that I feel comfortable commenting. The game is 1 part what's in the deck, 1 part in game strategy and 1 part luck of

I'm not an expert, but I've played enough that I feel comfortable commenting. The game is 1 part what's in the deck, 1 part in game strategy and 1 part luck of the draw each game. Because of part 2 & 3, anybody has a chance in any game. I played for years and only did tournaments a couple of times because it was a lot more fun...just playing. Building fun decks, playing with friends at the house, playing with people at the local card shop. There are so many types of games. I used to have a blast making decks just to see the looks on people's faces. You can do group games with 8 people in a single game, team games, two headed giant games. Depending on what type of format you're playing, entirely different strategies make sense. If your only goal is to show up, figure out "the perfect deck" and win tournaments then getting cards out of the gate to make that possible is probably going to be expensive. But it's a lot more fun to just get some cards with a little bit of everything to start with (they have starter kits and deck builder kits that speed up the process), and just try to see what are the best things you can come up with. Figure out what you have that's valuable, trade with people at a local shop to get things that you want to try, etc. If you do that, you'll probably end up having a lot more fun. There are also tournament formats that work well for people at all levels, called Drafts. Each player gets 3 booster packs, you open one, take a card and then pass the booster to your left. Repeat this process (and change direction) for the other 2 packs. When you're done, each player will have 45 cards to make a deck of at least 40. Lands are usually freely available to supplement whatever approach you took. It levels the playing field for new players and you get to win more cards. Don't let the competition get in the way of the fun with friends. The competition is fun, but much like programming there's a lot of fun to be had by just trying crazy things to see if it works.