To start off, we bought three packs of Modern Masters 2017, a set that has a ton of pretty cool reprint cards from prior sets. Based on what I got, I was able to build the following deck. Pictures, because pictures are fun. For lands, I have 5 Forests, 4 Plains, 3 Mountains and a Shimmering Grotto. The Shimmering Grotto will hopefully be nice because it lets me 'fix' my mana from one color to another. That's 13 lands total, leaving me with 17 other cards.
The deck has 8 Creature cards, which I'm hoping is a good number. It's a little under half of the non-land cards in the deck. I picked all of the Creature and other spell cards that deal with Token Creatures, in an effort to bulk up my army without having to waste cards.
Lastly, I picked 9 non-Creature cards. I'm hoping that I got the mana curve right... in other words, that I'll have enough mana to cast these cards. Three packs is a woefully small selection of cards to pick from.
There you have it. Three packs used to build a 30 card deck. In the past, I never used white or red cards, so this will be a new experience. I do like the game, but I generally don't like the people who play the game. My hope is that putting artificial limits in place (one pack per week added to the collection) will also limit the competitive streaks of the people I play with. Time will tell.
