Teaching my gf to play Magic

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Ecthelion
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Post by Ecthelion » 3 years ago

Hi Everyone!

I am an old player trying to start againg but this time bringing my gf into the game. I used to play stricktly Standard, but this time I want to play casual and specially at the start making it fun for her. We play boardgames rather often so I assume learning won't be an issue, I am however a little concerned that it might be too much "nerd stuff" all at once at first.

Do you guys think commender is a good point to start? What Decks do you recommend? Is Bawl a good alternative?

I just saw a couple of Brawl decks from Throne of Eldraine and they really fun :)

Thanks!

PS: Sorry if this is the wrong Forum

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

Some will probably disagree, but I think commander is an atrocious, atrocious place for someone to start learning magic.

For the very beginning, if it's still an option for you (i.e. if stores are open where you live) then I'd try to get my hands on some beginner decks. They're free at most LGSs. Those will introduce the game is a very basic way.

From there, especially during the pandemic I'd say Arena is a good place to go. Limited and standard keep the card pool small and manageable. Brawl would be great but it's hard to find people playing it in paper (although ofc everything is hard to find anyone playing right now).

A lot of new-ish players do get into commander, of course. In my experience they tend to be very bad at the game because they haven't mastered the basics in a more controlled environment. Commander looks like absolute chaos from the perspective of a new player, it takes mastering a lot of fundamentals before it really makes sense imo.

If you just want to play together, precon vs precon is pretty reasonable, especially if you play the same ones a lot so your SO can get used to the cards. I probably wouldn't recommend jumping into an LGS or whatever, though, if you don't want her to get overwhelmed.

My ex got pretty into limited, but always found commander too complicated. She was the sort of person who is fairly competitive and wants to understand the game. So YMMV depending on your SO's preferences.
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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

Relevant article about teaching MTG.

Anyway, in a vacuum, I'd say that EDH isn't the greatest way to learn to play. The card pool is massive, boards get complicated, and it has a bunch of rules oddities that can make transferring to 40/60 card formats weird. It's the metaphorical equivalent of jumping in the deep end.

On the other hand, having a commander that you build a deck around makes EDH significantly more resonant than other formats - having 'a sphinx deck' or 'a reanimator deck' is going to be more flavorful and intuitive than 'a red deck' or 'a blue deck'. Simultaneously, having a deck that is uniquely yours is a fantastic way to get invested. The multiplayer aspect can also definitely be an upside, depending on the person (and the group you're playing with).

I'll point to Welcome Decks and Arena as potentially new-player-friendly tools. I believe that Jump-Start is also targeted towards new players, although I can't recall whether those are out yet.

Still, the #1 objective in teaching a person to play is to make sure they have a good enough experience that they want to play a second time. I recall a WotC person mentioning that a lot of people actually start playing via EDH, and they've tweaked the precons to be friendlier to new players, so it's definitely possible to teach with it.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

The biggest issue in commander is the number of keywords and mechanics. It is too difficult of an entry point.
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Post by Airi » 3 years ago

Agree with the others that commander is a terrible way to learn the game, and I have personal experience doing it. The frustration of having to deal with so many card and rules interactions with only an absolute basic grasp on the game nearly made me quit initially.

If you are determined to start with commander, I'd limit it to precons only. That said, it would be better to look in to the learners kits that most LGS's carry, and maybe use starter decks after, then go from there.

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Post by Segrus » 3 years ago

I believe Commander can be a great way to get a new player into Magic, provided you have a good, supportive environment to nurture their interest. Approaching it like you would a board game is a decent way to start, with combat being the primary game loop (while leaving open the possibility of other ways to interact with players). The basics of Magic are fairly easy to teach--although ultimately take experience to fully master--and Commander can be boiled down into some basics (turn order, interpreting cards for their cost and type, how to play cards, and combat). Deck building and the intricacies of keywords or corner cases can be dealt with as they come up, but otherwise left alone for later. The function of the commander/command zone is the only really complex topic (in that combat, while complex, has a ton of intuitive elements since literally everyone can comprehend what battling is; the command zone has very few mechanically intuitive elements).

Having everybody in a game with new players playing simplistic decks--my go-to are mono-colored tribal decks--is the kind of environment you'll want at the start. Within the last year (eh, maybe 1.5 years) I've successfully taught about 8 people how to play this way.

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Post by tstorm823 » 3 years ago

Everyone saying commander is too complicated is looking at it the wrong way. I'll concede that there are some effects (a lot of the ones I love most, looking at you Knowledge Pool) that make games mentally taxing and could potentially scare someone off, but having observed plenty of players who jumped straight into commander, it's honestly a great place for new players.

a) The complexity of Magic isn't just the card pool. The complexity of Magic scales every step of the way. You can play starter decks against each other and gum up the board and end up with combat decisions that are more difficult than any decision you find in an average night of commander. Magic is great exactly because simple decks can still stump you after decades. Newer players aren't able to parse board states like that, and almost always do their attacks and blocks wrong, and they don't understand why their decisions are wrong because they can't see the complexity of the situation clearly. Combat math, resource management, the things that are supposed to be the basic building blocks of MtG, they're all math problems. People learn math by being given the answers and then practicing until they get good at it, and that takes time, and locking someone into the most basic Magic until they get the hang of those things is homework, and homework sucks. In many ways, card pool complexity is a friendlier complexity. Learning the different mechanics of magic across the many, many cards ever printed is almost literally learning a language. Language is a skill you benefit from immersion. Sure, the first time you hear a new word, you have to ask what it means. But just by seeing more and more of the mechanics, people gain enough knowledge that they can start figuring out cards they don't know by the context of the cards that they do. And that's something a new player feels good about. You can play for years with the same pair of starter decks and still find yourself doubting your basic Magic decisions. The complexity of the card pool and mechanics is the complexity people can see easily, and see how much they're learning, and feel a sense of accomplishment, and keep their interest long enough to get practice on the mathy parts.

b) Mulitplayer games are awesome for teaching. A new player can be involved in the game and having fun while also getting to spectate other people playing and learn from that. It's hard to walk someone through the right play decisions when playing against them, especially in a game with hidden information like Magic, where explaining a decision might actually change what they should do. It's easy to explain what two other people are doing when they interact with each other. Imagine a situation where you have a 5/5 attacker and the new player has two 3/3s. You might explain that it's beneficial to double block and trade 1 3/3 for the bigger 5/5, and then when they listen you Disfigure one and explain how you turned that seemingly good block into a bad thing, and then you get the "well then why did you tell me to do that!" moment. It's way less frustrating when you get to point out a moment like that at someone else's expense.

c) Pre-cons are a good place to teach someone. You have to play the game before you can build a deck, and preconstructed decks let you do that on a theoretically level playing field. The Commander products are the best preconstructed products Wizards puts out, not even close. They're more interesting than the really basic preconstructed decks, you don't get limited to just having 1 or 2 exciting cards to draw in the whole deck, and they've gotten pretty good at balancing 4 or 5 decks against each other, so even with just 2 players and one year worth of decks, you have 20 different matchup options to play around with.
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Post by ilovesaprolings » 3 years ago

I teached many people to play mtg with commander. Just buy precons and let people play precon VS precon. Then they slowly upgraded the decks.

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Post by Hawk » 3 years ago

Commander is tough, but as in all things EDH it depends. What kind of Commander decks do you have lying around? The Preconstructed decks may be totally fine from a complexity standpoint (especially if they avoid the ones that "break" Commander like the Eminence folks); finely tuned decks with multiple infinite combos maybe not so much.

It also depends on the person.

- My wife learned from playing normal kitchen table Magic first, just like basically everyone else I've ever taught to play Magic regardless of gender. She is brilliant but had never played a card game and had only played very basic boardgames like Monopoly when we started dating. Building a deck for her was exciting so she could make it her own - I brought some piles out once she settled on Black, and just had her pick 24 fun creatures and 12 fun non-creature spells. Now, 9 years later, Commander is her favorite format by a longshot - but I think she would have been totally overwhelmed if we started there. We couldn't have let her "own" her first deck, since building a Commander deck is more complex, and she would have gotten frustrated by all the many "gotchas" of the most complex format since she hates being blindsided by some ruling.

- Both my sisters-in-law learned from Commander. As boardgame nerds with a healthy background in video games (especially RPGs), it was easy and fun for them to connect with a "Leader" that dictated a deck's style and flow. They were just playing with me and my wife, and we were able to slow down, play hand's up, be patient and kind. But, we were also mostly playing precons or precon-level decks to start out and both of them wanted to take a break from it and practice with some starter decks after a few games to make sure they really understood the fundamentals before we went back to Commander - make of that what you will.

- My future sister-in-law I haven't played with, but apparently she learned from drafting which most people would say is a TERRIBLE way to learn to play Magic. But, she loves deckbuilding boardgames like Sushi Go so she picked it up quickly and had a lot of fun with it. Again, that control and "ownership" of what she played mattered to her, so she's wading into Commander now but it would have been an awful way to start playing.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

MTG Arena is the absolute best learning tool out there for a new player.

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Post by Treamayne » 3 years ago

Concur that for most people (not all) starting straight with EDH was not the "best" option.

I've taught a few dozen people to play MtG over the last few decades; most recently I taught about 5 co-workers a couple years ago. Everybody is different (teachers and learners) but here are the basics of what I usually do.

- Make sure you are evaluating the person's learning style at each step of the process. Prepare to adapt your teaching/coaching style at any given step (Explanation, example, guided action, etc.)
-- Also make sure the person you are teaching realizes that they are not expected to memorize anything the first time you discuss a topic or item. You bring things up often and repeatedly, so that later (after training game 4-6) they have seen it all before at least more than once, have learned enough to ask the questions they need and can start grasping the details (rather than broad overviews).

- Actually start without playing at all. So many people miss/skip this, but I have found it makes a great difference (especially in the first 2-3 weeks)
-- Spend some time going over the anatomy of a magic card. Make sure you have at least one example of each card type set aside. Whill going over the cards (Casting cost, type line, text-box, etc.) you can also cover what the types are and their primary differences (differences are much more important than similarities at this point).
-- Spend some time discussing turn order (WotC includes those nifty fold-outs to help teach this), characteristics of the phases and steps, as well as timing rules. Again, rough overview, this is a first look - not an attempt to memorize the CR.

- Goldfish a game with them watching.
-- Talk through what you are doing, why and how. Have them follow the turn order reference and any other references you may make to help them along (e.g. I print out evergreen keywords and their reminder text on a half-sheet of paper for when we start playing)
-- Follow that by having them goldfish the same deck with you watching and coaching

- Build some basic 60 card training decks, following the "9" rule, I generally make 2 each mono, dual and tri colored
-!- Don't talk about deck building at this time, but after a week or two of playing you can dissect these decks one-at-a-time to talk about deck building basics and show them how to upgrade/change a deck
-- Play the first 3-5 games with hands on the table (as if a global Telepahy were in play) and take it slow. Do not play down, but make sure you are discussing threat assessment and board state as you go (e.g. I'm going to Disenchant <this> - Explain why you chose the target and why this is the time to do so).
-- Play your first "normal" game on the same session you play your last "hands revealed" game. It can be detrimental to spit this between sessions

- Just play some normal games. Maybe get some dual decks and try to showcase different strategies and concepts
-- During these games is a good time to talk about the differences between agro, control, etc.
-- Give them time to find out what they do and do not enjoy playing and playing against

- Start teaching deck building
-- Now is a good time to first discuss variants like Commander, Tribal, etc. But don't try teaching the variant deck building yet - just make them aware that there are "other ways to play."

- Once they are comfortable playing and have learned to tweak a deck, you can have them let you know when they want to learn Commander or another variant. Build (or precon) the first couple decks for whatever format they want to learn and let them tell you when they are comfortable.

Depending on the person I was teaching, this whole process usually took about 6-10 "sessions," at which time I usually gave them about 1000 cards (I used the Holiday boxes and just filled it about 2/3ds full) and two-three of the decks I used for teaching and helped them build a deck or two out of their new collection.

Of course, YMMV. Hope that helps though.
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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

I'll agree with pretty much everyone. In a vacuum Commander has complicated board states, tons of random cards to identify - many of which are not obvious threats, and lots of keywords and interactions to learn. However... it also depends on the group she will be playing in. I built a deck especially for my wife to learn Magic (and Commander) which keeps the interactions simple and subtle, limited the number of confusing cards, kept the keywords to the basic ones she needs to learn most, and most importantly I sought out the newest edition of cards to have the most straight forward oracle text.
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Post by Dragonlover » 3 years ago

I taught my wife using a very early version of my Molimo deck and a UG madness deck I had lurking from when that was standard legal. Went better than I expected, and shows that really, so long as whoever you're teaching wants to learn the game, it doesn't really matter what you use.

That said, I wholeheartedly recommend those 30 card decks from the LGS after having worked at one. They're fantastic for that first hit of "here's what the cards do".

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Post by Vessiliana » 3 years ago

Another possibility, if she plays board games, is the option of starting with Archenemy. My daughter has the Nicol Bolas Archenemy set and loves it. She is a Bolas fan, though...

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Post by darrenhabib » 3 years ago

There is a difference between when somebody asks you to teach them, and when you want to introduce them to the game to try and get them into it.
If they are asking you then you can probably get into the more complicated aspects that commander has.
But when you are introducing them to Magic and they haven't asked you for it specifically, then you are waaay better off just sticking to a much smaller deck and the fundamentals of Magic play.

Even if you hand over a hundred cards, that is a daunting pile of cards to even shuffle. Why so many?

I would start with 30 cards decks with multiples of cards, so that they get a sense of "oh I've seen that card before".
In 100 singleton, its just going to be one new card after another all the time, and it'll give them less of a sense of familiarity when playing. And familiarity is comfortable, which is important for when you are learning anything new.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

I built 40 card casual decks to teach my wife and daughter how to play and it worked out pretty well. Still, it's not anywhere near a substitute for being able to play game after game with the computer in Arena :)

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Post by MrMystery314 » 3 years ago

Starting with EDH will generally not go so well unless everyone involved is extremely patient. Start with the welcome decks until they learn the fundamental rules, then maybe move to more complicated constructed decks that don't introduce new rules like EDH.

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Post by Gashnaw » 3 years ago

My best friend tried teaching his wife magic with EDH and it was a disaster. The Rules are skewed and with an environment meant to be casual it is a horrendous place to begin.

Start with the training decks most LGSs give out for free. Those decks are meant to teach new players so it ia s good place to start. The are easy to learn. Once they have the basics, you can start going more advanced, and work your way up to EDH.

EDH is a great place for new players who don't want the competitive environment, but don;t teach them with EDH, it is too much to take in.

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Post by Segrus » 3 years ago

I think it's also important to keep in mind that not everybody is cut out to teach Magic effectively to other people. Some people are going to have a harder time than others putting into words how the game is played in a way that other people will understand. I don't think just knowing how to play Commander or Magic naturally makes you good at doing this, so not everybody is necessarily going to be able to use Commander as a teaching tool. Other types of decks, non-Commander decks, might be needed.

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Post by schweinefett » 3 years ago

Another thing worth noting though (don't recall it being brought up) is what sort of games she's already used to. If she's like me, and likes rules-heavy games like wargames, 18xx, or even keyword heavy games like cloudspire and so on, then maybe EDH isn't necessarily the worst place to start. She'd gobble up the rules, and possibly see lines that many other players who aren't so used to complex boardstates would parse.

But that's probably more the exception than the rule. Even when introducing players who are used to complex games, I think 1v1 60 card casual is the place to start. Limit the number of keywords and ability words to that which exists within 1 standard rotation, and upgrade/add complexity as they get the game. Before you know it, your GF will be slinging cardboard, and answering rules questions like what what coloured mana can a tundra tap for when you have humility, and a magus of the moon in play.

Patience though, is probably key to getting your GF into EDH.

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Post by Ecthelion » 3 years ago

Wow! Thanks for the thorough answers!

I thought my post might get lost among all the other discussions, but it is nice to see the interest it brought up. I think I am getting into the right community.

Personally I had't given so much thought to the topics as you guys have. I truly believe that giving her a good first impression is key, since she has some interest but is not commited to learning it. Now that I hear about LGS decks I'll definately get them, the whole set. I think that as @Treamayne and @Segrus said going thorugh the color wheel can go a long way to loving the game.

Commander definately can have too many Keywords and strange dynamics, specially since the multiplayer aspect of it, so I'll guess it'll have to wait a bit. Perhaps afterwards she can choose a commander she likes and really make a deck that feels her own. I mean, that's why I love the game, and I want to share that feeling. One the stores open up again we'll go and see what they have for precons :)

It will be a good way to start fresh, since I haven't played since a moved to a new country and left all my cards to my friends back home.

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Post by ilovesaprolings » 3 years ago

Ecthelion wrote:
3 years ago
Perhaps afterwards she can choose a commander she likes and really make a deck that feels her own. I mean, that's why I love the game, and I want to share that feeling. One the stores open up again we'll go and see what they have for precons :)
Giving her a deck she will like mechanically with a general she will like on first impressions (name, art and whatever). This is the key to make commander works for beginners.

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Post by Segrus » 3 years ago

Ecthelion wrote:
3 years ago
Commander definately can have too many Keywords and strange dynamics, specially since the multiplayer aspect of it, so I'll guess it'll have to wait a bit. Perhaps afterwards she can choose a commander she likes and really make a deck that feels her own. I mean, that's why I love the game, and I want to share that feeling. Once the stores open up again we'll go and see what they have for precons :)
I will always feel it's a little misleading to think about Commander in terms of the number of available keywords, since it would be a terrible way to teach anybody how to play Magic. What I mean is, it isn't like you'd sit somebody down with the bloody Comprehensive Rules and make them memorize all 40 keyword abilities (exaggerated extremely on purpose). The multiplayer aspect won't really be much different from any other regular board game, so if the person you're teaching has a good handle on board games that won't be a problem either.

My primary way of teaching Magic right now is by having literally 10 mono-color tribal decks available, more or less balanced together (making it pretty much a board game). That way when I sit down to teach anybody, I'll let everyone choose which deck they want (and tribal decks are really good at hooking people into the game). Not everyone can do this though. Obviously.

I do hope she becomes interested in Magic and you two are able to share these play experiences together--because that's just the best!

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