Beginner/Learning Decks

Hi Sourcers! My children are getting almost to the age of learning the basics of Magic. My daughter in particular is 9 and thinks some of my cards are really cool. This brings me to the often pondered quandary of a seasoned Magic player: how do I go about making some introductory decks to teach the game? My initial thoughts are to create five mono-colored decks, each representative of what the color does well at a fundamental level. Digging deeper I was thinking that it would be helpful to make sure each card type is represented in each deck (land, non-basic land, creature, enchantment, artifact, instant, sorcery, planeswalker.) This is the extent of my progress so far, besides mentally listing some cards that would do well in each color (serra angel, lightning bolt, llanowar elves, doom blade, mana leak, you get the picture.) I'm not locked into these ideas however, and I'm 100% open to any and all suggestions.

I'm hoping to get some good feedback. I want the decks to really help learn the game but also not be atrociously underpowered/boring, thereby making them lose interest. Hell, I'd love to get to a point where the decks are super-fun and balanced so I can pull them out during a family board-game night and get a 'hooray!' Budget is really a non-issue because I'm not looking for chase rares or incredibly powered pieces. Functional, fun, interactive, fundamental Magic is my aim. I have tons of cards like most seasoned players and I can easily drop some cash for cards I don't already have.

Help me out best-magic-community-on-the-net!

I think you're very much on the right track.

To keep it a bit simpler I'd skip on a few card types for the first versions of the learner decks. You could go about it like this:
- Start off with basic lands, simple creatures (vanillas, mostly keyword abilities, just a few activated abilities, no triggers yet), instants and sorceries
- When they're comfortable with that, add 1/2 non-basic lands and a few enchantments/artifacts
- The next step would be including Auras and Equipments, some creatures with triggered abilities
- Add in Planeswalkers

To start off with all card types at once might be a bit much to take in. Just expand gradually.

I don't think you really need to worry about decks being underpowered or boring - building up for 20 turns until you can finally cast that Craw Wurm was one of the most exciting parts for me when learning how to play. I understand that for an experienced player it isn't very appealing anymore (this is one of the struggles I have when playing MtG with my wife - I've been doing this for 15/16 years now and she's a novice. I like to use full blown Legacy decks, she just wants to attack with a bunch of dragons), but new players experience the game in a completely different manner.

I hope this has been helpful. Good luck and have fun!

Each year, WotC releases a set of 5 pre-constructed (I think) 40-cards decks that serve exactly that kind of purpose. They're just a bunch of OK Commons and Uncommons (I remember having seen a Serra Angel and a Sengir Vampire :)) with basic lands and are ready to pick up and play with. My local store gives them out for free, and I used them to teach my girlfriend's little brother (11 yo) how to play the game. We then went on to buy a Duel Deck (Kiora vs. someone, or something) a few weeks later to spice things up a little. I suggest you do the same :)

http://wpn.wizards.com/en/products/magic-welcome-decks

Nice one! Saves you a lot of work.

I play Pauper decks with my wife. The current Pauper metagame is quite balanced, and offers decent options for all 5 mono colours (W tokens, U tempo, B control, R sligh/burn, G stompy), which shows their typical Magic traits. Most interactions are on the red zone, but timing the instants is also crucial. A lot of 4-ofs make the decks easy to pick up. The game play is not overly complicated, although the redundancy makes situations recur for players to identify and learn from mistakes. An intro deck caters for beginners but loses its appeal as they develop. A pauper deck fits in an existing format, and the elements of constructed Magic can be discovered as experience and skills develop. The deck develops with time and metagame, but it does not start with bad constructed cards.

Thanks for the great comments! I like the 'slow roll' idea with only creatures/instants/sorceries. I might even have a tiered system like Duals of the Planeswalkers, essentially adding cards as they get better at understanding the game. I think one of the first upgrades you could get on the mono-green Garruck deck was Rancor (adding auras to the mix), and following that same vein would be really cool.

The only thing I might skip is the 40 card beginning deck number. I always thought that was dumb, even in the beginning, when all constructed decks have 60 cards. Might as well start right off with 60 and not have to change over. When limited play enters the equation, that's a different story (and in my opinion a much more difficult skill set!) Drafting is certainly more skill intensive than playing a constructed deck over and over.

I'll check out the pre-con decks that wotc does. If I can just grab some decklists I can probably build them with my current collection (or slightly modify based on availability.)

I'll hold off on the pauper deck building for now. I play a bit of pauper myself, and while it may only use commons, its still a heavy-duty constructed format with a lot of intricate interactions.

Any idea if doing a tribal theme would be good? It might be a little boring but I always liked elves vs goblins, and this could add in angels, faeries, and zombies (just off the top.) This however doesn't allow for a mix of cool stuff like Shivan Dragon in red or Obstinate Baloth in green.

I also really want to build around a strong mana curve. More than anything I want games to move along well, regardless of outcomes. It doesn't help to draw your Shivan Dragon if you get stuck on 5 lands for a bunch of turns. It would help to drop in a Fireball or Taurean Mauler along the way to keep it interesting.

Thanks for the great response! I plan on cooking up some material after checking out the wotc link. I'll keep you guys posted, especially if you want to continue to help me refine the lists.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

Any idea if doing a tribal theme would be good? It might be a little boring but I always liked elves vs goblins, and this could add in angels, faeries, and zombies (just off the top.) This however doesn't allow for a mix of cool stuff like Shivan Dragon in red or Obstinate Baloth in green.

I also really want to build around a strong mana curve. More than anything I want games to move along well, regardless of outcomes. It doesn't help to draw your Shivan Dragon if you get stuck on 5 lands for a bunch of turns. It would help to drop in a Fireball or Taurean Mauler along the way to keep it interesting.

Thanks for the great response! I plan on cooking up some material after checking out the wotc link. I'll keep you guys posted, especially if you want to continue to help me refine the lists.

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I'd hold off on the tribal themes for a bit. Having a lot of synergy in your deck is a lot of fun, but you have to understand what you're doing in order to see the synergy between the various things (or why that's cooler than a Shivan Dragon).

Anyways, looking forward to the first lists! I don't have kids yet, but that doesn't mean I won't have them in the future.

First draft of the black deck. Curve seems good, cards have some cool interactions but nothing intense. Only creatures and sorceries for the beginning. For now, I will have a set of 'house rules' where players have to play with the deck as-is for the first game, and then can 'sideboard' into a group of fifteen cards. These will have instants, equipment/artifacts, a planeswalker, and enchantments (no color hosers though!) Stuff like Bonesplitter, Ratchet Bomb, Pestilence, and Liliana Vess will be really cool to mess around with (when they are ready.)

Classic Black Discard

1 mana
3x Will-o-the-Wisp
1x Duress

2 mana
2x Child of Night
2x Black Knight
1x Blood Seeker
2x Ravenous Rats

3 mana
2x assassinate
2x mind rot
1x royal assassin
1x dread warlock

4 mana
1x Abyssal Specter
2x bloodhunter bat
1x zombify

5 mana
1x sever soul

6 mana
1x nightmare

17x swamp


Let me know what you think! I was going to do something like Midnight Banshee, but the rules need to be simple. Same with Drain Life, I'll put that in the 'sideboard'. I did end up going with 40 cards because it will be more likely to see the more powerful singletons that way. Comments please!

Looks like a good start. A lot of triggered abilities though, and not a single vanilla. You might want to cut on the number of Will-o'-the-Wisp. They form quite a formidable wall, which isn't necessarily fun for the opposing party. I get that you want to show them what regeneration is, but you might be better off with a couple of vanilla 1 mana creatures and a Drudge Skeletons. The Skeletons can't accidently perma-block the only flyer you find :wink:.

I think it's good that you're incorporating a couple of keyword abilities and I think you're spot on for the number of different keyword abilities you're using. Not too many, not too few.

I have a similar project but more advance (as I use it to teach/play with coworkers at work)

I don't have monocolor decks, rather 10 decks that have the Ravnica guild color combinations.

Each deck are mostly lands, creatures, instants and sorceries. There are artifacts or enchantments in each deck but I limit them to 3 (either artifact or enchantment). Each deck has a learning curve (R/G Zoo and R/W Soldiers being the easiest and U/R spell matters/pseudo-storm among the hardest)

My themes are:

U/W tap out control (teaches the principle of card advantage) [control]

U/B draw go (teaches the principle of instant timing) [control]

B/R reanimator (teaches the principle of using other game zones) [combo]

R/G zoo (teaches the principle of damage race) [aggro]

G/W astral slide (teaches the principle of an engine deck) [midrange]

W/B midrange (teaches the principle of "who's the aggro/control") [midrange]

U/R pseudo-storm (teaches next level magic) [combo]

B/G ramp (teaches the principle of a mana curve) [midrange]

R/W soldier tribal (teaches the principle of combat math) [aggro]

G/U mimic tempo (teaches the principle of tempo) [aggro]

Each deck runs minimal rare cards (3 defining non-permanent rares and 2 rare creatures (mostly legendary))

I feel like using two color decks also teaches resource management which is paramount in learning the game. I also made sure that other decks are harder to play than others and it's actually balanced so there are no overpowered decks. This avoid boredom, especially with us that go on tour for work.

I also added flavor to the decks, trying to base the deck philosophy based on the guild they're representing.

I've done something similar with decks that my wife and I can play against each other. They originated with decks that I built when I got back into the game around Dark Ascension's release. A bunch of co-workers were reminiscing and someone said "hey, remember that old Magic game?" Turns out we all played and all retained a lot of our cards, so we started playing again around the lunch table at work. Very casually. One other guy and myself got very competitive with it, but I kept those casual decks intact.

I have 5 mono-color decks that we rotate through. Red goblins, green elves, blue merfolk, white humans, and black vampires. None are competitively viable, though the merfolk deck does include many of the creatures you'll find (minus True Name). Each deck also has 1 card around which the whole deck is flavored. Krenko, original Nissa, Thassa, Elspeth Knight Errant, and Sorin Markov. Where those have other cards with their names/art/flavor text, I try to include them. For example, Sorin's Vengeance is my wife's favorite card and she typically picks the Vampire deck because of it. Elves and Merfolk have lots of lords, Humans and Goblins have lots of tokens, and Vampires have some flyers and some drain spells. I've tried to make sure each color has spells that represent that color, such as burn spells for red, pump for green, some draw and counters in blue, etc.

They're more or less balanced with eachother, so we have a good time with them.

What I did for my nephew and niece as the very first introduction was to build two identical RG decks that only consisted of mono green vanilla creatures, mono red plain burn spells (Bolt and Shock), forests, mountains and a set of RG taplands. That way they can start off with how mana, combat and damage works, and how they can use a smaller creature and a burn spell to take down a bigger creature so that bigger isn`t always better. The rule of "creatures are green, instants are red" makes the first games easier, and is both easy and exciting to un-learn later. Playing with identical decks has some upsides: they can more easily learn from each other when playing, and you don`t get the "his deck is better than my deck, this is no fun" issue you often see with kids.

From there you can do all kinds of things gradually. Introduce a french vanilla creature with trample, a red creature with maybe firebreathing or first strike, a green instant like Giant Growth...

This is taking it all the way down to the basics, of course, I think they were probably younger than your kids. So this might not apply for you. But this worked well for me when I tried to teach the game to two children just barely old enough to be able to wrap their head around the rules. The #1 mistake seasoned magic players do when trying to teach the game to someone is to underestimate how complex it is, we take so much of our knowledge for granted. Mono green draw->combat->play forest->play vanilla creature can actually be enough complex for a starting point, that in itself is comparable in complexity to most games made for kids.

That's probably the best advice on how to teach playing Magic that I've ever read. I'll make sure to follow it if the situation ever comes up again for me, personally :)