I am very lucky to be married to a partner who supports my hobby. She encourages my continuing to create content, she puts up with my talking about it, and she has no problems with my going out once every other week or so and playing with my friends. She even let me have a whole section of the family room to store my cards! (I share it with a Barbie Dreamhouse, though.)

Early on in our relationship, we decided to see if Magic was something she might like. I got a couple of beginner decks and did all my research, reading about the best ways to teach the game to a new player without overwhelming them, prepping myself not to go too fast or get overly excited, but rather just to move at a reasonable pace and not introduce too much at once.

My wife is many wonderful things, but she is not a gamer; she's kind of a "play Monopoly till I get bored" person, not a "learn all the complicated rules and stay here till the bitter end" person. More power to her - she knows herself and what she likes. But we walked away from the experience knowing two things: 1) she's probably never going to be a Magic player and 2) she liked Trample.

As we start looking at Wilds of Eldraine and the fairy tale fun to be had, I realized there was a Commander who kind of looked like my wife - certainly wearing a cloak my wife would love to wear. And while she was not a Trample-forward General, she's in colors which encourage a lot of Trample, so I thought it might be fun to build a deck for my wife.

Let's take a look at the list.

Ruby, Daring Tracker | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Ruby, Daring Tracker

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Bookwurm
• 1 Canoptek Spyder
• 1 Challenger Troll
• 1 Combustible Gearhulk
• 1 Dragonborn Champion
• 1 Dragonlord Atarka
• 1 Drakuseth, Maw of Flames
• 1 Drumhunter
• 1 Elder Gargaroth
• 1 Etali, Primal Conqueror
• 1 Garruk's Horde
• 1 Garruk's Packleader
• 1 Giant Adephage
• 1 Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma
• 1 Keeper of Fables
• 1 Kogla and Yidaro
• 1 Mosstodon
• 1 Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion
• 1 Paleoloth
• 1 Pathbreaker Ibex
• 1 Primordial Sage
• 1 Rhonas the Indomitable
• 1 Sandstone Oracle
• 1 Soul of the Harvest
• 1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
• 1 Spellbreaker Behemoth
• 1 Stonehoof Chieftain
• 1 Strider, Ranger of the North
• 1 Thunderfoot Baloth
• 1 Treeshaker Chimera
• 1 Ulvenwald Observer
• 1 Warbeast of Gorgoroth

• Instants (5)
• 1 Bolt Bend
• 1 Entish Restoration
• 1 Temur Battle Rage
• 1 Vine Snare
• 1 Winds of Qal Sisma

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Blessing of Frost
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Explosive Vegetation
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Migration Path
• 1 Peregrination
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Roar of Challenge
• 1 Savage Punch
• 1 See the Unwritten
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Vastwood Surge

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Colossal Majesty
• 1 Dragon Grip
• 1 Garruk's Uprising
• 1 Kavu Lair
• 1 Mighty Emergence
• 1 Sarkhan's Unsealing
• 1 The First Iroan Games
• 1 Warstorm Surge
• 1 Where Ancients Tread

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Atarka Monument

• Lands (40)
• 10 Snow-Covered Mountain
• 16 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Castle Embereth
• 1 Castle Garenbrig
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Game Trail
• 1 Highland Forest
• 1 Highland Weald
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Racers' Ring
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits
• 1 Temple of Abandon

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If I could talk her into trying the game again, I think this would be a great deck to hand her. Additionally, it's the sort of deck which would be great for any beginning player; relatively straightforward but with enough decisions to make it interesting, and the opportunity to play with huge Creatures and Trample.

Ruby does two things, primarily. She comes down early and is a mana dork, providing either color. She also wants us to have a Creature with power 4 or greater, because if we do she gets much bigger when she attacks. A 3/4 with Haste for two mana is nothing to sneeze at, but I was thinking about what my wife, or another new player, would want to do, and that's play with big Creatures. So rather than looking to buff up Ruby, I decided to look at that ability as a reason to make a power-matters deck. We've had a recent spate of 4-Power-matters cards in Ferocious from the Temur, and way back in Shards of Alara the Naya shard cared about 5-power.

Since we're going to be casting some big Creatures, we're going to need mana. Our 40 Lands are helpful here; we have a number of Lands which fix our colors, a few utility Lands like Bonders' Enclave, Kessig Wolf Run, and Reliquary Tower, and a bunch of Snow Basics. We've also got several cards which go get us more Lands; my favorite here is Entish Restoration, which is almost always going to get us three Lands. Finally, we do have Atarka Monument, which turns into a flying Creature with 4 Power, so it seemed worth it.

I've been reliably building more card draw into my decks over the last several months, but I think it's even more important to put draw into decks which might be played by beginning players. Often, draw gets overlooked by newer players, because why does drawing a couple of cards matter when I can just put a 7/7 in that will smash my opponents in the face? It's a fair question, but if you've been playing, you know why - the more cards we draw, the more options we have and the more answers we can provide. By building in a lot of draw, and doing it in such a way it doesn't feel like a loss, we can teach by doing why card draw is so clutch to Magic, and Commander specifically. So, we're going to draw by doing what we want to do: playing big Creatures. We have Colossal Majesty and Garruk's Uprising. We have Kavu Lair and The First Iroan Games. But we also have Sandstone Oracle and Soul of the Harvest. And we have Rishkar's Expertise and Shamanic Revelation. We're going to care about having big Creatures, and the more of them we play, the more we're going to draw. While we're at it, some of our Creatures draw when they do stuff, like Bookwurm or Elder Gargaroth. Oh! And we're running Snow basics because we've got Blessing of Frost, which should draw us several cards for only four mana. We should keep a decent amount of cards moving to our Hand, allowing us to keep pace with the Battlefield and make some people nervous.

And we're going to draw some big ol' Creatures. A lot of them help with our gameplan of big Creatures, like Challenger Troll and Dragonborn Champion. Some of them throw damage around, like Drakuseth, Maw of Flames and Dragonlord Atarka. Some of them are simply fun, like Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness. Mosstodon, Spearbreaker Behemoth, and Spellbreaker Behemoth all hail from Shards of Alara, and all do good work for us here. Stonehoof Chieftain is a bruiser for sure, and Warbeast of Gorgoroth at least provides some cost to Wrathing the board.

A few of our Creatures fight when they enter the Battlefield, and we're running Bolt Bend because that spell is awesome for us, but otherwise we've got a couple of Fogs to keep the table from overwhelming us before we beat them down. Winds of Qal Sisma is particularly good for us; it turns a Fog into a one-sided Wrath in the event someone wants to try to take us out. Savage Punch is solid here, and Roar of Challenge is a good way to push a lot of damage through on someone by forcing them to block only one guy - who's indestructible.

In order to have some fun with what we're up to, we're also running Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, and Mighty Emergence, all of which care about those big Creatures. An Overrun is kind of a classic in a deck like this; we can't run Titanic Ultimatum, which would be perfect, but of course if you have one Craterhoof Behemoth would be great. In its place, Pathbreaker Ibex and Thunderfoot Baloth both do good work; the Baloth triggers all our high-power-caring cards, and the Ibex functions as an Overwhelming Stampede every time it attacks.

This deck plays out easily, draws plenty of cards, and is a lot of fun at tables which aren't overwhelmingly competitive. There's enough interaction among the cards the player will work, but it's not the end of the world if they miss a trigger, and for someone more advanced the deck allows for some fun sequencing challenges ("do I play out Where Ancients Tread this turn and save my Creature for next, so I get the value, or do I need my Soul of the Harvest first to get cards moving? Or should I just push for damage and play out Kogla and Yidaro?"). It's a good one to have in your bag for someone who needs to borrow, or if you're just in a Tramply mood!

What's your favorite style of deck to use to teach someone? How about a deck you've made for a partner or a friend? Let me know on socials!

Thanks for reading.