As a store owner, I am often tasked with teaching people how to play Magic. Considering that Magic: The Gathering is a genius-level game, as determined by MENSA, and that it's comprehensive rule book stretches into the triple digit page count, the task can be daunting. Where the heck do you start? How do you go about the process of teaching the game? When do you introduce big-picture strategic concepts, and with what format do you begin teaching? All of these questions plague me whenever someone new rolls up to my store and says "this game looks fun! Can you teach me?" The answer is always a resounding "yes", but internally, I always sort of dread the process. Turns out, teaching Magic is much harder than actually playing Magic.

I spent the past weekend in New York City, and while I decided against playing in the TCG Player 5k because I was "on vacation" and didn't want to spend my time playtesting and grinding, I poked my head into the event hall. I was with an old friend from college who has played Magic in the past, but no longer. We got the urge to sling some cards and we decided that the best way to feed the need was to sit around at the Learn to Play booth and battle with preconstructed decks. It was far more fun than we imagined, and it sent me into a very interesting thought experiment. After a few games, we began discussing the "art" of teaching Magic with the girl who was working at the table. Turns out, she'd been dating Darwin Kastle, and she was a hell of a player. I've never seen anyone gain 20 life off a single Goldenglow Moth. Yeah, I lost that game. Anyway, Rada had spent all day teaching people how to play Magic with the 30-card "Planeswalker" decks that WotC gives away to TOs and store owners to use as promos and teaching tools. After that discussion, I asked if I could perhaps grab a copy of each deck to work with while I'm on the road. My goal was to use the set of 10 decks (2 different of each color) as a complete teaching tool for a new player.

Before I get into how I began to use the decks themselves, I'd like to discuss how to begin the process of teaching a new player. We're going to assume that the person in question has never played a TCG in their life. The process of bringing someone over from WoW TCG or Yu Gi Oh is very different, and most of your difficulties in spreading the cardboard gospel will stem from teaching true beginners. The most common question among teachers of the game is "where the hell do I start?" This is where you need to use your skill as a player and read your opponent. Clearly, you're not playing to beat them, but you'd better figure out who they are and what makes them tick. I'll use a few case studies to demonstrate.

A gentleman and his girlfriend came into my shop one afternoon, and it turned out that the girlfriend used to play Magic back in the day. We got to talking and it came to light that her other half was interested learning the game as well. There was one major complication to my teaching process - he was very seriously autistic. They were both very upfront and forthcoming with this information, and while it presented an interesting challenge, it also made many parts of the game much easier to teach! He explained to me that he had a background in competitive poker, and that he hoped that playing Magic would help him become more comfortable in social situations. As I sat down to teach him, I began to understand the way his brain worked.

Figuring out how your student thinks is crucial to being a good teacher. Our autistic friend wasn't interested in hearing about how flavorful the Multiverse was. He was fascinated by the infinite lines of play implied by the infinite combinations of Magic cards. Out of curiosity, I asked him his profession. He was a Computer Science grad student. Bingo. Whereas in the following example, the player was much more interested in the flavor of the game, my student learned best when I explained the goal of the game in terms of probabilities. With a little help over his shoulder, he drafted a very competitive UW Levelers deck in ROE draft and absolutely crushed every match he played. It was like teaching a computer to play Magic; he missed no interaction, calculated every line of play, and once he began to see the other cards he was up against, he began playing around them when appropriate. It was rather humbling to watch that level of genius at work, and it never would have happened if I began my explanation with "you're a mighty wizard who...." instead of beginning with "Magic is a game of resource development and manipulating and min/maxing probabilities".

Fast forward back to New York City, where I was getting my head stomped in by my friend's R/G Fatties deck. While I was busy taking Yavimaya Wurms to the dome, Rada was teaching a young couple how to play. The girl was very energetic and enthusiastic about the game, and really seemed to enjoy the flavor of it a tremendous amount. She also loved the competitive atmosphere, and was very proud of herself when her Cloud Elementals flew over the top of her boyfriend's ground pounders to end the game. I believe there was even some smack-talk to the extent of "I'm going to put my fliers on you again and you're gonna lose". Paraphrased, of course. The boyfriend, of course, was grinning ear-to-ear.

She was focused on two things - first, the flavor of the game. She enjoyed learning about the world itself. It helped her to learn that Blue creatures often have flying because, well, they're made out of blue stuff like clouds and Faeries! Rather than explaining why a Lightning Bolt is both hyper-efficient removal and a versatile game-ender, it was easier to explain that Red Decks often value power and efficiency now at the cost of options later. The metaphor of burning twice as hot, half as long, seemed to be apt. She was not thinking like a competitive player, but you could clearly see that the competitive wheels were turning. If I were to teach her to play, I'd focus less on the probability (as I did in the prior example) and more on the competition itself. It's not that she wasn't able to understand any of this, because she seemed very smart, but it's best to focus on the area of the game that most appeals to the player right off the bat. Your goal is not to groom the next Pro Tour player! Your goal is to get one more person playing the game we all know and love so much, so retention until your next lesson is the key,

She was having a blast beating the crap out of her boyfriend with cheap fliers, but he was quickly realizing just how deep the strategic rabbit hole really went. As I listened to that him talk about the game, I noticed a few things that were indicative of his learning style and thinking style. First, once he learned the rules and the basics, he began to speak excitedly and quickly about strategy. This kind of "fast talking" usually indicates that someone's gotten ahold of a concept that resonates deeply with them. He clearly was more interested in the strategy of MTG than with the competition. This explains why he was grinning ear-to-ear as his girlfriend mowed him down; he was figuring out the game and loving every moment of it.

In this case, when someone is clearly interested in the strategy, it is important to learn what other games they know. In his case, it was Chess. He was a competent Chess player, which I find enviable since I seem to have no patience for the game. Whereas I could have taught the game using probability as my main axis, as I did with my autistic, poker playing student, I'd opt to focus on long-term strategy if I were teaching this student. He absolutely had the competitive drive that has girlfriend did, and I'm sure that probability was not beyond his grasp, but he was genuinely excited about the ideas of planning a long game, having a plan, setting up complex traps, and all the other techniques that Chess players use to make me feel quite dumb.

Looking at all the different ways that people can learn the same set of rules set me on a quest to figure out what cards I'd like to use to teach the game. The 30-card decks that WotC provides these days are great, since they introduce the important mechanics of the game without introducing too many complex rules interactions at once. They were very smart to make two different decks per color, since the 10 deck set can really stand alone as a "game in a box" if you need to teach a few people at once.

One of the judges at the event, Tameron was his name if I recall, had a smashing idea. He challenged my friend Will and I to build a few 60-card decks out of this pool. The goal was to build 5 decks, each of them using two colors, and we couldn't mix and match between the 30-card decks nor make the same color combination twice. This was a fun experiment. Most of the decks had multiple different ways they could be played. For example, the UG deck we built could mill you out with Hedron Crab and Harrow, or just run you over with big dumb animals. The WB deck could just as easily race you with cheap Vampires or build up a giant Ajani's Pridemate and crush in one hit.

No one was going to sleeve up a 60 from this pool and win a PTQ, but the cards were powerful. I found it unnecessary to keep the decks intact at this point. I'm planning to use these cards as a starting point for a new player's collection, so I just broke them down by color and set aside the basic land until I needed it. Just for fun, I made a few decks and in the process, I got to see how damned frustrating it is for a new player to try to build their first deck.

Each 30-card deck has 18 spells and 12 lands, which means that when we combine any given pair of them, we're left with a 60 card deck with 24 lands. That's about right. The problem is, half the cards in the decks aren't even close to constructed-worthy! It's difficult to teach a new player that a Goblin Piker isn't a good card, but it can still win a game of Magic in the right deck. In hindsight, I should have been building 40-card decks, since the 10 decks basically amount to two Sealed Deck pools (180 spells, versus approximately 90 in a sealed pool). At any rate, I found myself very frustrated by the poor cards I had to play, the lack of multiples of the best cards, and the fact that no one strategy seemed to lend itself to construction. Since I learned to build decks in 1993, not 2010, I'm pretty far-removed from what it feels like to be a beginner. This experiment put me back in those shoes.

Being able to understand how your student thinks is absolutely crucial to teaching them well. By forcing myself to experience their struggles in deckbuilding, I was able to relate to their frustrations. This is especially true with students who are on a limited budget and can't go out and buy four Primeval Titans to finish Valakut Ramp.

Overall, I'd suggest that everyone - not just judges and shop owners - teach new players how to play. Our game only grows when our players help it to grow, and we're the best resource WotC has when it comes to acquisition and re-acquisition. When you're teaching new players how to play, remember to mind their "game plan". Understand the way they think, process knowledge, make decisions and most importantly, understand why they're having fun and use that knowledge to your advantage. Our game is, as I understand it, undergoing an unprecedented popularity boom, and it's on all of us to keep the train running. Now get out there and show someone how to sling 'em!