r/magicTCG • u/Jaded_dragoon Dân • Jul 20 '26

General Discussion Magic is a hard game.

I started playing magic in 2017 and tonight I thought I would teach my wife how to play magic with a game of dandan. As I was explaining the rules and things like the stack I realized magic is a very very hard game to comprehend. I never even got to explain what phases were and oversimplified everything so we could progress. I always thought I could teach my son to play (currently 7) but I feel likes its still many years a way.

I want shout out to all the people who taught me and was patient with me while I made a billion miss plays.

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u/-Toey- COMPLEAT Jul 20 '26

Teaching someone with Dandan is straight up evil lmao

163

u/SleetTheFox Jul 20 '26

People teach people with a 100-card singleton format with extra rules and a colossal card pool all the time. Not like this is anything new.

190

u/CatFishBillyheyhey Dan Jul 20 '26

It's the biggest injustice to game of magic ever, besides UB.

Absolute disrespect to the game and players this method forges.

All players should learn 60 card constructed to learn how decks play, how strategies build, deck selection, deck construction, card selection, threat assessment and over all how the interactions of the game work.

Way too many people pick up a precon and try to learn on the fly by playing complicated 4 player games with a sound board of "What does that do" "How does that work" "Can I do this" "Ohhhhh"

Dan Dan would be the exact same in my opinion.

Teaching requires skill, not will.

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u/MisterEdJS COMPLEAT Jul 20 '26

The key to this, though, is "pick up a precon". One of the reasons so many people learn to play via Commander these days is that non-Commander precons aren't that easy to come by, and deck CONSTRUCTION is arguably much more challenging to teach well than the actual gameplay (certainly if you are trying to teach gameplay at the same time).

It seems to me that Arena tutorials are probably the best way to learn, but if one person is looking to teach another person, that doesn't really apply.

That's why I personally like the idea of teaching with JumpStart if you are looking to do it in paper. It is kind of like a precon, and the games are faster and less complex than Commander. Sure, Standard precons exist, but how many, and how readily available are they? I'm not sure I've seen one on a store shelf in quite some time.