Based on my experience. Of course, there’s plenty of rules mistakes and deck building mistakes, but I’m focusing on easy-to-fix problems. Also, even though I’m giving specific examples, I’m trying to fix larger problems.
In order to make their game more approachable to new players and to keep the game fresher, Wizards’ R&D began to emphasize creatures over spells. This has been good for the game, as now those cards that appeal to new players are actually good, and not just heartbreaking as they are easily dispatched or countered as they used to be.
There’s an old article from last millenium by Mike Flores called Who’s the Beatdown?, which is still available on SCG.com. Its about assignment of who is the beatdown and who is the control and what can result from not understanding this.
What I’m talking about today, are the decks that want to be the beatdown in most situations.
There’s plenty of daily strategy content on the Mothership, Star City Games, Channel Fireball, and other places. However, those are targeted at people, who are generally not that interested in deckbuilding, and who are fairly familiar with the game. Here I’m going for the beginner audience.
Taking a mulligan is always a hard decision. Every time. We do our best to justify keeping our hands, because going to six and not knowing what you are going to draw is scary. However, its not that bad.
Pretty basic guide to drafting and deck building.
Updated on 2015-11-02
Updated on 2017-05-17 with more names for the psychographics
This question was brought up in our forums recently. It was pretty off-handed and the ensueing discussion wasn’t really indepth, but it made me think. What do I have for the starting player?
First, I’m not going to talk about the rules. I’m sure there’s plenty of places for that. The Mothership (DailyMtG) has its own material. I’m going to emphasize your approach to games in general.
The thing about Magic is that it can be daunting to start. Not only is the game pretty complex (although a lot of work has been done to make it more beginner friendly and your usual games don’t necessarily delve that deeply into the finer points of the rules), but there’s also so many different products and formats, they will discourage many. And then there’s the question of money… Which we’ll get into later.
One thing people don’t always think about is that even though may not want to break down your carefully crafted deck, you do actually play more games with sideboard available than not in tournaments. This seems to be a problem especially among newer players, who don’t often have any sideboard whatsoever.