My wife and I just had a babay and one thing I'm looking forward to is teaching him to play Magic. The wife and I were both talking about when he would be ready to pick it up and she thinks as young as 7 or 8. My guess is 11 or 12. Anybody have an opinoin? Anybody who learned young or have kids that they have taught?? I wonder what the Manufaucturer reccomended age is?
My dad started teaching me when I was 6, but then I was a pretty advanced kid. your best bet would be to try and teach him when he seems ready. It could be as early as 5-6, or as late as 12-13. Who knows? Every kid is different...
It depends on the kid. I learned at 11, but some of the kids I played with were younger.
If a kid can learn to read or speak a foreign language at four, he can probably learn magic. The trick is to make sure your children are interested in the game and enjoy it, and be patient with them.
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I once tried to teach a kid through big brothers and big sisters. He was nine and actually had some cards that someone gave him. After 5 minutes he looked at me and said "This game is pretty complicated, let's do something else." At that point I was only talking about power and toughness and how combat would work. Definitely too early for him.
There is a nine year old neighborhood kid that I would like to teach some day. He seems pretty intelligent but I think he would be too hyper to sit down and learn the game. I think I might wait a few years.
I learned Magic when I was 17 so I don't know how I would have handled it at a young age. I know I was playing monopoly at 6 or 7. Not sure if that would be any indication whether or not I was magic ready.
I learned when I was 7 or 8, so that early is perfectly fine. However, I would suggest you go with the "ladder" approach. Get him into Pokemon early, then Magic (you can make a stop in Yugioh, but I've noticed that people who do that tend to develop annoying habits like calling creatures monsters). Also, take him to a couple of low level tourneys like FNM and a pre-release at a store with a couple of young children so he has a couple of other non-parent people to identify with. Good luck, and train your little minion well!
I started when I was 12 but it took me until I was probably 14 or 15 to really understand the strategy behind it - and much longer than that before I figured out the finer art of deck building.
You can probably teach a kid to play as young as 8 or so but you'll be kicking their ass for a few years before they really get it
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"...because without beer, things do not seem to go as well."
I learned at 9-10. I learned chess at 5. But that's me.
Point is, as others have said, the child needs to have some sort of interest to keep them through learning the dull rules, even if they are certainly mentally capable of grasping them all. Interest and then see how they are developing.
But congratulations on the baby.
(I saw through you! This is nothing to do with teaching the child Magic but rather a proud new parent wanting to brag about their new spawn! Congratulations anyway!)
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I learned at about age 8. I should say that it is very hard for people to get anything beyond the very basics at a young age, i remember many concepts were beyond me for a few years (stuff like why Wrath of God was a good card. You kill your own creatures too!), but i still played and enjoyed it.
I think it would definitely help to start with simpler board games like checkers, othello, backgammon, etc. Before going to any card games which have changing rules and card bases.
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i've thought about this myself. if i had a kid, i would start them off with pokemon. it's an easier game and most of the players will be around his/her age. then when he/she started to grow out of it, i would then move on to magic. it just seems like the best way to go.
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actualy you could start them off with yugi oh since transitioning from yugi oh to magic would be easier than pokemon to magic. i learned at 11, but if i had known about the game, i'm sure i could of learned it earlier. as for chess, i taught my self how to play at 9. (the inconvenience of living in the middle of knowhere).
edit: obviously the first steps are determining how well your child can read/perform simple math (as this is the core of the game) and how mature your child is at handling cards. of course this can be remedied by only giving commons to the child, but once the child is "hooked" and they discover your stash when you aren't around, well that doesn't sound like a pleasant afternoon.
I taught my brother when he was 8. I used a combo of actual games and the Learn To Play Magic disc that I got when I started playing. He's 11 now and I think that with a bit of practice he could become quite good. The kid is a natural at evaluating cards. I'm so proud.
I learned at six. I was though pretty advanced and had older brother like VERY OLDER BROTHERS!!! I learned the basics and could play dont expect him to be John but yeah he could learn the basics at 6. I love playing them. Did anybody notice they correct you and are right sometimes LOL well congratz and happy living.
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congrats on the young one!
just thought i would throw my experiences in. i have a 6 year old daughter and have tried to get her interested in card games. shes really into board games and thought she may like card games as well . so i tried starting with pokemon and magic, even tried some horse card game that was sold at the local game store but always run into the same problem. she looses interest very quickly. so i would probably say from my experience interest would be a big factor. gender related or not cant say. now compare my daughter to a son of a co-worker who is a year younger and he plays pokemon and yu-gi and im sure he will take up magic when all his friends get into it.
thinking about it as everyone else has said its probaby different for everyone.
congrats again though!
I learned at 9-10. I learned chess at 5. But that's me.
D'awwwwwww. . .
I first saw Magic around 10, but I think in my case what made it attractive was that I later came back to it about 3 years later. (I think 3 years later... it's hard in my case to put this back together.) I thought, "hey, this is a game. I have too much time this Summer. Let's have a go again."
Then I sat on those memories for a bit, found the website, read about Pie, and had a blast at Onslaught cycle, but I don't think that's essential to the origin story from your persprospective. (c wut i did thar?).
So if you, umm, went off my model, you could have him see, perhaps being shown in a non-serious way (you know that way - where you show your friend but you don't really think they'll play for srs so you just mess around a bit with the physical cards), the game; and then a remote interest, given complete room but not forced, might 'bring him back' if there's any love for fantasy there.
I think though that Magic is for people who like Fantasy, and not otherwise. So I've gotta say I wouldn't myself push any child of mine in that direction.
I do believe that Magic is awesome enough that the converse holds: If you like Fantasy, then you'll like Magic. Borrowing a phrase I'm not sure how to name, "Every Fantasy goober outside Magic just hasn't seen his/her deck yet."
Or you can just make like the Williams' sisters' father and raise the kid to be some kinda Finkel simulator... like a... Finkel-ator. Who knows. Finkel looks happy.
...
must... not make.... "forming babay (sic)" comment...
... too... ripe for derailment....
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Personally, I think it's less 'learning Magic' than 'learning how to play'. Learning Magic is learning how to build decks, how to look at card cost and decide the mana curve, etc. etc. He's not going to learn that for a while, because some require a lot more thought and patience than most children are willing to put in. Or are even -capable- of doing until later on.
However, it's like Alviaran said. He learned chess at 5. My dad and grandfather were teaching me how to play chess at roughly the same age. I read the Hobbit when I was six, and this was a big deal. But I didn't actually understand either of them until quite a few years later.
When your kid is talking and sitting around with you and trying to engage you in conversation, start teaching them. Expect them to learn. Don't expect them to understand for quite some time.
Like Nan said, I think the right age to teach kids to learn how to PLAY is about 7-9. I taught my little brother then, and he has a pretty good understanding of the rules now, that he's 11. He got bored with it for a while, but that's probably just cause I left for school and he didn't have many friends who were into it. But now that he taught one of his friends, they're both really into it, and it's a great thing to see.
Kids are very logical. They usually get the flavor-mechanics relationship much faster than dull adults who just focus on the strategy. And once you learn WHY a card does what the text says, it's easier to LEARN to play them. Our local shop's Tournament Organizer's daughter is 8 and she plays fairly well (she only plays Limited, though, and her dad understandably builds her decks. At another store I used to go to, an 8-year old kid who wasn't too bad also had his Limited decks built by his dad), managing to score in the Top 8 in some events and such...
When I was teaching my 8-year old brother (yeah, it seems like a recurring number, plus I started getting interested in strategy card games at the age of 8, so that'd be my number to learn to play seriously. I also learned how to play chess when I was 8), the time came to explain flying, and he immediately picked up that it's the creatures with wings that fly. That reminded me of how ashamed I've always been at the fact that it took me longer than it should have to realize that.:facepalm:
The evil spawn has finaly been born and now you can conquer Earth MUAHAHAHAHAHHAAAHAH...
Now that that has been said, I think any any time around age 10 is fine, I started YGO when I was 10 and moved on to magic when YGO released the ban list.
(On a somewhat related note I live in an apartment with very thin walls and the internet meme "Surprise buttsecks!!" isn't just on the internet anymore. Man that girl sounded pissed off.)
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I learned Yu-Gi-Oh at age 9 and Magic at age 10. I quit Yu-gi-oh at age 13 (pissed at lack of reserved list. My best cards that were near impossible to find were being reprinted as damned commons.)
I was a competent Magic player right from the get go. Meaning - I rarely had to ask about rulings, I knew some basic strategies, had an understanding of mana curve, etc. I guess this had something to do with the fact that I had already been playing Yu-gi-oh for a year though, which, back in the day, was a really simple game to learn. (I did have my faults though. Vigilance quickly became my favorite ability in MTG because in YGO virtually all creatures have it. They can attack and still be ready to defend on your opponent's turn. I also had trouble with the concept of the color pie. I understood that certain lands were needed to pay certain mana costs, but I didn't understand why each color received certain abilities while others didn't. For example, in addition to my love of creatures with vigilance, I loved green creatures. You can bet I got some odd looks when I asked if anyone would trade me green creatures with vigilance.)
Now, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I was a pretty bright kid. I'm trying to teach a kid in my neighborhood (aged 10, but he's not too bright) how to play, and he's definitely not catching on as fast as I did. I don't know what it is - I guess every kid just truly is different.
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You could probably start with vanilla creatures when your child can do addition and subtraction, and very slowly add new abilities and spells to the mix.
Whatever you do, do not push him to do it. Make your child want to learn how to play. If they do not want to do it themselves, chances are they will not.
It's like trying to make your kid be a doctor because you are.
Just because you play magic, it does not mean they will. You will first have to get them interested, then teach them when they can fully understand.
I got my first Magic cards when I was 11, it was the day Fallen Empires came out. What a terrible time to start. One of my older cousins kind of taught me the basics, but he didn't know stuff like Trample and all that. I remember playing at school too, learning the most from other kids. Then I started playing in Tournaments when I was 12 or so. I played Limited, I remember playing Ice Age sealed and 4th Edition release events at that age.
Anyway, all of that was without a dedicated teacher to show me the game. Had I had a parent or other adult into the game, I'm sure I could have learned earlier. I remember when I played the Star Wars CCG from Decipher, there was a kid who was 4 years old (his father was the tournament organizer), he could play the game. In fact, he'd enter tournaments and would have a decent showing. I remember playing him once in a later round, and he was less interested in the game than he was at making kid jokes with me, but that was probably just because he played a lot with me and my friends when his dad was at our local shop.
I'd suggest breaking out a very basic deck when the kid first shows interest in gaming... be it checkers, video games, what ever. See how well he reacts, if it's too boring, then put them away for a few months to a year and try again. I know that Magic helps tremendously to develop critical thinking processes. I would have loved to be into it earlier, but the game was only around a year or two before I got into it.
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obviously no one really listens to these lol, but like blackpoe said, every kid is different
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If a kid can learn to read or speak a foreign language at four, he can probably learn magic. The trick is to make sure your children are interested in the game and enjoy it, and be patient with them.
There is a nine year old neighborhood kid that I would like to teach some day. He seems pretty intelligent but I think he would be too hyper to sit down and learn the game. I think I might wait a few years.
I learned Magic when I was 17 so I don't know how I would have handled it at a young age. I know I was playing monopoly at 6 or 7. Not sure if that would be any indication whether or not I was magic ready.
You can probably teach a kid to play as young as 8 or so but you'll be kicking their ass for a few years before they really get it
Point is, as others have said, the child needs to have some sort of interest to keep them through learning the dull rules, even if they are certainly mentally capable of grasping them all. Interest and then see how they are developing.
But congratulations on the baby.
(I saw through you! This is nothing to do with teaching the child Magic but rather a proud new parent wanting to brag about their new spawn! Congratulations anyway!)
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edit: obviously the first steps are determining how well your child can read/perform simple math (as this is the core of the game) and how mature your child is at handling cards. of course this can be remedied by only giving commons to the child, but once the child is "hooked" and they discover your stash when you aren't around, well that doesn't sound like a pleasant afternoon.
I taught my brother when he was 8. I used a combo of actual games and the Learn To Play Magic disc that I got when I started playing. He's 11 now and I think that with a bit of practice he could become quite good. The kid is a natural at evaluating cards. I'm so proud.
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just thought i would throw my experiences in. i have a 6 year old daughter and have tried to get her interested in card games. shes really into board games and thought she may like card games as well . so i tried starting with pokemon and magic, even tried some horse card game that was sold at the local game store but always run into the same problem. she looses interest very quickly. so i would probably say from my experience interest would be a big factor. gender related or not cant say. now compare my daughter to a son of a co-worker who is a year younger and he plays pokemon and yu-gi and im sure he will take up magic when all his friends get into it.
thinking about it as everyone else has said its probaby different for everyone.
congrats again though!
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D'awwwwwww. . .
I first saw Magic around 10, but I think in my case what made it attractive was that I later came back to it about 3 years later. (I think 3 years later... it's hard in my case to put this back together.) I thought, "hey, this is a game. I have too much time this Summer. Let's have a go again."
Then I sat on those memories for a bit, found the website, read about Pie, and had a blast at Onslaught cycle, but I don't think that's essential to the origin story from your
persprospective. (c wut i did thar?).So if you, umm, went off my model, you could have him see, perhaps being shown in a non-serious way (you know that way - where you show your friend but you don't really think they'll play for srs so you just mess around a bit with the physical cards), the game; and then a remote interest, given complete room but not forced, might 'bring him back' if there's any love for fantasy there.
I think though that Magic is for people who like Fantasy, and not otherwise. So I've gotta say I wouldn't myself push any child of mine in that direction.
I do believe that Magic is awesome enough that the converse holds: If you like Fantasy, then you'll like Magic. Borrowing a phrase I'm not sure how to name, "Every Fantasy goober outside Magic just hasn't seen his/her deck yet."
Or you can just make like the Williams' sisters' father and raise the kid to be some kinda Finkel simulator... like a... Finkel-ator. Who knows. Finkel looks happy.
...
must... not make.... "forming babay (sic)" comment...
... too... ripe for derailment....
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
However, it's like Alviaran said. He learned chess at 5. My dad and grandfather were teaching me how to play chess at roughly the same age. I read the Hobbit when I was six, and this was a big deal. But I didn't actually understand either of them until quite a few years later.
When your kid is talking and sitting around with you and trying to engage you in conversation, start teaching them. Expect them to learn. Don't expect them to understand for quite some time.
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When I was teaching my 8-year old brother (yeah, it seems like a recurring number, plus I started getting interested in strategy card games at the age of 8, so that'd be my number to learn to play seriously. I also learned how to play chess when I was 8), the time came to explain flying, and he immediately picked up that it's the creatures with wings that fly. That reminded me of how ashamed I've always been at the fact that it took me longer than it should have to realize that.:facepalm:
I like 4/4s for 7.
Now that that has been said, I think any any time around age 10 is fine, I started YGO when I was 10 and moved on to magic when YGO released the ban list.
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I was a competent Magic player right from the get go. Meaning - I rarely had to ask about rulings, I knew some basic strategies, had an understanding of mana curve, etc. I guess this had something to do with the fact that I had already been playing Yu-gi-oh for a year though, which, back in the day, was a really simple game to learn. (I did have my faults though. Vigilance quickly became my favorite ability in MTG because in YGO virtually all creatures have it. They can attack and still be ready to defend on your opponent's turn. I also had trouble with the concept of the color pie. I understood that certain lands were needed to pay certain mana costs, but I didn't understand why each color received certain abilities while others didn't. For example, in addition to my love of creatures with vigilance, I loved green creatures. You can bet I got some odd looks when I asked if anyone would trade me green creatures with vigilance.)
Now, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I was a pretty bright kid. I'm trying to teach a kid in my neighborhood (aged 10, but he's not too bright) how to play, and he's definitely not catching on as fast as I did. I don't know what it is - I guess every kid just truly is different.
Currently playing:
M13 Draft
GGGGG Dungrove................(STANDARD)
GWGWG Maverick..................(LEGACY)
Jon Finkel on the PWP System:
Whatever you do, do not push him to do it. Make your child want to learn how to play. If they do not want to do it themselves, chances are they will not.
It's like trying to make your kid be a doctor because you are.
Just because you play magic, it does not mean they will. You will first have to get them interested, then teach them when they can fully understand.
Boston Magic: The Gathering Examiner - Please read my articles!
Anyway, all of that was without a dedicated teacher to show me the game. Had I had a parent or other adult into the game, I'm sure I could have learned earlier. I remember when I played the Star Wars CCG from Decipher, there was a kid who was 4 years old (his father was the tournament organizer), he could play the game. In fact, he'd enter tournaments and would have a decent showing. I remember playing him once in a later round, and he was less interested in the game than he was at making kid jokes with me, but that was probably just because he played a lot with me and my friends when his dad was at our local shop.
I'd suggest breaking out a very basic deck when the kid first shows interest in gaming... be it checkers, video games, what ever. See how well he reacts, if it's too boring, then put them away for a few months to a year and try again. I know that Magic helps tremendously to develop critical thinking processes. I would have loved to be into it earlier, but the game was only around a year or two before I got into it.
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