I am looking for decks that teach specific mechanics to newer players; to explain where I am coming from I need to give a rather convoluted example:
A long time ago, a friend of mine had a shared deck designed to teach blue mechanics to newer players, based around Dandân.
Since the only win con was everyone's favorite 4/1, 5 hits were a kill, no matter what. The deck was a shared deck, so the whole trick was about library manipulation.
The purpose of the deck, as previously stated was an excersize in library manipulation, and denying your opponent quality draws, yet any stacking you did could easily be reversed by your opponent. Memory lapse, for example, if used on an opponents turn, would give you the countered card the next turn, thanks to sharing the deck.
This was also before the combat changes, so snap and repel were used not only to steal an opponent's creature/save yours, but also with damage stacking.
Does anyone know of similar themed decks to tech specific mechanics to newer players?
My best guess would be to use the Theme Decks from any of the newer core sets as they're specifically designed to teach newer players how to play the game. The other thing you could do is build very simple mono colour staple decks with a few core mechanics from each colour. For example, a mono-green deck with elves, or big creatures, and Trample. A red deck with Haste, blue with counters or flying, white with damage prevention and black with creature kill.
This will give your newer players a feel for each colours strengths and weaknesses without overloading them with different keywords every time they draw a card.
Yeah, that's another exercise I've been working on, although a bit different.
The issue I have with the theme decks is that Wizards... hasn't been very good at balancing them out recently. Also, a new player who has their home made booster pack shuffled into land deck, is going to have some problems when sitting down at the store table. One of the articles I read about introducing newer players points out the obvious: the only way to build balanced decks, is to build them both yourself.
Another trick I've heard about, is building a 30 card deck of each color. about 11-12 land and 18-19 cards, pauper. What this allows you to do, is give the newer player a taste for each colors basic feel, and when you move on, you can shuffle two of the colors together to make a basic 60 card deck. This brings them to lesson 2 with color management.
My thoughts was what to do after that. Building the Dandan deck is a solid start, especially for blue players. Even with the loss of combat tricks, my focus on that deck whenever I played it was always about the deck manipulation, counter manipulation, card advantage, and card denial. These are all very good lessons to learn, but are a bit higher than the standard beginner lessons.
For reference: a 30 card sample deck for white (I'm still tailoring these, red has a few power issues)
Black would run some sacrifice combat tricks, lots of terror effects, etc.
Blue runs more flyers, card draw, and bounce.
Green runs bigger tramplers, giant growth type combat tricks, and some spiders.
Red right now has 4 bolts in it, and I really hate trying to find creatures for this color without making it a sligh.
One deck I had been considering was a white combat trick/protection/blink type of deck. And another for combos.
Card advantage is the most important thing for any new player to learn in Magic. I have a green deck that teaches card advantage very well. It's overall a pretty good deck and teaches card advantage with Harmonize and Garruk's Packleader.
It's a really simple straightforward deck as it's just big green creatures. But all the creatures in the deck have a power of greater than 3, so as soon as a player drops a Garruk's Packleader they will be drawing every single time they play a creature. It also includes Explore and Harmonize, with this amount of draw the player is bound to see that often they will have a full hand while opponent does not and will quickly understand the mechanic of card advantage.
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311 "Who's Got the Herb"
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I like it! I don't have the cards to mirror your deck, but the general premise is easy enough to mold to fit.
Perhaps a different question to ask would be, what are valuable things for new players to learn, and what are the best ways of doing it?
Along with the Dandan deck, I had a lot of fun with other mental exercise formats like a type 4 stack, and mental magic (Clearly mental magic is not for new players, but a type 4 stack can help with learning not to overextend, manage your resources, and think through decisions).
I think the subjects go along the lines of:
Basic gameplay: Basic even-matched decks. Card advantage: The beast machine Responding to stuff, messing with combat: white+?, first strike, double strike and combat tricks. Maybe some death touch? Messing with spells on the stack, manipulating the stack: Red+blue, misdirection and stuff.
Other formats for learning Dandan: a mental exercise in deck manipulation and messing with your opponent. Type 4 Stack: Weighing Decisions and overextending.
A long time ago, a friend of mine had a shared deck designed to teach blue mechanics to newer players, based around Dandân.
Since the only win con was everyone's favorite 4/1, 5 hits were a kill, no matter what. The deck was a shared deck, so the whole trick was about library manipulation.
The cards in the deck were (there were more than 4 copies of each, I don't remember the ratios):
Dandân
Memory lapse
arcane denial
Brain storm
portent
repel
jilt/snap
island
The purpose of the deck, as previously stated was an excersize in library manipulation, and denying your opponent quality draws, yet any stacking you did could easily be reversed by your opponent. Memory lapse, for example, if used on an opponents turn, would give you the countered card the next turn, thanks to sharing the deck.
This was also before the combat changes, so snap and repel were used not only to steal an opponent's creature/save yours, but also with damage stacking.
Does anyone know of similar themed decks to tech specific mechanics to newer players?
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
This will give your newer players a feel for each colours strengths and weaknesses without overloading them with different keywords every time they draw a card.
Multiplayer:
MonoBlack
Mono-Red
Cycling
Crush of Wurms
Zoo
Immortal Coil
Control
Reanimator
Mono-G
Cruel Ascension
Landfall
Esper Spirits/Tokens
Phantom Vigor
Not Explicitly Multiplayer:
Allies
Bant
Artifacts
The issue I have with the theme decks is that Wizards... hasn't been very good at balancing them out recently. Also, a new player who has their home made booster pack shuffled into land deck, is going to have some problems when sitting down at the store table. One of the articles I read about introducing newer players points out the obvious: the only way to build balanced decks, is to build them both yourself.
Another trick I've heard about, is building a 30 card deck of each color. about 11-12 land and 18-19 cards, pauper. What this allows you to do, is give the newer player a taste for each colors basic feel, and when you move on, you can shuffle two of the colors together to make a basic 60 card deck. This brings them to lesson 2 with color management.
My thoughts was what to do after that. Building the Dandan deck is a solid start, especially for blue players. Even with the loss of combat tricks, my focus on that deck whenever I played it was always about the deck manipulation, counter manipulation, card advantage, and card denial. These are all very good lessons to learn, but are a bit higher than the standard beginner lessons.
For reference: a 30 card sample deck for white (I'm still tailoring these, red has a few power issues)
3 Knight of Cliffhaven
4 longbow archers
4 Ballynock Cohort - used to be whiteknights in the original incarnation, way back when.
2 Serra Angel
3 path to exile - may change to condemn, for the anti-attacker theme.
3 shelter
11 plains
Black would run some sacrifice combat tricks, lots of terror effects, etc.
Blue runs more flyers, card draw, and bounce.
Green runs bigger tramplers, giant growth type combat tricks, and some spiders.
Red right now has 4 bolts in it, and I really hate trying to find creatures for this color without making it a sligh.
One deck I had been considering was a white combat trick/protection/blink type of deck. And another for combos.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
Card advantage is the most important thing for any new player to learn in Magic. I have a green deck that teaches card advantage very well. It's overall a pretty good deck and teaches card advantage with Harmonize and Garruk's Packleader.
24 Forest
Creatures: 24
4 Garruk's Companion
4 Leatherback Baloth
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Obstinate Baloth
4 Garruk's Packleader
4 Primalcrux
4 Beast Within
Sorceries: 8
4 Harmonize
4 Explore
It's a really simple straightforward deck as it's just big green creatures. But all the creatures in the deck have a power of greater than 3, so as soon as a player drops a Garruk's Packleader they will be drawing every single time they play a creature. It also includes Explore and Harmonize, with this amount of draw the player is bound to see that often they will have a full hand while opponent does not and will quickly understand the mechanic of card advantage.
--------------------------------------
"STAY CLEAR OF WHITE POWDER"
311 "Who's Got the Herb"
--------------------------------------
Perhaps a different question to ask would be, what are valuable things for new players to learn, and what are the best ways of doing it?
Along with the Dandan deck, I had a lot of fun with other mental exercise formats like a type 4 stack, and mental magic (Clearly mental magic is not for new players, but a type 4 stack can help with learning not to overextend, manage your resources, and think through decisions).
I think the subjects go along the lines of:
Basic gameplay: Basic even-matched decks.
Card advantage: The beast machine
Responding to stuff, messing with combat: white+?, first strike, double strike and combat tricks. Maybe some death touch?
Messing with spells on the stack, manipulating the stack: Red+blue, misdirection and stuff.
Other formats for learning
Dandan: a mental exercise in deck manipulation and messing with your opponent.
Type 4 Stack: Weighing Decisions and overextending.
any other ideas?
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
Defense 101: Spot Removal
Defense 102: Mass Removal
Defense 103: Counterspells
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"STAY CLEAR OF WHITE POWDER"
311 "Who's Got the Herb"
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Defense 104: Vigilance
Defense 105: Discard (Castigate, Duress, Despise)
Defense 106: Soft-Locks (Ghostly Prison, Icy Manipulator)
Also the importance of when to play creatures Pre or Post Combat, as well as knowing the right time to use spot removal/instants of any kind.
Multiplayer:
MonoBlack
Mono-Red
Cycling
Crush of Wurms
Zoo
Immortal Coil
Control
Reanimator
Mono-G
Cruel Ascension
Landfall
Esper Spirits/Tokens
Phantom Vigor
Not Explicitly Multiplayer:
Allies
Bant
Artifacts