New player duel deck improvement
Deck Help forum
Posted on Aug. 9, 2016, 11:28 a.m. by Trower44
I have been getting to playing Magic with my stepsons. They are 10 and 13, and it has really motivated them both to read more and well it seems a rather complex game that really uses your brain, so I am all for encouraging this new hobby!
They have a couple hundred cards and a couple basic beginner decks, and we recently went to the Eldritch Moon prerelease and had a blast! I picked up a Blessed vs Cursed, Blessed Duel Decks: Cursed and was looking to improve one or both into a standard or modern deck I could play with the 10yo at Friday night magic and the 13yo wants to build his own. Just looking for some tips and help better understanding how to build a decent and consistent deck without breaking the bank!
Thanks for any help!
well it really depends on what they want to play. for myself I like longer games so I play standard but if you want to to defeat someone by turn 3-4 modern is the way to go. also the list of cards for the 2 formats are drastically different.
August 9, 2016 11:49 a.m.
mathimus55 says... #4
To be fair, turn 3 & 4 kills are usually only for the Infect/hyper aggro decks and a few combo decks. If you look at a majority of the field, they don't plan on winning that quick. Jund, Merfolk, Abzan company, Hatebears, Tron etc etc etc play on very different axis. Jund certainly plays the long game, Tron can too along with a huge assortment of other decks.
Trower44 what I would do is just let them play casually and see where they gravitate from there. When I got back into Magic several years ago I played casually for a solid 6-9 months before I started looking at a format. If one likes to be a little more competitive I would direct him towards modern/standard once they understand what goes into the formats. If they like to play casually and don't care about going to tournaments then maybe EDH is the way to go. One way to get them into a standard card pool is to play limited/draft lots. That is one of the best skillbuilding activities you can do with them for Magic since it helps expose them to different cards/interactions and building coherent decks too. Plus, limited(especially prereleases) are tons of fun. Standard and limited are going to be the most accessible for you more than likely, but if you have a good modern crowd at your LGS more than likely they'll be cool about helping players come along and understand decks.
August 9, 2016 1:41 p.m.
First off thanks for the responses!
mathimus55 I think your right limited/draft sounds good to start. I just don't want to show up to FNM and have the kids get crushed and have them lose interest. My older son has dyslexia and reading magic cards has really helped him with reading comprehension, so I don't want to kill that!
As far as building tips, is there any articles or YouTube videos you could recommend? I grew up playing deciphers Star Wars CCG and it's very different, so I'm a bit in the dark when it comes to the MTG universe.
Thanks for the help,Nick
August 10, 2016 1:16 p.m.
mathimus55 says... #6
MTG Goldfish is a really good place to start. Seth there does lots of content that isn't your normal pro player talking about the same deck as everyone else is. His videos are fun and he does lots of constructed of any format along with drafts. One of my favorite resources for players of all levels.
Modern Nexus is my favorite site for Modern format questions, decks and whatnot. It's growing lately which is nice because before they just didn't have enough writers to make enough content.
For drafting/limited info watching any of the Channel Fireball writers do their thing is a super good place to start. They probably have the most successful group of writers so when you listen to them reason out a draft pick or cards to play you can be confident that they know what they're talking about.
And yes, if your son has dyslexia then limited is going to be a great place to help with that. With constructed you can just memorize what a certain picture does(my little brother has Aspergers and admits to doing this) so drafting with keep introducing new cards with new art so that he not only has to read the cards every time but challenges him to do it quickly. Once they get more exposed to the game I would start see what they like about the game and then introduce them to Standard/Modern/EDH from there.
MollyMab says... #2
Both are modern only really, as they use a ton of cards from original Innistrad.
Basically these decks are pretty poor, but have some nice casual rares, it depends if you want a UW humans deck or a UB Graveyard based midrange deck.
August 9, 2016 11:47 a.m.