I played my first hand ever during Chronicles, using a friend's deck. I did not finish the game, as I found it too confusing.

I played my second hand ever during Worldwake with an off-the-shelf preconstructed Standard deck. I completed this game, but it did not bring me a love of a magic.

Between Worldwake and Dominaria, I was slowly building a modern deck for play -- but I was very half-assed about it. Around the time of Ixalan, I changed tacts to Commander -- played a hand at FNM using my spouse's commander deck, but still very much wanted to finish my deck.. eventually.

Then I discovered Magic Duels and my whole world changed. The skill quests in it were so primed for beginners, that suddenly the basics of the game started making sense for me. I started playing Duels pretty much any chance I got. It was still challenging, but made me sad because it's not updated anymore, so that means no Dominaria, and no Marwyn, the Nurturer (a babywearing parent, just like me IRL!) So I went to GP DFW in May of 2018, picked up a few random cards and tokens.. and within a week, I had a fully constructed Commander deck.

I now play with the same deck (more or less, small changes because of price and economy differences) in MTGO as well as paper. I'm in so deep I listen to MTG podcasts whenever I can. I'm not a competitive player, I don't truly care about winning.. but the act of playing and the socializing with others, as well as having something to talk about with my spouse other than our kid... awesome!

.. and it's all the fault of a product that Wizards has chosen to discontinue. I would have never understood MTGO unless I played duels first. People teaching me IRL kept talking over my head and the basics never "clicked" for me. Even watching videos such as Tolarian Community College made no sense to me.. until I played duels.

tl;dr I'm very upset that Duels is no longer, but I'm glad it existed when I needed it.