General Best starter deck(s) you've seen?

[spicewitch]

Basically any good intro content that's not DotP, cuz some people prefer to learn at the hands of real players in a real game.

Here's the scene, I ask a friend if she wants to learn Magic, she says the thought of trying it out (despite knowing several players) never occurred to her, she says sure. I say what kinda deck do you want to play? She says elves. "Elves," I think. "We can definitely do elves. Where are the elviest elves? Hmm... probably one of those tribal sets. We'll do starter decks from the Lorwyn block!"

Oh mah gawd. Evoke. Harbingers. Fucking Clash. Activated abilities that don't require a tap. Activated abilities that DO require a tap.

Luckily, at the end of a long, grueling game, she won. Thanks in large part to Imperious Perfect, and to a lesser extent because I ignored a slightly-illegal play she made.

But I should be choosier in the future with decks. That was pretty messy. Any suggestions?

I'm looking for:

1. Startery decks where the color pie is very well-represented with not a lotta color bleed, and not a lotta board state complexity. No clash.
2. Advice about face the hydra / defeat a god / blow the horde. Are they fun? Good for newbs? Do they work on cockatrice?
3. For any of my newbies who graduate: what are some good newbie cubes that aren't completely made of boring creatures with evergreen keywords, but aren't super complex either?

 

[silasw]

You can get DOTP decks in real life, sorta! http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/tcg/productarticle.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/dotpdecks/themedeck#deck4

 

[spicewitch]

Right now we're playing on Cockatrice, as she mostly only speaks French and I mostly only speak English. Good lookin out tho! Might be handy for future newbie training.

 

[James Stevenson]

I've always thought it would good to build a pair of teaching decks. Start them off with just simple creatures and sorceries, then as you play more games you add instants, artifacts and enchantments, maybe later you can add planeswalkers if you care. You can add colors, or maybe it's a good idea to start with two color decks? Or two mono-color decks that are different colors? Anyway I never built these, but I think it would be pretty useful.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Yeah, I think a pair of 40-card two-colored decks that are in opposition (eg Izzet vs Golgari, or Azorius vs Rakdos) is a great way to display what the different colors do and have them balanced against each other. Vanilla creatures can do tons and tons of interesting stuff for beginners, so just sprinkling in some really basic characteristic cards for the colors like blue counterspells or red burn is probably a good way to both have simplistic and interesting decks that provide some identity. Honestly, I think this is my favorite style of kitchen table stuff. You get some concise themes, but the decks are still at a pretty low power level.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I'll echo the others and say that the best starter decks are homemade. 30 card decks, single colour, 12 lands, 18 spells, uncommons and commons only, all core set cards. It doesn't have to be anything fancy - you're trying to show them that a) Magic is fun! and b) the rules are comprehensible, in that order. So you want some of the spells to have some kick, but without getting bogged down in rules minutiae.

For newbie friendly cubes, I actually have an M13 set cube for this express purpose. One of each rare, two of each uncommon, and three of each common, then shuffle each of 'em up and make boosters with the normal pack distribution. It's a tad more work than simply shuffling a regular cube, but the design work has been 100% farmed out to Wizards, and the gameplay approximates that of the retail draft experience pretty well. I'd go with whatever your favourite core set is, and have a set cube ready at hand if you plan to bring more newcomers on board.

 

[Lucre]

the rat one from betrayers with the jitte in it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

the rat one from betrayers with the jitte in it.

Good luck finding one of those for an affordable price

 

[spicewitch]

the best starter decks are homemade.

For newbie friendly cubes, I actually have an M13 set cube for this express purpose. One of each rare, two of each uncommon, and three of each common, then shuffle each of 'em up and make boosters with the normal pack distribution. It's a tad more work than simply shuffling a regular cube, but the design work has been 100% farmed out to Wizards, and the gameplay approximates that of the retail draft experience pretty well. I'd go with whatever your favourite core set is, and have a set cube ready at hand if you plan to bring more newcomers on board.

Construct a deck out of cards that didn't come from a draft/seal? Blasphemy! Might be fun tho.

I think CML's a big fan of M13 as well, so that's worth looking into. And I think we have a 1x set of M11 C/U somewhere already.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

I teach newbies to play all the time. I actually find it a lot easier when they don't have enough preconceived notions or enough game knowledge to want to play a specific deck (by name, no less) as their first. I'm not a writer like (apparently) most on this forum, but I've been working on a "learn magic" process that seems to work more fluidly than wotc's published material, which while pretty isn't very effective.

1. Startery decks where the color pie is very well-represented with not a lotta color bleed, and not a lotta board state complexity. No clash.
2. Advice about face the hydra / defeat a god / blow the horde. Are they fun? Good for newbs? Do they work on cockatrice?
3. For any of my newbies who graduate: what are some good newbie cubes that aren't completely made of boring creatures with evergreen keywords, but aren't super complex either?

1. For ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS I recommend the free 30-card decks sent to magic-supplying game stores. Their supply varies from store to store- some will just give them to you while others will only let you use them in-house. The old versions capped at uncommons (garruk's packleader, serra angel) but the very newest ones (m15) have a single rare. One of each color, not 100% core set cards so there's some spice in art and flavor.

Players more familiar with the game should start with core set starter decks- 60 cards, typically two colors, a lot of evergreen keywords going around. Starting a player off in a block and making them learn 'dead' keywords never ends well- they become attached to those abilities and get lost without them more easily. Sticking with the fundamental evergreens, with the spice coming from more rare abilities like flash and token-producing, is best for learning the game.

2. The "raid boss" decks in magic are really random experiences- the most interesting games are with draft / semi-powerful block constructed decks. "Real" decks will randomly blow out/get blown out by the boss's various mechanics far too easily. I didn't find them especially good for newbs because they inherently make the player think and act differently than they would against another player.

3. Can't really help you with this- the one time I helped someone learn to draft we literally played as a pair- sat together, played together. I tried to explain picks mid-draft, but it made for slightly slow going with having to speak vaguely. ("This is especially good with *digs through picks* this, because this *points at clause of card* works great with this." *points at other clause*) Listening to other people try to teach their new friends how to draft is one of the most painful, awkward things I've ever overheard, but so many people already butt into and take over each others' lessons that it just becomes a confused clusterfuck while the poor newbie is sitting glassy-eyed while their peers argue about which deck was cooler nine years ago when they were both "into constructed" or something.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Protip: Don't use Planar Chaos to teach magic. That's what I did with my wife

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I will agree with Goldenpineapple that it's useful to tell any other Magic veterans standing nearby to go the hell away or shut the eff up while you're administering a lesson, because there's nothing worse than someone butting in every thirty seconds with rules clarifications or to meander on about corner cases that will certainly not apply in the next fifteen minutes. A lot of Magic players like to show off their extensive rules knowledge; what they don't realize is that clear cut rules explanation isn't what you want to subject newcomers to when they're just learning that lands are reusable every single turn.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

meander on about corner cases that will certainly not apply in the next fifteen minutes.

This is the biggest problem with bystanders- saying something like "Before you do anything else on your turn, untap all your stuff- lands, creatures, everything" and having someone clear their throat and "well ACTUALLY there are plenty of cards you DON'T untap" etc. etc. and they drag on. The absolute worst and THE reason I hide with my student(s) from now on.

they're just learning that lands are reusable every single turn.

This is the #1 preconceived notion that even new players have for some reason, no matter how I phrase or explain that everything untaps/refreshes/renews/recharges every one of their turns people still want to jam their tapped lands under their stuff as a permanent payment.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, explaining lands and the mana system was one of the things I had a tough time doing in 1996. Not much has changed in the ensuing nineteen years!

The other thing that trips up relatively new players (but not complete newbies) is that Swamps aren't the same thing as black mana, nor are Swamps themselves black. Players who I taught a year ago and have picked up most of the other tricky aspects of the game still run afoul of this all the time.

 

[Jonas]

The thing that people have had the hardest time grasping here is that creatures attack the other player, and can not attack the other players creatures. The Hearthstone way seems intuitive.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The thing that people have had the hardest time grasping here is that creatures attack the other player, and can not attack the other players creatures. The Hearthstone way seems intuitive.

Or maybe it's become hard to grasp because of Hearthstone? I seem to remember people doing it intuitively wrong (so yeah, the Hearthstone way is intuitive) but not having much trouble adjusting after a "no no, the defending player gets to organize his defenses and can choose which creatures, if any, he wants to block with and which attacking creatures he wants to block."

 

[Jonas]

Yeah, after a couple of times people do it right, but even without having played Hearthstone they try to do it that way.