Making Decks for New Players | EDHRECast 256
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2024
- Learning how to play EDH is difficult, and so is TEACHING a new player! These are some tips to help craft an excellent experience for brand new Commander players.
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Regarding the "let new players play the cards they like" discussion: I've been teaching my 11 year old son to play Commander over the past 2-3 years now, and the first deck he really showed an interest in was the Aesi precon that we've customized over time. The strategy was pretty intuitive to him, but one of the first swaps he wanted to make was taking out the bounce lands and put in some planeswalkers the he found in my collection (Mu Yanling, the UG Kasmina and the War of the Spark Jace). I knew this was not going to be a great choice, especially because of how powerful the bounce lands can be, but I let him figure that out on his own. In the first couple of games, I told him I was going to ignore any planeswalkers that he cast, and he saw how powerful they could be. Then I told him I was going to play "smart" against his planeswalkers in future games and he quickly saw how those planeswalkers weren't the best for his deck. Of course, now he's replaced them with Cultivator Colossus and the like, so apparently I've created a monster.
That is the best way to teach people things. Honestly when you say “no dont do that” people shut down.
Can you explain how bounce lands are a benefit. I’ve been playing g for 2 years casually and I just cut some bounce lands from my deck. They come in tapped and bounce a basic that I was using, so I see it as a loss unless I can play that tapped land immediately. I know I can benefit next turn but most games I play with my friend tend to cost me since I don’t have the mana now to counter or interact with his board during his turn. Or am I missing something not obvious. Thanks
@@Justadadonthetok There are a lot of reasons, probably more than I could list in a UA-cam comment, but I'll try.
First off, the guild bouncelands (Azorious Chancery cycle and Guildless Commons) are far superior to the 'original' bouncelands (the Karoo cycle from visions that produce one colored mana and one colorless). The guild bouncelands don't have the restriction of bouncing an untapped land, so you can sequence your turn so that you are bouncing an already tapped land, negating some of the downside.
The guild bouncelands also let you bounce *any* land, such as those with good enter the battlefield effects (Mystic Sanctuary, etc).
Speaking of that, any deck that wants landfall triggers (like the Aesi deck I mentioned above) absolutely loves being able to return a land to hand, especially if they have abilities that allow playing multiple lands per turn. In fact, a powerful combo in Aesi is to loop returning Simic Growth Chamber and Guildless Commons with each other, providing multiple "free" land drops per turn.
The bouncelands do fix your mana, which can be helpful, but they are very resource efficient, when you think that a single card is producing two mana, even if it is a bit delayed or requires a tempo loss. Very few lands in the game can do that. Moving ahead on total mana a turn ahead of schedule is powerful in the early game, but even late, a single bounceland can pay a commander tax by itself.
Outside of commander and maybe draft formats where the guild bouncelands are present, I think the tempo loss from playing a bounce land can be kind of crippling, but they are a net positive in Commander in my experience. They are also easy on the budget, which isn't always easy with manabases.
All this isn't to say that they belong in every deck. I don't believe I play any of them in my 1, 4 or 5 color decks, but I would say that I play them more often than not in my 2 and 3 color ones. I think I've only played the single color bouncelands (Coral Atoll and the green one) in Aesi, specifically because I want as many landfall triggers as possible in this deck.
Regarding the "let new players play the cards they like" discussion: If you're a new player especially if you're playing online and have a hard time getting wild cards, realistically you're not even going to get to play the cards you like. You're going to have to play the cards you have or else you're just not going to play at all.
@@JustadadonthetokI think there needs to be some disclaimers to their use: Unless budget is a concern, I use only the 2-colour bounce lands (and Guildless Commons sometimes) that bounce any Land, and only in 2-colour decks.
These bounce lands return anything - even if it's tapped - so while you basically skip your land drop this turn, you can still make use of the mana you already have on field, and the bounce Land gives you a land to drop next turn.
If I were to make a tier list, bounce lands would be in maybe the C tier - playable, but not the thing you reach for first.
In 3-colour decks there are plenty of untapped dual Lands to put together to consistently hit your colours, but in a 2-colour deck you simply don't have as many options due to colour identity and highlander rules. So in those decks do you load up on more Basic Lands, or do you start taking slightly worse options for dual lands?
I already run very few unavoidably-tapped Lands - a bounceland (2-colour) or triome (3-colour) is the only Land I consistently play that doesn't have an easy way to ensure it comes in untapped (2+ other lands? A Forest card? If it's past turn 2 it's exceedingly likely I have these kinds of conditions met.
If you're on a budget and using cards like the Temples or Snow Duals, then bouncelands become a lot harder to justify.
Cryptic command modes:
-target opponent sighs heavily
-return your snapcaster mage to your hand
-draw 3 cards, then put 2 cards from your hand on top of your library
-call a judge
-reorder the modes on this card at random
That's hilarious! I wonder what you would say for sublime ephinany lol
@@Commander_Claw
- Target opponent loses the game.
- Target opponent loses the game.
- Target opponent loses the game.
- Target opponent loses the game.
- Target opponent loses the game.
- If you have 6 or more opponents, you win the game.
Cryptic Command obviously says (in order):
- Fateseal 3
- Counter target Enchant World or Interrupt
- Distribute two -3/-1 counters among one or two target creatures
- Creatures with plainswalk may be blocked as thought they didn’t have plainswalk
Gravestorm
You're forgetting that it's a tribal interupt- beeble
@@DracoX-hz3tu No no no, Cryptic Command says:
Choose two -
• Return target permanent to its controller’s hand.
• Draw two cards, then discard a card.
• Change the target of target spell with a single target.
• Turn over target nontoken creature
Cryptic command 1UUU
Choose two
- reread cryptic command in confusion
- lie about cryptic command doing something else (your opponent's not gonna know)
- get sequencing wrong and ask if you can redo
- target opponent calls a judge
As the resident go to deck guy at my LGS, this episode kinda makes me feel pretty good about keeping a "shop deck" at our store for everyone's use. It's actually been a great help for teaching newer players, since Minotaurs are pretty straightforward, and people surprisingly can get behind attacking people with angry cows :^).
Great way to get people addicted to Magic. They are learning the straight forward way to play with Minotaurs ans at the same time they're victims of others players doing crazy things making them zealous! Like oh you can do that in Magic! I love it seeing ppls eyes light up when they find the endless possibilities of MTG
Joey proving that morphing a segment is faster than split second
The guys talking about not putting tutors in precons because of decision paralysis was the most relatable thing. When I was introduced to commander I was handed a Meren precon to try out because I've always liked reanimation mechanics in any type of strategy game. I had a Diabolic Tutor and when I cast it I was overwhelmed by the over 80 cards I had to sift through to find something that would be reasonable to pick. I legitimately thought that tutors were dead cards in hand until I bought my own Meren precon and started to learn how to actually pilot a deck.
I always tell people that if you want to put a tutor into a deck, you need to know what you would intent to tutor for as you put it into the deck.
A new player, playing something someone else built for them, just will not have the knowledge necessary to use a tutor without asking for help.
I felt that once two i don't remenber what deck i was playing but i remeber it was a creature tutor their is only like 28 -35 creatures in the deck and i was overwhelemed. You have to almost take the time look in the deck and think of the few cards you would want before hand before you even play.
@@newdarkcloud I think especialy with new players you have to explain the deck and the goals. And what to tutor for😅 I think complex decks like Reanimation, mill, steal stuff etc. Aren't decks for new players😅😂😢
I have a rule myself with tutors. If I know I want to play one on my next turn, or at someone’s end step, etc, if I can’t think of a card to grab (or at least a card type: board wipe, spot removal, card draw engine, powerful creature, etc), I’m not casting that tutor that turn. I don’t want to be the person spending 5 minutes looking for a card because I had no idea what I wanted. One of the only decks I put a few tutors in was my tasigur birthing pod deck. That decision was easy. Do I have a tutor in hand? Yes! Is birthing pod on my battlefield or in my hand? If no, we’re getting birthing pod. If yes, we’re getting the first 2 cmc creature we can find to start the birthing pod chain
man sometimes I tutor my own deck that I created and I'm still like "wait what's the best card to grab rn?"
Questing beast obviously has Griffin reach, trample over mites, protection from people named Steve, damage from llurgoyfs can't be prevented and it can't be blocked between the hours of 6 and 10 am Pacific standard Time. They should make a textless version because it's just that simple
Can I block with Sakura Tribe Elder?
@@rorschach1 no, it has protection from Steve
When I was teaching my partner to play I told them how much I love blue. They now play Saskia as their primary commader, because "it is all of the good colors". I'm very proud.
Joey's segway actually blew me away my goodness what a play
I know, I started the episode thinking about how Joey was gonna get took for a ride and he brought some fire this week
Segue.
I didn't know he had a bike
@@maxducoudray no
Joey just made the power play of the year with that intro
Cryptic Commands 4 modes are so obvious and memorable!
-Create a 2/2 Blue Drake Token with Flying
-Counter target Artifact Spell
-Each player discards their hand and draws cards equal to the greatest number of cards discarded this way
-Creatures you control cannot be blocked this turn.
This is such a good video. As someone who just got their fiance into the game as a BRAND NEW player, it has been so much fun watching her work through the learning process. I will say, to resonate with 22:03, it's amazing where people's inspiration will come from regarding the deck/commander they choose. My fiance and I were in our LGS as I was getting singles she pointed at an old pre-con from Midnight Hunt. She liked that the lady was a witch and had a coven of other cool creatures, so she just took it off the shelf and bought it off that alone. We have been having so much fun and it feels great to see a new player fall in love with the game.
Literally my own fiance's first deck as well. She doesn't play often, but she does enjoy the game when we all get together, and she's excited to work with me for the upcoming Sigarda angel/human tribal commander :)
Bottom line, who cares what gets a person into magic. As long as it's something that doesn't hurt others, gives them a sense of fun, and encourages them to invest in the hobby, bring it. I have a whole deck built only upon the premise of the deck having Phage the Untouchable be the commander because she was a character in a book I read 20 years ago, ya know?
I had been trying for ages to get my wife into magic, to no avail.
She is obsessed with dogs, we have two of our own that she loves, but she also will just sit and watch dog videos on Instagram etc.
I saw *Faldorn, Dread-wolf herald* in my LGS, which is basically "lady with her two doggies", and said "Look it's you with our dogs" and she loved it. We've basically played every day since then.
Get'em Joey!
That Challenge the Stats bit at the start was a straight up challenge to the video format 🤣
Cryptic Command modes:
- Target creature gains Bushido 3 and Horsemanship until end of this spell resolving. Sacrifice it.
- Exile your library. Draw a card for each card exiled this way.
- Counter target mana ability used to cast this spell. Amass 0.
- Return target player to owner's hand. That player draws the game.
I can not stress how important it is for the game to end well. We had a veteran player with a pod of three new players. He had a revel in riches and did a borad wipe on like turn five. The new players never played again.
Really appreciate the point about making exciting and fun games instead of playing purely to the most efficient win condition. I'll echo Joey in that I find it really sad to see how many people crap on the idea of pulling your punches now and then to make for a more interesting and fun experience for everyone. Glad you highlighted this point, and that we should all strive to be someone other people want to play with again.
As a relatively new magic player myself only having started in 2023 but having years of card game experience from other games I find the hardest thing to learn/hurdle to jump is the knowledge of table politics and how that translates to threat assessment on board that is caused by commanders multiplayer format
I used to have a soft rule for introducing people. Always play green.
I want them to start off playing Timmy with Johnny options. Something like a powered down Rhys or Atarka to get a feel of things.
I built my buddy an Atarka deck to get him into the game. He has like five decks now. It was definitely a good lead-in.
So glad this video came out as fate would have it I just got a few close friends into the game and I ended up building them decks we’re gonna try and get together to play today! To keep things fairly simple that I don’t think was touched on was keeping the amount of color combos low so for example every deck I built was a two color deck! I also built the decks to have the same sub theme of +1 +1 counters because it just so happened the commanders they picked had some kind of +1+1 counter trigger lol which also means any questions about it that might come up will end up being answered for everyone else at the table, and the deck I’m planning to use is also two color and I added a few janky proliferate cards so it’ll be some fun interactions for sure!
Yea brilliant idea and a good way to keep teachable and relatable moments because the same sub theme. It's always fun with new players. What colors are the 4 decks and which commanders? I'm always trying to find those commanders that don't have a lot of videos but are crazy popular!!! I'm trying yo male more EDH videos with this criteria.
@@Commander_Claw so my commander is Rashmi eternities crafter, it’s got some spellslinger creatures like the magecraft ones that get +1+1 counters and some jank proliferate stuff like from ravnica and war of the spark, for my friends I made a partner pair of Ghost of Ramierez Depietro with Alharu Solemn ritualist so it’s kinda spirit tribal with some +1+1 counters, then there’s a Halana and Alena Partners deck which also just has some +1+1 stuff and just some general good cards (he also likes art of women so there’s a lot of things like reclamation sage/eternal witness good cards that have women in the art lol) , and finally Kalain reclusive painter which also has some treasure stuff along with the +1+1 counters
Weekly EDHRECast while I clean the house on Friday, best part of the week!
After listening I think that something that wasn’t covered is consistency. I love giving new players my upgraded party time precon with Burakos and folk hero, because the play pattern of folk hero into burakos into drawing cards and making treasures is super consistent and lives in the command zone. One of the hardest things for my friends who I’ve taught to play commander is understanding what kind of hand to keep and what their game plan is. A deck like that one leaves very little to chance
Loved the episode!
My Burakos/Folk Hero deck is probably one of my favorite decks for that reason. Even someone with little experience with the deck can absolutely perform well because the deck rewards you for doing what most players already want to do when sitting down to play a game of Magic: Play cards and swing in.
on the idea of new players not wanting to sacrifice creatures; realizing there were scenarios where you actually wanted to do counterintuitive things like kill your own guys for benefit was when i truly got hooked on this game
As a teacher of almost twenty years, I agree with pretty much all of your "EDH pedagogy." Well done, lads.
Agreed on the Commander Agnostic move. It's why Ahrabo is such a good choice: cats are real straightforward, and if that cat gets iced, he's still useful from the command zone.
Questing Beast: Trample, Deathtouch, Reach, draw a card when dealing combat damage, probably also protection from something stupid... We need a textless one, I'm bad at that stuff, always forget Korvold gets counters for drawing cards.
Both those cards are OD. Korbold is a problem because of its colors. It's too easy to sacrifice permanents with those colors (cough cough) treasure tokens
Host fashion is underappreciated in this show. Basically, the 3 of you were wearing pieces from my wardrobe, and I feel represented.
I love that so many people’s first commanders were Omnath. He was mine too. It’s funny because nobody even recommended him to me. I got the card off a friend for free back in high school just because I liked him so much and this was before commander was even really a thing. When I was introduced to the format though, Omnath was the only legendary creature I had. So that’s what I built around. Turns out, he’s one of the best new player commanders out there.
I thought omnath was kind of tricky for new players. Landfall seems like an easy trigger but exploiting and making landfall Explosive takes a crafty player....but I think all the artwork for it was the 1st reason it's attractive
Great idea for this video. Thanks again guys.
My go to newbie commander is the mono white odric. I like how he makes you learn a bunch of keywords. And the mono color helps you get creative.
For a new player, every Tutor spell basically reads 'X to cast; spend ten minutes looking at your deck then get tired and pick one at random'. Especially rough for topdeck tutors, where you will regularly see them do that and then follow up with a shuffle effect.
My advice for a deck building for a new player is to build around a commander with an ability that can be redundant in the deck. Let them draw into a card that serves a similar purpose as their commander so they have a back up if their commander dies. Then you can really build around the commander and have really clear lines for them to follow, without making it feel like a glass cannon.
34:07
I believe you, whole-heartedly. My first ever EDH game was using a borrowed deck from someone at the shop and it had a textless card in it. I don't remember what the card was, unfortunately
Joey might end up opening a can of worm. Next Matt is going to do challenge the stats as his introduction
The first commander deck I was handed was Mizzix of the Izmagnus. I won the game with hivemind and eye of the storm on the table, it was chaos Lol. I wish my friends could have seen this video and given me something simpler. Thanks for the content ya'll!
Great Episode guys, I love this. Teaching new players in a fun way that doesn't overwhelm them and helping them do more of what they like is super important. On thing I will add is regarding conditional effects: those just gotta go. "Destroy target non-black non-artifact permanent" sort of effects are just a headache. It has to say "destroy target creature". To expand on the point about hidden information, such as instants, there's also words like permanent or spell that don't appear on cards are problematic. As are cards with excessive words like 'look at the top 4 cards of your library, choose one and put it into your hand', that could be any other card that instead says 'draw 2 cards'. I handed a new player a deck with Arbor Elf realized how hard it was do describe floating mana or even that Lnads produce this invisible thing calledmana, and have since swapped it for Llanowar Elves, and never really mention mana pool at all anymore and that seems to be working okay. Another observation on play pattern and pulling punches, there's a better way: play a riskier strategy, that allows you to play your best but only succeeds rarely. Those are the best decks to play against them with. Great episode guys, and a great topic, thanks!
My youngest just started playing, my roommate has a Krenko deck that is super straightforward to play since it's just mono red aggro with a million tokens and not much thought needed.
Hearing him cackle when he got to put out 30 something 4/3 goblins with haste in a single turn and the veteran players couldn't stop him from wiping two of us from the board that turn was fantastic to see.
Keeping a strategy simple, tossing in a couple of synergistic mechanics, making sure you're empowering them to see the combos themselves, and of course making sure they win their first game 😉 are all really important in getting someone interested.
Appropriately increasing the difficulty curve is the hardest part I think.
Questing beasts effects (according to my heart): menace, death touch. When it hits a player, that player ventures into a dungeon. If that player completes a dungeon this way, you gain the benefits of all the rooms they entered into.
On the note of "New players look at 100 new cards" that is the leading thought as to why the deck i will often let new players use is my Shadowborn apostles deck, lead by Taborax, Hope's demise. When 36 cards are the same card its a lot less cards to try and read 😂
This is a fantastic episode! I'm going to begin teaching my wife to play this weekend so this video really gave me some great "Do's and Don'ts" to abide by.
I told my friends i like reanimator strategies and they started me out with a wilhelt deck and honestly? You're right, it wasnt exactly what resonated with me. I ended up making my own muldrotha deck (when i was so new i didnt even know how busted it was, i just love all the playstyle and deck building needs of it. I find it so fun picking what tools i wanna put in)
Cryptic Command gives your questing beast indestructible and gives you a second combat phase.
I don't remember the other three modes, but Cryptic Command's first mode is "steal Joey's segue" - and honestly, it's the best mode.
I am 100% guilty of pretty much everything you guys highlighted in this episode. So much so that I killed my partner's potential interest in joining me in magic. She wanted to play a "hot" commander, and at the time (not about to throw you under the bus here Joey), but Joey mentioned that his Mom had a Tasha deck... so I built one for her assuming it could be friendly to new players. I included lots of interaction, lots of card draw, lots of pet cards of mine, and specifically a strategy around lots of mill, to leverage everything in everyone's graveyards all the time. Not only did she get hated out of the pods she played in by the other players, but she couldn't keep track of all the cards in everyone's graveyards well enough and it became a sour experience for her to want to play again.
35:35
cryptic command:
Choose one or more -
• Counter target spell.
• Counter target activated or triggered ability.
• Return target nonland permanent to its owner’s hand.
• Create a token that’s a copy of target creature you control.
• Target player draws a card.
questing beast: its one of those creatures that fetches for a specific planeswalker, but the planeswalker is sir arthur from universes beyond illuminated manuscripts that hasnt been released yet
Thank you Guys, as a new player myself (playing since November 22’) I appreciate this episode and advice very much.
Cryptic Command washes, drys and irons your clothes, it also cooks, cleans, and lets Joey have a segue. Too bad he's playing his Baby Lasagna deck this time...
My things for new players are only start with one or two colour decks. Too many colours can also be very hard to pilot a deck.
Cryptic Command - 1UUU
instant
Choose 2:
- deal 2 damage to each opponent
- create a treasure token. you lose 1 life
- draw a card
- put a +1/+1 counter on each creature target player controls
Like a boss, Joey!
Cryptic Command modes:
Return target hand to its owner's control.
Opponents your creatures control get -X/-0, where X is the number of end steps.
Gain control of target library.
Create a token that's a copy of target player.
Btw, if you want players to get comfy with sacrificing their own creatures, let them try out a goblin deck. So many gobbo-themed cards allude to the suicidal recklessness of goblins and how hilarious it is when they blow up, and it shifts the paradigm from "I want to keep as many of my little friends as possible!" to "I want to see how I can make these guys die in fun and hilarious ways!" The hard lesson then goes from "sometimes you must sacrifice the one for the good of all" to "maybe you should think about the future and not just turn everything sideways all the time" - which, I suspect, is an easier lesson to learn.
Plus, goblin decks tend to be relatively easy to pilot and can be quite strong. (At least, the 60-card kitchen tabletop-style decks. I've never piloted an EDH goblin deck so maybe I'm missing something.)
Cryptic Command
-Target creature gains flying until end of turn
-Tap target enchantment
-Target opponent does the hokey pokey
-All players hand their library to the player on the right
Very cryptic command
- Surveil X where X is the number of Phyrexians you control
- Fateseal 3, then shuffle
- Sleep target player’s creatures
-Draw
I had to pause on your first big point about giving a new player a simple deck - because I'm a new player, I've only been playing for two months - and my first deck that I played with? The pirate deck from Ixalan with Admiral Brass, Unsinkable as the commander haha. My husband, who has been playing for nearly 3 years, knows that I like pirates, and so his thought was simply "oh, well she'll enjoy this pirate themed deck!" Suffice it to say that, and I'm not exaggerating, it took us 5 hours to play through my first ever game. 😆
When it comes to "the stack" I think during my first game my husband had said, "yeah let's not worry about that right now."
edit: Oh, and I did win my very first game. ✌
Y’all echoed this sentiment but didn’t explicitly state it … “I would rather lose a good game than win a bad one”
I also felt like too many cards worth more than ~$5 were brought up … on the whole, you did a great job of listing the sort of things I use as a high school teacher to introduce new players to the game through our ‘club days’
At first,
* almost entirely lands, creatures, and sorcery-speed spells
*minimal shuffling; no tutors - i.e. Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are about the only things okay
*focus on learning evergreen keywords; anything else needs reminder text
*synergy is fine; combos should likely be avoided
Oh, and Rampant Growth, Cultivate, etc. are also fine … in beginner EDH, grabbing basics is very much something green is rightfully so much better at … while other colors have to mostly rely on 2-3 cmc mana rocks instead which are a bit more fragile
Cryptic command:
- Add 2 cards from your deck to your hand.
- You get an additional normal summon.
- Destroy all attack position creatures your opponent controls.
- Return target special summoned creature in the extra creature zone to the extra deck.
Surprised that Reliquary Tower, Thought Vessel and such weren't mentioned, beginners tend to love that effect. My guess is that they just detest discarding, so I'd avoid looting, rummaging, (self) milling, wheeling in addition to the ones already mentioned, paying life or sacrificing. Try to keep their card advantage tools straightforward, even if they're left with less efficient/powerful options at first.
Cryptic Command
-Counter Target Segway
-Take the Segway away from Joey
- Exile target Segway. For as long as it remains exiled you may cast it in the middle of the episode.
- name a Joey. Joeys named with cryptic command, cannot Segway as long as cryptic command is on the battlefield.
clearly a Cryptic Command would let you search your library for a Questing Beast, and Questing Beast will allow you to return the Cryptic Command to your hand, and deathtouch.
It's OK to pull the punch, I have a monocolor deck in each color all around the same power. The themes are color pie breaks, so the table was newer and chose mono blue agro. It's merfolk tribal and turn 3 I ripped lullmage off the top and just set it in my exile zone since it wasn't that type of game.
That sounds cool. What are the other deck themes?
Regarding tutors, I professionally teach magic to elementary schoolers and one of the decks I offer is a monowhite bogles-esque auras deck. It plays cheap creatures and buffs them big and plays pacifisms on opponent creatures. That deck has four or five tutors that all have the same text (search for an aura into your hand) and they will have surely seen auras in their hand already before they play one, and it's been great for teaching them to think about what they need in a given moment. The deck is 60card with 4-ofs so they only have ~4 auras to choose from, and they've constantly impressed me at picking out the right one. Pacifism when they're losing, evasion when the opponent has a lot of blockers, an expensive one when they have a lot of mana or a cheap one early on.
That said, commander is not the format for tutors. There's a difference between having 4 options and having 40. Don't try this with a singleton deck, please.
Great topic and discussion =)
New players not wanting to use life as a resource is so true, my girlfriend just started playing and it took a while to get her to understand fetch and shock lands
Yea agreed. Not paying That 2 life for mana to enter untapped can put you so far behind In a Commander match. It's only noticeable wants you start playing more commander matches
I built my buddy a Green Yorvo deck. Simple color with lots of cheap support for +1/+1 counters and a clear game plan to achieve in multiple ways. Plus it gave me an opportunity to throw in Vastwood Fortification to teach about MDFC's!
I love MDFCs. Once you play that for the moment that is game changing you always add them to your deck. You might need that land or that ability clutch. My favorite is the red mana / fling!!!
@@Commander_Claw Honestly the red ones are so underrated in general. Mana dorks with 1 toughness, exiled. Want to wheel your hand? Done. Need a mana sink, we got you. Glad you agree!
@@Vrir16 Yea Valukut Exploration I believe...its at instant speed! I you reminded me to add that to my Galazeth Prismari Voltron deck....
Choose two -
• Switch target creature’s power and toughness until end of turn.
• Target creature can’t be blocked this turn.
• Draw a card. If that card’s art is by Wayne England, you may reveal it and draw another card.
• Assemble a Contraption.
This is a very important, good and interesting episode, even if I am not building decks for new players atm. 👍🏼 And the 3 minute let's challenge some stats was hilarious 🤣
44:20 -- That's funny, I've had the exact opposite experience. I've taught my wife, son, and daughter, and half the time they completely forget about their commander as an option to cast. I have to remind them! My wife is only recently in the mindset of being excited to play her commander out every game, and even re-cast it with tax.
All of them did start out with 60-card Magic. It's possible that makes a big difference.
Cryptic Command:
• Counter target spell.
• Counter target activated or triggered ability.
• Return target nonland permanent to its owner's hand.
• Create a token that's a copy of target creature you control.
• Target player draws a card.
Matt nailed it. Cryptic Command: Counter target spell draw a card
As a correlary to Dana's comment about Liquidmetal Torque a little too difficult for a new player to understand, when I started playing the game about 7 years ago, the idea of Enchantment/Artifact CREATURES blew my mind. I have a much more adept understanding of the game now, but back then my brain went "An artifact can't be a creautre right? That doesn't make sense. It should be one or the other."
So if I was building a deck for a new player, I would try to keep the overlap between permanent types as low as possible so that they can compartmentalize and understand what each permanent type is before building on top of that later.
I knew Joey was going to challenge the stats right away one of these days lol!
Re: Vampire Hexmage challenge, that's probably in there mostly for those who also include Dark Depths. It's a bit clunky, but if you have DD in there, the Hexmage is a clutch include. If there is no DD, I agree with the challenge lol
Cryptic gateway is also great in human or soldier decks. There are cheap ones for tapping and expensive ones to cheat, and it combos with sunstrike legionaire. Add stormfront riders for infinite
I think the easy answer that almost always works for me is to not play blue with new players. Blue complicates the game way too damn much early on.
I made a deck list I’ve called “Nylea 69 Creatures” which is simply lands and creatures. I’ve included Ramp, Card Advantage, Removal, Protection, Evasion, and Recursion ALL FROM JUST CREATURES! It has plenty opportunities to learn how to play the game and learn instant speed interactions and the stack, but it is still a very easy deck to do well with just playing a land, a creature, swinging, and repeat
The deck list can be found Googling “Nylea 69 Creatures” since YT is stupid and won’t let me leave the link
YO no shit...just started the vid and thought to myself he should just go for it asap. Amazing.
Cryptic Command modes:
-Counter target spell
-Draw a card
-Take the segway to Challenge the Stats
-Challenge the Stats
one disadvantage about necrologia though, since it's during your end step, it doesn't let you pass the turn with more than seven cards since you need to discard after the spell resolves and you've drawn the cards from it
The hardest thing for me to learn over the last 5 months since I started was that life is a resource in EDH.
Joey finally got his Segway 😎
Lol I called it on the last video: the only way Joey will be able to segway in challenge the stats is by doing it during the opening 😅😅 nice one! ❤
Personally, I find a White/Black Flyers/Lifelink Deck is great for beginners. Put a bunch of simple destroy target creature or destroy all creature wraths for removal. Things like Phyrexian arena and cantrips for card draw. Pretty easy things to understand.
I have a Firja, Judge of Valor deck, but I'll admit that can she be confusing to new players. I think Rodolf Duskbringer would be best, since he can keep bringing back your creatures.
Out of those 3 commanders which one is your favorite? I'm looking for Deck Tech idea
So I bought a pair of modern precons from Amonkhet to tutor my cuddle buddy into the game. She would like to play more but gets overwhelmed by all the keywords with no explanation and all the wordy cards she needs to memorize.
She quickly figured out that blue is not okay at least, I am quite proud of her for that. Even without any counterspells involved.
He did it! I didn't think it could be done, but he got his segway!
I'm putting together some basic decks to teach MTG to kids at my school (I'm a teacher). The first commander that jumped out to me was Prime Speaker Zegana. They get to play big dumb creatures, draw a lot of cards, and play other effects just for having a board state. I also feel tribal, as you suggest, is a great place to start.
I find the first introduction deck should be Green stompy. After that lifegain like drain after that spellslinger/burn these are the best ways I've introduced friends to the
for me, if you run into new players, meren is a SOLID option for those who are getting familiar with the game. When you hand a new player a deck where their creatures CAN die and come back, it feels less bad to lose them, and helps kinda ease them into losing creatures and even letting them die for value. I remember when i was a new player, that was a deck that really stuck with me, since i didnt care if my creatures died, i could bring them back. black and green isnt too wild and crazy in terms of understanding, but it was fun and made sense to me. real easy and smooth to understand, super fun, and getting to bring things back from the yard really helps ease players into losing permanents
I love the impressed sound that Matt makes @42:19 after Joey asks an interesting question 🤣
To be fair, if you're making a Nymris deck, there's no need to put sorcery-speed draw like Sign in Blood or Night's Whisper in the deck. You could probably get away with all the card draw being instant speed (Opt, Impulse, Fact or Fiction, Stroke of Genius, etc.). And if you're making a draw-go deck for a new player, it's probably simpler just to have every single card in the deck (aside from maybe Sol Ring) be an instant or have flash.
I know this is an older episode, but I wanted to say that this advice is not universal, and that you can bend them in extremely specific contexts.
The rules of Magic operate very much like a computer program. My cousin is a passionate software developer, and the way that I convinced him to play magic with me was to show him Scourge of the Skyclaves (which can have negative power in the graveyard) and Nethroi (mass reanimation based on total power).
Right now, his favorite decks to play are spellslingers, because he loves puzzle-solving on the stack, which is itself a construct borrowed from computer science.
Fun fact, Questing Beast was my first Commander, and I still play and update the deck. Also, I basically memorized the card, and I STILL forget it hits Planeswalkers. It's almost never relevant, and still does 45 other useful things.
Well played Joey! That challenge reminded me the old days i was playing the UNO reversed order card for some reason
i remember a conversation i had last year with an old coworker of mine that i used to play with, about how we feel the best way to teach someone who has never even seen a magic card how to play the game. I made the point of i never start them out with commander, and always start out with super low power 60 card decks just so they can learn the basics, then we work our way up to commander. He argued that the best way is to just hand them his 5 color golos doomsday combo deck and just throw everything at them all at once, but hold their hand the entire way. i'm still baffled to this day how he is so adamant that throwing a litteral text book's worth of rules and interractions at them all at once is the best way to teach someone. Because it's not like it was an easy deck to pilot, it was on the verge of being a CEDH deck up until the point that golos got banned, i wouldn't even know how to pilot it myself
Bookmarking that this is the episode Joey challenges the stats in beginning of show!😂
My thought on the "commander centricity" question is this: I want the deck to function without the commander in play, but also for there to be enough synergy that they can understand what's going on easily. Some decks lend themselves to cards that don't synergize with the commander much, but do work well with most of the other cards in the deck. For example, buried ruin in feldon of the 3rd path. At first glance it's not obvious what these have to do with each other, since Feldon can bring back any creature, and only the token copy is an artifact. Once you have some experience, you realize there's a lot of ways to sacrifice artifacts that you can play, which work with Feldon's ability, as well as lots of general artifact synergies, and so you find yourself playing lots of artifacts, and maybe sacrificing those. This is neat to figure out, but might be confusing at the very start.
How to get segue for Joey: store them in a Graveyard to reanimate them when needed, Matt would never dig them out there. Now make them Basic Seugues and Dana would not touch them.
Wonderful
I think liquidmetal torque is a great card for a new player. When they ask what the benefit is to turning something into an Artifact, them them to just treat it like a mana rock because 2 drop rocks are always gonna be good. Eventually the people they are playing with will eventually point out when the changing type will be relevant.
11:57 I made a Blue White deck as my first normal deck ever and didn’t know how counter spells worked and thought they were super situational and could only counter instants and sorceries. It was just a deck of Walls/high toughness and Flyers.
I didn’t know creatures were spells till I moved and started playing tournaments/drafts at a local store. The game was definitely easier to understand when the only instants I played just increased my creatures toughness for blocks, unsummons to stall, and everything else was sorcery speed.
isn't questing beast the card that says whenever someone reads this card randomise it's keywords and abilities. and of course cryptic command is very simple it's modes are counter target player, deal 3 damage to target non-permanent card, put two cards on the bottom of your hand and search target players deck for a non-basic land put it into the scrapyard
Good option for new players (though these commanders are rarer for sure) would be something like Lathliss, Dragon Queen because it will be a deck that can be really cool to have the commander put while you do things, but even without her you still have big dragons and just don't get the tokens.