New Player Perspectives: Session 5

[New Player Perspectives is the ongoing story of my non-gamer girlfriend's introduction to Magic.]

Finally, a game with no mulligans! Freyja decided to take her W/U deck back, leaving me with G/B. Lifelink creatures helped me get ahead in the race early, and she missed her fifth land drop for several turns. After some trades, I threatened to close out the game with Axebane Stag. She fought him off with Griptide, Voidwielder, and eventually chump block + Paralyzing Grasp. We hit a ground stall and played off the top briefly. She pulled a Moon Heron, but I had tons of life and found some Pheres-Band Centaurs, which managed to finish her off. Victory at last.

By this point, she was getting used to untapping before drawing, but it was still unnatural. We realized between this game and the previous one that power and toughness were still a bit mysterious in how they interacted. I clarified that mid-game, after which she understood blocking decisions much better. The sticking point was that the P/T comparisons require a "swap"; that is, you compare creature A's power to creature B's toughness, and vice versa.

New Player Perspectives: Interlude

[New Player Perspectives is the ongoing story of my non-gamer girlfriend's introduction to Magic.]

One of Freyja's piano students, upon discovering that his teacher was learning to play Magic, excitedly volunteered to build her a deck. She brought in the box of several hundred miscellaneous commons and uncommons that I've been using as raw materials. During his sibling's half-hour lesson, the happy student came up with this concoction. I post the following decklist as a testament to our woefully inadequate understanding of what Magic players like.

Bant Aggro

3 Forest 2 Golgari Guildgate 1 Haunted Fengraf 2 Island 4 Plains 1 Unknown Shores 1 Agent of Horizons 2 Lagonna-Band Elder 1 Leafcrown Dryad 3 Scorned Villager 1 Seacoast Drake 1 Setessan Griffin 1 Staunch-Hearted Warrior 1 Triton Shorethief 1 Yoked Ox 2 Aqueous Form 1 Battlewise Valor 1 Commune with the Gods 1 Glimpse the Future 1 Ordeal of Nylea 1 Feudkiller's Verdict

New Player Perspectives: Session 4

[New Player Perspectives is the ongoing story of my non-gamer girlfriend's introduction to Magic.]

Freyja tends to get drowsy in the evening, and was more or less asleep for both of these games. We traded decks for the first time, giving me W/U tempo and her B/G fatties. I promptly mulliganed to four Plains and a Stealer of Secrets, whereas she kept a one-lander but peeled land after land. I was still able to put up a fight for a few reasons: she didn't know how important it was to block Stealer of Secrets, and used combat tricks and removal inefficiently. (Giant Growth on Giant Spider pre-combat, Pharika's Cure on my Soulmender, etc.) At the end of the game, she realized it was okay to throw away creatures on an attack for lethal.

I mulled to five again in the second game and got soundly trounced.

New Player Perspectives: Session 3

[New Player Perspectives is the ongoing story of my non-gamer girlfriend's introduction to Magic.]

Another month, another duel. As before, Freyja had a fairly clear recall of the rules despite not having thought about them in several weeks. This game was an epic struggle; I was up 29 -7 while she drew land after land, but eventually she stabilized and started sending in the flyers. My Axebane Stag was triple-blocked, Gravediggered, and finally Rebuked to squeak out a win from 2 life. If all my games were this exciting, I'd attend FNM a lot more often!

New Player Perspectives: Session 2

[New Player Perspectives is the ongoing story of my non-gamer girlfriend's introduction to Magic.]

A month had passed since Freyja's first game. Not ideal, I know, but both of our careers require a ton of extra work around Christmas. (She's a choral conductor; I'm a baritone.) I offered to recap the rules, but she elected to jump right in and pick things up as she went along. We used the same decks as in the previous session. 

New Player Perspectives: Session 1

[New Player Perspectives is the ongoing story of my non-gamer girlfriend's introduction to Magic.]

Freyja prefers to jump in and figure a game out for herself, so I only spent about ten minutes explaining before we started. (I suspect this is a common trait- few people are willing to spend the 25+ minutes it would take to thoroughly explain all the phases, card types, etc.) She chose the W/U deck. We played with hands revealed for the first game, and I did a fair bit of explanation of what spells she could cast and why. Happily, it turned out to be an extremely close and exciting game. She won from 2 life.

New Player Perspectives: Meet Freyja

Designers often have a specific idea of how their cards will be received by players. Naturally, the accuracy of these predictions is far from guaranteed.

Here at Goblin Artisans, we give and receive frequent feedback on designs. I suspect all of us are getting good at predicting how other designers will view our cards. However, I don't think this feedback is a valid substitute for the perspective of an inexperienced player. It's one thing to pontificate on how cleanly a card reads, how intuitive a mechanic feels, et cetera; it's quite another to actually hand a deck to somebody who's never played Magic before and see what they do with it. Sure, I've read Mark Rosewater's explanations of what new players do and don't understand, but I haven't experienced it firsthand since 1994.