Author

About the Author
Denis is a 20-something college student who co-hosts weekly drafts over at Windmill Slam on YouTube.

Changing Tides

This piece was written by a guest writer, Jeremy Aaranson.

Hey Guys! Due to school and work, I wasn’t able to write this article until a week after the GP ended. Hopefully, this still contains some financially relevant information. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, or let me know on twitter @xemitsellsmagic

GPDC was the 8th largest Grand Prix in Magic’s 20 year history. Financially however, it seemed one of the most relevant GPs in the last year. The same old faces that are a mainstay at every GP are still there, but under new names and shops. Many former buyers have become freelancers with many of the popular vendors falling off the GP Circuit. Another interesting development in vendor philosophy is the shrinking amount of vendors that are willing to take up the challenge of buying at a GP. One bad weekend can ruin many of the smaller vendor operations currently on the circuit, which is why in my opinion we’ve seen a smaller amount of individual shops apply for GP spots this year. The fees involved in getting a booth at these events have also finally stagnated, which paints a different picture from the fast growing rates TOs charged back in 2014 and 2015. Hasbro has also conceded that magic has stopped growing at insanely fast amounts per year in their stockholder report. With less new players entering magic every year, Hasbro has focused on increasing the amount of money each player spends on the game. This includes gimmicks such as the expeditions, and a plethora of supplemental product marketed toward every type of magic player this year.

Something that Ryan Bushard said at GPDC has stuck to me however. He remarked that the vendors whose models are buy everything at 50% will increasingly become archaic in the changing tide of the mtgfinance markets. The day before the tournament, Scout’s Warning spiked to quite a few dollars. The first day of the event, people were trying to sell the very same Scout’s Warnings that they had picked out of bulk boxes on the floor and at their LGS. The smart vendors no- sirred the hundred or so copies that each individual tried to flip, but some vendors bought them all at around 50% of the price they were going for at the time on TCG.  After talking with multiple finance cartel members about this practice, the general consensus is that vendors should be hiring knowledgeable people who check tools such as MTGStocks and put in more effort than checking TCG for every card at your booth. Technology has also changed the game at Grand Prixs.  The folks at Wizards Tower used up to date buylists and inputted each card into a spreadsheet at DC, meaning that two people trying to dump hundreds of copies of the same card to their different buyers at the same time wouldn’t work. Wizards Tower’s electronic buylist can also be changed in the blink of an instant on hundreds of cards. 

This means that they won’t receive complaints later in the day from someone demanding 14 on Thoughtseize when they bought a couple hundred copies in earlier in the day for example and have dropped their buylist down to 12. Another vendor who used a paper printed out buylist would still show 14 on the Thoughtseize instead of being able to electronically change it as they get copies in.

Talking about DC is great and all, but you guys read this site to make money or keep playing magic cheap. There’s quite a few cards that I like post-rotation, so let’s jump into it!

With no rare dual land cycle being spoiled in SOI, I quite like all of the lands in BFZ and OGW. The BFZ cycle could easily rise to 5-8 per card, and with them currently at a whopping 3 dollars, I would be actively trading and maybe even buying in to these cards. I am also a fan of lumbering falls at it’s near bulk price of $1.5 .

Kozilek, the Great Distortion is another easy money maker down the road. Multiple MTGPrice writers have bought in with cash. If you use Pucatrade, this would be a great tool to obtain Kozileks. A cash price of $5-6 is where many writers for this site would pull the trigger, including myself. This looks to be a casual favorite and an easy triple up down the road.

Purphurous and Thassa are two of the gods I have gone the deepest on. Purphurous is a casual favorite and is very popular in both EDH and 60 card. Thassa is another good card that occasionally sees play in merfolk. I don’t see these getting reprinted any time soon, and the fact that both Erebos and Kruphix have seen significant gains already solidifies my opinion of investing quite a bit into the gods.

Thawing Glaciers is a reserved list card that has yet to spike. This also received a Judge Promo before WOTC cut off that loophole. I would be targeting the Alliance copies in trade only.

I am still quite deep on Ashiok. This unique 3 cmc planeswalker is very popular in my local EDH groups, and could always break out in a 60 card deck. She has already risen almost $2 since rotation, but I’d be holding until she easily hits $10 in another year.

That’s all I have for now. See you guys at an upcoming GP near you, and as always, have a nice day!

Fighting Back Against Persecution in Magic

This is a guest post from Mark Nestico Jr. and was not written by Denis Stranjak. While the subject of this article is a little different than the usual fare you’ll find on Brainstorm Brewery, we believe this is a subject that is vitally important to the Magic community at-large, and we want to thank Mark for his willingness to tackle this difficult subject and share this piece with us.

I’m a funny guy.

I like to write satirical articles about decks or other trivial bits of nonsense that are meant to make you laugh. Sometimes people don’t understand that, at their core, those pieces are meant to hold a mirror up to the community. Whether it’s about the outcry for bannings in Modern, the distaste we may have for a format, or whatever else…I have always tried to give you something that would make people smile. I don’t always do the best job, but the heat from it never really bothered me. All I ever really want to do is entertain you.

Bear that in mind. It’s not about being entertaining- at least not today.

Over the weekend StarCityGames posted about the recent legislature, HB2, as it pertained to the upcoming Grand Prix in North Carolina. I won’t speak to it, because Pete explained everything about as perfectly as he could. The issue I have doesn’t stem from Mr. Hoefling’s words, but rather some of the comments posted in regards to them, and more so over various forms of social media. Perhaps I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. I had this set up all differently. I’ve already deviated from my outline. I guess it’s just time to write from the heart.

So anyhow; None of us are normal. Make sure you understand that before you proceed, because I assure you that’s a point we are going to drive home today.

Imagine for a moment you don’t belong. That shouldn’t be a terribly far-fetched concept, right? You’re not the captain of the football team nor are you the head cheerleader. You’re just you, and for some people you isn’t good enough. This is high school, middle school, elementary school, work, or wherever else all rolled into one. Eventually you start to think that you’re not good enough. Depression sets in. Pain sets in. Suffering sets in. You are suffering.

You’re not the person now that you were then, but you’re certainly a byproduct of it. All the downers, bullying, trolling, vicious comments, physical assaults, psychological assaults- they shape you. Not everyone can just “brush it off” or “stand up for themselves.” Amputate the leg and you’re no longer a track star. Amputate the self-esteem and  you’re no longer capable of fighting back.

Time passes.

You find Magic. Maybe you stumbled upon a store or saw it on the internet. It’s a children’s card game, but it has millions upon millions of people that play it, and there is a convergence of other people who just don’t belong meeting there a few times a week to battle, discuss, and share in a hobby. “What the hell.”

Forsaking your baser intuitions that tell you to avoid these kinds of interactions completely predicated on all of the unfavorable ones you’re used to, you go. You learn. You observe.

617d7b1dc3083eec2890c1e3c8b4adc5Time passes.

Magic isn’t just a hobby to you anymore- it’s the very air you breathe. Your friendships exist because of Magic. Your self-confidence has grown because of Magic. Your time is now spent between when you get to go to your local game shop and be happy and the life you loathe. Your life means more because of Magic. It has saved you.

Time passes.

You’ve spent so, so, so very much time being different. Not good enough in your own eyes, but Magic and good friends have finally given you the courage to be who you thought you always should be. When you go to these Opens or PPTQs or random events you’re surrounded by literally thousands of people who were all a little different, or made fun of, or outsiders/geeks/nerds/whatever the hell people need to call other people to make themselves feel superior. They all convene in one place for plenty of different reasons: commander, cosplay, to meet artists, trading, play competitively or casually, hang out with friends, draft, and a multitude of other possibilities.

With that in mind you decide you’re going to go to your first Grand Prix. Maybe it’s in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Developments in that state make you feel significantly less safe. Your pragmatism sets in, and you do your best to understand the “whys” and how they directly impact you. It’s not just HB2. It’s the reaction. Polarizing. You’re called names again. Your very state of being is called into question. You begin to feel those old notions of inadequacy- the kids in school who relentlessly tease you, or the adults who stare and point. It’s not just the bill. It’s the people and their treatment of their fellow man or woman. Anxiety sets in.

Here we are again, suffering- wasn’t I silly for thinking I could escape from you?

The Island of Misfit Toys

We are all beautiful, and beautifully broken. From the lowliest internet troll who seeks to inflict pain in order to feel something…anything to the most holier-than-thou crusader who finds offenses in everything regardless of if it exists or not. We all are something special, and usually that conflicts with the opposite end of the spectrum. Magic is the Island of Misfit Toys. Its where a lot of people who have never felt a sense of belonging go because they don’t know any other options. For some it’s the first, and for some it’s the last stop on a journey to find their place in this world. There’s nothing wrong with that.

There is something wrong, however, with acting like your place is somehow more sacred than another’s. Bullying is a hot-button topic. It has been for a few years. There are two camps:

1- Those who think the bullied should stop being soft and fight back.

2- Those who are bullied.

 

The interesting dichotomy that exists is that those who think it’s as simple as raising a generation of warriors often fail to realize how damaging it is to constantly be put down. Have you ever seen a boxer get knocked out? Does their corner rush to their side and scream “get up! You’re letting us down by being unconscious! What kind of loser are you?” Or do they rush to their side and try to take care of them? I’ll give you one guess, and it’s not the first one. We learn from getting knocked out, but some people become punch-shy, and they learn to dodge better rather than absorb a hit.
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When I was a kid I was bullied, but I had a smart mouth and I wasn’t afraid to take a beating or dish one out. That’s just who I was, but when I went home do you know what I did? Watched television. Played with my action figures. Ate dinner. Talked to mom and dad. Went to bed. That was it.

People nowadays have no escape. Are you tortured at home? Lovely. Let’s continue that when you get home over social media- tweet at you how much we hate you, and tag you on Facebook statues about what a terrible person you are. Are you scared? You should be. Here come the text messages because we somehow got your number. Emails. Don’t even try to cover your ears. We’re everywhere.

This is the life that the bullied live nowadays. It’s not as easy as when I was young. We threw some punches and called it quits. There is literally no escape from being condemned for your race, sexuality, gender identity, looks, weight…your everything is on trial.

The Magic community, which is supposed to be a Safe Haven for those who enjoy the game, instead has fostered a subset of members who believe their hatred trumps compassion and reason. Look no further than the various comment sections of articles. We make a play or write about something you don’t agree with? We’re idiots. Don’t like our articles? We’re illiterate. Constructive criticisms are a thing of the past, because why be kind and understanding when you can just tell the other living, breathing, alive person with feelings that they should kill themselves. That’s the ticket, right? Forget the middle. Straight to the endgame.

It’s not about safe spaces or secret clubhouses. Magic is a game and it is meant to be enjoyed by every person who chooses to play it, and the injection of prejudices and ad hominem should be a notion so far removed from it that it makes almost no sense to me that a group of people just searching for happiness would cannibalize itself with hatred. Malice doesn’t come with impunity.

The Remedy

So far I’ve heard “stop shoving your changes down my throat,” “things were fine the way they were before,” and “political correctness is destroying America.” I’m here to hold your hand through this. It’s not the end of the world. Listen to my words: change is a good thing, accepting your fellow man and woman is ok, and not spewing hateful rhetoric will do your soul more good than it will harm.

We are blessed. So blessed. Beyond blessed that we have Magic. It’s not the game- because a game is just that. For some it’s a living, or a passion- a hobby or an escape route. You don’t know the extent that someone has ran away from persecution just to be able to sit across from you at the table, shake your hand, roll some dice, and battle some cards. Their struggles- internal or external- are a catalyst for their strength and determination, but are also scars they bare from battles you know nothing about. Just being in your presence shouldn’t be another war, nor should telling them how much they disgust you. They are a human. You are a human.

Despite philosophical, perceived, real or fake differences, hurting someone is never ok. Your rights do not begin based off of ending someone else’s.

Empathy.
Understanding.
Respect.

Emotion.

You can never underestimate these qualities. They are literally the perfect starting hand for interacting with those around us.
Magic should be all-inclusive, and even though the vast majority of it is, that doesn’t mean we can’t be better. We should want to be better. After all, what would you rather do?

Destroy a life?

Or save it? Your words can do either.

Embrace the power your can have over the Magic community. Spread love, not hate. Spread positivity, not malicious thoughts.
Free yourself from the thorned bonds that would prevent you from helping those around you. Exile bullying or doing harm to your fellow players. This is my declaration today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the time I play Magic.
Next week I’m sure I’ll write about some deck or do some satirical piece. I’m a funny guy, right?

How Magic Almost Ruined My Life

Magic: The Gathering does a lot of good things for a lot of good people; it gives them an avenue to socialize, a hobby to be passionate about and a game to love and enjoy. In local game stores all around the world, long-standing friendships and relationships, deep cutting rivalries and meaningful senses of belonging are formed every Friday night, so it’s almost redundant to say that Magic has an impact on people. It had an impact on me too, but not in a way you might expect. Magic awoke something in me that I wasn’t aware existed before. A passion, a drive, an obsession with problem solving.

Magic is set up in such a way that it involves solving huge amounts of tiny problems; Which card do I pick in this draft, do I keep or mull this hand, which land do I play first, should I attack this turn etc. The whole game is an almost infinitely long sequence of decisions that, if enough of them are made correctly, lead you to winning the game, most of the time. This idea is incredibly attractive to me, and the little injection of variance that distinguishes Magic from games like chess keeps it fun and fresh where other games get stale and routine. Not to detract from one of the oldest games in history, but chess just isn’t interesting for me. Magic is. Magic rewards you making the correct decisions, making lots of them in a row, and punishes you if you make the wrong ones.

I decided that I would apply this to my entire life – not consciously, I never sat down and thought “well this is what we’re doing from now on, Denis.” but it just turned out that way. As I played more Magic, I started to think more and more in these terms of expected value, percentage chance of success, “outs” etc.

Every single scenario, every problem I was faced with, would be broken down subconsciously into a decision – What if I do X, what if I do Y, how happy will each of them make me, what’s the percentage chance that X will succeed rather than Y etc. I didn’t just become obsessed with this approach in relation to Magic, it changed the lens through which I viewed my whole life. Everything was a series of decisions, and life was no different. In Magic, if I made the right decision enough of the time I would win the game. In life, I thought that if I made the right decisions often enough that I would be happy.

That’s not how life works.

I’ve always been a somewhat obsessive person. I have a tendency to wrestle with things in my head and overthink them, over-analyzing scenarios and decisions long past the point of usefulness and quickly approaching the point of damaging. This had never been a real issue for me before, but when I started playing Magic, and more importantly continued to play it for a few years, it fed and nurtured that obsessive part of my brain.

Two years ago I started a YouTube channel called Windmill Slam with a good friend of mine called Oisin Lyons. We would617d7b1dc3083eec2890c1e3c8b4adc5 record ourselves doing a draft every week, and every second week we’d record one for MTGO Academy. This meant that I was drafting a lot. Now this doesn’t sound like all that often, but I’d play in my own time too. I’d do 3 – 4 drafts a day at some times, like when a new set had just come out, and I’d grind value out on Magic online – my mood was dependent on my success in the drafts that I was doing. This isn’t a piece about game addiction, though that is a very real thing and something that a lot of Magic players suffer from, just like any other game, but this repeated play altered the way I looked at the world.

This was all fine, honestly. I prided myself on being decision-focused, rather than results-focused (as preached by Limited Resources) and I thought that this was the best way to live ones life; by breaking things down into tiny decisions and trying to make those decisions as effectively as possible. I still think this is a great way to live, and it’s still a part of me, but I hit a wall.

I hit a problem that I couldn’t solve.

These issues are personal to me, and I wouldn’t mind sharing them except that they involve other people and I don’t think it’s fair to talk about them in detail here for their sake. Long story short, I hit a problem that didn’t have a solution. It was a situation that I was in, and some issues from my past, that I just had to learn to live with. There was no action that I could take to change them, there was nothing I could do “fix” what was happening and what had happened  – there was no decision to be made. My brain couldn’t handle that.

I obsessed. I had anxiety attacks, I lost huge amounts of sleep and I’d be plagued by this niggling little machine churning away in the back of my head, and every couple of minutes it’d spew forth some little piece of worry, anxiety or guilt. These would wear away at me, day in day out, for over a year. I had spent so much time training my brain to push itself to make correct decisions that when it hit a problem that didn’t have a solution, it just ran the problem over and over again, hammering at it with everything it had and achieving no result. This put strain on my happiness, my work and the relationships in my life, but I did all I could to keep it hidden – which was a huge mistake. There’s a stigma associated with men not sharing their feelings and emotions, and mental health issues are so prevalent in young males as a result. We’re taught from a young age to “toughen up” and “deal with it,” and while this might work for a scraped knee or a dinged elbow, when your mind is rattling against the side of your skull 24 hours a day trying to solve an unsolvable problem – it can get a little tiring to say the least. Anyone reading this that knows me personally will likely be surprised that this even happened to me, I shared with almost no one.

drown-in-sorrow-730x280Eventually, it made me depressed. Not in a constantly-being-upset sort of way, but in a way that I didn’t feel like anything mattered anymore. Things that usually made me happy didn’t faze me anymore, things that would make me upset usually I just shrugged off. I felt like I was floating through my life on auto-pilot with friends, family and the whole world just rolling off of me like water off a duck’s back. I started to realize how serious this was, and I started to get a little scared, when I couldn’t think of a series of events that would ever make me feel happy again.

So I went and got help. I went to a counselor on the recommendation of a good friend of mine, and it is probably the smartest decision I have ever made. They didn’t provide me with some magical cure or piece of sage advice that wiped my mental lens clean, I did most of the talking in fact. I poured everything that I was worried about, everything that caused me anxiety, everything that had driven my will and spirit down over the past year, and it looked ridiculous. Laying it out like that made it look like the stupidest things that no one should worry about, and that I should be able to just get over them and move on with my life. It wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t quick, but that’s what I’ve learned to do now. I’ve learned to let go.

Magic teaches a lot of good things, critical thinking , strategy, adaptability and probability to name a few, but it can also teach a dangerous obsession with these things if you let it. Magic is a game. It’s competitive, there are high ranking tournaments in it and people put a lot of emotion and soul into it, but it’s still just a game at the end of the day. I let it change the way I thought about myself and the world, and it almost ruined my life. Don’t let it ruin yours.

A Magic: The Gathering Gameshow

Some of you may know that I run a YouTube channel called Windmill Slam where I do silly drafts every week with a friend. One day I thought it would be fun to attempt to make up flavor text for cards and see if my buddy could distinguish between real flavor text and the false ones that I could come up with. We played the game and had a lot of fun with it, but this got me thinking; Why isn’t there a Magic: The Gathering gameshow like Jeopardy or Who Wants to be A Millionaire? There had been stuff in that sort of vein in the past, like Rich Hagon’s “Downtime,” but I wanted a more laid back, more fun experience. And most of all, I wanted to host a live-action one at my LGS. So that’s what I did.

The game, called Windmillionaire, pits players against each other in a setup similar to a game of Magic, but with decks of cards that I have pre-decided and special rules for most of the cards. The intricacies are outlined in the video below, so please check out the first episode, and let me know what you think!

 

Teaching People to Play Magic

I believe that Magic is a great game, and if you’re reading this there is a good chance that you agree with me. It’s normal human nature to want to share things that we enjoy with our friends, but introducing Magic to people not familiar with a similar game can be a daunting task. If their initial impression of Magic is poor, it is much less likely that they’ll come back to the game and keep enjoying it. As such, if you want to share Magic with your friends there are a few things to consider first.

  • Where should I start?

One of the core concepts of Magic is the color pie; what each color represents (loosely). Being order and justice for white, knowledge and control for blue, ruthlessness for black, passion for red and nature/growth for green. As experienced Magic players we know that the color pie can be bent at the best of times and outright broken at the worst (looking at you [Card]Hornet Sting[/Card]), but to new players this is an interesting and easily identifiable starting point. It’s not a bad idea to ask the “student” which color most appeals to them based on these traits.

  • What cards should I use?

Wizards of the Coast offers 30 card introductory decks for this very purpose and  decklists of the current ones are available here. However, if you have your own cards lying around it’s possible, and maybe even preferable, to create your own version. Below is a sample deck using recent cards that exemplify Green.

[deck title= Green Sample Deck]

[Creatures]

*2 Elvish Mystic

*2 Centaur Courser

*2 Kalonian Tusker

*1 Garruk’s Packleader

*1 Terra Stomper

*1 Charging Rhino

*2 Grizzly Bears

*2 Giant Spider

[/Creatures]

 

[Spells]

*2 Giant Growth

*2 Prey Upon

[/Spells]

[Land] *13 Forest [/Land]

[/deck]

 

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Cards like [Card]Garruk’s Packleader[/Card] and [Card]Prey Upon[/Card] reward the player for taking advantage of Green’s big creatures and [Card]Elvish Mystic[/Card] highlights ramp’s place in the color. The deck is very largely creature based and has poor, conditional removal (like Green should), and has an unconventional way of answering Blue and White’s flying creatures with the [Card]Giant Spider[/Card]s. The creatures in the deck are mostly simple creatures with no keyword mechanics other than Trample or Reach and should be simple enough for a new player to understand with ease. The cards can obviously be substituted with what you happen to have in your collection, but be sure to keep the key principles the same.

Creating similar decks in the other colors should be easy. For blue, focus on countermagic, bounce spells and fliers. For red, creatures with haste and burn spells. For white, vigilance and lifegain are key. For black, cards like [Card]Sign in Blood[/Card] or [Card]Bone Splinters[/Card] are perfect examples of the “greatness at any cost” attitude that the color embodies. Your student is likely to appeal to one or more of the colors upon hearing their “philosophies,” so be prepared to let them play with whatever appeals to them.

  • What about the rules?

The rules that you teach a new player should be kept to a minimum. They don’t need to know about the stack, priority or layers; they barely even need to know the phases of each turn. Explain that the players start at 20 life and the object is to reduce your opponent’s life total by attacking them with creatures. Explain summoning sickness and attacking and blocking, as well as noting that you can play spells both before and after combat. After that, tackle each card as it comes up. Your student is likely to have a lot of questions about Trample or First Strike etc. but it’s best to deal with those as they arise during normal play. Overloading your student with information is a very common mistake.

  • Let the game do the talking.

Just play Magic. The game is so well designed and so fun that it will do most of the convincing for you. Don’t worry about letting the student win when you first play; if you’ve taught them correctly they should have fun regardless of the result. If they get mana-screwed or flooded or something like that, explain to them that that’s quite a rare occurrence, but totally a normal part of the game.

What should I watch out for?

There are many traps and pitfalls that people run into when teaching their friends to play, but if you’re aware of them they can be pretty easy to avoid and can dramatically increase the likelihood that your friend will want to come back for more.

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  • Don’t teach at your level

You’ve likely been playing Magic for years and have accumulated both knowledge of the game and a vast collection. If you’re teaching someone new though, try to pull most of this back. Teach them with a basic intro deck like the one outlined above, don’t explain to them that Magic is awesome because of your Scapeshift Modern deck and launch into how that works; you’ll overwhelm them quickly and they’ll lose interest. Mentioning archetypes of the game in general is fine, but you shouldn’t go beyond Aggro/Control/Midrange/Combo in terms of detail.

  • Don’t get bogged down in rules

Many people who play Magic for years still don’t fully understand how some deeper rules, like layers, work in niche situations. The friend you’re teaching only needs to know about mana costs, combat and when they can cast instants, sorceries or creatures. They don’t need to know about the legendary rule, poison counters or that artifacts and lands technically have summoning sickness but “ignore” it – that can all come much later.

  • Keep the mechanics simple

If you’ve built your intro deck properly this shouldn’t be an issue, but some mechanics can be very confusing for someone just learning the game. Things like Morph or Bestow from recent sets come with a ton of rules baggage that we’ve come to accept, but isn’t necessary for a new player learning the game.

  • Don’t use slang

Magic is one of the most slang intensive hobbies in the world – almost everything in the game has a nickname, including plenty of individual cards. Naturally, using terms like “Bob,” “Goyf” or “Gary” is out of the question, but even more general terms that pop up in the game should be kept to a minimum. “Swing,” “Chump,” “Hellbent” etc. can all be left out. It’s not that they’re that confusing, it’s more that they just add to the information you’re dumping on your student and they can make the game feel more exclusive than it needs to be. More intuitive slang like “drain” or “pump” is generally fine, but be careful not to go overboard.

  • Keep it fun

This is probably the most important rule of all. Watching GP and Pro Tour coverage can make us all get caught up in perfect technical play and grinding out value, but at its core Magic is just a fun game to play with your friends and that’s what you’re trying to highlight. Keep things light and competitive to a friendly degree. This may seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many first Magic experiences I’ve seen ruined by the teacher being too ruthless or salty – if your student doesn’t have a good experience they won’t want to come back, and that experience is entirely in your hands.

Magic has been experiencing a burst of growth over the past few years and it doesn’t look like its stopping, with each new block outselling the last. With changes to rotation, Duels switching to a free-to-play model and  an increased push for Magic-related content on Twitch and YouTube, the game is going to keep on growing faster and faster. You can do your part to make Magic as popular as it deserves to be by teaching your friends, and hopefully by following these tips you can get a few of them hooked on the greatest game in the world.

What experience have you had with teaching people to play Magic? Did you have any huge errors that you ran into? Let us know in the comments below!