Getting new people into the game is tough. We have a fairly tough, competitive group here in Indianapolis. We may not be world renowned (yet?) but we’re dedicated and pretty solid. We’ve top 16ed several DMFs, gone undefeated in several regionals, achieved 3rd and 6th at Realm Champs most recently… But the problem lies in the fact that we play at a big shop, where we try to welcome new players to come in and learn the game. We do tournaments, and throw in an extra $5 on top of the draft packs, or just chip in $5 if it’s constructed. With 10-12 people, or more, that equates to a decent chunk of change. For someone new to the game, though, it’s quite an annoyance when they repeatedly lose their $5.
Getting people to understand the rules is pretty easy – we have a couple house starter decks we can sit down and show people how to play. I’ve not often been the pilot of one of these decks, but the guys who work at the store can usually be found behind either Zag’zil or Hepto, taking their 30 card deck to the ropes. Moving beyond that, playing competitively and trying to bring original ideas to the table when you don’t have all the cards, or know the cards, or have a means to get the cards (a lot of younger players don’t or can’t use ebay and paypal), is where we start to lose people.
Before most big tournaments that our group is going to compete in, we can be found with anywhere from 10-20 decks between us. We’ll use proxies where we need to, covering duplicate rares that span builds, or cards we don’t have yet, but a lot of us buy enough product that we’re usually covered. Then you have the casual group, who bring the same deck week after week or stick to the same class, who don’t get a lot of time to test between weekly tournaments, and who don’t pay attention to big tournament postings. They have fun, sure, but how do we keep these players into the game, supporting the scene, when they constantly lose?
I love it when people sit down, take their deck apart and they're like "tell me how to make it good". You suggest cards to remove, and cards to put in, and they're like "oh I like this card though". “If I get these 6 cards out, the deck is almost unstoppable” – has been a mainstay of a lot of new players. I’m still working on my bedside manner of taking apart someone’s deck, you never know who you might offend because they really thought their idea was original and the greatest new thing.
As much as I hate to curb originality, the first thing I tell people to do is to netdeck something that won a recent big tournament. This’ll introduce them to the mechanics of a good deck, and then they can go from there. The end result is if you want to get better you got to play the good decks. Learn what they do, how the synergies work, why it succeeds. Then try and implement new ideas into them and see if it works or not. Don’t reform the wheel, take the wheel and implement a new hybrid hydrogen fuelled propelling system onto it.
