Magic demo

I have to say teaching people Magic is not an easy task. And playing with little boys thinking they can do whatever they want is even more tiring.

Today I spent most of the day trying to teach the basic rules of Magic: The Gathering. I have to say that boys in the age between 9-12 had real difficulties with concentrating on the turn phases/steps and couldn't really memorize effects of certain cards. Explaining something like shroud and first was already a problem.
Some were performed better some where completely lost.

Adult players were faster in understanding the basic rules and did not need explaining different kinds of permanents (explaining what is an enchantment and sorcery/instant was quite difficult for some younger players to grasp!! not to mention that explaining what the card does is not sufficient for the player to understand how to actually use it). As usual there are things that people don't grasp at first like the fact that mountain is not a red permanent. I also got a bit stuck when explaining combat damage and triggering/playing abilities. Normally I would just put it on the stack and everything would be fine but now I got a bit lost in it. So next time I rather don't want to start about stack at all. (Unless it comes really to using the stack).

I also played against some players who think they can play Magic and are good enough to be capable of winning something. There were two groups of such players. In one group there were people cheating on purpose and not really playing by the rules consciously. I have to say that after trying to cheat on me for several times the players could at least give up at that. And I was probably too naive thinking that they would stop doing some illegal actions over and over again. I explained about 5 times what regeneration is and what it does, I tried explaining RFG and graveyard zones but the player just did not get it or ignored me ... Also players shuffling their decks so they would have what they need is erm not fair. I hope they will get few match losses and will think about the way they play a bit.

In the second group there were people who have expensive cards/decks but have no idea how to play. I have to say that with these it pains me to play against them. But I have to say that I coped with playing against bad players better than my colleague.

Also after few hours of playing I realized that my concentration and ability to even count my life total went down a lot (I started to use dice for life total..). Being so disoriented and trying to explain something is quite hard.

Now I'll probably dream about that...