Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #516: New to Magic

Episode Date: March 2, 2018

This podcast was made for you to share with someone new to Magic. I walk through the basics and demonstrate the important things to do when introducing the game.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, I'm trying something interesting today. So, one of the things I get asked all the time is about people who want to bring in friends, family, other people to play Magic that currently don't play Magic. And how exactly do they talk to them about it? So what I thought I would do today is something sort of fun is I'm going to make a podcast that you can have someone listen to that is not a magic player where I'm going to go over the basics of magic. Not so much the rules as you'll see because that really isn't the thing you need to do to get someone interested in playing. But the idea is either you can let someone listen to this podcast or if you could sort of listen to some of the things I'm saying and use some of those when you're talking to somebody new about magic. Okay, so let's start. Hello, hello person new to magic. How you doing? So my name is Mark Rosewater. I am the head designer

for magic. This year will be my 23rd year working at magic. And I do a podcast called Drive to Work, and I do a podcast called Drive to Work where I am literally driving to work and normally takes me about half an hour and or but it takes me as long as it takes me normally about half an hour and today I'm gonna talk to you about magic now here's the first thing I know and whenever I talk to somebody who gets brought in by somebody who already plays magic, that magic is very intimidating. The analogy I will use is, you know, imagine having a Star Wars fan that's really excited by Star Wars and has read so many of the books and watched the cartoons and collects things and, like, there's so much going on that

it's intimidating. Oh my god, there's so much going on. But if you just sort of sit down and watch the first movie, A New Hope, by the way, episode four, just watch the first movie, you don't need to know anything. That the movie will explain itself. That what is fun about the movie, you don't need to explain everything around it. So the first thing I want to say is, I get it's intimidating. I get when you meet somebody who's so passionate about something that and there's so much there's so many pieces and parts to it that it can be really

intimidating. But the thing I'm going to explain today is the actual basic game itself is pretty it's not that complex. I know you can layer a lot of things on top of it and it is definitely a game that's a very deep game meaning as you get into it there's a lot of places to explore but when you first start out you don't need to know all those things. So for example, let me start by explaining what Magic is. So it's what's known as a trading card game. So it was invented by a man named Richard Garfield, who was a math professor. And basically what he did is he said, let's take trading cards, like baseball cards or

movie cards or any sort of thing in which there's cards with pictures on them that talk about something and they're randomized. And when you open a booster, you don't know what baseball players or what movie cards or whatever, you don't know what you're going to get. It's randomized. And Richard said, okay, trading cards exist. Also card games exist. Something like Uno exists or there's, you know, Rook or Milbourne or, you know, there's a lot of games that just use cards.

What if you cross those two together? What if you took trading cards and took card games and made them into a trading card game? And that was the idea that started it. So the idea was you buy a booster pack. It's randomized. And then what you'll do is you'll open up cards that are game cards and then the way the game works is you can pick any cards you want to play with now i'm going to talk a little bit what that means and the important thing to understand is if you want to start with an

already made deck if the idea of making a deck is intimidating we sell decks are already made your friend who's teaching you friend or family member who's teaching you could make a deck. Hint, hint. Friend or family member, you should make them a deck. And one of the cool things about the game is most games, so for example, let's say you're going to play Monopoly. When you sit down to play Monopoly, there are 40 squares there. You know, there are four railroads. There's Boardwalk.

There's Baltic. There's Kentucky. There is the 40 squares that there always is. And whenever you play, whenever someone else plays, those are the exact same 40 squares. Now imagine if every time you sat down to play Monopoly, 20 of the squares you could pick what they were,

and 20 of the squares your opponent could pick. So you knew some of what was going to happen, but you didn't know all of it. That is kind of what magic is. It's sort of like, you know, you're playing Uno, but maybe there's a draw six. Draw six? I've never seen draw six. Oh, well, someone's introduced draw six, you know, or maybe there's a purple card. Purple card? I've never seen a purple card. You know, that one of the neat things about this is not only do you, the person playing, have a lot

of say of what kind of deck you want to play, but your opponent has the ability to bring in things that you might not know about. That there's this exploration, a surprise factor that's a lot of fun. Now, one of the things about Magic is there's many different ways to play it. And that you can be very serious about it, you can be very casual about it. Like one of the cool things is that, well, let me explain what the game is about, and we'll get into this in a second. So what exactly is the game? What's going on? What's, you know, every game has sort of a story that goes along with it.

What's happening in the game? So in the game, you are a magic user, a wizard. We have a special term, we call that Planeswalker. But it's a fancy name for a wizard. It means something else, which I'll explain in a little bit. But essentially, you're a wizard casting magical spells. You're having a duel. You're having a magical duel. And the cards represent all the different spells you're casting to try to win the duel. Now, sometimes

the cards can be powerful sorceries and things. You can throw lightning bolts at your opponent or freeze them in ice or do sorts of cool things. You can summon creatures. You can get creatures to come help you. And this is a fantasy game. So there are dragons and elves and goblins. There's vampires and zombies. There's every kind of animal you can name. Fairies, unicorns. It's the fantasy realm.

And there's a lot of different things that we do. So there's lots of different kinds of things it can be. You can have a bear or an elephant or a shark. There's all sorts of different kinds of things you can summon. Also, there are objects that you can get. There are weapons and there's armor. And there's things you can get that are actual physical objects that you can use. So the idea of the game is it's a strategy game.

Each player to start has 20 points to start. There's a lot of fun terminology that more gives its flavor. They're called life points in the game. But really, it's a strategy game. I have 20 points, you have 20 points. Oh, and Magic traditionally is played two-person, one-on-one. There are, though, ways to play with more than two people. And it's very popular to play with more than two people.

It's possible the person that teaches you, teaches you in a way that's more than two people. But the idea of the game, essentially, is I'm trying to knock you from 20 down to 0 before you knock me from 20 down to zero. And there's a lot of ways to do that. And the thing you want to understand is I'm not going to explain any of the rules today. This is not what I'm explaining. My introduction to magic is really not about the rules. The rules are best learned as you play the game when you're sitting down and playing. And the big thing that I always explain to people when they teach is you're going to be taught the rules as you need them. One of the things about Magic that makes it a fun game is because there's so many cards

that exist, the game has a lot of rules that are the normal rules of the game. And then any card can break any rule it wants to. And the card just tells you what it does. So maybe things don't normally do something, but oh, this card says you can do it, so then you can. And so one of the fun things, and I know this is one of the things that can make it intimidating, but the neat thing is when you play a game of Magic, all you need to worry about is the cards you've drawn and your cards your opponent's drawn. What's currently being played? Now, as you get better at the game,

you're going to start worrying about what your opponent might be playing and all sorts of things. There's a lot more things to concern yourself with. And one of the things to realize is magic has a set of rules, and then we let players play in a whole bunch of different ways. There's actually lots of different ways to play. The rules are always the same, but the means by which you play, what we call the formats, are different. Sometimes the formats have to do with

what cards you're allowed to play. Sometimes there's extra rules added in. There's a real popular format called Commander where you pick... One of the things we do in the game is there's a certain kind of card that is a character that represents a specific character and that you have to pick one of those characters

to sort of be the face of your deck. And so there's a lot of different things, depending on how you play. But the key to playing Magic is start with somebody that knows how to play. They'll pick some format they want to play. They'll probably make your deck for the first time you play. And you'll just play and you'll learn stuff.

It is actually pretty straightforward. The two most common responses I get when I start to teach people to play Magic is, one is, wow, this is fun because it's really intimidating and you sometimes miss it. It's a fun game. And Magic is a really, really fun game. In my house, in my den, I have two bookcases dedicated to games. And then in my basement, I have another giant set of shelves dedicated to games and three more bookcases dedicated to games. And then in my basement, I have another giant set of shelves dedicated to games and three more bookcases dedicated to games.

I have a lot of games. Hundreds and hundreds of games. I love games. I'm a big game player. Gaming is my hobby, one of my hobbies. Magic is my favorite game, bar none. It is my favorite game. It's really fun.

And one of the cool things that we do is, because we keep making new cards, the game keeps changing. So one of the neat things when you go to build a deck, and like I said, to start with, you don't need to build a deck. Someone can build it for you. Or we sell already made decks. You also can just buy a deck that's already made. We sell things called Planeswalker packs that are already made decks. And then if you're into certain formats like Commander, sometimes we'll sell Commander decks that are already made decks. And the idea is that you can build your deck around whatever you want.

You know, if you like vampires, you can make a vampire deck. I'm going to get into the colors in a second, but if you like a certain color, you can play a certain color. The magic is divvied up into colors. But the cool thing is, every time we make a new set, we will... So let me explain what a planeswalker is and talk about how the new sets work.

So the world of magic is in what's called a multiverse. What that means is there's a lot of parallel worlds. Now, the average person lives in a world and that's all they know. You know, if you lived on Earth, that's all I know. I live here on Earth. There's no other world. I don't know of any other worlds. But it turns out that there's a multiverse, meaning there's a whole heap of parallel worlds called planes. And that one of the things that's special about the planeswalkers, which are the magical creatures you are that you fight with magic, is, you know, the magic users, is that planeswalkers are really good with magic

and they can walk between worlds. That's something the average person can't do. So every time we make a new set, we go to either a new world or we go back to an old world. And one of the cool things is we have all these exciting different worlds. You know, there's Innistrad, which is a gothic horror world that has vampires and werewolves and zombies and spirits and lots of creepy crawly things.

You know, we have Theros, that's a Greek mythology world that's based on Greek mythology and there's hydras and gorgons and centaurs and pegasus. We have Amonkhet, which is an Egyptian-inspired world. And you can have mummies and sphinxes and scarabs and all sorts of things inspired by Egyptian mythology.

We have Ixalan. It was a world based of based on sort of Northern South America and it has dinosaurs and pirates and it has conquistador vampires and native merfolk and cool stuff. We have a world called Zendikar that's kind of an adventure world. We have a world called Ravnica that's a city world. We have a place called Tarkir that's kind of an Asian-inspired sort of a warlord, you know, a war clan world. So we have all these different worlds that each have their own unique feel to them. And you, as a powerful wizard that can walk between worlds, can pick and choose from any

of these worlds. Or you can focus. Sometimes you're like, oh, Ixalan has dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. I want to make a dinosaur. I'm just going to pick cards from Ixalan and make a dinosaur world. You know, you can pick and choose what you want to do. And the neat thing about it is that you have a lot of say in how you play the game.

That one of the reasons that the average person who plays Magic often plays for a long time because a lot of games at some point you grow tired of and Magic constantly changes and there's so many different ways to play and there's so many different choices for what you want to do that if you go tired of one deck you can just make a different deck or play a different format. You have a lot of options and abilities to play and do different things and I know I know I know when you're first starting out learning that there's lots of opportunities and possibilities is intimidating. But what I'm going to say today is that is stuff you can later explore, and none of it you need to know now. I'm talking about all these cool things about different worlds. If you want to learn about the worlds of magic, we have pages

on our website to learn about them. But you know what? If you don't want to learn, it's irrelevant. You don't need to know the different worlds. The other thing that we do is there's a story. So our main characters are planeswalkers. And right now in the story, some of them have banded together because there's a lot of, there's good planeswalkers and there's bad planeswalkers. And the good planeswalkers, some of them are sort of trying to stop the bad planeswalkers from doing bad things. And so, you know, right now there's, as I tell the story, there's six of them, but the team will keep growing. But anyway, we go to different worlds and there's this ongoing story. And if you're interested in the story, and once again, if you're not, ignore it.

It's not important that you know the story if you don't want to. It's just a facet that you can care about. We have a short story that goes up on our website most weeks on Wednesday. And if you want, you can go back and read old stories and learn about it. And there's all these different characters that have different backgrounds. And they, you know, each

character, for example, the main five characters right now are one of each color. And each one of them sort of represents the five colors of magic. So let me talk about the five colors of magic. So let me talk about the five colors of magic. So the key of magic, it's a fantasy game, and you are fighting with magic. Well, magic's a big part of the world. So one of the things that is unique about our game and our world is magic in this world comes in five colors, and each color comes with its own sort of philosophy.

So for example, there's white magic. White magic is very protective magic. It's healing magic. It's magic that aims to sort of, it wants peace. It wants everybody to get along. It's kind of the goody-two-shoes magic. You'll find a lot

of the knights and the armies and stuff are here. The pegasus, the unicorns. The biggasus, the unicorns. The big iconic creature of white is angels. There's a lot of humans in white. And the idea is white is the color that has a lot of small creatures that band together and really believes that the power comes from many people coming together to make something bigger. White believes in order.

White believes in structure. White believes in structure. White is the most civilization of the colors. A lot of the animals in white are more domesticated animals, things that have learned to live with humans, for example, trained animals and things. So white tends to be a little slower than some of the colors, and that is more defensive. Although, it can, it has more small creatures than the other color, and it can band those creatures together. So, it can be aggressive, it needs to be, but it has a very strong defensive side.

Okay, blue magic is the magic of air and water. It is, it has an elemental aspect to it. And it's also the magic of the mind. And it has a tricky quality to it. It's the magic that most understands how magic works. So it's the color that sort of messes with other people trying to cast spells. It is also the color that sort of can steal things and can change things.

Blue is very mercurial. And it is the color that really values knowledge and that really wants to change things. It's really into change and making things the best that they can be. Black magic, if you ever heard of black magic, black magic is like black magic. It's the magic that's very selfish. It seeks power. It can be very, very powerful. But black magic can turn on you.

Black magic is the magic that most often has a downside and that you can create power but at a cost. Black tends to have the creepy crawly stuff, the vampires, the zombies, the snakes, the spiders. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of creatures that are sort of, that live in the dark, or that things that are a little more on the selfish side tend to come from black. Demons are the iconic, oh, blue's iconic, I forgot, blue's iconic creature are the stinks,

you know, the riddle, the stinks, it's sort of, the smart creature that has riddles, because it's all, now it, it's sort of, this smart creature that has riddles, because it's all about knowledge. Black's iconic is the demon. That it's willing to make, you know, you want power, well, it's willing to make deals with you to get power. But it's the devil with the demon, so it always comes at a cost and stuff. And black is the color that actually has access to more things than the other colors, but usually at a cost. So a lot of things it can do, it doesn't do as well as the color that actually has access to more things than the other colors, but usually at a cost.

So a lot of things it can do, it doesn't do as well as the color that does them better, but it can access more things because it's willing to pay costs to do that. Next is red. So red is the other elemental color. Fire and earth are red. Red is very destructive. Blue is very mental. Red is very emotional.

Red is all about sort of living in the moment. Red is the most short-sighted, that it'll do what it wants to do now and not necessarily think of the ramifications. Red is probably the fastest of the colors because it's all about now, now, now. And red has a very destructive side, so it's good at blowing things up.

It's not good at subtlety. There's some areas, red has some blind spots because there's some things it doesn't know how to do. And its creatures, its iconic is the dragon. And it has goblins and orcs and ogres. It has, you know, a lot of creatures of the mountain or creatures of fire. Phoenixes are in, you know, and there's earth and fire elementals here, much like water and air elementals will show up. Blue, by the way, because

it has water and air, has a lot of flying creatures that live in the air or water creatures that live in the water. Next is green. Green is the color of nature. Green has the most animals in it, especially wild animals. It has the largest animals. White and green tend to have more creatures than other colors.

Green also is about growth. It's very good at sort of... it's good at getting you more magic and it's a color that makes it easiest to splash other colors of magic. Green tends to overwhelm the opponent. It sort of builds up over time and either has a giant creature or lots of medium-sized creatures that it sort of attacks at once with. So green tends to overwhelm because nature can sort of grow and overwhelm you. And then the cool thing about this is if you look at the back of the magic card, there's a circle. And each color is next to two colors and across from two colors. For example, white is next to blue and next to green, but across from red and across from black.

And the two colors you're next to are your allies. And those are colors that you have something in common with. And the two colors across from you are your enemies. And there's a conflict that represents them. And so one of the cool things is every color has two allies and two enemies. Now, if you're interested in any of the stuff I'm talking about, if you really want to go more in-depth on the color philosophies,

or on the alliances, or on the conflicts, I have podcasts on all of it. I have podcasts about each color individually. I have podcasts about why they get along. I have podcasts about why they don't. I have podcasts about any two color combinations and what happens when they come together.

So if this interests you at all, it's one of my favorite topics, so I talk a lot about it. But it's really deep. One of the neat things about magic is there's an ethos built into the game, and that different colors mean different things. In fact, one of the most popular places we have, a place called Ravnica, I said, was a city world. In it, if you take the five colors of magic and combine them into two color combinations, there's ten two color combinations. There are guilds in the city of Ravnica

that represent those ten combinations. And so it's a place where you look at how all the colors interact with one another. And that's a neat part of that world. But anyway, the neat thing about colors is it's another vector for you to choose from. There's a lot of flavor. There's a lot of flavor. There's a lot of sort of game balance.

There's a lot of different ways to play the game. So when you make your own deck, you can choose to go, there's a certain flavor I want to play up. I like elves. I'll make an elf deck. Or I want to make a deck based on some real world thing, like the Wizard of Oz, and I'm going to put in a Tin Man and a Scarecrow and a Lion. You could do that. So you can build something based on flavor.

You can build something based on mechanics. Oh, this is a neat—I like how this plays. I want to make a deck that wins this way or does this particular thing. Or you can choose based on color. I really like black or green or red, or I like a combination of colors. Usually the way the game works, you tend to stick to one or two colors. There's some ways to play with more colors, but you tend to stick to one or two. So sometimes you're just finding a color you like and, oh, I like black, so I'm going to play black. You can do that in building a deck. The key in any of this is

that there's a lot of different things to give you options to choose from and then you get to choose. And once again, I understand that when you're first starting out, the idea of choosing is a little intimidating, but one of the cool things is have somebody make a deck for you or buy an existing deck, pre-made deck, and then as you start to play, you'll find things that you like. Like maybe your friend makes you a deck and one of the creatures is like, ooh, there are unicorns in this game, you know, there are fairies in this game, there are ogres, there are centaurs, whatever it is that you can say, there's birds, there's insects, whatever it is, because we keep making games, so the way the game works, by the way, is every, about four times a year, we put out major sets.

And those sets, the most common way to play is something we call standard, which is just the last two years worth of cards. So if you're new and you don't want to worry about all the existing cards from the past, you can play it in a way that's just newer cards. But anyway, we keep putting out cards

and we keep going to new places. We go back to some places from time to time. But we keep visiting new places and that opens up new possibilities. As of me recording this, we've recently gone to Ixalan that has dinosaurs and dinosaurs and pirates. Dinosaurs and pirates kind of exist in the game in a little, little tiny bit, but not in enough to make a deck around. And all of a sudden, lots of dinosaurs, lots of pirates, and now you can make a dinosaur deck or a pirate deck. And people are excited to do them. They can.

So sometimes when we make a new deck, it'll open up new possibilities. And that we keep making new ways to play and new what we call mechanics for the game. But the key is, and this is important, you can take 60 cards that you like, that you own, that you have, put a deck together, and that's all you need to learn. You don't need to learn all the cards. Yes, the game has lots and lots and lots of cards. You don't need to know any of them. All you need to know is the cards in your deck,

and then as somebody plays them, you have to read the cards in your opponent's deck. And usually your opponent can help you with that. They can explain what things they're doing. And at the crux, what you will find is, the game, like I said, is this magical duel where you're fighting back and forth. But it's, while there's a lot of things that can happen, in most games, most games, the core of the game,

90% of the game is the same from game to game. That there's little tiny bits that will change, but it is not change as radically as... Yes, yes, yes, there is lots of places to explore, but when you're first starting out, you have a lot of ability to control where you go and what you want to do. And like I said,

play with a deck that's already made, and just find things in it that excite you. Be it a color, be it a mechanic, be it some flavor aspect, and then you can start, when you build your first deck, start building around that. Okay, so the other thing to understand is that magic has a very big, what I'll call an ecosystem. So magic, it depends on how you want to count the numbers. There's a lot of people that have played magic that don't play anymore.

There's people that play but stop and start again. There's people that, you know, don't have their own decks, but when they go to their friends, will play with their friends' decks. There's a lot of different ways to count Magic players. If you want to count everybody, then any possibility can be counted. There's like 20 million Magic players. If you want to count, like right now, who's actively playing, there's like 20 million Magic players. If you want to count right now who's actively playing, there's about 12 million around the world.

Magic's in 11 languages. It's played in over 140 countries. It is something that... There's a large network. There are websites dedicated to the game. There are lots

of podcasts and vlogs and videos. There's a whole community built in this game. And one of the fun things you'll find, like for example, there's a cosplay community. So cosplaying, if you don't know what that is, is people who like to dress up in character. And so there's a lot of people that really enjoy dressing up as magic characters. Like I said, there's a lot of characters in magic. There are the planeswalker characters that are the main characters.

But also, there are a lot of creatures on cards that it's fun to dress up as different creatures. And we are constantly making new characters. Remember I told you there's cards that are characters? And so people like to dress up like the characters and dress up like the different planeswalkers and stuff. That's a whole community. That might not be at all something you're interested in.

And if you don't care about that, don't worry about it. It's not something you need to concern yourself with. But if it's something you're interested in, there's a whole community. And like I said, there's different formats and each format has its own community. For example, I mentioned Commander before.

But if you're in Commander, there are podcasts that talk only about that format. There are videos talking only about that format. We make products for that format. You know, that one of the things that happens is we put out a lot of products every year. But not every product

necessarily is for every player. That there's so many different kinds of players that play so many different kinds of ways that we make different products for different players. And that's one of the things that as a beginner, as somebody being new to this game, that I want to sort of say to you is one of the neat things about this game, one of the neat things about Magic in general is that most games do not give you, the game player, a lot of options. They give you some maybe while you're playing,

but Magic really says to you, hey, you really can customize what this game is so you can play it the way you want to play. Now, for example, some people like to be competitive, and if you want to be competitive, Magic has an entire structure to be competitive in. We have an organized play tournament scene. We run millions of tournaments all around the world that if you go to a game store on Friday night, we have something called Friday Night Magic, odds are on Friday night at the game store,

there are people playing Magic. And the reason we do that is two things. One is, let's say you don't have somebody to play with, well, we want places you can go and play. Or let's say you want to be competitive. There's a whole system and you can play in the local stores and, you know, win tournaments that get you to higher tournaments. And eventually there's a pro tour.

If you're skilled enough and the pro tour, we gave away millions of dollars of money every year. We have tournaments around the world and that people play at the highest level. But here's the thing. If that's not your thing, if you don't want to play, if you're not about competitive play,

you don't need to be. In fact, the majority of people playing Magic aren't competitive. Competitive play actually is a tiny part of Magic. Although, the people that are into it

are very into it and that community is very active. And even if you're not into it, it's fun sometimes to watch the pros play. All our pro tours are streamed live and you can watch and see the best players in the world play, if that's something you want to do. Likewise, there are people that

are very into the story and there are websites dedicated to the story. You know, we put out a story on many Wednesdays and there are people, for example, that will get character actors, get voice actors, and they will read each story and put it to, say, if you want to listen to the stories rather than read the stories, you can do that. Like I said, there's people that dress up as different characters. There's people that love talking the story and debate the story, and if you want to read the story and you want to discuss with other people

what you think is going to happen next or what's going on behind the scenes, you can do that. There are other people that get really, really into the mechanics of the game. There are whole communities that build their own cards that sort of have fun sort of seeing if they can build cards for Magic. And there's whole card communities. That's something you can be involved in. And what I'm saying is each one of these groups is a That's something you can be involved in. And what I'm saying is each one of these groups is a

huge community that you can be involved in. And if you want to read about magic, you can go onto Twitter. You can go onto Tumblr. You can go onto Instagram. You can go onto Reddit. You can go onto name it. Name any social media. There are people there who play Magic. And different ones will do different things. Like, you know, the community on Tumblr is a very different Magic community than one on Twitter, which is very different than what you'll find on Reddit,

which is very different than what you'll find, you know, there's various bulletin boards. Different places you go, you'll find different things. And, you know, you'll find different things. But if you want to find the Snapchat community or the Instagram community or whatever app you currently, or whatever social media you prefer, there are Magic Players and that each one has its own feel to it. And that's one of the things that comes with it. That when you open up a booster pack, there is so much more that comes with it than just the cards in the booster pack. Like I said, there are tournaments that you can play in if you want.

There are communities that you can join. There are podcasts to listen to. There are videos to watch. There are endless opportunities for you to find what aspect of the game is interesting to you and then find other people that care about that aspect. And that's one of the reasons that Magic has thrived. And be aware,

Magic got founded in 1993. Magic is doing the best it's ever done. You know, Magic right now, the last, I think, eight, nine years have been just the best ever for Magic. That Magic just, you know, we keep getting new players. You know, it's something where we're always expanding out. And there are a bunch of digital ways to play Magic. Right now, for example, there's a game called Magic the Gathering Online, which is a little more if you're a little more serious about it. But we have a game that is coming out really soon. Maybe by the time you hear this, it actually might already be out. It's in its beta right now.

It's called Magic the Gathering Arena. And it's Magic. It's digital, but it now. It's called Magic the Gathering Arena. And it's magic that, it's digital, but it adds a little more hand-holding for you. And there's tutorials in it. So if that's the way you want to play, if you'd rather not learn from a human, but learn from a computer,

because computers aren't so judgy, you can do that. It's called Magic the Gathering Arena. And there are other games that have magic IPs built into them. There's a lot of different opportunities for ways to play magic and ways to enjoy

magic. And like I said, the cool thing about this is that when you learn how to play, you're going to be given so much opportunity to figure out where and what you want to do. And that really is my final point today. So I said I drive to work, by the way.

Like today there was traffic. So today we have a slightly longer podcast than I normally have. So this is one of those topics where I kind of had 30 minutes. So I'm giving some extra value to you because that's what I do when I have extra drive time. But the thing I really want to hammer home is that there's so many neat ways to explore, and that one of the things that you can do as you're learning about the game is ask the people teaching you questions. You know, can I do this? Can I do that? And the answer to so many things is yes.

Yes, if this is something you want to do, yes, you can do that. Like a real common thing I find when I play with beginners is they'll play, and there's a few cards that they'll instantly sort of get attached to. And different players will get attached to different cards for different reasons. And the answer is, I like this. Could I do more of this? And almost always, the answer is, yes, you can. And that person who's teaching you can help figure out how you would do that,

if you wanted to make something more of that ilk. And, once again, the other thing to stress is, I've talked about all sorts of different things at Magic. No one person does all those things. Nobody is into designing their own cards and doing cosplaying and be professional playing and follow the story and all the different things I'm talking about. Maybe there's one person. Usually people focus and you get to focus too.

You get to pick the things you like. What I'm trying to explain today is there's lots and lots of different aspects you can care about, but you don't need to care about them. And one of the things that, because I know it's intimidating, is there are pockets of anything you can enjoy. Anything you want to do, anything you want to focus on, you will find other people. Magic is so big and there's so many people playing and it's so sort of social media centric that you can find whatever it is that you want to do, whatever part of the game that you care about, there

are people out there that also care about it. That you can sort of bond with and find those people. And that magic is really good at helping you sort of interconnect and find those through all the different medias where people hang out. And in general, the community is a really nice community. That if you want something and you talk to people, people will steer you toward people that have a similar interest to what you have.

So here's what I'm asking for a new player. I ask two things of you. Or maybe three things, I guess. But I want you to have an open mind. So number one is just try once playing with somebody. What I recommend to the person who's teaching you is A, they pre-build your deck so you don't have to worry about making a deck

and that they make it simple so you're learning. There's no reason for the first time you play to have... I mean, there exist complicated cards in the game but the basic game

is not the complicated cards so don't start with the complicated cards. But try playing. And the thing I always say is that they'll teach you to play as you need to know things. Meaning, one of the things that's very intimidating is here are 80 rules that could matter, but probably won't. That's intimidating.

Here are four rules that matter right now. And that you will learn things as you go along and that it doesn't matter at the end of the first game, you know everything. You know, as long as you're having a good time and enjoying it, you know, you can learn more as you play other games. Two is, when you play,

look to see what aspect you have fun with, what aspect you like. Does a certain color intrigue you? Does a certain character intrigue you? Whatever. Whatever it is, a certain world, whatever that intrigue you. Does a certain character intrigue you? Whatever. Whatever it is. Certain world. Whatever that intrigue you. And then ask the person teaching you saying, I want to know more about this. And our website, for example, can let you read more story or learn more about the worlds or learn

more about the color pie. I've done a lot of podcasts, by the way, if you like my podcast. Any topic I've told you about, I've done some stuff on that. I've done some stuff. I've done the stuff on all the different worlds. I've told you about, I've done some stuff on that. I've done some stuff. I've done stuff on all the different worlds. I've done stuff on different character stuff. I've done stuff, you know, I've talked about a lot of these topics. If you want to learn about them, there's podcasts on them. Or if you want to read about them, there's articles on them.

You know, all I ask is try it once and look and see what aspects you like. And the idea is, the parts you're not interested in, you can do less of that. The parts you're not interested in you can do less of that. The parts you're interested in you can do more of that. That one of the things that's really cool about Magic is its flexibility and its ability to

sort of become the thing you want it to be. And that's one of the reasons that I fell in love with it way, way, way back when was that there's a certain thing that I wanted and the game got to be what I wanted but when I played other people the game got to be what I wanted. But when I played other people, the game got to be what they wanted.

And that's one of the neat things, that there's a lot of exploration that goes on. That even if you just care about one faction, as you play other people, you'll slowly learn about other things. And sometimes you learn about things that you didn't know about, but that's cool to you. Ooh, that's really cool.

Like often you'll play somebody and they have a neat deck, and you're like, that's a really neat deck. I want to make a deck like that. And that's something you can do. There's a lot of online resources, by the way. If you're intimidated to make a deck, by the way, there are places you can go where people have made decks. They already tell you what's in the deck.

You don't have to make it. There's resources. So if you're intimidated by making, you don't have to make a deck. If you're intrigued by deck making, if deck making is really cool to you and there's a whole community all about deck building, there's websites and people to talk to and ideas and there's all those resources. And that's the kind of thing I'm trying to say is

that if you give the game a chance and you walk in with the idea that I can pick and choose what I want and I can focus on what I want, you'll find that the game can be something that really can mean something to you. And the person who's introducing you to this game probably is pretty passionate about the game can be something that really can mean something to you. And, you know, the person who's introducing you to this game probably is pretty passionate about the game.

And what you'll find out is they can tell you the aspect of the game that they're interested in. Just remember, the aspect that they're interested in doesn't need to be the aspect that you're interested in. And sometimes when people talk about the game, it sounds like that's what the game is about. And most games, that is true. That is what the game is about. And most games, that is true. That is what the game is about.

But this game, not exactly. That somebody can be really into the game and be about thing A, but it turns out there's lots of other things the game can be about. So one of the cool things when you first start playing is try to discover what you would like the game to be about, and then they can help you craft it to make it a game that you would enjoy because it's doing things that you want to do. Okay?

So, hopefully, hopefully in my 38 minutes today, I have sort of piqued your interest. That was the goal of this. If by the way, you did not have someone listen to this, but you're listening to it, listen to the points I made today. If you can mirror a lot of things I'm saying, the number one thing that's a problem for new players is, I mean, I find is that they get intimidated. And so when you're teaching them how to play,

I did a whole podcast, by the way, on how to teach people how to play. So go listen to that. I'm not going to talk about it here. But for people that want to learn how to teach other people to play, I did that podcast already. Go listen to that. And to new player, you're in for a real exciting thing. Magic is a lot of fun.

And I just want you walking into it knowing you have the power. You have the choice. You have the ability to make the game what you want it to be. It is not like a lot of other games. And that if you walk in with that expectation and realization

you can find the part of the game and the way to play that is something that's exciting to you. So anyway, thank you very much for joining me and thank you for a friend or a family member for having them listen to me. But I am now at work. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.