Understanding what a good card is. Traded away duel lands, wheels, mana vaults. Also as most beginners I over valued life points and didn't see them as a resource.
6 years ago | 35
I think, the more important part is making a deck 'myself' that is competitive. It's easy to copy a deck but hard to learn what cards are good and bad and why.
6 years ago | 14
The hardest part for me was reconciling how my 8/8 Slagwurm which cost me 7 mana could be destroyed for 2 mana by my brothers broken black cards.
6 years ago | 15
I played YuGiOh prior to MTG. It was very odd to not be able to attack a creature directly. I remember I made a lot of bad attacks and blocks as a result
6 years ago | 21
Well back then (it was two years ago lol) I didn't really know English and learn enough English to play Magic was the hardest part for me.
6 years ago | 5
I play EDH (Commander) exclusively and always have done since I got back into the game really. (Used to play 60 card in the streets, I remember I built and 80 card Black Red Demons and Lizards deck. It was shit but I loved it. I made it from the cards I was given and the Dragons Maze toolkit I bought to get me started) I still have the deck from roughly when I got back into it. (Rakdos, Lord of Riots) It's a competitive 1v1 deck but it's taken years of refining and many many changes. (Rakdos, Lord of Pyres on Tapped out ) Another huge step was budget as well. I currently have mostly budget decks simply because I just don't have the resources to slap all the most efficient and expensive stuff into my decks.
6 years ago | 3
It took me the longest time to figure out Mana curve, but now I'm fine and rocking Rakdos Pirate tribal with a splash of blue for Admiral Beckett Brass. Another difficult part was trying to differentiate power and toughness. Was it on the right side of the meter or on the left? Hmm...
6 years ago | 5
The first thing I remember being majorly confused by is how planes walkers work.
6 years ago | 2
I still struggle with understanding of a card is just average or good for it's cost.
6 years ago | 3
Priority and the stack came easy but i didnt like - learn it thoughroughly until i was an experienced player. What tripped me up was the sheer number of cards, some of which do weird stuff. I remember just not understanding how startled awake worked. The real problem for me was evaluating cards - i think thats what im trying to get at
6 years ago | 3
Understanding the metas of different formats, the card pools available to them, and what specific strategies were the most prolific or the most effective is what took the most time to integrate for me. Having a basic deckbuilding knowledge is one thing, but fine tuning a deck to be coherent and understanding bad/good matchups against other decks that would be popping up at FNM took a while to get comfortable with. Very much related to card evaluation, but even broader in scope when thinking about how single cards interact in the context of a synergistic machine.
6 years ago | 0
In my case it was doing this on budget. I don't like spending too much on cards as I see this as a hobby, but losing all the time sucks as well, so making a good deck on a low budget is always challenging.
6 years ago | 7
I just started playing during the Hour of Devastation prerelease, and the most obvious learning curve that took the longest for me to start understanding was learning when the best time to play certain spells, when to play around things and when playing around something makes no difference because I’m losing if I don’t change the board. Learning most of the meta decks and good cards in the format helped, but it took a lot of stumbling.
6 years ago | 0
I had a lot of good friends/teachers and I’m a quick learner so I got the basics but for me the hard part was trying to play around my opponents responses especially counter spells and learning to think about what my opponent was doing. Also the concept of win conditions.
6 years ago | 0
I can see why people say priority/stack knowledge is hard, but in order to do that you have to know what cards can use, and more importantly abuse, the stack. As someone else mentioned, anyone can netdeck a tuned decklist and run it into the ground because they don't understand *why* it is tuned or how to pilot it correctly. Once you start understanding the value of cards and how to maximize an effect you want in a game, stack and priority fall in line shortly afterwards as you start looking into the lines of play available to you.
6 years ago | 0
I got in around return to ravnica and I would trade my shock lands for bulk rares because I didn't know better. Understanding what makes a card good isn't so easy to understand at first so making a good deck took me a few years
6 years ago | 3
Started with friends in 2002. Not until end of Ravnica did I play at all. Super lucky to get into it to be able to draft and play over the whole time spiral block, before school and some extra curricular kicked in. That set was incredible to learn on, if only because I had to learn so many mechanics. And can’t recall if it was Time Spiral, or M10/Lowyren when they changed some rules also. But I loved the mess of keywords on that set. I want Time Spiral 2.
6 years ago | 0
Honestly, the hardest thing was getting comfortable with being the most hated target on board, regardless of boardstate. As a new player, i started with a rakdos mass pain deck, then moved to dimir mill and esper stax. I just liked the concepts of the deck, but everyone wound up targeting me, even when i started playing nicer decks.
6 years ago | 0
TCGplayer Archive
Think back to when you were first learning Magic. What was the hardest part for you?
6 years ago | [YT] | 185