I mostly play Magic with people that I’ve taught the game and gotten hooked on it. Because of that I always keep the new player experience in mind when building decks and some of them are even built with that as a hard constraint.

These are the decks I keep that I give to newer or rustier players. They tend to have a bit everything or else commit hard to just the one theme where the theme is obvious.

Halana and Alena Counters - Make your commander big then they make something else big every turn.

Sloguurk Self-Mill - mill yourself, make your commander big, draw lands from the graveyard, play them.

Ramp City Svella - Ramp ramp ramp, cast fatties, profit.

  • Cloaca
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    31 year ago

    I like to keep a few precons from the same set to have a somewhat balanced power level against each other. Right now I have the Necrons and Tyranids from the WH40k set for this. It also lets you have talking points for how you might make cuts to the deck to make it your own.

    Otherwise I think big ramp or midrange makes a good intro. This Molimo Maro Sorcerer deck is an early rev of a budget deck that I would hand over to folks. It goes quick enough to be a threat, but has only a few decisions to make.

    Also decks that could run with different commanders in the same color identity in the 99 let’s newbies have a bit of control of how they play the deck. An example being [[Heartless Hidetsugu]] and [[Auntie Blyte, Bad Influence]] would play well in either’s deck, but changing up the commander choice could cause you to pivot between a combo or agro game plan.