Recently, Wizards of The Coast hosted an event for the press where we got to look at their upcoming Duskmourn: House of Horror and MTG Foundations products. As we were going around, introducing ourselves, it turned out that nearly every guest got their start in Magic: The Gathering thanks to some older relative (one person was actually introduced to it by their YOUNGER brother), and now many of them had children of their own they were teaching, or nieces and nephews. I have fond memories of sitting down with my dad and older brother learning how to play (mono green Treefolk deck, with every card I could find simply because more cards equaled better deck to my seven-year-old brain) and in a handful of years, my own son will be asking me to learn how to play. At this point, after more than 30 years, it has crossed generations to become one of the best card games, and is putting in place tools to make sure that it is around for a few more generations of players to come.
Magic is a fun game, but it isn’t quite the easiest thing to teach to new players. I’ve found that the tutorials in many of the digital versions of Magic do a pretty good job at teaching someone the ropes of the game, but the prospect of telling someone, "download this game and play the tutorial," or "just watch this YouTube video" isn’t exactly practical. This is especially the case when you’re hanging out with someone in person, and they just want to try out the game. But, at long last, it looks like Wizards is tackling the issue of having a good (physical) learning tool head on with what I think could be one of their most important releases in a long time - the MTG Foundations Beginner Box.
