My friend's 10-year-old son recently decided he's not interested in playing the Pokémon Trading Card Game any more and he wants to play Magic: The Gathering instead. Is helping him put together a whole collection of Magic cards to build decks with going to be a long and expensive process? Well, no. His mother has friends who used to be into Magic—they still play Commander on the regular—and have stacks of old cards they don't need. And so they happily donated a shoebox full of cards to her son.
It's a common origin story among Magic players. An older sibling or cousin, a workmate who is about to move house, a random garage sale—somebody somewhere has a bunch of Magic: The Gathering cards they'll part with, and that leg-up gives you an in. You go through those cards and discover synergies, you put all your favorites together and then you learn the hard way about mana curve, and slowly you get better.
