The role of this short section is to give the instructor teaching MTG tools for teaching the game in a limited environment. The section is divided into 11 exercises that should fill a full teaching semester with one lesson per week. The minimum time required for an MTG lesson is two hours, and this is the time frame referred to here. It would be desirable to extend the class time by another half hour, but this will not always be possible for logistical reasons. When this can be done, there is no need to change the structure of the lessons. The extra time will be devoted to more practice: the students will benefit from it!
I tried as much as possible to create a balance between the lecture time and the game exercise, which probably appeals more to the pupils. However, a complete balance was not possible due to structural needs. In some parts the lecture accounts for most of or even the whole class (albeit in very few cases). Other are entirely dedicated to holding a tournament, so the balance is ultimately maintained. Also, I saw fit in some lessons to replace the in-game practice with practice sheets that require the student to do a more systematic analysis.
Each lesson requires certain preparation on the part of the instructor. She must find the cards that she will present as examples in the lesson as well as prepare the practice. Once every few lessons, the pupils will hold a tournament. The tournaments will last one lesson. Due to the lack of time, the end of the previous lesson will be devoted to the construction of the deck (sealed) or to the draft. The tournament itself will consist of three rounds. Since two hours is a limited time for this, there may be situations in which it will be necessary to extend the lesson by an additional 15‒20 minutes and the pupils must be informed of this in advance. For the tournament, the instructor can use regular boosters (this will of course raise the costs of the tournaments) or build recycle boosters from old cards.
Exercise for the introduction:
The first exercise tries to demonstrate how an MTG match appears without the element of randomness. The instructor will distribute pre-constructed decks of the 4 main archetypes. They don’t need to be tournament-level decks but only reflect the logic behind each archetype. The decks will be distributed either randomly or by letting the students choose. Then they will be conducted in two consecutive tournaments. The first will be a regular one. The second will be a tournament in which the students can arrange their deck beforehand in any way they choose.
Exercise #1:
The tutor will organize a draft in which the pupils have an infinite amount of mana in all 5 colors. They will be required to build a 20 deck without lands. Their opening hand will be 3 cards. They can cast only 1 spell per turn. Every X in cards costs or effects count as 0‒6. The purpose of the exercise is to illustrate the importance of the MES and the mana cost/effectiveness ration. Without mana considerations, our evaluation of cards becomes completely different.
Exercise #2:
For this exercise you must prepare:
*Vedalken Mastermind, Knight of Meadowgrain (or similar spells that illustrate the same point, see below.)
*1‒2 examples of mana accelerators.
*1‒2 examples of finishers, preferably of different types (neutralizes the opponent’s defense, direct damage to the opponent.)
*1‒2 examples of creatures that require the use of alternative resources in order to cast them (paying a life, sacrificing a creature in play, discarding a card, etc.)
*Prepare decks that illustrate what is explained in the lesson. The idea is to build several decks revolving around the tempo issue: 1. Decks of expensive and powerful creatures + mana accelerators. 2. Decks of cheap and small creatures (at a cost of 1‒2 mana. This deck should be adjusted to the common card level in limited and not a constructed deck that will automatically beat all other decks). 3. A deck with a more aggro-control balance mana curve.
Practice: The decks will be distributed to the students randomly. It is suggested that the practice time be divided into two equal sections: at the end of the first half the instructor will change the decks between the players so that each one will try two different decks.
Exercise #3:
For the exercise you must prepare:
*An example of a cantrip as well as a recyclable spell such as flashback or buyback.
*2‒3 spells that require discard or permanent sacrifice in addition to the normal mana cost.
*Spells that clarify the difference between discord or sacrifice as payment and between discord or sacrifice as part of the effect of the spell.
*Spells clarifying the three different types of discord: the card is determined by the player, randomly or by the opponent.
* Spells that clarify the three different types of life loss: lack of control, giving up the card or full control.
*Class exercise: The following exercise is designed to clarify to students the importance of cards and life points as a resource.
The tutor will put together different decks revolving around a certain idea: a creature deck of a certain type, a deck that mills the opponent’s library, a deck that produces tokens and more. There is no need to assemble decks that are balanced in strength: on the contrary, the goal is to build decks of different qualities. What is important is diversity and originality. The number of decks will be the same as the number of students. The pupils will sit in a circle. The decks will pass between them so that each student will have an opportunity to inspect each of them. After all the decks have passed between all the students, the ‘auction’ phase will begin. The teacher will present the first deck and the students will offer a bid. Not all students have to offer a bid for every deck—they don’t have to participate in every auction. The currency available to the students is the cards in their hand and their life points. A student can offer, for example, to start the game with 6 cards and 15 life points in order to win a deck. The one after her will have to make a better offer in order to win the deck (i.e., an offer with a lower number of cards/lives. Cards have seniority over lives. So, for example, an offer of 6 cards and 20 lives is better than one of 7 cards and 15 lives). As long as there is a student willing to offer a better bid for the package, the auction continues. The auction is closed when the last student declares that she does not wish to raise his bid. Then move on to the next deck and so on until the last deck is chosen. Each student will receive the deck she won and will play with it during the tournament, with each one starting with the number of cards and the number of lives in which she ‘won’ a deck.
Exercise #4:
The exercise will be a points’ draft where pupils invest points to ‘purchase’ cards. Each player receives 30 draft points to ‘purchase’ cards. The class should be divided into groups of four. Each group will receive a pile of 180 random cards. The cards will be revealed one by one. Each time a card is revealed, the next one goes down the line. Moving clockwise, each player decides whether she wants to invest the number of points necessary to ‘purchase’ one of the cards. A player is never obligated to purchase a particular card or any card and may simply skip her turn by saying ‘pass’. At some point, card costs become positive, meaning the player picking them gains draft points. After the draft pile empties, the players will build a 40-card deck with the cards they ‘purchase’.
Figure 5: Points draft purchase course
Exercise #5:
For the lesson you must prepare:
- Example of a 6/1 and a 1/6 creature.
- Examples of creatures with various kinds of evasion.
- Examples of creatures with various kinds of drawbacks.
Exercise: the instructor will prepare several card piles filled with creatures (only creatures!). It is important to diversify the creatures to include all kinds of abilities and drawbacks. Such a pile will be set between every couple of students. Then, in turn, each of them will draw 7 cards from the pile and split the cards into two groups (not necessarily in a balanced way). The other player will pick which group to take, and the player who split will take the other group. They will continue the process until the pile empties. Then they will prepare a 40-card deck without lands. The creatures may be placed in the battlefield as though they are lands (losing their capacity as creatures) and produce mana according to their colors.
Exercise #6:
For the lesson you must prepare:
*An example of Terror and an example of Afflict (or similar spells).
*Card with Cycle, card with Morph and a card with Kicker.
*Grizzly Bear or another similar creature.
Exercise: The students will practice the learned material by analyzing cards according to the stability/situational test. For this purpose, the teacher will prepare special copying sheets (examples at the end of the booklet). The teacher will photograph on one sheet 9 different cards of interest to the subject of the lesson. Each student will receive such a photographed page and for the rest of the lesson will write on a separate page an analysis of each of the 9 cards according to a frequency/flexibility criterion. In order to increase the students’ motivation to fulfill the task seriously, a prize will be guaranteed to the student whose analysis is most impressive. The pages will be submitted to the teacher at the end of the lesson and she will have to check them by the next lesson. In this lesson, the students will not practice playing.
Exercise #7:
Practice: In order to help students understand what functional synergy is, the teacher will prepare the following practice. she will build half-decks of one color (20 cards including 8‒9 lands) and revolving around one theme that characterizes the color. Examples: a white deck of small and cheap creatures + white eliminations; white deck of defensive creatures + CT; White creatures + life-adding charms. The idea is to create 2‒3 of these in each color. These half-decks are not supposed to make strategic sense, i.e., to be effective on their own. On the contrary, the idea is to make them effective (or ineffective) in combination with an additional half-deck.
Each of the students will randomly pick such a half-deck. The half-deck that she chooses will be his base pack and will accompany her during the entire practice. The students will sit around a table, each student facing another. After they are seated, the teacher will randomly give them another half-deck. The students will play with the combination created from one game and then pass the other half-deck they received to the student on their right. In each game, each student will play with a new combination created between his original half-deck and another half-deck. The goal is that everyone will have time to play 3‒4 such games. This will allow them to identify ‘matches’ and ‘mismatches’ in the combinations of the half-decks, both her own and her opponent’s (the students play all games against the same opponent. The opponent’s deck changes from one game to another).
Exercise #8:
The instructor will build card pools that are based entirely or almost entirely on cards with a certain mechanism. For example: a madness pool, a kicker pool and so on. Each pool should have at least 15‒20 cards. It is desirable to increase the number of card pools as much as possible in order to create diversity. The instructor will lay out all the card pools on a table. After that, the students will draw their location in the selection of the card pools. So, the student who drew number 1 will be the first to choose, the student who drew number 2 will choose second and so on. Each student will choose one pool of cards. After everyone has chosen, the students will return and choose a second pool; this time the order is reversed. So, in a group of 8 students, the student who drew the number 8 will be the last to choose his first pool but will be first to choose the second pool. After that, the student who drew number 7 will choose the second pool, and so on. If the number of pools/the number of students will allow the selection of a third pool, this should be done. In the end each student will have 2‒3 pools from which she will build a deck of 40 cards including lands. The aim is of course to get the students to choose the card pools so that they create maximum synergy with each other. In the next lesson there will be a tournament based on the decks that the students built in this lesson.
Exercise #9:
A regular draft tournament will be conducted. To exercise different draft strategies, the instructor will prepare small notes with a pair of strategic draft methods, each applying to the picking of one color. Three different such combinations exist: late pick/late pick, early pick/late pick, early pick/early pick. The small notes will be assigned randomly. Each of the players will draft according to the strategies noted.
Exercise #10:
The tutor will organize a duplicate sealed tournament. She will create an identical pair of card pools (it would be optimal to create identical card pools for everyone but that could be challenging due to shortage of cards.) The players with the pairing card pools will play against each other. Then, the tutor will analyze the two different builds. The exercise is meant to illustrate the different deck building techniques possible with the same card pool and the different strategic paths such a pool enables.
Exercise #11:
The instructor will prepare copy-sheets (examples at the end of the booklet) with different types of opening hands―some relatively simple and some more complex. The students will analyze their hands in writing (they will have to determine whether it is worth keeping or not) and submit the pages to the instructor. The instructor will then conduct a guided analysis of the hands in front of the class. At home, the instructor will go over the students’ analyzes and select an outstanding analysis. The student whose analysis was commended will win a prize in the next class.