Monastery MentorMonastery Mentor | Art by Brian Valeza

Welcome to How To Be New, a series for players who can read the card three times and still need it explained to them.

This week, I'm doing a little twist on the format. This article isn't about things newer players can do to help themselves exist in Commander spaces. Instead, it's about things veteran players can do to ensure that the newer players at your table feel welcome.

It may seem obvious, but it feels warranted to say that being a new player at a Commander table is an extremely harrowing experience.

Truly and honestly, I remember my first night going to an open mic to do stand-up comedy, and I can tell you that I was way more nervous sitting down at a table to play my first game of Commander. At least at the open mic, I could watch some people do poorly before I got my chance to go up and tell my jokes.

When you sit down at your first Commander table, you're sitting down with three people who certainly know more than you do, who definitely have decks that are more powerful and/or more cohesive than yours, and who even likely know the general composition of their opponents' decks and how to play around them.

Furthermore, you're locked in for maybe an hour playing this deck that you're trying to hold together, like sand pouring through your fingers, while at least at the open mic I knew that no matter what happened, I'd be off the stage in five minutes.

And at the comedy club, they didn't make me immediately do my same jokes again for the same exact people who just heard them. But you, a new Commander player, likely only have this one deck to play in subsequent rounds, and the cards in it won't get any better between games.

Being brand new is really tough. And thankfully, a ton of the Commander players I've met went out of their way to make me feel welcomed when I was just starting out. It's one of the unspoken rules of this hobby: Be nice to the new player. That really does mean the world to the people it benefits.

Someone's first Commander experience is a beautiful, fragile thing, and the way people universally seek to protect it makes me have faith in the general good that exists within the Magic community (and are the memories I cling tightly to when I want to crash out after someone asks me "Cards in hand?" on turn two at a Prerelease).

So today I want to shout out a couple of the exemplary moves that I've seen veteran players make for me and for other new players. Hopefully you can adopt some of these when you find a new player at your table, because they truly are the reason I'm still here writing about this game.

Move 1: Helping a Lost Player Find Their Home

After I'd been to a couple of Commander nights, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I figured I was just one of the regular crew, and could really pick anywhere to sit. So I sat down with a group of players who all had gigantic boxes with them (a detail I should've considered more closely at the time) and we shuffled up and drew.

I don't remember a ton about the game we played. I do remember one player was using Frodo as his Commander (I can't remember exactly which iteration of Frodo, as all seem very strong, but I believe it was Frodo, Adventurous HobbitFrodo, Adventurous Hobbit because I seem to remember Sam, Loyal AttendantSam, Loyal Attendant playing an important role), and I thought that was fun, as I hadn't seen Frodo on a table yet.

I was considerably less amused four turns later when his side of the board was flooded with strong creatures and all I had out was PropagandaPropaganda. I'd been able to get away with slower starts like this at the more casual tables I'd become used to, but I was seeing stars at how quickly this game ramped out of control for all three of my opponents.

Not having any blockers, I did become a target for one player in particular (which, look, I get it. But c'mon, sometimes you have to factor in someone's wide-eyed look of helplessness when you do your threat assessment). A couple of turns later, I was eliminated from the game entirely on accident, as a byproduct of a card that was clearly played mostly for the card draw it would provide.

And let me tell you, I've never felt so defeated in a game of Magic before or since. It was so clear that I was in a weight class much higher than I'd been training against.

The game ended fairly quickly afterwards, and as soon as it did, the Frodo player looked over to me. I can't summon the wording he used exactly, but he asked very kindly if I'd like to swap with one of his friends. I nodded, and he surveyed the game store for a moment before shouting to a person he knew who was between games and asking if he'd mind swapping pods. They said sure, came over, and I scooped my cards up and shuffled to the other table.

The Frodo player had, probably from his past experience with the players at this store, made the exact right call. This table played at a much lower power-level, and I had an absolute blast for the rest of the night.

I was extremely thankful for that player. At least at my game store, once people are in a pod, they're in that pod for the whole night. So if I had left this table, where it was extremely clear that I did not own a deck which could put a scratch into any of these other decks, I would've had nowhere to go.

He recognized my ordeal and solved it for me through familiarity with the scene, a confidence earned from a long time playing Commander, and relationships to the other players at the store - all things that, as a new player, I simply did not have and could not have used to get myself out of my situation.

I'll forever be grateful for that player, and when I see him, I remember how important he was for my continued presence in this hobby.

Move 2: Playing a Commander With a Clear Play Pattern

One of my first times out with my signature The Jolly Balloon ManThe Jolly Balloon Man deck, I found myself in a three-person pod. I was still getting that deck up on its feet at that point, but it was starting to come together.

However, in this game, another player was running a mono-white Angels deck. That deck ran like a dream, and even the landsthe lands sometimes took me a couple of readthroughs to understand.

While I wasn't as clearly outmatched in this game as in the one I described earlier, it was clear to that player that I, Roman, was having trouble following along with some of the other mechanics and interactions at the table. So for our next round, he pulled out a new deck led by The Lord of PainThe Lord of Pain.

I can already hear your responses through my computer screen, and yes, The Lord of Pain is a mean commander and often leads a nasty deck. But do you know what else The Lord of Pain is? An extremely easy to understand card.

As soon as I read that text, I immediately understood not only what I could expect to see from this deck, but also the things I would need to do in order to play around its effects. It presented a fun challenge for me as a player at the table. It didn't combo off, it didn't activate some synergy to produce endless Treasure tokens, it just did exactly what it said it would do.

And I had a blast playing against it!

I felt so involved and engaged as a player in this game. At this point I'd seen combo decks and graveyard recursion decks and all sorts of things where I basically just had to wait out a player's turn and ask if I was dead yet at the end of it. It was so refreshing to have a clear effect to play around, and due to its triggering on each player's turn, even made me pay closer attention during the other player's turn.

I've done some board game design in my life, and one guiding principle in that space is that each player's turn should be interesting to all of the other players at the table. If you've designed a game where players will take out their phone and check out between their turns, then you've designed a bad game.

Durdly decks in Commander (decks that involve a lot of comboing triggers and effects during a player's turn that only affect their own board) are, in this way, bad game design. Of course, as a veteran player, they're more trivial to track and you'll see the hidden points of potential interaction within them. But for newer players, they fall very firmly into the realm of bad game design.

For this reason, I implore you to survey your own collection. Most players I know keep a precon in their bag to run with newer players. But please take a moment to consider your new player precon.

For example, I do have a copy of the Temur Roar precon from Tarkir: Dragonstorm in my bag. That deck, in addition to being stronger than many of my constructed decks, is extremely durdly. I would never pull it out to play against a new player.

However, my slightly upgraded Nelly Borca, Impulsive AccuserNelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser precon works great for newer players (especially once I removed Trouble in PairsTrouble in Pairs). It's pretty clear early on that I'm looking to attack on my turn and make other players have to attack each other on theirs, while offering free card draw as they do. It's usually fairly obvious what's going to happen on my turn, and it gives the other players in the pod things to look out for on their opponents' turns (after all, there's only two options for those goaded creatures to attack, and one of the two is them).

See what precon or precon-level deck you have that could do the same. Though she often gets built in ways that turn her into an intercontinental ballistic missile, Ms. BumbleflowerMs. Bumbleflower is a great precon commander for providing a clear play pattern for newer players. Brion StoutarmBrion Stoutarm's MO is almost made clear just in reading his name.

These are exactly the sort of Commanders that help a new player become comfortable with the ebbs and flows of a Commander game.

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