Tutorial
You have reached the Magic Stronghold's Magic Tutorial. I do not claim to be the world's greatest Magic player and I am not trying to tell you how to play. These are just suggestions I offer to help people.
Beginners
The best advice I have for beginners is to play people who are good. Tell them to beat you as bad as they can. You will learn more from that than you will playing against people who are also beginning. Also, don't fall into a big creature trap. Big cretures are great, but look at the casting cost. Rootbreaker Wurm is a great example. A 6/6 with trample is a good card, but the soonest you can reasonably have it out would be sixth or seventh turn. This is a perfect example of the creature trap. Another thing to remember, keep your deck as small as possible. I know it is hard to get rid of some of those cards. So to cut down your deck, pic out the cards you would never take out, then add a couple more you like and you should be able to whittle it down to a reasonable number. And forget about bad combos. I have played a countless number of beginning magic players using terrible combinations of cards. They have one of each in their deck and they don't even work that well together. Just play it stright forward. Speed is the last and final thing. Speed is the key to Magic. Whoever can slow the game down or speed it up enough to meet their deck usually wins. If you have a deck that uses small creatures, put in as many quick damage sources as you can find. If you want to use big creatures or counterspells, use lifegain and early creature removal like dark banishing. Magic is a very complicated game for a beginning player, but if you put these tips to use, you will be competitive in no time.
Email: donnelly@psci.net