For teachers · a twelve-lesson course
This guide was written as a course. The last chapter of it is a syllabus for an instructor with a class: twelve lessons of two hours, one a week, each with a lecture, an exercise and — every few weeks — a tournament. It is free, it needs no licence and no account, and 11 of the twelve exercises now also run in a browser, so a student who misses a week can do the week.
- Two hours a week, and a room with tables. The lessons are built for two hours; an extra half hour goes to more practice, never to more lecture.
- Cards. Boosters where you can afford them, and recycled cards where you cannot — most of the lessons are built out of piles the instructor assembles, not out of new product.
- A photocopier, twice: the stability sheet and the opening-hands sheet are written exercises.
- The deck building for a tournament happens at the END of the lesson before it, or the tournament will not fit.
Four archetype decks played twice: once as a normal tournament, once with every deck arranged beforehand. What randomness is actually doing to the game.
No browser version: this one needs real games played twice over.
One pack drafted three times over: with no mana at all, with every land making two mana, and in an ordinary draft. Turning the price of a card up and down moves the answer, which is the whole lesson.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Tempo: accelerators, finishers, cards that cost something other than mana. Decks built around each, swapped at half time.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Cards and life as resources. Decks go under the hammer and the bids are paid in opening-hand size and life total.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
A points draft: thirty points a player, cards revealed one at a time, the price falling as they go round.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Split and choose. One student divides seven creatures, the other takes the pile he prefers, and the decks play with creatures as lands.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
The stability test, in writing: nine cards a sheet, each judged on how often it acts and what it is worth off its best case.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Functional synergy: half-decks of one colour passed around, so every student plays several combinations of the same base pack.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Mechanical synergy: pools built entirely on one mechanic, drafted in a snake order, two or three pools a student.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
A draft run to a strategy drawn from a hat: pick early or pick late, in each of the two colours.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Duplicate sealed: two identical pools, played against each other, and then both builds taken apart in front of the class.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
Opening hands, analysed in writing: keep or mulligan, and why, before the class works through them together.
Run it in a browser: the exercise — the same decision, dealt from real cards and marked against the chapter.
If you run this with a class, a club or a store and something in it does not work, say so — the course has been taught, but never by everyone.
