So Lana (name changed to protect the innocent)
Started showing up to the FLGS after a hiatus.
Her decks are worse-than-a-unmodified-precon, interaction-free piles of goodstuff that ticks off all of the first “Babby’s first Brew” checkboxes. (20 lands, 0 removal, every card in her collection that had the type line “creature - elf”)
She looke like she might be on the verge of quitting due to having no fun against experienced players’ bullshit Doom Blade-s, Abrade-s Path to Exile-s, Run Away Together-s and Return To Nature-s.
This time, I tried to have a rule 0 conversation that went along the lines of this:
Pickup magic at a bar
me and a mutual friend who is borrowing one of my decks
“Hey Lana, do you wanna borrow one of my decks? Enough of my disposable income is in this box that you it will hardly be fair or fun if you bring what you usually bring.”
I am an EXCELLENT DECKBUILDER! No, I’ll play my elves.
half an hour later, she is tearfully calling me a pubstomper as I try not to laugh
give an insincere apology and begin pondering what to do
What can I do so that everyone has fun?
- Swap Decks - It may just be that I worded it in a condescending way and she would be more receptive to this in the future.
- Gift a Deck - What I am worried about here is that it won’t be long before the replaces “useless” low mana value interaction with Craw Wurms and we are back to square one.
- Gift on-theme upgrades - I was thinking if I looked hard enough, I could find ~$20 of thematically awesome singles like Reclamation Sage that would bring her up in power so she would at least have a fighting chance instead of eating shit before t6 EVERY time.
- Brew to her level - I would rather not play Magic at all than be trapped in a traffic jam the length of an Oscar bait film on the ground of Creatures: The Tappenning. I would need to go out of my way to remove all interaction to meet her at her current level.
- A fifth, more sinister thing
What do Y’all think?