Most of my frustration comes from the lack of instructional design involved in all of the various methods used to teach the game - or the occasional bugs in the stuff that I assume had at least someone thinking of it.
So here's the thing - playing on Duels of the Planeswalkers I notice that cost affecting enchantments can be cast but don't work consistently, which is why when I was playing a challenge meant to pretty much teach me that deathtouch attackers can split their damage and the deathouch bearing card should have been dead afterwards but was happily hanging around in the battlezone after all it's blockers went away I made an assumption ( but knew enough to check it out ) that deathtouch triggered as soon as it caused damage ( getting back to my general slower learning curve on state-based actions vs various other timing cycles).
Playing a live person in casual on Monday with a Typhoid Rat with Deathtouch on the play against a Glissa the traitor, his understanding was different. I deferred to his ( no judge) and threw a set of cobbled wings on the rat, blocked with something else and had a typhoid rat with wings which made me happy. I did win those rounds anyway.
I generally find that if I have a big misunderstanding of a rule or an timing issue a little research shows me that it's a rule that changed.
Thus I have discovered that SOMEONE at Wizards does know how to diagram rules.
Ok this is the first update to all of the rules overhauled in 2010 - mostly for the better - especially taking combat damage off the stack . When you scroll down to deathtouch you will see that there is diagramming - it's still not the best instructional design but it's nice to see someone was familiar with the concept
But even after that there are slight changes to the rules with the 2011 release
Ok so here's an example of how one teaches specific rules in text - it's not really fancy but it's hella easy to read
Interestingly I found this article where the bridge blogger sounds a whole lot like various magic players I've heard whining on the internet
I've read the whole Chapin Book just in time for the update to be released . . . . It helps to some extent but it's not really what the doctor ordered, it's just better than most of the dreck that's out there. I've also been reading up about cheats and cheating since there is a controversy happening at the moment. Pro magic is beginning to look a lot like pro-sports to me, the people who dominate the airwaves and internet are people who are fond of the wish fullfillment aspect of cheering on heros and villians and imagining they are one-step-away from or could-have-been-as-good as the people playing for money.
Perhaps the problem is really that the game is so dominated by young males that they can't actually look past what brought them in, or what matters to them. To put it in "Magic" terms, they believe they understand the stage 1 early game ( who taught them, what made them play) and the focused on the stage 3 games (I could be a pro! I could be heard on the internet! I could make money playing magic (no you can't, not real money, but you might be able to use it to land a job in a field that pays poorly) and they focus like sports fans on where they would like to be, identifying with persons or teams and taking up their causes, but not understanding a long game with a solid middle Stage 2 is needed for their beloved Stage 3 to have life, growth and stability.
There are no resources for a stage 2 player and not a good centralized one for a stage 1 player. The foldouts are nice good for turn order - but awful for reference at play, the computer game has bugs in it that lead to confusion and the "teaching puzzles" end abruptly, most likely to accomodate the software without adding extra feature creep, but it can lead to confusion if you're using it as a training tool to play the paper game.
Counter's vs effect pluses are a problem for people like me who are having trouble keeping track of the game state. You are allowed to put a die on the card to indicate counters but not apparently the cumulative effects of enchatments or activated effects. - I'm going to have to find out if I'm allowed to have scratch paper for that because otherwise I have yet another barrier to play with my learning disability. I know from experience that with practice I won't need it but that practice might take another year- If I'm struggling to hard to remember my board state it will take away from figuring out the board state of my opponents.
But I'm getting closer to a zen place when the rules are very different than I was expecting and that will certainly help me moving forward.
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