Dillie-O
Council of Heroes
You heard me right! Get them into the game in 10 minutes or less from knowing little to nothing, short of watching the cartoon show!
I've experienced this a couple times now as a Judge, and it goes along the lines of this. Parent A walks up to me with their 8 to 10 year old kid who's been wanting to get into the game after watching the cartoon for weeks on end. However, they have no clue what to do and all their kid has at this point is the cool Kaiba dueling disc that attaches to your wrist. They just paid the 20 bucks for their sneak preview packs, and now they're told they have to "open duel" with 5 different people and fill out this card.
The blank look on the parent's face and the enthusiasm on the child's face is priceless.
The judging staff is a little limited today and the people are piling in, but the TO has directed you to them and said you can spend about 10 minutes with them helping them get the ropes. So what do you do?
I've struggled in this position myself and I'm not exactly sure what to do! In one instance, I tried to go over the basics of the game (use your monsters to attack and reduce the life points to 0 of your opponent). But the problem with me is that I'm uber analytical (yes anal 8^D) and I start thinking about Exodia, [ycard="TP6-EN015]Last Turn[/ycard], Deck Out, etc. and start explaining there are other ways and then stop myself as I start to ramble.
So I begin to show them the cards in the pack they pulled out. This is the star level, monsters that are more than 5 or 6 starts require a tribute of a monster on the field to summon, 7 stars or higher require two tributes. However, there are special summon monsters that don't require a tribute or special monsters that will serve as a double tribute and... uh oh, I'm rambling again.
So then I show them spell/trap cards. Now trap cards are the purple ones and you have to set them face down for a turn before you can activate them. Some of them require a special circumstance in order to activate and others require a cost to activate them, such as discarding one from your hand. There are continuous traps that stay on the field once activated. Spells you can activate only during your Main Phases, unless they are a Quick-Play and...
...their faces are getting pretty blank. I'm sure they're smiling at me because of my genuine attempt to bring them up to speed, but they just want to have a bit of fun. This is too much for a sitting.
And that's how it goes! 8^D I was looking over the 5.0 rulebook that comes with the starter decks, and they are pretty decent, but it does take some time to read it over and even then there are questions involved. It would be cool to give one to those folks that are just starting and let them read that through, but I don't think UDE provides them openly, unless you want to eat up your own paper.
So how to you do it? Should we try to write a "concise" Yugi guide that gets somebody up to par in 10 minutes or less. Is it even possible?
The worst part is when you see this parent just slop down 15 bucks at a regional and expect their kid to go into it with their 60 card deck that hasn't been validated. Its rough on all parties involved.
Your help greatly appreciated!
EDIT: Oh, and please refrain from the "They shouldn't be there in the first place" argument this time round. There are plenty of people that use the Sneak Previews as their genuine first time experience into Yugi, and I would like to make that as smooth as possible so they'll seek our their nearest card shop to keep playing. 8^D
I've experienced this a couple times now as a Judge, and it goes along the lines of this. Parent A walks up to me with their 8 to 10 year old kid who's been wanting to get into the game after watching the cartoon for weeks on end. However, they have no clue what to do and all their kid has at this point is the cool Kaiba dueling disc that attaches to your wrist. They just paid the 20 bucks for their sneak preview packs, and now they're told they have to "open duel" with 5 different people and fill out this card.
The blank look on the parent's face and the enthusiasm on the child's face is priceless.
The judging staff is a little limited today and the people are piling in, but the TO has directed you to them and said you can spend about 10 minutes with them helping them get the ropes. So what do you do?
I've struggled in this position myself and I'm not exactly sure what to do! In one instance, I tried to go over the basics of the game (use your monsters to attack and reduce the life points to 0 of your opponent). But the problem with me is that I'm uber analytical (yes anal 8^D) and I start thinking about Exodia, [ycard="TP6-EN015]Last Turn[/ycard], Deck Out, etc. and start explaining there are other ways and then stop myself as I start to ramble.
So I begin to show them the cards in the pack they pulled out. This is the star level, monsters that are more than 5 or 6 starts require a tribute of a monster on the field to summon, 7 stars or higher require two tributes. However, there are special summon monsters that don't require a tribute or special monsters that will serve as a double tribute and... uh oh, I'm rambling again.
So then I show them spell/trap cards. Now trap cards are the purple ones and you have to set them face down for a turn before you can activate them. Some of them require a special circumstance in order to activate and others require a cost to activate them, such as discarding one from your hand. There are continuous traps that stay on the field once activated. Spells you can activate only during your Main Phases, unless they are a Quick-Play and...
...their faces are getting pretty blank. I'm sure they're smiling at me because of my genuine attempt to bring them up to speed, but they just want to have a bit of fun. This is too much for a sitting.
And that's how it goes! 8^D I was looking over the 5.0 rulebook that comes with the starter decks, and they are pretty decent, but it does take some time to read it over and even then there are questions involved. It would be cool to give one to those folks that are just starting and let them read that through, but I don't think UDE provides them openly, unless you want to eat up your own paper.
So how to you do it? Should we try to write a "concise" Yugi guide that gets somebody up to par in 10 minutes or less. Is it even possible?
The worst part is when you see this parent just slop down 15 bucks at a regional and expect their kid to go into it with their 60 card deck that hasn't been validated. Its rough on all parties involved.
Your help greatly appreciated!
EDIT: Oh, and please refrain from the "They shouldn't be there in the first place" argument this time round. There are plenty of people that use the Sneak Previews as their genuine first time experience into Yugi, and I would like to make that as smooth as possible so they'll seek our their nearest card shop to keep playing. 8^D
