Transition Taking Place Now -- Pokemon to Magic the Gathering

I've had a starter deck of Magic kicking around the house for years and one of my 8yo boys had taken interest from a look-at-the-art kind of perspective. Last night at Target he decided to spent report card money on Magic instead of Pokemon, and last night I gave him the basic gameschpiel. There's two starter decks in the house now, and as I work in the kitchen they're playing their first serious game on the living room floor. Two tasks presenting themselves:

1. Teaching the fundamental concept of Magic gameplay, and

2. Unteaching the concepts of Pokemon that are so firmly embedded in their personal gamespaces. They've likely played 300-400 Pokemon games each, so they're having a devil of a time understanding that you don't assign manna to a single creature. They just can't conceive of a creature attacking without energy assigned to it.

I'll be curious to see if they continue with Pokemon or convert completely to Magic.

S.

My daughter is 7.5, and my wife hasn't allowed us to dabble in Pokemon. I have ~60 MtG precon decks, but I'll probably have to wait a couple of years to introduce those due to violent imagery (seriously, I should just play her some Nile and Cannibal Corpse and get it all out of the way now...). Kinda wish I had kept my Portal decks for this purpose...

I think the first CCG I would introduce to her though is AEG's Warlord. Something about it just seems more "fun" than Magic.

Our current most-played games are Canasta, The Reef, Loco!, and Pirateer.

Good luck!

My kids love the Pokemon video games they have for DS but they never dabbled in the CCG. Just recently though my 9-yo expessed interest in trying Magic and he loved it. Now he has his own deck that he made from a preconstucted deck and he regularly plays a few games with my friends when they come over for a MtG session. He's getting pretty good too.

-Will

My boys just toyed with the game part of Pokemon until they got involved in a no-cost Pokemon league. Open play every Saturday morning. That's when it really took off for them. They were 7 and 10 at the time.

Magic has some graphic imagery (though they see worse on TV) but it doesn't have the slavery-like subtext that Pokemon does. I don't think the kids have any perception of it but the whole "they're happier this way" thing is just a little uncomfortable for me. Magic is bad-asses stepping up and lobbing spells at each other. Much more equal opportunity.

S.

I dabbled in PokeMon when I was in middle school when it first hit big and I'll be the first to admit that it's a solid CCG. Hell, I always thought it was better than that convoluted mess called Star Wars that Decipher was doing at the time.

Probably the hardest rules difference for kids to understand is that, in Magic, your creatures CAN'T attack your opponent's creatures. Can't seem to remember if PokeMon had anything like the "stack" but some people have a hard time wrapping their minds around LIFO.

If they haven't already, get them to check into DeckBuilder's Toolkits. They can be found at WalMart/Target and for $20 you get:

-4 boosters ($16 MSRP)
-about 150 commons and uncommons - some predetermined, some random - the random ones are broken up into themes that match deck archetypes laid out in one of the inserts
-a pack of basic land - always useful
-a cool box to store decks in - I personally prefer these to the fatpack boxes myself even if they are butt ugly

All in all, a pretty decent deal if they are looking to build/tweak some decks.

Edit: here's a post better laying out what you get