I've been playing MTG for about 4 years now. I go to nearly every FNM each week and spend a lot of time on weekends playing. I currently have 3 standard decks, a pauper, a modern, a sergeant (newly invented format created by one of my friends that's picking up a lot of steam in our area) and 7 edh decks. Basically I have a fair bit of experience and can generally do well in a tournament.
So naturally, every now and then some new player/s will turn up and play at our LGS, usually brand new to the game, with a deck that has like 70 cards, 30 land, a bunch of 1-off janky commons and uncommons and maybe a couple of actual decent cards. They get ruined. They constantly forget to draw at the start of their turn, or untap, or to attack. They get stuck with too many unplayables in hand and have to keep discarding, pretty much anything that could go wrong usually will for them. I try to be as nice as possible and offer some advice after the game, letting them know where their deck could be improved, teaching them what a mana curve is, how to tell a janky card or vanilla creature from a bomby rare. Most usually realise just how underwhelming their decks are and will come back next time with improvements, some realise just how much money they probably need to spend to make their decks work and don't bother.
Most recent player was a girl on this sunday just gone, at the Amonkhet pre-release. Her bf had dragged her along and she didn't really want to be there. I understand she has at least played with him on occasion as she mentioned she likes fast, cheaper aggro decks and she wasn't happy that her card pool today was definitely a bit more top end. She said she was probably going to drop out after the first or second round as she wasn't too keen on playing the deck. Unfortunately for her, the deck never really got going. I saw 1 particularly nasty 7 mana creature that I had no answer for late on, but by then I had already gotten enough flyers down to swing for lethal next turn. After the round was over I asked to see her deck. I was actually quite impressed with her pool; about 4-5 good removal spells, some great top end creatures, a 3 mana 4/3 rare... a Liliana planeswalker. The deck was solid, absolutely solid. So what went wrong? As I was looking through I noticed there seemed to be a few too many lands. I recounted, confused. 19 land, 2 too many for what the deck really needed, and nowhere near enough early creatures to help her survive into the mid-game. I also noticed 2 slightly less than stellar other cards and suggested she take a look at what else she had. Turned out the boyfriend had helped her deckbuild and had basically done a piss poor job, even though he's a fairly experienced player.
She also asked me to explain what a mana curve meant, because her bf had apparently tried to explain it (seeing a pattern here?) and she didn't understand. I laid out my deck to show her and explained what it meant in simple terms. She stuck around to play out the rest of the tournament despite her earlier inclination to drop out, so at the very least I hope I made the deck a little more playable for her and taught her not to listen to her bf on how to deckbuild any more.
