Magic The Gathering Made Easy: Adapting MTG to be Kid-Friendly for My
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Learn how I made Magic The Gathering easy and fun for my 6-year-old daughter. This post offers practical tips for adapting MTG into a child-friendly game, ensuring a great time for young players and t

Adapt/ simplify MTG rules for Kids

Hi! I wrote an article on my blog about adapting MTG rules for kids and I thought it would be interesting for some parents with small kids who have yet to learn how to read.

To get in context, I have a 6-years-old daughter who wanted to play with me. I tried to teach her some rules but, given that she can’t read yet, was a little hard to explain everything. Then I also realized that she didn’t like some concepts (like graveyard), so I adapted the rules in a way that, I hope, will be easier for her to understand the real rules when she grows up (and that it will be easier for me to explain).

The result is that we have played many times since and we have had fun :)

If you have improvements to the article, such as other rules, I would be happy to read them.

Cheers, and happy game :)

FYI: I also posted this on Reddit

  • Aviandelight @mander.xyz
    ·
    1 year ago

    I really like the idea of calling it the Sleep Zone. I might use that for myself. 😊 I am curious to know how she will rename exile though in the future.

      • daco@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 year ago

        Wow. That’s a great idea! Death is Sleep and Exile is You are grounded!

        I will elaborate on this when I get to this situations and update the article accordingly.

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Sounds pretty fun! Maybe you've already thought about this, but as she begins to learn to read, maybe y'all could have fun learning the Pokemon card game together? It already is designed as a sort of simplified version of Magic, where you only have one creature out at a time, there's no interacting on an opponent's turn, you can take all the game actions you want during your turn until you attack, and defeated Pokemon are "knocked out" rather than killed. Also from what I can tell, events at many local game stores are family-friendly and well-attended.