I have enjoyed Magic: The Gathering for many years, and get together regularly with friends to play. My son Brandon is now twelve, almost thirteen, and has really become quite good at the game, winning about as often as any of the adults. I think it has been a useful tool in sharpening his ability to think critically, manage resources, and interact socially with others; I suppose it has done those things for me as well. So, even though I refuse to play black (because I don't want even to pretend to do the things those spells depict), I think it's a good game, and we enjoy playing it.
This naturally led my daughter, Morgan, now five, to become interested in the game as well. She has taken to sitting in my lap while we play, and she has occasionally made comments that make it clear that she has a fundamental grasp of the game. Recently we were playing at our house, and Brandon even had a guest over to play as well, and I noticed that Morgan was looking rather dejected and left out. There was an extra deck on the coffee table, and I told her she could look at it. She immediately perked up and started playing with the cards, taking on both sides of a mock duel. After I took Brandon's friend home and returned, I had some time while the others finished their duel, so I sat and pretended to play a game with her, just laying cards out at random. She was delighted. When Karen put her to bed that night and asked her for something good that had happened that day to thank God for in her prayers, she immediately said, "I played Magic with Daddy!"
So I had to give the matter some thought. Obviously she can't play Magic. She can't read! I considered introducing her to Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, and remembered that in playing them with Brandon I had found them both very dull. Besides, I have a lot of Magic cards already, and don't want to sink more money into some other collectible card game. I decided to come up with some rules for Magic that would meet the following criteria:
Thus I've created rules for Ultralite Magic: The Gathering. I originally called it Preliterate M:TG, and then Preschool M:TG, but decided that it could be used also as an introductory tool for adults if I gave it a name that allowed them to retain some dignity. The major rules modifications are as follows:
We've played it a few times now and Morgan loves it. I can already see that she is learning a lot by playing. She quickly learned how to identify the three types of cards (Land, Creatures, Spells). She's remembering the sequence of play in each turn. She's learning to make choices about which creatures and spells to cast. She's getting lots of practical math experience from calculating damage. And she's starting to read some of the words on the cards, even though they don't matter at all in these rules.
She did seem to grasp the idea of casting cost, and how to calculate it with both colorless and colored mana, but after the first game we switched to my all-artifact Chimera deck, which has worked even better. I haven't introduced her to multiple colors of mana yet. Spells with "X" in the casting cost haven't come up yet, but they should work fine if handled normally.
The first game we played I made the mistake of using my regular life counters (from one of the old introductory sets): light blue worth 1 point, dark blue worth 5. Making change for the 5 counters was pretty hard for her, so we have switched to using 20 pennies each instead. This is much less confusing for her, and she likes making little flowers with them when it's my turn.
Having spells do damage equal to their casting cost does seem rather severe sometimes, but it has the advantage of being very simple (rather than having her calculate, say, half of 3), and tends to keep games short. I don't know if keeping games with preschoolers short is more of an advantage for children with short attention spans or adults with imperfect patience, but it's recommended regardless.
I haven't yet come up with a satisfactory way to handle creatures with toughness of zero, so I've avoided playing with my Spike deck. I suppose they die instantly. Morgan does know what zero is: I'm a programmer by trade, so I taught her to start counting by holding up a fist and asking her "How many fingers?" to which she replied "Zero!" with great enthusiasm.
I've also avoided creatures with power or toughness of "*". I think it should be equal to the creature's casting cost.
I hope you find these rules useful and enjoyable. Please send me any comments or questions.