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It's super easy, don't worry. Now, each turn has 5 phases, each of which is further divided into multiple steps...
"Here, just use this easy quick-reference PDF."
Oh, that just pissed me off.
Couple weeks ago I was at a bachelor's party, to which a number of people had brought Magic decks. I knew nothing about the game (never even watched a video), made this clear, and said that I just wanted to watch everyone else play.
Someone handed me a deck and said, "no buddy, you're playing!" I protested, but it was fruitless. I'd been roped in; and I was excited! A group of people excited to show a new player their hobby.
The guy that handed me the deck then proceeded to explain nothing and get increasingly frustrated when I had no idea what he meant when he'd say "uh, no you have to UNTAP your cards first.. ok now tap them.. yeah I know you just untapped them but tap them 😠🙄" (I still do not know what the point of turning my cards sideways for two seconds was but I guess it's super important?)
The other two players were fairly intoxicated and probably didn't pick up on the toxicity, but the whole table was frustrated with how God awfully slow the game was taking since the new guy just wasn't getting it. I just wanted to watch.
Up until now I thought homeboy had just oversimplified a few rules in his head and forgot a thing or two, but seeing that the actual instruction manual is 500+ pages, I'm furious that he had the audacity to forcibly rope a drunk person with zero interest in playing into the game, just to treat them like a moron for not instantly getting it.
\rant
In all fairness, the instructions you actually need to know to play the game could be summarized in a single page (with the caveat that there will be a lot of edge cases that won't be adequately explained there); tournament judges and, to a lesser extent, tournament players are the only folks who need to know the majority of what's in that PDF.
That said, the game is super archaic and hard to learn, and any player who thinks otherwise is probably either playing only at a super basic level, or just isn't considering how long they've been playing and how much nuance they've accumulated. Sorry you had a shitty experience; your friends absolutely should not have tried to throw you into the deep end like that. You sound like you already know, but to reiterate it, this was absolutely not a failing on your part and was 100% your friends' fault.
If you actually want to try the game (and I completely understand if you don't), you can go to a game store that sells MtG products and ask for a (free) intro deck. They're small decks with simpler cards and a booklet explaining the basic game rules that can be helpful to learn the game.
There's also Magic Arena, the computer game version, which really does a pretty good job of teaching the game. If you don't mind that format, I'd absolutely start there.
It's honestly a really fun game, but you have to teach people way slower than that. I have a couple training decks without all the card types to teach the basic concepts before ever getting into the complex stuff. Throwing someone in at the deep end like that just seems like a good way to make sure they never wanna play again.
I taught my mom to play by using a couple of starter decks, giving a short overview of the objective and what the parts of the card meant, and then played a couple of matches with our cards revealed to each other. You just need to be patient, willing to explain anything, and be generous with allowing take backs and reminding about any rules they missed. And remember that if you want someone to keep playing with you, they need to be able to have fun too.
It worries me that the first rule specifies that a two player game is a game that begins with two players.
What do you mean, begins? Are there mechanics that add more players to the game?
No, but a multiplayer game which starts with, for example, 4 players could be reduced to 2 players before it ends, so they have to specify 'begins with' to keep that multiplayer game from also being a two-player game at that point.
And this really sums up the level of semantics and minutia that requires a 299 page comprehensive rule PDF for a card game.
"Professors hate this one weird trick to become a lawyer without studying for 7 years!"
I'll see your "Cones of Dunshire", and raise you this actually real, published game: https://youtu.be/bE7f0ehPUAM
Wow. If you told me this was satire, I'd 100% believe you.