Beginners: How do we deal with them?

Yahallo lads and ladettes, its me its your best friend its CanYouSayG, and you’re reading the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better cardfighter.

Today is an opinion piece where we will be talking a bit about how we should, and should aim to treat newer and returning players in the game of Vanguard.

Recently I witnessed a rather unpleasant situation. There is a player whom isn’t as experienced and recently returned to vanguard because of his favorite unit: Ezel.

However, some of the competitive players in the community asked him for his deck, to use in Premium, as Ezel is the current top contender. At the start when he wasn’t playing in events, he would lend the deck out despite it coming back one time missing certain parts. When he said no, a few more competitive players surrounded him, and asked again, saying things such as “If you’re our friend you would give me the deck” and “don't you want your deck to win?”. He, of course, caved to the pressure and gave his deck away to be used for tournaments again.

When he wanted to use his favorite deck for a BCS in his country, the competitive players again pressured him into giving it up, so one of them would be able to use it, gloating to their friends when he was not around that “Its okay you can use the deck for the tournament. If I bother him enough he will surely give me his deck.”



The player who owns the deck, while he very much was looking forwards to doing so, will not be joining BCS this year.

Is this the kind of “Community” you want to be a part of?

These sort of situations do occur, and very often with the perpetrators not even knowing what damage it can cause, nor that they are even in the wrong. In fact, many veterans of the game have previously had, in the past or even to this day, potentially damaging attitudes and done damaging actions.



Myself, regretfully, included.

It is this lack of wisdom, the lesson not yet learned, that lead to such players taking actions that lead to others quitting and leaving.

This situation reminded me of a recent video by Tomohappy(Tomohiro Saitou) on Youtube, where he discusses how an unpleasant situation potentially lead to a newer less experienced player leaving the game, and how important newcomers are to the game, which is why I’d like to spend some time to discuss how beginners are important in our game, as well as what we can do to improve their experience, something that ends up benefiting the community.

Why beginners are important

In any hobby, people come out of the hobby due to various factors, life, moving away, financial difficulty, losing interest, other friends quitting, no more anime to follow or other reasons. However, there needs to be an equal or greater inflow of newer or returning players to the game, or the player population would only decrease slowly into decay. In an interactive hobby such as vanguard, population of the game is directly tied to how much fun you can have. The less players there are the less players there are to play against.

For this reason, it is important to spread the game to those whom are interested and will enjoy the game, and to avoid making such players want to quit the game.

Returning players may already know most of the basic rules for Vanguard, sparing them the core rules of the game, but Returning players would also not have a good memory of some of the gameplay skills, or perhaps those gameplay skills will often be less relevant in the recent meta game.

Everyone starts out as a beginner someday, and depending on how they feel and how they are treated, they can either become another member of the community, or quit and move on to other hobbies. When a beginner or less involved member of the community quits, its often very quiet and harder to notice, so the number of players in the community slowly go down.

Because of how niche vanguard is as a hobby and how important it is in our lives, it can often be easy to develop an elitist attitude, that because you are experienced at vanguard it belongs to you, that your opinion on who should and should not play vanguard is more valid, or that you are better than other people because of it. Supported by the community around you, it can sometimes be hard to see beyond this, potentially leading to treating other players poorly.

Vanguard does not belong to you and you alone, and just because your way of enjoying vanguard is different than someone else, does not make that person invalid or that they have no right to play vanguard. That decision is not up to you, everyone has a right to vanguard, and veterans are not the person to decide whether or not someone should come to the card store.



Disliking certain people and not actively interacting with them is one thing, but outright ousting them or telling people against their wishes they should not play a certain hobby is out of the question.

What do beginners feel, what you can do to change that?

When somebody new starts the game, it is usually with one or two friends, or starting because of the anime alone. This results in the players coming with the starting of a new playgroup or them joining, or trying to join, a playgroup to have people to play with.

While easier with people going with them, it is a daunting task, and requires a lot of courage to approach players to ask to play with them.

When more established players go to play, they already know who is in the community and that they can play with them, but as a beginner there is none of this familiarity, leading to more difficulty asking to play.

Beginners can also feel difficulty in joining a shop tournament, as they are not confident in their ability to win the event. As we know a weekly shop tournament is far more than a competitive event, but for a beginner who doesn’t not know or understand this well, this is not the case.

Without a playgroup, players either continue on playing in shop tournaments, eventually join a playgroup, or quit. Not having a group that welcomes them will result in players quitting due to being tired of mustering up courage every time.

It's often important to remember that most players that join card games lack confidence, and it is through their hobby that they gain it. A beginner will not yet feel accepted by the community, and thus will often times lack the courage to speak up and ask for a game.

This is why it should be courtesy to try to, at times, respond to peoples wishes to play against you, as a sign of respect for that courage.

Beginners often do feel intimidated when playing against players not their level. Their opponents move cards faster, come to decisions faster and better, anything they do is hopeless, they have never encountered any of their opponents decks before, and there is not much chance in winning. These feelings are very common, and any player has been through that feeling before.

But do remember how you made it through: with the support of the community around you to teach you and show you where to get more information.

Beginners take more time with their decisions and learning the game, so it is important to support this by letting the players take their time, and be welcome to play with them.

When someone new starts the game, they want to win. In a player versus player game like Vanguard, there will always be a winner and a loser, and everyone always wants to be a winner. With newer players, win rate, strategy, deck build often don’t matter as much as just wanting to win once or twice. This is why players of a similar level are important for their growth: they can play at equal levels and sometimes win and sometimes lose, but with the all important point of being able to win. When facing off against more experienced players, they won’t be able to win very often, sometimes not at all, but it is very important that they feel that they can win.

The key to creating this feeling is not in your play or their deck, but instead in your tone and how you talk with them. If you win and then gloat to them or your friends about how easy it is, how your opponent sucks because they’re not good at the game, that’s going to create a fairly negative feeling for your opponent. They’re not going to feel welcome in the community. On the other hand if you take some time to point out some of their better plays that game, or perhaps point out how some of their moves affected what plays you could or did take, it helps them build understanding of their play and their confidence in the game, leading to a feeling that they can win, one of the more crucial feelings in continuing the game.

Comments such as “Hey I saw you were playing this card. Are you also playing this other card to support it?” and “Your play on turn four to ride that unit instead of another almost had me. Did you expect my hand to be low on attackers?”

feel a whole lot better to be receiving than “What a trash player he’s playing that waste of space card.” or “Only weak players make weak plays that’s why you lose”

Acquiring New Cards

Many beginners will aim to start out the game by buying trials decks and add on booster packs, while some may have a friend reccomend or give them a complete deck. At any rate their collections will not be as complete as other more enfranchised players, nor will their knowledge of how to grow them be.

With these players, while it is important for them to learn the value of buying or trading for exactly what cards they are looking for, in doing so they will not be exposed to a variety of cards or effects. When an experienced player opens packs they are only looking at the higher rarities, often ignoring the lower rarities because they either have all the copies they need or know how to acquire them if they do not. On the other hand, beginners, unfamiliar with card effects, will often take the time to read each and every card. This is part of the experience of enjoying vanguard, the discovery of new cards.

So while encouraging trading or buying singles, sometimes it is good to have a balance of both, allowing the player to see both options and take what path they want, instead of a veteran player choosing for them.

When newer players often buy much more packs, ending up with many cards they do not use, and not understanding the value of certain rarities.

Because of lack of experience and knowledge of card values, many newer players can easily fall predator to trade sharking, or trades that under or overestimate the value of certain cards, taking advantage of the lack of knowledge of card values. While the trade itself will take place, becoming a victim to a shark trade, once the player understands the full value of what they have been cheated out of, results in very negative feelings which will result in decreased motivation to play vanguard, and eventually lead to players leaving, as they feel continuing the game will result in them being preyed on, feeling that card shops are a place for the newbies to be taken advantage of by shark traders.

It is for this reason that a lot of communities actively discourage trade sharking, and take the inverse by their players giving discounts to newer players just so they can enjoy more and become part of the community. Try to be the person to support this trend.

Their first big steps: Joining a shop tournaments, visiting other shops.

When newer players join, they often start either by themselves when they visit one shop, or with a few friends and play amongst said group. It takes more effort to join a shop tournament or visit another store, but it is also a step in their development as a player. This ends up being a fairly daunting task, especially if there is no reason for the players to make the journey to join.



Fortunately for many communities, joining the weekly tournament just to play is a very common part of the card gaming culture, so it is actively encouraged. However, with beginners they can sometimes feel scared or confused by the event that people consider routine. Taking some time to explain the basics of pairing, that a swiss pairing means they’ll be so and so many rounds, and that they’ll be fighting against players with similar wins as them will make them feel much more accepted.

As for journeying to other shops to join those tournaments, this allows the players to find a new shop and new options for them to acquire cards, as well as potentially meet new players that they click closer with, and can enjoy their hobby together with. However, without a solid reason for visiting another shop, they would not have a reason and perhaps not have a means of transportation to go there.

While special events such as VGCS, Shop Challenges, etc need to cater and appeal to beginner as well as players of other levels in order to capture this audience, for shop tournaments it can be as simple as telling the beginner that a shop tournament is on. If they have never been to that store, sometime they won’t know when a shop tournament is on. By offering to go with a player to that store it helps them grow as a player.

Everyones Journey Through The Decade

Everyone is the protagonist of their story, with their own adventure with their hobby. While one persons story takes them from being shy to a top tournament player, another’s journey may take them to become a fan artist whom draws art of their favorite units. Some people’s journey starts with them meeting the game while for someone else their journey starting a vanguard club in their university starts when them and three friends get their idea.

Everyone is on one of the episodes of their series, and you encountering them can either be a cut to finish or the start of being a recurring supporting character.

A beginner will be starting on episode one of their vanguard journey, so every time you speak to them and play against them, it can either be an epic fight which keeps their motivation going and peaks both players enjoyment, or it can be the start of the end of their journey, just another stone on the scale that’s tipping towards them quitting.

Therefore its always a good habit to make sure your interactions with people are positive and beneficial for them, not only beneficial for you. Don’t be that guy who coerces people into building decks just so they can take them, or worse steal them.

As a majority of the more engaged veterans of the game do move towards the competitive scene or content creation scene, many communities around the world have unfortunately created an environment where only opinions by top players are valid, as these are the most followed opinions. Players who have been around longer have had more chances to build their reputation and gain tournament results, but this does not invalidate ideas, thoughts, content or collections from players who are not tournament players.

There have been incidents around the world where players have tried to create content, but end up flamed and exiled because fewer tournament results somehow invalidates a person when they try to create content. Thats not the community you want to be part of is it?

Don't deny people the chance to explore their interests in the game.

Vanguard is far more than just the card game itself, there are people who play casually, some play premium, some play only standard, some collect cards, others follow the anime and others so like to create content.

It is not your role to decide what direction peoples journey or how they want to choose to walk it.

Comments such as “Premium is a cancer format”, “Standard is brainless sack game” , “Dont come to tournaments if your deck isn’t full rarity”, “nobody cares about your collection trade me that card”, “you don’t win so your opinion doesn’t matter” only serve to foster negativity in the community, they are comments that invalidate people for playing the way they like. Vanguard is not enjoyed only one way.

Just because its not exactly the same as your journey does not make anyone else’s choices or journey wrong, it just makes it different than yours. Instead of denying them, learning from others experiences and sharing experiences serve to benefit you as a person. Thats a lot of win-win to be gained.

What kind of example do you want to be setting, what sort of world do you want to create?

As a veteran of the game, when newer players encounter you, they are going to look up to your example in some way or form. Be it in your playing, game thinking, or how you act. Newer players will see such actions as acceptable, or even encourage it, as its how the community sees such action, if the veteran players are doing it.

Its very easy to just conform to a consensus if the outcome does not directly affect you, so if the players that are looked up to hate on a format, then other players will follow them. If they engage in trade sharking, newer players will either quit or simply follow suit and repeat it in the future. If the veteran players all engage in regular match fixing and cheating, newer players will simply copy them, creating the competitive scene which is seen in certain parts of the world today. If the veteran players walk around slinging vulgarities, so will the newer players. If they engage in shop bashing and are loud online about hating on certain stores or players, some players will follow and cause damage to that store or players.

I of course are guilty of the last one, something that I do regret and one of the reasons I am much more painfully aware of how it could potentially damage the community.

In the smaller communities, not confirming or disagreeing with how veteran players act will result in exclusion from the community, resulting in players quitting, as there are no other cliques to join.

As veteran players we should strive to be examples in manners, play, and attitude in the game to set a good example for the newer members of the community. Not only so they stay and grow the community and increase the amount of fun you can have, but also giving them a chance to become a positive reflection of the community for newer players after them.

Each action you take is a step for your community, so be sure to reflect on what sort of community you want Vanguard to have.

Unless you are very active in various levels of the community, your interaction with beginners is going to be very limited, perhaps one or two fights once in a while. Though it does require energy and effort, a small good example from every player can build a better community.

As veteran players we should strive to better our community by what we can do for it: running events, creating content, creating fan-art, collecting cards or fostering the competitive scene, all as examples to the newer players of how wonderful the hobby of Vanguard can be, and as an example of who newer player can become in the months and years to come.

Conclusion

Every player starts their journey somewhere. Every new player is the potential event host, the next blogger, the next youtuber, the next tournament champion, the next deck builder, the next fan-artist, the next meme maker. Toxic attitudes can and will destroy each players potential, leaving to a less populated and less exciting community, but positive and supportive attitudes can, and do, create much more.

Nobody is perfect people do make mistakes that can drive players away, but more importantly they can also grow and improve upon them to become better.

Think back on what you remember as a beginner in vanguard, and a beginner in the community, and think about what made you want to continue to play.

Lets each do our best to make the newer members of the community feel more welcome, and enjoy vanguard with more people.