It's the Magic: Censor/Control/Sludge/Bender/Blaze

Ever since I recently re-read Mark Rosewater's "When Cards Go Bad," for my Zombie CCG project, something's been bugging me. And since I write most of these blogs about a week (or two) in advance, you can figure that's been a longer time than it might initially seem. Mr. Rosewater mentioned in his article that Magic provides a sense of exploration; poor(new) players initially pick poorer cards over better ones and in seeing how they play out, they learn the qualities of a good card (it's mostly unsaid, but I think it's a reasonable interpretation). I get that. The exact question given is, why pay 1 mana to gain one life off of a spell, when you can do it for free?

However, if you put Crystal Rod and Kraken's Eye together, I think even a novice player can figure out which one is better. Then again, I'm not sure if the two were ever made side by side; Crystal Rod was printed from Alpha to Eighth Edition, while Kraken's Eye ran from 9th Edition to 2011 and Darksteel. Sure, this example doesn't really pan out, but I get that better players will learn that there are cards which are and aren't good. I like the Resounding Cycle, but realize it's only good in EDH and not all cards can work for some specific format.

The implication is, then, that new players don't know how to play the game correctly.