[dimator]

Ah I wish I had a friend like you. I wanted badly to get into the game, and I tried to get people into it without success. My spouse tried once but it was most definitely not her thing.

I went to a little tcg bootstrapping event at my local game store (way before covid), and that was fun, but everyone else there was such a pro that I felt really intimidated and out of place.

Anyway now I have a little pile of cards in a drawer :(

[curryst]

It's not quite as fun, but you can play MTG: Arena on a phone or laptop to learn the game enough to keep up. It's free, and made by the same company. You only have to pay if you don't want to play enough to earn cards, or want to build decks with a lot of rare cards (which are not common to see in Quickplay).

There are also online platforms that let you use real cards to play online. It's like Zoom, but with health counters and you aim your webcam at your board.

Or, if you go to an event, tell people you're new and ask if they want to play a jank game. Jank decks are basically decks that people like for reasons other than it being effective, i.e. a deck of cards they just like the art on, or that uses an effect that's fun but not very good. That should bring the power level down to where you can actually compete.

Also, don't be afraid to ask people to break something down. I've never seen anyone be upset about that. The Magic rules are 400 something pages long, and most cards have had online rule clarifications added to them individually. No one is expecting you to just "know" how everything works.

It's a fun game, I wish you luck in finding a group! I think Reddit has an active MTG community, you could look there.