Magic: The Gathering 101

Magic: The Gathering is another big game that can be confusing to get into. As compared to Dungeons & Dragons, which is actually much lighter on rules than you would think, Magic: The Gathering has been around for a long time, and all of the cards that have been created for the game can still be used.

Magic: The Gathering is a deck-building game in which players can choose from many different styles of decks. The makers of the game have been printing cards for many years, and they print new sets of cards three times a year. The players can build decks using these cards, which they then use to play against another player’s deck. The first player to get their opponent down to zero life points from a starting total of twenty wins the game. Players lower their opponents’ life points with cards they play from their hand, drawn from their own decks. These decks are generally made up of sixty cards of different types.

There are several different kinds of sixty-card decks: vintage, which use old cards; modern, which use somewhat more recently created cards; and standard, which use cards from the latest sets. What most people start out with, though, is the casual deck style. A casual deck is also made up of sixty cards, but there aren’t as many restrictions on the cards that you can use. This allows people to play with whatever Magic cards they happen to have as they start to figure out the game, even if their collection is a mix of different styles.

This is one of the seven different types of cards.

In the top left is the name. The top right shows how much mana (the currency of the game) you have to pay to play this creature. In this case, the Storm Crow costs one mana of any color (or no color), identified by the number 1 in the grey circle, and one blue mana, shown by the one blue circle at the top of the card. Below the image is the type of card — in this case, creature — and after that is the type of creature, which is Bird, in this case.

Below that is the card text, which will show and explain what abilities the creature has, which for the Storm Crow is flying. The text beneath that, in italics, is known as the flavor text. This text has no real reason to be on the card beyond adding detail to the story that Wizards of the Coast has created for the game. And finally, on the bottom right there are two numbers. The number on the left is the power (attack) number, so the Storm Crow can do a single point of damage to a creature of another player. The number on the right is the Storm Crow’s toughness (defense) — a toughness of two means that if a Storm Crow takes two or more points of damage on a single turn, it dies and is removed from the battlefield and put into the pile of cards known as the graveyard.

Land cards are much simpler; they cost nothing to play, but you can only play one per turn. Land cards can be tapped (turned sideways to indicate that they’ve been used during the current turn) to produce mana, and must already be in play before they can be used for this purpose. This mana can then be used to cast a spell, such as Storm Crow. The swamp shown above could be tapped for one mana to then pay the one mana of any color needed to play the Storm Crow, along with an Island land card that’s needed to get a blue-colored mana to play the Storm Crow. Mana is used to cast any card, but the number and type needed is different, and is represented by the grey and colored circles at the top of each card.

The other other types of cards to go along with creatures and lands are sorcery, instant, artifact, enchantment, and planeswalker. All of these are cast the same way that a creature is cast, and will also show the cost to play the card in the upper right-hand corner. They will also all have text that explains what the card does and how to play it. Instant cards can be played at any point in the game, but the rest of the cards will generally be played on your turn, unless the card specifically says otherwise.

That’s a brief overview of Magic: The Gathering — as you can see, there are many different cards with many different abilities and ways to play them. That’s half the fun of playing Magic — you can build a deck that no one has built before and play it for fun.

Next time on Magic: The Gathering: What are the different colors about?