Magic The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering - everything you need to know to get started

Magic: The Gathering is a card game in which wizards cast spells, summon creatures and use magic items to defeat their opponents.

In the game, two or more players build a deck of 60 cards with different abilities. They choose these decks from a pool of approximately 20,000 cards created during the game's development. Although the game resembles fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, it has significantly more cards and more complex rules than other card games.

The card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG) took the world by storm in the 1990s and is still played and collected by millions of players and collectors worldwide. You can find the complete range of the latest Magic: The Gathering sets as well as boosters, starter kits, commander decks and other Wizards of the Coast products and accessories right here. And if you're interested in learning more about the game itself, read on.

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About the game

In Magic, a player takes the role of a Planeswalker, a powerful wizard who can travel ("walk") between dimensions ("planes") of the multiverse and battle other players as a Planeswalker by casting spells, using artifacts, and summoning creatures as shown on individual cards drawn from their decks. A player defeats their opponent usually (but not always) by casting spells and attacking with creatures that deal damage to their opponent's "life total", with the goal of reducing it from 20 to 0.

Although the game's original concept drew heavily on themes from traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the game bears little resemblance to a tabletop RPG, while having significantly more cards and more complex rules than many other card games.

Magic can be played by two or more players, either in person with printed cards, or on a computer, smartphone or tablet with virtual cards via the online software Magic: The Gathering Online or Magic: The Gathering Arena and Magic Duels.

It can be played in a variety of rule formats, which fall into two categories: constructed and limited. In limited formats, players build a deck spontaneously from random cards, with a minimum deck size of 40 cards; in constructed formats, players build decks from cards they own, usually with a minimum of 60 cards in the deck.

New cards are released periodically through expansion sets. Other developments include the Wizards Play Network, which operates internationally, hosting worldwide community tournaments on the Players Tour and also influencing the Magic resale market. Some cards can be valuable due to their rarity in production and usefulness in play, with prices ranging from a few crowns to tens of thousands.

How to play MTG

A standard game of Magic involves a duel between two or more players, who are characterised as Planeswalkers according to the game's story. Each player has their own deck of cards, either pre-built or created from a limited pool of cards for the event, which represents the magical resources they can use during the duel. A player starts the game with a "total life count" of twenty and loses the game when his life count drops to zero. A player can also lose if he has to recharge his deck when he has no cards left. Finally, some cards determine other ways to win or lose the game.

Cards in Magic: The Gathering have a uniform format, with half of the card face showing the illustration and the other half stating the mechanics of the card, often relying on commonly used keywords to simplify the card text.

Cards are generally divided into two classes: lands and spells.

Lands produce mana, or magical energy. Players can only play one land card per turn, and most lands provide a certain color of mana when "tapped" (usually by turning the card 90 degrees to show that it has already been used that turn); each land can only be tapped once per turn to gain mana. Spells, meanwhile, consume mana and usually require at least one mana of a particular color. More powerful spells cost more mana and more specific colors, so as the game progresses, more lands will be in play, more mana will be available, and the amount and relative power of spells played tends to increase.

There are several types of spells: non-permanent spells, such as "sorcery" and "instant", have a one-time effect before going to the "graveyard" (discard pile); "enchantment" and "artifact" spells, which remain in play after casting and provide a permanent magical effect; and "creature" spells summon creatures that can attack and damage opponents, as well as serve to defend against attacks from opponents' creatures. Lands, spells, artifacts, and creature cards are considered "permanent" because they remain in play until removed by other spells, abilities, or combat effects. The Lorwyn set introduced a new type of card, the "planeswalker", which represents powerful allies that fight with their own magical abilities.

Players begin the game by shuffling their decks and then drawing seven cards. On each player's turn, each player draws a card according to the established order of phases, uses their lands and other permanent cards as needed to gain mana to cast spells, engages their creatures in one round of attack against an opponent who can use their own creatures to block the attack, and then completes other actions with the remaining mana. The resources (cards) used remain "tapped" until the start of the player's next turn, which can leave the player without lands to draw mana from to cast spells in response to an opponent or creatures to block attacks, so the player must plan ahead for the opponent's turn as well. Most of the actions a player can take enter a "stack", a concept similar to a stack in computer programming, in that each player can respond to these actions with additional actions, such as counterspells; the stack provides a way of dealing with complex interactions that can result in certain scenarios.

The five colors of Magic: The Gathering

Most cards in Magic are based on one of the five suits that make up the game's "color wheel" or "color pie", shown on the back of each card, each representing a school or area of magic: white, blue, black, red, and green. The arrangement of these colors on the wheel describes the relationships between schools, which can broadly influence deck construction and game execution. For a given color, such as white, the two colors immediately adjacent to it, green and blue, are considered complementary, while the two colors on the opposite side, black and red, are its opposing schools. The goal of Wizards of the Coast's research and development (R&D) team was to balance the strength and abilities of the five colors by using a color pie that distinguishes the strengths and weaknesses of each. This blueprint lays out the abilities, themes, and mechanics of each color and allows each color to have its own distinct attributes and gameplay. The color wheel is used to ensure that new cards thematically belong to the correct color and do not encroach into the territory of other colors.

The concepts for each color on the Color Wheel, based on a series of articles by Mark Rosewater, are as follows:

White represents order, peace and light and draws mana from the plains. White planeswalkers can summon individually weak creatures that are collectively strong as a group, such as soldiers, as well as powerful creatures and leaders that can empower all of a player's creatures with additional abilities or power. Their spells tend to focus on healing or preventing damage, protecting allies, and neutralizing the opponent's advantages on the battlefield.

Blue represents intellect, logic, manipulation and cunning and draws its mana from the islands. Its magic is usually associated with the classic elements of air and water. Many blue spells can interact with or interfere with the opponent's spells, as well as alter the overall course and basic rules of the game. Blue magic is also associated with control, allowing the player to gain temporary or complete control over the opponent's creatures. Blue creatures are often weak but evasive and difficult to target.

Black represents power, death, corruption, and sacrifice, and draws mana from the swamps. Many black creatures are undead, and a few can be sacrificed to make other creatures more powerful, or sacrificed to destroy an opponent's creatures or permanents, or to achieve other effects. Black creatures may be able to draw life taken in an attack back to their sender, or may even be able to kill creatures using the deathtouch effect. Black spells similarly force the sacrifice of a player or their opponent through cards or life.

Red represents freedom, chaos, rage, and warfare, and draws its power from mountains. Its powers are associated with the classic elements of fire and earth, and it tends to have the most powerful spells, such as fireballs, which can be strengthened by draining additional mana when cast. Red is an attack-oriented class: in addition to powerful creatures like dragons, red planeswalkers can summon weak creatures that can strike quickly to gain a short-term advantage.

Green is the color of life, nature, evolution, and indulgence, and draws mana from forests. Green has the widest range of creatures it can draw, across all power levels, and is generally able to dominate the battlefield with many creatures in play at once. Green creatures and spells can generate life points and mana, and can also gain immense power through spells.

Most cards in Magic: The Gathering are based on a single color, which is shown along the edge of the card. The cost to play them requires a certain amount of mana of that color, and possibly any number of mana from any other color. Multi-color cards were introduced in the Legends expansion and usually use a gold border. The cost to play them includes the mana of at least two colors plus additional mana of any color. Hybrid cards, which were part of Ravnica, use a two-color gradient border. These cards can be played using mana from any color shown, plus additional mana cost. Finally, colorless cards, such as some artifacts, have no color mana requirements, but still require a general amount of mana to play.

The color wheel can influence the choice of deck design. Cards from colors that are in alignment, such as red and green, often provide synergistic effects, whether due to the basic nature of the schools or the design of the cards, but can leave the deck vulnerable to the magic of a common color in conflict, in the case of red and green it is blue. Alternatively, decks built from opposing colors, such as green and blue, may not have many advantageous combinations, but will be able to deal with decks based on any other colors. There is no limit to the number of colors that can be in a deck, but the more colors in a deck, the more difficult it can be to get mana of the right color.