Magic: The Gathering

Richard Garfield, the Patron Saint of Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering (or just "Magic") is a collectible card game plagiarized by Richard Garfield from Yu-Gi-Oh, and introduced to neckbeards everywhere in 1993. Despite the amount of RAGE the game has created over the years, it's still going strong. The game is currently in it's 16th year of production with a large competitive following, consisting mostly of 40-year-old basement dwellers. Magic is notable for being the first CCG to make it big, and its influence can be seen in almost every CCG since.

Rules

Each player starts with a life total of 20, it is the goal of the game to reduce your opponent's life to 0 or less. Each player takes a turn until only one player is left in the game.

Game expressions

• Mana - Mana is the magical resource of the game, it is what you commonly use to play cards. Mana you have drawn from a source is kept in you mana pool, waiting for you to spend it. However, at the end of each phase in a turn, your mana pool is emptied, so there's no saving up by constantly draining your lands, in fact, you take 1 damage for each mana left in your mana pool when it is emptied at the end of a phase.

• Spell - Spells are any card that is currently on the stack.

• The Stack -This children is where all the real bullshit occurs. The stack is where any effect other than those that produce mana go to wait to resolve, whenever an effect, such as playing a card, activating an ability of an artifact or creature, goes on the stack, all the players of the game receive priority, starting from the player to the right of the one who last took an action. When a player has priority, no other player can act. When something is on the stack, only effects that are played at instant speed may be added to the stack, such as other abilities or instants themselves. You never have to put anything on the stack when you have priority, it just gives you the ability to respond to another players move. Effects on the stack resolve from the one to be put on last resolving first, this means that whenever you respond to your opponents move, your response will always take effect before his move.
  For example if your opponent casts a spell to destroy one of your creatures in play, and you have the appropriate amount of mana to play a counter spell, you can tap your lands and add your counter spell to the stack, targeting your opponents destruction spell. When the stack resolves, your counter spell will be the last effect on the stack, and as such will resolve first, countering your opponents spell and saving your creature. Note that your opponent also receives priority again when you play the counter spell, meaning that it'll be possible for him to add a new spell to kill your creature after you have played the counter spell, meaning he'll kill your creature anyway. But then again, you'll receive priority again as well, and so on and so on.

• Tap - Tapping is the act of turning a card 90 degree to the right, this is done to indicate that the card has been exhausted. You tap a land when you draw mana from it, you tap a creature to attack with it, and many abilities of creatures or artifacts require that you tap the card as well.

• Ability - Abilities are found in a permanent's text field. Abilities can be both activated, or triggered abilities. An activated ability is noted for having a cost followed by a colon followed by the effect of the ability. For example, "Tap : Draw a card, then discard a card ." Triggered abilities however, will be added to the stack whenever a certain condition is met, for example "Whenever you gain 1 life, draw a card". A triggered ability can be triggered as many times as the condition for it is met, and an activated ability can be activated as many times as you can possibly pay the cost.

• Hand - No, not that hand, stupid. Your hand of cards. You can only have 7 cards in your hand at any time, and your hand of cards is kept so your opponent can't see it. You start the game with a hand of 7 cards, and you draw 1 card each turn, there are cards that let you draw more cards however.

• Library - You library is your deck of cards, it must contain no less than 60 cards, and it is often ideal to not include more than 60 cards either. If you are asked to draw a card and you cannot because there are no more cards left in your library, you lose the game, just as if you had hit 0 life.

• Graveyard - This is where used sorceries, instants and destroyed cards go. Some cards are able to return cards from here, but normally they just stay dead. This is a place of magic and wonder for any deck that runs revive. Until someone plays Samurai of the Pale Curtain...

Structure of a turn

The first step in a turn is the untap step, here all the cards in play that are tapped untapped. The next step is your upkeep, nothing happens here by default, it is only in place for some cards to trigger different effects at the start of your turn.

After your upkeep is your draw step, here you simply draw a card from the top of your library. Next is your first main phase, here you can play any spells that are played at sorcery speed, this is things such as artifacts, creatures, enchantments, planeswalkers, land and sorceries themselves.

After your first main phase is your combat phase, this is broken up into several subphases itself. The first thing to happen is that you declare any creatures you want to attack to attack by tapping them, you opponent is then given the choice of blocking your creatures. Only an untapped creature can block, and a creature can only participate in one block each combat. However, several creatures can be picked to block the same creature at once, meaning that it is possible to 'gang up' on attackers in order to kill them. When creatures are in combat with each other they will deal each other damage at the same time, meaning that two 1/1's will kill each other at the same time. In the case of multiple creatures blocking one creature, the attacker assigns the damage that his creature would deal out to the blocking creatures as he wishes, for example a 2/2 blocked by two 1/1's could deal 1 damage to both creatures and kill them both. Any unblocked creatures will deal their damage to the opponent. Once all damage has been assigned, the clean up step follows, where all creatures that have taken lethal damage will be sent to their owner's graveyards.

After combat you have your second main phase, where you can do exactly the same as in the first.

After the second main phase, you have the end of turn step, pretty much the same deal as with the upkeep, nothing really happens here unless a card says so. Lastly, after your end of turn step, you discard down to the maximum hand size if you have exceeded it, so if you for example have 9 cards in hand, you will have to discard 2 of them to meet the required of 7.

Types of cards

The game of Magic contains several different supertypes of cards:

• Lands - Lands are the player's most basic resource, and they allow the player to play their other cards that have a mana cost.

Example of a Land card.

• Creatures - Creatures are the players soldiers and guardians, they primarily participate in combat, although as with all things in Magic, there are many exceptions this. Creatures have many subtypes, these are commonly referred to as creature types, most creatures have a race and a profession creature type, for example "Creature - Human Warrior". Creatures have a toughness and a power score, portrayed as P/T on the bottom right corner of the card. Power determines the amount of damage the creature can cause in combat, whereas toughness is how much damage it can take before it is destroyed. Damage assigned to a creature is cleared at the end of each turn, meaning that if a creature isn't killed by the amount of damage it has sustained, it'll return to its full toughness at the end of the turn. This means that the same creature will often participate in several combat steps before it is finally killed. Damage assigned to players however, is never healed by any other means than other cards that give the player an amount of life upon being played.

Example of a Creature card.

• Enchantments - These are raw magic that you create, they can do all different kinds of things, and generally have a constant effect on the game, until they are destroyed by your opponent. There are global and local variants of enchantments, the local being a subtype called auras, these are attached to other cards in play to enhance them or weaken them. A lot of competitive players dislike auras since they are destroyed if their 'host' is destroyed, meaning that it is easier for your opponent to make a lot of you cards obsolete by destroying one card.

Example of an Enchantment card.

• Sorceries - Sorceries are spells that you can only cast on your own turn, and when nothing is on the stack, they'll have some kind of immediate effect on the game, but they are not persistent like enchantments. This means that it is common for sorceries to simply just destroy something else in play or to give a temporary boost to a creature or something like that. The more massive destructive effects in the game are commonly found in sorceries, such as globally destroying all lands or creatures in play.

Example of a Sorcery card.

• Instants - Just like sorceries, however an instant can also be played in an opponent's turn, they'll often do the same as sorceries, but stuff like counter magic, that is a spell that prevents your opponent's spell from resolving, are only instants.

Example of an Instant card.

• Artifacts - All kinds of magic items, like a staff or some other kind of stuff. Normally this is equipment for the player himself, but some artifacts can be equipped by the player's creatures, making them work like auras, only they do not need a 'host' to be in play, and as such are a lot more persistent than auras. Some artifacts are also creatures, this is stuff like golems or other kinds of magical constructs. Artifacts are colourless, meaning that any colour can use any artifact, since they do not have a coloured mana cost.

Example of an Artifact card.

• Basic - A supertype currently found only on land cards. A deck can contain any number of the same basic card.

Example of a Basic card.

• Legendary - Much like Basic, Legendary only appears together with another supertype. There can be only one of the same legendary card in play at once, and if another is played while one is in play they both end up in their owners graveyards. Legendary cards are often stuff like characters from the plot line of Magic, or somehow else very special things like specific places in the case of legendary lands.

Example of a Legendary card.

• Tribal - A newcomer among the supertypes, a Tribal card lets a noncreature card have creature types. For example, a card that would allow you to destroy a goblin card would work on any goblin creature, as well as a Tribal Enchantment - Goblin.

Example of a Tribal card.

• Planeswalker - Another newcomer, a Planeswalker is similar to an enchantment. Planeswalkers come into play with a certain amount of loyalty counters on them. Once per turn a planeswalker can use one of its activated abilities during his main phase whenever he may play a sorcery, either adding or subtracting the indicated amount of counters. A planeswalker can be targeted for either spells or abilities that deal damage, and can be targeted in an attack phase like a player. For each damage a planeswalker takes, instead remove that many loyalty counters. If a planeswalker has no loyalty counters left on it, it is destroyed. Similarly to the Legendary supertype, if two planeswalkers that share a plainswalker type are in play, they are both destroyed. Planeswalksers can do some really awesome shit, such as create 5 4/4 dragons or force your opponent to discard 20 cards from the library. Problem is, since you can't do things like make them indestructible, keeping one alive can be a royal pain in the ass.

Example of a Planeswalker card.

Colours of magic

The back of a Magic card.
It features the trademarked pentagram of the colours. The pentagram is set up in such a way that colours that have parts of their philosophies in common are adjacent to each other, whereas colours that oppose each other are positioned opposite of each other.

As well as having different types of cards, the game of Magic has 5 different colours to choose from when building a deck. It is important to have the appropriate type of land for the colour of magic that you are playing with, since no basic land except a mountain can produce red mana, which is needed to play red spells. Certain effects are associated with certain colours, and only rarely if ever appear in the others - this is to ensure that the colours feel different to play, and that there is a point of having different colours in the first place.

• White - This is the mostly goody-two-shoes of the colour pie, white often prevents damage to creatures and restore life to players. It has a general philosophy of having a large amount of small creatures, instead a few big ones. White embodies law, order, good, community, healing, and light. The symbol for white, is a sun. White lands are plains.

• Blue - Blue a colour of logic and wizardly magic. It is the best colour at things like counter magic, drawing cards, and using minor trickery to be a general pain in the butt.Blue concerns itself with such things as logic, water, science, knowledge, divination, and air. The blue symbol is a drop of water. The blue land is an island.

• Black - Black is the more diabolical of the colours. It often has the ability to emulate other colours to a lesser degree at a cost of the player's own life. The more powerful black creatures sometimes turn on their player. Black contains such things as sickness, destruction, evil, necromancy, death, darkness, and corruption. A skull is the symbol for black. The black land is a swamp.

• Red - Red is the colour of passion and rage. Red contains some of the more self destructive cards of the colours, but this the power of the effects usually make up for it. Some of the most powerful damaging sorceries are found in red. The domain of red is such things as speed, destruction, fire, lightning, dragons, and recklessness. Red's symbol is a ball of fire. The red land is a mountain.

• Green - Green associates itself with nature and the cycle of life. It usually has the most powerful and straight-forward creatures. Green contain cards that can increase the strength of your creatures, cards that give you more mana more quickly and give you access to the other colours of mana, and cards that let you create and profit from large numbers of small creatures. The green symbol is a tree, and the green land is a forest.

• Colourless - Mana of any colour can be used as colourless mana. This is useful to ease the stress of coloured mana requirements in multicoloured decks, and making cards that can fit in decks of any colour - Artifacts are as good as always colourless.

It is possible to build decks that are a mix of more than one colour - in fact there are many spells that require anything from two to five different colours of mana to play. It is however not advisable to have more than 3 colours in a single deck unless you know what you are doing, since it'll begin to become a problem to get access to all the different colours of mana you need during play. This means you'll be left with a hand full of cards you can't play, and a table full of lands you have no use for - not a good position to be in.

Players

AZNs playing Magic

The developers of Magic have put out their 3 archetype players:

• Timmy - The classic little boy, likes that cool big monsters and all the other cards with huge effects, despite the fact that these often suck because they have a too high mana cost to have any real effect on the game because they can only be played so late.

• Johnny - A combo player, these are the guys who'll spend days looking through cards to find a bizarre combo that makes them win the game. They often end up building decks that doesn't participate in the game itself, and are more oriented on getting their combo into play, turning the game into a sort of solitaire.

• Spike - The competitive player of the bunch. They'll build decks to win and only play to win, almost none of them are in it for the fun, and often turn the game into an obnoxious competition, even outside of tournaments.

The three archetypes mix and match, meaning that it is possible to be a Johnny-Timmy player, aiming to make some kind of combo that'll give you a million life and an army of 100/100 creatures or some other kind of stupid nonsense.

Recently, it has come to light that there are 2 more archetypes, though these can't be considered proper archetypes. The types here are on a seperate axis than the aforementioned. They are as follows:

• Vorthos - Vorthoses care about flavour and the story part of the game. They'll build a deck that re-enacts the forces Urza rallied to fight the phyrexians. Fluff is of key importance in the mind of a Vorthos. Stories, art, flavour text, and block novels are all things that a Vorthos focuses on.

• Melvin - On the opposite side of this spectrum lies Melvin. Melvins love to deconstruct the rules, find out why things tick. A Melvin will base a deck on retarded shit like banding, or some sub-clause of an obscure part of the comprehensive rules. Melvins love reading the logs and development process of various cards.

See also

• Vampire: The Eternal Struggle - Another card game by Richard Garfield.

External Links

• Official site
  
• Rulebook
• magiccards.info - A card database.
• MTG Salvation - A Magic fansite.
• Star City Games - A huge Magic site, they buy and sell cards, have articles, deck lists, everything.