Beginners Guide

Are you wondering whether to start playing Magic and how to learn the basics? Here is the perfect guide for you. As a first piece of advice for all readers, I suggest watching videos online of people playing and trying to understand what they are doing, how they do it, and, above all, why they are doing that particular choice—that said, let's begin.

What is Magic: The Gathering? What is Magic?

Magic The Gathering or in alias MTG, is a Trading Card Game where players (who are considered sorcerers) summon creatures and cast spells to defeat their opponents. The game has thousands of cards and because of that you can always find a way to express yourself on the battlefield through many different ways of playing.

Basics, Zones and Setup

At the start of every game, each player shuffles their deck and places it face down in front of them, then each player draws a hand of seven cards (your hand is the cards in your hand that you drew from your library and those are the cards you can play) from their library (the library or in alias grimoire, is the list of cards composing your deck). If a player is unhappy with their hand (usually when you have no lands or only lands in your hand), they may take a mulligan.

Taking a mulligan means you need to shuffle your hand into your library and draw seven cards and then, put a card of your choice from your hand on the bottom of your library for each time you mulliganed this game during that game (so if you do it 7 times you will have no cards in hand).

You must choose a way to track your life, then decide which player goes first. Whoever goes first will skip drawing their first card (usually each player draws a card at the beginning of their turn). Don’t lose track of life totals because, to win the game, you must reduce your opponent’s life to zero (you may win in other additional ways that you will discover later).

To cast a spell, you must pay Mana equal to the symbols in the top right corner of the card. Generic Mana costs (usually represented by a number) means you may use any color of mana to pay.

Now here is a key difference between MTG and other TCGs. To be able to play your cards aka to generate mana, you must tap (rotate the card by 90 degree) a land. Land cards are not spells and you may play one during each of your turns for free, tapping it causes it to produce a mana of the color indicated on the card.

Once cast, permanent spells like creatures, artifacts, and enchantments stay on the battlefield, also keep in mind lands are permanents too. Once cast, instants and sorceries, unlike creatures exc, go to the graveyard after you resolve their effect since they are not permanent.

Steps and Phases

Now let’s get a look at how the turns work in magic the gathering. The turns are divided in the following way:

- Beginning Phase: In this phase you untap your cards, resolve any upkeep effects, then draw a card. Upkeep effects are all those effects on your cards that say for example “at the beginning of your upkeep do this…” .

- First Main Phase: You may play a land card and cast any spells you can afford in your hand. This phase comes after your beginning phase.

- Combat Phase: This is when you attack your opponent and its divided in:

- Declare attackers: Choose which of your creatures you’d like to attack your opponent or a Planeswalker or Siege card with. Tap them. Tapped creatures can’t block.

- Declare blockers: The defending player may choose any number of untapped creatures they control to block attacking creatures.

- Calculate damage: Attackers and blockers damage each other, and unblocked creatures damage the player who took the attack. Creatures that have taken damage equal to or greater than their toughness die and are sent to the graveyard (a creature with 1 toughness can defend a creature with 10 power and you won't receive any damage).

- Second Main Phase: This works the same as the first but If you played a land during your first main phase, you can’t play one now.

End Step: In this step damage is removed from creatures still in play. Resolve any end-of-turn effects (just like with upkeep effects), then pass the turn to your opponent.

For more information visit Wizard - HowToPlay and check the videos or check the Keywords Glossary.