The whole point of this blog is to explain the game of Magic: the Gathering, however, it has come to my attention that some people who read my blog don't actually know how to play the game so I will be explaining to the best of my knowledge, using a handy rule book I found online, on how to play Magic: the Gathering.
Magic: the Gathering is a trading card game that debuted in 1993 (Jahromi "The Twenty-Five-Year Journey of Magic: The Gathering"). Throughout this game's twenty-seven-year history there have been more than 20,000 unique cards, however, one thing that remains consistent is the basic rules of the game.
First, I'll begin by explaining how to set up a game. Let's say a friend invites you over to his table and he hands you a deck of Magic cards. How do you begin? Well, you shuffle up your deck, draw seven cards, and set your life total to twenty. Your friend explains that the game ends when either your deck runs out of cards, or your life total goes down to zero or below. You see that your hand is separated into two parts Land cards and non-land cards.
This hand is good, oh and your friend has allowed you to go first so, now what, well the game is divided into phases, Untap, Upkeep, Draw, Main Phase 1, Battle Phase, Main Phase 2, and End phase/cleanup. The chart below details what each phase entails.
During your Main Phase 1, since you can't draw on your first turn, you look at your hand and see a plains card, since lands provide resources called mana, which allow you to cast your spells, you decide to play out one of the plains in your hand. You can only play out one land card per turn so be careful. Now you decide you want to cast a spell, however with this hand, since you don't have any cards that cost one mana, you cannot play anything. For example, look at the two cards below.
They both cost two mana to play. One costs you one white mana and one generic mana (which can be one mana of any color), and the other costs you two white mana to cast. Since you can only play one land per turn, you cannot get two mana to turn one from one basic land. So with nothing else to do you move through the rest of your phases and end your turn.
Now let's skip what your opponent does, (if only to shorten the length of this article), and go to your next turn. You start, by untapping any tapped permanents. Now is a good time to explain tapping. Tapping is basically turning a card sideways to signify that it has been used. Once your card is tapped, it cannot be untapped until the untap step of your next turn. Tapping a land produces mana, and creatures will tap to attack, but creatures cannot attack the first turn they are summoned. I'll go over combat in more detail later, for now, let's move through your upkeep and draw your card. Now you can move to your Main Phase one and play out your one land per turn. Now you see that there are three cards in your hand with a converted mana cost (which will now be called CMC) of two. So let's say you cast your Consul's Lieutenant. So you tap your two lands, (turn them sideways) and cast the card from your hand.
After this, you know that your creature cannot attack so you read over the rest of your cards. There are six main card types, lands, creatures, instants, sorceries, enchantments, and artifacts. Lands, creatures, enchantments, and artifacts are all permanents, meaning that once they are played, they remain on the battlefield until they are destroyed. Sorceries and instants are spells that go to the graveyard/discard pile after their effects resolve. Sorceries can only be cast during your Main phase one and two and cannot be cast in response to another spell, but instants can be cast on either player turn and can be cast in response to other spells, however, if you don't have the untapped lands to do so, you cannot cast the instant.
Now since you can't attack and your lands are tapped you can end your turn. Now on your opponent's turn, they played out their second land and cast a creature. Then they pass the turn back to you. So you now untap your two tapped lands and draw your card for your turn. So now you play out your land for turn and now you have options. You can either cast your Howling Golem in your hand, put Pacifism on your opponent's creature, cast your Raise the Alarm to make two token creatures (when tokens leave the battlefield they are destroyed no matter where they go), or you can just pass through your Main phase. Let's say for this example you cast your Howling Golem, and decide to go to combat.
Now to go over Combat and keywords. Some cards have effects that can be activated by spending mana, tapping the creature, or fulfilling a requirement stated on the card. There is also a list of abilities that are so common that they are shortened to a couple of words to save card space. Below is a list of basic Keywords
Now to explain combat. Creatures have two numbers on their bottom left corner. The right number is power and the left number is toughness. Creatures deal damage using their power and the damage is dealt with toughness. When a creature's damage is greater than or equal to its toughness, the creature is destroyed. So it's your turn, and you decide you want to attack with your Consul's Lieutenant, which is a 2/1 with first strike. So you go to Declare attacker and tap your Lieutenant to attack.
Then your opponent gets to declare their blockers so they block your creature with their 2/2.
However, when the phase shifts to the Damage step, since your creature has first strike, it deals combat damage before the other creature can, dealing two damage to their creature, which has two toughness, destroying their creature before it can damage your creature.
Now that is all of the basic rules of Magic the gathering, and for another explanation on how to play the game, click this link. Thanks so much for reading.