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Oct 16, 2020 · Ready to learn about different deck archetypes, mulligans, sideboarding, tempo, card advantage and so much more? Take your Magic: The Gathering gameplay to t...
- 19 min
- 1.2M
- Tolarian Community College
Ladies and gentlemen welcome, I'm josh 'Strife' Hayes and this is a complete beginners guide to the collectible card game 'Magic: the Gathering'.Patreon: htt...
- 62 min
- 516.2K
- Josh Strife Hayes
- Overview
- Understanding the Basics
- Understanding the Different Kinds of Cards
- Understanding Gameplay
- Understanding the Phases of a Turn
- Advanced Concepts
Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game that combines strategy and fantasy. The premise is this: you play a powerful wizard, called a planeswalker, who summons creatures, spells, and weapons to aid you in your destruction of other planeswalkers. Magic can be enjoyed alone as a trading card collection, or with friends as a sophisticated strategy...
Understand that two or more players — but usually only two — square off against one another. You can play games where you fight against two or more players, but the most common way to play is by squaring off against a single player.
Assemble different cards into a deck.
Your deck is your army, your arsenal. In a "constructed" deck — one that you might use to play friends in an informal setting — the minimum amount of cards is 60, with no upper limit. Players, however, usually choose to stick to the minimum of 60 cards.
In a tournament setting, you might play a "limited" deck, which has a minimum number of 40 cards, with no upper limit.
A player's 60- or 40-card deck is also called their
At the beginning of each game, have each player draw 7 cards from their library.
Understand what lands are and where "mana" comes from.
Lands are one type of card and are the building blocks of spells. There are five basic lands, each associated with a color. Lands produce magical energy, or "mana," which is the fuel used to cast other spells.
The five basic lands are as follows:
White lands, or Plains, which produce white mana
Blue lands, or Islands, which produce blue mana
Black lands, or Swamps, which produce black mana
Understand how to summon a creature or spell.
You summon a creature by looking at its casting cost, which is usually a circled number followed by a specific color of mana — either white, blue, black, red, or green. In order to summon a creature, you need to produce mana equivalent to the card's casting cost.
Take a look at the card above. You'll notice a "1" followed by a white mana symbol — the white sun. In order to summon this particular card, you need to have enough lands to produce one mana of any color, along with one white mana.
Try another example of how to summon.
See if you can't figure out how many mana total, and which specific kinds, it takes to summon the following card:
The first card, "Sylvan Bounty," costs 5 colorless mana — mana of any kind you want — along with one green mana — mana produced by a forest, for a total of six mana. The second card, "Angelic Shield," costs one white mana — mana produced by a Plains — along with one blue mana.
Understand the different phases of a turn.
Each player's turn has five phases, or steps. Understanding what these five phases are and how they work is an essential part of understanding gameplay. In order, the five phases are:
The beginning phase has three different steps:
Untap step: the player untaps all his cards unless that card stays tapped during Untap.
Upkeep step: not usually used, but sometimes a player has to pay mana — i.e. tap lands — during this step.
Draw step: the player draws one card.
Creatures with flying cannot be blocked by creatures without flying. In other words, if a creature has flying, it can only be blocked by another creature with flying or a creature that can explicitly block creatures with flying, such as a creature with reach.
Creatures with flying, however, can block creatures without flying.
Understand what "first strike" is.
First strike is a concept in attacking. When one creature is attacking and a player chooses to defend that attack with a blocker, you measure their strengths and toughness against one another. The strength of one is measured against the toughness of the other, and vice versa.
Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast can be an incredibly complicated game to learn and wrap your head around. How do I build a deck? What is a Plane...
- 23 min
- 35K
- Dicebreaker
Draw Step. You must draw a card from your library (even if you don’t want to). The player who goes first in a two-player game skips the draw step on their first turn to make up for the advantage of going first. Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.
Jan 29, 2023 · Playing a game of Magic: The Gathering used to mean organizing a kitchen table play session with friends, or heading to a local shop for a tournament. But now, it's as simple as opening an app on ...
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Jan 30, 2024 · Upkeep Step: A phase that resolves effects that happen at the start of the turn. Draw Step: Phase where a player draws their card for the turn. Main Phase I: This is the phase where a player a ...
