New to Magic? Start Here
Magic: The Gathering is the original trading card game, first released in 1993 and still going strong more than thirty years later. If you have just picked up your first deck, or you are staring at a pile of cards someone handed you and wondering where to begin, this guide covers everything you need to play your first game.
The rules below are the standard rules used in almost every format, from kitchen table games through to Commander nights at your local store.
The Basic Idea
You play the role of a Planeswalker, a powerful mage duelling other Planeswalkers. Each player starts at 20 life. You win by reducing your opponent's life total to zero.
There are two other ways to win, and they come up more often than you might expect:
- Your opponent tries to draw a card from an empty library and loses immediately.
- Your opponent accumulates ten poison counters, or a card states outright that a player wins or loses the game.
In multiplayer games such as Commander, players start at 40 life instead of 20, and you play until one player remains.
Your Deck
A standard constructed deck has a minimum of 60 cards, with no more than four copies of any single card, aside from basic lands, which have no limit. Commander decks are different: exactly 100 cards, one copy of each card, and a legendary creature as your commander.
If you are starting out, a preconstructed deck is the easiest entry point. Everything is already built to work together, so you can focus on learning how the game flows rather than worrying about deck construction. We stock preconstructed decks at MTGAU.COM, including Commander precons, which are the most popular way to get into the format and are designed to be played straight out of the box.
Mana: The Fuel of the Game
Nearly everything you do costs mana. Mana comes in five colours, and each colour has its own personality and play style:
- White - order, protection, healing, small creatures working together
- Blue - knowledge, card draw, countering spells, control
- Black - ambition, destruction, life as a resource, reanimation
- Red - impulse, direct damage, speed, aggression
- Green - nature, large creatures, ramping into more mana
There is also colourless mana, produced by many artifacts and non-basic lands, which can pay generic costs but not coloured ones.
You produce mana by tapping lands, which means turning the card sideways to show it has been used. You may play one land per turn, and this is the single most important rhythm in Magic. Lands untap at the start of your turn, so your available mana grows steadily as the game goes on.
Reading a mana cost is straightforward. A cost of 2G means two generic mana of any type plus one green mana, for a total of three. A cost of 1WW means one generic plus two white, for a total of three.
The Card Types
Lands produce mana. They are not spells, so they cannot be countered, and playing one does not use up your turn.
Creatures attack and block. Each has two numbers in the bottom right, its power and toughness, written as power/toughness. A 3/2 deals 3 damage and is destroyed by 2 or more damage in a single turn.
Instants are one-shot effects you can cast at almost any time, including during your opponent's turn. They go to the graveyard after resolving.
Sorceries work the same way, except you can only cast them during your own main phase when nothing else is happening.
Enchantments stay on the battlefield and provide an ongoing effect. An Aura is an enchantment that attaches to something else, usually a creature.
Artifacts are also permanent, usually representing objects rather than magic. Equipment is a type of artifact you attach to your creatures.
Planeswalkers are allies who join you. They arrive with loyalty counters and you may activate one of their abilities each turn. Opponents can attack them directly.
Battles are a newer type that both players interact with, though you are unlikely to meet one in your first few games.
How a Turn Works
Every turn follows the same five steps. Learn this sequence and the rest of the game falls into place.
- Beginning phase. Untap all your permanents, resolve anything that triggers at the start of your turn, then draw a card. The player going first skips their draw on turn one.
- First main phase. Play a land, cast creatures, sorceries, artifacts, enchantments and planeswalkers. This is where most of your building happens.
- Combat phase. Declare attackers, your opponent declares blockers, then damage is dealt. More on this below.
- Second main phase. Another chance to play spells, useful if combat revealed information you wanted before committing.
- End step. End-of-turn effects resolve. If you have more than seven cards in hand, discard down to seven.
Combat, Step by Step
Combat is where most games are decided, so it is worth walking through carefully.
You choose which of your creatures attack. Attacking creatures tap, and a creature cannot attack the turn it came under your control unless it has haste. This is called summoning sickness.
Your opponent then chooses blockers. Any untapped creature they control can block one attacker. Multiple creatures can gang up to block a single attacker, and if that happens, the attacking player decides how to distribute the damage.
Damage is then dealt simultaneously. An unblocked creature deals its power in damage to the defending player. A blocked creature and its blocker deal damage to each other, and any creature that has taken damage equal to or greater than its toughness is destroyed.
All damage on creatures is removed at the end of the turn, so a 4/4 that survived 3 damage is back to full next turn.
The Stack
When you cast a spell it does not take effect immediately. It goes on the stack, and your opponent gets a chance to respond before it resolves. Responses resolve first, working backwards through the stack, last in and first out.
This is why instants are so powerful. If your opponent casts a spell to destroy your creature, you can respond with an instant that gives it indestructible, and your instant resolves before the removal spell does.
Keywords Worth Knowing Early
- Flying - can only be blocked by creatures with flying or reach
- Trample - excess damage beyond what is needed to destroy blockers carries through to the player
- Deathtouch - any amount of damage from this creature destroys the creature it hits
- Lifelink - damage dealt also gains you that much life
- Vigilance - attacks without tapping, so it can still block
- Haste - can attack the turn it arrives
- First strike - deals combat damage before creatures without it
- Hexproof - cannot be targeted by opponents' spells and abilities
Mulligans
If your opening hand of seven cards is unplayable, usually because it has no lands or nothing but lands, you may take a mulligan. Shuffle your hand back, draw seven fresh cards, then put one card from your hand on the bottom of your library. You can repeat this, putting one additional card on the bottom each time. Do not be afraid to mulligan a hand that cannot cast anything.
The Golden Rule
If a card contradicts the rules of the game, the card wins. Magic has tens of thousands of unique cards, and many of them exist specifically to break the usual rules. When in doubt, read the card carefully and follow exactly what it says.
Where to Go Next
The fastest way to improve is simply to play. Find a friend or a local game night, and expect to look a few things up along the way. Everyone does, including players who have been at it for decades.
Most players follow the same path. Start with a preconstructed deck so you can play a real game on day one, then swap a few cards out as you work out what you enjoy. Before long you are building from scratch.
We cover both ends of that journey at MTGAU.COM. Our preconstructed decks give you a ready-to-play starting point, and our range of singles across a wide selection of sets lets you pick up exactly the cards you need rather than opening packs and hoping.
Have a rules question we did not cover? Get in touch and we will add it to a future post in the Learn MTG series.