Understanding Magic: The Game Playing of Magic

Magic has a long history, chugging along for well over a decade with several expansion sets being released each and every year. But why are there so many expansion sets being released? To understand this, you'll have to understand what the game of Magic: The Gathering is and how one plays it.

Magic: The Gathering is a card game that represents a duel between two or more wizards, with each player taking the role of a wizard. Each player takes turns and performs actions during each turn that hopefully lead them to winning the duel.

There are several ways to win a duel but there are two very common ways of winning the game: reducing the other player's life points to zero or below or forcing them to draw from their deck of cards (library) when there are no cards left in it. There are several other ways to win, including winning via special cards or via poison counters but those methods are for the most part, exotic.

There are several card types and phases to the game, along with a complex set of rules which probably scare off most players. However, the game is a rich tapestry of interactions that wouldn't be possible without all of the variety available to us. There are spell cards (sorceries can only be played on your turn, instants can be played anytime), creature cards (which can only be played on your turn), enchantment, artifact, and land cards (all of which can only be played on your turn).

There are several excellent primers and articles about playing Magic and scores of websites are devoted to strategy, so I'll just mention the bare bones about playing Magic in this article. There's no need to cover in depth how to play Magic as the rules will help you learn and www.magicthegathering.com is an excellent site to visit to learn more about the game from the developers themselves.

There are really just a few things that I believe you need to remember to be successful at playing the game of Magic: the stack, phases, and a couple of actions.

The stack is a complex procedure within the game. Basically, players can respond to one another's spells and the stack is the way the game deals with how each spell resolves. Player A has a small creature on the board and Player B wants to kill it. Player A has one card in his hand. Player B could cast a Lightning Bolt on Player A's creature, trying to kill it but Player A can respond to Player B's Lightning Bolt before it resolves and takes effect, with another spell, which would go on top of the Lightning Bolt. This is a simple illustration of how the stack would work:

Player A's creature is targeted by Player B's Lightning Bolt. Lightning Bolt is on the stack. Player A wants to save his creature. Player A casts a Giant Growth on his creature in response to Player B's Lightning Bolt. The stack resolves last in first out order. Player A's Giant Growth makes his creature bigger than what a Lightning Bolt can kill. Lightning Bolt then deals damage to Player A's creature, but not enough to kill it.
Player B could have played another spell on top of the Giant Growth to kill the creature by hitting it with a second Lightning Bolt so the creature would die before the Giant Growth made it bigger to survive a Bolt.

Phases are a major part of Magic. They always occur in the same order, every turn, and can be affected by special cards. Here's the order of the phases:
Untap
Upkeep
Draw Phase (Each player must always draw one and only one card per turn)
Main Phase (Each player may play one land and only one land per turn)
Combat Phase
2nd Main Phase
Discard Phase / End of Turn Phase (The active player must discard down to 7 cards in his hand)

The restrictions on certain actions, such as drawing cards, discarding cards, and playing land cards can be removed or reduced by special cards. In addition, phases can be skipped or added to by certain cards. Stasis for example, removes the Untap phase from all players. Paradox Haze adds an Upkeep phase to the player enchanted by the Haze. Whether those cards are beneficial or not depends on how you've built your deck.

The actions you must always take are: untapping all your cards and drawing one card per turn. There's also discarding down to 7 cards at the end of your turn if you have more than 7 cards in hand. You cannot skip those actions without cards.

When in doubt, read the cards. The cards take precedence over the rules. In fact, most of the best cards in the game of Magic are the ones that break the rules. The most valuable card of all, Black Lotus is so desired because it allows you to massively accelerate your resource gathering by providing triple the commodity that a single land can provide.

Now, there are several other concerns to consider with Magic: The Gathering's game play but those go in too much detail for the scope of this article. I will mention that there are several choices you must make in playing the game. The massive variety of cards available to you allows you to pick and choose the cards that make up your deck. The minimum number of cards for a deck, in a constructed format is 60 cards, of which only four copies of a single card can be a part of the deck. The limitation on four copies does not apply to the basic land cards (Island, Forest, Mountain, Swamp, and Plains).

Those basic land cards produce the resource needed for the five colors that Magic has. Each color has its own unique strategy and ideas behind their flavor. Black is the color of death, necrology, and evil. Its cards reflect that personality with demon cards, cards that cause pain to the wizard in exchange for raw power, and cards that deal violent damage to the opponent's hand (forced discard).

There's so much available to explore in Magic: The Gathering. Pick up a rulebook and try it out! Thousands play it and love it. Won't you join them?