How to play

How to Play Magic: The Gathering

The game that invented the collectible card genre: build a deck, then out-think one opponent.

Players

2 players

Play time

20–60 min

Published

1993

Publisher

Wizards of the Coast

What you are trying to do

Reduce your opponent from 20 life to 0 before they do the same to you. You do that by casting creatures and spells, paid for with mana produced by lands.

Everything in the game is a card, and almost every card does one of four things: makes mana, puts a creature on the table, removes something, or draws you more options.

Build a deck

A constructed deck is at least 60 cards, with no more than four copies of any card other than basic lands. Most decks run 20–26 lands; the land-to-spell ratio is what makes a deck function.

The mana curve matters more than individual card quality. A deck full of expensive spells will lose to a deck that can act on turns two, three and four.

How a turn works

Untap your permanents, resolve upkeep triggers, draw a card, then take your main phase. You may play one land per turn; lands tap for mana, and mana pays for spells.

Combat comes after the first main phase: creatures that have been under your control since your last turn can attack. The defender chooses blockers, and damage is dealt simultaneously.

After combat there is a second main phase, then the turn ends and all damage wears off.

How games end

A player loses at 0 or less life, when they have to draw from an empty library, or when a card says so. Ten poison counters is also a loss.

Because there are several ways to lose, control decks often win without ever attacking.

Formats worth knowing

Standard uses recent sets and rotates; Modern uses a much larger card pool; Commander is a 100-card singleton format for four players starting at 40 life.

Draft is the best entry point if you do not want to buy a competitive deck — you build from cards you open at the table, so nobody can out-spend you.