Magic, what and how

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

As I'm sure all of you saw, Brandon sent out a tweet asking how many people wanted to play Magic with him on Monday, and like most of those call out I see a ton of people going "I'd love to join you, if I knew how to play."

So, I decided to give everyone here a little bit of a crash course on what the heck magic is, so even if you don't play you can at least understand what Brandon's talking about when he says he's playing a colorless deck, or a draft, or something else. This way as well if you're interested in getting into Magic, but don't want to seem like an idiot walking into a game store and asking all the wrong questions, you'll have some small idea of what you're talking about.

Of course, I'd encourage you if you're truly interested in learning to play! Everything makes a lot more sense when you're the one playing instead of just reading or watching a video. And don't be scared of looking like an idiot! Most of the people I've meet have been really nice and willing to explain or answer questions. (Also, there's a pretty good video series on youtube if you want to see instead of read what I'm saying here.

is the first video.)

(Note for those of you who are avid players, this is just going to be pretty basic. I don't want to overwhelm anyone with super details.)

So, the first thing to note is that this is a playing card game. (I know, duh. But I said it was going to be the basics!) There area few different types of cards: mana or land, creatures, and a few others that just kind of serve to beef up, or counter act another card. (Don't yell at me for lumping these together people! They're not that important to understanding game play right off. Maybe I'll get into more detail about them later.)

Each player starts out with 20 life points, and through different actions those points can go up or down (yes, it is possible to have more than 20 life points). You start out the game with 7 cards, but you might end up having less than that. You draw cards from your "library" (the remainder of your deck), and if a creature dies you put it into your "graveyard" (discard pile). The game ends when someone loses all of their life points, or else you go through your entire library.

The basic game play is really simple: each player takes a turn. During their turn they can do a few different things. The standard thing to do is draw a card, play a land, cast a spell, attack another player, and that's the end. There are other ways to play things, but when you're first starting out it's usually how things go. (At least, it was for me.)

That's the most very basic information for playing magic! I'm going to break this up into a few posts to go over a few of the extra details just to keep things from being too overwhelming.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

So, onto part two: Land and mana

The first thing I want to discuss is mana or land. This is one of the most important parts of MTG, since it's pretty much what fuels the game. As a few of you video gamers are aware mana is a term used to describe the "cost" of doing magic. You have to have a certain number of land, and sometimes it even has to be a specific color, in order to play a card. There are five colors of land: mountain (red), forest (green), plains (white), island (blue), and swamp (black). The land types are mostly for aesthetics, and I've usually heard them called by their color, but sometimes you'll hear it referred to by it's type. (Actually, about the only time I see this is when it's on the cards themselves.) So when you hear someone talking about a blue/black deck that means that all of the cards in their deck either require blue or black mana in order to be played. (A colorless deck is one that can use any type of mana to play any of the cards.)

The only reason the color matters is some cards require a specific color before they can be played. (So, to break it down to a Brandon style explanation you can't use Tin to make you stronger. You've got to have some pewter.) Land doesn't "expire", and it doesn't cost anything to play, so once it's down it stays available -- unless someone has a card that makes you get rid of it.

If you want to play a card you "tap" your land, which usually just means twisting it to the side to show you're using it, and put your card down from there. Once you've tapped a card it doesn't untap until your next turn (again, there are ways to get around this, but don't worry about those for now).

About the only other thing to note right now is that you can usually only play one land card each turn.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

Part three: creatures, and other card types

Here's the other major part of this game, the creatures. These are pretty much what they sound like: creatures... and people. (For the ease of the game, humans are considered a creature as well.) The main purpose of creatures is to do one of two things: attack or defend.

The first round a creature is played they have what's called "summoning sickness" (since it's called "summoning" to play the cards), and they can't be used to attack someone. They can still defend though. Once it comes to your turn again they are healthy, happy, and ready to get blood! (As always, there are exceptions to the sickness thing, but this is just for basic understanding.)

Attacking is kind of odd in that when you're attacking you tap the creatures (again to show which one you're using), and it attacks the player, NOT they're creatures. That player then gets to chose which of their creatures defends against who. You don't tap a creature to defend, but a tapped creature can't defend. And of course you don't get to untap until it's your turn again, so sometimes people will just take the damage -- which reduces their life count.

In most cases using a creature to defend, even if it's weaker and dies, prevents you from losing life. However, if someone attacks you and you don't have any creatures to defend with, or all your creatures are tapped, you're going to take damage.

So remember up top when I said there were creature cards and other cards? Well, let's talk a little bit about those card types as well. There are things like artifacts that can be used to beef up your creature (give them more attack points) or prevent certain things from happening. There's also enchantments which can do all types of things (a few just off the top of my head are allow you to draw another card, tap or untap a card, give you control of another players card. All types like I said.). All of these cards so far stay on the field once they've been played. However, there are cards that expire like sorcery, which do similar things to enchantments, but once they've been used must be discarded. There's also instants which are pretty cool because they can be played at any time as long as you have the mana required. (This is cool because there's instants that make it so newly summoned creatures have to die.)

I think that's all there is really to say about the different card types without it getting too crazy. This is where things usually get the most complicated is trying to understand what each card does, so really the best thing to do is to actually play a game or two.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

Part four: drafts and other stuff

This is going to be where I talk about a few different things. For now I want to focus on drafts (since they confused me when I was first getting started.)

(Mind, I'm going to assume that you have a basic understanding of MTG for this section. If you want to do a draft for your first game of magic you can, but I'd really advise against it.) A draft is actually quite a bit of fun once you get the hang of how it works. They usually cost to enter, but you get to keep all of the cards you gets. There are a few different types of drafts, but from what I can tell the most common style goes as follows:

Each player is given a booster pack. Then when you're given the okay you open your pack, and find the one card you'd want to keep the most. The rest of the cards are then passed to the person next to you, who selects a card and passes the pack on. (Mind, while they're looking through the pack you just opened, you're looking at the cards you were just handed.) This keeps on going until all of the cards from that booster pack are taken, then it starts over with a new pack. This is done three times. From there you make a deck out of the cards you've selected. (Though, you don't actually have to use all the cards! I was kind of sad when I found that out because I passed over a couple of cards I would have loved to keep because they didn't fit in with the deck I was building.) Once your deck is built you play someone else three games. Your wins are tracked, and whoever has the most wins at the end of the night is the great winner!

I believe theirs another type which involves elimination, but I'm not sure how those games work.

I can't think of anything else to say right now. If I do, I'll edit this to say it.

Again, if you want to see a more in depth explanation, here's the official MTG how-to on youtube:

.

I hope this has helped you at least have a better understanding of what's being talked about!

[Eerongal he/him]

just a small niggle with your explanation, but from the way you described "artifacts" it sounds more like you're referring to "artifact - equipment" (specific types of artifacts) as opposed to artifacts as a whole, since artifacts have a huge range of what their specific effects (significantly more than just buffing creatures and preventing certain conditions). Other than that, everything else looks pretty rock solid to me.

also, i'd just like to put this out there. It's basically an open source program for building and playing MTG online.

It may also help to go into what the different types "mean". Such as that white is mostly protection/healing based, blue is mostly "crowd controlling" effects, black is damage/insta death (for creatures), red is direct damage spells, and green is buffing (obviously there's more to them than this, but as a quick overview of types and what you can expect from the different colors)

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

I agree with the comment about artifacts, and will get that changed when I get home. As for going into what to expect from each color I think that's better saved for someone who is actually playing. Heck, I didn't know most of that. This is just supposed to be really basic so you can watch Brandon play and have a basic idea of what's going on.

Also, thanks for that resource. I plan on looking at it myself at the very least!

[dj26792 he/him]

I have a question, more out of interest than out of wanting to play, a guy I used to know played magic with what he called a 'mill deck' and I seem to remember him mentioning blue-black, I played a couple of games but never really had a huge idea what was going on or using that deck but anyway, what is a blue black mill deck and why would you use it?

[Eerongal he/him]

I have a question, more out of interest than out of wanting to play, a guy I used to know played magic with what he called a 'mill deck' and I seem to remember him mentioning blue-black, I played a couple of games but never really had a huge idea what was going on or using that deck but anyway, what is a blue black mill deck and why would you use it?

a "mill deck" is basically a deck that has tons of cards to make your opponent discard cards from his library. this is to take advantage of the "run out of cards and you lose" rule of the game. I always heard the term came from an (old) MTG card called a millstone, that did just such a thing at a very low cost (its also tourney banned, i believe)

[Shivertongue he/him]

A quick addendum of my own - Deck building.

Once you get some experience and start building decks on your own, a good strategy I've found is to focus on a win condition of some kind. Milling, beatdown, life gain, overrun - whatever it is, every card in that deck should support the idea of that deck. You want cards that are as useful on turn 15 as they would be on turn 2. So many decks I have seen have become bogged down with additional cards for specific situations. It is nearly impossible to build a standard 60-card deck that can handle any situation, so focus on one particular strategy.

For example, one of my favorite decks is my aura deck (also called a 'Voltron deck'). My aura deck is filled with auras, naturally, that give benefits when attached to my creatures. High power/toughness, added abilities, totem armor, etc. The strongest creature in the deck is a 3/4 with trample, which isn't especially tough. However, a couple of auras attached to it give it flying, lifelink, totem armor, the ability to untap all of my lands whenever the creature attacks, and a total +6/+7, and suddenly it's a beefy monster. Voltron decks are about building up what you have with other cards - kind of like Hemalurgy, taking something weak and making it stronger with spikes. Every card in that deck was selected for that goal, and it has served me very well.

So, in summary, think of a win condition when building a deck, and pick cards that support that condition. Don't rely on one specific card, because if that card get sent to the graveyard, or to exile, your entire strategy will fall apart.

There is no strategy that will work against everything. For example, a mill deck works great, unless your facing a reanimator deck. Against a reanimator deck, you want your opponent to have as little as possible in their graveyard, and a mill deck works against that idea.

[Arcanist Lupus he/him]

a "mill deck" is basically a deck that has tons of cards to make your opponent discard cards from his library. this is to take advantage of the "run out of cards and you lose" rule of the game. I always heard the term came from an (old) MTG card called a millstone, that did just such a thing at a very low cost (its also tourney banned, i believe)

This is Millstone.

However, it doesn't appear to be banned in anything. It might have been banned back in the day, though.

[Eerongal he/him]

This is Millstone.

However, it doesn't appear to be banned in anything. It might have been banned back in the day, though.

heh. that's not the old millstone from way back in the day (the one i was talking about). That's apparently a rerelease (that i was unaware of). The old one didn't tap when used.....HUGE difference.....

Here's a picture of it:

[Arcanist Lupus he/him]

heh. that's not the old millstone from way back in the day (the one i was talking about). That's apparently a rerelease (that i was unaware of). The old one didn't tap when used.....HUGE difference.....

Here's a picture of it:

You mean this one?

Millstone was first printed in Revised. It has always tapped.

[Eerongal he/him]

You mean this one?

Millstone was first printed in Revised. It has always tapped.

millstone from antiquities was not tap. Just looked it up on starcitygames.com (they sell magic cards), though it may have been an error on WOTC's part.

link

I remember it well, because some dude i played with a lot back in the day had one, and i thought it was stupid broken.

Edit: hrm....i can't seem to find any info on the antiquities one not saying that it taps (just with a quick minute or two of googling). so i don't know

[Emeralis00 she/her]

Um, your pictures aren't displaying the card. Its some picture of a squirrel.

[Zas678 he/him]

I finally learned to play Magic! And I won, incidentally.

But that's only because we were playing a free for all match, they went easy on me, and the last player pretty much sacrificed himself to kill the second-to-last player (because his Creatures were insanely powerful).

But I still won.

[Tulir he/him]

I have been playing Magic only about a month now with my friends and brother and I came across some questions that I didn't know the answer for. Here they are:

1. Can a creature with defender block flying creatures?

2. If I have Joraga Treespeaker level 5 or higher, and I also have Llanowar Elves, when I tap Llanowar Elves, do I add 1 green mana, 2 green mana, or 3 green mana to my mana pool?

That is all and I have to say that this game is amazing!

[Emeralis00 she/her]

I have been playing Magic only about a month now with my friends and brother and I came across some questions that I didn't know the answer for. Here they are:

1. Can a creature with defender block flying creatures?

2. If I have Joraga Treespeaker level 5 or higher, and I also have Llanowar Elves, when I tap Llanowar Elves, do I add 1 green mana, 2 green mana, or 3 green mana to my mana pool?

That is all and I have to say that this game is amazing!

1. No, unless it also has flying. Defender just means it cannot attack.

2.llanowar elves gains the ability to tap for 2 green mana, but it does not stack with its own ability. So you can get 1 or 2 mana but not both.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

Random question for smart people: can you equip an artifact or enchantment on another artifact, or strictly creatures?

[Tulir he/him]

Thanks, Emeralis00.

[Lance Alvein he/him]

Random question for smart people: can you equip an artifact or enchantment on another artifact, or strictly creatures?

You are only able to equip creatures. If it happens to be an artifact creature (or an artifact currently turned into a creature), you are able to equip it (since artifact creatures count as both artifacts and creatures).

Enchantments always specify what they can affect. If it is an enchant creature, it will only affect creatures (which include artifact creatures). If it's an enchant artifact, it'll only affect artifacts (either creature or non-creature). If it's an "enchant permanent", it'll be able to affect both creatures & artifacts (and other enchantments/planeswalkers/lands as well...)

Hopefully that answers the question.

[Jon Paul he/him]

Two words: White Soldiers .

[Sweetness she/her]

Slightly Off-Topic Thread Revival, activate!

Would any of you Magic players be interested in taking a large quantity of cards of unknown value/condition off my hands? I've been trying to get rid of them for *counts* ohmygodhasitreallybeen nine years.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

If you want to send them to me, I'll pass them onto Brandon for you. Alternately, I'd be willing to have them.

[Sweetness she/her]

Your choice. Thank you so much! Want to PM me your info?