How to Play Magic The Gathering

Thonky.com » Magic: The Gathering guide » How to play Magic The Gathering

Overview

Here's the general idea behind a game of Magic the Gathering. You and your opponents are powerful magicians who can cast spells and summon magical creatures. Your goal is to defeat your opponents using your spells and creatures. Spells and creatures are in the form of cards. You and your opponents have 20 life points each.

To cast spells and summon creatures, you must draw strength from the land around you. Your deck has Land Cards, which, when tapped (turned sideways), add Mana to your Mana Pool. You use this Mana to pay the Mana cost marked on your cards, allowing you to cast them.

Step 1: Get a Magic The Gathering deck

According to the official Magic The Gathering rules, each player must have a deck of at least 60 cards to play the game.

Step 2: Decide who goes first

If you haven't played a game against your opponents already, there is no official rule that dictates the method that you use to choose who goes first. You can use any method, like flipping a coin, rolling a die, or just verbally agreeing about who goes first. But, if you have played your opponent already, then whoever lost the previous game gets to go first.

Step 3: Shuffle, then draw your starting cards

Now, each player must shuffle his or her respective deck. Once that is done, each player draws seven cards from his or her respective deck.

Step 4: Take a mulligan, or start the game

If any player is not satisfied with the seven cards that he or she just drew, that player can "take a mulligan," or, in other words, can put those seven cards back into his or her own deck, shuffle the deck, then draw six cards. If the player is still not satisfied, he or she can shuffle them back and draw five cards, and can repeat this process, drawing one fewer card than previously each time, until the player is satisfied or until the player reaches zero cards (whichever happens first). If the player reaches zero, he or she must start the game with zero cards in hand.

Once all players are satisfied and all mulligans are done, you can start the game.

Step 5: Play the game

The goal of the game is to use your spells make your opponent lose all of his or her life points. Each player starts with 20 life points. (Be sure to have a way to keep track of each player's current number of life points, like on piece of paper for example.)

Each player's turn has five phases:

1. Beginning
2. First Main
3. Combat
4. Second Main
5. Ending

Phase 1: Beginning Phase

The Beginning Phase has three steps:

1. Untap step - Untap any cards of yours that are tapped. You and the other players are not allowed to cast spells or activate abilities during this step.
2. Upkeep step - If any of your cards mention actions that take place during the upkeep step, do those actions. You and the other players can start casting instants and activating abilities (which you can do almost any time during a turn, except for the Untap step and the last step of the Ending Phase (unless a card specifies otherwise).
3. Draw step - You're not allowed to draw a card if you are the player who is starting the game (i.e. taking the first turn of the game), but otherwise, in this step you must draw one card from your deck and add it to your hand. This is skipped in the first turn to balance out the advantage gained by going first.

Phase 2: First Main Phase

The two Main Phases are identical in terms of what can be done during them. The things that you can do in both Main Phases don't have to be done in any particular order, but there are specific things that you and the other players are allowed to do during the Main Phases, in any order:

• You can play one land card (in other words, take it out of your hand and put it faceup in front of you). You are only allowed to play one land card during your entire turn, so if you play one during the First Main Phase, you can't during the Second.
• You can tap any of your land cards (i.e. rotate them 90° to show that they're tapped) to add Mana to your Mana pool.
• You can cast any number of spells that you have enough Mana in your Mana Pool for.
• You and your opponents can cast instants, and can activate abilities.

Phase 3: Combat Phase

The Combat Phase has five steps:

1. Beginning - You and your opponents can cast instants and activate abilities.
2. Declare attackers - Once you and the other players have finished casting instants and activating abilities, you can choose to tap any of your creatures that you want to use to attack the opponents or the opponents' planeswalkers (if any), provided that the creatures that you tapped are not suffering from summoning sickness (i.e. they are not creatures that you summoned during this turn, unless they have haste or some other protection from summoning sickness). You must declare whether you want the attack to hit another player, or one of the other players' planeswalkers (if any). Note that you are not permitted to have one of your creatures target a specific creature to attack (although there are abilities that allow you to target specific creatures). Once you are done declaring your attackers, you and your opponents can cast instants and activate abilities.
3. Declare blockers - The opponents can now choose any of their untapped creatures (or creatures who are allowed to block while tapped) to block your attacking creatures. The opponents can use different creatures to block different attackers, or can even line up several creatures to block a single attacking creature. Once these blockers are declared, players can cast instants and activate abilities.
4. Combat damage step - Once you and your opponents are done casting instants and activating abilities, you calculate the damage done by the creatures. The left-hand number on a creature's card is its Power. When the creature attacks, that's how much damage it inflicts on other creatures. The right-hand number on a creature's card is its Toughness. If a creature loses life points equal to or greater than its Toughness, it is destroyed and sent to its player's graveyard. If a planeswalker sustains damage greater than or equal to its current loyalty count, it is sent to the graveyard. If a player sustains damage greater than or equal to his or her current life point counter, that player is out of the game. All damage is dealt at the same instant, unless a creature has first strike (which means its damage is dealt before the damage from creatures who don't have first strike) or double strike (which means it can attack as if it has first strike, and then it attacks a second time when all the other creatures attack). Once you are done, you can cast instants and activate abilities.
5. End of Combat Step - If you get to the end of those instants and abilities from the last turn, you can do another step of instants and abilities if you wish.

Phase 4: Second Main Phase

This phase is just like the first main phase, except that if you played a land card during the first main phase, you cannot play another one in this phase. If you didn't play a land in the first main phase, you can play one now.

Phase 5: Ending Phase

The ending phase has the following steps:

1. End step - any abilities that are triggered during the end step are now activated. You and your opponents can cast instants and activate abilities.
2. Cleanup step - You are only allowed to have seven cards in your hand, so if you have more than that, choose which ones to discard until you have seven cards in your hand. If you have a card that is triggered at cleanup, add that spell to the stack. Any creatures that were injured but not destroyed during this turn are returned to full health. You are not allowed to cast instants or activate abilities during this step unless you have a card that says otherwise.

Step 6: The next player takes a turn as described in step 5 (not phase 5)

Each player takes turns doing step 5 (not to be confused with phase 5 from above) until only one player remains. That player is the winner of the game.