How to Play Magic: The Gathering — A Complete Beginner Guide

Magic: The Gathering is a two-player (or multiplayer) card game where you take the role of a powerful wizard called a Planeswalker. Each player starts the game with 20 life. The main way to win is to reduce your opponent's life total to 0, usually by attacking them with creatures or hitting them with damage-dealing spells. You can also lose if you have to draw a card from an empty library (your deck), so cards are a resource you have to manage carefully.

Before the game begins, both players shuffle their decks, decide who goes first, and draw an opening hand of 7 cards. If your opening hand has too many or too few lands, you may take a mulligan: shuffle your hand back, draw 7 again, then put one card on the bottom of your library for each mulligan you have taken. A good opening hand usually has a healthy mix of lands and spells so you can do something on your early turns.

Everything you do in Magic costs mana, the game's magical energy. You make mana by tapping lands — basic lands are Plains (white), Island (blue), Swamp (black), Mountain (red), and Forest (green). Tapping a land means turning it sideways to show it has been used this turn. Most cards show a mana cost in the top-right corner; for example, a card costing two generic mana and one green mana needs three lands tapped, at least one of which produces green.

You can normally play only one land per turn, so your available mana grows slowly as the game goes on. On your early turns you cast cheap creatures and spells; later you can afford bigger, more powerful ones. Creatures stay on the battlefield and can attack and block, while instants and sorceries usually do one effect and then go to the graveyard (your discard pile).

Creatures have two numbers, written as power/toughness — for example 2/3 means it deals 2 damage and can take 3 before dying. During your combat phase you choose which creatures attack. A creature cannot attack on the turn it entered the battlefield because of summoning sickness, unless it has haste. Your opponent may then block your attackers with their own creatures; any attacker that is not blocked deals its damage straight to the opponent's life total.

Most games are won by chipping away at your opponent's life with creatures and burn spells until they reach 0. To get there you build board presence, trade efficiently in combat, and protect yourself from their attacks. Magic rewards planning a few turns ahead, so the more you play, the more naturally these decisions will come to you.