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Magic Gameplay Basics

You’re here because you want to learn the Magic: The Gathering game, the world’s premier trading card game. From the outset Magic can be very intimidating, especially from the perspective of a brand new player. As the owner of a friendly local game store, product knowledge is vital to sales so understanding what makes Magic tick is very important. Learning the game and playing yourself is the quickest way to understand it.

In Magic, you play the role of a planeswalker—a powerful wizard who fights other planeswalkers for glory, knowledge, and conquest. Your deck of cards represents all the weapons in your arsenal. It contains the spells you know and the creatures you can summon to fight for you.

Trading card games like the Magic: The Gathering TCG combine collectable cards with a strategy game. You don’t know what you’ll get in a Magic booster pack. You just start a collection and trade with other players to get the cards you want.

Two players sit down across from each other, each with their deck of choice. They will cast spells and summon creatures in a race to reduce the opponent’s life total from 20 to 0. First player to do that wins, or in the case of a tournament, the first player to win two out of three games.

Below, you can watch the Planeswalker Primer video series for a quick trip through the major points of playing Magic: The Gathering and all it has to offer. For a more in-depth review of the rules, click here for a more comprehensive rules pdf.

Part 1: Welcome to the Multiverse

Part 2: The Five Colours of Mana

Part 3: Game Zones and Parts of a Card

Part 4: Card Types

Part 5: Parts of a Turn

Part 6: The Next Step