Author's Note: Due to logistic issues, this tutorial was left on hiatus for some time. It is now back with updates every Monday, with a minimum of six episodes. Depending on how things go, tutorials after episode 6 will be geared towards specific game topics. As a measure of apology, episode 2 will also be updated today. End note.
alutations, everyone. Welcome to the Planeswalking Peddler’s official Magic: The Gathering Tutorial. This series of tutorials will be aimed mostly at beginners, but in the later episodes as we get the fundamentals out of the way, we’ll dive deeper into the twist and turns of the game and what advantages you can evoke from the rules.And before that I suppose I should take time to introduce myself. You may call me Aihiave, or Ai if it’s easier. I have been a long-time player of Magic since 1998, but decided to be more a collector rather than delve into competitive play. The game has been a passion to me as a fount of inspiration for my writing more than as a contest of skill and judgement. Nevertheless I keep myself updated with the latest rules.
And now, on with the show.
Magic is a turn-based strategy game (TBS game, like chess), and is normally played between two opposing players. Both players start with an empty battlefield, and as the game progresses they gather resources to produce units with which to attack the opponent.
Like many other strategy games there are actually multiple ways to win, but the most widely employed way is to reduce the opponent’s life points from 20 down to 0. Summoning creatures and attacking with them is one way to do that. We’ll look at a simple game scenario and I’ll explain what’s going on.
We have here a player using white cards facing off against a player using red cards. There are five colours in Magic, each with their own strengths and vulnerabilities. For this first article I’ll stick to two colours.
Resources that players collect are usually lands. White has five on the battlefield for him to use (Plains) while Red has the advantage with seven (Mountain). Yet in the midsection of the battlefield between the lands we see that White has two creatures to attack compared to Red’s one.
Next to both players’ lands are their decks, all cards face down and shuffled. To the right of White’s deck is his graveyard, a place where cards that have been used are placed. Red also has a graveyard next to his deck.
This layout is the normal layout for a Magic game; your deck to one side, lands beside the deck and graveyard nearby. Creatures and other cards will be placed in the midsection of the battlefield between the two players.
We will return to this match later, but now I’ll take time to explain how a game is set up and how scenarios like this can be reached.
To start a Magic game you will need a deck of at least 60 cards. You can have any type of cards, with or without creatures. The main restriction is that you can have maximum four copies of any card, except ‘Basic Lands’ which you can have as many copies as you want. In White’s case, he can have 1, 2, 3, or 4 copies of Assault Griffin in his 60-card deck, same with his Silvercoat Lion and the other cards we see in his graveyard. Because Plains are resources labelled as ‘Basic Land’ (as written directly under the card’s illustration) he can have as many Plains as he wants in his deck.
Same rule applies to Red with his Canyon Minotaur, Mountains, and all his other cards.
Once you have a deck, you need a friend to challenge to a game. Feel free to grab any random stranger that passes by.
Setup of a game is simple. Randomly decide who starts first, either by coin flip, role of the die, rock-paper-scissors, or similar methods. Then each player shuffles their own deck and draws a starting seven cards from the top of their decks. That is all.
We go a bit into how to make things happen in the game, particularly how to pay the costs of cards to put them from your hand onto the battlefield.
Once both players have drawn their seven cards, the player that goes first takes his turn.
As a general rule the first thing a person would want to do during his turns would be to put resources from the cards in his hand onto the battlefield, usually land cards like Plains or Mountain. Without such resources, a player will not be able to pay the costs of his other cards. There is a one-per-turn limit on playing lands; you can only play one land from your hand to the battlefield every turn.
When you have enough resources on the battlefield, you are able to use them to summon creatures, or to play other cards from your hand that may hurt the opponent or help strengthen your defences.
Each non-land card has a cost that needs to be paid in order to use it. In the case of creature cards, when the cost is paid these cards will be put onto the battlefield from your hand, readying itself for war or to disrupt the opponent in some way. Some other cards may happen as a one-shot benefit then go away to the graveyard, instead of staying on the battlefield to help you continuously.The cost of non-land cards can be seen on their upper right corner, designated by numbers and / or symbols. Land cards never have these costs.
If you start your game with a Plains and a Goldenglow Moth in your starting seven cards, you will be able to play them both on turn 1. First you put the land onto the battlefield, then you use the land to fulfil the Moth’s cost, thus putting the Moth onto the battlefield.
The cost of playing the Moth as seen in the picture to the right is a single sun symbol, the symbol of the colour White. What this means is that you will need to use up one White resource (like a Plains) in order to put the Moth down onto the battlefield.
To use up a resource like a ‘Basic Land – Plains’, you turn it sideways to indicate that you are using it to differentiate it from resources you have not used. Same goes for some other cards like creatures, where you turn them to the side to show you are using them for something.
In the case of the Moth, the cost to put it from your hand onto the battlefield is a single White symbol. This means that you need to spend one Plains to summon it, nothing more.
On turn one, White’s battlefield position looks like this:
White has played a single Plains from his hand which he then used, hence turned to the side. The Plains has paid for the cost of the Goldenglow Moth, which is now on the battlefield.
When a resource like a Basic Land is used and turn to the side, they stay on the battlefield but cannot be used again until they are straightened. Straightening your cards happen during the start of your turn. This means that Basic Lands can be used once per turn and will only recharge when you start your next turn.
Those are the basics of how to put cards from your hand onto the battlefield, both resources like Basic Lands and creatures. During week two we will dip into actual game play and see some of the things creatures can do as well as a few one-shot cards.
We’re starting out slow to build a good foundation, but action is just around the corner.
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