t’s the second instalment of the Planeswalking Peddler’s official Magic: The Gathering Tutorial. Last week we saw what you need to play a game of Magic, how to set one up, and how to both play a simple resource and how to use that resource to put a creature from your hand onto the battlefield. In week two we’ll see a bit more about creatures and go into combat.When we left off, the battlefield position for White on turn one looked like this:
Red’s battlefield position still has nothing except his facedown deck, mainly because he hasn’t taken his turn. Now White will end his turn and give the turn to his opponent because there’s nothing else to do.
Red starts his turn by drawing a card from the top of his deck. When a player starts his turn, he always draws a card from his deck. This means a steady flow of cards going into your hand every turn. However, if you start the game first, you skip that first draw because you already have the advantage of building up your army one turn earlier than your opponent. After that first turn, you draw cards like normal.
Red puts down a Mountain, a resource, and does nothing else. He passes the turn back to White. Either he has nothing in his hand that he can put onto the battlefield or he is waiting to do a trick to White on White’s turn.
At the beginning of White’s turn, he straightens all his cards on the battlefield. In this case, he straightens his one Plains with was sideways. Then he draws a card.
White puts down another Plains and uses his two Plains to put a second creature from his hand onto the battlefield. He turns the two Plains to the side and now his position is like this:
Before we end the turn and pass the game back to Red, some elaboration on card costs and payment of costs.
Goldenglow Moth, the first creature, costs only 1 White resource so you just need to use up one Plains. The second creature, Silvercoat Lion, costs 1 White resource and 1 grey resource. Any number in a grey circle means that you need to use up that many additional resources, but it can be any colour. White has two Plains, so he can use one to pay for the single White symbol in the Lion’s cost and use the other Plains to pay the colourless cost of the grey number. If he had a Plains and a Mountain, he can still pay the cost of the Lion since the Plains will pay for the White symbol while the Mountain will pay for the 1 colourless grey cost.
Assault Griffin costs 1 White and 3 colourless. This means that he needs a total of 4 resources to play the Griffin; one has to be White while the others can be of any colour. Bear in mind that there are five colours in Magic.There really isn’t much left to do on this turn. We can end the turn for White.
On Red’s turn he starts by drawing a card. Let’s say he puts down another Mountain. He uses both Mountains, turning them sideways, to put his own creature from his hand down onto the battlefield.
He decides to pass the turn because he can’t do anything else. He has already used up his one-land-per-turn privilege and has no unused lands on the battlefield to put down more creatures.
Back to White. He straightens all his cards, draws a card from the top of his deck, and plays a third Plains because he has one. He finally decides to attack the opponent. He sends the Silvercoat Lion towards the opponent but leaves his Goldenglow Moth alone.
Using a creature to attack an opponent is exactly the same as using a land. You just turn it sideways to show it is attacking, to distinguish it from those that are not attacking.
Combat in Magic is not about attacking opponent creatures. You can never attack an opponent’s creature in Magic. Instead, you can only attack enemy players. The exception to this rule is that the player you attack can use his creatures to block your attacking creatures. If the other player chooses to block, then your creatures and his creatures get into a battle with each other, rather than damaging the opponent’s life total. Likewise, if an opponent attacks you, you can choose to let the creatures damage your life total or you can choose to block with your own creatures, causing the creatures to fight it out amongst themselves.
So White attacks with the Lion. For example purposes, let’s say Red decides he wants to block with his own creature. The battlefield looks like this, with the creatures in combat highlighted in red:
You can click on the image to see a near full-scale size of the battlefield at this point.
To understand what will be happening to the creatures in this combat, we’ll see a close up of both the creatures involved.
Two of the most important features of creatures are on the bottom half of the card. The first is the text box that spells out any abilities a creature may have. The second is the creature’s power and toughness.
In the case of Silvercoat Lion, the text box is filled with only italicised text. This means that the creature has no abilities and that some of Magic’s backstory fills the text box. This story has no impact on the game.
Below the text box at the bottom right corner are two numbers. Only creatures have these numbers. The number to the left is the creature’s power, which is how much damage a creature would deal in combat. The number on the right is the creature’s toughness, which indicates how much damage has to be done in order to kill it.
Silvercoat Lion has 2 power (left number) and 2 toughness (right number). These numbers have no correlation to one other. A creature can have any power value and any toughness value. The slash between the numbers is just a separator; it isn’t a mathematical divide sign.
Red’s creature is almost the same. The text box does not show any abilities, so it can be ignored. The power / toughness values are slightly different. The Goblin has 2 power like the Lion, but only has 1 toughness.
This means that the Goblin would die to 1 or more damage, but the Lion can survive 1 damage. The Lion would die to 2 or more damage.
When these two creatures meet in combat, they both deal damage at the same time. The Lion and Goblin would deal their 2 power worth of damage to the other, then players check if any of the creatures would survive. Since both of them can’t survive 2 power worth of damage, they both die.
This scenario would mean that at the end of combat, two dead creatures would be in their own graveyards.
Now let’s assume that Red refused to block White’s Lion. In this case the 2 damage from the Lion would hit the opponent, dropping Red from his starting 20 life points to 18 life points. The Lion would be straightened at the start of White’s next turn and will be able to attack again and again until it dies.
One last combat example. Again we assume that Red didn’t want to block, which means both Goblin and Lion didn’t die. When Red gets back his turn, he straightens his cards, draws a card, and puts down a land if he has one. Now he decides to attack. The major drawback of cards that have been turned sideways (meaning they have been used) is that they can’t be used again until you straighten them at the start of your turn. So if Red attacks with his Goblin;
the Lion can’t block it because it is sideways. Just like you can’t use a land when it is already sideways, a creature turned sideways can’t do much. In this case White has two choices: either he takes the 2 damage, falling from his starting 20 life to 18 life points, or he blocks with his other creature. We’ll make him block and see the carnage.
The Moth has 0 power and 1 toughness. This means it does 0 damage and dies to 1 or more damage. The Goblin takes the 0 damage, at the same time dealing 2 damage to the Moth. After combat, the only card to die will be the Moth.
Now, the Moth has some text in its text box that are straight (meaning non-story text) which indicates it has some abilities. Abilities are always written above story text. The first is Flying, which is not relevant in this case. The remaining ability of the Moth is:
“Whenever Goldenglow Moth blocks, you may gain 4 life.”
So when the Moth blocks the Goblin, these things will happen in sequence:
1) White will gain 4 life
2) The creatures damage each other
3) The Goblin lives, the Moth dies
Up to this point, Red has 18 life points while White is at a health 24 life points. After combat, Red decides he’s not done yet. He uses his three Mountains and puts his second creature onto the battlefield. A note on putting cards down from your hand onto the battlefield: you can do them before or after combat.
Also (see the next image) the creature he puts down costs 2 Red and 1 colourless. With three Mountains, he can pay for the 2 Red and use the third Mountain to pay the colourless cost.
White straightens, draws, and learns that he does not have another Plains, so he doesn’t put down any. He’s stuck at three resources for the time being. He decides to use a one-shot card in his hand, seeing that he has one creature against Red’s two.
Excommunicate costs 1 White and 2 colourless, just enough for White to cast with his three Plains. The ability of the card says:
“Put target creature on top of its owner’s library.”
This means that White can choose any creature and that card’s owner puts it on top of his deck. A Magic deck is called a “library “, so any card that refers to the “library” actually refers to a Magic deck.
Just below the illustration you will see that Excommunicate is labelled as a “sorcery”. This means two things: first, that it happens only once before going away to the graveyard; secondly, that you can only use it on your turn. I’ll elaborate more on what the second point means in the next tutorial.
And on to the next tutorial in a week. I know this week was a bit of a bundle, but paying costs and doing combat is so common in Magic that I wanted to make clear the fundamentals.
This is Aihiave, signing off for now.
This is Aihiave, signing off for now.
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