The Planeswalking Peddler

Magic: The Gathering - Tutorial Week 5

brief recap of the types of cards we have seen so far and some rule baggage that comes with them.

 



Lands. Plains (white), Island (blue), Swamp (black), Mountain (red), Forest (green). You can only put down one land per turn. Use them by turning them sideways, and they will add one resource of their colour alignment. They straighten at the start of your turns.

Creatures. A staple of most strategies. Can attack to damage the opponent, can block to defend yourself. Some have abilities that can be used many times, some only happen once or twice. Turn sideways to attack, and there may be creature abilities requiring the creature to turn sideways as payment. Creatures cannot attack (or use abilities that need them to turn sideways) on the first turn they are on the battlefield. They can only do so starting from your following turn. Blocking does not require a card to turn so they can block immediately. They straighten at the start of your turns.

Sorceries. One-shot cards that go to the graveyard after use. Generally more powerful game effects than instants but have significant timing restrictions.

Instants. One-shot cards with possibly weaker game effects than sorceries, but have practically no timing restrictions.

All the card types we see here (and every other card type in Magic) can only be played when the stack is empty (meaning when no cards or abilities are pending) and only during your two main phases. The exception is instants which can be played whenever you want.

Card abilities like that from Fiery Hellhound can be played as instants, even though it’s on a creature and creatures themselves don’t have the timing of instants. So if an opponent does something, you can respond to that something with a card’s ability so that yours happens first, potentially wrecking what the opponent tried to do.

Now a look as some other types.

Enchantments. As explained in the previous tutorial, all cards (except instants and sorceries) stay on the battlefield after you play them. These are “permanents” for they remain permanently in the game until someone kills them or the game ends. Easy enough to figure out that enchantments stay with you after you bring them online.

Enchantments can’t attack or block and can’t be used as resources like lands. Players can’t damage them because they have no toughness. For the most part, they offer little interaction. What they can do is what it says on the card.

Just like there are a variety of creatures, sorceries, and instants, there are a variety of enchantments. Some give a continuous bonus that happens all the time (like Honor of the Pure) while some only help at specific times. Some help you if the opponent does something it doesn’t like, or if they’re in the mood, or if you’ve been nice to them this morning, etc.

The simplest way to use enchantments is to play them, let them sit pretty beside your army, and they give whatever bonuses the card says. Low maintenance, in a way.

But there actually two types of enchantments.

Enchantment – Aura. This second type of enchantments are very similar to normal ones but with two small differences. When you play them, you need to attach them to something, hence the subtype “aura”. Once they are attached, they function like normal enchantments. The other difference is if the thing they are attached to disappears, the enchantment – auras vanish to the graveyard.

Example time.

Mind Control does only two things. First line is:

“Enchant creature"

All auras will tell you what to enchant (meaning what it needs to be attached to). Some attach to creatures like this one, some to lands, some to either one, you choose. Some to any permanent. And there are those strange ones that attach to the most unusual of things. I’ll tell you another time.

Mind Control’s other line is:

“You control enchanted creature.”

That’s all this card does. In action this is how it works:

1. You need something to attach it to. In the case of Mind Control, the first line says it needs a creature to target. If there is no creature on the battlefield, it means there is no target for the aura to attach to so you can’t use it.

2. So you got a target here, a black creature of some kind. Use your resources to play Mind Control (3 of any colour and double Blue).
3. Mind Control will be put on the stack, pending approval from the opponent. If the opponent can’t do anything about it, he has to let it happen. And that’s when the aura attaches itself to the creature and its ability starts to happen.
4. As long as this aura stays on the creature, the creature is yours to do what you want. You can attack, block, and use its abilities as if it’s your own. If the creature leaves the battlefield either by dying or something else, the aura loses its anchor to the battlefield and goes to the graveyard.

Artifacts. Artifacts are something of a versatile card type. You have artifacts that are creatures and can do all the things a creature can do. You have those that are like enchantments that give a passive bonus and then those that have abilities which require payment every time you wish to use it. There are artifacts that are similar to enchantment – auras and need to be attached.

Platinum Angel works exactly like a normal creature. Can’t attack when it first enters the battlefield. Later it can attack and can block. It has power and toughness. The difference here is that it is an artifact, which means two things.

First, it means that it is colourless. White cards require White resources to pay the cost. Blue cards require Blue resources. Black needs Black, Red needs Red, Green needs Green. The cost of Platinum Angel is just 7 colourless. Without colour, artifacts are immune to cards that hurt only a certain colour.

Another good point (a strategic point) is because artifacts don’t require any coloured resources, you can easily put them into a deck of any colour. Using Mind Control in a Red deck is not so easy due to the different resource requirements, but artifacts bypass this colour restriction.

One drawback of artifacts is that although they are immune to cards that anti a certain colour, they are fully vulnerable to anti-artifact cards.

Like Honor of the Pure, Amulet of Vigor is and artifact that has an ability that is active all the time just by being on the battlefield.

Small explanation on the ability:

“Whenever a permanent enters the battlefield tapped and under your control, untap it.”

Meaning whenever a permanent comes down onto the battlefield on your side, if it comes down already sideways, you straighten it. This is useful for cards that enter the battlefield already sideways, which is a kind of drawback that the Amulet overcomes.

(“Tap” in Magic means “turn sideways”, somewhat based on the actual English definition. “Untap” simply means to undo that action i.e. straighten.)

For those that are still confused about “tap” and “untap”, here is an alternate way to write the Amulet’s ability:

“Whenever a permanent enters the battlefield sideways and under your control, straighten it.”

Replace “tap” with “sideways” and “untap” with “straighten” and you’re good to go.

Crystal Ball allows you to manipulate the top cards of your library (deck). The italicised text after the ability isn’t story text since it directly follows a card’s ability, and is placed in parentheses. In this case the text is an explanation on how to use the ability.

This is an example of an artifact which ability doesn’t happen all the time but needs to be paid for. In order to “Scry 2” (meaning manipulate the two top cards of your library) you need to pay 1 colourless resource and tap it / turn the card sideways.

That black arrow inside a grey circle is the tap symbol indicating the card has to turn sideways. Whenever you see this symbol, the card’s ability needs it to “tap”.

Last example of an artifact is the colourless equivalent of an enchantment – aura. These are called artifact – equipment.

The rules for equipment are these:

1. You play them like normal artifacts. After you pay for a piece of equipment, it comes onto the battlefield but not attached to anything.

2. To attach it to your creature, pay the equip cost. In the case of Warlord’s Axe, the cost is 4 colourless resources.

3. The equipment will give its bonus to the creature for as long as it is attached.

4. If the creature dies or goes away, the equipment stays on the battlefield, so you can equip it to another creature. In comparison, auras will disappear to the graveyard. You can also shift equipment around from one creature to another just by paying the equip cost again.

5. You can only equip at sorcery-speed, not instant-speed. So to equip something, it must be a) your main phase and b) the stack must be empty.

There is one more card type but I’m saving that as an exploration for another time.


In this section I’ll explain what is the “main phase” of your turn and touch on other elements of the turn structure.

The basic turn structure looks like this.

And here’s the general breakdown:


During the “start of turn” phase, you untap (straighten) your artifacts, creatures, lands, and other cards. Then you draw a card from your library which puts it into your hand. Only instants and card abilities can be played during this phase.

After you’ve done those two things, the game takes you to your first “main phase”. Your main phases are where you can play any card and attach equipment. Instants can also be played during the main phases but is generally discouraged for strategic reasons.

This is when creatures attack, block, and deal combat damage to players. Only instants and card abilities can be played during this phase. You may use them in response to a variety of things that happen here, of which I will get into detail in a future article.

Exactly the same as the first “main phase”. According to the one-land-per-turn rule, if you have put down a land in the first main phase, you can’t put another one down here. If you haven’t, then go ahead and use the chance in this phase.

This is when things that last until the end of turn, like Mighty Leap and Fiery Hellhound’s ability, disappear. Damage to creatures also disappear here. If you have more than 7 cards in your hand, you choose and discard to your graveyard what you don’t want until you go down to 7. You do this during your own “end of turn”; if you have more than 7 on your opponent’s turn for some strange reason, you don’t have to discard. Only instants and card abilities can be played during this phase.

The game proceeds from one phase to the next when both players don’t want to do anything more in those phases. Example is during your “start of turn” phase, an opponent may use a card to make you discard a card from your hand. You both may play cards / abilities in response to one another. When no one wants to play anything else, the discard effect happens and then the game goes to the next phase.

Same principle for each phase. If you want to go to the combat phase and the opponent doesn’t want to play instants or abilities to mess with your creatures beforehand, then the game moves to combat. So on and so forth until the opponent takes his turn, where the same thing happens from his perspective.

Next week I’ll demonstrate enchantments and artifacts in actual game scenarios and more creature abilities. The week after that perhaps we’ll explore the subdivisions of a turn, and how to take advantage of them.

I wish all readers a good week ahead.