What is Magic ?

The basic storyline is of Planewalkers who roam the lands of Dominaria. The Planeswalkers (Magicians) duel with each other and represent different aspect of magic fire (red), nature (green), death (black), water (blue) and purity (white).

So what is Magic the Gathering ?

The idea is you play with cards which form a deck of spells and you are a planeswalker (magician). You build and construct your deck with at least 60 cards to play. Your deck consists of mana (land), creatures and other spells. You duel against another planeswalker and both start with 20 life. When you get to 0 life you loose and your opponent wins or if your opponent runs out of cards you also win by this way. You build a deck with about 26 land and 34 other spells (just a rough guide the land can go down a couple when you are ready).

Where do I get the cards to play with and what are the best ones ?

For a beginner , Wizards of the Coast recommend that you start with Portal. But I recommend the basic editions like 7th Edition. You can buy it in boosters, one booster holds 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons and 11 commons. Or you can buy constructed decks which are ready to play or starter decks which have 75 cards and can make a deck from them. Each year there is 3 expansion sets, for this year 2001, we have Invasion (Oct 2000), Planeshift (Feb 2001) and Apocalypse (June 2001). Invasion is the largest set and the next large set will be Odessey in October 2001. When Exodus was released Magic went through a minor change. The expansion symbol now comes in three colours, Gold--rare, Silver- uncommon and Black-common. There is also a number which tells you which card it is in that set so for example Reverse Damage a rare in 7th edition is 34/350, which is card 34 out of the 350. They also introduced foils from Urza's Legacy which is a 1:100 chance and are worth more. To get all the lists of cards check out Wizards of the Coast or my shortcuts to them at Card Lists.

How do I play ?

Once you both have your 60 card decks you roll a dice to see who goes first. You both draw 7 cards each. Whoever wins and goes first does not draw a card. You may play a land only once a turn. If you don't have any land to start with you put your cards back and shuffle and draw again. Once you have played a land, for example if it is a single mountain, you can tap that mountain to gain 1 red mana in your mana pool (to tap a land you turn it by 90 degrees). SO if you have a spell that uses one red mana you can cast it using your one mountain. If you can't cast anything then you say done and it's the opponents turn. The opponent draws a card first of all. Then he can play a land. As before if he can use that land to cast anything then you can. Mana symbols are of the land type and if it's a number in a circle that means of any colour. So a card with 3GB that mean 3 colourless mana (3 lands of any type), one green (1 forest) and 1 blue (1 island) to cast it. On turn two you draw a card. You can play another land and you choose another mountain making it 2 mountains in play. With this you can cast a 1R creature. You tap 2 mountain for the mana and the creature goes on the table into play. It cannot attack or use any tap abilities as it suffers summoning sickness until your next turn. Then your opponent has his turn he puts another land down but doesn't cast anything and its your turn. You draw another card and your creature becomes active. It has a 1/1 Attack and Defence, which means it will do one point of damage to your opponent if not blocked. If blocked by an opponent's creature it will do one point of damage to the opponent's creature. The defense is how much damage it can take before dying. So if it takes one point of damage it will go to the graveyard and out of play. For more details on play look at your rulebook in a starter deck or goto Wizards of the Coast