Magic: The Gathering (colloquially known as Magic or MTG) is a collectible, tabletop, and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. It was released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993 as the company's first trading card game. From 2008 to 2016, over twenty billion Magic cards were printed as the game grew in popularity. , Hasbro—the parent company of Wizards of the Coast—announced that Magic had generated $1 billion in annual revenue. , Magic had amassed approximately fifty million players worldwide.
Players in a game of Magic represent dueling wizards called "Planeswalkers". Each card a player draws from their deck represents a magical spell which can be used to their advantage in battle. Instant and Sorcery cards represent magical spells a player may cast for a one-time effect, while Creature, Artifact, Enchantment, Planeswalker, and Battle cards remain on the Battlefield to provide long-term advantage. Players usually must include resource, or Land cards representing the amount of mana that is available to cast their spells. Typically, a player defeats their opponent(s) by reducing their life totals to zero, which is commonly done via combat damage by attacking with creatures. Many other sources of damage exist in the game, in addition to alternative win-conditions.
Although the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the gameplay bears little similarity to tabletop role-playing games, while simultaneously having substantially more cards and more complex rules than many other card games.
Magic can be played by two or more players, either in person with paper cards or on a computer, smartphone, or tablet with virtual cards through Internet-based software such as Magic: The Gathering Online, Magic: The Gathering Arena, Magic Duels and several others. It can be played in various rule formats, which fall into two categories: constructed and limited. Limited formats involve players creating a deck spontaneously out of a pool of random cards typically with a minimum deck size of 40 cards. In constructed formats, players create decks from cards they own, usually with a minimum of 60 cards per deck.
New cards are released on a regular basis through expansion sets. Further developments include the Wizards Play Network played at the international level and the worldwide community Players Tour, as well as a substantial resale market for Magic cards. Certain cards can be valuable due to their rarity in production and utility in gameplay, with prices ranging from a few cents to millions of dollars.
Gameplay
Cards in Magic: The Gathering generally have a consistent format, with half of the face of the card showing the card's art, and the other half listing the card's mechanics, often relying on commonly-reused keywords to simplify the card's text. Cards fall into two classes: lands and spells. Lands produce mana, or magical energy. Players usually can only play one land card per turn, with most lands providing a specific color of mana when they are "tapped" (rotating the card 90 degrees). Each land can be tapped for mana only once per turn.
Spells consume mana, usually requiring at least one mana of a specific color. More powerful spells require larger amounts and more specific combinations of mana. As the game progresses and more lands enter play, the available mana increases, allowing stronger spells to be cast. Spells come in several varieties: "sorceries" and "instants" have a single, one-time effect before they go to the "graveyard" (discard pile); "enchantments" and "artifacts" that remain in play after being cast to provide a lasting magical effect; "creature" spells summon creatures that can attack and damage an opponent as well as used to defend from the opponent's creature attacks; and "planeswalker" spells that summon powerful allies that act similarly to other players. Lands, enchantments, artifacts, creatures, planeswalkers, and battle cards are considered "permanents" as they remain in play until removed by other spells, ability, or combat effects.
Players begin the game by shuffling their decks and then drawing seven cards. On each player's turn, following a set phase order, they draw a card, tap their lands and other permanents as necessary to gain mana to cast spells, engage their creatures in a single attack round against their opponent who may use their own creatures to block the attack, and then complete other actions with any remaining mana. Most actions that a player can perform enter the "Stack", a concept similar to the stack in computer programming. The stack follows Last in First Out order, where the last card played onto the stack is the first card effect resolved. Either player can react to these actions with other actions, such as countering an opponent's spells, removing an opponent's creature, and/or protecting their own. The stack provides a method of resolving complex interactions that may result in certain scenarios.
Deck construction
Most sanctioned games for Magic: The Gathering under the Wizards Play Network (WPN) use a Constructed format that require players to create their decks from their own library of cards. In general, this requires a minimum of sixty cards in the deck, and, except for basic land cards and cards that have text superseding this rule, no more than four cards of the same named card. The Standard format, by including mostly recently released cards, helps to prevent "power creep" that can be difficult to predict with the size of the Magic card library and help give newer players a fair advantage with long-term players. Other Constructed formats exist that allow for use of older expansions to give more variety for decks. A large variety of formats have been defined by the WPN which allows different pools of expansions to be used or alter deck construction rules for special events.
Commander is a 100-card constructed format that makes many changes to typical deck construction rules. In Commander, each of the one hundred cards must be uniquely named, excluding basic land cards. Each player must also denote a legendary creature to be their Commander, which is able to be played at any time, without needing to draw it. All other cards in the deck must share their color with the commander. Additionally, Commander also allows any cards from any set release to be used, excluding any specific cards that have been banned from play and most cards from parody sets. Commander as a format has a separate ban list than other Constructed formats.
In Limited formats, a small number of cards are opened for play from booster packs or tournament packs, and generally a minimum deck size of forty cards is enforced. One of the most popular limited formats is Booster Draft, in which players open a booster pack, choose a card from it, and pass it to the player seated next to them. This continues until all the cards have been picked, and then a new pack is opened. Three packs are opened in total, and the direction of passing alternates left-right-left. Once the draft is done, players create decks out of the cards they picked, basic land cards being provided for free, and play games with the players they drafted with.
Limitations
Colors of Magic
Most cards in Magic are based on one of five colors that make up the game's "Color Wheel" or "Color Pie", shown on the back of each card, and each representing a school or realm of magic: white, blue, black, red, and green. The arrangement of these colors on the wheel describes relationships between the schools, which can broadly affect deck construction and game execution. For a given color such as white, the two colors immediately adjacent to it, green and blue, are considered complementary, while the two colors on the opposite side, black and red, are its opposing schools.
The Research and Development (R&D) team at Wizards of the Coast aimed to balance power and abilities among the five colors by using the Color Pie to differentiate the strengths and weaknesses of each. This guideline lays out the capabilities, themes, and mechanics of each color and allows for every color to have its own distinct attributes and gameplay. The Color Pie is used to ensure new cards are thematically in the correct color and do not infringe on the territory of other colors.
The concepts behind each of the colors on the Color Wheel, based on a series of articles written by Mark Rosewater, are as follows:As part of the Making Magic (2003-2005) article series on the game's official site, Mark Rosewater described each color in depth (as well as multicolor cards, artifact or colorless cards, and color-hybrid cards). The Great White Way , True Blue , In the Black , Seeing Red, It's Not Easy Being Green , Just the Artifacts, Ma'am , and Midas Touch .
These articles were updated and republished in 2015: The Great White Way Revisited , True Blue Revisited , In the Black Revisited , Seeing Red Revisited , It's Not Easy Being Green Revisited . represents order, peace, and light, and draws mana from plains. White planeswalkers can summon individually weak creatures that are collectively strong as a group such as soldiers, as well as powerful creatures and leaders that can strengthen all of the player's creatures with additional abilities or strength. Their spells tend to focus on healing or preventing damage, protecting their allies, and neutralizing an opponent's advantages on the battlefield. represents intellect, logic, manipulation, and trickery, and pulls its mana from islands. Its magic is typically associated with the classical elements of air and water. Many of Blue's spells can interact or interfere with the opponent's spells as well as with the general flow of the game. Blue's magic is also associated with control, allowing the player to gain temporary or full control of the opponent's creatures. Blue creatures often tend to be weak but evasive and difficult to target. represents power, death, corruption, and sacrifice, drawing mana from swamps. Many of Black's creatures are undead, and several can be sacrificed to make other creatures more powerful, destroy opponent's creatures or permanents, or other effects. Black creatures may be able to draw the life taken in an attack back to their caster, or may even be able to kill creatures through a deathtouch effect. Black's spells similarly coerce sacrifice by the player or their opponent through cards or life. represents freedom, chaos, fury, and warfare, pulling its power from mountains. Its powers are associated with the classical fire and earth elements, and it tends to have the strongest spells such as fireballs that can be powered-up by tapping additional mana when cast. Red is an offense-oriented class: in addition to powerful creatures like dragons, red planeswalkers can summon weak creatures that can strike quickly to gain the short-term edge. is the color of life, nature, evolution, and indulgence, drawing mana from forests. Green has the widest array of creatures to draw upon, ranging across all power levels, and generally is able to dominate the battlefield with many creatures in play at once. Green creatures and spells can generate life points and mana, and can also gain massive strength through spells.