Magic The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering (colloquially "Magic", "MTG", or "Magic Cards") is a collectible card game created by Richard Garfield, Ph.D and introduced by the company Wizards of the Coast in 1993. Magic inspired an entirely new game genre, and has an estimated six million players in over seventy countries worldwide, as well as a successful Internet version[1]. The game is a strategy contest which includes an element of chance due to the random distribution of cards during shuffling.

Each game represents a battle between powerful wizards called "Duelists" or "Planeswalkers" who use magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures to defeat their opponents. Though the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic as a game bears little resemblance to role-playing games.

The game has an official tournament system, with tournaments having been played on all seven continents, including Antarctica[2]. The cards themselves are valuable, much like other trading cards, but in the case of Magic, a card's value is primarily based for their power and utility in game play, not just their scarcity and other intangible aesthetic qualities such as the quality of the card's artwork[3].

Play Magic

In a game of Magic, two or more players are engaged in a duel. A player starts the game with twenty "life" points and seven cards in his or her hand. If a player is reduced to zero life, that player loses the game. A player also loses the game if he or she is required to draw a card, but cannot (because his or her deck, or "library", has no cards remaining in it). The object of Magic is to be the last surviving player.

Players duel each other by casting spell cards by using mana, or magical energy, drawn from various sources, most often land cards. There are two basic types of cards: those which become "permanents" and stay on the table once they have been played, and those which affect the game immediately and are then put into their owners' discard piles, or "graveyards." The types of cards are:

Permanents

Lands: The basic resources of the game. Lands require no mana to play, but players may play only one land during each of their turns. Lands generally possess the ability to be "tapped" (turned sideways) in order to produce mana with which it becomes possible to play other cards.
Creatures: Magical beasts or warriors that can either attack the other player or be used for defense against the opponent's creatures. Creatures, like other permanents, may also possess a variety of special abilities that can be used in different ways.
Artifacts: Magical objects, machines, automatons, and/or weapons which can enhance creatures, provide useful abilities, or create unusual effects.
Enchantments: Lasting magical effects which modify the game environment or a specific permanent.
Non-Permanents

Instants: Spells which have a one-time effect and are then discarded. Instants may be played at almost any time, and as such are valued for their versatility.
Sorceries: Spells similar to Instants, except may be played only during the player's own turn.
Each player has a library (a deck or draw pile), a hand containing cards drawn but not yet played, an area on the table for his or her permanents, and a discard pile called the graveyard. Players can't look into the libraries (unless a card's ability allows a player to do so) and may see only their own hands, but may normally view all other cards without restriction.

Some spells have effects that override normal game rules (e.g., allow a player to play more than one land per turn). The so-called "Golden Rule of Magic" is that if a card's text conflicts with the rules, the card has priority. Resolving interactions between conflicting spell effects is one of the more difficult aspects of game play. A detailed rulebook[4] exists to clarify these conflicts.

Deck construction

A player needs a deck ready before he or she can play a game of Magic. Beginners typically start with only a starter deck, which is pre-built and ready for play, but over time, cards are added or removed through purchases or trading with other players. Due to the many permutations, two players seldom play with the same decks, often because decks are customized based on the particular player's technique or playing style.

Normally, decks are required to be at least sixty cards. Players may use no more than four of any named card, with the exception of the "basic lands", that act as a standard resource in Magic[5]. When deciding which cards to include, it is often beneficial to use the minimum deck size, combined with the maximum number of card copies, to provide consistent draws to minimize the effect of luck on a particular game. A proper balance of mana sources, including basic land and mana-producing artifacts and creatures, to spells is also important in creating an effective deck. A deck should have enough mana sources to fit the mana curve of the deck's spells. In a sixty card deck, it is usually best to have 16 – 27 mana sources and 33 – 44 other spells. A deck composed of mostly cheap spells can run smoothly on fewer mana sources, while a deck with large creatures or expensive spells often requires a larger number of mana sources. A useful benchmark is to start with 24 lands and then modify the count if necessary.

Although five colors of spells are available, it may help to play just one or two in a deck so that the color of spells drawn will match the color of mana available. On the other hand, the five colors each have different strengths and weaknesses, and playing more colors may help create a more versatile and well-rounded deck. Many players feel that it is essential to use more than one color in order to increase their deck's versatility, because each color has its own strengths and weaknesses. The decision on what colors to use is vitally important, and successful decks have used nearly every combination of colors.

The colors of Magic

Most spells come in one of five colors. The colors can be seen on the back of the cards, in a pentagonal design, called the "Pentagon of Colors". Starting from the top, going clockwise, they are: white, blue, black, red, and green. To play a spell of one color, mana produced by a land of the appropriate type is required. These can sometimes be shown as small icons. Each color is also associated with a basic land type. These are, respectively: plains, islands, swamps, mountains, and forests.

The equilibrium among the five colors is one of the defining aspects of the game. The various strengths and weaknesses of each color are attributed to the fact that each color represents a different "style" of magic. Because the trade-offs between the abilities of each color are integral to keeping the game balanced, it is helpful to discuss the various color philosophies.

White is the color of order, organization, purity, balance, law, justice, community, righteousness, and light (although not necessarily "good"--laws and the assumptions behind them can be flawed). Typical white creatures include knights, soldiers, clerics, and angels. Within the game, white's strengths lie in protecting and enhancing its creatures, healing damage dealt to players, resetting the board, efficient small creatures (rather than large individual creatures), imposing restrictions on players that favor oneself, punishing actions by creatures (attacking and blocking), preventing action outright, and the ability to "equalize" the playing field. White's weaknesses include its difficulty in removing the opponent's creatures permanently (especially those which are not used to participate in combat), its inability to change game plans, and the fact that many of its most powerful spells affect all players equally.

Blue is the color of knowledge, illusion, reason, dreams, clouds, ingenuity, manipulation, and trickery, as well as the classical elements of air and water. Typical blue creatures include wizards, faeries, merfolk, drakes, and air and water spirits. Blue's cards are best at letting a player draw additional cards, stealing control of opposing permanents indefinitely, returning permanents to their owner's hands (informally called "bouncing"), and countering (canceling) spells as they are being played. Also, blue is the color that most focuses on alternate methods of winning the game, such as emptying the opponent's deck and setting up "locks," situations in which the opponent cannot do anything to win the game and can only watch as the blue mage slowly drains them of cards in deck or life. Blue's creatures tend to be "tricky" and precise; they often have weaker base statistics than other colors, but commonly have evasive abilities such as flying to evade an enemy's blockers. Blue's weaknesses include having only limited ways of dealing with opposing threats once they have entered play, combined with a fairly passive creature corps and a lack of ways to increase its mana production. Blue is often the slowest of the five colors.

Black is the color of death, darkness, despair, plague, selfishness, ambition, greed, corruption, and amorality (although not necessarily "evil"). Typical black creatures include rats, undead, vampires, demons, and necromancers. Within the game, black cards are best at killing opposing creatures, making players discard cards from their hand, and raising creatures from the dead. Black is also the most flexible color in some ways; it's willing to do anything, which is reflected in being able to cast many unusual out-of-color effects if it sacrifices enough creatures, cards, or life. Black's main weaknesses are its tendency to hurt itself in order to gain an advantage, an almost complete inability to destroy enchantments and artifacts, and difficulties in removing other black creatures directly from the field. This third restriction has been lightened in recent years, though.

Red is the color of chaos, destruction, war, art, passion, and fury, as well as lightning and the classical element of fire. Red shares an association with the classical element of earth with the color Green; Red has an affinity for the nonliving aspects of Earth such as stone, metals, lava, and seismic effects, while green is focused on the organic aspects. Typical red creatures include goblins, barbarians, dragons, and fire spirits. Red is one of the best colors for destroying opposing creatures and lands, trading long-term resources for short-term power, and for playing spells that reduce the opponent's life points (colloquially, "burn" or "direct damage"). Red also has the vast majority of cards that involve random chance and/or effects. Red shares the "trickery" theme with Blue and can temporarily steal an opponent's creatures or divert their spells. Red also has some ability to damage the entire board in order to "reset" the game. Red's weaknesses include its inability to destroy enchantments, the random or self-destructive nature of many of its spells, and its generally weak late-game play. Red is generally the fastest of the colors.

Green is the color of life, nature, growth, instinct, and interdependence. Typical green creatures include beasts, elves, insects, centaurs, wurms and druids. Because it is concerned most with the natural order of life, green is the home of some of the most powerful creatures in the game, and has numerous ways to destroy unnatural artifacts and enchantments, increase a player's life total, increase its mana-production capabilities, and gain access to mana of different colors. However, green has difficulty removing opposing creatures from play, and it lacks damaging or controlling spells; nearly all of its strategies are creature-based. Green is often the best color for beginners because of its flexible mana generation and straight forward creature strategies.
The colors adjacent to each other on the wheel are "allied" and often have similar, complementary abilities. For example, blue has few efficient, aggressive creatures in general, but does have a relatively large number of flying creatures. White and black, being next to it, also have many flying creatures. Red and green are opposite blue and have very few flyers. The two non-adjacent colors to a particular color are "enemy" colors, and are thematically opposed. For instance, red is the color of chaos, while white and blue are the colors of order and logic.

The R&D team at Wizards of the Coast balances the power between the five colors by using the Color Pie to define each color's strengths and weaknesses. As noted above, every color has its own distinct attributes; the pie is used to insure new cards are thematically in the correct color and that they do not impede on the territory of other colors. Color balance has not been static. For example, blue used to have a monopoly on spell-on-spell interactions and stealing. Now, Red has cards that allow temporary stealing and redirection.

A series of six articles written by Mark Rosewater describing each color in depth (as well as multicolor cards) can be found at the game's official site at MagicTheGathering.com: The Great White Way, True Blue, In the Black, Seeing Red, It's Not Easy Being Green, and Midas Touch.

Multi-color cards were introduced in the Legends set and use a gold background to distinguish them. These cards tend to combine the philosophy and mechanics of all the colors used in the spell's cost. Due to the restriction of having to play all the colors in the casting cost, multi-color cards tend to be more powerful for their cost compared to single-color cards.

More recently, two-color "hybrid" cards that can be paid for with either of the card's colors (as opposed to both, as is the case with normal multi-color cards) were introduced in the Ravnica set. The border of these cards has a distinctive "half-and-half" design, with a vertical merge between colors in the middle. Hybrid cards also introduced a series of "split" mana symbols, designating a mana cost which can be paid with either of the two colors.

Tournament Structure

The DCI maintains a set of rules for being able to sanction tournaments, as well as runs its own circuit. Many hobby shops offer "Friday Night Magic" as an entrance to casual competitive play. The DCI runs the "Pro Tour" as a series of major tournaments to attract interest. They also run a special tournament set called the Junior Super Series for underage competitors.

Frequent winners of these events have made names for themselves in the Magic community, such as Kai Budde and Jon Finkel. As a promotional tool, the DCI launched the Hall of Fame in 2005 to honor these players.

Buy Magic

Magic: The Gathering cards are produced in much the same way as normal playing cards. Each Magic card, approximately 63 x 88 mm in size (2.5 by 3.5 inches), has a face which displays the card's name and rules text as well as an illustration appropriate to the card's concept. Over 8000 unique cards have been produced for the game, with about 600 new ones added each year.

The first Magic cards were printed exclusively in English, but current sets are also printed in Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish .

Magic cards are divided into three rarities. These are Rare, Uncommon and Common. Most new cards are purchased in the form of “Booster Packs” or “Tournament Decks”. When you open a typical fifteen-card Booster Pack you get one Rare, three Uncommons, and eleven Commons. A Tournament Deck contains three Rares, ten Uncommons, thirty-two Commons, and thirty Basic Lands. This means that three Booster Packs are roughly equivalent to one Tournament Deck. [6]

The vast majority of Magic cards are marketed to the public in one of two ways. The first is via the now biennially-released Core Set, Ninth Edition being most recent. Currently, Core Sets consist of three-hundred and fifty-nine reissued older cards, with a mixture of old and new artwork on the cards. The second is via the release of expansion sets. These are the sets in which newly-designed cards are first sold. A "Block" consists of three theme related expansion sets released over a period of a year. The first and largest part of a Block consists of a set of three-hundred and six cards. It has eighty-eight Rares, eighty-eight Uncommons, one-hundred and ten Commons and twenty basic lands. At subsequent four month intervals the second and third expansion sets of the Block are issued. Each of these sets consists of one-hundred and sixty-five cards divided into fifty-five Commons, fifty-five Uncommons, and fifty-five Rares.
In 2003, starting with the Eighth Edition Core Set, the game went through its biggest visual change since its creation--a new card frame layout was developed to allow more rules text and larger art on the cards, while reducing the thick, colored border to a minimum. The new frame design aimed to improve contrast and readability using black type instead of the previous white, a new font, and partitioned areas for the name, card type, and power and toughness. This change received a mixed reception when first announced, but players quickly adapted, and most people have at least made their peace with the new frame design, with many still hailing it as better than the original.

Secondary market

There is an active secondary market in individual cards among players and game shops. On eBay, for example, there are an estimated 30,000 Magic: The Gathering card auctions running at any one time. Many other physical and online stores also sell single cards or, more commonly, "playsets" of four of a card. Common cards rarely sell for more than a few cents and are usually sold in bulk. Uncommon cards and weak rares typically cost under US$1. The most expensive cards in Standard tournament play usually cost approximately US$10-20.

The most expensive card which was in regular print (as opposed to being a promotional or special printing) is Black Lotus, with as of 2005 average prices of above US$500 and high-quality "graded" copies rising above US$3000. A small number of cards of similar age, rarity, and playability – chiefly among them the other cards in the so-called "Power Nine" – routinely reach high prices as well. In 2003, after the rotation of the Extended tournament format and in combination with the first Type 1 Championships, the prices for such old, tournament-level cards underwent a large, unexpected increase.

As new sets come out, older cards are occasionally reprinted. If a card has high play value, reprinting will often increase the original version's price, because of renewed demand among players. However, if the card is primarily attractive to collectors, reprinting will often decrease the original version's value. Wizards of the Coast formulated an official "Reprint Policy"[7] in 1995 in an attempt to guarantee to collectors the value of many old cards. The Policy details certain cards that are unavailable to be printed again.

Wholesale distributors are not allowed to ship product to foreign nationalities, thereby affecting the market and creating pockets of opportunity. Additionally, several countries still have import restrictions that could be construed to bar the import of Magic: The Gathering or other collectible card games (Italy, for example, places restrictions on the importation of "playing cards").

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