Understanding Magic: The Game Playing of Magic

Magic has a long history, chugging along for well over a decade with several expansion sets being released each and every year. But why are there so many expansion sets being released? To understand this, you'll have to understand what the game of Magic: The Gathering is and how one plays it.

Magic: The Gathering is a card game that represents a duel between two or more wizards, with each player taking the role of a wizard. Each player takes turns and performs actions during each turn that hopefully lead them to winning the duel.

There are several ways to win a duel but there are two very common ways of winning the game: reducing the other player's life points to zero or below or forcing them to draw from their deck of cards (library) when there are no cards left in it. There are several other ways to win, including winning via special cards or via poison counters but those methods are for the most part, exotic.

There are several card types and phases to the game, along with a complex set of rules which probably scare off most players. However, the game is a rich tapestry of interactions that wouldn't be possible without all of the variety available to us. There are spell cards (sorceries can only be played on your turn, instants can be played anytime), creature cards (which can only be played on your turn), enchantment, artifact, and land cards (all of which can only be played on your turn).

There are several excellent primers and articles about playing Magic and scores of websites are devoted to strategy, so I'll just mention the bare bones about playing Magic in this article. There's no need to cover in depth how to play Magic as the rules will help you learn and www.magicthegathering.com is an excellent site to visit to learn more about the game from the developers themselves.

There are really just a few things that I believe you need to remember to be successful at playing the game of Magic: the stack, phases, and a couple of actions.