Magic: The Gathering rules

A typical game of Magic involves two or more players who are engaged in a battle, acting as powerful wizards known as Planeswalkers. Each player has their own deck of cards, purchased and constructed from a limited pool of available cards. A player typically starts the game with a "life total" of twenty and loses the game when the total is reduced to zero. A player can lose the game if they must draw from an empty deck. Some cards specify other ways to win or lose the game. Formats Magic can be played in various formats; each format provides additional rules for deck construction and gameplay, with many confining the pool of permitted cards to those released in a specified group of Magic card sets. There are two main categories mandated by the Wizards Play Network (WPN): Tournament and Casual. The term "sanctioned" refers to formats the WPN allows to be run at official events. Officially sanctioned events can add additional rules, such as the disallowance of proxy cards. Players have also invented alternative formats for playing the game, some of which Wizards of the Coast has accepted. Some of these formats use rules or sets of cards that differ from those used in sanctioned tournament play. One of the most popular formats of Magic is Commander, which is a casual sanctioned format. Formats can be further divided into Constructed and Limited formats. Limited formats, in contrast, use a restricted and unknown pool of cards that is usually formed by opening Magic products. Limited competition requires players to select cards and build decks during the tournament. The primary two sanctioned Limited formats are Sealed Deck and Booster Draft. Deck construction Deck construction requires strategy; players must choose cards to play from thousands of cards, requiring players to evaluate the power of their cards, the possible synergies between them, and their possible interactions with the cards they expect to play against. This "metagame" can vary by location and time period. The player restricts the choice of cards by deciding which colors to include in the deck. Players expand their card library for deck construction through booster packs, which have a random distribution of cards from a specific Magic set and are defined by rarity. These rarities are known as Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic Rare; more-powerful cards are generally the rarest. == Initial setup ==

Beginning and ending the game Each player uses their own deck to play the game. In most formats, a deck must have a minimum of 60 cards; Some formats have exceptions or additional limitations to these rules. At the beginning of a game, each player shuffles their deck and draws seven cards to form their starting hand. Zones At any one time, every card is located in one of the following "zones": • Library: The portion of the player's deck that is kept face down and is normally in random order (shuffled). • Hand: A player's hidden hand of cards that can be played. If a player has more than seven cards in hand at the end of their turn, any extras must be discarded. Typically, "creatures, enchantments, and artifacts stay on the playing field whereas sorceries and instants are placed in your discard pile ... after casting their one-time effect". • Exile: Cards that have been exiled by specific effects are put here. Unlike the graveyard, exile is "the place where cards go when they're really dead and can't be replayed back into the game". == Terminology ==

Abilities Types of abilities include: • Activated abilities have a cost and an effect, which are separated using a colon. A player may activate such an ability at any time by paying the cost. • Triggered abilities begin with the word "when", "whenever" or "at". The ability is put on the stack when the trigger event occurs. Evergreen keywords "can appear in absolutely any set, since its gameplay effects and flavor are flexible and generic enough to fit anywhere. Effects like trample, flying, deathtouch, first strike and haste are examples of this". Abilities classified as Mechanics are rotated in and out of the game as expansions are released. According to Game Rant: "most planes have some unique rules that are only relevant on cards from specific sets" and "new mechanics are constantly added to shake things up and give the players new tools to work with". Types of cards All objects that remain on the battlefield are called permanents, types of which include lands, creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and planeswalkers. Sorceries and instants go to the graveyard immediately after they are used. Lands Land cards tap to produce mana that is used to cast spells and activate abilities. They cost no mana to play but a player may play no more than one land per turn, and only during the main phases of their own turn. These lands can each be tapped to produce one mana of the appropriate color. Other lands are non-basic and may produce other combinations or amounts of mana, or may have other abilities. Creatures of the same type often synergize well with each other, causing players to build decks based entirely on one type of creature. Enchantments Enchantments represent persistent magical effects; they are spells that remain on the battlefield and alter some aspect of the game. Some enchantments are attached to other cards on the battlefield—often creatures); these are known as Auras. These enchantments affect that card in some way, and are automatically put into the graveyard when the card they are enchanting leaves the battlefield. Sorceries and instants Sorceries and instants represent one-shot or short-term magical spells. They never enter the battlefield but take effect and are immediately put into their owner's graveyard. Planeswalkers According to Magic lore, the player is a planeswalker, a wizard who can travel between different realms or universes (planes); as such, planeswalker cards represent scaled-down versions of other players, whose decks are represented by the card's abilities. Planeswalker cards were originally designed to move autonomously through a roster of effects without player control. Most planeswalkers are legendary and subject to the "legend rule"; if a player controls more than one legendary planeswalker with the same name, that player chooses one and puts the other into their owner's graveyard. Loyalty counters equal to any damage the planeswalker takes are also removed. Planeswalkers are not creatures so they cannot directly attack or block. Creatures can attack an opponent's planeswalkers rather than the opponent themself. Those creatures may be blocked normally but if not blocked, they damage the planeswalker instead of the player. == Gameplay ==

Phases Magic officially labels its gameplay phases "as Begin, Main Phase, Combat, Second Main Phase, and End". • Untap step: a player untaps all of the cards they control. • Upkeep step: then, any abilities that trigger on the "upkeep step" happen, starting with the player of the current turn. These often include cards that require mana payments at every turn. A tapped creature cannot be declared as an attacker or blocker. At the beginning of each player's turn, the player untaps all cards they control, unless otherwise stated by a card's effect, and they can again be tapped as normal. Mana costs and colors Most cards other than lands, when cast as a spell, incur a mana cost. Cards may require mana of any color or combination of colors, including generic costs that can be paid with mana of any color. Screen Rant commented:One of the more important aspects of constructing a deck is the mana ratio. This ratio determines how many basic land cards players will need in their deck in order to 'cast' spell cards for combat and defense when playing a game. Too much mana can lead to players becoming 'mana swamped' or pulling out mostly basic mana cards and not enough spell cards to attack. The opposite can also happen where players become 'mana starved' and have too little mana to play their spell cards. ... There are a number of ways the calculate or estimate this more specifically, but a quick rule of thumb is that basic mana should make up approximately one-third of their Magic: The Gathering deck, or 20 to 24 cards in a 60-card deck. ==Timing==

When a player casts a spell or activates an ability, it does not immediately take effect. The card is placed on the stack, allowing other players to respond to the ability. Most activated abilities and instant spells can be used as responses in this manner on any players' turn. == History ==

Magic Comprehensive Rules aim to "stabilize the rules" with errata and outline "special-case rulings". In April 1994, Wizards of the Coast attempted to simplify and formalize Magic rules with the Revised Edition card set. The rules text on the cards was made more consistent, with some rules templated to achieve consistency. The next major rules update occurred with the Magic 2010 core set. Several rule changes were made to make the game terminology more flavorful, such as renaming the "in play-zone" to "battlefield". The main change was combat no longer using the stack, a change many veterans of the game considered reduced the strategic depth of combat situations, although it was generally accepted in many cases the change would not affect the combat situation. Banned and restricted cards In the event individual cards are listed as "restricted", only one copy can be included in a deck; other cards are "banned" at WPN's discretion. For example, with the elimination of the "play for ante" mechanic in all formal formats, all cards with this feature were banned. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which drew more players to the online Magic games and generated volumes of data of popular deck constructions, Wizards of the Coast was able to track popular combinations more quickly than in a purely paper game, and in mid-2020, the company banned additional cards that in specific combinations could draw out games far longer than desired. Wizards of the Coast has banned some old cards from all formal play due to inappropriate racial or cultural depictions in their text or illustrations in the wake of the George Floyd protests, and their images have been blocked or removed from online Magic databases. This includes a card called "Invoke Prejudice", which was displayed on the official card-index site Gatherer "at a web URL ending in '1488', numbers that are synonymous with white supremacy". ==References==