How to Play Magic: The Gathering: Setup, Turns and Combat

To play Magic: The Gathering, each player shuffles a deck, draws seven cards and starts at 20 life. On your turn you untap, draw, play one land, spend mana from your lands on creatures and spells, and attack. Creatures that get through deal damage to your opponent, and you win by bringing their life total to zero.

Setting up a game of Magic

Setting up a game of Magic takes a minute. Each player shuffles their deck and places it face down; that pile is your library. Everyone draws seven cards. A player who dislikes their opening hand may take a mulligan, which means shuffling and drawing a new hand.

Each player starts at 20 life, or 40 in Commander. Choose a way to track life totals, such as a pen and paper or a spindown die, and decide who goes first. In a two-player game, the player who goes first skips the draw on their first turn.

The card types in Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering has a handful of card types, and each one behaves differently once played:

Creatures, artifacts, enchantments and planeswalkers are permanents: once cast, they stay on the battlefield. Instants and sorceries go to the graveyard after their effect.

How mana and casting spells work

Mana is the resource that pays for every spell. To cast a spell, you pay the mana shown in the top right corner of the card; a number there means generic mana of any color. You make mana by tapping lands, turning them sideways, and each land makes the color shown on it.

Magic has five colors: white, blue, black, red and green. A beginner’s deck usually uses one or two, so that its lands can make the colors its spells need.

Beginner Boxes, Starter Kits and Theme Decks

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The five phases of a Magic turn

A Magic turn always runs through five phases, in this order:

1. Beginning phase. Untap your cards, handle any upkeep effects, then draw a card.
2. First main phase. Play a land if you have not this turn, and cast any spells you can pay for.
3. Combat phase. Attack with your creatures (see the next section).
4. Second main phase. The same as the first. You still get only one land for the whole turn.
5. End step. Damage on creatures wears off, end-of-turn effects happen, and play passes to the next player.

How combat works in Magic

Combat in Magic happens in three steps. First you declare attackers: choose which untapped creatures attack, and tap them. Then the defending player declares blockers, assigning any of their untapped creatures to block attackers. Finally damage is dealt at the same time.

Attacking and blocking creatures deal damage to each other, and unblocked creatures deal damage to the player. A creature that takes damage equal to or greater than its toughness dies and goes to the graveyard.

How to win a game of Magic

The usual way to win a game of Magic is to reduce your opponent’s life total to zero. A player also loses if they must draw a card from an empty library, and some cards create other ways to win or lose. In Commander, 21 combat damage from a single commander also knocks a player out.

Where to practice Magic as a beginner

The easiest place to practice Magic is a product that walks you through the first game. The Foundations Beginner Box takes two players through a game turn by turn, then gives them ten Jumpstart decks to mix and match. MTG Arena, the free digital game, follows the same rules and starts with a tutorial.

Once you know the basics, pick a format: Magic formats explained compares them, and the best way to start Magic compares the beginner products. To build your own deck, start with how many lands a deck needs.