Magic: The Gathering

A quick summary on this marvelous card game

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Just what is Magic: The Gathering?Just what is Magic: The Gathering?

Magic: The Gathering (colloquially Magic or MTG) is a collectible card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic is the first example of the modern collectible card game genre and still thrives today, with an estimated six million players in over seventy countries. Magic can be played by two or more players each using a deck of printed cards or a deck of vir-tual cards through the Internet-based Magic: The Gathering Online or third-party programs.

Each game represents a battle between powerful wizards, known as "plane-swalkers", who use the magical spells,

items, and fantastic creatures depicted on individual Magic cards to defeat their opponents. Although the origi-nal concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the gameplay of Magic bears little resemblance to pencil-and-paper adventure games, while having sub-stantially more cards and more complex rules than many other card games.

An organized tournament system and a community of professional Magic play-ers has developed, as has a secondary market for Magic cards.

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1994: Mensa Select Award winner

1994: Origins Awards for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board game of 1993 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board game of 1993

1994: Origins Award for the Legends expansion as Best Game Accessory

1995: Italian Gaming Society Gioco dell Anno award winner

1996: Super As dOr award for Best New Game Concept and Genre Introduced in France

1997: InQuest Fan Award for Best CCG Expansion for the Weatherlight expansion

1998 Origins Award for the Urza’s Saga expansion as Collectible Card Game Ex-pansion of the Year

1999: Inducted alongside Richard Garfield into the Origins Hall of Fame

2003: Games Magazine selected Magic for its Games Hall of Fame

2005: Origins Award for the Ravnica: City of Guilds expansion as Collectible Card Game Expansion of the Year

2009: Origins Award for the Shards of Alara expansion as Collectible Card Game Expansion of the Year

Awards won throughout the years

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Each player needs a deck to play a game of Magic. Beginners often start with an initial Intro Pack, which can then be modified using cards from booster packs. In most tournament formats, decks are required to be a minimum of sixty cards, with no upper limit.[25] Players may use no more than four copies of any named card, with the exception of basic lands, which act as a standard resource in Magic.

Deck building requires much strategy as players must choose among thousands of cards which they want to play. This requires players to evaluate the power of their cards, as well as the possible syn-ergies between them, and their possible

interactions with the cards they expect to play against.[28] The choice of cards is usually narrowed by the player decid-ing which colors they want to include in the deck. This decision is a key part of creating a deck. In general, reduc-ing the number of colors used increases the statistical likelihood of drawing the lands needed to cast one’s spells while a player utilizing more colors has access to a greater arsenal of cards.

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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 ’Color Wheel’ or ’Pentagon of Colors’. Clockwise from the top, they are: white, blue, black, red, and green (respectively abbreviated W, U, B, R, and G).To play a spell of a given color, at least one mana of that color is required. This mana is normally generated by a basic land: plains for white, island for blue, swamp for black, mountain for red, and forest for green. The balances and distinctions among the five colors form one of the de-fining aspects of the game. Each color has strengths and weaknesses based on the ’style’ of magic it represents.

White is the color of order, equal-ity, righteousness, healing, law, com-munity, peace, absolutism/totalitarian-ism, and light, although not necessarily ’good’. White’s strengths are a roster of small creatures that are strong collec-tively; protecting those creatures with enchantments; gaining life; preventing damage to creatures or players; imposing restrictions on players; destroying arti-facts and enchantments; and the ability to ’equalize’ the playing field. White creatures are known for their ’Protec-tion’ from various other colors or even types of card, rendering them nearly impervious to harm from those colors or

cards. Numerous white creatures also have ’First Strike’, ’Lifelink’, and ’Vigilance’. White’s weaknesses in-clude a focus on creatures and the fact that many of its most powerful spells af-fect all players equally.

Blue is the color of intellect, reason, illu-sion, logic, knowledge, manipulation, and trickery, as well as the classical elements of air and water. Blue’s cards are best at letting a player draw additional cards; permanently taking control of an oppo-nent’s cards; returning cards to their owner’s hand; and countering spells. Blue’s creatures tend to be weaker than creatures of other colors, but commonly have abilities and traits which make them difficult to damage or block, par-ticularly ’Flying’ and to a lesser extent ’Shroud’. Blue’s weaknesses include having trouble permanently dealing with spells that have already been played, the reactive nature of most of its spells, and the fact that its creatures tend to be in-efficient.

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Black is the color of power, ambition, greed, death, corruption, selfishness, and amorality. It is not necessarily evil, but many cards refer directly and indirectly to this concept. Black cards are best at destroying creatures, forcing players to discard cards from their hand, making players lose life, and returning creatures from the dead. Furthermore, because Black seeks to win at all costs, it has limited access to many abilities or effects that are normally available only to one of the other colors; but these abilities are disproportionately expensive, often re-quiring the sacrifice of life, creatures, or other resources.

Red is the color of freedom, chaos, passion, creativity, impulse, fury, warfare, light-ning, the classical element of fire, and the non-living geological aspects of the classical element earth. Red’s strengths include destroying opposing lands and artifacts, sacrificing permanent re-sources for temporary but great power, and playing spells that deal damage to creatures or players. Red has a wide ar-ray of creatures, but with the exception of extremely powerful dragons, most are fast and weak, or with low toughness, rendering them easier to destroy. Some of Red’s cards can turn against or hurt their owner in return for being more powerful for their cost. Red also shares the trickery theme with Blue and can temporarily steal opponents’ creatures or divert spells, although generally not

permanently. Red’s weaknesses in-clude its inability to destroy enchant-ments, the self-destructive nature of many of its spells, and the way in which it trades early-game speed at the cost of late-game staying power. Red also has the vast majority of cards that involve random chance.

Green is the color of life, instinct, nature, reality, evolution, ecology and interde-pendence. Green has a large number of creatures, which tend to be the largest in the game for their cost. Many of its spells make them stronger temporarily. It can also destroy artifacts and enchantments, increase a player’s life total, get extra mana sources into play, and produce the other four colors of mana. Green creatures often have ’Trample’, an ability which lets them deal attack damage to an op-ponent if blocked by a weaker creature. Green’s weaknesses include its difficulty destroying creatures directly; a distinct shortage of flying creatures (though some of its creatures have ’Reach’, mak-ing them able to block flying creatures), and having few strategic options besides overwhelming the opponent with large and numerous creatures.

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Wizards of the Coast was founded by Peter Adkison in 1990 just outside Seat-tle, Washington, and its headquarters is still in nearby Renton.

In 1990, Richard Garfield approached Wizards of the Coast with the idea for a new board game called RoboRally, but was turned down because the game would have been too expensive for Wiz-ards of the Coast to produce. Instead, Adkison asked Garfield if he could in-vent a game that was both portable and quick-playing, to which Garfield agreed.

Adkison set up a new corporation, Gar-field Games, to develop Richard Gar-field’s collectible card game concept, originally called Manaclash, into Magic: The Gathering. This kept the game sheltered from the legal battle with Pal-ladium, and Garfield Games then licensed

the production and sale rights to Wiz-ards until the court case was settled, at which point the shell company was shut down. Wizards debuted Magic in July 1993 at the Origins Game Fair in Dal-las. The game proved extremely popular at Gen Con in August 1993, selling out of its supply of 2.5 million cards, which had been scheduled to last until the end of the year. The success of Magic gener-ated revenue that carried the company out from the handful of employees in 1993 working out of Peter’s original basement headquarters into 250 employees in its own offices in 1995. In 1994, Magic won both the Mensa Top Five mind games award and the Origins Awards for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board game of 1993 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board game of 1993.

Yes, But who are the Wizards?

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MSRP 1,99 USD

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