Magic: The Gathering rules

The rules for Magic: The Gathering were first written by its creator, Richard Garfield, and came with the game’s initial release in 1993. Since then, Wizards of the Coast has updated them often, usually with small tweaks, though a few major overhauls have occurred as well.

In its most common form, Magic is a two-player game where each person uses their own deck. To start, each player draws a hand of seven cards and then takes turns. During a turn, a player may put one land card into play (which produces mana), cast spells that require specific amounts and colors of mana, and attack the opponent to lower their life total. The game begins with each player at 20 life, and a player wins by reducing an opponent’s life to zero.

A typical game involves two or more players acting as powerful wizards called Planeswalkers. Each player’s deck is built from cards they own, often purchased and assembled from a limited selection. A player loses if their life total hits zero or if they must draw from an empty deck. Some cards provide alternative win or loss conditions. One of the game’s core rules is that if a card’s text directly contradicts the standard rules, the card wins. The game has many variants; Magic often adopts popular house rules as official formats—Commander, for instance, began as a fan creation.

Formats Magic can be played in many formats, each with its own deck-building and gameplay rules. Many formats restrict which card sets are allowed. The Wizards Play Network (WPN) divides formats into Tournament and Casual categories. “Sanctioned” formats are those the WPN permits for official events, which may add extra rules, such as banning proxy cards. Players have also invented alternative formats, some of which Wizards has later made official. Commander is a popular casual sanctioned format.

Formats split into Constructed and Limited. In Constructed, players bring pre-built decks using any tournament-legal cards they own. Sanctioned Constructed formats include Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. In Limited, players build decks on the spot from a random pool of cards, usually by opening Magic products. The main sanctioned Limited formats are Sealed Deck and Booster Draft.

Deck Construction Building a deck requires strategy. Players choose from thousands of cards, weighing power, synergies, and likely opponent strategies—a “metagame”