Magic 101: The Basics
Okay, now I'm doing short brief tutorials for MTG because the ideas for posts that I've been thinking recently aren't the ones that I want to write about. I have things to write about Webtoons, webcomics, drawing tutorials, some more commentaries about Stardew Valley and so on but I would rather talk about Magic the gathering rules while you can find a lot of them online.
The truth is I just want to draw and not to write but whenever I post a single drawing here somehow it gets votes and I feel guilty doing that. I can decide to just go MIA(missing in action) but that wouldn't be smart with today's market (crypto market) and I would look like a douche if I leave all these people that I invited here in Whaleshares (around 8 people so far) and see me just playing games and drawing things. So yeah, I just want to keep on writing from time to time while doing what I really want.
For this segment, I will be just talking about the game rules of Magic the Gathering. This rules as I said is something that you will find around the internet if you really want to but I want to try and explain this with my own words. Just consider this post as some kind of practice for me.
With that said, I'll start explaining.
Magic the Gathering, what is it? What do you need?
Magic the Gathering is a trading card game published during the 90's. Its the premiere trading card game before Yugioh, Pokemon and Hearthstones. As I said in my other post, this game had it's successes in the past and today it is more known as being an asset rather than just game. People who reads this post might disagree with that but be real, the majority consider something like Hearthstones over MTG because of how it is as a whole. With the new game from Valve being released soon(Artifact) Magic the Gathering as a game will get more spanking. But that is not the point of this post! I want to talk about rules so let us talk about that.
Magic the Gathering is a card game where two or more players pretend to be wizards. An individual wins with either making his/her opponent's life total go to zero, make his/her opponent deck out, or use something like Exodia the Forbidden one(wait, isn't that from a different game?).
There are several type of cards in Magic the Gathering, creature, lands, enchantment, sorcery, instants, artifacts and planeswalkers.
Creatures are the monsters that fight for you and do things for you. What a creature can do can also be done by the other types of cards but more likely creatures fight for you by either defending or attacking.
Lands are cards that produce mana for you. Mana is something that you spend for you to be able to play the other cards. You simply play a land by placing it on the table and you are allowed to play only one land per turn.
Enchantment and artifact are the same in paper other than artifacts have no color most of the time. They do shit once they are played and they stay on the battle field once you cast them unless it says so that you have to remove it.
Sorcery and instant are almost the same as well. They are spells that you cast one time then after the effect resolves, you place it in your discardpile/graveyard. The only difference that an instant and a sorcery have is that a sorcery can only be played at your turn and an instant can be played anytime as long as you have mana to pay for it.
Planeswalker is another type of card. Its like an enchantment or an artifact that does things but never attacks, the only thing that it differs in paper from enchantments and artifacts is that it can be attacked. You can use a planeswalker's abilities once per turn and only one ability per turn.
Cards that stay on the battle field once you cast them like lands, creatures , artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers and tokens are called permanents. Your deck or your opponents or any other player's deck is called a "library". The graveyard is where you place your used or dead cards and other than the graveyard, we also have this area called "exile zone" which I will try to explain on another post(with the best that I can).
That is the type of cards and some of the jargons that we use when playing MTG. With that said, let us go to things that you need and things that I will suggest you do if you want to play this game.
To play Magic the gathering you need a deck consisting of 60 cards and an opponent to play with. Like, in paper, this is simple but you have to consider that to play this game, you need to buy 60 pieces of expensive cardboard cutouts that I fully regret buying when I was younger.
That is the thing with trading card games, because of the ridiculous prices just to be able to play these games, not only MTG but other trading card games, the prices created a barrier that only people who can afford them can enjoy them. Personally, I wouldn't suggest buying them unless you want to collect them.
In today's world, people have a lot of means of entertainment. We have android fones, game consoles, pc, television and so on. Something as monopoly which is a board game for at least two people is unplayable alone before the computer but now? OMG, just look at fortnite and dota 2.
So I guess you should see where this recommendation will go to. Just play Magic the Gathering Arena or other games. I just made this post for practice and you shouldn't take anything in this post seriously cause the author of this post isn't in anyway serious.
Oh well, this is all for this post!
Oh hey!
This is the first art I've noticed having the cleaner colorist work!
I really like this! :)
Good on you for making this post. I'd like to see more MtG content on this platform.