Magic CCG Review

Since this game is so popular, I will not try to give a full explanation of all its aspects. Instead you would do better to search the WWW for some good sites on the subject.

Inspiration

Magic was published first in 1993 and is based upon an idea by Richard Garfield. The game is set in a fantasy world, where wizards duel to rule the world. In trying to do so, they use their powers to summon creatures from other worlds (planes) to fight the other wizard, who will probably also summon creatures to defend himself.

Objective

Goal of the game is to defeat your opponent in one of several ways. The most common way is to "kill" your opponent by bringing his lifepoints down from twenty to zero. You can do this by having your creatures attack your opponent, causing damage.
The other common reason is to cause your opponent to "run out of cards". Each player has a limited number of cards to play with. Whenever a player cannot draw a card when he has to, he loses the game.
There is another way to win the game, by using poison counters, but it is rarely used as it is very difficult to achieve.

Rarity

Magic know three sorts of rarity: Rares, Uncommons and Commons. Since this is the most popular CCG out there right now, a lot of people are after a limited number of good cards. Therefore, some rare cards can cost you a lot money (or cards in trade) to get.

Ever since 1993, a lot of expansion sets have been printed. In general, the older the cards you are looking for, the more difficult they are to find. Even when a card is available in a new set, the older ones are often more sought after for sentimental value or because the artwork is nicer.

There is also a "simplified" version of Magic, called Portal, which is being promoted as a good way to start Magic. My advice, however, is to ignore this set. First of all, the rules are simpler than the real game, so you will still have to learn a lot when you decide to switch. Second, a lot of cards from Portal are not legal to use in the ordinary game. Basically you spend money on Portal, learn some rules, start to like the use of certain cards and then find out you can throw it all away as soon as you start with the real thing. Just find someone willing to spend some time with you learning the real game in an easy way.

Explanation

Each player starts with his deck, which has to contain at least sixty cards. After drawing cards, each player has an opportunity to play one turn, in which he can play certain cards and perform an attack. If a player has previously managed to summon some creatures, he can use these creatures to attack his opponent. An opponent can use his creatures to hold of the attacking ones. If this is not possible, each unblocked creature will deal a certain amount of damage to the opponent. Should this damage bring your lifepoints at or below zero, you lose the game.

Magic has evolved very much and now it is a very complex game. There are many rules and a lot of cards have special rulings or errata to reflect the difficulties of the game. For those of us who have access to the Net, there is a great compilation of rules, updated monthly, nicknamed the D'Angelo rulings. Check those out, even if you are a seasoned player!


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