from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering

Magic: The Gathering (colloquially "Magic" or "MTG"), is a collectible card game created by Richard Garfield, Ph.D. and introduced by Wizards of the Coast in 1993. Magic inspired an entirely new game genre, and continues to endure with an estimated six million players in over seventy countries worldwide and on the Internet¹. The game plays as a strategy contest not unlike chess, but like most standard card games, there is an element of luck due to the random distribution of cards during shuffling.

In the game's primary fictional setting, each duel represents a battle between very powerful wizards called "planeswalkers" who draw upon magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures to do battle. Though the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic bears little resemblance to those pencil-and-paper campaigns.

The game boasts a thriving official tournament system, in which the game is played for cash and scholarship prizes, but is also known to be very well supported by casual gamers who only play with friends at schools, clubs, or home. The cards themselves also have value, much like other trading cards, but in this case based on both scarcity and game play potential.

History

When Peter Adkison, then CEO of the fledgling Wizards of the Coast games company, met Richard Garfield, then a graduate student who would become a mathematics professor, it was to discuss Garfield's new board game Roborally. Adkison was not very keen on the idea, as board games are expensive to produce and difficult to market. He did enjoy Garfield's ideas and mentioned that he was looking for a portable game that could be played in the downtime that frequently occurs at gaming conventions. Garfield returned later with a prototype he had been working with on and off over the last few years under the development name of Mana Clash. Adkison immediately saw the potential of the game and agreed to produce it.

Role-players were enthusiastic early fans of Magic, but the game achieved much wider popularity among strategy gamers. The commercial success of the game prompted a wave of other collectible card games to flood the market in the mid-1990s. Many of them were poorly designed and failed both commercially and in popularity. Although Magic's gross card sales have been surpassed in recent years, particularly by Japanese import games based on the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! franchises, Magic's popularity continues to grow steadily.

In 1996, Wizards of the Coast established the "Pro Tour" – a circuit of tournaments where players can compete for top prizes in excess of US$30,000 for a single weekend-long tournament, at which the total purse is over US$200,000. Sanctioned by the DCI, the popular series of tournaments adds an element of prestige and weight to the game by virtue of the large payouts and media coverage from within the community. The system is similar to the ones used in golf, tennis and other professional sports. The company publicizes good players who win frequently in order to create a "star" system, and examples for other players to follow and aspire to.

In 2002, an official online version of the game was released. While less functional methods of online play have existed, Magic: The Gathering Online was the first to capitalize on this interest. It had features which were lacking from previous methods; specifically, it handles game rules correctly. The online version has been a runaway success for the company and has inspired similar products from many popular collectible card games.

Awards

• 1994: Origins Awards for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Boardgame of 1993 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Boardgame of 1993
• 1999: Inducted alongside Richard Garfield into the Origins Hall of Fame
• 2003: GAMES Magazine selected it for its Games Hall of Fame

Game play

Main article: Magic: The Gathering rules

In a game of Magic, two players are engaged in a duel. A player starts the game with twenty "life" points and seven cards in their hand. If a player is reduced to zero life, that player loses the game. The object of Magic is to be the last surviving player.

Players fight each other by casting spell cards by drawing upon mana, or magical energy, from Land cards. There are two basic types of spells: those which become a "permanent", which stay on the table once they have been played, and those which affect the game immediately and are then put into their owners' graveyards. The types of cards are:

• Lands: Are the most basic resource of the game. A player may only play one land per turn, a feature which regulates the speed of the game by limiting the amount of mana available early.
• Creatures: Summon a magical creature or warrior that can attack the other player and/or be used for defense.
• Artifacts: Represent machines, devices, automatons, magical items, armor, and weapons.
• Enchantments: Modify the game environment or a specific permanent by generating an effect as long as they are in play.
• Instants: Spells which can be used by the player, after which they are discarded into the graveyard. Instants may be played by either player at almost any time, and as such are valued for their versatility.
• Sorceries: Spells similar to Instants, except may be played only during the player's own turn. The tradeoff is that Sorceries are typically more powerful than Instants.

Each player has a library, or draw pile; a hand containing cards drawn but not yet played; an area on the table for his or her lands, creatures, etc. that are in play (permanents); and a discard pile called the graveyard. Players may never look into the libraries (unless a card's ability allows you to do so) and may see their own hands only, but may normally view all the other cards on the table without restriction.

During each turn, the active player untaps his tapped cards (returns them to their upright state), draws one card, plays at most one land from his or her hand, casts as many spells as he or she wants to and can afford (with mana), and may attack another player with one or more creatures. In order for a creature to be used as an attacker, it must have been in play before the current turn starts. The attacking player taps the creature card by turning it sideways to indicate he or she is attacking with that creature. The defending player may declare some of his or her creatures as blockers. Attacking creatures deal damage to their assigned blockers (equal to their power) and are likewise damaged by them. A creature that amasses in one turn more than a specific amount of damage (its toughness) dies and goes to its owner's graveyard. Unblocked attackers deal damage to the player they attacked, reducing that player's life points. All damage dealt to creatures that did not die is healed at the end of the turn.

The protocol for resolving spell cards and other abilities is known as the stack, or the LIFO (Last In, First Out) rule. The stack works like this: A player may play any number of successive spells or abilities when he or she has priority. However, none of these actions will resolve (that is, take effect) until the player with priority passes it to the other player, and that player passes in return. If the second player adds anything more to the stack, they go "on top" of the actions already there. When both players pass in succession, the top action on the stack resolves. If both players pass when there are no actions on the stack, the game moves on to the next phase. Most effects use the stack, and all cards cast from the hand enter the stack and can therefore be responded to, except land cards.

Some spells have effects that override normal game rules (e.g., allow you to play more than one land per turn). The so-called "Golden Rule of Magic" is that if a card's text overrides a game rule, follow the card. Resolving interactions between conflicting spell effects is one of the more difficult aspects of game play. A detailed rulebook exists to clarify these conflicts.

Deck construction

A player needs a deck ready before he can play a game of Magic. Beginners typically start with only a starter deck, but over time, more cards are added to the player's stock through purchases or trading with other players. Due to the many possibilities, two players seldom play with the same decks.

Normally, decks are required to be at least sixty cards. Players may use no more than four of any named card, with the exception of "basic lands", a standard resource in Magic. When deciding which cards to include, it is often most beneficial to use the minimum deck size, combined with the maximum number of card copies, so that the most useful cards are drawn more often. Ensuring a proper balance of lands to spells is a fundamental aspect of deck building. A deck must have a large enough number of lands so that they are drawn in a timely manner. The ratio of lands to spells is typically in the range of around 33-40% land to 60-67% spells.

While five colors of spells, as well as colorless artifact spells, are available, it may help to play two or fewer colors in a deck, so that the color of spells drawn will usually match the color of mana available. At the same time, the five colors each have different strengths and weaknesses. For this reason, it may help to play three or more colors in a deck, so that the strengths of one color can compensate for the vulnerabilities of another.

The colors of Magic

Most spells come in one of five colors: white, blue, black, red, or green. To play a spell of one color, mana, produced by a land of the appropriate type, is required. The equilibrium among the five colors is one of the defining aspects of the game. The various strengths and weaknesses of each color are attributed to the fact that each color represents a different "style" of magic. Because the trade-offs between the abilities of each color are integral to keeping the game balanced, it is helpful to discuss the various color philosophies.

• White is the color of equality, order, law, righteousness, and light (although not necessarily "goodness"). Typical white creatures include knights, soldiers, clerics, and angels. Within the game, white's strengths lie in protecting and enhancing its creatures, healing damage, and imposing restrictions on the other players. White's weaknesses include its difficulty in removing the opponent's permanents through direct removal, and the fact that many of its most powerful spells affect all players equally.
• Blue is the color of knowledge, illusion, reason, ingenuity, and trickery. Typical blue creatures include wizards, faeries, and air and water spirits. Blue's cards are best at letting you draw additional cards, giving you control of opposing creatures, sending permanents back to their owner's hands (informally called "bouncing"), and countering (canceling) your opponent's spells as they are being played. Blue's weaknesses lie in that it has the weakest creatures of any color and it has only limited ways of dealing with opposing threats once they have entered play.
• Black is the color of death, darkness, plague, selfishness, ambition, and greed (although not necessarily "evil"). Typical black creatures include rats, zombies, demons, and necromancers. Within the game, black cards are best at killing opposing creatures, making your opponent discard cards which are in his or her hand, and raising creatures from the dead. Black's weaknesses include its inability to destroy enchantments and artifacts, and the fact that many of its best spells harm the player using them.
• Red is the color of destruction, war, passion, chaos, and anger. Typical red creatures include goblins, barbarians, dragons, and earth and fire spirits. Red is one of the best colors for destroying opposing permanents, trading long-term resources for short-term power, and for playing spells that reduce the opponent's life points (so-called "burn" or "direct damage"). Red also has the vast majority of cards that involve random chance. Red's weaknesses include its inability to destroy enchantments and the random nature of many of its spells.
• Green is the color of life, nature, growth, instinct, and interdependence. Typical green creatures include beasts, elves, insects and druids. Green has large, powerful creatures, numerous ways to destroy artifacts and enchantments, many spells that increase a player's life total, and can produce mana more quickly than any other color. However, green has difficulty removing opposing creatures from play, and has almost no strategies that are not creature-based.

The colors can be seen on the back of the cards, in a circle-like design, figuratively called the "color wheel". Starting from the top, going clockwise, they are: white, blue, black, red, and green. These can sometimes be abbreviated as W, U, B, R, and G respectively. The colors adjacent to each other on the wheel are "allied" and can have similar/complementary abilities or strategic approaches. For example, blue has few efficient, aggressive creatures in general, but does have a relatively large number of flying creatures. White and black, being next to it, also have many flying creatures. Red and green are opposite blue and have very few flyers. The two non-adjacent colors to a particular color are "enemy" colors, and are often thematically opposed. For instance, red is the color of chaos, while white is the color of order.

A series of five articles written by Mark Rosewater describing each color in depth can be found at the game's official site at MagicTheGathering.com: The Great White Way, True Blue, In the Black, Seeing Red, and It's Not Easy Being Green.

Some cards, such as artifacts and lands, are considered colorless. Other cards may be multiple colors, thus requiring two or more types of mana to play. Such cards are commonly known as gold cards due to the gold colored card frame normally used to reflect card color.

Variant rules

While the primary method of Magic play is one-on-one using standard deck construction rules, casual play groups have developed many alternative formats for playing the game. The most popular alternatives describe ways of playing with more than two players and change the rules about how decks can be built.

• Multiplayer — The simplest format is the free-for-all, where players sit in a circle and combat those around them to be the final surviving player. One popular variant is "Rainbow" (or "Five-Player Star") and involves exactly five players, each one playing one of the colors of Magic and trying to defeat the diametrically opposed ones. Team-based play is also extremely popular. "Two-Headed Giant" is a team game where pairs of players share turns and life totals. In "Emperor", two teams, each generally composed of three or five players, play to ensure their central player (the "emperor") outlasts the other. In June 2005, rules for handling multiplayer games were added to the official rulebook, and "Two-Headed Giant" team play is one of the first multiplayer variants to be sanctioned.

• Alternative deck construction — Various alternative rules can be used to govern the construction of decks. In one system, players are allowed to use only one of each card instead of the usual limit of four; this is called "Singleton" or "Highlander" ("There can be only one"). In the "Pauper's Deck" or "Peasant Magic" variants, the more powerful rare cards are not allowed, and players must construct decks using only the more commonly available cards as a way of balancing the games for players on a budget. In "5-Color" or "Prismatic Magic", players must build very large decks (at least 250 cards) and accommodate a minimum number of cards of each color, usually twenty. In order to alleviate problems with the mana resource system, some play variants include rules for building decks without lands. These variants often include other compensating controls, such as restricting players to one spell per turn (as in "Type IV" or "DC-10"), or in using spell cards themselves to be played as lands and produce matching colored mana. In "Mental Magic", a common stack of random cards is used as decks for each player. Play is normal except that the cards in their hand can be played as any card in the game with the same mana cost, but each such card can only be named once per game.

Organized play

Main article: Duelists' Convocation International

Magic: The Gathering has grown a lot since it was first introduced in 1993, and a large culture has developed around the game. Magic tournaments are arranged almost every weekend in gaming stores. Larger tournaments with hundreds of competitors from around the globe sponsored by Wizards of the Coast are arranged many times every year. Large sums of money are paid out to those players who place the best in the tournament, and the winner receives sums upward of US$50,000. A number of websites report on tournament news, give complete lists for the most currently popular decks, and feature articles on current issues of debate about the game. The Duelists' Convocation International (or DCI) is the organizing body for professional Magic events. The DCI is owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast.

There are two basic types of organized play, Constructed and Limited.

Constructed

In Constructed tournaments, each player comes with a pre-built deck. Decks must consist of no fewer than 60 cards, and no more than four of any one card (the basic land cards may be used in any quantity), just as in the standard game rules. Various tournament formats exist which define what card sets are allowed to be used, and which specific cards are disallowed.

Additionally, a 15-card sideboard is permitted, from which a player may tweak his or her deck during a match to better deal with their opponent's strategy. Following the first game of a best-of-three match, each player is permitted to replace any number of cards in his or her deck with an equal number of cards from his or her sideboard. The original deck configuration is restored at the conclusion of the match.

Limited

Limited tournaments are based on a pool of cards which the player receives at the time of the event. In sealed deck tournaments, each player receives 75 cards from which to build their deck. In a draft, players are seated around a table and select cards out of packs in some fashion, each ending up with 45 cards. Any number of basic lands may be added to the deck in both cases. The decks in limited tournaments need only be 40 cards; all the unused cards function as the sideboard.

Product information

Main article: Magic: The Gathering sets

Magic: The Gathering cards are produced in much the same way as normal playing cards. Each Magic card, 63 x 88 mm in size (approximately 2.5 by 3.5 inch ), has a face which displays the card's name and rules text as well as an illustration appropriate to the card's concept. Over 7000 unique cards have been produced for the game, with about 600 new ones added each year. Each player builds a deck of cards, chosen from those which he or she owns (with certain restrictions as discussed below) to be used in a duel against an opponent.

The first Magic cards were printed exclusively in English, but current sets are also printed in Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.

Magic cards are released in expansion sets and base sets. Expansion sets are released in "blocks", with a new block released each year. Each block consists of three sets: a large expansion of 306 cards, which is released in the fall, and two smaller follow-up expansions, each 165 cards, released in late winter and early summer, respectively. Each block shares an overarching theme in its design, with the smaller sets expanding upon the flavors and game mechanics of the large set. The expansions consist almost entirely of new cards, with few reprints of already-existing cards.

The base sets consist entirely of reprints of existing cards, most of them being fairly simple in function. The purpose of the base set is twofold. Firstly, it is used as a "stepping stone", giving new players a chance to learn and understand the basics of the game without having to deal with the more complicated mechanics often used in the expansions. Secondly, it allows certain staple cards to remain legal within the various tournament formats without the need to reprint them in an expansion. This also makes these staple cards easier to acquire, lowering the barrier to entry for constructed play. The current edition of the base set (as of 2005, Ninth Edition) is always called the game's "Core Set."

In 2003, starting from the Eighth Edition, the game went through its biggest visual change since its creation--a new card frame layout was developed to allow more rules text and larger art on the cards, while reducing the thick, colored border to a minimum. Contrast and readability were improved by using black type instead of the previous white, a new font, and partitioned areas for the name, card type, and power and toughness.

Secondary market

There is an active secondary market in individual cards among players and game shops. On eBay, for example, there are an estimated 30,000 Magic: The Gathering card auctions running at any one time.

The game cards are published by Wizards of the Coast in varying quantities – a standard booster pack contains eleven common cards, three uncommon cards, and one rare. The prices of individual cards vary accordingly. Common cards rarely sell for more than a few cents. Uncommon cards and weak rares typically cost under US$1. The most expensive cards in Standard tournament play usually cost approximately US$10-20.

The most expensive card is generally considered to be the Black Lotus, with certain rare printings as of 2005 rising above US$1000. A small number of cards of similar age, rarity, and playability, chiefly among them the other cards in the so-called "Power Nine", routinely reach high prices as well. In 2003, after the rotation of the Extended tournament format and in combination with the first Type 1 Championships, the prices for such old, tournament-level cards underwent a large, unexpected increase.

As new sets come out, older cards are occasionally reprinted. If a card has high play value, reprinting will often increase the original version's price, because of the higher demand among players. However, if the card is primarily attractive to collectors, reprinting will often decrease the original version's value. To help protect the collectible value of many old cards, Wizards of the Coast has formulated an official "Reprint Policy", which details certain cards that are unavailable to be printed again. [1]

Artwork

Each card has an illustration to represent the flavor of the card, often reflecting the setting of the expansion for which it was designed. Since its inception, Magic has used exceptionally high-quality art on its cards, by many well-known fantasy and science-fiction illustrators. Notable artists who have contributed art for Magic cards include John Avon, Brom, John Coulthart, Mike Dringenberg, Kaja Foglio, Phil Foglio, Frank Kelly Freas, Donato Giancola, Rebecca Guay, John Howe, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ron Spencer, Bryan Talbot, Christopher Rush, Kev Walker, and Michael Whelan.

A few early sets experimented with alternate art for functionally identical cards. This created an unforeseen problem and a lesson learned for the company. Many players learn to recognize a card by its art and, thus, having multiple versions of art caused confusion when players tried to identify a card at a glance. Consequently, alternate art is now only used sparingly and mostly for promotional or chase cards.

Most of the artwork created was initially left completely in the hands of the artist. However, after a few years of submissions featuring beings with wings on creatures without flying, or multiple creatures in the art of what was supposed to be a single creature, the art direction team decided to impose a few constraints so that the artistic vision more closely aligned with the design and development of the cards. Each block of cards now has its own style guide with sketches and descriptions of the various races and places featured in each new setting.

As cards are reprinted over the years, many older cards eventually return with new art. Even older cards with iconic art such as Serra Angel or Wrath of God are not immune to a visual overhaul. All of this artwork becomes property of Wizards of the Coast once a contract is signed. However, the artist is allowed to sell the original piece and printed reproductions of it, and for established and prolific Magic artists, this has become a lucrative source of revenue.