Magic - an Introduction
What is Magic?
Magic is a collectable trading card game with a fantasy theme. Huh, what a description! But wait, I can explain it.
A card game
To play a game of Magic all you need are the cards, at least one other player, some free space on the table and some time.
Although a lot of players use some extra equipment like neat little stones and dices with numbers of faces you wouldn't have guessed it would be possible to shape an object that way, these things are just to make playing more comfortable, but your chances do not depend whether you have those gimmicks or not.
The number of players can vary from 2 to 8. It is still possible to think of rules for more or less players, but it gets a bit boring if you play with too many players or on your own.
Collectable trading cards
Sad thing is: you can't just walk into your local comicstore and buy "those Magiccards"; you have to collect them.
You do this by buying different packages of cards from different expansion sets (up to now there have been five basic editions and ten expansion sets). A single pack ain't enough to play, so you have to buy some more.
When you have bought quite a few you can make a selection of your best (or preferrably those, which work best together) and built a deck, which will be the pile of cards you will use to beat the other Magic players.
You will notice that some cards show up much more often than others, and this is right: every single card can be specified to be common, uncommon or rare. For a classification to which group a card belongs you may want to check my cardlists.
As it is very difficult (and expensive!) to buy all cards, you will soon feel the urge to trade cards with other players like: "Hey, great, you have a Zuran Orb, maybe you would like to have my Howling Mine!" (it depends on the cards you already have or need to have to decide if this would be good exchange).
Some people also sell single cards (especially the rare ones), but be careful: some may try to cheat you by selling a photocopy of a real card.
Collecting Magic cards can take some time, my own guess is that there are about 1500-2000 different cards released.
... with a fantasy theme
Definitely the most interesting thing when you first watch a game of Magic. Every card is decorated with a neat piece of artwork. Those pictures feature a lot of different things from the fantasy world of Dominia.
Role players will enjoy the reappearance of familiar names like Goblins, Heroes, Fireballs and a lot others.
Huh! That's all?
Nope, I'm afraid not. This is just the beginning. By now I haven't lost a word about the rules, the principles of the game or general strategies. But keep on.
So, how do I learn Magic?
Every starterpack (I'll explain later what that is) contains a small rulebook. It explains all rules and even features a sample game.
In fact Magic is a game you need to learn by doing. The basic rules are simple, but there is a huge variety of cards out there that modify the rules or even revert them.
Try to find some other Magic players (you'll need them anyway to play) and ask them, if one of them can teach you the basics. This is usually a good idea, as most Magic players meet more or less regularly and are always glad to spread around their game.
If you don't know where to find other players, ask at the shop where you bought the cards, they should know at least one club.
That's it...
... for now. Study my rules if you got interested.