Magic: The Gathering rules
A typical game of Magic involves two or more players who are engaged in a battle, acting as powerful wizards known as Planeswalkers.
[2] According to CNET, the game has many variants; "Magic tends to embrace all that house ruling, making it official when it catches on.
There are two main categories mandated by the Wizards Play Network (WPN): Tournament and Casual.
[6] The term "sanctioned" refers to formats the WPN allows to be run at official events.
[7] Officially sanctioned events can add additional rules, such as the disallowance of proxy cards.
[8] Players have also invented alternative formats for playing the game, some of which Wizards of the Coast has accepted.
[14][5] Constructed formats require decks to be made prior to participation; players are allowed to use any tournament-legal cards they possess.
[14][15] Limited formats, in contrast, use a restricted and unknown pool of cards that is usually formed by opening Magic products.
Limited competition require players to select cards and build decks during the tournament.
[4]: 61 At the beginning of a game, each player shuffles their deck and draws seven cards to form their starting hand.
[39][40] Evergreen keywords "can appear in absolutely any set, since its gameplay effects and flavor are flexible and generic enough to fit anywhere.
[42][43][44] According to Game Rant: "most planes have some unique rules that are only relevant on cards from specific sets" and "new mechanics are constantly added to shake things up and give the players new tools to work with".
[33][45] All objects that remain on the battlefield are called permanents, types of which include lands, creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and planeswalkers.
[46][47] Land cards tap to produce mana that is used to cast spells and activate abilities.
[33][30] Creatures have two values that represent their strength in combat; these are printed on the card's lower right-hand corner.
[4]: 44 The second number is its toughness;[4]: 44 if it receives that much damage in a single turn, the creature is destroyed and placed in the graveyard.
[50] Enchantments represent persistent magical effects; they are spells that remain on the battlefield and alter some aspect of the game.
[4]: 46 Artifacts represent magical items, animated constructs, pieces of equipment, or other objects and devices.
Instants can be cast at any time, including during other players' turns and while another spell or ability is waiting to resolve.
Planeswalker cards were originally designed to move autonomously through a roster of effects without player control.
[27] Screen Rant commented:One of the more important aspects of constructing a deck is the mana ratio.
[61] In April 1994, Wizards of the Coast attempted to simplify and formalize Magic rules with the Revised Edition card set.
[61] It also introduced the "last-in first-out" (LIFO) timing system that in a similar form is still used in the game today, instead of spells being simultaneously resolved as they were in earlier editions.
[52] During the next year it became clear to Wizards of the Coast the game needed a more-detailed rulebook, leading to the development of the Comprehensive Rules, which were introduced in mid-1995 with the Fourth Edition card set.
[61] According to Dan Grey: "Fifth Edition rules changed interrupts to work remarkably like instants, simplified the attack, and introduced several 'new' concepts that had never had formal names (including phase costs and triggered abilities)".
Instead of spells resolving in complete batches, players could now interact on the stack at any point, interrupts were removed from the game, combat damage used the stack, and the rules deactivating tapped artifacts and preventing tapped blockers from dealing damage were removed.
[64] Several rule changes were made to make the game terminology more flavorful, such as renaming the "in play-zone" to "battlefield".
[66][67][68] For example, with the elimination of the "play for ante" mechanic in all formal formats,[69] all cards with this feature were banned.
[70] Wizards of the Coast has banned some old cards from all formal play due to inappropriate racial or cultural depictions in their text or illustrations in the wake of the George Floyd protests, and their images have been blocked or removed from online Magic databases.
[71][72] This includes a card called "Invoke Prejudice", which was displayed on the official card-index site Gatherer "at a web URL ending in '1488', numbers that are synonymous with white supremacy".
