Learn the Rules

Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game where two or more players act as powerful spellcasters, called planeswalkers. Each player builds a deck of cards representing spells, creatures, and lands, then battles opponents by casting spells and attacking with creatures until an opponent’s life total hits zero (or another win condition is met).

To play, you’ll need:

• A deck — 60 cards for most formats, 100 for Commander
• A way to track life totals (dice, paper, or an app)
• One or more opponents, and a bit of table space

Don’t have a deck yet? Every Commander deck we build is complete and ready to play straight out of the box — browse our current decks.

Commander (also called EDH, short for “Elder Dragon Highlander”) is the most popular way to play Magic casually, and it’s the format every deck we build is designed for. A few things set it apart from other formats:

• 100-card, singleton decks — only one copy of each card allowed, apart from basic lands
• A Commander — a legendary creature that leads your deck, sets its colors, and starts each game in the “command zone” where you can cast it from
• 40 starting life — double the usual 20, since games often involve 3–4 players at once
• Multiplayer and social — Commander is built around table politics, big plays, and everyone having a good time rather than pure competitive optimisation

Every turn in Magic follows the same basic structure:

1. Untap — your tapped cards from last turn untap and become usable again
2. Upkeep — some cards trigger effects here
3. Draw — you draw a card for the turn
4. Main Phase 1 — play a land, cast creatures and sorceries
5. Combat — declare attackers, your opponent declares blockers, damage is dealt
6. Main Phase 2 — cast anything you held back before combat
7. End Step — a few last effects trigger, then priority passes to the next player

Lands provide mana (tap them for one of five colors — white, blue, black, red, or green), and mana pays for the spells in your hand. You can typically play one land per turn.