Wizards Duel in Magic: the Gathering

The game Magic: the Gathering (a.k.a. M:TG) broke new ground when it was published in 1993.  It was the first trading card game – a game where you collect cards and select some to add to your deck.  In Magic, your deck consists of spells to cast and creatures to summon as you participate in a duel of wizards.  Many trading card games have since followed in it’s foot steps, including very popular games like Vampire TGC and Pokemon.  After all these years, M:TG is still going strong with several expansions published every year.

For those of you new to Magic, here’s a look at one of the free “mini” starter decks that I’ll be giving out at my Friday “Learn to Play Magic” event:

In Magic, there are 5 Colors (White, Green, Red, Black, and Blue).  Since each of these “mini” decks is 30 cards, they’re perfectly sized to combine into a normal 60-card deck.   Each player can pick any two of their choice, for a variety of color combinations. (That’s 5 choose 2 combinations for the math geeks!)

While I will happily teach people what’s going on (or help refresh those who haven’t played in awhile), you can also pick up some good basics on the Wizards of the Coast website.

The Saturday Magic event is a Return to Ravnica sealed deck tournament.  You’ll need to know the basics of how to play Magic for this one, so either come to Friday’s event or check out the how to play link above.  Don’t worry about knowing anything specific about this set – I’ll explain things up front when we start, and will be around to answer any questions.

For those unfamiliar with sealed deck, each player gets 6 booster packs plus as much basic land as they want to build a minimum 40-card deck.  Again, no worries if you haven’t done a sealed deck before – I’ll explain further how it works there, and give some basic strategy suggestions for those who are new.

After everyone has built their deck, we’ll then we’ll play 4 “swiss” rounds, which means that after each round, we’ll try to pair people against people with as similar records as possible (for example, if you win the first round, you will generally play someone else who also won the first round).  Prizes packs will be awarded to people with the best records after 4 rounds.

For the sealed tournament, we’ll be using this year’s new set: “Return to Ravnica”.  Ravnica is a city-themed world that pits the various “guilds” against each other.  Each guild is a 2-color combination.  For example, the Azorius are the White and Blue guild, and here are a couple of their cards: 

Dramatic Rescue (on the right) is a multicolor card – it costs a white and a blue mana to play.  Vassal Soul (left) is a hybrid card – it costs 1 generic, plus two “hybrid” blue/white mana – meaning you can pay each as either blue or white mana.  Hybrid cards like Vassal Soul make for very flexible deck building, as while it is best in a blue and white deck, it could also work fine in other color combinations, such as a green and white deck.

For those who are curious, you can find the complete list of the cards in the set online.

Hope to see you there!

-Eric

Pre-registration closes on October 12th, so register before it’s too late and select your Magic: The Gathering event ticket.