Tag: Magic the Gathering

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Learn to Play Magic – Part 3 : The Commander Format

Hello Everyone! MacKenzie back again to help you learn the wonderful game of Magic!

The last time we talked I worked my way through the phases in the game and how to go through turn in general. Now I want to get you started on learning one of Magic’s most-played formats; Commander. This is a format to build wacky decks focused around synergy, powerful mechanics, or just a group of cards you like to play with.

Commander has been around for a long time, it started at Magic conventions with a group of friends who wanted to play something in-between judging/playing in different rounds. The idea was to play a game based around the Elder Dragons. 

”Nicol Bolas, an Elder Dragon.”

Don’t worry if you have no idea what those are, they are a very old set of cards from 1994 from a set called Legends. This was the first set with legendary creatures populating a large majority of the packs, ever since the legendary sub-type has been adapted to a number of different things, but creatures remain the main source throughout Magics history. Commander players take advantage of this and use these legendary creatures to “command” their decks; meaning, the deck is generally built around the legendary creature and taking advantage of its abilities. 

Commander was originally known as Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH); Elder Dragon for the main commander used (back then mostly for their color identities) and Highlander for the singular nature of the format. You heard that right, this format, you can only use 1 of any card in your deck other than basic lands. Providing a unique game experience that is much different from that of other formats, commander allows you to build around synergy and groups of cards you enjoy to create the smooth-running machine that is a Magic deck and this usually allows for longer gameplay wich is popular with casual magic players. 

The rules in Commander are a bit more complicated than that of a “Normal” game of Magic. It starts with picking your Commander (some people would call it their General) as well as possibly picking a few Lieutenants to include in the deck. These are all legendary creatures that share the same color identity. Most cards in Magic have a color identity, a defining characteristic in their mana cost or otherwise that designates them to a single or group of colors within the game. Having this is what allows you to choose your General and Lieutenants for your commander deck, but also determines what cards are legal to play within said deck. I will begin with a simple commander from a recent set;

This is a mono-black commander, meaning that you can only have spells that have black in their color identity or are colorless. Vito has the black mana cost, which determines him being a mono-black commander, as well as his activated ability using only black mana symbols. 

Vito is a good example, as he has both black mana symbols in his casting cost and his activated ability; since his activated ability did not have to be exclusively black. There are a number of cards that seem like they would be a mono colored general on the surface, but have an activated ability that requires one or more colors to activate, thus changing their color identity for this game mode. Here are two examples of creatures that have this occur;

Can you see why these cards have multiple-colors in their identities? No? Well, you aren’t alone, both of these creatures are actually commanders for 3 or more colors. Najeela is a 5 color commander due to her activated ability using all 5 colors, which means you can play any cards you want in a deck with her at the helm!

Samut looks like it would be a two-color commander on the surface, but is actually 3 due to her activated ability using a white mana symbol. This allows green red, and white cards to be played in a deck with her as the general. 

As you can see, the choice of general is very important to what the rest of your deck wants to be doing, in the same way the choice of lieutenants can mean a great deal. A deck does not need lieutenants, but they can be very useful. They can replace your commander as an alternate way to play the deck, which gives the deck longevity it may not have if you play it a great deal. Lieutenants share the same color identity as your commander, and so can be switched out before the game starts, if you want to give a specific general a break. 

One of the other strange things about the commander format is cards that your commanders attacking power can matter. I know that sounds strange, but it is another quirk that has stayed with the game over the years since its beginning. The idea is that dealing 21 commander damage to any single opponent will take them out of the game; mitigating any life gain an opponent may have. 

“21 Damage? Why that amount?” You may want to ask, well this is due to the original Elder Dragons we talked about earlier, each of them had 7 Power, which made it so that three hits with your Elder Dragon of choice would kill your opponents no matter the game state at that time. This extra damage you have to worry about adds a level of complexity to the game and allows different strategies to form around it to try and kill opponents with large powered commanders.

A few more rules that should be kept in mind when thinking about Commander are that 40 health is the starting amount when playing with 3 or more players, and 30 life when playing the format 1 on 1. Besides this cards that have a hybrid mana cost can only be played in decks with both of the given colors. An example of this from the most recent set would be;

“Kaheera, the Orphanguard”

As you can tell commander is a very complicated format, but is a ton of fun to play once you actually get to building. An easy way to get started on making your own commander deck is to choose something you enjoy in Magic and build around it. Find a commander that suits your purposes and use it to get to where you want to go. 

To get my Fiance into magic, I built her a Cat commander deck around Arahbo, Roar of the World. He is a commander made to perfectly helm a cat commander deck. And if you would like to see that deck, and other decks I have made, be sure to check back next time here at Geekadrome.com!

“Arahbo, Roar of the World”

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Learning to Play Magic – part 2

Greetings magic players!  Last time we met I told you a lot about the basics of Magic, the color pie and card types. Today we will go a step further. We will be talking about the game itself, the “phases” of the game, and talk a bit about different formats within the game. 

Magic the gathering’s main formats all require a 60 card minimum for their deck to be legal, this includes Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. Those terms are likely foreign to you at this point, but by the end of this article you will understand the different formats well enough to decide what type of magic you would like to play and even to educate your friends too. Back to the deck itself, these 60 card decks generally have a sideboard of 15 cards, cards that you are allowed to change into that main 60 card deck during 2nd and 3rd games in tournament play. These cards allow you to change your deck to help defeat specific strategies or gain the upperhand in a different way than your main 60 card deck would. In the previous article I went into what makes up the deck itself, but today we will be talking about actually playing the game using this 60 card deck you’ve built! 

Your deck is built and you are prepared to battle against your friend or if online against a random person. You want to make sure you are doing everything according to the rules of course, but how do the turns play out? There is a very useful graphic that Wizards of the Coast produces to help explain this. 

This is the most basic formula for a turn order; with every turn following this general outline throughout the entire game. (If need be, you can print this out to help)

First, your Untap Step occurs, allowing you to untap all the permanents currently on the battlefield at that time. (If this is your first turn of the game, you likely won’t have anything yet. But it’s still good to remember)

Second, is your Upkeep, allowing certain effects to occur before your draw phase occurs. These can be effects your opponent has or you yourself have. An example would be a card that says: “At the beginning of your upkeep draw a card.”

Then comes your Draw phase. When you draw a card for the turn, every turn. There are certain cards that have an affect after you draw your card for the turn. An example of this would be a recent card type called “Saga’s,” having an ability that occurs after you draw your card for the turn by adding a counter to themselves, but before your Main Phase. 

Then comes the Main phase. This is where the majority of your casting of spells will occur. Plus, this is where you get to play your one land per turn, allowing you to cast the spells in your hand over time. You can cast certain card types only during your main phase, while other ones can be cast at any time. Sorceries, Planeswalkers, Enchantments, Artifacts, and Creatures are the main card types that can only be played during your main phase. There are certain “Keywords” that get around this timing restriction, but we will go over those later. 

You then move to your Combat Phase. This is when you decide which creatures you want to attack your opponent with if any. Within this phase, there are several smaller phases where your opponent has time to act and react to your actions. These are; declare attackers, declare blockers, damage, and post combat.

Main Phase two comes next. You gain the ability again to play spells as you would during your First Main Phase. This allows you to play spells you did not during your first main phase, but it is exactly the same as the first main phase otherwise. 

You then move to your end step, which also has small phases within it. You go to your end step, where certain abilities will occur, for example a card can say “At your end step, Exile this creature.” These types of abilities will all occur here, then there is a cleanup phase, where if you have more than 7 cards in hand you will need to discard a card from your hand to allow the game to progress to your opponent’s turn.

Now that all of those phases have passed, it is your opponent’s turn! They get to move through the same process you just did and play out their hand just as you have. This process will allow the game to progress and, hopefully, bring you victory over the course of several turns!

Understanding the phases of the turn is the first step to actually playing a game of magic; the intricacies of this are numerous though. Whether that be timing activations of abilities, casting of spells, or creatures attacking in; these play patterns help to make the game as enjoyable of an experience as it is, allowing for different dynamics to occur every time you pull out a deck of cards. But now, we move on to formats, and helping you to choose how you want to play the game!

Formats

There are a large number of Magic formats to choose from and play; with some following the standard format of 60 cards with a 15 card sideboard, other’s with 100 cards decks that only allow for 1 of any card! These formats all contain a separate set of rules or card pools, the different cards legally allowed to be played within that format. 

(This leads me on a small tangent, in most formats 4 of any card, other than a Basic Land, are allowed in any deck. This means that I can only have 4 of a card named “Llanowar Elves,” but I can also have 4 of “Llanowar Tribe” since they have different card names. This allows for the gameplay in each game to have an element of variance that it wouldn’t have, if you were allowed to have any number of a card in your deck. There are certain cards that break this rule by literally having the text “You may have any number of this card in your deck.” There are formats that do not allow this, such as Brawl, Commander, and a few others, but those do not relate to the main competitive formats we will be talking about today.)

Standard is the constructed format of choice for most new players, as this entails only the most recent cards that have been released into Magic the Gathering. This format includes sets from the last 2-3 years, with the list being updated as new sets are released and old sets rotate out (losing legality within that format.)  

Don’t worry though, those cards that rotate out of standard have moved into the next format, Pioneer. This format includes cards from the set “Return to Ravnica” onward, this is a set that was released in October of 2012, so any sets produced into the Standard cycle of sets is legal to be played in this format. 

If you come across cards that came out before this and want to play with them then Modern may be the format for you. This format includes all Standard Cycle sets from July 2003 in “Eighth Edition” to today. This format also includes a supplemental product in its legality in the name of “Modern Horizons”. The first supplemental set ever printed directly into the modern format!

Now, if you have cards ranging back to the beginning of Magic the Gathering’s existence, whether this be from your parents playing, or an older sibling or friend etc, then Legacy or Vintage could be your format of choice. These formats allow you to use cards back to Magics inception with a few restrictions. Legacy and Vintage are the more “powerful” formats, since they include such a wide range of cards you can use. Also within these formats you are allowed to use any cards printed in Magic’s long history, this means cards from any supplemental set not printed into the Standard Cycle. This allows players to play with cards in competitive formats they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. 

These are not all the formats one can play, but these are the most competitive ones out there currently. There are more casual formats such as Commander, Brawl, Oathbreaker, Historic, Etc. which all include their own ban lists and rules, which we will go into another time, but for now we are focusing on competitive formats, as those are what most Local Game Stores (like Geekadrome, hint hint) hold events for and what you can currently play online. 

Each of the above formats have their own banned list, cards that you cannot play in the format for a number of reasons, as well as Vintage having a restricted list, cards you can only play a single copy of in your deck. These rules help to regulate the competitive formats so that any number of decks you decide to build are viable/ can have a chance of doing well at any given time. Keep this in mind when building your first deck for your chosen format, it isn’t a good time to show up at your local game store hoping to play a few games just to have the deck you wish to play have illegal cards within it. To check that, please use the link here.

Anyways, thank you for reading and I hope you’ve learned a little more about how to play Magic the Gathering this week. We will be back soon! If you have any questions in regards to my article or about Magic in general, do not hesitate to send me an email and I will do my best to help!

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How to Play Magic: The Gathering – Part 1

So you have discovered Magic: The Gathering. You’re beginning a journey you won’t want to stop for the foreseeable future; at least that’s the way it was for me. The game itself seems very simple when you get down to brass tax, but it becomes much more complex the longer you play the game. Don’t worry about that for now though, I am here to get you started, help you learn the basics, and set you on your way to becoming a powerful player.

There are many games comparable to Magic, but none quite like it. For starters, it has been around for over 25 years at this point, longer than cards games like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon TCG. That alone would not set it apart, the strategy and deck-building within this game span multiple formats and age groups, allowing anyone to play at any time. These formats cater to a number of different groups and competitive spirits. Though, for someone just getting started there is an easy way to learn the basics of play and begin challenging yourself to learn this game; through an online client called MTGA, or Magic the Gathering Arena.

The client mentioned above has a select number of formats and ways to play the game, allowing new players to learn the basics as well as play with their friends whenever they would like. This platform is particularly relevant in our current situation, where tabletop gameplay is difficult to arrive at, especially for someone looking for a new hobby or new to the game. Using this platform someone can begin to experience the world of Magic while in the comfort of their home. You wouldn’t come to read an article about an online gaming platform though, and that is why I am here; to tell you about the real game itself.

The Game:

Magic the Gathering has a fundamental base; where everything is built off of, just like any other TCG or Video Game. This base is aptly seen in the basics within the game. “Basics?” you may ask, “what are those?” These are the building blocks that the game uses to progress. Every game of Magic has a deck, a set of cards put together with a goal set in mind, that use’s these basics and other mana sources to play spells.

Mana is how you pay to put cards into play, On the majority of cards, there is a Mana cost. A cost associated with what it will take to get that spell into play. This mana is generally produced by land cards. These lands allow you to build a functional deck to play against your opponents. Your deck will have a mixture of lands and spells. The regular ratio is around ⅓ of a deck should be lands or other sources of mana. Allowing the rest of the deck to be filled with spells to further your gameplan.

There are a number of types of spells within the game; Instants, Sorceries, Creatures, Enchantments, Artifacts, and Planeswalkers. These are all the types of spells one can cast in the game, these types span a number of colors as w0ell under the idea of Basic Mana types; primarily Forests (green), Mountains (red), Islands (blue), Plains (white), and Swamp (black). These are the base elements of any Magic the Gathering deck, as stated previously, that will allow you to create a deck that functions like clock work.

Each of these card types and color types has their own identity within the Magic the Gathering universe; all primarily doing something different in regards to how the game progresses. This allows for a large number of different decks to be built and played against each other without the game ever going stale in terms of gameplay scenarios. To help you understand this, it would be best to go over the colors themselves and what their functionality is within the game, while then going more in-depth into the different card types; this will allows one to get a better understanding of the type of player they are and what they may like to try out as their experience with the game deepens. 

The Colors:

Forests (green): This is the color of nature as one would suspect. This color focuses on creatures both small and large, hoping to grow out into the world in any way possible. It has a focus on getting on board and beating down one’s opponent over time. Green has a focus on Elves and a multitude of beasts to overcome your opponent’s strategy. 

Mountains (red): This is the color of anger and fire, as one would suspect this color wants to burn things down. It is focused on removing opponents’ creatures and killing your opponent as fast as possible. It relies on small creatures and a build up of damage over the early turns usually. Red creatures have a base in creature types like Goblins and Dragons to clog up the board. 

Islands (blue): This is the color of serenity and patience. This color wants to play a long game the majority of the time, focusing on attrition to take your opponent low on resources and saying “NO” to everything they try to do. This is not the only thing the color does, but it is the basic principle of the color to control the board through countering spells and playing the long con. Blue creatures range heavily, but there is a focus on sea animals in leviathans and krakens, as well as merfolk.

Plains(white): This is the color of justice and duty within the game, with an aspect of attrition one could expect. This color focuses usually on tokens and incremental value, hoping to outdo your opponent by overwhelming them and living far longer than they would. A key aspect of this color would be gaining life, a resource that every magic game begins with, as a way to keep ahead of your opponents. White focuses on Angels and humans for a great deal of its creature base.

Swamps (black): This is the color of destruction and of horrors. This color focuses on hurting your opponent through incremental card advantage and card disruption. Mixing that idea with ways to destroy creatures on the board and control the cards you can cast, it is similar to blue as a controlling color. It also focuses on the darker creature types such as zombies, demons, and vampires as its base elements. 

Now that you have a base understanding of how each color functions, it is time to look into the different types of cards you can play within your deck. A deck is standardly made up of 60 cards, with a 15 card sideboard, allowing you to modify your main deck in order to adapt to different decks you may come across. This will help you to build a deck to progress your gameplan, but also to affect your opponents in a 2nd or 3rd game. The cards in your deck help determine what your gameplan is the majority of the time. 

Some decks prefer to have a very large number of creatures, the cards you use to attack your opponent’s life total that stay on the board, generally having power and toughness that allows them to physically attack your opponent and drop their life to 0. While others prefer to have a small number of creatures, and instead capitalize on a large number of instances, spells you can cast to affect the board at any time, and sorceries, spells you can cast only on your turn. Then there are Enchantments, these are a permanent, something that stays on the board after you play it, which have a variety of effects. They are very similar to Artifacts, a generally colorless card type that can be played in any deck, except they are very color restrictive the majority of the time. Finally there are planeswalkers, another permanent type, but these ones have abilities you can only activate once they are on the board, they are similar to a creature, except they cannot attack or defend, and can be targeted by your opponent with attacks or spells. 

Whew, that was a lot to learn, right? Now you mash all your cards together, making sure you have green cards with your forests, and white cards with your plains. Where do you go from there? Well, it’s on to start learning about how to play the game itself. Come back for that article next week!

For now, If you are excited to get started check out some of the Pre-Constructed decks below or Sealed product to get started building your collections NOW!

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Mtg News – Ikoria PreRelease & COVID-19

Sad to say Here in Pittsburgh, Pa we won’t be able to host a PreRelease or Release event for the upcoming set Ikoria. HOWEVER The set WILL still be releasing on May 15th. And all local Preorders will be delivered that day. Some of you might be asking about the PreRelease kits. Don’t worry, PreRelease kits will still be able to be purchased here in the online store. Some Ikoria Product is also still available for Preorder. Items not Preordered before the 15th will be delivered as soon as possible after. See the below links to place Preorders and orders of the New Ikoria set product. any further questions not addressed here can be directed to our email geekadrome@gmail.com with The subject COVID Questions.

Thank You and Stay Safe, Geekadrome Management