MTG is a fantasy card game where strategy is key, and also a with little bit of luck involved. Actually it isn't that far away from poker since you need to read your opponent as well as the cards. But MTG is deeper than that because, even though there's a framework of rules, all of them can and will be broken by the cards themselves. This makes MTG a dynamic game that always stays interesting.
Let's Put Down Some Ground Rules
In MTG you play the role of two wizards (aka planeswalkers), you and your opponent, both have 20 life each. You're in a battle and by using magic and creatures you'll try to kill the other. Something that is often easier said than done.
Imagine you're standing behind your forces high up on a hill overseeing the entire battle. Now and then your opponent will attack and with resources you have at your disposal you will block the attack.
However, sometimes some parts of the attack will slide through and hit you in the face! This is where you loose life, and this is why the strategy to play your cards right is so important. You have an limited amount of resources and if you don't play them properly you will loose. Off course you will get to attack as well.
The Cards
Your resources are a deck of 60 cards (allowed to be more but not less) which contains lands and different spells. A spell is everything you play except lands. Artifacts, enchantments, instants, sorceries and even creatures are all considered spells.
You have a set of 7 cards to begin with and every card is structured in a certain way:
* First is the cards name, for example Royal Assassin. In exception to lands or other cards that bend the rule you can have a maximum of 4 cards with the same name.
* Next to the name to the right you can see the mana cost. For example, Royal Assassin costs two skulls (black mana) and a 1. This means that to play this card you must pay two black manas and one either colorless or whatever color you want. Mana is the currency of Magic and you produce it to be able to play spells.
* Next in the middle is just an awesome pic. Most of the artwork of MTG is simply amazing!
* Where it says "Creature -- Human Assassin" is the identification of what type of card it is (creature, artifact, instant, sorcery, enchantment or land) and "Human Assassin" is the creature type. Royal Assassin is "Human" and he is "Assassin". The creature type is there out of strategic reasons during the game which will be apparent later as you play.
* In the white big box is the creatures abilities. These are things it can do outside of just fighting and blocking.
* The text in italic is just some text thrown in there to fit the story. Sometimes they are really corny and sometimes they are really cool but they have no effect besides giving you a laugh or two.
* Last but not least the numbers "1/1" - the first number stands for the creatures power and the last one for the creatures toughness. This is basically how much damage can the creature produce and how much can it take. Any time the last number (the toughness) goes down to 0 the creature will die.
The really good cards often has some sort of negative effect that makes them cheaper and if you play it in the right deck the negative effect becomes a positive one. For instance Avatar of Discord which tells you to discard two cards for her to stay in play and it's typically a negative effect, but if you have something like a Madness or a Reanimate deck when you want to discard you'll turn it all around and make use of her negative effect and still get a 5/3 flying creature on the battlefield by turn 3. The synergy must exist in a good deck because no card is strong enough to stand entirely by itself.
The Playing Field aka Battlefield
The playing field is called "The Battlefield" in MTG. On it lies your library (your deck of remaining cards), the cards you've played and your graveyard. It will contain the following blocks:
Library: This is your deck of cards excluding the ones you have on the battlefield. This is from which you draw new cards.
Graveyard: When you use one of your cards, one of them die or get destroyed they will end up here. Normally when something ends in the graveyard it will stay there, but there are many cards to get them out of there again (for example Reanimate). So even the graveyard can be a major strategic move.
Artifacts & enchantments: These are spells that stay on the board and they affect the play in some way. Megrim for instance has the effect that everytime an opponent discards a card he looses two life. This remains to be true as long as Megrim stays on the battlefield. They aren't creatures and can't block, they are continuous magic or magic you can call on when you want to affect the board.
Lands: Lands are the normal way of producing mana. They cost nothing but you can only play one each turn. However, there are cards that you can use to play several lands each turn but those cards will in it self cost (example Harrow). There are also so called mana accelerators like Birds of Paradise or Seething Song that produce mana. A rookie mistake is to believe that lands equal mana, but that's not true. Lands produce mana.
Creatures: This is where you place the creatures, including artifact creatures like Darksteel Colossus.
Let's Start
It starts off with that you decide who starts, normally by rolling a die. Then both players picks up 7 cards. In the opening hand you need to check if you get one that is playable. You'll normally need at least 2-3 lands on it for it to be playable but after a few games you'll learn how to recognize this. If you aren't satisfied with your hand you can draw 7 news cards. However, if you aren't satisfied again you'll have to draw one less card each time. So next time you'll only get to draw 6 cards. This is so that you can't sit there and just draw til you get the perfect hand. That would be obnoxious. If you at one point draw a full hand of just lands or just no lands you reveal that and then draw just as many cards more.
The player who starts does so by laying out a land and then he taps it to produce mana. This mana he'll spend on playing a card (for instance the creature (Pulse Tracker) on the right which costs 1 black mana). He signifies that he used the land to produce the mana by rotating the card 90 degrees clockwise, which is called to tap. Untapping a card is when you reset it to vertical again.
He'll go through the game phases of MTG:
start | main | attack | block | damage | main
In his start phase he resets his side of the playing field by untapping every card and then he draws one card from his library. In his first main phase he plays cards. In the main phases are the only time he can play creatures, artifacts, enchantments and sorceries.
The first time he plays a creature he can't attack with it because it has something called "Summoning Sickness". This means that it can't be tapped or attacked with until it's his turn again, this is so that the other player gets a bit of warning. He moves over to the block phase, no creature has attacked so nothing happens. No damage is dealt in the damage phase and in the second main phase he could play other cards but he doesn't have any mana left to spend so it's now the opponent's turn.
The opponent goes through the same motions and he puts down a 2/1 creature of his own (let's say Flamekin Bladewhirl), and then it's our player's turn again. He starts with untapping his land and creature and then he draws a cards from his library. He only get's to play ONE land each turn so he plays another land. He taps them both and plays a creature that costs two black manas instead and moves over to the attack phase. His creature that he just played has summoning sickness but he can now attack with the creature he played previous turn. So he does. This is where it get's fun!
He declares his attackers (Pulse Tracker) and by doing so it becomes tapped. Now, the Pulse Tracker card says that "Whenever Pulse Tracker attacks, each opponent loses 1 life." and since he just attacked with it his opponent lost one life. He's now down to 19. Moving over to the block phase.
The opponent can now either take the damage and just let this little creature slide pass and hurt him, or he can block. He wants to take out the puny annoying vampire so he declares that he blocks Pulse Tracker with his creature. "Summoning Sickness" only affects anything that causes the creature to tap but he can still block with it before it's his turn.
Now he avoided getting hurt but instead his creature will. His creature is a 2/1 and our players creature is a 1/1. The first number is strength and the second toughness. So this means that the opponent's creature deals 2 in damage onto our player's creature 1 in toughness and our player's creature deals 1 in damage onto the opponents 1 in toughness. So now the opponent has a 2/1 - 1 in damage = 2/0 creature, and our player a 1/1 - 2 in damage = 1/0.
Moving over to the damage phase. Since Pulse Tracker is now down to 0 in toughness it dies and ends up in the graveyard. The opponents creature does as well but since he blocked the opponent player doesn't loose any life. Moving over to the second main phase.
Now our player can play some new cards but since he has spent his mana and has no way of getting more he can't do anything.
It will continue like this. Around and around it goes. It takes a long time to learn how to do this, but just stick with it. Once you know the basics you can start to play and once you learn or the sweet tricks it will be really fun!
In a quite simplified manner, remember the steps:
1. Untap.
2. Draw a card.
3. Play creatures, sorceries, enchantments and artifacts.
4. Attack your opponent. (You can't attack a creature, just an opponent.)
5. Your opponent blocks. (You attack, he decides how and which creatures he'll block.) Now you can also play instants that might benefit the outcome. A typical card would be Giant Growth.
6. Damage is dealt. (Creatures die, he looses life)
7. You play creatures, sorceries, enchantments and artifacts.
Choose What Color to Begin With
Magic The Gathering consists of 5 colors: black, white, red, green and blue. Each of these colors has certain powers and tactics.
Black:
Pure evil. Makes your opponent loose life, lessens the strength of creatures, sacrifices and brings back creatures from the dead in the graveyard.
The basic lands are swamps.
White:
White stands a lot of defense where the cards in some way protect each other. Typically white gives protection, gains life, strikes first and most often has more toughness than strength.
The basic lands are plains.
Red:
Pure aggressive fire and chaos. Red deals damage - quick and powerfully. If you want to be aggressive this is definetly the color for you.
The basic lands are mountains.
Green:
The power of nature and it's loaded with massive creatures that trample down everything that exists. They build up fast and they easily grow in numbers.
The basic lands are forests.
Blue:
Blue controls the board and is often trickier to play, but at the same time its very powerful because when playing blue you basically control what your opponents gets to do.
The basic lands are islands.
When you choose which color to begin with keep in mind to start with one that fits your personality. Do you enjoy irritating your opponent go with black. If you want to be aggressive go with red, or maybe you just want to sit back and make all the strategic decisions: go blue. In magic you can have one deck with every color, but its tougher and more expensive to build such a deck and until you know why that is you should just keep it in one color.
Very Very Very Short on Building Your First Deck
If you are interested in building your first deck I recommend that you browse around the decks at SixtyCards.com and try to figure out why the cards work so well together. Find a deck that you understand quite well and that seems to be right up your alley, and then base your own deck on that one. If you just start off building from scratch you most probably wont be able to build a very good deck.
More In Depth
Magic the Gathering is so much more than I've described here and I've paraphrased quite a bit just to make it more understandable. The depth in this game is extensive, but that is also one of the biggest joys of the game.