The Rules of the Game

Each player must have a minium of 60 cards in their deck. At the beginning of the game, each player draws 7 cards facedown. If you don't like your hand, you can perform a mulligan to redraw your cards. Each player has 20 points of life. The goal is to get your opponents life points down to zero.

First Turn

You start by playing a Land card (only one Land card per turn). Land cards are required to draw Mana for your other cards. The player who goes first does not get to draw a card from the deck, but the player who goes second does get to draw a card on their first turn.

The Next Step

Once each player has their Land cards on the battlefield, they can now summon Creatures or cast Spells. Each Spell and Creature card has a mana cost in the top right corner. For example, a card might have a mana cost of "1 and a Plains symbol". This means you need two mana total to cast this card. One mana must be white (produced by the Plains card) and the "1" represents generic mana. This generic mana can be paid by any color mana card, such as a Forest (green mana).

Once you have the proper mana to use the card you want, you have to "tap" the mana cards. You do this by turning the Land cards sideways.

The Five Phases of a Turn

Beginning Phase

After your first turn, each turn has five phases. The first is the "beginning" phase. If you have any tapped cards in your beginning phase, you have to untap them by turning them back to their normal position. Then you draw a card.

First Main Phase

If you have any additional Land cards in your hand, you can place one Land card down on the battlefield. You can also choose to play another card from your hand if you have the proper amount of mana by tapping your Land cards.

Combat Phase

During this phase you can use Creature cards to declare attackers or blockers. If declaring an attack, you must choose to attack the opponent or attack one of the opponent's cards. When it comes to blocking, a Creature can only block one of the opponents attacking Creature's. However, you can use multiple Creature's to block the same attacker.

You can use an app or a pencil and paper to keep track of any damage taken during this phase. If a Creature's toughness is lower than the attacking Creature's power, that creature can be destroyed and sent to the graveyard pile. If blocks are successful, the player will take no damage. During this phase, both players have the opportunity to cast Instant's.

Main Phase 2

There's another "main phase" after combat. During this phase, the players can draw an additional card and if you have more Land cards in your hand, you can place one down on the battlefield. It's important to note that during this phase, all Land cards from the previous phases that were tapped, remain tapped. This means you have less mana to use unless you have more mana cards in your hand that you can use, or if there are any untapped mana on the field, you can use those as well. If you have enough mana, you can play another Spell or Creature card during this phase.

Ending Phase

During this phase, players get one final chance to use their Instants or activate abilities. There's also a clean up section at the end of this phase where the player discards their cards until they're down to 7 cards in their hand again. Having 7 cards in your hand is the maximum limit you can have. Be strategic when discarding cards at the end of this phase. For example, if you have too many Land cards, you may want to discard some of those. All discarded cards go in the graveyard pile.

Back to the beginning

After the ending phase, the cycle continues to the beginning phase where players untap all their cards, draw new cards, and continue the battle until someone's life points go down to zero.

These Are Just the Basics

There's a lot more to MTG that can make the game more complex and strategic. Different decks represent a variety of different play styles and gives you different ways to defeat your opponent. Furthermore, you could even customize your own deck (see the next section) and mix different play styles together or make more powerful versions of existing styles. But these steps should help you with the basics of the game to help get you started!