Designed by: Richard Garfield
Although Magic: The Gathering has a reasonably simple mechanic at its heart, the game is almost a movement in part due to the bewildering array of cards the world of the game provides. You can buy a single deck (even a single card) but there are literally thousands of cards available, and Magic is what started the oft-copied collectible card game (CCG) model.
The game itself is a head to head battle between two wizards, with the cards representing the spells they cast. Each player plays with a deck of cards that they cycle through, dealing themselves a hand and then choosing how to play it. Some cards are the spell itself (or the creature the spell conjures up) whereas others are Mana: these function as a kind of battery, to power the more exciting spell cards. Mana played from your hand to the table can be tapped (indicated by rotating onto its side) to power a spell – once tapped, it’s unavailable until your next turn. The juicier cards are meanwhile doing damage to your opponent – some have an effect they vanish into your discard pile, but others sit out on the table as a thorn in the side, giving your opponent something to deal with. Each of you begins the game with a certain amount of health, and when one of you hits zero, they lose the game and the other is triumphant.
So the game is a balance of managing your hand, and timing your attacks in a way that maximises the effect of your available cards. But – see Sam Says – it’s also about what cards you start the game with, which encourages players to keep buying.
The whole game is a battle, so the Take That quotient is up there at maximum.
Low. Once you're familiar with how the game plays, the choices are not overwhelming, but enough to keep things interesting.
Your Mana can only power so many cards, but there's also the cards your opponent has played and is playing - there are decisions to be made here and the game rewards tactical thought.
You can play with the same deck over and over, but Magic encourages 'developing' your deck - ie, buying more cards.
2-2
Players
10+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Magic has garnered a lot of love around the world over the last 20 years, and introduced a lot of people to a more interesting side of gaming than the abundant roll-and-move luckfests that populated stores when it was launched (and still do, unfortunately!) There's nuance to the game that I won't pretend to be familiar with, having not really embraced it myself: I'm not a huge fan of the take-turns-to-attack premise and won't pretend that the overview here is comprehensive: a regular Magic player would describe it better. But the issue I have (as a parent, rather than a player) is that the game encourages more and more expenditure. Even the label collectible card game troubles me slightly from that angle. And putting the expenditure to one side for a minute (because I'm inviting a pot-and-kettle comparison here) there's a potential problem in that if one player has upgraded their deck more than the other, the fight becomes lopsided. That is, however, navigable. And on the flip-side, thousands of people - including my own family - love the game, enjoy the collecting aspect, love bringing new cards into play, and that is of course a positive thing. However my overall perception of the Magic phenomenon - regardless of how good the game is - is of a money-making machine.