How to play in 10 minutes

Start with the goal

Each player normally starts at 20 life. Your creatures and spells can reduce the opponent’s life; reaching 0 or less usually means losing. You also lose if you must draw a card and your deck is empty. Simply having no cards left in your deck does not make you lose immediately.

Your deck is your library. The cards you hold are your hand. Cards in play occupy the battlefield. Used spells and destroyed creatures normally go to their owner’s graveyard. Exile is a separate place; a card in exile is not in the graveyard.

Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗ · How to Play Magic: The Gathering · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗

Shuffle, draw seven, decide whether to keep

Randomly decide who chooses to go first. Shuffle your deck and draw seven cards. The first player skips the draw on their first turn in a two-player game.

If your hand cannot get started, you may take a mulligan: shuffle it back and draw seven again. When you keep, put one card on the bottom of your library for each mulligan you took. For example, after one mulligan you choose six of the seven cards to keep. Two-Headed Giant has a free first mulligan.

Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

Lands make mana; mana pays for spells

You can normally play one land from your hand on each of your turns, during a main phase with nothing waiting to resolve. A land is not a spell. Basic lands usually enter untapped and can make mana immediately.

Tap means turn a card sideways. Use a basic land’s mana ability by tapping it to produce one mana: Plains make white, Islands blue, Swamps black, Mountains red, and Forests green. A cost of two generic mana and one green mana needs three mana total, at least one of it green. Paying that cost does not put the lands in the graveyard.

Your lands untap at the start of your next turn. Unspent mana normally disappears as each step or phase ends, so you cannot save yesterday’s mana for a bigger spell tomorrow.

How to Play Magic: The Gathering · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗ · Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

Take a turn in this order

You have a main phase on both sides of combat. You do not have to cast every spell before attacking.

1. Untap your tapped cards. Then handle anything that happens during your upkeep, the step immediately after untapping.
2. Draw one card, except for the first player’s first turn.
3. First main phase: play your land and cast creatures or other spells you want before combat.
4. Combat: choose attackers; the defender chooses blockers; deal combat damage. Players can use instants and appropriate abilities before damage.
5. Second main phase: play more spells, or your land if you have not used that turn’s land play.
6. End the turn. Handle end-step abilities. In cleanup, discard down to seven cards if necessary, remove marked damage, and end effects that last until end of turn. Counters stay unless something removes them.

How to Play Magic: The Gathering · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗ · Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

Read the type line before playing a card

A creature stays on the battlefield and can fight. Artifacts and enchantments usually stay too, doing what their text says. These cards in play are called permanents. Instants and sorceries normally go to the graveyard after their instructions finish. A token is a game piece created by a card’s instructions; use a marker or token card to show what it is.

Normally cast creatures, artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers, and sorceries in your own main phase when nothing is waiting to resolve. Instants and cards with flash can also be cast at other times when you have priority—the opportunity to act. You cannot interrupt someone halfway through following one spell’s instructions.

Players can respond to a spell before it resolves, meaning before its instructions happen. Responses resolve from newest to oldest. A creature is a spell while waiting to resolve; it only becomes a creature on the battlefield after it resolves.

Counter a spell means stop a spell that is still waiting to resolve. A counter on a creature or planeswalker is different: it is a marker recording a change, such as an extra +1/+1 or a loyalty point.

How to Play Magic: The Gathering · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗ · Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

Attack the player; let them choose blockers

A creature’s two lower-right numbers are power and toughness. A 3/2 normally deals 3 damage in combat and is destroyed once it has at least 2 damage marked on it in one turn.

Choose your attackers together and tap them unless they have vigilance. A creature usually cannot attack or use an ability with the tap symbol until you have controlled it since the start of your turn. This is often called summoning sickness. It can still block immediately. Haste removes that waiting restriction.

You normally attack your opponent, not one of their creatures. The defender decides which untapped creatures block. Blocking does not tap a creature. One creature normally blocks one attacker; several creatures can block the same attacker.

Unblocked attackers deal damage to what they attacked. Blocked creatures fight their blockers, normally dealing damage at the same time. An attacker stays blocked even if its blocker disappears; without an ability such as trample, it normally deals no damage to the defending player.

How to Play Magic: The Gathering · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗ · Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

Five words you will see often

Card text can change the normal rules. Read the whole sentence; similar-looking abilities can work differently.

• Flying: only creatures with flying or reach can block this attacker. A flying creature can still block a creature on the ground.
• Vigilance: attacking does not tap this creature. It may be available to block next turn.
• Trample: after assigning enough damage to the blockers to be lethal, an attacker can assign its remaining damage to the player or planeswalker it attacked.
• Deathtouch: any positive amount of damage this creature deals to another creature is normally lethal.
• Lifelink: damage this creature deals also gives its controller that much life. This works when it hits a creature, too.

Keyword Glossary · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗ · Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

If you open a planeswalker

A planeswalker has loyalty instead of power and toughness. Put that many loyalty counters on it when it enters. A +1 ability adds one counter; a −2 ability spends two. You must have enough counters to pay. These loyalty costs do not normally require mana.

Normally activate one loyalty ability per planeswalker per turn, during your own main phase with nothing waiting to resolve. You can do this on the turn it enters. An opposing creature may attack your planeswalker instead of you, and your creatures can block it. Damage removes that much loyalty; zero loyalty puts the planeswalker in the graveyard. Excess damage does not spill over to you.

Matt Tabak · Foundations Mechanics — Planeswalkers · Oct 25, 2024 ↗ · Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗

For your first game, say each action aloud

At a practice table, play a few turns with hands visible and explain why you are spending mana or leaving a creature back. Then shuffle up for a normal game. During an event, ask a judge when a rule is unclear; do not guess and hope to repair it later.

• Say which land you are playing and which spell you are casting.
• Announce attacks before assuming damage gets through. Give your opponent time to block or respond.
• Keep a written life total and agree on changes. Use separate markers for counters and damage.
• When a card says target, identify the legal player or card it will affect. A spell that only targets a creature cannot target a player or an ordinary planeswalker.

Comprehensive Rules — effective September 25, 2026 · Sep 25, 2026 ↗ · How to Play Magic: The Gathering · Checked Sep 26, 2026 ↗