Transcribed Text:

BUILDING A DECK

The Basics: Card Types

All Magic the Gathering cards fall into three categories:

SPELLS

A spell is anything that isn’t a land (because they’re cast into play using mana, provided by your land cards).

PERMANENTS

Some permanents are spells, but not all spells are permanents. Creatures, Enchantments, Artifacts, and Lands are all permanents. Instants and Sorceries, however, are not permanents (once you play them they go away in some fashion). Permanents, however, stay on the battlefield after they have been played. Creatures are there to fight for you, Enchantments can be played in a variety of ways, and Lands help you to play those cards.

LANDS

Lands, as mentioned above, are permanents and your resource for playing spells. You can play one per turn and

there are two types of lands: basic and non-basic. A basic land is any card that has the Basic Land keywords on it

such as Plains, Forests, Mountains, Swamps, and Islands.

The Basics: Construction

• Your deck needs to consist of at least 60 cards.

• Choose one or two colors of lands to start with at first.

• You can have no more than 4 of a given card aside from basic lands.

• A typical deck will have 24-26 lands, 17-22 creatures, and 13-18 other spells.

GAMEPLAY

How to Cast Spells

To cast a spell, you must pay its mana cost (located in the upper right corner of the card) by tapping lands (or other permanents) to make the amount and type of mana which that spell requires.

For example, if you were casting Serra Angel, which costs (3)(W)(W), you could tap three basic lands of any type to pay (3) plus two Plains to pay (W)(W).

Once a spell has been cast, one of two things happens. If the spell is an instant or a sorcery, you follow the instructions on the card, and then you put the card into your graveyard. If the spell is a creature, artifact, or enchantment, you put the card on the table in front of you. The card is now on the battlefield.

The easiest way to get better at deck-building is to get some cards together and just start playing. The goal may be to win, or play that awesome creature, or do some neat combination of card plays, but in the end the objective is for everyone to have fun. Try a deck, change it up, then try something else!