How to Play Magic: The Gathering: Your First Game, Turn by Turn
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For your first game of Magic, use two ready-to-play teaching decks and treat the opening match as a conversation. Learn how lands pay for spells, how creatures attack and block, and when you can respond. You can add deck construction and multiplayer politics after those decisions feel familiar.
This walkthrough assumes a normal two-player game starting at 20 life. Commander changes deck construction, starting life, and several multiplayer details; a Commander precon is not interchangeable with a small teaching deck.
Prepare the table and understand your cards
Each player needs their own deck, a way to track life, and counters or dice for effects that need them. Shuffle, decide who starts, and draw seven cards. The starting player skips their first draw in an ordinary two-player game. Keep your library face down, your graveyard face up, and your lands and creatures visible on the battlefield. Exile is a separate zone, not a second graveyard.
A card’s name identifies it. Its mana cost tells you what you must pay to cast it. The type line distinguishes lands, creatures, instants, sorceries, artifacts, enchantments, and other card types. Rules text explains what it does. A creature’s two bottom-right numbers are power and toughness: the damage it normally deals in combat, and the amount of damage that is lethal to it in a turn.
Read all of a card before using it. A creature may have an ability that changes an otherwise sensible attack, and a spell may require a target you cannot legally choose. If unfamiliar wording interrupts the game, check that card’s current Oracle text in Gatherer rather than guessing from a similar card.
Lands make mana; mana pays costs
You may normally play one land during your turn, during a main phase when the stack is empty and you have priority. Playing a land is not casting a spell. It does not cost mana, and opponents cannot respond to the land play itself. Abilities caused by a land entering may still use the stack.
Tap an untapped land that has a mana ability to produce mana. A basic Forest makes green mana; it does not permanently add one to a score that grows every turn. Mana is spent to pay costs, and unused mana normally disappears as steps and phases end. Lands usually untap on your next turn, so you can use them again.
Choose an opening hand you can actually use
Look for lands and early plays that work together. Three lands and several inexpensive spells are easier to learn with than one land and a hand full of expensive creatures. A hand can contain enough lands but still lack the colors needed for its spells.
Under the usual London mulligan procedure, shuffle your hand into your library and draw seven again. When you keep, put a number of cards from your hand on the bottom of your library equal to your mulligans, except where a format grants a free mulligan. For a teaching exercise you can agree to practice with an open hand, but distinguish that exercise from the actual rules.
Follow the same turn rhythm
- Beginning: Untap your permanents, handle upkeep, then draw. These are separate steps; players do not normally get priority during untap.
- First main phase: Play your land if you want, and cast spells at the times their rules allow.
- Combat: Move through beginning of combat, declare attackers, declare blockers, combat damage, and end of combat.
- Second main phase: Another chance to cast creatures or sorceries and use other main-phase actions. It does not grant another normal land play.
- Ending: Handle end-step abilities. In cleanup, normally discard down to seven cards, marked damage is removed, and “until end of turn” effects end.
Creatures, sorceries, and most other noninstant spells normally require your main phase, priority, and an empty stack. Instants can be cast when you have priority, including on another player’s turn. Flash changes when a spell can be cast. “Any time” is a useful beginner shorthand for instants, but it does not mean halfway through another spell resolving.
Attack players; let defenders choose blockers
In a straightforward first match, you attack the opposing player rather than targeting one of their creatures. Other rules allow attacks on planeswalkers and battles. Declare your attackers together and tap them unless an ability such as vigilance says otherwise. The defender then chooses which untapped creatures block, if any.
A creature normally cannot attack or use its own abilities with the tap or untap symbol unless you have controlled it continuously since your most recent turn began. Haste bypasses that restriction. A newly played creature can usually block, because blocking does not require tapping it.
An unblocked 3/3 normally deals 3 damage to the player it attacks. A blocked attacker usually remains blocked even if the blocker disappears before combat damage. Keywords such as flying, first strike, deathtouch, and trample change these examples; introduce them one at a time rather than pretending every combat follows the simplest case.
A complete early-turn example
On your first turn, play a Forest. You may use it for a one-mana spell or leave it untapped. If you cast a creature without haste, it cannot attack that turn. On your next turn, untap, handle upkeep, and draw. Play a second land if you have one.
Before spending your mana, decide what combat needs. If a new creature has no effect on your attack, casting it after combat can preserve uncertainty about an instant in your hand. Announce that you want to go to combat, give your opponent a chance to act, then declare your attacker. After combat, cast the new creature in your second main phase if that still fits your plan.
This is a teaching example, not a rule that you should always cast creatures after combat. A creature with haste or an ability that improves your attackers may be useful beforehand. The habit worth learning is to ask what changes if you spend mana now.
Learn responses without racing through the stack
When a player casts a spell, it usually waits on the stack. Players get opportunities to respond. When everyone passes in succession, the top object resolves; players then get another opportunity to act before the next one resolves. The most recently added object normally resolves first.
Say “I cast this, targeting that,” then pause. If your opponent responds, keep the objects physically separate so you can resolve them in reverse order. Paying a cost is not something an opponent can interrupt halfway through. A mana ability usually does not use the stack. Those distinctions explain many first-game arguments.
Finish the game and choose one thing to improve
A player normally loses at 0 or less life, and also loses if instructed to draw from an empty library. Cards can create other ways to win or lose. Creatures dying does not directly reduce their controller’s life unless an effect says so.
After the first match, replay with the same decks. Pick one question for the second game: Did you miss a land play? Tap everything before considering a response? Attack into a blocker you had not read? Repetition with familiar cards teaches more than replacing the decks after every loss. Once both players can complete a turn and explain combat, move to building a small deck or trying Commander with its additional rules.
Official sources & further reading
Rules and product details checked against Wizards of the Coast resources. Examples and learning recommendations are B3’s own.
- Official how-to-play lessons
- Basic and Comprehensive Rules
- Gatherer: current card text and rulings
- Commander rules and differences