How to Play Magic: The Gathering: Rules and Basics

Here's how to play Magic: The Gathering in one breath. Each player starts at 20 life with a shuffled deck, plays one land a turn, taps lands for mana to cast creatures and spells, and attacks until the other player's life hits zero. Everything else on this site (deck guides, tier lists, precon upgrades) builds on that loop.

We'd learn it on a 60-card deck against one opponent. Commander, the four-player format a lot of paper players settle into, is a great second step and a rough first one.

How to Play Magic: The Gathering

Setting up. Shuffle, draw seven cards, and decide who goes first. The player who goes first skips their first draw, which is the game's way of evening out the head start. If you hate your seven, you can mulligan: shuffle them back, draw a fresh seven, then put one card on the bottom of your library for each mulligan you've taken. Players call this the London mulligan.

Your turn runs through five phases in the same order every time:

A creature that takes damage equal to or greater than its toughness dies. Unblocked attackers hit the player.

The stack and priority are the part that confuses new players. When anyone casts a spell, it doesn't happen right away; it goes on the stack, and each player gets a chance to respond before it resolves. The last thing added resolves first. You don't need to memorize the priority rules on day one. You just need to know that holding up mana on your opponent's turn means you can answer what they do.

How a game ends. A player loses when their life total is 0 or less, when they have to draw from an empty library, or when they concede. Some cards add their own way to win or lose.

Wizards' official learn-to-play video, presented by The Command Zone, walks through a full game if you'd rather watch it than read it.

How often your opening hand works

We worked out the odds for three common deck shapes. In a 60-card deck with 24 lands, about three opening hands in four hold two to four lands, the range most players keep. About one in seven has zero or one land, and that's usually a mulligan. A Commander deck with 35 lands in its 99 gives you a short hand more often, about one in five, which is one reason multiplayer games make your first mulligan free.

Chart: BaseMTG. Source: exact hypergeometric odds, checked against 100,000 simulated shuffles per deck, October 15, 2026.

• MTG Keyword Abilities Explained: Combat and Protection: flying, menace, first strike, deathtouch, trample, hexproof and ward, with combat examples.
• Board Wipe in MTG: The 5 Kinds and Which Decks Play Them: destroy, damage, exile, -X/-X and bounce wipes, and which decks run them.
• Bury MTG Meaning: What the Old Destroy Wording Did: retired Bury wording, Extort's every-spell trigger, and a step-by-step Discover resolution.
• MTG Mulligan Rules Explained: London Mulligan Step by Step: the London mulligan step by step, plus the free first mulligan in multiplayer.
• MTG Zones Explained: Every Zone and Your Board Layout: the seven zones, which ones are hidden, why a card that changes zones comes back as a new object, and the tournament table layout.
• MTG Turn Phases Explained: Every Phase and Step in Order: the five phases and their steps, where you get priority, and which steps Standard cards trigger in.
• MTG Stack Explained: How Priority and Responses Work: how spells and abilities wait on the stack, who gets priority, and what never uses the stack, with a Bolt, Giant Growth and Counterspell example.

The Five Colors and Color Identity

Magic has five colors, usually written WUBRG: White, Blue, Black, Red and Green. Each has a personality. White likes order and wide boards of efficient creatures, Blue draws cards and counters spells, Black trades life and creatures for power and brings things back from the graveyard, Red is fast and burns things, Green ramps its mana and plays the biggest creatures. Plenty of decks pair two or three colors so one covers the other's gaps.

Color identity is a stricter idea than "what color is this card." It's every color of mana symbol in the card's mana cost or rules text, and it only really matters in Commander, where every card in your deck has to fit inside your commander's color identity.

One detail catches people out: reminder text doesn't count. The rules ignore the italic explanation in parentheses when working out identity. Syndic of Tithes is the classic example: its extort reminder text mentions a white-or-black hybrid symbol, but the card itself is white only, so it fits in any deck with a white commander.

Syndic of Tithes: the hybrid symbol sits in reminder text, so its color identity is white only. Card image: Wizards of the Coast, via Scryfall.

• MTG Color Identity: Hybrid, Phyrexian and Reminder Text: what counts toward color identity and what doesn't, card by card.
• MTG Color Combinations: Names, Playstyles and How to Pick: what Azorius, Grixis or Witch-Maw means, what each combination plays like, and how to pick your colors.

Deck Building Basics

A constructed deck needs at least 60 cards and no more than four copies of any card except basic lands. Tournament play adds a sideboard of up to 15 cards. Build around one plan (aggro, midrange, control or combo) rather than a pile of individually good cards; it makes every cut easier.

Get the land count right before anything else. Frank Karsten's formula, built from more than 95,000 tournament decks, starts at 19.59 plus 1.90 times the average mana value of your spells, then takes off about a quarter of a land for each cheap card-draw or ramp spell. For a typical deck with an average mana value around two and a half, that lands near 24, not the 17 you see in 40-card draft decks. Commander is its own world: EDHREC's average decks for the 100 most popular commanders run a median of 35 lands, backed by about 16 ramp pieces.

Every deck, whatever the format, needs the same three things: enough lands to cast its spells, some card advantage so it doesn't run out of gas, and enough removal or interaction to stop the other player's plan. Aggro trims the card draw for cheap threats; control flips that and plays for a long game.

• MTG Mana Base Guide: The Land Count Formula Explained: Karsten's land formula worked through for 60-card, 40-card and Commander decks.

Format Legality Explained

A format is just a list of which cards you're allowed to use. Start with these two.

Standard is one-on-one, 60-card decks, built from recent sets only. Once a year, after the first premier set Prerelease of the year, the six oldest sets rotate out. On October 15, 2026, Wizards lists 20 legal sets, from Wilds of Eldraine to Reality Fracture. The next rotation follows the Prerelease of Nauctis: The Sunken Realm, which releases February 5, 2027, and takes Wilds of Eldraine through Duskmourn with it.

Commander uses exactly 100 cards including the commander, one copy of each card except basic lands, and nearly every card ever printed, limited by the banned list and color identity. It's built for three to five players, starting at 40 life each.

Modern, Pioneer, Pauper and Legacy sit between those two, each drawing its line somewhere on the spectrum from "recent sets only" to "almost everything."

• MTG Format Legality Explained: Standard vs Commander: a card must be in the format's card pool and off its banned list.

Where we'd start

Pick one 60-card deck and play it a dozen times before you buy anything else. You'll learn the turn, the stack and combat faster with one opponent than with three, and a two-player game takes about 20 minutes instead of two hours. When the r/magicTCG crowd answered a new player who found Commander miserable, one reply summed up the usual advice: "Commander is a social format. Who you play with is more important than what you play. Anyways, you should start by playing a 60 card format, especially if you're playing online." (comment)

If your friends already play Commander, that's fine too: borrow an unmodified precon and ask them to do the same. Then come back for the Commander deck guide linked below.

How we checked: rules against the Comprehensive Rules effective September 25, 2026 and Wizards' how-to-play, Standard and Commander pages, read October 15, 2026; opening-hand odds computed exactly and checked with 100,000 shuffles per deck shape.

Related Reading

• MTG Commander Deck Guide: Building, Budget, and cEDH: once you know the basics, the usual next format to try.
• Commander Damage Rules in MTG: What Counts and What Doesn't: the extra way to lose a Commander game, from one commander's combat damage.
• MTG Standard Format Guide: Rotation, Archetypes, Meta: the format most new players build a competitive deck in first.
• Magic: The Gathering 2026 Set Release Schedule Guide: what's legal right now and what's coming next.

References

• Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules, effective September 25, 2026
• How to Play, Wizards of the Coast
• Standard Format, Wizards of the Coast
• Commander Format, Wizards of the Coast
• Frank Karsten, How Many Lands Do You Need in Your Deck? An Updated Analysis (TCGplayer)