A carved stone doorway standing open at the top of a long flight of steps, white-blue light and mist pouring out of it under a violet aurora

● MAGIC · CHAPTER 02 — DOOR 01 · LEARN THE PLANE

Getting Started

from turn one.

five phases, sixty cards, one card at a time.

Thirty years of history, explained from turn one. Lands, the stack, the mulligan — without the nine-hundred-page rulebook.

▸ THE TURN TRACK

A Magic turn is five phases long, and you only get to do things in two of them. Learn where the turn stops and waits for you.

Almost every confusion in a first game is a timing question. Here is the whole system.

Sorceries, creatures, artifacts, enchantments and lands only go down in your own main phases, on your own turn, with nothing else waiting to resolve. Instants and abilities can go at almost any other moment, on anybody's turn. That single distinction settles about half the arguments a new player ever has.

SORCERY SPEED — PHASES 02 AND 04 ONLY

INSTANT SPEED — ANY PHASE, EITHER PLAYER

Lands and sorcery-speed spells only go down in your own main phases, with nothing else waiting to resolve. Instants can go almost anywhere.

01Beginning~~untap · upkeep · draw a card~~

02Main 1~~play one land · cast anything · the stack must be empty~~

03Combat~~declare attackers · declare blockers · damage~~

04Main 2~~cast what you held back · the land, if you didn't play one~~

05End~~end step · cleanup · hand down to seven~~

Concentric rings of glowing runes turning in the night sky above a dark ruined skyline

Three steps in.

THE TURN · THE DECK · THE CARD. IN THAT ORDER.

Three interlocking stone rings carved with glowing cyan runes, turning inside a vaulted chamber above still water

STEP 01 · THE TURN

How a Turn Actually Flows.

Untap, upkeep, draw — then the turn stops and looks at you twice, once before combat and once after. Everything else is the game running itself. Learn those two windows and the rulebook stops mattering.

▸Which phases wait for you, and which just happen
▸The stack: the last thing said is the first thing that happens
▸Attacking without accidentally skipping your own combat

◆ GUIDE COMING SOON

STEP 02 · THE DECK

Your First Deck, On Any Budget.

Sixty cards, about twenty-four of them lands, in one or two colors. That is the whole shape of a first deck, and a preconstructed box off the shelf already has it. Buy the shape, then change it slowly.

▸Why sixty cards and twenty-four lands, and when that changes
▸The precon route — a starter box played exactly as it comes
▸The first three cards to swap, and what to leave alone for a month

◆ GUIDE COMING SOON

A scholar's worktable under a violet oil lamp, dozens of blank slate cards laid out in a grid with stacks, inkwells, a ruler and a compass

An open book on a wooden lectern in a dark cavern, lit by five hanging lanterns casting white, blue, grey, orange and green beams onto the page

STEP 03 · THE CARD

Reading Cost and Colors.

Everything you need to play a card is printed on the card itself. Cost top right, what it is in the middle, what it does under that. Ten minutes learning the layout buys you a year of not asking.

▸Generic numbers versus coloured pips, and why the difference bites
▸The type line, the rules box, and the two numbers in the corner
▸Rarity and set symbol — the bottom line that matters when you buy

◆ GUIDE COMING SOON

The two things nobody explains

THE STACK & THE MULLIGAN

Everything waits its turn, from the top down — which is why the first spell anybody casts is the one most likely never to happen at all. Say what you are doing, then wait to see whether anyone answers before you move a card.

▸ THE MULLIGAN, IN THREE MOVES

Most losses in a first month are not skill. They are a bad opening hand that somebody kept because they didn't know they were allowed to throw it away. You are. Here is the whole rule.

01Draw seven. Don't like it? Shuffle it back and draw seven more.Looking costs you nothing — the price comes off the new hand. Two lands or fewer, or six lands or more, is usually a hand worth redrawing.

02Every mulligan costs one card off the new hand.You still draw seven each time. You just put one on the bottom of your library before you start — two cards after a second mulligan, and so on.

03Six good cards beat seven bad ones. Almost always.Keeping a hand you can't cast is the most expensive habit in the game — and the easiest one to drop in your first week.