In Magic the Gathering, you are a planeswalker, a powerful mage that can travel the planes of existence, using the energy from the lands you go to, to power devastating spells. But life is not peaceful for a planeswalker and you find yourself frequently battling others like you. To emerge victors of these bloody fights, you must summon mythical creatures, cast gravity-defying spells and clash in a combat that only one of you can come out of.This blog, I am not going to explain all the rules of Magic the Gathering because A I can't be bothered to, and B because I think that someone could explain it better anyway. So if you want the low down on how it works, go here to find out all the rules of this game.
Now, after you have read that article (or most of it anyway), it is time to discuss what I think about it. First things first, I have to say I love it, once you are playing, the rules are intuitive and flow easily. Although it can be hard at first to read all those rules, it makes sense afterwards. I would suggest that you keep a computer connected device to search for the meanings of the key words that sometimes show up on the cards.
Personally, I find that this game has just enough bite to it, to make it not brain hurting from all the possibilities and variables that could come up, but a nice amount of strategy and tactics to make it a good thing to think about.
Two things that I love about this game that other people might be not bothered about, is the art and the story behind it. I mean, I could frame some of these cards and put them up on a wall to look at all day (although I'm not a massive fan of some of the older stuff). As well as this, if you like this kind of stuff (which I do) the story behind the cards is really cool and quite in-depth.
Now then, it is time to debate a real double-edged sword to this game… and that, is deck building. I personally love it, trying to figure out which cards would work really well together and testing your skills against the maker of the other deck. But, to make a deck all by yourself, you will need a lot of cards, and the requires investing money and time which some people will be unprepared to do. However, if you buy a pre made deck, you get two packs full of random cards, to customise the pre made deck you got, which allows you a taste of what deck building is like, but it doesn't give the full experience.
Another thing that is annoying is that Magic the Gathering is quite reliant on luck, sometimes you will play an entire game, just drawing lands (the things that power your spells) or spells and no lands(so you can't play the spells you do have). This means you basically spend the game doing nothing and watching as your opponent decimates you and you can do nothing about it. However, the games are short enough and the games detailed here are far enough apart to make it not a massive problem, but
still an annoyance.
Overall, I think that Magic the Gathering is a really good game, but if you want to get the full depth and enjoyment out of it then be prepared to get your wallet out once or twice. A thing I would suggest is that if you have a local game store then you can ask for a taster deck, which is 60 cards split in to two smaller decks for you to try out (that was how I first encountered Magic the Gathering). I think I would give this game a 8.5 out of 10 and suspect that I will like it a lot more, the more I play it.
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