How to Play Magic: The Gathering and Build Your First Deck

How to Play Magic: The Gathering and Build Your First Deck

Magic: The Gathering launched in 1993 as the world's first trading card game. Over thirty years later, it is still one of the biggest and most strategically deep games you can play. Millions of players worldwide build decks, trade cards, attend tournaments and play casually at kitchen tables every week.

This guide covers everything a new player needs to get started: how the game works, what each colour does, how to build a deck, how Commander works and what the card pool actually looks like in 2026. If you are ready to jump straight in, browse our Magic: The Gathering sealed products and Commander decks.

How does Magic: The Gathering actually work?

Two players sit down, each with their own deck. Both start at 20 life. The goal is simple: reduce your opponent to 0 life before they do the same to you.

You do this by playing lands, which generate mana (the resource that powers everything), and then spending that mana to cast spells. Some spells put creatures onto the battlefield that can attack and block. Others deal direct damage, destroy your opponent's cards or draw you extra cards to pull ahead.

There are six main card types you will see:

Lands tap for mana. You can play one per turn for free, and they are the foundation of every deck.
Creatures are your attackers and blockers. They have power (how much damage they deal) and toughness (how much damage they can take).
Instants can be cast at any time, including on your opponent's turn. Think of them as reactive plays.
Sorceries are powerful one-time effects, but can only be cast on your own turn.
Enchantments stay on the battlefield and create ongoing effects, like boosting all your creatures or taxing your opponent.
Artifacts also stay in play and can be cast by any colour. Equipment, mana rocks and utility pieces fall here.

The key thing that makes Magic click is that every card interaction follows the same rules, but the sheer variety of cards means no two games play out the same way.

Turn structure: what happens each turn

Every turn follows the same sequence, and learning it properly makes the whole game easier to understand:

1. Untap: Straighten all your tapped (used) cards so they are ready again.
2. Upkeep: Certain cards trigger effects here. If nothing says "at the beginning of your upkeep," you just move on.
3. Draw: Draw one card from your deck. (The player who goes first skips their draw on turn one.)
4. Main Phase 1: Play a land, cast creatures, sorceries, enchantments and artifacts.
5. Combat: Choose which creatures attack. Your opponent chooses which creatures block. Damage is dealt.
6. Main Phase 2: You get a second main phase after combat. This is a good time to cast creatures or spells you held back.
7. End Step: Some effects trigger here, and then the turn passes to your opponent.

One tip that separates beginners from experienced players: you almost always want to wait until Main Phase 2 to play creatures (unless they have haste or you need them as blockers). That way your opponent has to make combat decisions without knowing what you will play after.

The best way to learn is just to play. Grab a friend and open a few Magic booster packs, or pick up a starter deck and battle it out.

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The five colours of Magic and what they do

Every non-land card in Magic belongs to one or more of five colours. Each colour has its own personality, strengths and weaknesses, and understanding them is fundamental to building a good deck.

White (Plains) focuses on small, efficient creatures that work together. White is the colour of life gain, mass removal (board wipes like Wrath of God) and protection effects. Its weakness is card draw. White armies are powerful but can struggle to rebuild after a setback.

Blue (Islands) is the colour of control. Blue draws extra cards, counters your opponent's spells and bounces their creatures back to hand. It tends to be slower and more reactive. Blue decks aim to deny the opponent's gameplan and grind out a win over time.

Black (Swamps) pays life, sacrifices its own creatures and raids the graveyard for advantage. Black has the best targeted removal in the game and can strip cards from your opponent's hand. The tradeoff is that many of its strongest effects cost you life or resources.

Red (Mountains) is fast and aggressive. Red deals direct damage to creatures and players, plays cheap hasty attackers and creates temporary bursts of mana. It is the colour of speed. The downside is that red runs out of steam quickly if the game goes long.

Green (Forests) ramps mana faster than any other colour, plays the largest creatures and uses fight effects to remove threats. Green struggles against flying creatures and has almost no way to interact with the stack (it cannot counter spells). Its plan is simple: go bigger than everyone else.

Most beginner-friendly decks use one or two colours. Mono-colour decks are the easiest to build because the mana base (your lands) is straightforward. Two-colour decks offer more flexibility but need a bit more thought put into the land mix.

How to build your first 60-card deck

Deckbuilding is where Magic really opens up. There is no single right way to build a deck, but following a solid structure will get you winning games far quicker than throwing 60 cards together at random.

A strong beginner template for a 60-card deck looks like this:

23-24 Lands. This ensures you hit a land drop on most turns for the first four or five turns of the game. If your deck has a higher average mana cost, lean toward 24 or even 25. If you are playing a low-curve aggressive deck, 22 can work.
16-20 Creatures. These are your main way of winning. Pick creatures that support a theme rather than just playing every big creature you own.
6-8 Removal Spells. Cards that destroy, exile or otherwise deal with your opponent's threats. Every deck needs answers.
6-8 Support Spells. Card draw, pump effects, enchantments, equipment. Whatever helps your core plan succeed.

The most important principle in deckbuilding is consistency. Play four copies of your best cards. A deck with 15 different one-of creatures is going to play differently every game, and not in a good way. If a card is worth including, it is usually worth running three or four copies.

Another common mistake is ignoring the mana curve. Your mana curve is the spread of mana costs across your deck. If every creature costs four or five mana, you will spend the first three turns doing nothing while your opponent builds a board. Aim for a healthy spread: a few one-drops, a solid cluster of two and three-drops, and a handful of top-end finishers.

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If you need singles to fill out a deck or want to upgrade specific slots, browse our latest Magic: The Gathering singles.

Tuning your deck: what to cut and what to keep

Building a first draft is only half the work. The real improvement comes from testing games and being ruthless about cutting cards that underperform.

After playing a few games, ask yourself these questions about every card in your deck:

Am I happy to draw this card on turn three? If the answer is regularly no, it probably does not belong.
Does this card support my main plan? A cool card that does not fit your strategy is just a distraction.
Is there a strictly better version of this card? Magic has been around for 30 years. There is almost always an upgrade available if you look.

Common upgrades that help most decks immediately: improving the land base (dual lands instead of basic lands), lowering the average mana cost, and increasing the number of copies of your best-performing cards. Small changes compound quickly. A deck that felt clunky last week can feel completely different after swapping out five or six cards.

How to play Commander (the most popular format)

Commander is the most-played Magic format in the world, and the reason many people get into the game. It is a multiplayer format built around self-expression and social play.

The rules are different from standard 60-card Magic in several important ways:

100 cards per deck. Exactly 100, including your Commander.
Singleton. No duplicate cards allowed, except basic lands. Every card in your deck must be unique.
One Legendary Creature as your Commander. This card sits in a special "command zone" and can be cast from there at any time you could normally cast it. If it dies, you can return it to the command zone and cast it again for two extra mana each time.
Colour identity. Every card in your deck must match the colour identity of your Commander. If your Commander is red and white, you cannot play blue, black or green cards.
40 starting life. Games last longer, which means bigger, splashier plays are viable.

Commander is typically played with four players in a free-for-all format. This creates a political dynamic that does not exist in one-on-one play. Alliances form, threats get negotiated, and the biggest threat at the table draws fire from everyone else. It is chaotic, strategic and endlessly replayable.

The singleton rule means every game feels different, and the Commander you choose defines your entire deck's identity. Some players have a single Commander deck they have tuned for years. Others have a dozen.

Pre-constructed Commander decks are one of the best entry points into Magic. They come ready to play out of the box, are designed to hold their own at a casual table, and give you a solid shell to upgrade over time. Browse our Commander deck range to find one that matches your playstyle.

You may also enjoy reading our Magic: The Gathering blog guides for more deck ideas and product advice.

How many Magic: The Gathering cards exist?

The answer depends on how you count. As of 2026, there are roughly 27,000 to 29,000 uniquely named Magic cards. Each of those has its own rules text and in-game effect. That number grows by several hundred with every new set release.

If you include every reprint, alternate art treatment, foil variant, promo version and special edition, the total climbs past 85,000 distinct printings. Factor in non-English versions and digital-exclusive cards and the number goes higher still.

To put that in perspective, the original Alpha set in 1993 contained just 295 cards. In 2026 alone, the release schedule includes Lorwyn Eclipsed, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Secrets of Strixhaven, Marvel Super Heroes, Reality Fracture, The Hobbit and Star Trek sets. Each one adds hundreds of new cards to the pool.

The enormous card pool is a strength, not a barrier. It means there is always something new to discover, some forgotten card that slots perfectly into your deck, some interaction nobody at your table has seen before. That sense of discovery is a major part of what keeps players engaged for years and even decades.

New cards arrive regularly through the latest Magic sealed releases.

Where to go from here

The best thing about Magic is that you do not need to master it before you start having fun. Grab a deck, find someone to play with and learn as you go. Every experienced player started exactly where you are now.

If you want a simple starting point, a pre-constructed Commander deck or a Starter Kit gives you everything you need for your first games. If you enjoy cracking packs and building from a random pool, pick up some booster boxes and draft with friends. If you already know what you want to play, go straight to singles and build exactly the deck you have in mind.

For decks, boosters, singles and accessories, explore the full Harlequins Games Magic: The Gathering range.

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