Header art by Narendra Bintara Adi
Chances are that you’ve at least heard of Magic the Gathering. MTG, as it is known, is not only the card game that inspired the Pokémon TCG, but it’s what Stranger Things was going to be based around before the writers realised it didn’t work out, time wise. Instead they went with Dungeons and Dragons, a franchise that is not only closely linked, but owned by the same company, Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro).
Until recently, MTG has relied heavily on the wizards (obviously), witches, knights, demons and so on that you would come across in D&D. Over the past few years the Universes Beyond supplementary product has expanded to crossover with other IPs. Starting with The Walking Dead and Warhammer 40k, this has expanded to cover everything from My Little Pony to Fallout, Transformers to Monty Python.
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast with art by Stephen Andrade
Yes, there is even a D&D set and a bunch of Stranger Things promos. This year saw the release of an Assassin’s Creed set (it was bad) and next year sees the release of a Final Fantasy set (which we hope will be amazing).
But before all that, we have the upcoming set Bloomburrow, which does away with all that high fantasy stuff and simply asks ‘What if Magic, but Watership Down?’
The elevator pitch for MTG is that you’re a Planeswalker that travels between planes of existence. Wherever you go, you fight other Planeswalkers using your deck of cards, wielding powerful magic and summoning the local denizens to your side. Sometimes that’s a knight or a demon you call on, sometimes it’s Optimus Prime.
This time, we’re heading to Bloomburrow, a plane where there are no humans: everything is a bat, a bunny, an otter or something else. And yes, it is heckin’ adorable. We’ll be here for a few months, before moving to the 80s horror-themed world of Duskmourn on 27 September.
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast with art by Aldo Dominquez, Cory Godbey
If you’ve ever wanted to dip your toe into Magic, or if you’re looking for a deckbuilder to try with your kids, this is the perfect time to give it a go. The only potential issue, of course, is that Magic can be a very complicated game with tens of thousands of cards. So, where do you start?
There are two online clients you can use: Magic the Gathering Online and MTG Arena, but we’d strongly recommend you start on Arena — a free client for computers, tablets and phones that has a decent tutorial to get you into the game. MTGO has pretty much every card ever made on the client, but Arena looks a lot better (in that it doesn’t look like Windows 95) and is a lot more user-friendly.
Arena also has an excellent new-player tutorial that teaches you how the cards work and interact with each other, and then the basics of gameplay. In a nutshell, there are two main types of cards: lands and spells. Lands are resources that you can use to cast your spells, which either summon creatures to attack your opponents with or create powerful effects like drawing you cards, killing your opponent’s creatures or simply doing direct damage to try to kill your opponent and win the game.
Once you get past the tutorial, you will quickly realise that Magic isn’t just a single game, per se. Instead, to paraphrase Mark Rosewater, the head designer at MTG, Magic is a shared rules system that can be applied to many different games. The cards themselves are game pieces, but there are many different ways you can play.
To start with, you’ll likely play Constructed, in which you make a 40-card deck and play 1-vs-1 against your enemy. You each have 20 life and whoever runs out of life (or cards) first loses. This offers the easiest and most consistent gameplay because you know what’s in your deck and how your deck is supposed to be played.
From here, you can graduate to Limited, in which you draft a 40-card deck and then follow the same rules: 20 life, 1-vs-1. Since Limited requires a bit more skill, it’s not going to be where you start, but because every deck you draft will be different, there is huge replayability in this format and we’ll likely still be drafting Bloomburrow in mid-September.
If you’re looking for something quick and snappy, you have Jumpstart, where you smash two 15-card packs together and then pretend it’s a constructed deck. Each Jumpstart pack is themed — Goblins, Elves, Doctors, Lifegain and so on, meaning that while there is still consistency, it is a lot more random than a finely tuned Constructed deck. This is a great way to kill 15 minutes waiting for the train, for example.
Finally, for those with four hours to kill, we have Commander — the most popular of all formats. This sees you build a 100-card deck around one specific and powerful creature. You then sit down with 40 life and battle it our against three other players in a multiplayer match.
Unfortunately, the economy on Arena isn’t ideal, and packs of digital cardboard can quickly become expensive. Fortunately, all of these formats exist online and in paper, which means that whether you enjoy playing with IRL friends or you want to play against randos online, there are options for you. A brand new, preconstructed Commander deck that is ready to play out of the box will probably set you back around £40.
Bloomburrow, and all the cuteness it entails, is pegged to be the best-selling set of the year. It releases on Arena today, before being released in paper (cardboard) later this week on 2nd August. If you want to learn the basics or dip a toe in t, now is the perfect time to give it a shot.
