Learn To Play Magic the Gathering

How to play a turn

During your Magic games, you’re going to be summoning creatures, sending them into battle, flinging spells back and forth—all while doing your best to thwart your opponent.
The action will get intense from time to time, and that’s part of the fun! But knowing when you can cast something and when you can’t is important, and that’s where the parts of the turn come in.

Magic’s turn sequence breaks down each player’s turn into phases to add order to the chaos. The phases always follow the same sequence, so you’ll get used to them after only a few games.

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Once you’re ready to start a game, it helps to know how most players organize the battlefield.

Start with your library (your deck).
Give it a good series of shuffles and let your opponent cut it, if they wish.
Then place it off to the side, with enough space near it for your graveyard.
To start the game, you draw seven cards from the top of your library. This is your opening hand.
In your opening hand, you ideally want a mixture of lands and spells, if you are lacking one or the other, you may wish to "MULLIGAN".

Many players put lands nearest them on the table, with other cards closer to your opponent.
This way, both you and your opponent can clearly see what cards are on the battlefield, and your creatures are at the center of the action.
Other cards on the battlefield, like artifacts or enchantments, are usually placed off to the side of your creatures.

Your turn always starts with the beginning phase, broken down into three steps.

First, during the untap step, you’ll untap (straighten out) any tapped cards you have.

Next is the upkeep step, usually nothing happens during the next step, but some cards have abilities that happen then.

Finally, at the beginning of the draw step, you’ll draw a card from your library (your deck).

You can also cast instant spells or activate abilities during your upkeep and draw steps.

The main phase is where you’ll do most of your dirty work, playing lands and casting spells.

In fact, it’s such an important phase that you get two of them every turn.

One happens before you attack with creatures, and the other happens right after combat.

BEGINNING OF COMBAT

This is the first step of combat, you usually use this step to notify your opponent you are moving away from your first main phase.
This step gives you or your opponent a chance to cast any spells before you declare your creatures attack.

DECLARE ATTACKERS

Tap every creature you want to attack your opponent with.
(A creature can’t attack the turn you cast it unless it has haste.)
If a creature has Vigilance, you do not need to tap it. You just need to declare it is attacking to make sure your opponent is aware.

DECLARE BLOCKERS

Once you’ve decided to attack, your opponent gets to choose how to block your attack.
Sometimes you’ll get off easy and your attack will go undefended.
When that happens, your opponent will lose some life.
Other times, your attack will run straight into a block by an opponent’s creature.
And then the vicious creature-against-creature battle begins!

DAMAGE STEP

Attacking and blocking creatures have been declared, and you and your opponent have used any nasty tricks you had up your sleeves.
Now, it’s time to deal damage.

Attacking creatures that didn’t get blocked will deal damage directly to your opponent—you’re that much closer to victory!
If a creature was blocked, it deals damage to its blocker instead of your opponent.
Blocking creatures deal their damage back to the creatures they blocked.

If a creature is dealt damage at least equal to its toughness, it’s destroyed and sent to the ominous-sounding graveyard.
(You may know it simply as the discard pile, but “graveyard” sounds so much cooler.)

END OF COMBAT

After combat ends, any creatures that survive remain on the battlefield to fight another day.
That’s one of the reasons that creatures are such a popular way to achieve victory:
they remain a powerful force on the battlefield until they’re destroyed.

But don’t worry about keeping track of damage for too long—creatures heal at the end of every turn.
If you have spells or other ways to deal damage, you can finish off wounded creatures before the end of the turn.

After combat, you’ll get a second main phase.
If you didn’t play a land during your first main phase, you can do so now. You can also cast spells during this phase.
It’s often a good idea to cast creature spells during your second main phase and not your first. This keeps your opponent working on as little information as possible—if you drop a large creature before your combat phase, it may change how they decide to block.
And since you can’t attack with a creature on the first turn it’s on the battlefield, it’s often better to wait until the second main phase to cast that creature spell.

Finally, there’s the ending phase, and as its name implies, here is where the turn wraps up.

There are two steps here.
The end step is your last opportunity for anyone to cast instant spells or activate abilities before the turn ends.
Often, if you have an instant spell you want to cast during your opponent’s turn, you’ll cast it during the end step to give them the least amount of time to react.

Finally, there’s the cleanup step, where a little bit of housekeeping takes place. Creatures with lingering damage heal, and any abilities that say “until the end of the turn” end.
Once you’re done with your ending phase, let your opponent know it’s time for their turn.

That’s it! These five phases ensure that the turn flows smoothly, and the action is always moving forward.

When you cast a spell, it doesn’t resolve (have its effect) right away. It has to wait on the stack. Each player, including you, now gets a chance to cast an instant or activate an ability in response.
If a player does, that instant or ability goes on the stack on top of what was already waiting there.
When all players decline to do anything, the top spell or ability on the stack will resolve.
For example, say you have a 2/2 Runeclaw Bear on the battlefield.
You have Titanic Growth in your hand and your opponent has Lightning Strike.

If you cast Titanic Growth first, your opponent can respond by casting Lightning Strike.
Lightning Strike will be on top of Titanic Growth on the stack, so it will resolve first.
Lightning Strike will deal 3 damage to Runeclaw Bear, which is enough to destroy it.
Runeclaw Bear is put into your graveyard.
When Titanic Growth tries to resolve, its target will be gone, so it will have no effect and will be put into the graveyard.

On the other hand, if your opponent casts Lightning Strike first, you can respond with Titanic Growth.
Titanic Growth will resolve first, boosting Runeclaw Bear into a 6/6 creature.
Then Lightning Strike will resolve and deal 3 damage to it, but that’s not enough to destroy the suddenly enormous Bear!