A few years ago, some guys at work started playing "Magic the Gathering", a card game from Wizards of the Coast, and naturally, I joined in. I hadn't played a collectible card game before, but I'm surprised how quickly I got hooked on it.
There's lots of rules in Magic, and there's lots of editions and lots of cards with their own special rule. But the core mechanics of the game are very simple. When I was new to the game, I got a starter pack which came with everything needed for two players to start playing, as well as a cheesy comic which described how to play in a way that was very easy to understand.
The picture above shows the 9th edition starter, but you can get the 10th edition starter here, if you want to give the game a go.
The basic objective in Magic is simple: kill your opponent, by damaging him such that his life points goes down to zero (from the starting 20). To do this, you make use of spells (the cards are your spells). Spells have all sorts of effects, and some can even damage your opponent directly, while others are used to summon creatures, which you can then use to attack your opponent, or defend yourself against his attacks. In order to cast spells, you need to draw magic energy (mana) from the lands you control (some cards are Lands rather than Spells, and the more Lands you play, the more (and more powerful) Spells you can cast.
Magic is an amazingly well balanced game, where you constantly have to think ahead and use your resources wisely. There's also an element of chance, as you're never sure what cards you'll be getting next.
There's two more things I'd like to mention about Magic - it's a collectible card game, and it's a constructible card game. Myself, I largely ignore the collectible aspect - I'm not interested in buying lots of "boosters" (packs of randomly selected cards) to get hold of some "rare" ones, but you can buy big lots of common cards online, which is what I tend to do.
The constructable aspect is more interesting - it means you can construct your deck of cards any way you like, by choosing which cards to include. This is a big part of the fun, as the way you construct the deck pretty much decided which strategy you need to use when playing it. Building, testing and tweaking your own decks is a lot of fun.
But sometimes it's fun to play with pre-constructed decks, and there's a lot "Theme Decks" available for Magic, which is simply a pre-built deck of cards, along with some information on recommended playing styles and strategies to use for it.
Magic the Gathering is a really good game, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who likes board games, card games or strategy games.
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