Magic the Gathering FAQs

Updated 4/15/2012

Frequently Asked Questions


What Is FNM?

Friday Night Magic… There are 2 types that are played here Type II & Draft…….


How Does A prelease work?

How the Prerelease works is you will get 6 packs,and played as a
  • Sealed Deck tournament

    •   Players build decks from the cards they selected, adding as many basic lands (Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, and Forests) to their decks as they like. Each deck must have at least 40 cards.Each pair of players then plays a match, which consists of the best two out of three games.Plus the pot for the game is doubled..

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    What is EDH?

    (aka EDH – Elder Dragon Highlander)Commander is the modern name for EDH, a Magic:The Gathering variant format which emphasises social interactions, interesting games, and creative deckbuilding. It can be played 1-on-1 but is usually multiplayer.

    For more info click the Banner

     

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    How Do You Build a Type II Deck?

     

    Type II Format Deck Construction

    Constructed decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards. There is no maximum deck size; however, you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance. If a player wishes to use a sideboard, it must contain exactly fifteen cards. With the exception of basic land cards, a player’s combined deck and sideboard may not contain more than four of any individual card, counted by its English card title equivalent. All cards named Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are basic.

    *****Click  A card set to see all the cards in that set*****
    The following card sets are permitted in Standard tournaments:

     

     

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    What is Two-Head Giant?

     

    Have you ever wanted to play with a friend as a team? Two-Headed Giant (2HG) is a great format for players looking to do battle alongside another player against another team of two players. To start, players sit next to their teammates. Both teams start at 30 life and each team shares a turn. You don’t need to worry about sharing your cards though, as all four players have their own separate decks.

     

    You’ll draw from your own library and tap your own lands to pay for spells, just as in a regular Magic game, but with all the fun of sharing that experience with someone who wants you to win just as much as you do!

     

    Two-Headed Giant is a great format to help new players learn the game, because you can talk with your teammate, give advice about what cards to play, and strategics together for the best way to defeat the opposing team.

     

    Two-Headed Giant Format Deck Construction

     


    Two-Headed Giant Constructed decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards. There is no maximum deck size; however, you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance.

     

    Two-Headed Giant uses the Unified Deck Construction rules. With the exception of basic land cards, a team’s combined decks may not contain more than four of any individual card, counted by its English card title. (For example, if one player is using four Naturalizes in a Multi-player Constructed event, no other player on that team may have a Naturalize in his or her deck.) Sideboards are not allowed in Constructed Multi-player tournaments.

     

    If a card is restricted in a particular format, no more than one of that card may bee used by the team.

     

    No players may use cards that are banned in a particular format.
    In addition to the above rules, the following card is

    Banned in Constructed Two-Headed Giant tournaments:
    Erayo, Soratami Ascendant

     

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    How Do you Play Boster Draft?

    Instead of just opening your cards and building a deck, you and the other players at the table (four to eight total) have to draft the cards for your decks. At the start of a Booster Draft, each player opens a booster pack and picks the card he or she wants from it. (You can’t see the cards that the other players draft.) Then each player passes the rest of the pack to his or her left. You pick up the pack that was passed to you, select a card, and pass the rest to your left. This process continues until all the cards have been drafted. Next, each player opens a second pack, but this time, you pass the pack to your right. After all those cards are drafted. You open the third pack and pass to the left again.Once all the packs have been drafted, players build decks from the cards they selected. Adding as many basic lands (Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, and Forests) to their decks as they like. Each deck must have at least 40 cards. Each pair of players then plays a match, which consists of the best two out of three games. In the next round, the winners play against other winners (and the losers against the losers, if you like). The player who wins all three rounds—or all three matches—is the winner. It’s a great way to spend a few hours with your buddies.

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    What Is Modern?

    Constructed decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards. There is no maximum deck size; however, you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance. If a player wishes to use a sideboard, it must contain exactly fifteen cards.

    With the exception of basic land cards, a player’s combined deck and sideboard may not contain more than four of any individual card, counted by its English card title equivalent. All cards named Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are basic. (The five Ice Age block snow-covered lands — Snow-Covered Plains, Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Swamp, Snow-Covered Mountain, and Snow-Covered Forest — are also basic lands. Note that snow-covered lands are permitted only in formats that allow expansions from the Ice Age block to be used.)

    *****Click  A card set to see all the cards in that set*****

    The following card sets are permitted in Modern tournaments:

     

    **Unglued & Unhinged are Banned****
    Take a look at the banned List for Modern

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    What Is Legacy?

    Constructed Legacy decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards. There is no maximum deck size; however, you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance.
    If a player wishes to use a sideboard, it must contain exactly fifteen cards.
    With the exception of basic land cards, a player’s combined deck and sideboard may not contain more than four of any individual card, counted by its English card title equivalent.
    All cards named Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are basic. (The five Ice Age block snow-covered lands — Snow-Covered Plains, Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Swamp, Snow-Covered Mountain, and Snow-Covered Forest — are also basic lands. Note that snow-covered lands are permitted only in formats that allow expansions from the Ice Age block to be used.    )

    **Unglued & Unhinged are Banned****
    Take a look at the banned List for Legacy

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    What Is Peasant Magic?

    Constructed Peasant Magic decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards. can have only 5 uncommon.. Nothing higher then that and the rest commons…There is no maximum deck size; however, you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance.
    If a player wishes to use a sideboard, it must contain exactly fifteen cards.
    With the exception of basic land cards, a player’s combined deck and sideboard may not contain more than four of any individual card, counted by its English card title equivalent.
    All cards named Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are basic. (The five Ice Age block snow-covered lands — Snow-Covered Plains, Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Swamp, Snow-Covered Mountain, and Snow-Covered Forest — are also basic lands. Note that snow-covered lands are permitted only in formats that allow expansions from the Ice Age block to be used.)
    Peasant Rules
    * No more than five 5 uncommon cards.
    * No rare cards.
    * Decks should be at least 60 cards.
    * Decks should contain at least 55 commons.
    * Sideboards should be 15 cards.
    * There may be no more than 4 copies of any single card except basic land.

    Banned cards:
    - Jeweled Bird
    - Bazaar of Baghdad
    - Berserk
    - Diamond Valley
    - Library of Alexandria
    - Mana Drain
    - Brain Freeze
    - Strip Mine
    - Frantic Search
    - Sol Ring
    - Skullclamp
    - Tendrils of Agony
    - Ancient Den
    - Darksteel Citadel

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    How do you play a Swiss-system tournament?


    Swiss-system tournament works like this.

    A Swiss tournament goes for a predetermined number of rounds, with all of the players taking part in each round. In each round two players compete head-to-head. All players participate in the entire tournament – none are eliminated. The winner (and top places) of the tournament is based on the final scores of the players. The final score is based on the number of points they accumulated for each round. In some competitions, one point is awarded to the winner of a round; in others, a number of points can be earned each round.

    The principle of a Swiss tournament is that each player will be pitted against another player who has done as well (or poorly) as him or herself. For the first round, players are paired either according to some pattern or randomly (according to common practice in that type of game or sport). For subsequent rounds, players are sorted according to their cumulative scores and players are assigned opponents that have the same or similar score to that point. One proviso is that the same players never oppose each other twice. There may be adjustments made to the natural order. For instance, in chess the pairings may be changed to equalize the number of times a player has been White and Black.

    Pairing procedure

    The first round is either drawn at random or seeded according to some prior order, such as rating or last year’s performance. Players who win receive a point, those who draw receive half a point and players that lose receive no points. Win, lose, or draw, all players proceed to the next round where winners are pitted against winners, losers are pitted against losers, and so on. In subsequent rounds, players face opponents with the same (or almost the same) score. No player is paired up against the same opponent twice however. In chess it is also attempted to ensure that each player plays an equal number of games with white and black, alternate colors in each round being the most preferable, and a concerted effort is made not to assign the same color three times in a row.

    The basic rule is that players with the same score are ranked according to rating. Then the top half is paired with the bottom half. For instance, if there are eight players in a score group, number 1 is paired with number 5, number 2 is paired with number 6 and so on. Modifications are then made to balance colors and prevent players from meeting each other twice.

    The detailed rules of how to do the pairing are usually quite complicated and often the tournament organizer has access to a computer to do the pairing. If the rules are strictly adhered to, the organizer has no discretion in pairing the round. See the link below for detailed pairing rules from FIDE.

    Standard Swiss system

    Round 1:
    #1 plays #5, #1 wins
    #2 plays #6, #2 wins
    #3 plays #7, #3 wins
    #4 plays #8, #4 wins

    Round 2:
    #1 plays #3, #1 wins
    #2 plays #4, #2 wins
    #5 plays #7, #5 wins
    #6 plays #8, #6 wins

    After two rounds, the standings are:
    1 2-0
    2 2-0
    3 1-1
    4 1-1
    5 1-1
    6 1-1
    7 0-2
    8 0-2

    Final scores and tie-breaking

    The tournament lasts for a number of rounds announced before the tournament. After the last round, players are ranked by their score. If this is tied then a tie break score, such as the sum of all their opponents’ scores (Buchholz chess rating), can be used: see Tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments.

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    What Is Sealed a Deck tournament?


    Sealed Deck is easily the most common Limited format used when people play real-life Limited Magic (in Magic Online, draft is probably more common although the large numbers of Sealed Deck leagues would certainly make it close).

    The way it works is very simple. Each player in the tournament gets a number of cards that are still sealed in their original packaging. You open up those packs and then build a deck using only the cards contained within. In most other Magic formats, you would build a deck before leaving to go to the tournament but in Sealed Deck you are restricted to using only the cards that the organizer of the tournament gives you. This is typically one tournament pack and two booster packs, but not always. You pay for the product (although often at a reduced rate) but you get to keep all the cards you open. You own them; you take them away with you at the end of the day. This small set of cards is usually referred to as your “Sealed Deck pool” or your “card pool.”

    Once you’ve opened up your packs, you then have a set amount of time to construct a deck using those cards. This obviously means you are very heavily restricted in the deck you can build, as you would normally only have 75 spells (45 spells from the Tournament Pack, 15 each from the two boosters) from which to build your deck. Fortunately, to make this a little easier, you only need to make a 40-card deck instead of the standard 60-card one for Constructed events.

    Choosing your spells

    Once you have your cards, you then have to decide how to build your deck. The most obvious thing you have to do is decide which cards will go in it! This requires you to utilize probably the most important skill to have in Limited Magic — card evaluation. All this means is basically being able to tell the good cards from the bad ones. You don’t need to play all of the spells you open – indeed you shouldn’t do so – so you need to have an idea which ones are worth playing and which ones aren’t. Cards which are good in Constructed aren’t always good in Limited, and there are some cards which are great in Limited but wouldn’t necessarily make your Constructed decks.

    Due to the reduced deck size of 40 cards, you’ll really only want to play 22-23 of your 75 cards (the remaining 17-18 cards will be lands – we’ll get to that shortly). You will rarely have enough cards to make a mono-colored deck so you can expect to have to play cards from two colors at least, and sometimes three.

    When deciding which colors to play, you will usually base this choice on which colors contain the most powerful cards. In addition to this though, you should also look at how deep each color is (by that, I mean how many playable cards each color has). You should also pay close attention to which colors have spells that allow you to deal with your opponent’s creatures. Limited Magic is primarily about creature combat, so any card that allows you to neutralize an opponent’s creature – should draw your attention and sway your decision toward that color.

    Once you have chosen the colors you think will make the best deck, you need to select which spells from those colors will go in the deck. Sometimes you might need to include all the playable cards from each color just to make up the 22-23 cards you need for the deck, but more commonly you’ll have a number of great cards that automatically go in, and then you’ll have to select the remainder of the deck from a larger number of more mediocre cards. These decisions are important, but if you’re new to sealed deck and aren’t too sure, don’t worry about it too much. Instead try to focus on making sure you have a good balance of cheap and expensive cards so you have things you can cast in the early turns of the game as well as later on.

    Sometimes you’ll open a lot of powerful cards and building a good deck isn’t difficult. The real skill in the Sealed Deck format is learning to make the most from your weaker card pools. Sometimes you get a pool so bad, you can’t really rescue it, but the vast majority of card pools contain a halfway decent deck in them somewhere. When you receive a mediocre card pool, the key to succeeding with it is to optimize your most powerful cards and try to build a deck that sticks to one style of play or one major theme.

    You should also try to maximize any particular themes of your deck.

    As a general rule, you should try to stick to two colors whenever possible. If you need to include cards from a third color to make up the numbers or because you have some very powerful cards in three different colors, you can do so. You should try to make sure the third color is a minor one, though. It should only have 2-3 spells from that color, and none of the spells should have a double-colored mana cost.

    If you are able to run two colors, you should generally run 17 lands. With only two colors you don’t need to include extra lands of a third basic land type, and as a result you can usually meet your color requirements with just 17 lands. You will almost always split these 9/8 or 10/7 depending on which color you have most of. On rare occasions you might even run an 11/6 split if,

    If you are running a splash color consisting of a single spell, you should really make sure you have at least two different ways of casting that spell. You might get a dual-land or you might be able to rely on a mana-fixer. If you don’t have those types of cards, two basic lands of the appropriate type should be included to support a single-card splash. If you are splashing 2-4 cards you should have at least three ways (but preferably four) of casting those spells. Again, mana-fixers can count but more often than not you’ll just want to make sure you have 3-4 basic lands that will support your splash color. Three-color decks should contain 18 lands more often just so you have a better chance of drawing lands for all your splash colors. You’ll usually want to split these in an 8/7/3 ratio (8 Swamps, 7 Islands, 3 Mountains in a black-blue, splash red deck, for example) or perhaps 7/7/4 if you have four cards for which you are splashing.

    Sideboarding

    The other big difference between Limited Magic and other formats is that in Limited formats, every card you open that doesn’t make your main deck becomes part of your sideboard. You aren’t restricted to using just 15 sideboard cards — all of the cards you opened on the day can make up your sideboard.

    Sideboarding is one of the more over-looked aspects of Limited Magic, but paying attention to your options can swing a match that you might otherwise lose. When you sort through your card pool, pay note any cards that you wouldn’t play main-deck but that you would want to play against certain decks or cards, At its simplest.

    Also remember that you are free to swap out entire colors if you wish. You might also want to consider swapping a splash color on occasion.

    The other key thing here is to plan ahead. When finished building a sealed deck in a tournament, always spend some time and pull out any cards that you could see yourself sideboarding in. If there’s a possible color change make sure to have enough basic lands of that color to support the change should you ever need to make it. Also spend some time deciding which cards that you would sideboard out in most circumstances. Making these decisions before you even sit down to play a match is much better because you won’t be under any time pressure and can think more clearly. If you don’t think about this until you’re down a game and having to try and sideboard an entire colour out in the five minutes before the start of Game 2, you can easily make mistakes in terms of your land count and which spells you take out or leave in.

    The final important thing to learn here is the ability to adapt. Although it feels like you don’t have many cards to work with, it’s still very easy to miss potential sideboard cards if you dismiss them at an early stage. Don’t be afraid to change any of your sideboarding plans if you spot something that you think will help you out against whatever deck your opponent is playing.

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