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Welcome to the Multiverse!
Magic: the Gathering is a Trading Card Game, the first of its kind, developed by Richard Garfield and his playtesters for the gaming company Wizards of the Coast in 1993. You and your opponents play the role of dueling
planeswalkers, wizards able to travel between dimensions known as planes to gather unique magic. Using customized decks made up of your spells, the creatures you can summon, your mana bonds with lands, and even other planeswalkers you can call in to help out, you try to defeat your foes.
Magic constantly travels to different worlds with their own gimmicks, such as a focus on artifacts or multicolored cards, but Core Sets are for beginners to experience Magic at its, well, core. This is the perfect place to start the game, but for experienced players, it can also be enjoyable to play plain and simple Magic. For more experienced players, you can check out Modern Horizons, released recently. Most of the banner art in this thread is from that, actually >_>.
With this set, it takes a break from the ongoing story, but that doesn't mean there's no story. Instead, we're getting additional backstory for Chandra, the red-headed fire mage.
This set also brings a significant change to the mulligan system. With the
London Mulligan, if you don't like your opening hand, you can shuffle it back into your library and draw
seven new cards. This is a mulligan. Then if you keep your hand, you choose cards equal to the number of mulligans you have performed from your hand and put them on the bottom of your library. So if you keep after one mulligan, you draw seven cards and then you choose one card and put it on the bottom of your library, leaving you with six cards in hand. On the second mulligan, you draw seven and put two cards on the bottom of your library, leaving you with five cards. This is a change from the old system, where you only draw seven minus the number mulligan you're on and then scry 1. The new system makes it more reasonable to go down to a five card hand (two mulligans).
Note that the majority of discussion happens on Discord now, but we'll be available for any questions here.
GETTING STARTED
Official guide to starting Magic
To see what a game is like, check out
Geek and Sundry's Spellslinger series, where Day[9] battles various geek celebrities, often losing, using simple and easy to follow decks.
For the digital card game, you can play
Magic Arena potentially for free.
It has its own thread. Though it's now discontinued in light of Magic Arena,
Magic Duels is still available to download for a single player Magic experience, and it can help a lot for figuring out the rules.
For the physical card game, there are many ways to get on board. If you go to a local game store (LGS), the owner will give you a simple
Welcome Deck for free, after demonstrating how to play the game. The
Spellslinger Starter Kit has two simple decks that you
do not shuffle so you and a friend can get a guided tour through how a game of Magic can work.
Planeswalker Decks are pre-constructed decks with four brand new cards, including unique planeswalker cards and one additional booster pack. While not particularly strong, they will allow you to actually play casual games.
Challenger Decks will allow you to compete in Standard tournaments using real decks for, before release, much cheaper than buying the cards individually.
If you want to build your own deck, a
Deckbuilder's Toolkit will give you a decent starting collection of cards, including 125 semi-random cards, basic lands, four booster packs, and perhaps most importantly, a good box for your cards.
Game stores will hold
Magic Open House events specifically meant for new players, with people there to give you Welcome Decks and play teaching games. Experienced players are also encouraged to participate and help beginners, and everyone will get a promotional card for attending.
The big thing to look forward to, however, is the
Prerelease event held for every set. You play using the Sealed format, where every player is given a box with six booster packs and a random additional rare card. From this pool of cards, all of which you keep, each player builds a deck of 40 cards and participates in a Swiss-system tournament. This is a fun and casual event, where everyone is still trying to figure out the set, so don't worry about messing up. In addition to normal duels, there are also Two-Headed Giant events, where you pair up with another player and face off against another team.
Magic Open House events will be on June 29–30, 2019. Prerelease events will be held on July 5–7, 2019. Call your local game store a few days ahead of time to register for the Prerelease, or they might just run out of room.
Find local game stores here.
Number of Cards: ???
Magic Open House: June 29–30, 2019
Arena Release: July 4, 2019
Prerelease Weekend: July 5–7, 2019
Release Date: July 12, 2019
Draft Weekend: July 13–14, 2019
Card image gallery
As part of the onboarding process for beginners, Core Set 2019 has not just one, not two, but five Planeswalker Decks, all focusing on a single color. Planeswalker Decks are great if you're just starting out and want a deck to practice with. Each deck comes with a booster pack, and they run for $10.99 MSRP.
The focus of this set is Chandra's backstory, so we get not one, not two, but three different Chandra planeswalker cards. Plus another one in a Planeswalker Deck.
So yup, not only are we getting multiple Chandras, but the cards even encourage playing them with each other. So it's Chandra tribal! Oh, elementals too, I suppose.
SCHEDULE
Premier events schedule
Core Set 2020
Magic Open House: June 29–30, 2019
Arena Release: July 4, 2019
Prerelease Weekend: July 5–7, 2019
Release Date: July 12, 2019
Draft Weekend: July 13–14, 2019
RESOURCES
Official articles - Nicknamed the Mothership, these articles are the primary source of news. Recommended columns are Making Magic, written by the head designer, Mark Rosewater (aka MaRo); Magic Story, which tells the story, written by various authors; and Play Design, written by various Magic developers. The other articles generally discuss deck building.
Card image gallery - Best way to see all of the spoiled cards together, but only updates once a day.
Blogatog - Tumblr ran by Mark Rosewater where he answers questions, updates very frequently.
Drive to Work - Mark Rosewater's weekly podcast about Magic that he literally records as he drives to work. Two episodes are released every Friday.
MTG Reddit - The best place to get new card information. The community sucks, though.
Gatherer - The official method of searching through released cards. Has autocomplete.
Scryfall - The better search method, with bigger cards, but it doesn't have autocomplete.
Game store locator
