I'm new to Magic: the gathering and have questions

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O.K. So whenever I attack with a flying creature, by default it always damages the player unless he can block with flying or reach creatures. I can't choose to try to attack his creatures.

I have another question. If my creature has a tap-able ability like "pay one mana and this creature get+3/+3 until the end of the turn" can this be done during the opposing players turn to aid in defense? Actually this is my nephews question. I'm pretty sure that the only cards that can be played during an opponents turn are instants and creatures with flash.


Another question. When a certain creature is summoned, it says to return a creature back into play from the graveyard. Is this considered a creature ability or a creature spell? I have a counter creature spell card that I am itching to use.

Good to see you've gotten started. It'll take some time to learn all the rules, but you seem to be well on your way.

Your questions are all about abilities here. These are not spells & different rules apply to them. There are 3 kinds. Activated, triggered, & static.

Activated: These abilities have a cost (mana, tapping, or both), read like "cost: do this effect", and require you to actively use them to make them happen. You can play these at any time unless told otherwise on the card. So, your +3/+3 pump could be used in defense unless is says on the card for some reason it can't.

Triggered: These abilities read "when x happens, do y". That's what the creature-from-graveyard card is doing. When the creature comes into play, it triggers it's effect of returning another creature from the graveyard. So to answer your question, the creature in question is a creature spell WITH a triggered ability; not one or the other. If you counter the spell, it will never come into play & it's ability will never happen.

Static: Flying, first strike, trample, etc.... self-explanitory.

Deadeye, have you considered becoming a judge (if you aren't one already)? That was a very good explanation.

creatures can have special abilities, too. morph is considered a special abililty, and is a free action to use.

Oh Morph and it's special action absurdity. It doesn't use the stack. Not many things get away with that, and morph is one of them.

Cool!! So my counter spell and counter creature spell cards are better than I thought they were.

O.K. Now I have a major question. I should probably know it, but I can't find the answer to it anywhere. Suppose I play an instant during my opponents turn. Is the mana cost for that supposed to come out of my mana pool for my turn coming up? Surely I'm not supposed to save mana from my previous turn to use it, the mana burn would kill me.

Whenever you pay the mana cost for a spell or ability, odds are you're tapping lands to pay for it. You can tap your lands during your opponents turn so as long as you leave some lands untapped you'll be able to play things. Make sure you leave enough lands untapped (or "mana open" as people often say) to do what you want to do. So say you want to play Cancel on your opponents turn, you'll need to leave at least enough lands untapped in such a way that you can produce 1UU (so probably two islands and something else).

Seems you've got a lot of basic game questions. Try this site:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/playmagic/

It should get you through a lot of the basics.

I passed the test at a promotional event for judging seven years ago at origins. Never did much with it though. I prefer to just play magic rather than hand out game losses. I like teaching new players though.

Hmmm, I think I'll download the free tutorial computer game. I should learn quite a bit off of that.




Seems like the mana burn would kill you. Using instants during an opponents turn suddenly doesn't sound so good. (Mana burn happens at the end of my turn right before my opponents turn, right?)


By the way, thanks Optician and Deadeye for being so helpfull with information.

Mana burn happens due to you having excess mana at the end of a phase (the phases are the beginning phase, main phase, combat phase, postcombat main phase and end phase). Mana is what comes out of lands when you tap them. An untapped land can make mana but it being untapped doesn't mean that you have mana in your mana pool.

O.K., I think I understand now. I was thinking that lands and mana were the same thing. Whenever we had untapped lands at the end of the turn we assigned mana burn for them.
This also caused my confusion with instants.


Now that I know better, the game will last even longer and will be even more fun!

A good way to get cards, especially if you're just starting out is to buy fat packs. They typically cost about $30. With them, you get 8 booster packs (with the Alara block, 6 with older sets), 40 basic lands, a collector's box and a 20 sided die.

Hmmm sounds interesting, but what is the 20 sided die for?

The most common use is as a life counter. I have a few and I use for +1/+1 counters or something. I have a deck with creatures that continue to get bigger so I put a D20 on them and then adjust as they get bigger to show how many counters they have. I've also seen them used in place of tokens for creatures. If you have cards that allow you to spawn 1/1 creatures, instead of putting a token in place for each one, you can use the die to represent how many you have. As more come into play or more are killed, you adjust the die accordingly.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/a ... eature/42a

Read this. This is an article about some gameplay changes coming in Magic 2010 (one of them is that Mana burn is gone. So this whole line of questioning will never occur again).

Looks like you picked a good time to begin playing. You were about right at the point where you'd have to be learning the logical loopholes of the game experienced players like to trick newbies with. It's been simplified now. Read this article & you'll be on the cutting edge of rules knowledge.

As an experienced player, I'm a little sour about the changing of the rules I've already come to master. However, I'm sure I can find new ways to be tricky. lol