Magic: The Gathering

*Magic: The Gathering* (colloquially known as *Magic* or *MTG*) is a tabletop and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. Released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, it was the first trading card game and had approximately thirty-five million players as of December 2018, and over twenty billion *Magic* expansion cards were produced in the period from 2008 to 2016, during which time it grew in popularity.

## **Summary**

How the game works is a player takes the role of a Planeswalker, A player in Magic takes the role of a Planeswalker, doing battle with other players as Planeswalkers by casting spells, using artifacts, and summoning creatures as depicted on individual cards drawn from their individual decks. A player defeats their opponent typically (but not always) by casting spells and attacking with creatures to deal damage to the opponent's "life total," with the object being to reduce it from 20 to 0. Although the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as *Dungeons & Dragons*, the gameplay bears little similarity to pencil-and-paper adventure games, while simultaneously having substantially more cards and more complex rules than many other card games. *Magic* can be played with two or more players, either in person with printed cards or on a computer, smartphone or tablet with virtual cards through the Internet-based software *Magic: The Gathering Online* or other video games like *Magic: The Gathering Arena*. It can be played in various rule formats, which fall into two categories: constructed and limited. Limited formats involve players building a deck spontaneously out of a pool of random cards with a minimum deck size of 40 cards; in constructed formats, players create decks from cards they own, usually with a minimum of 60 cards per deck. New cards are released on a regular basis through expansion sets. An organized tournament system (the DCI) played at the international level and a worldwide community of professional *Magic* players has developed, as well as a substantial resale market for *Magic* cards. Certain cards can be valuable due to their rarity in production and utility in gameplay, with prices ranging from a few cents to tens of thousands of dollars.

Richard Garfield had an early attachment to games during his youth: before settling down in Oregon, his father, an architect, had brought his family to Bangladesh and Nepal during his work projects. Garfield did not speak the native languages, but was able to make friends with the local youth through playing cards or marbles. Once back in the United States, he had heard of *Dungeons & Dragons* but neither his local game store nor his friends had a copy, so he developed his own version of what he thought the game would be based on the descriptions he had read, which considered closer to *Clue*, with players moving from room to room fighting monsters with a fixed end-goal. When Garfield eventually got copies of the *Dungeon & Dragons* rulesets, he was surprised that it was a more open-ended game but was "dreadfully written". *Dungeon & Dragons'* open-endedness inspired him, like many others, to develop their own game ideas from it. For Garfield, this was a game he called *Five Magics*, based on five elemental magics that were drawn from geographically-diverse areas. While this remained the core concept of Five Magics, Garfield continued to refine the game while growing up, often drastically changing the base type of game, though never planned to publish this game.

In 1991, Garfield was a doctoral candidate in combinatorial mathematics at University of Pennsylvania and had been brought on as an adjunct professor at Whitman College. During his candidacy, he developed his ideas and had playtested *RoboRally*, a board game based on moving robots through a factory filled with hazards. Garfield had been seeking publishers for the title, and his colleague, Mike Davis, suggested the newly formed Wizards of the Coast, a small outfit established by Peter Adkison, a systems analyst for Boeing in Seattle. In mid-1991, the three arranged to meet in Oregon near Garfield's parents' home. Adkison was impressed by *RoboRally* but considered that it had too many logistics and would be too risky for him to publish. He told Garfield and Davis that he liked Garfield's ideas and that he was looking for a portable game that could be played in the downtime that frequently occurs at gaming conventions.

After the meeting, Garfield remained in Oregon to contemplate Adkison's advice. While hiking near Multnomah Falls, he was inspired to take his Five Magics concept but apply it to collectible color-themed cards, so that each player could make a customizable deck, something each player could consider part of their identity. Garfield arranged to meet with Adkison back in Seattle within the week, and when Adkison heard the idea, he recognized the potential that this would be a game that could be expanded on indefinitely with new cards in contrast to most typical tabletop games; Adkison later wrote on the idea on a USENET post "If executed properly, [the cards] would make us millions." Adkison immediately agreed to produce it.

Garfield returned to Pennsylvania and set off designing the game's core rules and initial cards, with about 150 completed in the few months after his return. The type of gameplay centered on each color remained consistent with how Five Magics had been and with how Magic: The Gathering would stay in the future, such as red representing aggressive attacks. Other games also influenced the design at this point, with Garfield citing games like *Cosmic Encounter* and *Strat-o-matic Baseball* as games that differ each time they are played because of different sets of cards being in play. Initial "cards" were based on using available copyrighted art, and copied to paper to be tested by groups of volunteers at the university. About six months after the meeting with Adkison, Garfield had refined the first complete version of his game.[56] Garfield also began to set the narrative of the game in "Dominia", a multiverse of infinite "planes" from which players, as wizards, can draw power from, which would allow for the vast array of creatures and magics that he was planning for the cards.

Garfield has stated that two major influences in his creation of Magic: the Gathering were the games *Cosmic Encounter*, which first used the concept that normal rules could sometimes be overridden, and *Dungeons & Dragons*. The "Golden Rule of Magic" states that "Whenever a card's text directly contradicts the rules, the card takes precedence." The Comprehensive Rules, a detailed rulebook, exists to clarify conflicts.

Simultaneously, Adkison sought investment into Wizards of the Coast to prepare to publish the game. The company had already committed to completing The Primal Order rulebook, aimed to be compatible with most other role-playing systems on the market, which most investment was drawn to. He had to bring in a number of local Cornish artists to create the fantasy art for Garfield's cards, offering them shares in Wizards of the Coast in payment. After The Primal Order was published in 1992, Wizards of the Coast was sued by Palladium for copyright infringement, a case that was settled out of court and with the result that a second printing of The Primal Order removed the rules relevant to Palladium's system, but this case also financially harmed Wizards of the Coast. Adkison decided to create a separate company, Garfield Games, for publishing the card game.

While the game was simply called *Magic* through most of playtesting, when the game had to be officially named a lawyer informed them that the name Magic was too generic to be trademarked. Mana Clash was instead chosen to be the name used in the first solicitation of the game. However, everybody involved with the game continued to refer to it simply as *Magic*. After further legal consultation, it was decided to rename the game *Magic: The Gathering*, thus enabling the name to be trademarked.

By 1993, Garfield and Adkison had gotten everything ready to premiere Magic: The Gathering at that year's Gen Con in Milwaukee that August, but did not have the funds for a production run to have shipped to game stores in time. Adkison took a single box of cards with a handful of complete decks to the Wizards booth at Origins Game Fair hoping to secure the funds by demonstrating the game. Among those he demonstrated to were representatives of Wargames West, manufacturers of historical tactics games; the representatives eventually brought their CEO over, and after seeing the game, took Adkison to dinner and negotiated funding terms. Adkison returned with US$40,000, enough to make the necessary orders.

*Magic: The Gathering* underwent a general release on August 5th 1993. After shipping the orders, Adkison and his wife drove towards Milwaukee while making stops at game stores and demonstrate the game to drum up support for Gen Con. Their initial stops were quiet, but word of mouth from previous stops spread, and as they traveled south and west, they found larger and larger crowds anxiously awaiting their arrival. Garfield met up with Adkison at Gen Con, where their shipment of 2.5 million cards had been delayed a day. Despite this, by the end of the convention, they had completely sold out.

Magic was an immediate success for Wizards of the Coast. By October 1993, they had sold out their supply of 10 million cards. Wizards was even reluctant to advertise the game because they were unable to keep pace with existing demand. Initially *Magic* attracted many *Dungeons & Dragons* players, but the following included all types of other people as well

## **Action Figures**

Besides making several expansion sets and cards over the years, *Magic* has also had some toys made for the franchise in recent years by Funko who produced some POP! vinyl figures and Legacy action figures based on some characters in the series; both classic and new. However, Resaurus had plans on doing a line of action figures based on the first six years of *Magic* before Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast and were snuffed out so they could produce their own action figures, though were also never produced. Their stories are down below:

* Resaurus
* Hasbro

## **External Links**

* Wizards of the Coast. (2014, February 18).ANNOUNCING FUNKO PLANESWALKERS. The official *Magic: The Gathering* website.

## **Reference**

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:\_The\_Gathering