Below we embed our long-form videos of the week, alongside lists of featured cards or decks and additional information. If you still crave more content, make sure to check out our shorts on YouTube!
Tuesday
No matter if you're new to Magic: The Gathering or if you want to introduce your friends to one of the best games of all time, these five ideas include something interesting for every situation.
Also check out these additional ideas!
- Tales of Middle-earth Starter Kit
- Core 2021 Arena Starter Kit
- Shadows over Innistrad Horrific Visions intro pack
- Ninth Edition Fast Track two-player starter set
Thursday
We assembled four actual Magic players and one who is really a Yu-Gi-Oh! player. Our jury had to guess who the impostor is. Would you have guessed?
Here are the five biggest differences between Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh! (described in somewhat simplified terms so that players of either game can understand what's going on in the other):
Almost every relevant play in Magic requires so-called mana, which you get from land cards you have on the battlefield. You're limited to playing one land per turn, and you can be unlucky and draw too few or too many of them. In Yu-Gi-Oh! everything is technically free, and the limiting factor is instead that you can only make plays of certain types once per turn. Many of the more powerful things you can do also require you to play and/or sacrifice specific other cards first.
Magic knows five distinct colors with different strengths and weaknesses, and the cards of a certain color require mana of the corresponding color. So the more colors you want to include in your deck, the higher the effort (both in deck design and some plays you may have to make to meet your mana requirements) and the greater the risk (of not meeting your mana requirements).
To account for the presence of lands, Constructed decks in Magic contain a minimum of 60 cards, and you start with seven cards in hand, whereas in Yu-Gi-Oh! it's 40 and five. A deck can contain a maximum of four copies of the same card in Magic, excepting basic lands, and in Yu-Gi-Oh! a maximum of three.
Creatures are much smaller in Magic, often just 1/1 or 2/2 and rarely going into double digits. The corresponding numbers on Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters can go well into the thousands. Consequently Magic players start at twenty life and Yu-Gi-Oh! players with 8,000 life points.
The vast majority of Magic creatures can only attack one turn after they've been played. A player declares all of their attackers simultaneously, and the defending player then chooses if and how their creatures block. Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters can attack on the turn they are played, except that the very first turn of the game does not have a battle phase at all. They attack one after another, and they have to attack an opposing creature if one exists.