Magic The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering, created by Richard Garfield, was the first collectible card game, a big seller, and prompted a wave of similar games in the 1990s.

In Magic, two or more players take the roles of so called planeswalkers engaging in a magical duel to the death. Every player has a number of life points, once these reach zero he or she dies. The last surviving player wins.

Players fight each other by casting spells from their hand. To cast a spell one needs mana, magical energy, which is generated by special land cards. There are hunderds of different spell cards. The most common types are:

• Summoning Spells: permanently create a creature that can attack the other player or be used for defense.
• Enchantments: permanently modify a single other card (creature, land, etc.) or the whole environment.
• Sorceries & Instants: generate one-shot effects (like dealing one point of damage, or killing all creatures).
• Interrupts: prevent or modify the casting of spells themselves.

Each player has a deck where cards are drawn from; up to seven cards in their hand; an area on the table for their lands, creatures, and enchantments; and a graveyard where no-longer-active cards are discarded. Noone may look into the decks, everyone may see their own hand only, all the other cards are open for viewing by anybody.

Players take turns where they draw one card, can play at most one land from their hand, cast as much spells as they want and can afford, and may attack one other player with one or more creatures. An attacked player may declare some of his or her creatures as blockers. Blocked attackers damage their blockers and are in turn damaged by them. A creature that amasses more than a specific number of damage points in one round dies. Unblocked attackers deal damage to the player they attacked.

Instants and Interrupts may be played during another player's turn and during combat. Other spells (and lands) are only playable before or after combat in one's own round.

Apart from creating a new game genre, Magic also has an accompanying magazine, a number of national and international championships, and line of fiction novels set in Magic's world.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/