Know someone who likes games? Magic: the Gathering is your answer for a fantastic gift idea! Magic: the Gathering offers fun, competition, and endless opportunities for creativity and critical thinking.
Magic: the Gathering is a collectible card game designed to make players use their minds to create better and more strategic decks and to outthink their opponents, and, best of all, it's great social fun!
Magic: the Gathering offers fun competitive and always changing play for 2 or more players. Of course, each player needs their own deck of cards.
Getting Started
Need to learn how to play? The basic, and also more in-depth, rules for playing Magic: the Gathering can be found on the Wizards of the Coast website here. In addition, if you are in the Utica, NY area, Utica Public Library regularly runs Magic: the Gathering events and Josh Carlson, Director of Youth Services, is always willing to help new players learn to play!
Pre-constructed decks can be purchased, including Intro decks from the Core Sets or expansion sets. Intro Decks are usually a great way for new players to learn the basics, because they feature a ready-to-play deck, as well as a booster pack to add some of your own customization. Event Decks are another form of pre-constructed deck that are released around the same time as a new Core Set or expansion set. Event Decks are complete decks like Into Decks, however they are far more competivite and finely tuned decks. As such, Event Decks tend to be more expensive than Event Decks because they feature more valuable, and more desirable, rare cards.
Much of the fun of playing Magic: the Gathering, however, comes from building your own deck, tweaking it to play against your regular competition, and coming up with new, and interesting, interactions between the thousands of cards available. Cards can be bought online, or in stores, from retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Target, to local game/hobby stores. Although there are numerous online retailers, including Ebay, where both single cards and sealed products can be purchased, StarCityGames.com stands near the top in terms of reliability and fair pricing. There are many game/hobby stores in Central/Upstate New York:
Play the Game, Read the Story
9808 Carousel Center Mall
Syracuse, NY 13290
315-472-4263
Utica Public Library
303 Genesee Street
Utica, NY 13501
Casual play every Wednesday and Thursday afternoon at 3:00pm. FREE monthly tournaments!
Storytellers
214 Oriskany Blvd, Suite 13
Whitesboro, NY 13492
315-601-1998
Killino's Card & Coin
8376 Seneca Turnpike
New Hartford, NY 13413
315-724-6000
Mind Games
114 Madison Street
Oneida, NY 13421
315-363-2448
Providence Hobbies
629-631 W. Buffalo Street
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-273-4251
Larger Than Life Toys & Comics
Great Northern Mall
4155 Rt. 31
Clay, NY 13041
315-622-1891
Cloud City Comics & Toys
Shoppingtown Mall
Syracuse, NY 13214
315-449-0016
Comix Zone
628 South Main Street
North Syracuse, NY 13212
315-452-1037
Bearded Dragon Games & Comics
19 Ford Avenue
Oneonta, NY 13820
607-432-5722
Sanctuary Comics
750 Bradley Street
Watertown, NY 13601
315-779-9636
Jupiter Games
3701 Vestal Pkwy, Suite 7
Vestal, NY 13850
607-729-5910
Mythic Games
2026 Lake Road, Suite A
Elmira, NY 14903
607-873-7318
Additionally, most gaming stores offer numerous in-store opportunities to play Magic: the Gathering, most notably Friday Night Magic on Friday evenings. Also, Utica Public Library offers weekly casual play on Wednesday afternoons (and other afternoons and evenings players can be frequently found gaming), as well as monthly FREE Modern Format Tournaments with prizes!
What type of Magic: the Gathering to play?
There are many formats of Magic: the Gathering. If you are just playing with friends, casually, you can follow any format you wish, have house rules, or no rules at all! However, generally speaking, it is important to know about the major formats because it can give you a base for building your decks, and if you wish to play more competitively in a store, or other competitive, environment.
Standard Format: Standard Format is the most basic competitive format, and makes use of the most recent sets of cards released. Friday Night Magic at a game store is usually Standard Format. More information on Standard Format rules and deck construction.
Modern Format: Modern Format is one of the newest competitive formats and offers more flexibility and a larger pool of cards to draw from to build a deck. More information on Modern Format rules and deck construction. FREE Modern Format tournaments are offered on a monthly basis at Utica Public Library in Utica, NY. Modern Format rules and deck construction.Learn more about getting into Modern Format Magic: the Gathering.
Extended Format: Extended Format features a slightly larger pool of cards than Standard, but not as many as Modern. It is seeing less competitive play since the introduction of Modern Format. Extended Format rules and deck construction.
"Eternal" Formats: Vintage and Legacy Formats feature cards from the beginning of the game - all the way back to 1993! As competitive formats they are rather expensive to get into due to the cost of many of the individual cards popular in them. Vintage Format rules and deck construction. Legacy Format rules and deck construction.
In addition to the competitive formats above, there are many casual only formats, including, but by no means limited to:
- Free-For-All: No special rules, just a bunch of players playing there decks against each other rather than 1-on-1 matches.
- Emperor: Emperor Format information 1, Emperor Format information 2
- Star: Star Format information 1, Star Format information 2
- Horde Magic: Horde Magic information 1, Horde Magic information 2, Horde Magic information 3, Horde Magic information 4
- Planechase and Archenemy: Planechase and Archenemy are casual format products officially released by Wizards of the Coast. As a result, you need to have the special oversized cards associated with those products to play these formats. Both formats are very fun, and you only need one set of oversized cards for an entire group. More infomation on Planechase. More information on Archenemy.
- Commander: Of all of these, Commander (formerly known as Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH) is the most popular. Wizards of the Coast recently provided a great deal of support for this format by releasing very well made preconstructed Commander decks. For detailed information on Commander, check out these links: Commander Format information 1, Commander Format information 2
Feel free to drop me a line for more information on this great game!
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