Now throughout the course of the article i will be looking over what you will see on a typical card and how they work in game, since there are several different things to watch out, Mana Costs, Rarity, Types of Cards, Power/Toughness, Card Abilites., so let's go.
Mana Cost - For this article i'm gonna be taking a look at one card and breaking it down for you in steps to look out for, the first one is the summoning cost to play the card, or mana cost in this case, each mana cost is different and has different rules around it, some require various types of mana and others don't for this let's use for this case, Sphinx of Jwar Isle it has a mana cost of 4 of any type of mana, a blue mana and another blue mana meaning this card needs 2 blue mana to cast it plus four of any other type of mana, though it is not as bad as some of the costs on other cards in the following sets to come including Ancient Hellkite which costs 7 total 4 of anything and 3 red mana in this case, now how to get the mana, it's from playing lands and tapping the card to represent your adding 1 of that colour to your mana pool for the duration of your turn, the more lands you have the more powerful and more ridicliously casting cost cards you can play in game, meaning more high end cards including some very powerful planeswalkers, there are also several types of mana costs in one card at times for example Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker whom has 3 different types of mana in his casting cost in this case, 2 black mana, one red and one blue as well as 4 of anything else, so keep a eye on everything and look for the mana costs in cards before playing them in game, but also be sure to attune your deck to the cards you want to play.
Rarity - On each and every card there is 3 different types of symbols, usually located in the middle of a card on the right hand side, this is a rarity value and is used to determine how well or how expensive the card is most times for some better known cards, one is black meaning it is a common card and is found just about everywhere these days, one is silver and it is a uncommon rarity, so the amount of times you'll see this card decreases and one is gold meaning it is a rare card for this i'll look at the three rarities and of course the brand new rarity level mythic rare. For commons it is usually found once a pack in most cases and that, meaning you'll often see it in draft or in most cases the amount of times you'll see it per box is about 4 roughly so there is 4 in 36 packs a box that contain a full set of these commons and one of these commons i'll be looking at really. Let's take a look at one of my favorite commons in game Mana Leak which is a common and is found in the latest core set Magic 2011 at the time of this writing, most cases each box of magic 2011 will contain a full playset or 4 of this card in cases and sometimes not only containing 3 or 2 of the card in question the way wizards's breaks up the rarity value is just maddening.
Let's now take a look at the uncomon level of card, most boxes of product end up having at least 3 of a specific uncommon considering uncommons are only twice as rare as a common in most cases, for this one i want to take at one of my top 5 uncommons ever printed in the form of Hedron Crab also known as the boston crab in this case as it's annoyance level for mid range blue decks is just retarded and in zendikar you could easily get 3 of him in a single box, though price wise most uncommons end up going for about a dollar to 2.50 depending on the card and how it impacted the game, in this case let's look at another card for the uncommon level in the form of Mind Funeral which can go for about 2.50 these days in terms of price since it's effect is just broken and can cause some major headaches when mill decks are being played, i should know i bought two of these recently. This happens to be one of my top 5 favorite uncommons as well, also it can be rather effective in game, so keep a eye on the uncommons for this set and all that jazz. Now moving onto the rarity value of rare there are usually one of these in every booster pack you pick up these days and most of them are never the same, with some being so hard to find while others are a simple eye look away from obtaining and all that, rare cards are usually divided well into booster boxes with no box having a single set of 1 rare anymore since the sets are all so large. Let's look at one particular rare from the Alara Reborn set of cards in the form of Nemesis of Reason which is a rare from the Alara reborn block from 2 years ago and this card goes for about 3 dollars roughly these days, since it's not widely played anymore, a rare that is widely played however is, Marsh Flats which is a sacrifice land from the Zendikar set of things and was just introduced last year around this time into tournaments with these kinds of cards ranging from 8 to 14 dollars in most cases or even more now that they are a tournament staple.
Now moving onto the mythic rarity value of card and boy these ones impact the game more then ever, with most new mythic rares going for a expensive and insane price in this case let's look at a couple of recent mythics and such. The first one i wanna take a look at is Skittles he's actually known as Skithryix, The Blight Dragon and he is a mythic rare legendary card, now mythics however there are usually only 5 a box, no two same mythics are in each box unless your extremely lucky and all that jazz but i digress, each mythic is very powerful and it's money cost is different for Skithiryix however it is about 10 dollars these days, though there are another subtype of card that are way more overpowered and all that and they are planeswalkers with them going at sometimes over 40 dollars a piece in this case let's look at a new walker in the form of Venser, The Sojourner and the fact he is a 30 dollar card these days even if the set is brand new shows the fact how playable he is in most cases but i digress i've gone on long enough bout rarity and such, time to move onto more important matters in the form of other topics for this article.
Types of Cards - There are 5 different types of cards in game, planeswalkers, sorceries, instants, creatures and enchantments now most of these are self explanatory, planeswalkers are other caster type creatures you can summon such as Venser or even Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Sorceries can be played only during your turn, instants can be played at anytime, creatures can sometimes be cast if they have a unique ability called flash, though most cases only during your turn and enchantments can be only cast during your turn i won't go into detail as most of this stuff i've already covered for the most part in prior articles so next please.
Power/Toughness - This is a pretty self explanatory thing as these only show up on creatures each has a specific indicator showing how much power they do, which is their attack power and the toughness means their endurance which is how much damage they can take before they die off, again this is self explanatory and all that stuff just read the combat phase stuff when i can do it and it will be fine to understand this particular portion of a creature card.
Card Abilites - Lastly i wanna look at card abilites, each card has a specific ability and does something completely different, as there are no two cards that have the same unique ability, could range from haste to even destroying a permanent when a card comes into play, each card varies and it would take almost forever to describe each card ability in detail so go to wizards's youtube page to learn as much as you can bout the game i've provided the link in the last article.
Anyhoo that is all for this edition of the basics of Magic the Gathering, see you next time.
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