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Games are a froody way to spend your time. One of the froodiest games around is Magic: The Gathering. If you happen to like role-playing games, you're sure to like Magic a lot as well. Better still, you're sure to like it a lot, period! Magic is not just another game you play with the standard playing cards, Magic has its very own cards and an amazing lot of them too. In fact, the other use of Magic is collecting all the different cards and trading them with your friends, just like baseball cards or nose buggers. You can go on collecting these cards forever, because expansion sets are continuously seeing the light. Already we have the standard revised edition, the Arabian Nights expansion set, the antiquities set (with lots of artifacts), the Legends set (with legendary figures and a rules extension), and the Dark expansion set (the be-careful-with-use:-possibly-backfires! set); altogether more than 600 unique cards! The amazing idea behind Magic has had tremendous success: in the 18 months of its existence over 10 billion cards have been sold world wide! There exists another trading card game built on the Deckmaster (the name of the producing company) ruleset, but it isn't compatible with Magic. It is called Jyhad. It's about vampires and the politics they use to survive. I haven't played this game, but it is said to be a bit more complicated than Magic. Rumour has it that a third game will come out soon, to be called Middle Earth. This will be based on the Middle Earth books of Tolkien and it also won't be compatible with Magic. Now what's the game about? In Magic the players are powerful sorcerers, who battle to destroy their opponents in order to gain the sole domination of Dominia, the imaginary world where Magic is set. This goal is achieved by casting spells by playing the cards and following a careful strategy doing this. Magic consists of different kinds of cards, representing lands, creatures, interrupt spells, instant spells, enchantments, sorceries and artifacts. With these cards you try to reduce to zero the 20 life points of your opponent. You can do that by summoning creatures that attack and defend, and by modifying or attacking them, their lands, or themselves with your other spells. Without creatures to defend you your opponent will be able to get through to you directly. There are five different kinds of magic, powered by the five different kinds of lands: forests (green magic), plains (white magic), islands (blue magic), swamps (black magic), and mountains (red magic). The amount and type of lands you've got down on the table limit the energy (mana) available for you to power the spells. Each colour of magic has its own character, blue is for instance more ethereal and mental in nature and black magic is evil. If you have enough cards you can start to strategically select cards to create a better balanced deck. This is mostly done by using two main magic colours and one other to provide the edge, and then in about equal amounts selecting creatures, lands, and other spells, making a total of minimal 60. But that is just standard. And you can still have a lot of fun with the limited and random deck you have as a starter. For your entertainment I'll give an example of how the game goes. It's simple and standard at first, but later on I'll show you how you can ingeniously combine cards. Imagine your opponent has had some luck with getting lands, he has four different lands, but not so much with creatures; he's only got a 0/3 Wall of Wood to defend himself. The 0 is its power: the amount of damage it can do, and the 3 is its toughness: the lower limit of damage that can destroy it. You've been a bit luckier, you've got two 2/2 Grey Ogres on the table. It's your turn and you draw the Earthbind enchantment card, capable of grounding a flying creature and doing 2 damage in the process (flying creatures can't be blocked by non-flying creatures). This card is not useful right now, but is without a doubt a powerful card. Maybe it would be of use later (wink, wink). You decide to attack with both Ogres. Attacking makes defending during the opponent's turn impossible, but in this case that doesn't matter because he doesn't have a creature to attack with anyway. Your opponent decides to block one Ogre with the Wall (no one dies). To deal with the other one he uses the fast effect spell Unsummon (which allows him to put one card back to your hand) to send him back where he came from. All in all no critical damage has been inflicted in this round. In your opponent's round he draws a Hill Giant, a 3/3 creature costing four lands. (You aren't allowed to use the lands again until your next round). He puts it in play, but can't use it to attack in this round. Now it's your turn and you draw a Fireball spell, which can do damage to a selected target, costing you one mountain and an amount of lands equal to the damage you want to do. You only have two mountains and one island, so your Fireball wouldn't be powerful enough to kill the Hill Giant. You just put your Grey Ogre on the table again and don't attack with the other one, because he wouldn't survive the blocking by the Giant. Your opponent, in his turn, draws a Regeneration spell, which can regenerate a creature that would otherwise die. He feels safe and decides to attack with the Hill Giant. You block him with both your Ogres, giving the Hill Giant enough damage to kill him, while he kills one of your Ogres. Of course he regenerates the Giant, which you did not expect. Ouch! Now it's your turn again and you draw a Flight enchantment. This card permanently puts a creature up in the air. Normally you would put it on your own creature, so the Ogre could fly over the Wall and past the Giant directly to the opposing mage, but you detect the better opportunity and enchant the Giant with it. Your opponent is surprised and does not know why you gave him this present. He suspects something though. You let him have his turn. After drawing a for now useless card, your opponent lets the flying Hill Giant sweep past the Ogre and attack you. You receive full damage. He is happy. Now you draw a card that is not particularly of interest at the moment, and cast your Earthbind spell, costing one mountain. The Hill Giant heavily hits the dirt and receives two damage. That is not enough to kill him off, so you also cast the Fireball, costing one mountain and one other land, just enough to let the damage be lethal. Wicked! Your friend's grin has now changed into something quite the opposite. This description should give you some idea what you can experience during a game. The game is designed to be played by two, but numerous multi-player and solitaire rules have been invented. If you want to know more about this or about Magic in general you can either buy a starters deck (each different from the other) and read the rules, or find out if you have friends (don't worry, more is to come...) who play it and ask them, but there is also a newsgroup, rec.games.deckmaster, and the official Magic (and Jyhad) website at http://marvin.macc.wisc.edu/ to help you along. This should be enough to convince you that you simply have to start playing this awesome game. Happy sorcery!