100 Fun Facts About Magic: the Gathering

Who created Magic: The Gathering?

Garfield was a maths PhD student who pitched Wizards of the Coast founder Peter Adkison a fast game needing minimal equipment; the idea reportedly came to him hiking near Multnomah Falls.

In which year was Magic: The Gathering first released?

Limited Edition Alpha shipped on 5 August with 295 cards, and by the end of 1994 more than a billion cards had been printed.

The game's creator completed his doctorate in 1993 in which subject?

His thesis at the University of Pennsylvania was titled On the Residue Classes of Combinatorial Families of Numbers; he later designed Netrunner, King of Tokyo and KeyForge.

Which toy giant bought Wizards of the Coast in 1999 for about $325 million?

Two years earlier Wizards had bought TSR, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, for $25 million.

Wizards of the Coast founder Peter Adkison named the company after what?

Adkison was a systems analyst at Boeing when he started the company near Seattle in 1990.

Which was the first Magic expansion, released in December 1993?

It had just 92 cards; Antiquities followed in March 1994 and the 310-card Legends that June.

Which of Magic's five colours is described as representing intellect, logic, manipulation and trickery?

White stands for order and peace, black for power and death, red for freedom and fury, and green for life and nature.

Which colour of Magic represents freedom, chaos, fury and warfare?

Its cards lean on direct damage and haste, which is why the classic 'Sligh' aggro deck was built around cheap red spells like Lightning Bolt.

How much life does each player start with in a standard two-player game of Magic?

Commander doubles it to 40, and players draw an opening hand of seven cards.

What is the minimum deck size for a constructed Magic deck?

Limited decks built from boosters need only 40, and apart from basic lands you may run at most four copies of any card.

When a Magic spell is cast it does not resolve immediately but goes where?

Spells and abilities resolve from the top of the stack down, so the last one played happens first.

Turning a card sideways to show it has been used this turn is called what?

Each land can be tapped for mana only once per turn, and players normally play just one land per turn.

Which zero-cost artifact, sacrificed for three mana of one colour, is the most expensive Magic card ever sold?

Only about 1,100 were printed in Alpha; a graded Alpha copy sold for $3 million in 2024.

Which artist painted Magic's most expensive card and helped design the five mana symbols?

Rush illustrated more than 100 Magic cards and was the first non-Japanese artist to illustrate a Pokémon card; he died in 2016.

How many cards make up the game's infamous set of overpowered early cards, restricted in Vintage?

Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Timetwister and the five Moxen; all are restricted to one copy in Vintage and banned nearly everywhere else.

Which Power Nine card lets a player take an extra turn for just two mana?

Ancestral Recall draws three cards for one blue mana, and the Moxen act like lands you can play more than one of per turn.

Wizards' 1996 promise never to reprint certain valuable cards is known as what?

The Power Nine are on it, which is a big reason Modern was created to exclude those cards.

Roughly how many unique Magic cards had been created by the early 2020s?

Between 2008 and 2016 alone more than twenty billion physical cards rolled off the presses.

Roughly how many people had played Magic worldwide by 2023, according to the game's owner?

The game topped $1 billion in annual revenue for Hasbro in fiscal 2022.

The Commander format was originally known by what name?

Adam Staley's Alaskan play groups devised it in the late 1990s, naming it after the film Highlander and the game's Elder Dragons.

How many cards are in a Commander deck?

Every card except basic lands must be uniquely named, and players start with 40 life.

In Commander, taking how much combat damage from a single commander causes a player to lose?

Wizards took over management of the format from the volunteer Rules Committee in September 2024 after a wave of harassment over bans.

The Modern format allows cards from which core set onward?

Created in 2011, it deliberately excludes Reserved List cards; Pioneer, launched in 2019, starts at Return to Ravnica.

Which format allows only cards that have been printed at common rarity?

Vintage, by contrast, allows everything but restricts its most powerful cards to a single copy.

In a Sealed Deck event, how many booster packs does each player open?

The resulting deck must have at least 40 cards; a Booster Draft uses three packs passed around a table of eight.

Who won the first Magic World Championship, held at Gen Con in 1994?

The tournament was open to all comers and played as single elimination; the Pro Tour followed in 1996.

The Pro Tour debuted in 1996 in which city?

It launched as 'The Black Lotus Pro Tour' with US-only events on 16-18 February 1996.

Which player, nicknamed 'Jonny Magic', topped the vote for the first Pro Tour Hall of Fame class?

The 2000 World Champion later became a professional poker player and hedge fund partner; head designer Mark Rosewater called him the game's most naturally gifted player.

German player Kai Budde, 'the Juggernaut', holds the record for how many individual Pro Tour wins?

No one else has more than three; the Player of the Year trophy was renamed in his honour in 2024, and he died in January 2026.

Which player won the Magic World Championship in both 2018 and 2024?

Seth Manfield took his own second title in Seattle in 2025.

The largest Magic tournament ever, Grand Prix Las Vegas in May 2015, drew how many players?

Thousands of game shops still run the weekly Friday Night Magic events that feed such numbers.

Which digital client, launched in 2002, lets players redeem complete digital sets for real paper cards?

Daybreak Games has run it since 2022; the newer Arena, in open beta from 2018, is the free-to-play mobile-friendly alternative.

The 1997 MicroProse Magic game, where the player fights Arzakon, was set on which plane?

Players roam the land collecting cards and duelling five colour-aligned wizards.

Which action-RPG based on the game was cancelled in June 2021 after a poorly received open beta?

Its servers closed that October; MTG Arena had passed a billion games played by mid-2019.

Mark Rosewater, who became Magic's head designer in 2003, once wrote for which TV sitcom?

He joined Wizards in 1995, became head designer in 2003, has led design on dozens of expansions and has long answered fans on his blog Blogatog.

Ravnica, the setting of the 2005 block, is what kind of world?

Ten guilds, each pairing two colours, run the ecumenopolis under the Guildpact; the dragon Niv-Mizzet leads the Izzet League.

Which Ravnica guild combines blue and red and is led by the dragon Niv-Mizzet?

Boros is red-white, Dimir blue-black, and Simic green-blue.

The gothic-horror plane of Innistrad introduced which card mechanic in 2011?

Werewolves flip to their beast side when conditions are met; the set won the 2012 Origins Award for expansion of the year.

Which archangel of Innistrad imprisoned the plane's demons in the Helvault?

Liliana Vess shatters the Helvault hunting the demon Griselbrand, freeing angel and demon alike.

The 'landfall' mechanic, triggered when a land enters the battlefield, debuted on which plane?

The 2009 set also revived full-art basic lands, and its Rise of the Eldrazi sequel unleashed the 15-mana Emrakul.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is a creature of what power and toughness?

The Lovecraft-inspired Eldrazi titan costs 15 mana and headlined the 'battlecruiser Magic' of Rise of the Eldrazi.

Urza and his brother Mishra, whose war shaped Dominaria, first appeared in which 1994 set?

The later Urza's Saga block was so overpowered it earned the era the nickname 'Combo Winter'.

Which 2006-07 block's three sets were themed on the past, present and future of Magic?

Its 'Timeshifted' subset reprinted 121 old cards in their original frames with a purple expansion symbol.

Which musician bought the one-of-a-kind One Ring card from the 2023 Lord of the Rings set?

Collector Brook Trafton pulled the single-print card and called the sale 'a moment straight out of a fairytale'.

Which deck archetype wins through the interaction of specific cards rather than combat?

Storm is the classic example; 'Sligh' defined aggro and Brian Weissman's 'The Deck' defined control.

Which robot board game was Richard Garfield trying to get published when he first met Peter Adkison?

Adkison thought it too risky, so Garfield pitched the endlessly expandable card game instead.

Which early gambling rule required each player to risk a random card from their deck?

Inspired by marbles, it was quickly made optional; the last card to mention it appeared in 1995's Homelands.

Which expansion introduced multicoloured, gold-bordered cards?

Multicoloured cards later became the whole point of settings like Ravnica and its ten guilds.

Which set debuted the red-orange 'mythic rare' rarity, replacing about one in eight rares?

The same 2008 set was the last to include Tournament Packs and the first to put a basic land in place of an eleventh common.

Which Toho movie monsters appeared as promotional cards in the 2020 set Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths?

Sixteen kaiju were reskinned onto Ikoria's own giant beasts, a taste of the Universes Beyond crossovers to come.

Which Japanese franchise's trading card game did Magic's publisher release in English from 1999 to 2003?

Pokémon cards sold so fast in 1999 that some sports card series were discontinued because the printers were busy making them.

Which word, a relic of a planned family of card games, is printed on the back of every Magic card?

Deckmaster was a brand meant to group Magic with games such as Jyhad and Netrunner. The grouping was abandoned, but the card back is locked, so the logo remains.

Which 1994 artifact gave Magic its slang verb for putting cards from a library into the graveyard?

Millstone sent two cards at a time from a library to the graveyard, and 'mill' stayed player slang for decades before becoming an official keyword in Core Set 2021.

Which one-mana red instant from Magic's very first set deals 3 damage to any target?

Lightning Bolt proved so efficient that later versions were toned down: Shock, printed in 1998, costs the same but deals only 2 damage.

Which keyword lets a Magic creature attack on the turn it arrives, ignoring so-called summoning sickness?

Haste was named retroactively: for years, older cards simply spelled the ability out as 'may attack the turn it comes into play'.

Which one-mana Magic artifact, adding two colourless mana, comes in nearly every preconstructed Commander deck?

Sol Ring is banned in Legacy and limited to a single copy in Vintage, yet Commander players get a fresh one in almost every boxed deck.

Which kind of card is exempt from the four-copy limit in constructed Magic decks?

Basic lands have no cap because every deck needs mana. A few oddball cards, such as Relentless Rats, carry their own text allowing any number of copies.

Which telepathic planeswalker from Vryn became the Living Guildpact, arbiter of Ravnica's ten guilds?

Jace Beleren won the title by solving the mystery of a hidden maze, which left a mind-reader as the living judge of every guild dispute.

Which Magic plane of gods, heroes and monsters was modelled on Greek mythology for its 2013 debut?

Theros was a 'top-down' design: the team began with the myths and their tropes and made cards to fit, the reverse of starting from gameplay.

Which city names the Magic mulligan adopted in 2019: redraw seven cards, then bottom one per mulligan?

London hosted the 2019 Mythic Championship where the rule was first tested, just as the earlier Vancouver mulligan took the name of the city where it was trialled.

Besides running out of life, a Magic player loses when an empty library stops them doing what?

Draw a card from an empty library and the game is lost, a rule that lets some decks win without ever dealing a point of damage.

A Magic player loses the game on collecting ten of which counters, dealt by creatures with infect?

Poison counters are a second route to victory: ten of them end the game however much life the player has left, and infect damage skips life totals entirely.

Which term names the italic lore or quotations on a Magic card that have no effect on play?

Flavor text carries the game's storytelling and jokes. Reminder text is italic too, but it sits in brackets and explains how a rule works.

Which flagship Magic format, originally called Type 2, drops its oldest sets each year in a 'rotation'?

Standard arrived in 1995 and became the flagship of tournament play, while its older sibling Type 1 lives on under the name Vintage.

Which Magic necromancer struck a pact with four demons, including Griselbrand, to regain her youth and power?

Liliana Vess then spent years trying to escape the contract, and killed Griselbrand herself with a cursed relic called the Chain Veil.

Which dragon planeswalker, tyrant of the desert plane Amonkhet, was the villain beaten in War of the Spark?

Nicol Bolas spent several sets collecting a planar portal and an army of embalmed warriors, only for that undead army to be turned against him.

Which biomechanical villains of Magic, led by Elesh Norn, 'compleat' victims into more of their own kind?

Phyrexians spread like an infection that even planeswalkers could catch, and their leader styled herself the Mother of Machines.

Which 2007 Magic set, on an idyllic plane inspired by Welsh folklore, introduced the planeswalker card type?

Lorwyn broke another habit too: the plane has no humans at all, with hobbit-like kithkin taking their place.

Which keyword lets a Magic attacker push its excess combat damage past the blockers to the defending player?

Trample works only on the attack: the rules give it no effect at all when the creature is blocking or dealing noncombat damage.

Which white-bordered printing, the second Magic set ever, reissued the same cards as the Alpha and Beta runs?

Unlimited Edition set a lasting precedent: for the next fourteen years, a white border told players that a core-set card was a reprint.

Which Magic plane, first modelled on Sengoku-era Japan, returned in 2022 as a cyberpunk city of ninja and samurai?

Kamigawa's first visit was themed as 'Shinto gone wrong', a war between mortals and their spirits, before the sequel reimagined the plane.

Which Magic plane, introduced in 2019, blends King Arthur's Camelot with the Grimms' fairy tales?

Eldraine is the home of the royal twins Rowan and Will Kenrith, planeswalkers who had first appeared a year earlier in the Battlebond set.

Which Magic plane sets the Sun Empire's dinosaur riders against pirates, merfolk and a legion of vampires?

Ixalan made Dinosaur an official creature type, and older cards such as Raptors were rewritten to join the new tribe.

Which artificial Magic plane, where living things are part metal, hosted the artifact-heavy block of 2003?

Mirrodin introduced Equipment, gear that creatures can pick up and wield, which has been a staple of the game ever since.

Which Magic keyword makes any amount of a creature's damage enough to destroy the creature it hits?

Deathtouch lets a humble 1/1 trade with the biggest monster on the table, because a single point of its damage counts as lethal.

Which Magic keyword stops only opponents from targeting a permanent with their spells and abilities?

Hexproof differs from its cousin shroud, which stops everyone from targeting the permanent, including the player who controls it.

Which artifact subtype, new in the Magic set Kaladesh, becomes a creature only while other creatures operate it?

Vehicle cards sit inert until creatures with enough total power 'crew' them, which turns them into artifact creatures until the end of the turn.

Which enchantment subtype, gaining one counter a turn until it is sacrificed, debuted in the Magic set Dominaria?

Saga cards tell a story chapter by chapter: a lore counter arrives each turn, and the card is sacrificed once the final chapter has played out.

Which Magic card type, new in 2023's March of the Machine, enters with defense counters and can be attacked?

Battle cards were the first permanents to be placed sideways, and each has a protector who is the only player allowed to block for it.

Which Magic keyword action lets a player look at the top cards of their library and send any to the bottom?

Scry first appeared in the set Fifth Dawn and later became the first mechanic ever to be brought back in a core set, in Magic 2011.

Which company, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, did Magic's maker Wizards of the Coast buy in 1997?

TSR had put out its own collectible card game, Spellfire, before Wizards bought the company together with Five Rings Publishing for $25 million.

Which name was used to first solicit Magic after a lawyer called the one-word title too generic to trademark?

Mana Clash never caught on: everyone involved kept calling the game Magic, so a subtitle was added to make the original name trademarkable.

Which Magic brand puts outside franchises such as Warhammer 40,000 and Doctor Who on tournament-playable cards?

Universes Beyond grew so central that from 2025, beginning with Final Fantasy and Spider-Man, its sets were made legal in every format.

Which free-to-play digital version of Magic, fully released in 2019, hands out 'Wildcards' to swap for any card?

MTG Arena spent nearly two years in beta before that launch, during which the Dominaria set arrived in the app on the very day of its paper release.

Which 1998 release was the first satirical Magic set, full of joke cards that are not legal in tournaments?

Unglued was not a commercial hit, yet its unique land cards, the only ones in the set that tournaments accept, are still sought after.

Which 1995 Magic expansion, the first playable without any other product, introduced snow-covered lands?

Ice Age was built to stand alone, so its designers reprinted staple cards from the basic set alongside the new snow theme.

Which old Magic penalty cost players life for every unspent point in their pool until the Magic 2010 rules update?

Mana burn nearly vanished a decade earlier, in the Sixth Edition rules update, but designer Mark Rosewater fought to keep it, then later fought to have it removed.

Which Magic team format has partners sit together, take their turns as one and share a life total of 30?

Two-Headed Giant has headlined a Pro Tour, in San Diego in 2007, and in 2018 it received a booster set of its own, Battlebond.

Which Magic format, created in autumn 2019, allows cards from the set Return to Ravnica onward?

Pioneer's starting line was no accident: Wizards said beginning with Return to Ravnica made the new format as different from Modern as it could be.

Which Magic draft format swaps fresh boosters for an owner's hand-picked pool of at least 360 cards?

Cube pools usually hold just one copy of each card, and the format reached the top level in 2012 at the Magic Players Championship.

Pearl, Sapphire, Jet, Ruby and Emerald are five famously powerful artifacts from Magic's first set sharing which name?

Mox artifacts cost nothing to play and each adds one mana of a single colour, like lands with no one-per-turn limit, so tournaments restricted them to one copy apiece.

Since the Exodus set of 1998, a silver expansion symbol on a Magic card has marked which rarity?

Uncommon cards wear silver, rares gold and commons black. Before colour printing improved, every expansion symbol was black whatever the rarity.

Which Alpha artifact is flipped onto the table from at least a foot up, destroying every nontoken permanent it touches?

Chaos Orb inspired a possibly apocryphal tale of a player tearing the card into pieces to scatter over an opponent's side, only for the judge to rule it illegal.

Which banned Magic sorcery makes the players stop and play an entire subgame using their libraries as decks?

Shahrazad is named for the legendary teller of stories within stories, so the card creates a game within a game, and whoever loses it forfeits half their life.

Which early Magic keyword, mostly on white cards, let small creatures attack as one group?

Banding was retired because, in head designer Mark Rosewater's words, even the top players in the world were confused by it.

Mark Rosewater's scale of how unlikely a Magic mechanic is to return is named after which notorious mechanic?

Storm copies a spell once for every spell cast before it that turn, and Rosewater has called it probably the most broken mechanic Magic ever created.

Which golem, built by Urza as a probe for time-travel experiments, later inherited Urza's planeswalker spark?

Karn was made of silver because Urza's studies showed that no other material could pass through temporal energies unharmed.

Which 2019 planeswalker card, soon banned in several formats, turns artifacts and creatures into 3/3 Elk?

Oko, Thief of Crowns can strip any threat of its abilities while raising his own loyalty, and the first bans came within weeks of his October debut.

Which mechanic from Magic's Ikoria set, a creature kept outside the deck, had its rules rewritten within weeks?

Companion originally let a player cast the chosen creature straight from the sideboard; since June 2020 it costs three mana just to move it to hand first.

Which skyship and her crew star in the Magic storyline running from Tempest in 1997 to Apocalypse in 2001?

Weatherlight was also the name of the 1997 expansion that began the tale, Wizards' first attempt at a cohesive story world in the manner of Star Wars.