Magic: The Gathering Trivia
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This Magic: The Gathering trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and covers thirty-plus years of the game: Richard Garfield and Wizards of the Coast, the 1993 Alpha release, the Power Nine and the record-breaking Black Lotus, the philosophies of the five colours, the rules of the stack, formats from Standard to Commander, the Pro Tour and its Hall of Fame legends, digital Magic from Shandalar to Arena, the great planes and villains of the lore, and the Universes Beyond era that put The One Ring in Post Malone's hands. It is written for game-store nights, Commander pods and anyone who has ever cracked a booster: the opening questions are easy for casual players, and the deep cuts will challenge judges and old-school collectors. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and published records before publishing.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created Magic: The Gathering?
Richard Garfield
Richard Garfield reportedly hit on the idea while hiking near Multnomah Falls, after Wizards of the Coast's Peter Adkison asked him for a quick, portable game to play at conventions.
Q 02Magic: The Gathering sold out at which August 1993 convention?
Gen Con
Gen Con, in Milwaukee. Wizards sold every one of the 2.5 million cards it brought, and its founder Peter Adkison went on to buy the convention itself in 2002.
Q 03Magic's creator completed his doctorate in 1993 in which subject?
Combinatorial mathematics
Combinatorial mathematics. He was teaching maths at Whitman College when Magic launched, and its success led him to quit academia in 1994 for full-time game design.
Q 04Which toy giant bought Wizards of the Coast in 1999?
Hasbro
Hasbro. Coverage of the deal billed Wizards as the 'Pokemon card maker', because it had launched the Pokémon trading card game in America earlier that year.
Q 05Wizards of the Coast took its name from one of founder Peter Adkison's sessions of which role-playing game?
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons. Adkison borrowed the name from a session he had played in the early 1980s, and in 1997 his company bought the game's publisher, TSR.
Q 06Which was the first Magic expansion, released in December 1993?
Arabian Nights
Arabian Nights was nearly printed with a different card back; the idea was dropped, and the small scimitar added to mark its cards became the game's first expansion symbol.
Q 07Which of Magic's five colours is described as representing intellect, logic, manipulation and trickery?
Blue
Blue. Its creatures tend to be weak, so blue decks win by control instead: countering an opponent's spells and even stealing their creatures.
Q 08Which basic land produces red mana in Magic: The Gathering?
Mountain
Mountain. Basic lands are exempt from the four-copy limit, so a red deck can pack as many Mountains as its owner likes.
Q 09How much life does each player start with in a standard two-player game of Magic?
20
20. A player can also lose with life to spare: anyone who has to draw from a deck with no cards left is out of the game.
Q 10What is the minimum deck size for a constructed Magic deck?
60 cards
60 cards is only the floor: there is no maximum, provided the player can still shuffle the deck in reasonable time.
Q 11A cast Magic spell goes where to wait for players' responses before it resolves?
Onto the stack
Onto the stack, which resolves from the top down: the last spell cast happens first, so a reply always beats the spell it answers.
Q 12In Magic, turning a card sideways to show it has been used this turn is called what?
Tapping
Tapping. The move is so central that the patent Wizards of the Coast won in 1997 for trading card games covers turning a card to show it has been used.
Q 13As of 2025, which Magic card held the record as the most expensive ever sold?
Black Lotus
Black Lotus: a pristine Alpha copy sold for $3 million in 2024. It costs nothing to play and can be sacrificed for three mana, a head start so strong the card is banned or restricted everywhere.
Q 21How many cards are in a Commander deck?
100
100, counting the commander, which waits outside the deck in the command zone and can be cast again each time it dies, for two more mana than before.
Q 22In Commander, taking how much combat damage from a single commander causes a player to lose?
21
21. Volunteers on a Rules Committee ran Commander until September 2024, when threats made against them over a round of card bans led them to hand the format to Wizards.
Q 23Which Magic format, created in 2011, allows cards from 2003's Eighth Edition onward?
Modern
Modern. The cut-off is no accident: Eighth Edition introduced the modern card frame, and the format takes its name from it.
Q 14Which artist painted the Magic card sold for $3 million in 2024, and helped design the mana symbols?
Christopher Rush
Christopher Rush illustrated more than 100 Magic cards. When he died in 2016, a Wizards designer wrote that the mana symbols were a fitting tribute, keeping him part of every card the company prints.
Q 15The Power Nine are limited to one copy per deck in which Magic format?
Vintage
Vintage. No other tournament format allows the nine at all, and because the originals cost so much, many Vintage events let players use stand-in proxy cards.
Q 16Which Power Nine card lets a player take an extra turn for just two mana?
Time Walk
Time Walk. Its playtest text said a player 'loses next turn', and it was reworded before release because players read that as losing the game.
Q 17Wizards' 1996 promise never to reprint certain valuable cards is known as what?
The Reserved List
The Reserved List. Wizards published it in 1996 after collectors complained that reprints were eroding the value of their cards, and confirmed in 2021 that it would stay.
Q 18Which card type, added in the 2007 Lorwyn set, summons a powerful ally such as Jace or Chandra?
Planeswalker
Planeswalker. In the story every player is one as well, so these cards were designed to feel like bringing another player into the game on your side.
Q 19Roughly how many people had played Magic: The Gathering worldwide by its 30th anniversary in 2023?
Fifty million
Fifty million. That reach made Magic its parent company's first billion-dollar brand in 2022, the year an analyst warned the company was killing its golden goose by overprinting cards.
Q 20The Commander format was originally known by what name?
Elder Dragon Highlander
Elder Dragon Highlander is credited to Adam Staley's Alaskan play group: 'Highlander' for the film's line 'there can be only one', matching the one-copy rule, and Elder Dragon for the dragon cards that led each deck.
Q 24Which format allows only cards that have been printed at common rarity?
Pauper
Pauper began as an online-only format and proved so popular with players' physical cards that Wizards made it an official tabletop format in June 2019.
Q 25Who won the first Magic World Championship, in 1994?
Zak Dolan
Zak Dolan, the last American standing among European semi-finalists, beat French champion Bertrand Lestrée in the final of an event that anyone could sign up to enter.
Q 26Magic's Pro Tour debuted in February 1996 in which city?
New York
New York. Players had to phone Wizards' offices to claim one of the places, which earned the event the nickname 'Pro Tour Speed Dial'.
Q 27Which player topped the vote for the first Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame class, in 2005?
Jon Finkel
Jon Finkel, nicknamed 'Jonny Magic', had retired by then; in 2008 he used his Hall of Fame invitation to enter Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur and won it.
Q 28Which player, nicknamed 'the Juggernaut', had won a record seven Magic Pro Tours as of 2025?
Kai Budde
Kai Budde won all seven between 1999 and 2003. Wizards renamed its Player of the Year trophy after him in 2024, during the illness from which he died in January 2026.
Q 29Which player won the Magic World Championship in both 2018 and 2024?
Javier Dominguez
Javier Dominguez had lost the 2017 final; his second title in 2024 made him only the second player, after Shahar Shenhar, to win the championship twice.
Q 30As of 2025, the largest Magic tournament ever held was a 7,551-player Grand Prix in which city?
Las Vegas
Las Vegas. So many players signed up for the May 2015 Grand Prix that organisers had to split it into two parallel tournaments.