[MtG] Beginners Tips

[Black Mage]

Ok tell me a few things i need to know to get started maybe? The deck i bought is called Champions of Kamigawa Kami Reborn. Like i said before wal-mart only had expert level decks so... yea. Its not like i know anyone around here to practice with, but hey i could atleast learn to play on the off chance i find someone. Im going to 2 anime conventions here soon and i know they will have card battles. I would love to know how to play more than just yi-gi-oh by the time i go.

[Yoherz]

The "expert level" decks are just showing that it's not a booster pack. That's all that means. Real expert lvel players will have stacks and stacks of cards to make their own decks, so they usually don't need to buy theme decks like those.

Basic tips? I'll put stuff off the top of my head.

1. Each player has 20 life to being with (similar to life points in YGO) and draws seven cards as a starting hand. The first person won't draw.

2. Colors will tell what kind of deck you have. Each color has it's own type of land and their own strategies. I'll list them here:
Colors:
Red: "It's on now!" All-out attacking and raising power to hit for a lot of fast damage.
Green: "Feel the wrath of nature!" Getting a lot of small tokens out, or using creatures to get a lot of mana and pull out big creatures quickly.
Blue: "I own you." Blue lets you counter your opponent's moves and draw cards, so you can keep countering. This keeps them from doing anything.
White: "Can't touch this." White will get increase your life and is good for general defending. It's most famous for it's clerics.
Black: "Wither and die." This is all about destroying the opponents cards by forcing them to sacrifice them, or by forcing them to discard. I've found that black works best when combined with another color.
Lands:
Fire uses mountains for mana. Commonly called "red" cards.
Earth uses forests for mana. Commonly called "green" cards.
Water uses islands for mana. Commonly called "blue" cards.
Light uses plains for mana. Commonly called "white" cards
Dark uses swamps for mana. Commonly called "black" cards.

3. One of the major differences between the games is that you attack the players, not the creatures. From there, the person being attacked will choose to block whatever attacks you make, cast spells to stop them, or do whatever else in reaction.

4. Mana is life. If you have no mana, you can't do anything. Try and get as much mana as you can in the deck, without having too much. A normal balance is two non-lands for every one land (i.e. a spell and creature for every land card).

5. All creatures have something called summoning sickness that they get when they're summoned. This means they can't attack on the turn they come into play, unless they have an effect like haste, which lets them attack on the turn they're summoned.

6. A basic rule of any card game: buy lots of cards. It'll get you more rare and powerful cards.

7. Just have fun with it. It's a game, after all.

[cyberdemon]

lol. i remember when i used to play pokemon cards. i really had a lot and i had many exs too.

[Yoherz]

I only had like 200 or so. I gave them all away to my nephew.

[Black Mage]

I really want to learn how to play, but even if i do learn it will have to be through videos on youtube and then i cant even test it out on anyone cause no one playes around here.

[Yoherz]

Not at all. We can hold tournaments on here, just like we did with the YGO tournament.
Or you could test your deck like I do. Make multiple decks and play them against each other and see how you can improve them. That's how I got my undefeated deck, along with a lot of practice.

[Black Mage]

Well im not buying more cards to build multiple decks if i can only duel you over the internet or duel myself :\

Not saying its not a good idea, because i do that with my yugioh cards. Except i actually have people to duel in yugioh.

[Yoherz]

No no. You don't have to buy cards JUST to play me or yourself. In fact, I agree with you that it would be a waste of money since most MtG tournaments actually require you to buy a deck there and not open it until your first match.

If you're just coming out of YGO, then the closest thing you'll have is red cards. The next closest would be white or black, and then probably green.
Once you've played at least one deck of each color, you'll be able to have a good grasp on what color you're best with. Maybe buy one deck a month, depending on the price of cards where you live.
After you've tried out some of those decks, consider combining colors, like green/black, red/black. blue/green, or even the most common deck, which would be red/black.

Once you have your deck colors, you'll be doing great and you can simply tweak your deck and make it better, like I do.

If you want a suggestion for colors to try first, I'd say you're likely a green player. Maybe a green/black or red/black when mixed.
Also, black (and for the most part, white) is mainly a support color. I've yet to see a truly working pure black deck, and only one mostly working white deck that our state champion made and gave to me before he retired.

[Black Mage]

This kamigawa deck i have is a green/black, so it looks like ill be learning on it for the time being.

[Yoherz]

Sounds good. That's probably the best colors for you right now anyways.
That, and that the YouTube videos are a LOT easier to understand if you have the cards in hand.

Oh and a warning. NEVER try a rainbow deck. Those decks use every color card and are often anywhere from 100 to 500 cards in size. It's very hard to get the mana you need and is useless unless you have the only rainbow card in the game.
On a similar note, try to avoid using more than two colors. Three or more colored decks often have problems with either getting the right color mana, or even getting the wrong creatures at the wrong times.

Oh and one last thing. Try to get single colored decks from now on. That way, if you find two colors you like, you can try mixing them rather than two colors going off only one creature type (such as a green/black elf deck that I recently got where I'm only able to use the green side effectively). It makes the cards much more malleable since they'll usually have costs like 3R instead of 1RRR in which the latter requires that at least three red mana and one mana of any color to be spent to play it, as opposed to only one red required and the rest can be any other color in the first example.