Die Zauberschrecken der Schrauberzecken

von Jörg Zuther

Deutsche Version

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English Version

Seitenindex

	Was ist Magic?
	Regeln
	Verweise
		Magic in Berlin

Leider ist diese Seite noch nicht vollständig auf Deutsch übersetzt.

Zum Titel: Die englische Version dieser Seite war zuerst da. Ihr Titel, der einen Spoonerismus zu einem kurzen Schüttelreim verarbeitet, konnte nicht ohne weiteres übersetzt werden. Die deutsche Version der Seite sollte im Titel ein ähnliches Wortspiel vorweisen. Der aktuelle Titel ist das Beste, was ich bisher finden konnte. Immerhin gibt es in Magic ja so seltsame Kreaturenarten wie z. B. Remasuris. Warum dann nicht auch "Schrauberzecken"? (-:

Was ist Magic?

Magic:Die Zusammenkunft (M:DZ, wird im folgenden einfach 'Magic' genannt) ist ein von Richard Garfield (Wikipedia-Artikel leider nur auf Englisch) erfundenes Kartenspiel. Bei einem 'normalen' Kartenspiel stellt einer der Spieler einen festen Satz von Karten zur Verfügung, mit denen dann alle spielen. Außerdem sind viele 'normale' Kartenspiele schon recht alt. Magic kam erstmals im August 1993 heraus und führte eine völlig neue Klasse von Kartenspielen ein, die sogenannten sammelbaren bzw. tauschbaren Kartenspiele (engl. Collectible Card Games (CCGs) or Tradable Card Games (TCGs)). Die Karten werden in limitierten und unlimitierten Sets herausgebracht, wobei einige Karten selten ('rare'), einige weniger selten ('uncommon') und die restlichen häufig sind ('common') - ähnlich wie bei sammelbaren Sportkarten, z. B. Baseballkarten. Die Karten werden in zwei Sorten von Packungen verkauft, den sogenannten Startern (mit 75 Karten) und Boostern (mit 15 Karten), wobei die Karten eine Zufallsmischung aus dem jeweiligen Set darstellen. Nun ja, nicht vollkommen zufällig: So enthalten die Booster beispielsweise eine seltene, drei weniger seltene und elf häufige Karten, und normalerweise kommt dabei keine Karte doppelt vor.

Hence, each player has her own individual collection of cards. She chooses cards from this collection she wants to play with, putting them together in a stack called her deck. Therefore, if you want to play Magic, you need your own collection of Magic cards and someone else who has also a collection.

It is not difficult to find Magic players nowadays, since this game has received an extremely high degree of popularity:

• Several billion (!) cards have been sold all over the world.
• Cards are currently (February 2003) available in nine languages, among them Chinese.
• The basic set is currently (February 2003) available as 7th edition, and there have been released over 20 expansions, such that there is a total of about 5,000 (!) different cards available for Magic.
• You can meet players in any bigger fantasy games store, testing their newest deck ideas and trading their cards.

In Magic, the players are mighty wizards and sorceresses trying to reduce their opponents initial 20 life points to zero (and, of course, to hold their own life total above this level). This sounds brutal, but its up to your own imagination to visualize a serious fight between mages or just some sort of sports to train their magical abilities.

There are two basically different classes of cards: Those that represent lands and those that represent spells. To cast a spell (this means, to put a card into play permanently or to play it for a solitary effect) needs some magical energy called mana. Every spell shows the type (there are different colors) and amount of mana one needs to cast the spell in the upper right corner. This mana is provided by the different types of lands (swamps, mountains, forests, planes and islands). Each turn, you can play at most one land such that usually there's only a slow growth of the mana base. More powerful spells that need more mana normally can't be played in the first few turns of a duel.

The different colours all have a different flavour: Black is the colour of death, disease and destruction, red the colour of chaos, fire and brute force, green the colour of nature, plants and beasts, white the colour of order, life and healing and blue the colour of mind, intrigue and water. The spells can be further divided into creatures (whose main purpose is to attack the opposing mage and protect their own master), artifacts (providing powerful effects), enchantments (to modify the course of gameplay or the properties of lands, creatures, artifacts and other enchantments), sorceries (one-shot spells with powerful effects that can only be played at certain occasions) and instants (one-shot spells that can be played at almost any time - even in reaction to your opponents dirty deeds).

Both deck building and gameplay are challenging and fun. It is difficult to build a deck that can take on any other deck regardless of its structure. There's a vast variety of viable strategies - land destruction (mana denial), hand destruction (discarding), fast efficient creature hordes (overrun the opponent in only a few turns), card recursion (most involving the graveyard - the pile of used or destroyed cards), all sorts of control (slow decks that ward off first onslaughts until they gain control over the game), all sorts of combos (decks that rely on managing to play a deadly card combo usually consisting of 2-3 cards) and many more. It is also possible to build theme decks, e.g. around creature types like zombies, goblins, elfs, soldiers and merfolk or featuring some unexpected subject like a jewel deck or an astronomy deck. Naturally, theme decks tend to be significantly weaker than general decks due to the thinner card base.

Note, however, that playing magic has its drawbacks. It is an expensive and time consuming hobby. Card prices exploded over the last two years (February 2003). If you want to build strong decks you need too buy many starters and boosters or have to buy wanted single cards from traders and other players. Single rare cards that are high in demand can cost you $20 and more! On the other hand, the variety of possible decks you can build growths exponentially with every booster you add to your collection.

Regeln

Even the basic magic rules are extensive and packed with details. Further, at a card base of over 5000 different cards, no simple ruleset can cover all interactions between all card combinations. Several rule overhauls were necessary, which is the main reason that many old cards needed new wordings. You find everything at the

• Magic Rules Page (in several languages/ by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.),
  the official rules page. You find there rules for beginning, advanced and pro players.

Verweise

• Wizards of the Coast (WotC)
  All mages in the world of Dominaria have - directly or indirectly - learned their craft from the creators of their universe.

• Official Magic:The Gathering Home Page
  runned by Wizards of the Coast

• Gatherer - The Official Magic:The Gathering Card Database
  is runned by the Wizards of the Coast. Enter a search term (like 'first strike' or 'flying'), apply some additional filters (card type, color, set) and find all magic cards fitting the criteria. The search interface could be better, but nevertheless you can search an always up-to-date database of all magic cards.

• Amigo Spiele + Freizeit
  ist der deutsche Distributor von Magic:The Gathering.

• Wikipedia-Artikel Magic: Die Zusammenkunft
  

• Interviews: Richard Garfield (Englisch/ von ogrecave.com, Allan Sugarbaker)
  Was denkt der Erfinder von Magic heutzutage über sein Spiel?

Magic in Berlin

• Darkpact - Magic in Berlin (von Matthias Nagy)
  covers local tournaments, leagues and shops, and much more...