How to Look at Magic Cards

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Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game created in 1993. Game involves two or more players with decks of 60+ cards that can be spells, artifacts, and creatures. The players use the cards to fight one another.

On the back of the cards there is an illustration similar to a book cover, a rectangle with a large oval inside. At the top of the oval it says ‘Magic: The Gathering’ and at the bottom it says ‘Deckmaster’. In the center there are five circles in a pentagonal design which are white, green, red, black and blue. Each colour represents one of the elements that a card can be. Each colour presents different strengths and weaknesses. The face of the card will be in the colour that the card’s magic matches.

The card ‘Crusader of Odric’ is a white card, which is the colour of order, righteousness, law, and light. The name of the card is found in the upper left corner. In the upper right corner there is two small circles one with the numerical ‘2’ and one with the symbol for white lands. In MTG lands are placed on the field to call forward creatures, by having a ‘2’ and a symbol for white lands the card is telling the player that they must have 3 lands on the field and at least one of them must be a white land. The other two can be any colour because often times players will have decks with more than one colour to have more abilities. Below this information is a drawing of the crusader herself, shown to be thrusting her sword upwards and leading people into battle while light shines behind the crew.

Underneath the image is the line ‘Creature-Human Soldier’ which tells the player what kind of card this is. On the right side of that line is ‘M13’ which means that this is part of the MTG core set for the 2013. Underneath this information is what the card actually does when it is put into battle. As a creature it can attack the opponents creatures with power and toughness which is also known as attack and defense in other games. The Crusader of Odric is unique because in the bottom right corner instead of numbers like most cards there are two stars. This is because in the card details it tells the player that the power and toughness are equal to the number of creatures you control. This means that the Crusader works best when you have more creatures on the field because the more creatures there are on the field, the stronger she is.

Below the card information is an flavour quote that all cards have, for this one she is inspiring the troops by saying that they will ‘strike without fear’. At the very bottom left corner there is the name Micheal Kormack beside a paint brush which is the name of the cards artist.