Magic the Gathering

Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game - also known as a collectible card game - originally created by designer Richard Garfield and released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993. Widely considered the first trading card game, the game typically sees two players compete to defeat their opponent first by spending mana to play creatures, spells and other items and abilities. Players can customize their deck before each battle, choosing cards from their library and - depending on the format - the current legal pool of sets and expansions. More than 20,000 different cards have been released for Magic: The Gathering since it first released more than 25 years ago, with over 20 billion cards printed between 2008 and 2016 alone.

The first modern trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, was set loose upon the world on 5 August 1993. Created by Professor Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc, Magic: The Gathering can be said to be the origin, indeed the very Genesis, of TCGs as we know them. Featuring a modest initial print run of 2.6 million cards with fantasy illustrations to match, it would inspire a genre of collectible-card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon over the next decade.

There are currently more than 20,000 unique Magic cards, to which hundreds are added each year. Cards are sold in a variety of languages and products, including booster packs and preconstructed theme decks. To tell if a card is rare or mythic rare we look at the expansion set symbol. Almost all cards will have an expansion set symbol on it to help you identify it. The colour of this symbol will tell you what rarity the card is; common = black, uncommon = silver, rare = gold, mythic = orange-red / bronze.

After the 1993 release of Limited Edition, also known as Alpha and Beta, roughly 3-4 major sets have been released per year, in addition to various spin-off products. Magic has made three types of sets since Alpha and Beta: base/core sets, expansion sets, and compilation sets.

As of 2022, there have been over 100 MTG sets released for the trading card game, excluding supplemental sets like Commander decks, Duel Decks, etc.