Magic: The Gathering - Starting the Game
May 29th, 2024
Welcome to The First Nerd Leagues Blog Post
Here are our default rules for starting a game of Magic The Gathering. We will be referencing and referring to the Official Wizards Rules as often as possible. There will be some exceptions in later blog posts where we discuss our modifications and rules for specific game modes.
Pre-Game
Each Player picks their Deck/Commander and sets their starting life totals to the decided upon amount by the format they are playing. They then roll dice to determine Seating Position and Turn Order, which is supposed to be random. You then play out each turn in clockwise order.
"Mulligan" Rules
Each player draws 7 cards. In turn order, they each determine if they want to exercise their Mulligan options.
The London Mulligan became the official Mulligan rule along with the release of Core Set 2020. With these rules a player can shuffle their hand into their library, draw a new hand of seven cards, and then, if they keep the hand, put a number of cards equal to the number of times they've Mulliganed this game on the bottom of their library in any order. Multiplayer (3+ Player) games typically allow for 1 “Free” Mulligan without a card penalty.
Read our next blog post to learn about the Turn Order and how Magic the Gathering is played.
Check out this blog post to learn more about additional ways you can Mulligan.