I Can’t Sleep - Magic: The Gathering | Can’t Sleep? Explore the Epic Card Game

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Magic: The Gathering has grown from a tabletop card game into a worldwide phenomenon. This episode explores how the game was created, how it is played, and the cards, colors, and strategies that shape its many possibilities. Along the way, you’ll hear about the game’s history, rules, different ways to play, and the world that has developed around it. It’s steady and consistent, with no whispering and no sudden changes, just enough to give your mind something to follow as you wind down. Happy sleeping! Read with permission from Magic: The Gathering, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. — Ad-free episodes: ⁠icantsleep.supportingcast.fm⁠Have a topic in mind? ⁠Request a topic⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I help you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster, and today's episode is about Magic the Gathering. Thank you to Will Hale for sponsoring today's episode. He says, For Ethan and Jackson, may your draws be lucky, your man a plentiful, and your dreams legendary. Magic the Gathering, colloquially known as Magic or MTG, is a collectible tabletop and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield, who was released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993 as a company's first trading card game. From 2008 to 2016, over 20 billion magic cards were printed as the game grew in popularity. For the 2022 fiscal year, Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast,

announced that Magic had generated $1 billion in annual revenue. By 2023, Magic had amassed approximately 50 million players worldwide. Players in a game of Magic represent dueling wizards called Plainswalkers. Each card a player draws from their deck represents a magical spell, which can be used to their advantage in battle. Instant and sorcery cards represent magical spells a player may cast for a one-time effect, while creature, artifact, enchantment, plains walker, and battle cards remain on the battlefield to provide long-term advantage.

Players usually must include resource or land cards representing the amount of mana that is available to cast their spells. Typically, a player defeats their opponents by reducing their life totals to zero, which is commonly done via combat damage by attacking with creatures. Many other sources of damage exist in the game, in addition to alternative wind conditions. Magic can be played by, by two or more players, either in person with paper cards, or on a computer, smartphone, or tablet

with virtual cards through internet-based software, such as Magic the Gathering Online, Magic the Gathering Arena, Magic Dules, and several others. It can be played in various rule formats, which fall into two categories, constructed and limited. Limited formats involve players creating a deck spontaneously out of a pool of random cards, typically with a minimum deck size of 40 cards. In constructed formats, players create decks from cards they own, usually with a minimum of 60 cards per deck. Cards in Magic the Gathering generally have a consistent format,

with half of the face of the card showing the card's art and the other half listing the cards mechanics often relying on commonly reused keywords to simplify the card's text cards fall into two classes lands and spells lands produce mana or magical energy

players usually can only play one land card per turn, with most land providing a specific color of mana when they are tapped, usually by rotating the card 90 degrees to show it has been used that turn. Each land card can be tapped for mana only once per turn. Spells consume mana, usually requiring at least one mana of a specific color. More powerful spells require larger amounts and more specific combinations of manna. As the game progresses and more lands enter play, the available mana increases, allowing stronger spells to be cast.

Spells come in several varieties. Non-permanence like sorceries and instance have a single one-time effect before they go to the graveyard or discard pile. Enchantments and artifacts that remain in play after being cast to provide a lasting magical effect. Creature spells summon creatures that can attack and damage an opponent, as well as used to defend from the opponent's creature attacks. And Plainswalkers spells that summon powerful allies that acts similarly to other players.

Lands, enchantments, artifacts, creatures, plainswalkers, and battle cards are considered permanence as they remain in play until removed by other spells, ability, or combat effects. Players begin the game by shuffling their decks and then drawing seven cards. On each player's turn, following a set of,

phase order. They draw a card, tap their lands, another permanent as necessary to gain mana to cast spells, engage their creatures in a single attack round against their opponent who may use their own creatures to block the attack, and then complete other actions with any remaining mana. Most cards and magic are based on one of five colors that make of the game's color wheel or color pie, shown on the back of each card, and each representing a school or realm of magic, white, blue, black, red, and green. The arrangement of these colors on the wheel describes relationships between the schools, which can broadly affect deck construction and game execution. For a given color, such as white, the two colors. The two colors,

immediately adjacent to it, green and blue, are considered complementary, while the two colors on the opposite side, black and red, are its opposing schools. The research and development team at Wizards of the Coast aimed to balance power and abilities among the five colors by using the color pie to differentiate the strengths and weaknesses of each. This guideline lays out the capabilities, themes, and mechanics of each color and allows for each color to have its own distinct attributes in gameplay. The color pie is used to ensure new cards are thematically in the correct order

and do not infringe on the territory of other colors. White represents order, peace, and light, and draws mana from planes. White Plainswalkers can summon individually weak creatures that are collectively strong as a group, such as soldiers, as well as powerful creatures and leaders, that can strengthen all of the players' creatures with additional abilities or strength. Their spells tend to focus on healing or preventing damage, protecting their allies, and neutralizing an opponent's advantages on the battlefield. Blue represents intellect, logic, manipulation, and trickery,

and pulls its mana from islands. Its magic is typically associated with the classical elements of air and water. Many of Blue's spells can interact or interfere with the opponent's spells, as well as with the general flow of the game. Blue's magic is also associated with control, allowing the player to gain temporary or full control of the opponent's creatures. Blue creatures often tend to be weak, but evasive and difficult to target. Black represents power and corruption, among other things, drawing mana from swamps. Black creatures may be able to draw the life taken in an attack back to their caster. Black spells similarly coerced sacrifice by the player or their opponent to cards or life.

Red represents freedom, chaos, fury, and warfare, pulling its base. power from mountains. Its powers are associated with the classical fire and earth elements, and it tends to have the strongest spells, such as fireballs, that can be powered up by tapping additional mana when cast. Red is an offense-oriented class, in addition to powerful creatures like dragons, Red Plainswalkers can summon weak creatures that can strike quickly to gain the short-term edge. Green is the color of life, nature, evolution, and indulgence, drawing manna from forests. Green has the widest array of creatures to draw upon, ranging across all power levels, and generally is able to dominate the battlefield with many creatures in play at once.

Green creatures and spells can generate life points and mana, and can also gain massive strength through spells. Magic, like many other games, combines chance and skill. One frequent complaint about the game involves the notion that there is too much luck involved, especially concerning drawing too many or too few lands. early in the game especially too many or too few lands could ruin a player's chance at victory without the player having made a mistake this in-game statistical variance can be minimized by proper deck construction as an appropriate land count can reduce manna problems in duels of the plains walkers twenty twelve the land count is automatically adjusted to forty per cent of the total deck size. The original set of rules prescribed that all games were to be played for anti. Garfield was

partially inspired by the game of Marbles and added this rule because he wanted the players to play with the cards rather than simply collect them. The anti rule stated that each player must remove a card at random from the deck they wished to play with before the game began, and the two cards would be set aside together as the ante. At the end of the match, the winner would take and keep both cards. Early sets included a few cards with rules designed to interact with this gambling aspect, allowing replacements of cards up for ante, adding more cards to the ante, or even more cards. or even permanently trading ownership of cards in play. The anti-concept became controversial because many regions had restrictions on games of chance.

The anti-rule was soon made optional because of these restrictions and because of players' reluctance to possibly lose a card that they owned. The gambling rule was also forbidden at sanctioned events. The last card Dimension Ante was printed in the 1995 expansion said Homelands. The Wizards Play Network, WPN, formerly the Dulles Convocation International, DCI, is the organizing body for sanctioned magic events. It is owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast. The WP.N. establishes the set allowance.

and card restrictions for the constructed and limited formats, for regulation play, for tournaments, as well as for other events. Thousands of game shops participate in Friday Night Magic, FNM, an event sponsored by the WPN. It is advertised as the event where new players can approach the game and start building their community. FNM offers both sanctioned tournament formats and all casual formats.

In 2018, the New Yorker reported that, even as it has grown in popularity and size, magic flies low to the ground. It thrives on the people who gather at lunch tables and apartments, or one of the 6,000 stores worldwide that Wizards has licensed to put on. on weekly tournaments, dubbed Friday Night Magic. FNM tournaments can act as a stepping stone to more competitive play. Richard Garfield had an early attachment to games during his youth. Before settling down in Oregon, his father, an architect,

had taken his family to Bangladesh and Nepal during his work projects. Garfield did not speak the native languages, but was able to make friends with a local youth through playable cards or marbles. Once back in the United States, he had heard of Dungeons and Dragons, but neither his local game store nor his friends had a copy, so he developed his own version of what he thought the game would be

based on the descriptions he had read, which he considered closer to Clue, with players moving from room to room, fighting monsters with a fixed end goal. When Garfield eventually got copies of the Dungeons and Dragons rule-sheads, he was surprised that it was a more open-ended game, but was dreadfully written. Dungeons and Dragons' open-endedness inspired him, like many others, to develop their own game ideas from it.

For Garfield, this was a game he called Five Magics, based on five elemental magics that were drawn from geographically diverse areas. While this remained the core concept of five magics, Garfield continued to refine the game while growing up, often drastically changing the base type of game, though never planned to publish this game. In 1991, Carfield was a doctoral candidate in combinatorial mathematics at University of Pennsylvania,

and had been brought on as an adjunct professor at Woodman College. During his candidacy, he developed his ideas and had play-tested Robo Rally, a board game based on moving robots through a factory filled with hazards. Garfield had been seeking publishers for the title, and his colleague, Mike Davis, suggested the newly formed Wizards of the Coast. A small outfit established by Peter Atkinson,

a systems analyst for Boeing in Seattle. In mid-1991, the three arranged to meet in Oregon near Garfield's parents' home. Adkison was impressed by a Robo Rally, but considered that it had too many logistics and would be too risky for him to publish. He told Garfield and Davis that he liked Garfield's ideas, and that he was looking for a portable game that could be played in the downtime that frequently occurs at gaming conventions. After meeting, Garfield remained in Oregon to contemplate Atkinson's advice.

While hiking near Multnomah Falls, he was inspired to take his five magic's concept, but apply it to collectible color-themed cards. so that each player could make a customizable deck, something each player could consider part of their identity. Garfield arranged to meet with Atkinson back in Seattle within the week, and when Atkinson heard the idea, he recognized the potential that this would be a game that could be expanded on indefinitely, was new cards in contrast to most typical tabletop games. Adkison later wrote on the idea on a used-ness,

post, if executed properly, the cards would make us millions. Atkinson immediately agreed to produce it. Garfield returned to Pennsylvania and set out to design the game's core rules and initial cards, was about 150 completed in the few months after his return. The type of gameplay centered on each color remained consistent with how five magics had been and with how Magic the Gathering would stay in the future, such as Red representing aggressive attacks. While the game was simply called Magic through most of playtesting,

when the game had to be officially named, a lawyer informed them that the name Magic was too generic to be trademarked. Maniclash was instead chosen to be the name used in the first solicitation of the game. However, everybody involved, with the game continued to refer to it simply as magic. After further legal consultation, it was decided to rename the game Magic the Gathering, thus enabling the name to be trademarked. By 1993, Garfield and Adkisson had gotten everything ready to debut Magic the Gathering

at the years Chen Con in Milwaukee that August, but did not have the funds for production, to have cards shipped to game stores in time. Adkison took a single box of cards with a handful of completed decks to the wizard's booth at Origins' Game Fair, hoping to secure the funds by demonstrating the game. Among those he demonstrated too were representatives of War Games West, manufacturers of historical tactics games. The representatives eventually brought their CEO over, and after seeing the game, took Atkinson to dinner and negotiated funding terms. Atkinson returned with $40,000 enough to make the necessary orders.

Magic the Gathering underwent a general release on August 5, 1993. After shipping the orders, Atkinson and his wife drove towards Milwaukee, while making stops at game stores to demonstrate the game and drum of support for Gencon. Their initial stops were quiet, but word of mouth from previous stops spread, and as they traveled south and west, they found larger and larger crowds anxiously awaiting their arrival. Garfield met with Adkison at Gencon, where their shipment of 2.5 million cards had been delayed a day. Despite this, by the end of the convention, they had completely sold out. Magic was an immediate success for Wizards of the Coast.

By October 1993, it had sold out its supply of 10 million cards. Wizards was even reluctant to advertise the game. because it was unable to keep pace with existing demand. Initially, magic attracted many Dungeons and Dragons players, but the following included all types of other people as well. The success of the initial edition prompted a reissue later in 1993, along with expansions to the game. Arabian Nights was released as the first expansion in December, 1997.

New expansions and revisions of the base game, Core sets, have since been released on a regular basis, amounting to four releases a year. By the end of 1994, the game had printed over a billion cards. Until the release of Mirage in 1986, expansions were released on an irregular basis, beginning in 2009, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000. One revision of the course head and a set of three related expansions called A Block were released every year. In 1996, Wizards of the Coast established the Pro Tour, a circuit of tournaments where players can compete for sizable cash prizes over the course of a single weekend-long tournament. In 2009, the top prize at a single tournament was $40,000.

Sanctioned through the DCI, the tournaments added an element of prestige to the game by virtue of the cash payouts and media coverage from within the community. For a brief period of time, ESPN2 televised the tournaments. In 1999, Wizards of the Coast was acquired by Hasbro for $325 million, making Magic a Hasbro game. Magic the Gathering cards are produced in much the same way as normal playing cards. Each magic card, approximately 63 by 88 millimeters in size, or 2.5 by 3.5 inches, as a face which displays the card's name and rules text, as well as an illustration appropriate to the card's concept. 23,318 unique cards have been produced for the game

as of September 2016, many of them with variant additions, artwork, or layouts, and 600 to 1,000 new ones are added each year. The first magic cards were printed exclusively in English. But current sets are also printed in traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. The overwhelming majority of magic cards are issued and marketed in the form of sets. For the majority of its history, there were two types. The corset and the themed excurset.

and the themed expansion sets. Under Wizards of the Coast's current production and marketing scheme, a new set is released quarterly. The majority of cards are sold in booster packs, which contain 15 cards normally divided into four rarities, which can be differentiated by the color of the expansion symbol. A 15-card booster pack will typically contain one rarests, gold, three uncommonds, silver, ten commons, black, and one basic land, colored black as

commons. Sets prior to Shards of Alara contained 11 commons instead of a basic land. Shards of Alara also debuted Missic Rairs, red-orange, which replaced one and eight rare cards on average. There are also premium versions of every card with holographic foil, randomly inserted into some boosters in place of a common, which replace about 1 and 70 cards. In addition to the quarterly set releases, magic cards are released in other products as well, such as the plane chase and arch-enemy spin-off games.

These combine reprinted magic cards, cards with new oversized cards with new functionality. Magic cards are also printed specifically for collectors, such as the From the Vault and Premium Deck series sets, which contain exclusively premium foil cards. In 2003, starting with the English edition CoreSed, the game went through its biggest visual change since its creation. A new card for the game, frame layout was developed to allow more rules text and larger art on the cards, while reducing the thick, colored border to a minimum. The new frame design aimed to improve contrast and readability using black type instead of the previous white, a new font, and partitioned areas for

the name, card type, and power and toughness. The card frame was changed once again in Corset, 2015, which maintained the same templating, but made the card sleeker, and added a hollow foil stamp to every rare and mithic card to curtail counterfeiting. In 2025, wizards announced that 2026 would have seven standard legal sets releasing the highest ever. They also clarified that 2027 would return to the norm of. Garfield had established that Magic the Gathering took place in a multiverse with countless possible worlds, planes. The game's primary events taking place on the plains of Dominaria, Ravnica, Zendikar, and Inestrade. Only extremely rare beings called Plainswalkers are capable of traversing the

multiverse. This allows a game to frequently change worlds so as to renew its mechanical inspiration, while maintaining Plainswalkers as recurrent common elements across worlds. Players represent planeswalkers able to draw on the magics and entities of these planes to do battle with others. Story elements were told through the card's flavor text and a driving narrative. the first expansion arabian nights designed by garfield was based on one thousand and one night's folklore and included figures from that like aladdin