Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 30 years, you must have heard of Magic: The Gathering. Even if you don’t play or collect trading card games, you must have seen it on YouTube, Twitch, or at least in the checkout aisles at Walmart. Initially released in 1993, Magic: The Gathering (MtG) has had 168 expansion sets, the most recent being Magic: The Gathering Foundations, released on November 15, 2024. It has probably been over a decade since I last touched a MtG card, and that was when I spent a small fortune buying booster packs because my youngest daughter liked how they looked and wanted some for Christmas. Now, with the help of the Magic: The Gathering Foundations Beginner Box.
Magic: The Gathering Foundations – What’s In The Box?
The Foundations Beginner Box is part of the MtG: Foundations ecosystem, which also includes a Starter Collection, Collector Boosters, and Jumpstart Boosters. While the other components are perfect for anyone already entrenched in the MtG universe, the Starter Collection is a curated experience meant to introduce a new initiate to the game. Each Beginner Box includes the following:
- 2 gameboard playmats
- 1 Reference guide booklet
- 2 “How To Play” guides
- 2 quick reference cards
- 2 20-sided die
- A handful of +1/+1 counters and Token Cards
- 10 Themed Jumpstart decks of 20 cards each. Just shuffle two decks together, and presto, you have a simple but cohesive deck designed for beginner play.
Other than a friend, the Beginner Box comes with everything you need to get started in Magic: The Gathering. The quick reference cards are very useful as you stumble through your first few rounds, and the reference guide may not be an all-encompassing rule book, but it does give the basic rules and glossary of terms that a new player can refer to after completing the tutorial match. I like that the playmats are made of grayboard. It gives the set a higher quality look and feel that a plastic mat would give. In fact, the paper tokens are the only low-quality item in the box, and an upgrade to plastic tokens would be a cheap and easy way to maintain a premium feel for the entire package.
Magic: The Gathering Foundations – Beginning Play
The purpose of the Beginner Box is to teach new players how to play Magic. As I mentioned, I’m not a veteran player, and although I had a basic understanding of general game flow, I wouldn’t have a clue how to play through a single round of Magic, let alone teach someone else how to play. So, with little idea of what I was getting into, I grabbed my girlfriend (my board-gaming partner and absolute MtG newbie), set up the game table, and cracked open the Beginner Box.
The Beginner Box is put together with the assumption that you have absolutely zero knowledge of the game. Instead of a general rulebook that throws an entire game’s worth of information and rules at you all at once and then lets you fend for yourself as you play through your first game, the How To Play guides are laid out in a manner that introduces the different game elements through a hands-on approach.
Each guidebook uses one of the Jumpstart decks in the kit, with one player using the Cats deck and the other getting the Vampires deck. Each deck is set in a specific order, so the tutorial plays out in a predetermined order. My girlfriend took the Cats deck, leaving me with the Vampires deck.
To start things off, the guide walks you through setting up your playmat and then has you draw seven cards – the basic opening of any Magic match. With cards in hand, the guide then introduces you to each portion of a card: card name, mana cost, type line, expansion symbol, text box, and power and toughness. From there, the tapping and untapping of cards is explained, followed by the Cats player taking their first turn.
Each guidebook is written in the form of a mentor teaching a student. During your turn, it walks you through each phase, directing you on what actions you can take – play a land card, cast a spell, attack, etc. – along with explaining any new rules being introduced during that turn. When your turn is over, the guide shows a recap of your board and hand to ensure everything looks correct, and play is then passed to your opponent. During your opponent’s turn, the guide will inform you of any noteworthy actions that your opponent is performing, and you are guided through appropriate actions like blocking, casting instant cards, and any other decisions you must make.
The first couple of turns are very simple, with land cards being played and a couple of creatures entering the playfield on each side. Later turns introduce combat, blocking, instant cards, sorcery cards, dealing damage, and so on. With each turn building upon the last, players are slowly introduced to the rules of play in a natural fashion.
Most rulebooks dryly teach you the rules of a game step by step. With its mentor/student design, the How To Play guides add some flavor text that also teaches the “why” behind the “how.” My girlfriend and I both found this to be a nice addition that left us with more than just a basic understanding of the rules.
The flavor text also helps immerse you in the game. The Cat mentor urges you along, building your confidence through its positive tone, while the Vampire mentor continually reminds you that you are only surviving by their prowess and to mind your place lest they squash you like the bug you are. We both found the extra text engaging, and we even found ourselves reading the comments out loud as we took our turns. We’ve learned multiple board games together, and we agree that this was the most engaging set of instructions we have seen.
After six turns each, the How To Play guides have walked you through the basic information and rules that you need to play a game of Magic, and you are left on your own to finish up the tutorial game. My vampire forces nearly took down my girlfriend’s cat army during the first few rounds of the tutorial, but I was finished off just three rounds after being left to our own devices. She’ll never believe it, but I let her win. Ok, maybe not.
After the tutorial, we took the next step and used the Jumpstart decks to play several more games. Each Jumpstart deck consists of 20 cards centered around a specific theme. Dragons, goblins, elves, healing, and other themes are all in play. For each game, we combined two of the decks to create a 40-card deck. The curated decks all blended to create playable decks, and after several matches, we felt confident that the tutorial had done a good job of teaching us the basics.
Final Thoughts
The Beginner Box is a great way to learn the basics of Magic: The Gathering. The hands-on learning approach used in the How To Play guides does a good job of explaining the rules of the game. Not only was the flavor text informative, but it also made the tutorial a much more immersive environment than other rule books. I can think of several games that we’ve played where the tutorial game was the first and last time we opened the box, and this approach may have prevented that.
The curated Jumpstart decks don’t have the most powerful cards, but they are sufficient to create decent starter decks. I doubt anyone who has spent even a minimal amount of time playing MtG would find much value here, but if this is your first attempt at learning Magic: The Gathering, the Foundations Beginner Box is the way to go.
