#also obligatory this isn’t every combat-relevant keyword just most of the most common ones

[juniepops]

I’ve only been playing magic the gathering for a few months and I feel like I understand how it works pretty well, but I tend to pick things up quick anyway so it makes me wonder how comprehensive it is to complete strangers to the game.

For people who don’t play magic: one of the types of cards is “creatures,” which are left on the playing field and have numerical values called “power” and “toughness,” meaning strength and health. During one player’s turn, they may have their creatures attack another player, which requires them to be “tapped” (turned sideways); being tapped prevents the creature from doing other actions, including blocking. However, creatures that were played the same turn can’t be tapped to attack. For each attacking creature, the defending player chooses one of their own creatures to block it, and blocking creatures do not tap. If an attacking creature is blocked, both creatures deal their power against the other’s toughness as if fighting. Creatures that are not blocked damage the other player’s life total.

With this in mind, creatures can have additional abilities that modify the above combat process. Each of the following “keywords” is used to summarize a sentence or two of additional rules that apply to creatures who have the keyword on their card. I’ve sorted them in what I personally consider to be most to least intuitive, and would like any willing non-players to try and guess their effects without looking them up:

Deathtouch

Trample

Double Strike

First Strike

Lifelink

Flying

Reach

Haste

Vigilance

Menace

#this isn’t a super scientific post so I don’t expect a lot of answers but anyone else is welcome to reblog #also obligatory this isn’t every combat-relevant keyword just most of the most common ones #and some of the rarer ones Are like. more flavorful conceptually than necessarily easy to understand from the name