Ruling — Magic: The Gathering

← Magic: The Gathering

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Magic: The Gatheringbg-463-en-1e

To play a Magic game, follow these steps:

1. Decide which player will go first by rolling a die or flipping a coin.[1]

2. Each player shuffles his or her deck.[1]

3. Each player draws a hand of seven cards to start.[1]

4. If you do not like your opening hand, you can mulligan by shuffling your hand back into your deck and drawing a new hand of six cards, continuing to draw one fewer card each time until you decide to keep.[1]

5. Each turn proceeds in the following sequence:[2]

* Untap step: Untap all your tapped permanents.[2]

* Upkeep step: Players can cast instants and activate abilities.[2]

* Draw step: You draw a card from your library (the player who goes first skips this step on their first turn).[2] Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.[2]

* Main phase: You can play one land during this phase.[2] You can cast any number of sorceries, instants, creatures, artifacts, enchant and planeswalkers, and you can activate abilities.[2] Your opponent can cast instants and activate abilities.[2]

* Beginning of combat step: Players can cast instants and activate abilities.[2]

* Combat step: You decide which untapped creatures will attack and which player or planeswalker they will attack, which taps the attacking creatures.[2] Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.[2] Your opponent decides which untapped creatures will block, then they do so.[2] Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.[2]

* End of turn: The turn ends when both players pass in a row and no spell or ability is waiting on the stack.[3]

Game Rules and Objectives:

* Winning: You win by reducing your opponent to 0 life, if your opponent must draw a card but has none left in their library, or if a spell or ability says you win.[1]

* Life Totals: Each player starts at 20 life.[1]

* Hand Size: You start with seven cards and have a maximum hand size of seven; you must discard down to seven at the end of each of your turns.[4]

* Lands: You can play a land during a main phase of your turn when the stack is empty.[5] You can normally play only one land during your turn.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook · p.16 · Section 3: Playing a Game

[2] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook · p.17 · Section 3: Playing a Game · A. Untap step · B. Upkeep step · C. draw step · 2. M P · A. beGinninG of combat step · …

[3] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook · p.30 · P · P · P · P  · P

[4] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook · p.8 · L · L · H · T S · B · G

[5] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) · p.63 · 305. Lands

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 195 ms · ask 6677 ms · total 6875 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6875 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.045087, "snippet": "103.1. At the start of a game, the players determine which one of them will choose who takes the first turn. In the first game of a match (including a single-game match), the players may use any mutually agreeable method (flipping a coin, rolling dice, etc.) to do so. In a match of several games, th", "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044412, "snippet": "103.5d In a multiplayer game using the shared team turns option, first each player on the starting team declares whether that player will take a mulligan, then the players on each other team in turn order do the same. Teammates may consult while making their decisions. Then all mulligans are taken a", "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 63, "score": 0.043445, "snippet": "305.1. A player who has priority may play a land card from their hand during a main phase of their turn when the stack is empty. Playing a land is a special action; it doesn't use the stack (see rule 116). Rather, the player simply puts the land onto the battlefield. Since the land doesn't go on the", "headingPath": "305. Lands", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.040134, "snippet": "103.8b In a Two-Headed Giant game, the team who plays first skips the draw step of their first turn. 103.8c In all other multiplayer games, no player skips the draw step of their first turn. Ending the Game 104.1. A game ends immediately when a player wins, when the game is a draw, or when the game ", "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "You know everything you need to play a Magic game. But what kind of game will you play? Appropriately enough for a game with so many options, there are lots of different ways to play. Everyone can start on equal footing with brand-new cards rather than build decks in advance from the cards in their ", "headingPath": "Section 4: Different Ways to Play · L F · S D (   ) · B D (4  8 )", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.031319, "snippet": "Now that you know the elements of the game and how to perform the main actions, it's time to walk through a turn. This section describes what happens in each part of a turn. In a typical game, you'll skip many of these parts (for example, nothing usually happens in the 'beginning of combat' step). A", "headingPath": "Section 3: Playing a Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030579, "snippet": "sticker sheets from among those in the sealed product they opened and reveals them. In either case, that player has access to only the stickers on the chosen sheets during the game, and those sticker sheets remain revealed. (See rule 123, 'Stickers.') 103.2e In a Conspiracy Draft game, each player p", "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.03031, "snippet": "You can play a Magic game with more than two players in it. There are dozens of different ways to do so. Some of the most popular are Two-Headed Giant and Commander, which can be played using only traditional Magic cards from your collection. Other multiplayer variants use oversized cards or a speci", "headingPath": "M V · T-H G · C · T · P · A", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Section 3: Playing a Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Section 3: Playing a Game · A. Untap step · B. Upkeep step · C. draw step · 2. M P · A. beGinninG of combat step · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 30, "quote": null, "headingPath": "P · P · P · P  · P", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "L · L · H · T S · B · G", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 63, "quote": null, "headingPath": "305. Lands", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 172 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 172 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89226 of 1782 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 05:29 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.8	0.045087 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.10	0.044412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	305. Lands	p.63	0.043445 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.10	0.040134 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 4: Different Ways to Play · L F · S D (   ) · B D (4  8 )	p.19	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game	p.16	0.031319 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.9	0.030579 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	M V · T-H G · C · T · P · A	p.20	0.03031 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 4: Different Ways to Play · L F · S D (   ) · B D (4  8 )	p.19	#5	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	M V · T-H G · C · T · P · A	p.20	#8	0.03031 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	P · P · P · P  · P	p.30	#28	0.021852 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	305. Lands	p.63	#3	0.043445 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	L · L · H · T S · B · G	p.8	#14	0.027433 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	147462 C · P · L	p.7	#39	0.013514 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game · A. Untap step · B. Upkeep step · C. draw step · 2. M P · A. beGinninG of combat step · …	p.17	#10	0.028485 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game	p.16	#6	0.031319 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game	p.16	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game · A. Untap step · B. Upkeep step · C. draw step · 2. M P · A. beGinninG of combat step · …	p.17	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	P · P · P · P  · P	p.30	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	L · L · H · T S · B · G	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	305. Lands	p.63	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 195 ms · first delta 4147 ms · total 6875 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 195 ms · ask 6677 ms · gateway work 6875 ms · total 6875 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 5187
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 521
tok/sec: 195.1 tok/sec — 521 output tokens in 2.670 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 58s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 8s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 85), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.