Play Magic: The Gathering On-Line For Free

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So first off, if you should familiarize yourself with how to actually play Magic: The Gathering. This can be achieved by getting a friend to teach you, reading articles on http://www.wizards.com/magic/welcome.asp?regionset=true, reading a game manual, or buying a starter box and playing through the guided game.


Now assuming that you know how to play the game, go to http://www.magicworkstation.com/, click on "Downloads" at the top, and downloading. Then, of course, you install it. Then, go back to the MWS site, click on "Games & Manuals" at the top, and download the latest version of the MTG Card Database. This contains all the cards for magic without the pictures. If you want pictures you can download a themes pack also, but that is unnecessary.


Once you have this set up, in your start menu folder that has the MWS icons, there are 2 important ones for you to look at. One is called "Magic Workstation"; this is where you build your decks. The other is "MWS Online Play"; this is where you go to test your decks after you have build them, either in solitaire mode or vs another person online.


First, go to "Magic Workstation", which looks something like this:

If the first card is not "Ach! Hans, Run!" then go to "File -> Open Libraries ->" and browse to the folder that you installed MWS into (usually C:/Program Files/Magic Workstatoin) and open the file called "Master.mwBase". When you are using MWS and something isnt right make sure that this is the library file loaded.


Now that you have your MWS set up, you are ready to make your deck. Go to "File -> New Deck", choose a name for you deck, and save it to the decks folder. Now, the screen should look something like this:

Type the name of the card you want into the search box and MWS will find it for you. You can't type in appreviations or parts of the names though, so if you dont know what your card is called go to http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/index.aspx? and they have some ways to look for specific cards.

When you add cards to your deck, they will show up in the deck screen, like this:

After adding a card to your deck, you can highlight the "Qty" field or "Sideboard" field and press enter to change how many of that card you have in your maindeck or sideboard. You can also highlight the card and press the red "X" to remove it completely from your deck.

Once you finish making your deck, it will look something like this:

Now go to "File -> Save Deck/Library" and save your Deck. You are ready to test it or play online against other people!

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Now that you have your deck, it's time to play against other people online!

Go to "MWS Online Play" and you will see a screen like this:



Go to "File -> New Game" and then click the "Load Deck..." button, and browse to and load your deck. Your screen looks like this:

Choose a screen name for yourself, choose to play online or by yourself, and then click start game.


If you are playing online, the screen looks like this:

Click the join button next to someone's game to join theirs or type in a game name and click create to make your own. Click update list to refresh the games listing


If you are making your own game, the screen will look like this:

When someone joins your game, click accept to play against them. If several people join your game then you can click accept for one of them (you can't play against several people at once). If you change your mind and dont want to make your own game click cancel next to your game's name to remove it from the listing.


After you have successfully joined a a game, you are ready to play!

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Now that you are actually in a game, it's time to actually play!


First when you first join a game, the screen will look something like this:

At the beginning of a game, you usually shuffle your library a number of times by either going to "Action -> Shuffle Library" OR by pressing Ctrl + S. Then, usually both player rolls a 20-sided dice to see who goes first ("Action -> Roll a Die" or Ctrl + I). Then, each player draws 7 cards and decides whether to keep or mulligan ("Action -> Mulligan" or Ctrl + M). Then, the first player takes his or her turn and the game proceeds.

Turn phases: In playing online, it is usually considered very bad-mannered to not use phases. This is actually fairly simple. The phases are indicated by the icons in the middle of the screed, as such:

Click on each phase to indicate that it is now that time of the turn. You cand double click on some to automatically do whatever it is that usually happens during that phase.


Important Game Hints -

1)Right-clicking & Holding on one of your cards and dragging it over another card will show an arrow that indicates targeting. Drag it over your oppenent's life total to indicate you are directly targeting them.

2)Right-clicking on your life total will let you increment it by a chosen amount.

3) Double Clicking a card will tap it. Do it again and it will untap.

3) To search your library, to to "View - > My Library...". To get a card from your library click and drag the card to the play area or your hand. To put it face down on the play are hold down shift while you drag. To put a card that you searched for on top of your library (a la Vampiric Tutor), first put it in the play area (either face up or face down depending on whether you need to show whatever it is you seached for to you opponent) and then drag it to your deck.

4) To look at X number of cards on top of your library, go to "View -> Top Cards Of My Library" and enter in the number of cards you want to see.

5) To remove a card from the game face down (usually temporarily), drag it over to the corner of the play area that you are not using while holding the shift key.

6) Right clicking on something usually gives you more options on what you can do with it! Such as modifying power/toughness, adding counters, peeking at a face down card, etc. Right click on the play area gives you some useful options as well.

7) Left Clicking on one of the mana circles increases the number in it by 1. Right clicking decreases it by 1. This is useful to keep track of your mana if you are executing a long, complicated combo.

8) Read the help or pm me with more questions.