Magic: The Gathering.Play Boosters, bundles and Commander decks

Play Boosters and Universes Beyond

Play Boosters arrived with Murders at Karlov Manor, and the first full booster set in Universes Beyond was The Lord of the Rings in 2023. How the packs and releases fit together is covered in the guide to Magic sets.

The Commander decks

Wizards has released ready-made Commander decks since 2011, and since 2024 the company manages the format itself, which was previously run by an independent rules committee. The rules are in the guide to playing Magic.

How Magic came about

Wizards of the Coast was founded in 1990 by Peter Adkison outside Seattle. In 1991 Richard Garfield, then a PhD student in mathematics, offered the company the board game RoboRally, but Adkison found it too expensive to produce and asked for a quick game that was easy to carry around. During playtesting the game was simply called Magic, but the name could not be trademarked, so in the first mailing to retailers it was called Mana Clash before it became Magic: The Gathering. In two years Magic turned the company in Adkison's basement into a business with 250 employees, and since 1999 Wizards has been owned by Hasbro. Other games are under trading card games.

The World Championship and the Pro Tour

The first Magic World Championship was played in 1994 at the Gen Con game convention in Milwaukee and was won by American Zak Dolan. The Pro Tour started in 1996, and that same year Olle Råde from Gothenburg won Pro Tour Columbus as the first European and became the first to be named Player of the Year.