Your First Game

Who this is for: a total beginner about to sit down for a real game. This is a narrated walkthrough of an opening — pre-game setup through the first several turns — so you can follow along at the table. Everything here ties back to the earlier chapters; we link as concepts come up.

🆕 New players: read this with a deck in hand if you can. It’s meant to be followed move-by-move, not memorized. 🔁 Returning players: the flow will feel familiar; what’s worth watching is how 40 life, the command zone, and four players change your pacing. 🎯 Commander-specific: this is the format end-to-end in miniature — Rule 0, the command zone, commander tax, and multiplayer combat all show up.

flowchart TD
    A([Look at your opening hand]) --> B{Keepable hand?<br/>about 2-4 lands plus things to do}
    B -->|No| C[Mulligan: redraw 7,<br/>then put 1 card on the bottom]
    C --> A
    B -->|Yes| D[Keep]
    D --> E[Your turn: play your land for the turn]
    E --> F{Can you afford a useful play?}
    F -->|Yes| G[Develop: ramp, a creature,<br/>or your commander once affordable]
    F -->|No| H[Hold and pass]
    G --> I{Hold up interaction?}
    I -->|Instant-speed answers + a likely threat| J[Leave mana open]
    I -->|Nothing to react with| K[Tap out to develop]
    H --> L([Pass turn])
    J --> L
    K --> L

Diagram source: diagrams/first-turn-decision.mmd.

About the example: we use Krenko, Mob Boss — a well-known legendary creature — as the example commander, and describe its effect in plain words. All other cards in this walkthrough are generic stand-ins (“a 2-mana mana rock,” “a 3-mana removal spell”), invented so you can follow the logic without leaning on any specific card text or art.

The pre-game

Four players sit down. Everyone reveals their commander — yours is Krenko, Mob Boss, a mono-red legendary creature whose ability (paraphrased) lets you tap him to create a pile of 1/1 red Goblin tokens equal to the number of Goblins you already control. It’s a snowbally, go-wide aggressive plan.

Rule 0 — the 30-second chat

Before anything else, the table has its Rule 0 conversation (see Brackets and Rule 0). It goes like this:

“Let’s aim for Bracket 2 — precon-ish, nothing degenerate. No infinite combos. Also, heads up, it’s Priya’s first game, so let’s keep it friendly.”

That one exchange sets expectations and protects everyone’s evening. Done.

Setup

Each player sets their life total to 40.
Each player puts their commander face up in the command zone (see The Commander).
You randomly determine who goes first. Say you’re seated second; the player to your right takes the first turn.
Everyone draws seven cards.

Your opening hand and the mulligan

You look at seven: three Mountains, a 2-mana mana rock (a generic artifact that taps for one mana), a 3-mana 2/2 Goblin, a 3-mana removal spell, and a clunky 5-drop.

Is this a keep? Yes. Three lands plus a mana rock means you’ll hit your early plays and can cast Krenko on curve; you’ve got a creature and an answer. A hand with zero or one land, or six lands and nothing to do, is the classic mulligan — shuffle back, draw seven, and put one card on the bottom (London mulligan). This hand needs none of that. Keep.

🆕 New players: the most common beginner mulligan mistake is keeping a hand with too few lands hoping to draw them. Two to four lands with something to do is the comfortable zone.

The first few turns

Remember the turn structure from Anatomy of a Turn: beginning → main 1 → combat → main 2 → ending. We’ll mostly live in the main phases early.

Turn 1 (yours)

The player on your right went first (and, as the starting player, skipped their first draw). Now it’s you:

Main phase: play a Mountain — your one land for the turn.
Nothing else worth doing. Pass.

🆕 New players: a turn where you just play a land and pass is totally normal, especially early. Don’t force a play you don’t have.

Turn 2 (yours)

Play your second Mountain (two lands now).
Tap both for the 2-mana mana rock. This is ramp — next turn you’ll effectively have three lands’ worth of mana plus the rock.
Pass.

Turn 3 — cast your commander

Play your third Mountain. You now have 3 lands + the mana rock = 4 mana.
Krenko, Mob Boss costs four mana. Cast him from the command zone — this is his first cast from there, so there’s no commander tax yet (see The Commander).
Krenko has summoning sickness: he just arrived, so this turn you can’t attack with him or tap him for his ability. That’s fine — he’s online next turn.
Pass.

An opponent answers Krenko

On someone else’s turn, an opponent reads the room — a Krenko left untapped will bury the table in Goblins — and casts a removal spell to destroy him.

Here’s the key Commander move: instead of going to the graveyard, you use the command-zone replacement (see The Commander) and send Krenko back to the command zone. He’s not gone; he’s just waiting to be recast.

🎯 Commander-specific: this is why your commander is so resilient — answers rarely get rid of it for good. The cost you pay is the rising tax, not the card itself.

Turn 5 — recast Krenko, now with tax

You develop a land on turn 4 and hold. By turn 5 you have 5 lands + the mana rock = 6 mana. Time to bring Krenko back:

His base cost is four mana.
He’s been cast from the command zone once before, so the commander tax adds {2}.
Total: 4 + 2 = 6 mana. You have exactly that. Recast him.

🆕 New players: the tax climbs each time. A third cast from the command zone would be 4 + 4 = 8, a fourth would be 4 + 6 = 10, and so on. Letting your commander die repeatedly gets expensive fast.

A simple combat

By turn 6, Krenko has been in play since last turn — no summoning sickness — and you’ve got a couple of small Goblins out too.

In your main phase, tap Krenko for his ability and create a batch of Goblin tokens. Suddenly you have a small army.
Move to the combat phase (see Combat). At declare attackers, you choose a target for each attacker individually — and in multiplayer, that’s a decision about the whole table.

Reading the table (this is Multiplayer & Politics in action): one opponent is hellbent on combos, one is low on life, one has been friendly. Do you:

swing everything at the low-life player to knock them out, or
pressure the combo player before they assemble their engine, or
spread damage and keep your head down?

Say you send most of your Goblins at the combo player to slow them, and hold a couple back as blockers. They declare a blocker on your biggest attacker; the rest are unblocked.

At the combat damage step, blocked and unblocked damage happens simultaneously. The unblocked Goblins chip the combo player down; your blocked attacker trades with their blocker.

🆕 New players: you don’t have to attack with everything (or at all). Holding a few creatures back as blockers is a smart, normal play — especially when you’re the one who just made a big board and might become a target.

🎯 Commander-specific: notice you didn’t try to win on the spot. You used combat to manage the table’s biggest threat while staying out of the crosshairs — exactly the multiplayer instinct from Multiplayer & Politics.

Where the game goes from here

From here it’s the long game: rebuild if someone wipes the board, keep assessing who’s ahead, and look for the turn you can actually close — by reducing an opponent to 0 life or via 21 commander damage (see Winning and Losing). In a four-player game, winning is usually being the last one standing, so patience and politics matter as much as raw power.

🆕 New players: if you get knocked out, stick around and watch. You’ll learn more from seeing how the back half of a game unfolds than from almost anything else.

Quick recap

Pre-game: reveal commanders, have the Rule 0 chat, set life to 40, put commanders in the command zone, determine turn order, draw seven, mulligan bad hands.
Early turns: hit your land drops, ramp, and deploy your commander on curve (no tax on the first cast).
When it dies: use command-zone replacement; recasting costs +{2} per prior cast (the commander tax).
Combat: in multiplayer you choose a target per attacker — that’s a political decision; you can hold blockers back.
Winning: outlast the table; close via 0 life or 21 commander damage.

What to read next

The mechanics behind the moves → The Commander · Combat
Getting better at the table → Multiplayer & Politics
A fast in-game reference → Quick Reference
Any unfamiliar term → Glossary

Sources: the setup figures and mechanics shown — 40 starting life, the command zone, commander tax (+{2} per prior cast), command-zone replacement, multiplayer per-attacker targeting, and the win conditions — paraphrase the Magic Comprehensive Rules §903 and the official Commander format rules (SOURCES.md S1, S2; facts #2, #3, #4). The example commander is named; all other cards are generic invented stand-ins, and no copyrighted card text or art is reproduced.