Explaining MTG Jargon, Terms, and Common Phrases

Magic the Gathering’s player base, like all gaming communities, has invented and adopted terms for certain effects, game actions, or color combinations. In this video, we’ll go over a bunch of them and explain what they mean, and where the name comes from

Script and Editing by Pumkinswift

#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering

[calemr]

"Bolt the bird."
"What?"
"I cast Shock on your Noble Hierarch."

[randommaster]

The color blue being abbreviated with "U" is something that trips newer players up.

[astramancer]

"math is for blockers" to indicate that you're pretty sure you'll win by attacking with everything but you don't want to figure it out yourself.
"Looting" to indicate draw a card, discard a card. And it's best friend "card selection" which is kind of like card advantage but you don't actually get more cards (scry, surveil, looting, etc)

[SlipthePsych]

Coming from Legends of Runeterra, its pretty cool to see the origins of terms we use. We say things like "tutor" and "ramp" and I never knew where those words came from

[chrayez]

One minor but confusing distinction is the difference between mono-red Burn decks and “Red Deck Wins” (RDW). They’re both mono-red aggro decks, but RDW is more creature-based, and Burn is more based on damaging non-creature spells.

(Which also reminds me, something that confuses a lot of new players is that every card that isn’t a land is a “Spell, ” even artifacts & creatures.)

[EmperorPylades]

Big ones that should probably be noted

"Mana Dork" A creature that can (and usually only is) tapped for mana

"Bolt the Bird" A piece of advice that has turned into a play sequence, using a burn spell or removal to kill a 1 drop dork like Birds of Paradise

"Fizzle" When an effect fails, usually because it's target has become invalid

"Fail to Find" this one is...special. its a very creative use of rules about searching your library that has made some memorable moments.

"Fetchland, Shockland" two special land card cycles that define entire formats

"Cycle" A series of related cards printed across the colours

"Cracking" Sacrificing a non creature permanent for it's effect, usually used with Fetchlands

[fernandobanda]

More slang off the top of my head:

-Wheel: An effect that makes all players discard their hand and draw some number of cards, named after Wheel of Fortune.
-Pump: An effect that raises a creature's stats until end of turn.
-Combat trick: An instant that alters how combat was going to happen, like by saving a creature. Mostly relevant in Limited.
-Fix/Colorfix: A card that helps you get to more colors of mana easily, but not more (so not ramp).
-Manabase: The lands and mana-producing cards in your deck with which you plan to develop your game. Mainly used when discussing consistency and probability.
-Dual: A land that taps for two different colors of mana, with whatever restriction or cost necessary to do so.
-2 for 1: A card advantage exchange where someone ends up +1 card ahead. Often because 1 card was used to remove 2 but also used in other cases.
-Hatebear: A small creature with an effect that restricts your opponent. Started out as bears (2/2s for 2) but I've seen it used with other stats as well.
-Toolbox: A ministrategy where you play a bunch of one-ofs and a card that can tutor any of them, so that you adapt to what you need.
-Trade: To block a creature with another creature such that both are destroyed in combat.
-Red zone: Combat, often in regards to attacking specifically.
-Instant speed: An action you can do anytime you have priority, just like how you play instants.
-Sorcery speed: An action you can do during your main phase when the stack is empty, just like how you play sorceries.
-Scoop: To concede, surrender
-Fizzle: A spell or ability fizzles when it can't resolve properly because its target was removed or changed in some way.
-Gray Ogre: A 2/2 for 3
-Hill Giant: A 3/3 for 4. Neither are as popular a term as "Bear"
-Manadork: A creature that taps for mana, usually a 1-drop.

[zennistrad]

One thing that I think is really interesting is that I've actually heard a few terms that originated in Magic make their way over to Yu-Gi-Oh. One example of this is "mill, " which originated as a shorthand reference to the card Millstone and its then-unique decking out mechanic. It became such an ubiquitous shorthand for "put the top cards of your deck into your graveyard" that not only did it make its way to Yu-Gi-Oh slang, it eventually ended up becoming an official Magic keyword.

[WhitenedInk]

Seeing the character growth in real time as he learns to pronounce more and more of the color combinations

[DamonXWind]

In both of my most recent tournaments, I had an opponent refer to activating an ability that creates a creature token as "making an idiot"

[MihaelGeng]

"Blink effects" can also be called "flicker effects", named after the card Flicker, which came 7 years earlier than Momentary Blink, so technically the name "flicker" has a longer history. Besides it still hasn't been obsolete today.

[Folfire]

I hope one day the Duel Logs embrace insanity and starts making videos like "Top10 differences between MtG and YGO mechanics" lile the stack work or banish/exile zone, or how in MtG a 0/0 card can't stay on the field unlike YGO. Would also be fun to point some of these differences in videos like these, so also other games players can be introduced to foreign mechanics. But I will acknowledge that would be a ton of work.

[DragoSmash]

Mana Dork - creatures that tap for mana
Mana Rock - artifacts that tap for mana
Sac - sacrifice
Sac outlet - a card that allows you to sacrifice cards
Combat trick - cards, usually instants, that modify stats or give abilities that interact with combat
Milling - putting the top card from your deck into your graveyard, comes from Millstone and is now an official keyword

[anthonycannet]

There are official names for the four color decks which were announced in 2016 when the commander preconstructed decks for that year were each of the 4 color combinations, although most people don’t remember them.
Non-white is “Chaos”, Non-blue is “Aggression”, Non-black is “Altruism”, Non-red is “Growth”, and Non-green is “Artifice”. Prior to those commander decks, the closest thing to a 4 color legendary card that many people allowed as a commander were the cycle of Nephilim cards from the Ravnica set. The “Chaos” nephilim is Glint-Eye Nephilim so people would refer to the combo as “Glint”, Aggression has Dune-Brood Nephilim so “Dune”, Altruism has Ink-Treader Nephilim so “Ink”, Growth has Witch-Maw Nephilim so “Witch”, and Artifice has Yore-Tiller Nephilim so “Yore”

[HakureiIllusion]

Also worth mentioning, if I'm not mistaken, the turn "swinging" with a creature to describe attacking with it comes from MTG as well despite seeing use in many card games. Both stemming from the idea of using your creature as a weapon (like how you'd swing a weapon at someone) and how the motion of tapping your creature while you attack with it actually "swings" one end of the card outward.

[Bongus_Bubogus]

Looting (“draw a card, then discard a card” effects) and rummaging (“discard a card, then draw a card” effects) are a pretty good jargon inclusion missed here.

[OlympusPublicAffairs]

I've played Magic for a long time, so these terms are pretty ingrained in my head, but seeing them all laid out and explained is still pretty crazy. I could see why new players would seem overwhelmed.

[fwg]

Most decks that get called control in magic are actually a subset of control decks called reactive control decks. Another name for prison decks is proactive control decks. It's not super common terminology among the community, but fundamentally, both are trying to control the game, but classic control is trying to react with answers to opponent's threats as or after they come down, whereas prison decks are placing answers down proactively to prevent the opponent from enacting their gameplan.

Also, a pretty important shorthand for MtG is the color coding. All five colors together are referred to as WUBRG (woo-berg), for White, blUe, Black, Red, Green. Since black and blue both start with B, blue was changed to U. This makes it real easy to denote mana costs, such as 2uu for a spell that costs 2 generic and 2 blue mana. It also gets used to denote colors for decks, particularly for Temur and Sultai decks, which are RUG and BUG respectively. A further convention some have adopted is using lower case for splash colors. So for the Jeskai Black example mentioned, that'd be WURb.

[SymphonicPotato]

MTG shorthand lead to one of the greatest sentences I've ever said in an official event. "Heath, Fetch, Savannah, Plow your mom?" Legacy Maverick players anyone?

[draketheduelist]

Mill was actually recently canonized as a term for sending the top card(s) of your deck to the Graveyard, based on Millstone.

Another analogous term for tutor is "fetch", particularly for lands, wherein the most famous are the "fetchlands". (I've also heard "slow fetch" to refer to stuff like Evolving Wilds that bring in lands only to immediately tap them.)

Lands have all sorts of nicknames, usually named for the condition (if any) for which they come into play untapped. Aside from the aforementioned fetchlands, shocklands are dual lands (any land that can tap for one of two colors) that can come in untapped by taking 2 damage, painlands let you tap for one of their two colors by taking 1 damage each time (or a colorless for free), and scrylands (a.k.a. Temples) always come in tapped and let you Scry 1 when played, among many others. In general, lands that always come in tapped get referred to as "taplands", a supertype under which there are many subtypes.

"Cycles" are any group of cards (usually one of each color / combination) that follow a common pattern, often some kind of common trigger. A recent Dominaria United cycle were the creatures that, when on the board, turn certain colors of mana on spells you cast into Phyrexian mana (which itself means mana you can pay by tapping 1 color _or_ by paying 2 life instead).

Another synonym for splashing is to call a deck by its major color(s) and to give it an adjective indicative of its splashed color (i.e. bright, dim, wet, warm...). For example, Jund with a splashed amount of Red might be called "warm Golgari" or something of that nature.

A pretty recent one I occasionally hear is that, if you cast a Creature with an Adventure using its Adventure half (exiling the creature to cast its Instant / Sorcery half and allowing you to cast it as a creature later), you might hear "[creature] is going on a trip". If you cast the creature immediately afterwards, you might call it a "short trip".

It'd be kinda' funny if people started calling "venture into a dungeon" effects "crawling" (named for "dungeon crawling", a term common to Dungeons and Dragons, as well as numerous video games that function similarly), but the effect is too new for it to be named just yet.