Planeswalker post
You’ll need
- Box or container
- Magic: The Gathering Welcome Deck
Before you begin
- You can order a free Magic: The Gathering Welcome Deck and use the real cards for this game. If you don’t have the deck, prepare some basic creature cards in advance that just include the mana cost – there’s more information about how to read a Magic card below.
Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game. You take on the role of a planeswalker, who collects magic energy (called mana) from the land around you. You use that mana to summon creatures and cast spells during the game. There are five different colours of Magic cards; each colour handles things differently, so you can choose what kind of planeswalker you want to be. Your deck of cards represents all the spells you know and the creatures you can summon.
Find out more on the official Magic website.
Magic cards are made so the information you need to know is always in the same place. Check out the image below for an overview of a basic creature card, the Serra Angel.
For this game, the important bit is the mana cost. Mana is what’s used to cast spells in Magic. All spell cards have a mana cost in the top right corner. Serra Angel’s mana cost is 3 * *, which means that you must pay three mana of any kind plus two white mana to cast it. Other cards will have different colours. If you’re making your own cards for the game, you’ll just need to include the creature name and mana cost.
You can find full details on the official Magic webpages.
To watch in full screen, double click the video
Get ready to play
In this game, players cast spells by collecting a Magic creature card, finding the coloured land cards they need, and posting all the cards in a box to cast them. The team that casts the most spells wins.
Leader will hold all of the different cards – they’ll move around the space or hide. Check out Change the level of the challenge for some different ways to change up the game. You’ll need at least:
- One leader with Magic creature cards. The game works best if you split into two teams and give each team different coloured cards to make it easier to count the points at the end! If you don’t have coloured cards, you could have a different box for each team to cast their spells in.
- A number of leaders with Magic land cards. You could also use coloured sticky notes instead. If you have enough helpers, they could have one colour each – otherwise, it’s OK for them to hold more than one colour.
- One leader with a box to post the completed cards.
Play the game
- The person leading the game should set clear boundaries for the playing area.
- Everyone should split into two teams.
- Everyone should move around the space, find the leader with the Magic creature cards, and collect a card.
- Everyone should read their Magic character card to find out how many mana they need to cast the spell, and which colours their mana should be.
- Everyone should move around the space and find the leaders who have the coloured cards they need.
- Once someone has their creature card and all of mana they need to cast their spell, they should find the leader with the box and put their cards into it.
- Everyone should repeat steps three to six as many times as they can before the time runs out!
- After a set amount of time, everyone should gather together to see which team has cast the most creatures. Don’t forget to congratulate the winners.
Reflection
This game was all about working together in teams to complete the challenge. Take the time to think about what you did and why – you’ll be amazed at what you learn. Try out a quick, active reflection from our reflective toolkit to lock in the great things you tried and learned in this activity.
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
- Active games
The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.
- During the game, leaders could swap cards so that the planeswalkers don’t know who has the different coloured land cards.
- Ask leaders to move around the space and hide during the game too for an extra challenge. You could give some young people the cards and swap these helpers after each round.
- For a basic version of the game, ask everyone to collect only one of the different coloured land or mana cards for each spell. For more of a challenge, you could ask them to collect the full amount that the card says and give extra points for teams who cast spells that cost more mana.
- If you don’t have many leaders, think about hiding the land cards around the space you’re playing in instead.
- Make sure everyone can read the Magic cards. It can be tricky at first, so you could make some custom cards for the game that just show the creature name and the mana cost.
- Think about how everyone will move around the space. You could remove the time limit and just set a challenge for each team to cast a certain number of spells by working together.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
Check out Magic: the crafting to create your own mana tokens for the game, or Learn to play Magic for some info on how to get started playing Magic: The Gathering.