17 Incorporating Features and Functions of a Written Genre in Your Discourse Community – Anthony Spaeth
Anthony Spaeth is a first-year student majoring in Biochemistry. He grew up in Rushville, Indiana. This paper is one of three he wrote for the discourse community unit in Dr. Kauza’s W131 class. The discourse community he wrote about is Magic the Gathering. Dr Kauza notes, “Anthony started our class concerned he wasn’t the strongest writer, but he was determined to succeed in our class regardless. And he certainly did! Anthony produced great work on all of our assignments, from narratives to analyses to research papers. One particular piece of writing that stands out to me still is his analysis of a kind of playing card used in a collectible card game. The features and context of that genre were so richly and thoroughly explained!”
Write-up: Incorporating Features and Functions of a Written Genre in Your Discourse Community
5 Main features of a Magic: the Gathering Card
1. Card Name
2. Card type
3. Mana Cost
4. Abilities
5. Power/Toughness
Card Name
A card’s name can be a very powerful thing and can carry a variety of emotions for each player even though a card’s name isn’t used for anything other than to refer back to the card and its abilities. That’s not all a name carries in Magic: the Gathering. The name of a card can carry many things including memories of past games with friends, emotions of joy because you used that particular card to win a game, or emotions of annoyance because it provides an unfair advantage to your opponent. Magic: the Gathering is a complex game and community, but it is up to each individual player how complex their community and games become.
Card type
The type of card is associated with the card’s role during a player’s turn. It is also important because it can trigger abilities on other cards. You can tell a lot about a card’s abilities and the deck that the card will be played in by the card type. This will be something that comes naturally after experience in the community. When beginning MTG, I found it hard to keep all the different card types separate. There are many different card types–for example, creatures, artifacts, sorcery, instant, enchantment, land, planeswalker–and those are just some of the general card types. There are many other card types, but learning and understanding these terms will come with experience.
Mana Cost
Mana cost is the price to summon a creature or cast a spell. The cost varies with the effect of the card or the type of card. When reading a mana cost, the colored symbols in the top right-hand corner of the card can only be paid for with the corresponding colored mana.
The gray bubble found usually to the left of the colored symbols can be paid for by any color. This would make the converted mana cost the total between the number of colored circles and the number located inside the gray circle. For example “The Raven’s Warning” converted mana cost would be 3 This is because there is 1 sun and 1 water droplet and the number 1 in the gray circle. Counting converted mana cost becomes natural as the player gains experience. There is a link below with definitions of what mana is and how to get it.
Abilities
The abilities of a card can be found in the lower half, and are the most important thing to read on a card. In this lower half of the card, the abilities are presented in normal text, but there is also an italicized portion of text. This italicized portion of text is called the “flavor text” and doesn’t do anything but give the card a personality. The best example I could think of is Griselbrand. He is a demon with abilities of flying and lifelink, but he also has an activated ability where the player can choose to pay 7 life to draw 7 cards. The abilities can be seen in normal text but below that, there is italicized text that gives the card an evil demeanor where it implies that Griselbrand is not the nicest demon. You can read more about activated and triggered abilities in the link below.
Power/Toughness
The goal of Magic: the Gathering is to reduce your opponent’s life total to zero, or to reduce the cards left in their deck to zero. This can be done in many ways but the more traditional method is attacking with creatures. The rules for attacking can be found in the link below. When you are about to declare attackers a good thing to do is look at your creature’s toughness and power. The number on the right is the creature’s toughness and the number on the left is the creature’s power. When a creature’s toughness is zero the creature is placed in your graveyard. While debating what creatures to attack, compare the power and toughness of your creatures with those of your opponents. There is more information about how to attack and block found in the link below.
Handbook
This is the official handbook to Magic: the Gathering, written by Wizards of the Coast. Any question or term that a player is confused about can be found in this handbook. https://media.wizards.com/images/magic/resources/rules/EN_MTGM14_PrintedRulebook_LR.p df