Magic: The Gathering (final version) received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which was archived on 7 April 2026. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Magic: The Gathering article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.
Magic: The Gathering was one of the Sports and recreation good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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This article is within the scope of WikiProject Magic: The Gathering, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Magic: The Gathering on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Magic: The GatheringWikipedia:WikiProject Magic: The GatheringTemplate:WikiProject Magic: The GatheringMagic: The Gathering
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Jace BelerenJace Beleren was merged into this article. The discussion was closed on 03 February 2014 with a consensus to merge. The original page is now a redirect to this article. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.
PlaneswalkerPlaneswalker was merged into this article. The discussion was closed on 18 October 2013 with a consensus to merge. The original page is now a redirect to this article. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.
@Whimpers1: I'm going to help go over this article for you, since you are aiming for GA I will review it with those guidelines in mind. Give me some time and I'll make a list of things that should be changed and I'll do any of the small changes myself. From the last time I looked at the article, I know it needs drastically cut down but it's an old game and so we need to be careful about what and how we cut. If you have any questions at any time let me know. I went ahead and added the GA criteria here since those are the criteria that we are going to want to be aiming for.
– Issues that would not pass GA. B – Issues I see outside of the criteria that are optional but would be great to address. Y – No longer an issue.
Citation needed tag, preferably we would like to have a non-primary source so the rules would not be the best option but if a secondary source is not found (which I doubt that there isn't one tbh) then the rules could be used for this. (601.1 would probably be the best option but there is also 112 that talks about it. A secondary source would be best though considering it doesn't outright state that there are only 2 classes of cards in the rules)
2
Gameplay 3rd paragraph
1a
Meanwhile, spells consume mana, typically requiring at least one mana of a specific color. More powerful spells cost more, and more specifically colored, mana, so as the game progresses, more land will be in play, more mana will be available, and the quantity and relative power of the spells played tends to increase.
This is overly convoluted and wouldn't be easy to understand for the average reader/layperson. Simplifying it to something like Spells consume mana, usually requiring at least one mana of a specific color. More powerful spells require larger amounts and more specific combinations of mana. As the game progresses and more lands enter play, the available mana increases, allowing stronger spells to be cast.
3
Gameplay 3rd paragraph
1a
Spells come in several varieties: non-permanents like "sorceries" and "instants" have a single, one-time effect before they go to the "graveyard" (discard pile); "enchantments" and "artifacts" that remain in play after being cast to provide a lasting magical effect; "creature" spells summon creatures that can attack and damage an opponent as well as used to defend from the opponent's creature attacks; and "planeswalker" spells that summon powerful allies that act similarly to other players.
Few issues here:
Battles are not included in this list but are immediately mentioned without any explanation in the following sentence. They should be defined and could probably be grouped in with enchantments and artifacts so ..."enchantments", "artifacts", and "battles" that remain in play after being cast to provide a lasting magical effect... or they can be included with planeswalkers since they can be attacked similarly (although it would make more sense with enchantments and artifacts in my opinion).
Sorceries and instants are listed as non-permanents but then it immediately launches into the rest of the permanent card types before stating that they are a different type. This all could probably be reworded to be more clear such as Cards can be either non-permanents, like sorceries and instants, or permanents, which includes lands, enchantments, artifacts, creatures, planeswalkers, and battles. If you go with this option then doing an embedded glossary at the bottom of the article may be the way to go. This would also help clean up a lot of the article considering there are A LOT of definitions that are written out in this article. Also if you go with this option then both the sentence starting "Spells come in several varieties..." and the following sentence ending "or combat effects" would essentially be combined.
I would consider removing the excerpt and including a link in the hatnote instead.
5
Deck construction 2nd paragraph
1a
The Standard format, by including mostly recently released cards, helps to prevent "power creep" that can be difficult to predict with the size of the Magic card library and help give newer players a fair advantage with long-term players.
Rewording to something like By limiting the card pool to recently released and core sets, the Standard format helps mitigate power creep, while making the format more accessible to newer players.
6
Deck construction
B 3b
This section could be trimmed down a lot, most of the information is present in the other articles and doesn't really need to be re-covered here. It could be simplified down to the hatnote linking to the 3 other articles (Magic: The Gathering deck types, Magic: The Gathering formats, and Magic: The Gathering rules#Deck construction) and a brief blurb about the most common formats. Include info about deck sizes and cards that can be included for standard, such as it being the flagship format, 60 cards, and no more than 4 of a single card (excluding lands), Commander, a player-made format that uses 100 cards, 1 of which is the commander, and is singleton, and limited, draft, 40 cards, etc etc. I would also specifically link to those sections/articles for each formats blurb. You could also include a short list of some of the other formats (without going into detail) such as pauper, legacy, modern, vintage as derivatives of standard and a few of the lesser played formats like archenemy and two-headed giant.
This whole section could be removed. It's not necessarily pertinent to the main article and the rules article is linked to in the hatnote for the deck construction section.
I don't think this section should be kept. No other trading card game page has this, not to mention this would fit much better on the general TCG article. I could also see this as a split, as Pokémon would trivially also have a pretty big secondary market section. Happy to discuss further! Whimpers1 (talk) 17:04, 6 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to add a broader subsection on secondary market trends to Collectible card game, that's probably worth doing. But it doesn't really matter whether or not other TCG articles have similar sections (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). The overview of Magic's secondary market isn't WP:UNDUE & this section is pretty well sourced (both industry outlet articles & academic sources). Sariel Xilo (talk) 17:27, 6 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
In the list of colors, we have 5 colors (red, blue, white, black, green). However, some specific spells do have colorless mana as prerequisite to be cast, for example certain Endrazi creatures. Therefore the sixth mana type (even if the game treats it as not a color) must be mentioned. Colorless mana usually interacts with the game as 'universial mana of any color' but there are some cases where specifically 'colorless' mana is required. What do you think? Shey1993 (talk) 13:55, 8 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've added colorless mana into the gameplay. Its technically not a separate mana type, it just represents any mana source regardless of color. Masem (t) 14:09, 8 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This is actually a widespread confusion. Colorless mana *is* it's own type of mana. What you describe is called generic mana.
Generic mana is used in costs and means, you can pay this cost with any type of mana.
Colorless mana is a type of mana and can be used to pay for generic mana costs and costs of colorless mana as used on several Eldrazi cards.
Finally I'd like to argue that colorless mana does not need to be mentioned in the article. Yes, it exists, but the article doesn't need to and in fact shouldn't try to be all-encompassing. For an overview article like this one it only leads to cluttering and confusion while not providing useful information to anyone not familiar with the subject of the article. OdinFK (talk) 07:49, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like Masem did (correctly) add colorless mana to the article, however I do agree. Though, I think the same can be said about a lot of this article, so what's a little more? Whimpers1 (talk) 01:53, 12 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion we should strive to make the article better instead of knowlingly let it bloat more, but I totally agree, there's a lot of cleanup necessary and this one is not going to change much about the state of the article. OdinFK (talk) 07:41, 12 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
– Issues that would not pass GA.
– Issues I see outside of the criteria that are optional but would be great to address.
– No longer an issue.
