How to play
New to Magic? Start here.
You don't need to know the card game to play. The game shows you what you can do at every step.
Two ways to play
Follow a whole story as a campaign, or take on single encounters built around one moment of it.
Real Magic, told as a story
Shuffled 40-card decks on both sides, against an opponent that plays its own deck and thinks for itself. Each book follows its story as a path of chapters on a map: win one to open the next; branches beside the path are optional fights for more cards.
Every win brings cards from the people met along the way, so your deck grows. Each chapter has three rewards: win in best of one, then in best of three, then with the Story Deck, the deck the story gives that moment.
See the campaigns →One scene, set up by hand
Each challenge starts in the middle of the story, with the board laid out the way the episode has it. The other side follows a script and plays the same way every time, so it can be learned, and every challenge can be won.
Lose, learn, try again: when you lose, read the tip, or take back a turn with the ↶ Turn button and try another way.
See the challenges →What makes it different
It plays like the card game you know, and reads like the story you love.
Real cards, real rules
Every card is a printed Magic card, played by the rules. When a card asks for a choice, you make it.
Opponents with a plan
In the campaign, opponents think for themselves. In the challenges, they follow a script you can learn: lose, read the tip, and try again.
The story on the table
Scenes play between the turns: who enters, who falls, what changes. The fight is the story, not a break from it.
The rules you need
1. Lands make mana
Mana is what you spend to play cards. Most of it comes from lands: you may play one land from your hand each turn, and each land can be tapped (turned sideways) once a turn for one mana of its colour. Spent mana comes back at the start of your next turn.
2. Cards cost mana
The symbols in a card's top-right corner are its cost. Pay it, and the card is cast. Creatures stay on the table and fight for you. Spells do something once and are gone. Other cards (artifacts, enchantments) stay and keep working.
3. Creatures fight
A creature's numbers, like 3/2, are its power (the damage it deals) and its toughness (the damage it can take in one turn). On your turn you choose which creatures attack. Your opponent chooses which of theirs block. Unblocked attackers hit your opponent; blocked ones fight the blocker. A creature cannot attack on the turn it arrives.
4. Win the way the story says
In ordinary Magic you win by bringing your opponent's life from 20 to 0. Many fights here have their own goal instead: escape before the pursuit catches you, hold out for five turns, find a memory in someone's mind. The goal is shown, big, before each fight starts.
5. Words on cards
Cards have keywords such as flying (only creatures with flying or reach can block it) or first strike (it deals its damage first). Hover over a card, or hold it on a phone, to read it whole.
Tips for this game
- Cards you can play right now are lit. If nothing is lit, there is nothing to do: move on.
- When a card asks you to choose (a target, which cards to keep), the choice is always yours.
- Settings, on the title menu, holds the sound, how the game plays and your save. In a match, the ⚙ button opens the same settings and the log of the game.
- Lost a fight? The end screen gives you a tip, and every challenge can be won.
Keep your save
There are no accounts: your progress is saved in this browser as you play. To keep a copy, or to carry it to another browser or computer:
- Download it. On the title menu, open Settings, and under Your save press Download save. A file named
magic-untold-save-and the date lands in your downloads. - Load it back. In the other browser, open Settings and press Load save, then pick that file. It replaces the progress there.
Clearing this site's data in your browser erases the progress kept in it, so download a save first.