Magic the Gathering used to be an excellent game of skill, wits, daring, and intelligence. Because of corporate greed it has deteriorated into a game of money and status.

Magic is played with a deck of cards that each player puts together from his collection. The cards can give mana (spell casting power), creatures, spells, artefacts, and a bunch of other stuff. The player duels against another player, attempting to reduce the opponents hit points to zero or below.

At the beginning all the concepts were introduced at once and the cards were balanced. In other words, a good player with a not-huge amount of cards could put together a good deck and have a chance against anyone. But Wizards of the Coast were not satisfies with the huge profit they already amde and kept introducing new types of cards. The newer ones were always just a little more powerful and just a little bit easier to use in a game, so that if you decided you had enough cards you would eventually become unable to win. For example, a relatively recent invention makes a card invulnerable to any of the older ones because of a special power, so in order to defend yourself you neede to get some of these cards yourself.

If you haven't gotten involved yet, don't.