Magic terms and slang I use:

(Always expanding.)

• X/Y for Z: Refers to a card's power, toughness, and mana value, in that order. A 2/2 for 3 is a 2 power 2 toughness creature that costs 3 mana total. See Mana Value.
• 2-for-1: Being able to answer two cards with one, or taking two cards out of play by playing one card. This is the reason why auras are bad.
• Alpha Strike: Attacking with all your creatures. There's a button in Forge that does the same thing. Not always a good idea, not just because some creatures do not do anything when they attack, but because some boards can block your creatures in such a way that you will be worse off when they attack.
• Answer: A way to deal with a threat, by taking it off the battlefield in some way.
• Aura: An enchantment that attaches to usually a creature and provides effects to it, good or bad, but you can also put it on their stuff. Is put into the graveyard when the thing it's attached to leaves play.
• Bait: A card played to pressure the opponent into playing their removal on it instead of something more dangerous you'll play later.
• Bait Out: To bait removal out of an opponent's hand. See Bait.
• Banish: A card that will exile something until the banishing card leaves the field. Named after Banishing Light. I prefer to use the term Capture though.
• Board: See Board State. Can also refer to the sideboard.
• Board Pump: A card that grants a temporary boost to power and toughness to all of your creatures.
• Board State: Refers to the current amount of creatures on one or all players's side of the board.
• Board Wipe: See Wrath.
• Bomb: A card that, when played, will contribute to winning the game in most scenarios. Be advised that for a bomb to be called such a thing it needs to do an effective job at presenting a winning board state, even if you're losing.
• Bounce: Any effect that returns something to someone's hand.
• Burn Spell: Spells that simply deal damage to any target. Lightning Bolt is an example.
• Buildaround: A card in draft that is exceptional provided you draft additional cards to synergize with it. For example, most expensive green creatures work best in a deck with a lot of mana ramp.
• Cantrip: A spell that, upon resolving, draws you a card. Doesn't have to be an instant or a sorcery. This can be a permanent.
• Card Advantage: Having more cards either in hand or in play than your opponent. Usually means you're winning since you have more options.
• Chump Block: Blocking an attacker with a creature that will die to it for the sole purpose of preventing the damage to you. Has to be a block that just kills your creature for no other reason. If both creatures die, for example, that's a trade.
• Crack: See Sac / Sacrifice. Usually refers to lands and artifacts doing this.
• Crackback: Your opponent swinging with their creatures after you swung yours the previous combat. The consequence of having your creatures go on the attack instead of blocking.
• Dead on Board: See Lethal on Board.
• Decking: Milling your opponent to death, since you lose if you can't draw when told to. See Mill.
• Deck Thinning: Cards that will generally remove cards out of your library in some way, lowering the pool of cards you have to work with to draw what you want. Evolving Wilds is a good example of a card that, when drawn, will remove both it and a basic land from your deck.
• Dies to Removal: A casual reminder that a creature is only as good as the number of removal spells in your opponent's hand it can take. What keeps bombs in check.
• Dork: A weak creature who is able to tap for mana. Llanowar Elves is the best example. Doesn't have to be a 1/1 for 1, but usually you want your dorks to be played as early as possible and serve no purpose other than to tap for mana.
• Draw-Go: The ideal control form. When a control deck does nothing but pass its turns and wait for you to do something so it can respond to it. Also refers to stalemates where you're both having to topdeck for a new threat.
• X-Drop: A permanent with a total mana value of X. Usually said to refer to cards that'll be played on that turn, so a 2-drop is ideal for turn 2, 5-drop for turn 5, and so on.
• Equipment: Artifacts that can be attached to a creature for an Equip cost. The better Auras.
• Evasion: An ability that allows a creature to avoid being blocked by creatures, normal or otherwise. Traditionally, this is flying. Anything that's just unblockable also counts.
• Fatty: A creature with a high statline, for breaking boards and winning.
• Fetch: To search your library for something.
• Fetch Land: A land card that is sacrificed to, well, fetch a land from your library.
• Firebreathing: The ability on many creatures that simply reads, "Red: This creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn." Notably powerful in several instances due to its spammability, even when there's drawbacks to the ability.
• Fizzle: When a spell fails to resolve. This is typically done by making its target(s) illegal, since spells need to have valid targets to take effect, targets are determined when you cast the spell, and a card leaving and re-entering the field is considered a new instance of the card.
• Flicker: An effect that exiles something then returns it to the battlefield at some point. Usually this is either immediately or at the next end step. Doing this will re-trigger enter the battlefield abilities.
• X Hate: A card or a deck that explicitly counters something. Color hate is an example, where cards will be extremely powerful against a specific color.
• Hoser: A card that explicitly counters something. See X Hate.
• X in the Air: The total incoming damage of attacking creatures with flying.
• Lethal: Incoming damage that will bring your Life to 0 or less. It can also refer to someone having enough power on the board that they will win if they swing out next combat.
• Lethal in X: See X-Turn Clock.
• Lethal on Board: You can tell you're going to lose on your opponent's next combat.
• Limited: A way to play Magic: the Gathering with a finite number of cards, sometimes without knowing the exact cards available. Games like booster drafts will have rules to distribute all cards of the limited pool to players.
• Mana Curve: The distributions of all cards of your deck from least expensive to play to most. Also refers to the curve formed by making a graph of those cards and drawing a line. Good decks will have a good mana curve, sitting at around 3, dipping lower if it's about playing cheap aggressive creatures, or higher if it supports it with mana ramping.
• Mana Fixing: Cards that grant easier access to colors of mana by either granting multiple colors of mana or turning mana into different colors, among other ways to gain easier access. Pretty much a necessity when you have more than 2 colors in a deck or have a small amount of 1 color.
• Mana Ramp / Ramp: Anything that allows you to generate more mana than one land's worth per turn.
• Mana Value: A card's total amount of mana required to cast it. Just add the generic symbol with the colored symbols you see. A lot of cards care about the mana value of a card. Was originally called the much more cumbersome phrase "Convertred Mana Cost".
• Mill: To put a card or cards from the top of your library into your graveyard. Was said and understood everywhere but it wasn't until recent that it became an actual keyword in Magic.
• X on the Ground: The total incoming damage of attacking creatures without any evasive ability.
• Ping: A spell or ability that deals a small amount of damage--usually 1, but can be any number--to any target, but usually a creature.
• Pinger: A creature that can do pinging. See Tim.
• Protection from X: What I consider is the worst keyword in early Magic that's still around today. This is because Protection means the creature can't be damaged, enchanted, blocked, or targeted by anything of the specified quality, usually a color. Not intuitive to memorize, and not easy reminder text to put on a card. Yet, despite how it's a very clunky keyword like regenerate is, it's still used regularly.
• Pump: To temporary increase a creature's power and toughness for the turn. Sometimes increases one while decreasing the other. Can be found on cards and also on abilities.
• Rarity: How frequent the card shows up in booster packs. Most booster packs for a draft will have 15 cards: 11 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare. There is a 1 in 8 chance for the rare to be a mythic rare instead. This should give you an idea of how often you'll see cards in a set. You can usually tell what rarity a card is by looking at the set symbol on the card and taking note of its color: black-and-white for common, silver for uncommon, gold for rare, and orange for mythic.
• (Hard / Soft) Removal: A way to destroy or exile something on the board. Hard removal refers to destroy and exile effects, whereas soft removal refers to damage, conditional counterspells, or disabling auras.
• Response: To play something in response to an opponent doing something. Counterspell is the best example.
• Red Deck Wins: The meme of Magic: the Gathering where playing a deck consisting of nothing but aggressive red cards--creatures and/or spells--tends to perform well above the norm. Sometimes it's just creature aggro, other times it's with burn spells. No matter the era, we cannot escape the red deck winning.
• Sac / Sacrifice: To put one of your creatures on the field into the graveyard. Is NOT considering destroying it, so indestrucible does not prevent this. IS considered a creature dying, so will trigger those abilities. I use the phrase snackrifice because I watched too much Futurama.
• Stalemate: For Magic, this is when neither player can attack eachother's board without being worse off. Thus the game goes by without anyone doing anything until they topdeck a way to break the stalemate.
• Sticking: For a card to remain on the board for a turn, thus no longer have summoning sickness and can now do its thing. For example, a creature with a tap ability will need to stick to the board for you to use that ability.
• Swing: To attack with a creature.
• Swing the Board / Swing Out: See Alpha Strike
• Superman: Refers to Morphling who, at the time, was the best 5-drop you could ever play since it had 5 great activated abilities, none of them requiring a tap, and a good statline on top of that. Is a term because cards like Morphling would be printed for a while.
• Tempo: Efficiently playing your cards and using your mana every turn. Unlike aggro, which just plays fast and cheap, tempo tries makes the most out of every turn by optimally utilizing their mana to play the best cards for the turn, thus generating and maintaining a winning board state. Tempo decks are designed to consistently do this, but aren't common since drawing perfectly from the start is difficult to do, not playing efficiently hurts a tempo deck more than normal it turns out. There's a lot I can mention about tempo in Magic but I'd be here all day.
• Threat: Some thing or way to deal damage to you. Usually a creature.
• Tim: Prodigal Sorcerer. Also, any creature that can tap to deal 1 damage to any target.
• To the face: Damage dealt to you.
• Topdecking: No longer having playable cards in your hand and having to rely on drawing from the top of your deck to find new cards to play. Ideally you want to be the last person in this state.
• X-Turn Clock: Assuming no more cards or abilities are played, how many turns your opponent has before they lose the game. So being on a 5 turn clock effectively means you have 5 turns to stop your opponent's win condition.
• Weenie: A low power/toughness creature. Named because old white was (in)famous for how many of their creature cards had such low stat lines they couldn't do much of anything without help.
• Wrath: A card that destroys, at minimum, all creatures. Comes in many flavors of resetting the board state. Sometimes is one-sided in that it will reset their board but not yours.
• Wide: A board state focused on getting as many creatures as possible. Ideal for chump blocking and board pumps.
• Win More: Cards that are only good if you are already winning. Usually not effective, but sometimes they speed up the game enough to matter.



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