Beginner Series
Every MTG Card Type, Explained
The type line is the most important line on a Magic card. It decides when you can cast the card, whether it stays on the table, whether it can be attacked, and which removal spells answer it. There are nine types worth knowing and they are not equally common.
The Short Answer
There are nine card types in Magic: artifact, battle, creature, enchantment, instant, kindred, land, planeswalker and sorcery. Every card in your deck is at least one of them, printed on the type line under the art.
Six of those nine will make up nearly every deck you ever see. Battle is new and uncommon, kindred is rare and never appears alone, and planeswalker is a card type most decks run two or three of at most.
Reading the Type Line
The line under the art has up to three parts and they always come in the same order: supertypes, then card types, then a long dash, then subtypes.
Take Legendary Creature - Human Wizard. Legendary is a supertype, meaning you can only control one with that name at a time. Creature is the card type, and it is what decides the rules: this thing attacks, blocks, has power and toughness, and cannot attack the turn it arrives. Human Wizard are subtypes, which do nothing on their own and matter enormously as soon as another card cares about Wizards.
There are only a handful of supertypes: Basic (on basic lands), Legendary, Snow, and the near-extinct World and Ongoing. Subtypes run to the hundreds and are a different subject entirely. This page is about the middle part.
Comprehensive Rules · Rule 205.1a
"The type line is printed directly below the illustration. It contains the card's card type(s). It also contains the card's subtype(s) and supertype(s), if applicable."
The Six You Will See Constantly
These are the types that make up a deck. Learn what each one changes and most of the game's timing questions answer themselves.
Serra Angel ↗
Creature. Attacks, blocks, has power and toughness, and cannot attack the turn it arrives.
Command Tower ↗
Land. Played rather than cast, one per turn, and it pays for everything else.
Lightning Bolt ↗
Instant. Castable at almost any moment, including during an opponent's turn.
Wrath of God ↗
Sorcery. Your turn, your main phase, nothing else on the stack.
Sol Ring ↗
Artifact. Stays on the table, usually colorless, and any deck can play it.
Rhystic Study ↗
Enchantment. Stays on the table and keeps applying, with nothing to attack it with.
Creature is the one you interact with most. Creatures attack, block, and carry the two numbers in the bottom right. The rule that catches everybody is summoning sickness: a creature cannot attack or use an ability with the tap symbol until it has been under your control since the start of your turn. Summoning sickness, properly →
Land is the odd one out and the most important. A land is not a spell. You do not cast it, you play it, which means it never uses the stack and cannot be countered. You get one per turn and that single restriction is what gives Magic its pace. Building a manabase →
Instant and sorcery differ in exactly one way and it is timing. A sorcery is your turn, your main phase, empty stack. An instant is nearly whenever, which includes during combat and in response to something an opponent just cast. Neither stays on the table.
Artifact and enchantment are both permanents that sit there doing their job. The practical difference is who can remove them: artifact removal is common in every color, enchantment removal is much narrower, which is why an enchantment that is quietly ruining somebody's game often stays on the table for a long time.
The Three You Will Not
Chandra, Awakened Inferno ↗
Planeswalker. Loyalty counters, one ability per turn, and opponents can attack it.
Invasion of Gobakhan ↗
Battle. An opponent defends it, everyone else attacks it, and defeating it flips it.
Bitterblossom ↗
Kindred Enchantment. A noncreature card that still has a creature type, here Faerie.
Planeswalker cards enter with loyalty counters, activate one ability per turn by adding or removing loyalty, and go to the graveyard at zero. Opponents can attack them directly, which in a four-player game means three people can. Planeswalkers in full →
Battle arrived in 2023 and is the newest card type in the game. It is genuinely strange: you cast it, but you choose an opponent to protect it, and then you and everyone else can attack it. Defeat it and it is exiled and cast transformed, so the card is a two-stage payoff you have to fight for. Every battle printed so far is a Siege.
Kindred never appears alone. It attaches a creature type to a card that is not a creature, so Bitterblossom is genuinely a Faerie card while being an enchantment. It was called Tribal until Wizards renamed it, and it exists so that a deck built around a creature type can count noncreature cards too.
Kindred Dominance and Kindred Discovery are Kindred cards.
Neither one is. Kindred Dominance is a plain Sorcery and Kindred Discovery is a plain Enchantment. The word is in their names because they care about creature types, not because it is on their type lines. The actual Kindred cards are older and mostly from Lorwyn: Nameless Inversion is a Kindred Instant, Bitterblossom is a Kindred Enchantment. If you are checking whether a card is Kindred, read the type line and ignore the name.
Permanents vs. Spells
This is the division that most card text actually cares about, and it cuts across the nine types rather than following them.
A permanent is a card that stays on the battlefield once it resolves: artifacts, battles, creatures, enchantments, lands and planeswalkers. When a card says "destroy target permanent" or "each player sacrifices a permanent", those six are what it means.
A spell is a card on its way to resolving. Everything you cast is a spell while it is on the stack, including a creature. That is why a counterspell can answer a creature: it is countering the creature spell before it ever becomes a permanent. Instants and sorceries are the two types that are only ever spells, since they resolve, do what they say, and go to the graveyard. How the stack works →
Lands are neither, strictly. A land is played rather than cast, so it is never a spell, and it becomes a permanent without ever having been one. That is the reason nothing counters a land.
Cards With More Than One Type
A card can carry several types at once and it is fully all of them. That is usually a liability rather than a bonus, because every removal spell that answers any of its types answers it.
Blightsteel Colossus ↗
Artifact Creature. Both at once, so artifact removal and creature removal each answer it.
Urza's Saga ↗
Enchantment Land. It is a land you play for turn and an enchantment that sacrifices itself.
Ajani, Nacatl Pariah ↗
Creature on the front, Planeswalker on the back. One card, one type at a time.
Double-faced cards work differently and the distinction is worth having. Ajani, Nacatl Pariah is a creature on its front face and a planeswalker on its back. It is never both at once: it is whichever face is currently up. A card that is genuinely two types simultaneously prints them on one line, like Artifact Creature.
Tarmogoyf is the clearest demonstration that the game itself counts these. Its power is the number of card types among all cards in all graveyards, so it grows as instants, creatures, lands and enchantments pile up. It is a card whose entire text is a question about this page.
The Types That Never Go in Your Deck
Six more card types exist and none of them belong in a normal deck. They are called non-traditional card types and each one belongs to a specific way of playing: conspiracy (draft games), dungeon, plane and phenomenon (Planechase), scheme (Archenemy), and vanguard.
A dungeon like Dungeon of the Mad Mage is the one you are most likely to run into, because cards in normal sets reference them. It is not in anybody's deck. It sits outside the game and a card that says "venture into the dungeon" brings it in.
You can safely ignore all six until a card in front of you mentions one. They are listed here so that seeing an odd type line does not read as a rules gap.
Why It Matters When You Build
Card types are how you notice a deck is unbalanced before you play it. A deck of thirty-five creatures and no instants cannot interact on anybody else's turn. A deck with no artifacts or enchantments is a deck whose effects all die to creature removal.
They are also what makes your removal package work or fail. Most decks answer creatures easily, artifacts fairly easily and enchantments badly, which is why the card quietly winning the game across the table is so often an enchantment nobody at the table can touch. The slot counts a Commander deck wants →
If you want that read on a list you already have, paste it into the deck rater and it will count the types for you along with everything else. Rate a decklist, no account needed →
FAQ
How many card types are there in Magic: The Gathering?
Nine that you will meet in a normal game: artifact, battle, creature, enchantment, instant, kindred, land, planeswalker and sorcery. There are six more non-traditional types used by specific play formats and products, which are conspiracy, dungeon, phenomenon, plane, scheme and vanguard. Those never go in a normal deck.
What is the difference between an instant and a sorcery?
Timing, and nothing else. A sorcery can only be cast during your own main phase when the stack is empty, meaning nothing else is waiting to resolve. An instant can be cast almost any time you have priority, including during an opponent's turn, in the middle of combat, or in response to a spell somebody else has just cast. That flexibility is why an instant is usually costed slightly worse than a sorcery doing the same thing.
What is the difference between a card type, a supertype and a subtype?
Read the type line left to right. Supertypes come first and are a small fixed list, mostly Legendary, Basic and Snow. The card types come next and are the nine that decide the actual rules. Subtypes come after a long dash and are flavor with rules attached: Human, Wizard, Equipment, Aura, Siege. In "Legendary Creature - Human Wizard", Legendary is the supertype, Creature is the type, and Human Wizard are the subtypes.
What is the Kindred card type?
Kindred lets a noncreature card carry a creature type. Bitterblossom is a Kindred Enchantment - Faerie, so it is a Faerie card even though it is not a creature, which matters for cards that count Faeries or search for them. It was called Tribal until Wizards renamed it. Watch out for the trap: Kindred Dominance and Kindred Discovery have the word in their names and are not Kindred cards at all, just a sorcery and an enchantment.
What is a permanent in MTG?
Any card that stays on the battlefield after it resolves: artifacts, battles, creatures, enchantments, lands and planeswalkers. Instants and sorceries are the two types that are never permanents, because they do what they say and then go straight to the graveyard. When a card says "destroy target permanent" or "sacrifice a permanent", that is the group it means.
Can one card have two card types?
Yes, and plenty do. Blightsteel Colossus is an Artifact Creature, so both artifact removal and creature removal can answer it. Urza's Saga is an Enchantment Land. A card with multiple types is fully all of them at once and every rule that applies to any of its types applies. Double-faced cards are the exception that proves it: Ajani, Nacatl Pariah is a creature or a planeswalker depending on which face is up, never both.
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