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Created: 03 Oct 2026

A Reflection on Communication and Magic: The Gathering

Two things have occupied my mind a lot over the past few weeks: a university course on communication and the deckbuilding card game Magic: The Gathering. During this time, the two have become deeply connected. While playing Magic has been a great way to relax and socialize in between studying, it also serves as a surprisingly good example for illustrating some of my biggest takeaways and learnings from the communication course – which is what this reflection is about.

There is a lot to say about communication, but I will focus on four key concepts and perspectives that the course made me more aware of and that have really stuck with me, along with how each one relates to the game of Magic. This is not a comprehensive or academic overview, but rather a personal account of what I learned, split into four sections so that I can easily return to it later and see whether these lessons have stayed relevant for me.

(The course gave me plenty of practice with oral communication, so I chose this blogpost format as a chance for me to reflect in a different medium. It also means it can be easily skimmed, reread and revisited at your own pace.)

I. Communication Competence

“What is communication?” may be a predictable question to start the course with, but I was surprised by the size of the mind map that ended up on the whiteboard, and how many things and concepts are related to communication – language, culture, relationships, emotions, identity, politics, management, technology, media, art, and so on. The fact that communication impacts so many aspects of our lives might not be a revelation in itself, but it highlights the value of thinking about communication as a skill.

The course book, (Communication in the Real World, 2013), was especially engaging in this regard, because it details many ways to improve your communication competence. In a later chapter on leadership, for example, it explains that leaders can emerge because of their traits or because of a situation, but also because of their communication skill and competence. This is a particularly helpful perspective, because it focuses on “behaviors (which are learnable and adaptable) rather than traits or situations (which are often beyond our control)” (Communication in the Real World, 2013, “Leaders Emerge Based on Communication Skill and Competence” section, para. 1). I really like this distinction. In general, seeing communication as a skill to improve almost feels like a bit of a relief; it directs some attention away from “hard” performance metrics, technical skills, or output quality as the only paths to success – which as a perfectionist I very much welcome.

You can see this in almost any group project. The person with the strongest technical skills isn’t automatically the one who moves the team forward. Often it’s the person who listens, clarifies what everyone is actually aiming for, and keeps the group on the same page. Their expertise might be average, but their communication competence is what makes the work come together.

Now, simply communicating well is not going to save you in Magic: the Gathering, one might say. The game is sometimes compared to Chess, except that everyone brings their own pieces, of which there are tens of thousands of unique ones. This makes it highly complex, with a long list of precise rules. And yet communication competence plays a big role in your success as a player, because even the most experienced player has had to start from zero and learn the rules at some point. And since the game is so complex and so many unique situations occur constantly, it is very rare that everyone playing together has the same level of knowledge. More experienced players are regularly asked to explain certain mechanics, give advice, or act as a referee. This creates a meta layer of communication about the game that sits on top of the game itself, and it strongly affects how easy or difficult it is for newcomers to get into it. Communication competence goes both ways here: learning players benefit from an ability to listen attentively and teaching players benefit from an ability to explain concepts clearly and clear up misunderstandings.

It also matters in the strategy itself. In formats like Commander (with more than two players), negotiation is part of the game: convincing someone to attack another player instead of you, proposing a temporary alliance against whoever is running away with the game, or explaining why a certain play is in everyone’s interest. Two players with identical decks and identical skill can end up with very different outcomes depending on who can make a persuasive, clear case at the right moment. 

The takeaway that communication competence is worth practicing came early in the course, but it ran through all of it. In fact, the remaining three concepts can each be seen as a specific area in which to improve it.

II. Nonverbal Communication

When a friend says “I’m fine” in a flat tone, with crossed arms and eyes fixed on the floor, you don’t need a communication course to know that you shouldn’t take that sentence at face value. The importance of nonverbal communication is quite easy to understand, but also easy to forget – especially when so much of life now happens in text messages. Here, (Communication in the Real World, 2013) once again provides a really good overview.

The indie horror game “Who’s Lila?” (Garage Heathen, 2022) puts you in direct control of your character’s facial expressions, with unsettling results.

I wasn’t really aware of how many different types of nonverbal communication there are before reading the book. Paralanguage, for example, is described as the “vocalized but nonverbal parts of a message” (Communication in the Real World, 2013, “Vocalics” section, para. 1), which includes pitch, volume, and speaking rate, among other things. The book further explains how these vocal qualities can serve different communicative functions, such as complementing or contradicting a verbal message. Other interesting subcategories that are mentioned include proxemics, which studies how space and distance between people affects communication, as well as chronemics, the study of how time influences communication.

As you’d expect, many of these insights can be applied to Magic: The Gathering. Doing so reveals aspects of the game that resemble Poker, where you can bluff and try to deceive other players in order to get an advantage that your real hand might not provide. Just like in Poker, this involves a range of nonverbal cues, such as eye contact and facial expressions. In Magic, a classic example is leaving mana untapped on your opponent’s turn. Nobody can see your hand, but if you sit there with lands open, calmly watching the board with a relaxed posture and that knowing look on your face, other players start wondering whether you’re holding a counterspell or a removal spell – maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. It also works the other way around: a long hesitation before an attack, a glance at your hand right after drawing, or a sudden change in tone can give away more than you intended.

The role of nonverbal communication becomes even clearer when you focus on Magic as a casual game and activity to socialize with friends (rather than looking at it purely mechanically and assuming that everyone plays competitively and only tries to maximize their chances of winning). In that setting, much of what matters isn’t happening on the battlefield but around it. Nonverbal cues tell you how people actually feel: whether someone is having fun or quietly getting frustrated after being targeted for the third turn in a row, whether a newer player looks overwhelmed by a wall of rules text, or whether someone has checked out and started scrolling on their phone while the others take their turns. These signals aren’t spoken out loud, but they shape how the evening goes. Noticing and responding to them, whether with a smile, a joke, or a quick “want me to explain that one?”, may be the difference between a game that people want to play again and one they politely avoid next time. In that sense, nonverbal communication is less about reading your opponents and more about understanding and connecting with each other.

A Magic: The Gathering tournament (Brain Dead X Magic: The Gathering Fantasy Games, 2025).

III. Cultural Communication

I’ve always been curious about other cultures; how people grow up, how they communicate, and the different values and behaviors that get imprinted on them by their social environment. So this part of the course was one I was looking forward to, and the book (Communication in the Real World, 2013) mentioned some interesting things.

One idea that stuck with me is the dialectical approach to intercultural communication (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). It avoids dichotomies like good/evil or right/wrong and instead “captures the interplay between patterned behaviors learned from a cultural group and individual behaviors that may be variations on or counter to those of the larger culture” (Communication in the Real World, 2013, “Intercultural Communication: A Dialectical Approach”, para. 1-2). I find this a refreshing way to think about culture, because it doesn’t stereotype people (“everyone from X does Y”). Instead, there is always a push and pull between cultural and individual influences. There are also other dialectics to think about with regards to intercultural communication, as seen in here:

Dialectics of Intercultural Communication (Communication in the Real World, 2013). Adapted from (Martin & Nakayama, 1999).

Just as valuable to me were the open discussions in class. We’re quite an international group, and had plenty of opportunities to share experiences and insights from our own backgrounds, through which I learned a lot of interesting things. It’s of course one thing to read about cultural differences in a book, and another to hear concrete examples and experiences described by your peers.

Now, when I think about culture and Magic, I’m not thinking about countries, languages or ethnicities, even though the game is played all over the world. Instead, I think Magic is a kind of culture in its own right, with its own communication patterns that you only really notice once you’re inside them (or, as a newcomer, standing just outside).

Take card nicknames: Gray Merchant of Aphomia is almost never called by its name; it’s “Gary”. Dark Confidant is “Bob” and Prodigal Sorcerer is “Tim”. Nicknames like that are tiny pieces of shared history, and using them signals that you belong. The same goes for keywords and jargon, which make conversation faster by packing a lot of information into a single word. “Ramp” means accelerating your mana, and “ETB” means a card does something when it enters the battlefield. Experienced players use these words constantly, and everyone at the table understands, which is exactly what makes the communication efficient. It’s also what makes it hard for a beginner to follow along, which connects back to the meta layer of communication I described earlier.

All of these things, the nicknames and jargon (as well as humor and memes), work exactly like the culture the book describes: it’s patterned behavior learned from a group, and it’s also constantly varied by individuals and playgroups. My friends and I probably have inside jokes that other tables have never heard of, which goes back to the dialectic perspective.

IV. Settings and Audiences

One thing that the course kept coming back to is that good communication adapts to different contexts. Here, the skill lies in really understanding the audience you’re communicating with and the setting you’re in, as well as being able to competently modify your approach accordingly. The course made me practice this in a genuinely meaningful way.

This happened mainly in the third module, which was the most intense one but also the most rewarding. We had to hold six presentations on the same topic, each adapted to a different (imagined) audience and setting, with different goals, and most of them could last five minutes at most. The topic was supposed to be something we’re passionate about, like a hobby – so, naturally, I picked Magic: The Gathering. It turned out to be a fun choice, because there are so many things to say about the game and so many directions to take it in.

What made this manageable was a set of questions from one of the lectures, which I came back to before every single presentation:

  • What do I want the audience to take away?
  • What actions do I want the audience to take afterwards?
  • What are the needs, interests and backgrounds of the audience?
  • What is the one clear message or argument (the red thread)?

The first presentation was simply aimed at the other students, with the goal being to connect with them and let them get to know you. It was my first time presenting while being recorded though, which felt a bit scary. In the end it was fun, and getting that first one out of the way made everything after it easier.

The second presentation probably taught me the most. The scenario was a job interview in which you’re asked to give a five-minute presentation about something you’re passionate about, so that the interviewers can learn a bit about you. Talking about the game itself now felt a bit too straightforward. Instead, I turned it into “what being a Magic player says about me, personally and as a potential employee.” I talked about how it shows that I like to socialize, that I love deep strategy, that I’m especially motivated when a task lets me be creative, like deckbuilding does, and that I’m persistent when learning something new and complex, even if it’s overwhelming at first. It worked really well. The same topic turned into a completely different presentation, because the audience and the goal were different. That was the moment when the importance of adapting really clicked for me.

After some more presentations, the module ended with a 2.5-minute “TED”-style talk aimed at young people and teens, which had to be really engaging. Here I leaned heavily on humor and “action”, and I’m fairly sure I would never have dared to do that at the start of the module. It only worked because of the bits of confidence I had gained from the earlier presentations.

Presenting the same topic six times to six different audiences made it obvious how much your understanding of the audience and setting can impact your presentation. I’ll definitely keep asking myself those questions from the lecture in the future.

Conclusion

In the end, Magic turned out to be a better companion for this course than I would have guessed. Not because these lessons are somehow uniquely relevant to Magic, but because it’s a hobby I’m genuinely enjoying at the moment, which gives me real, personal experiences to apply them to. That made them much more tangible.

Perhaps that’s the other big takeaway here, not about communication but about learning in general: take what you’re learning, relate it to something seemingly unrelated and very specific, and force yourself to connect the dots. Even when the connection feels like a stretch, the effort of making it improves your understanding.