MtG: Duels of the Planeswalkers

There were few people that came to our store and were asking for Duels of the Planeswalkers. I had to tell them that I have no idea about the game, decks whatsoever. Yesterday I decided to try the game out. I've already played it several times as you could try it at the last GPs or other big events organized by WotC. But when I was playing it on Xbox (sitting on a huge green sofa and looking at a big LCD screen) the game was rather confusing and boring. I had difficulties with realizing what cards are played and I was confused about the comtrols. It was better to take out my deck and catch an opponent IRL.

I downloaded the game and had few difficulties running it. First I managed to create a new account on steam (ten minutes later realizing that stsung account is actually mine as I used that one for Counter Strike) and later I managed to run the game.

The aspect ratio of the few first screen was wrong and I was wondering if I will have to deal with other problems but hopefully the game loaded just fine and I could start playing it.

So if you have no idea what the game is about. It's a Magic: The Gathering card game simulation. So don't expect an action game or something.
The simulation is not complete as it does many things for you automatically. You don't need to shuffle your library, draw a card, search your library etc. There are things you can set differently (for example browsing your entire library - otherwise it will let you browse only the relevant cards you are looking for). This game was first released on Xbox and now is available on PC via steam. It costs 9EUR and there is an expansion set available for another 3 EUR.

The graphics and the user interface is nice, the music is nice as well and the sounds used during play are not that disturbing as those in MTGO (the official Online version of Magic). Each spell and action has an animation which is quite ok but it can get long (hopefully you can skip the combat ones).

When the game fully loaded I clicked on something saying that I play Magic for a long time and I was ready to go. I started a campaign and I was shown a list with Planeswalkers' names. I chose to play the first 'battle' against Chandra. I chose to play with a red deck hoping for some burn and fast creatures. During the first game I tried to figure out how to operate the game. It came to me quite easily even though there are things I did not figure out myself without checking the controls in the settings later.

With arrows you can move between permanents on the table and your hand. Enter is used for confirming or playing spells. A tab key is used to skip phases/steps. Whenever you are given priority you can press spacebar to stop the timer and play what you need or just play it right away if you are fast enough (the cards you can play are highlighted in blue). Sometimes I managed to 'miss play' or choose a wrong target several times because of not stopping the timer and having the automatic skipping of steps/phases turned on.

This takes me to the settings. When I played my first game I was given tips like "Flying means that a creature with flying cannot be blocked by creatures without it" or something like that. This is slowing you down if you already know this so you can turn it off. Also the computer just skipped the rest of your turn if it "knew" that you can't play anything. This way you got from the first main phase directly to your opponents one which was confusing me. There was also some weird automatic targeting and resolving spells. That's why I went into settings and tried to figure out if I can make this MANUAL or not. Hopefully you can turn all these settings off. But than it also means more clicking and more pressing of the tab key^^. But at least you have control over the game (more than before). But it prevents you from resolving Holy Day at a wrong time^^.

As I mentioned before the game does some things for you. What is quite annoying is that it taps lands for you, sometimes it will tap wrong lands. For example in one of the challenges I wanted to play one card for GG, one card for G and one for 2B. I played the black one first and it tapped a forest and two swamps which resulted in me not having three forests untapped. So if you already know what you are going to play during the whole round you should count with this as well.

Now to deckbuilding and computer AI. The game has certain kind of preconstructed decks with which it plays. You have some of the decks at your disposal. The decks are rather simple. One of the more sophisticated decks is this one for example...

Ajani Goldmane

3x Bull Ceredon
1x Brion Stoutarm
2x Farhaven Elf
3x Grizzly Bears
2x Knight of the Skyward Eye
3x Rip-Clan Crasher
3x Tundra Wolves
3x Wooly Thoctar

2x Blaze
2x Incinerate
2x Naturalize
4x Pacifism
4x Rampant Growth
1x Sangrite Surge
1x Wild Swing
+24 lands

A magic player would expect that after unlocking some cards (which you can do, each battle won unlocks one card) he or she would be able to change the decklist. Well, he's not and that's probably because of the AI (it would not know how to play against your own decks). What you can do though is add the unlocked cards to your deck. Each deck can have 20 additional cards that can be added. The game adds lands in the 3:2 ratio automatically. But I don't really feel like playing with a deck that consists of 100 cards or something...

I don't know how the AI works and I don't know if each duel in the campaign has different AI or not (in that case it would only depend on the decks). I got just up to Jace with Elspeth's Wings of something deck. I have to say that I had real troubles beating Liliana. She always played some drudge skeletons early in the game then added megrim and underworld dreams. She played mind rot when I really needed to keep my cards and added ravenous rats to all that. When my creatures were on the table flying or with first strike she just gave them +0/-2 and I was doomed. If I even managed to get her life total under 10 she played consume spirit. Just cool...

I beat her after I have no idea how many mulligans - my winning hand was Youthful Knight, Suntail Hawk and 2 plains. During the game I managed to draw another Knight and played it. All of the creatures managed to do some damage. I played pacifism on Drudge Skeletons and I forced Liliana to block with her 2/1 imps and rats that hopefully just died because of first strike damage. Liliana played Megrim and Underworld dreams. Having 6 lands at that time. Later she forced me to discard 2x Angel of Mercy, 2x Holy day and I was slowly losing life because of my draws. She played more discard spells than usually and that was her doom. I was afraid of Consume Spirit but she did not draw it. She finally got 0 cards on her hand and I happily attacked for 5 with a blessed Knight (angelic blessing) being at 1 life and having 3 lands in play. (I was waiting for the 3rd land for AGES. I had the last chance to top deck a land card and I did not even expect to draw it...dreams would kill me next time I would draw. but the land card came^_^)

If you are tired with dueling you can go to challenges and solve the puzzles. You are given a situation and you have to win in that round except the last challenge (where you take two rounds to beat your opponent). There is one challenge we had difficulties with (and the last one as well, but that was just because we forgot what Condemn does...otherwise the last challenge is simple). The challenges are quite fun. I want more of these^^. Even though there are some challenges that we solved in a way that we would not really be trying in real game because we would expect that our opponent would do something else than what the AI in the game does. Also a deck with 5 condemns is pretty suspicious... (and the challenges have more solutions)

Well, that's about it I guess. Have fun with the game both offline and online.

EDIT: One more thing...is it possible to do something during upkeep??? Because there's Razormane Masticore in one of the decks does it even trigger in the game? ...