Picked up this year's iteration of Stainless Games' "Magic: the Gathering- Duels of the Planeswalkers" and it's reminded me something I've known for quite a long time. M:tG is the only worthwhile collectable card game ever made.
I've played a lot of them. Tried to get into Pokemon for awhile because that was the rage in my younger days, but it lacked real strategic depth. Tried Yu-Gi-Oh but it's a convoluted mess, and it was one of those games where a rare card totally trumped deck building. Tried the World of Warcraft CCG but it just felt like a cash-grab despite actually being fairly good.
But Magic. The allure of the franchise grabs me again every time. It's proof style matters a whole lot, though substance is still equally important. It's been around since 1993. It is the first, and because of it, the best. It's had the most amount of time to turn into a refined product, and is the only one that can truly claim it's not an imitator.
For those uninitiated, the concept is fairly simple. You are a Planeswalker, a.k.a. a really powerful magician. You tap into the powers of the elements, represented by the M:TG color wheel. Green represents growth, harmony, nature and is themed around big ass creatures and spells that make those creatures more powerful. Red represents chaos and fire, and is often themed around directly damaging opponent creatures and players via sorceries and instant spells. Blue represents intellect, the ocean, and strategy and tends to rely on cards that manipulate what your opponent can attempt to do, via counterspells and mind control. Black is evil, domination, and death and tends to employ minions of the undead along with direct creature destruction sorcery magic. White represents holiness, purity and defense. It usually has hordes of weak creatures that synergize well together, and employs powerful defensive spells.
Remember these are all themes. There are a lot of cards which basically overlap from one ideal to another, so aligning yourself with a color simply focuses your possible strategies rather than defining them. The video game version obviously lacks depth of the real card game because you are stuck with pre-fabricated decks rather than ones you assemble yourself, but it's still the actual game represented 100% faithfully.
New features to 2013:
The campaign is set up a little bit differently, and for the better I feel. You still fight against the 10 decks to unlock more cards, but they added in challenges where the enemy deck behaves in a set way, with set draws, and tends to spam a specific strategy at you to see if you can overcome it. It's a good way to highlight which strategies counter your deck, and lets you build accordingly to overcome it as best you can.
The challenge modes fans of the first two games remember, where you are presented with a specific situation and tasked to overcome the odds by playing your hand perfectly, is available immediately like it was in the first title rather than having to slog through the campaign to unlock them. It's over quick if you're good at the game, but it's still a lot of fun and was always the highlight for me as a fan. They also start off much more difficult than previous games. I'm stuck and I'm barely halfway through it!
There are a lot more variety between the initial 10 decks, and I am pretty sure we'll be seeing DLC deck packs coming soon themed around the notably absent famous characters from the M:TG world. So far, I feel it's a lot more balanced than 2012 was. The blue illusions deck in 2012 was so vastly superior to every other deck except maybe the direct damage red one that 80% of the time you went online, you'd play against it. Kind of annoying. I hope the deck balance lasts. We'll see how my opinions of that change once I unlock more cards and throw myself into the competitive scene.
The big new mode is "Planechase." It's a twist on the already chaotic 4 player free-for-all matches. A planes card is in effect which manipulates the battlefield in some way, and can be manipulated by use of a "Planes die." You can roll it for free once a round or tap mana for extra rolls, each roll taking another mana than the last cast. Listing each possible planes would take me forever, so we'll just leave it at it totally changes the dynamic of multiplayer matches in a much needed way, and is totally hectic. I'm all in favor of this mode, even though it can potentially make matches drag on for a very, very long time.
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Verdict: It costs $9.99 bucks to get a starter deck to begin with, so if you're new to Magic or enjoy the game, it's pretty hard to argue with the cost of entry. Pick it up! It's a very fun game for the price of entry and keeps players playing for a long while.
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