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M:TG Duesl of The Planeswalkers
Just out of curiosity I downloaded the free demo of this for the 360. With it, I was able to play a few games of Money: The Wasting. They were relatively simple and uninteresting games, because they were all basic decks. Regardless, it reminded me that Magic can be a fun game if you keep only the customization aspect, and remove the collection aspect.
In considering whether to pay money for this game or not, I need some answers. How do you get cards? Are they selling boosters and starters as DLC? Can I just use any card I want as many times as I want? Can I even make my own deck, or do I just choose from a list of available decks? Is there any collection aspect whatsoever, or does everyone just all have the same cards, and you do whatever you want?
When you are going to play against someone online, can you see what deck they are using? How does that work, and how do they avoid the rock-paper-scissors aspects? Oh I see you have chosen a red deck, blue it is then.
Also, I was surprised at just how many of the cards were actually cards I recognized from back in the day, but had simply been reprinted in new sets with newer artwork. I was also surprised that the rules were basically 100% identical to what I remember. A creature has defense instead of wall. An enchant creature is now an aura.
The user interface was also surprisingly good. I would like to see a game like Dominion coded using a similar interface. However, I do think the game would work better on the PC. The game would certainly go faster if I could just click on cards instead of cycling through them with the stick.
In considering whether to pay money for this game or not, I need some answers. How do you get cards? Are they selling boosters and starters as DLC? Can I just use any card I want as many times as I want? Can I even make my own deck, or do I just choose from a list of available decks? Is there any collection aspect whatsoever, or does everyone just all have the same cards, and you do whatever you want?
When you are going to play against someone online, can you see what deck they are using? How does that work, and how do they avoid the rock-paper-scissors aspects? Oh I see you have chosen a red deck, blue it is then.
Also, I was surprised at just how many of the cards were actually cards I recognized from back in the day, but had simply been reprinted in new sets with newer artwork. I was also surprised that the rules were basically 100% identical to what I remember. A creature has defense instead of wall. An enchant creature is now an aura.
The user interface was also surprisingly good. I would like to see a game like Dominion coded using a similar interface. However, I do think the game would work better on the PC. The game would certainly go faster if I could just click on cards instead of cycling through them with the stick.
Comments
I'm pretty sure they'll sell you boosters as DLC. I mean, let's be realistic here, it's a viable and successful business model, and since people have gotten used to paying for boosters, the transition to DLC is nearly trivial. Hell, if they make it cheaper to get boosters as DLC instead of as cards, people will jump all over that.
Wasn't there a much older M:tG game for like Windows 95?
If you want to play some free computer Magic, use Magic Workstation for your PC and the MTG Card Database. That's how I play Magic these days if I feel the need. Unfortunately there is quite a lot of shitcockery in the community, but if you want some fun and lighthearted games, play some Elder Dragon Highlander.
If you just want to play some MtG with people over he internets, without spending any money and with any of the cards you want (well almost, it seems they haven't updated it in a while), check out Apprentice.
1) How do we put everyone's cards back where they came from without marking them?
2) We need to use some sort of drafting mechanism. If one person has one very rare card, whoever gets it is bleh.
3) We have to figure out what rules to use in terms of banned/limited cards. If we use modern tournament rules, most of our cards might be banned. If we use rules that are too lax, channel/fireball rears its ugly head.
It takes a few times to figure out which cards are "good" for this game and which are boring.
1) Obviously you would use all of the expensive cards that are otherwise useless in a normal game of magic. I'm talking about things like the absolutely gigantic creatures and the gold cards that require so many different mana colors to cast that they are typically unusable.
2) Any spell that scales is far better than one with a static effect. Disintegrate is an automatic winning card. There are also creatures that get +1/+1 for ever mana you spend. You would basically have to ban all these cards for their to be any meaning to the game.
3) Only using one card per turn removes a lot of what makes magic fun. A lot of the fun in the game was activating instants, interrupts, and other abilities in combination and in clever response to the opponents moves.
I think the best way to play M:TG would be to have an actual draft where you get a starter box and boosters, open them up, and go. The thing is, that costs real world money, and isn't worth the mount of real world money it costs. What would be awesome is if we could simulate a real draft with software. Everyone gets a virtual starter deck and boosters at the start of each game. Then there would be a customization/trading phase. Then the game. It would be uber fun to just have new cards each time. Any luck factor of getting a great card would even out over the course of many games. Also, everyone would be drafting from the same set.
Even better would be to use the same mechanism to play a different CCG, such as Pokemon.
If we pooled our cards (or hell, just used one person's collection), we could create our own boosters from the pool (1 rare, 3 uncommons, 11 commons, IIRC), give everyone 3, and draft away. 40 card minimum deck size, as much land as you need, and whatever you have left goes in your sideboard, or something to that effect. You could even add in a mechanic where you can pay some life to pick a rare from a known set.
Essentially, any drafting mechanic has to control the deck size, the number of non-land cards we each get, and the rarities of those cards. Personally, I like the idea of paying life for the ability to pick a rare card. Maybe we could do a Vinci sort of thing where we start everyone with 30 life, allow people to pay 2 life to select a rare, and stipulate that you must start play with at least 20 life. There are a lot of ways we could do a draft.
While there's certainly a lot of good things about having a game like that, and it can be quite enjoyable, it fails in that it doesn't solve the primary problem I've always had with Magic. That is the pre-game matters way more than the game itself. The idea here is to determine the actual winning and losing based on the decisions you make during actual play, not for the game to be mostly determined by what goes in your deck. If the game itself isn't the most important thing that happens, then something is wrong.
Yes, a sealed draft has a lot of meta-strategy to it. It's more a test of on-the-fly deck construction than anything else. A lot of potential situations are evened out by the randomness; yes, you may get handed a handful of shit cards, but everyone has the same approximate chance to get handed shit cards, so it evens out.
As for the complaint about the nature of the game, well, it's like Battletech. You go into the game with a concept in mind (my 'mech is going to do blah), and then you make that happen. Your in-game decisions pretty much boil down to "position myself so that I can do my thing" and then do your thing. The only thing that keeps either game from being completely deterministic is the randomness.
Since there is equal chance of you getting the card vs other players getting the card, there is no incentive to pick particularly strong or weak cards. Instead the incentive is to pick cards that either you are the only one who knows how to use them effectively, or are just fucking interesting and fun to play with.
EDIT: This whole conversation really makes me want to play Magic again. I really do miss it sometimes.
Yes, plural.
Fortunately, if you know enough people with enough Magic cards, you can make an effectively free customizable game.
Dominion is hot stuff, though.
EDIT: I'd also contend that WotC has a fantastic business model for MtG. It's very good at making them money.
EDIT 2: You can find the current rules online. You can access the basic rulebook, which tells you everything you need to know in order to play and is a measly 34 page .pdf, or you can access the comprehensive rules which cover any and all possible situations for any and all possible gameplay scenarios. That clocks in at 169 pages.