Duels of the Planeswalkers is a unique product. It does some things spectacularly right, and does other things spectacularly wrong. The things it does right represent some great work and show a lot of promise for other, better projects in the future. The things it does wrong range from places where I think priorities were misplaced, to places where we will need more time to improve the product to places where the game is intentionally being held back for reasons both good and ill. Overall, this is a great game at its absurdly low price point that has the promise to mature into something far greater.

Rules Changes

The game has reduced the game to its core: Begin, Main, Attack, Block, Damage, Main. Combat damage does not go on the stack, and unnecessary steps have been eliminated slash abstracted away. The results here are very good, as things have been simplified greatly without much being sacrificed. It is clear that the essence of the game has been preserved. I don’t like the new way of dealing with combat damage, but having seen the game in action I understand how it makes things flow far easier for this version. It does have unfortunate implications but given the decks and matchups involved those situations are rare enough to be a minor quibble.

Mulligans have been expanded, as the first mulligan of all games is now free. Given the types of decks people have been given, I think this is a good change. It allows players to have more fun and gives us a very skill intensive decision on whether to keep your initial hand of seven. Inexperienced players will inevitably be far, far too reluctant to throw their initial hand back and there will be some interesting debates on hands. I don’t like the process of giving the mulligan out because multiplayer games wanted it and the difference ‘was confusing’ but the results are strong. It would be a serious balance problem if such a rule were used elsewhere and it would slow games down, but here it works.

The other change is that the computer takes care of tapping your lands for you. It saves a lot of time, and it is clear that the times the computer will get it wrong will be relatively rare. It takes some skill out of the game, but the time saved is appreciated. I don’t like the fact that all mana now has to come from basic lands, which may end up being a far more serious restriction long term than we may like to admit, but the extra mulligan helps compensate for the mana issues. My hope is that you can still allow non-basic lands and other alternate mana sources, as long as they are chosen carefully. Coastal Tower should be able to fit right in. I also think that having mana bases no longer can eat your life points is a welcome change of pace and much kinder to new players.

I’d actually suggest we consider going a step further with the rules modifications once we are willing to have the two systems not match exactly. There’s no reason why all the triggers in the game need go on the stack and allow for responses. It does add that little bit of strategic depth but given you need to have a countdown cycle every time it happens it seems like this is one place you could simplify profitably. Let players gain a life as a green spell is played, rather than making us wait. It isn’t quite the same functionally, but the difference is trivial. For the few that make a big difference, the trigger can be kept.

Overall, I highly approve of what has been done in this realm - as long as it isn’t spilling over into the original!

Graphics and Sound

The game is beautiful, both sight and sound. The one concern I would have is that the cards are impossible to read without zooming in, no matter how big your screen, so it would be a good idea to look into a way of addressing this if one can be found. You can zoom in when you need to, at which point the cards are clean and crisp, so it’s not that big a deal once you master the interface if you know all the cards already. If you’re new to the game, I can see this being quite frustrating.

Interface

Once I got over the fact that the computer will not let me use the directional pad for anything useful, instead forcing me to steer with a stick, me and my grouchy get-off-my-lawn old school style of computer gaming got used to the controls quickly. There are a number of places where you have to click multiple times where one would have been quite sufficient, especially the requirement that you zoom to an ability before you can use it no matter how many times in this same game you’ve used it before. There’s also being forced to choose creature or player before choosing the target rather than being able to simply select the target.

The big addition to the interface of course is the clock. The clock is completely inflexible unless you pause it, but it can be paused at any time. This results in some strange situations that could have been prevented. The computer is unwilling to shorten the time involved when neither player has untapped mana or any abilities to activate, or at times when there is nothing either player can play, or would be inclined to. I understand the need to disguise what people are holding, of course, but this also occurs when you’re facing the AI and when there is nothing potentially there to hide. It would be nice to try and save us some time. On the flip side, the timer goes equally fast during the combat step after blocking is declared, which is now both the pre-stack and post-stack steps. Multiple times I’ve moved a little too slow and lost a combat to this, before I started pausing the timer reflexively. That timer should be longer, and others should be shorter, the same way that on your main phase you are not timed. The responses to triggered effects that you wouldn’t usually respond to in particular should be shorter, such as the gain one life triggers.

It’s also impossible, it seems, to do anything with the board turned around and we miss out on a number of other little things that might help most of which I’m sure I have not thought of yet, but aside from the timers being a little rigid and having no way to skip past them things seem to have been handled quite well. In the most obvious skipped skip, I can’t find a way to concede a game.

Magic: The Puzzling

This is a neat little side bonus, but doesn’t add all that much. Right now I’m stuck on the blue puzzle, but I’m sure like the others it’s a matter of seeing the key thing and then going from there. With additional puzzles via DLC this could turn more interesting, as the idea doesn’t always have to be ‘kill him this turn.’ A side joke is how utterly impossible many of the situations are, unless the players are co-operating to get there.

Campaign

I liked playing against a wide variety of different deck types, and I found it funny that the game uses modern cards in the later battles in order to give the decks better card quality and in the case of the final battle a deck that is reasonably well thought out. The problem of there being only fifteen battles but seventeen cards to unlock in each deck does force you to grind games at some point in order to get your decks into top form, with the Planeswalker achievement requiring some serious grinding that feels stylistically like a JRPG’s 100% completion. Since you need only beat each opponent once, you can safely find the right deck to beat them and then wait until you get the right pair of draws to win even against the decks later on that seem to be playing far better cards than you can.

Decks

The decks vary wildly in quality. The green deck seems like an intelligent build and offers a lot of power, especially with the ability to put Blanchwood Armor on Troll Ascetic and to use Civic Wayfinders to set up large men and Overruns. Its curve is solid and its creatures effective. The red deck offers a full set of pingers and a bunch of good burn. Then there’s the white deck, which is all but unplayable, and the blue deck which has some cards in it but had better pray its opponents can’t punch through Wall of Spears. The black deck is somewhere in the middle. The multi-color decks later on have their charms, but the inability to get rid of the cards that don’t belong and the need to fight for full complements of the good stuff have made them seem relatively unattractive to me so far. The free mulligan is a huge help to them as they have wide ranges of power level and need the help getting good mana.

You are tied to these decks, and can only put cards in with no ability to take cards out or adjust the mana base. Even the simple ability to substitute out cards as you put more cards in would have been most welcome, but given the price point of the game such options had to be limited. I’m hoping that expansions unlock more options and deck customization in addition to adding more decks and more campaign.

AI

If there’s one place the game lets us down it is the AI. I’ve thought a decent amount about how to make a Magic AI, and while it is functional for teaching a new player and an improvement over the Microprose version this is not yet a quality effort. I realize how difficult good Magic AI would be, but unless the AI was made intentionally poor to avoid discouraging new players, and I think this is much worse than giving the AI worse cards but making it smarter to compensate, I don’t see why it makes elementary mistakes. There are some very basic principles Magic players learn that the AI doesn’t know, and it hurts it severely. Some examples:

The AI will often do things right away when it has no reason not to wait. It usually casts creatures before it attacks rather than afterwards, and this for example often causes it to lose out on attacks with Troll Ascetic. There’s also the standard loss of information.

The AI dramatically undervalues its tricks, especially Giant Growth which it is willing to use on an unblocked attacker early in the game without any motivation to do so beyond a quick three damage. It is also willing to use Pacifism on Wall of Wood without much motivation. This should be easily preventable.

The AI will walk its creatures into a pinger one after another, even in decks with lots of removal in them.

I saw the AI sacrifice a Bottle Gnomes on first main, and die because the Gnomes then wasn’t available to block. I’ve also seen creatures attack where the attack left the computer dead on board when it otherwise wouldn’t be.

I fully accept that the AI should be willing to walk into most tricks, that it will never bluff, that it won’t make the best mulligan or discard decisions, that it won’t handle unusual situations well. All of that is fine, and the decks were chosen with this in mind. I can think of a lot of ways to try and make the AI actively good given the sandbox we’ve given it, but there are also some very simple guidelines that could make the AI both more interesting and less jarring of an opponent. I would be happy to share my ideas with the developers, if they are interested.

Tutorial

I have yet to see the tutorial in action, but I have recruited a guinea pig to try it out and see how it goes. Given how such things have gone in the past, this is one place the game could provide a lot of value if done well.

Value

Needless to say this game offers tremendous value for your dollar, as you get a foil copy of a worthy card and the whole game together for under ten bucks. That is outstanding, and it is all I need to forgive them for the many things that are missing from the first release.

Summary

Everyone should go out and buy Duels of the Planeswalkers. It provides a unique Magic experience that is quite enjoyable, and brings new perspective to the game all for less than the cost of one draft. By supporting it, you’ll be helping to bring newer and better adaptations. I’m hoping for expansions that provide new decks (both for AI opponents and players), more customization and better AI, for organized tournaments which I believe would be good for the game despite the limitations, and for all of that to lead into a full game version that allows for full deck customization and includes a spiritual successor to Shandalar. It could also try to go down the same route as Magic Online, or do both, or take a third path we haven’t thought of yet. I’ve been critical of a number of choices the game made, and it’s important to make our voices heard so we can help make future versions better, but that doesn’t take away from this game. Well done, guys. Well done!