Free stuff with purchase: It’s really easy to miss, but when you first run the game you’ll be given a redemption code for a free Magic card. If you do miss it, go to Options and dig around until you find the Redeem Code option; it will show you how to get your free card mailed to you.
Magic: the Gathering has been an on-again, off-again love of mine. I believe it has excellent game design and love the basic flow of play, but often find I don’t have the time or money to stay involved. So when Duels of the Planeswalkers was announced, I was cautiously optimistic. For those unfamiliar with Magic, it is a competitive card game where players take turns drawing and playing cards against one another. The usual goal is to reduce your opponent to zero Life points, though there are a few other ways to win. Cards tend to do things like deploy magical creatures, blast targets with fire, or even change how one of the rules normally works. It’s an incredibly diverse game, and there’s a reason it has both a huge casual and tournament following to this day.
Duels of the Planeswalkers faithfully portrays Magic for the most part, though by necessity a few rules have been changed to speed up play and match how casual players go about things. Rather than strictly following tournament rules, things are more relaxed and concepts like player priority are now shared or simultaneous rather than explicitly passed back and forth. This means players can interrupt one another’s actions in ways that aren’t 100% according to normal rules, but it still works fine. Anyone that has played the game within the last decade or so will feel right at home, and it’s easy to get into. Newcomers will benefit from a variety of tutorial and mentoring modes, so I can safely say that this is worth a look even if you haven’t played Magic before.
Unlike normal Magic, you do not build your own deck. Instead, several pre-made decks have been included: one representing the iconic playstyle of each color of card (I’ll get to that momentarily), and others that mix the colors to make interesting combos. Each color has its own specialty, though there is some overlap in functionality between them. Red prefers to play fast, flooding the field with a variety of creatures and damage-dealing cards, Green builds up massive armies over time while healing itself, while Black tries to gain either a creature advantage or put its opponent at a disadvantage, then enhance that with forcing them to take damage by other means. Blue is all about ’permission’, able to cancel out cards the opponent plays before they have any real effect, and White builds an early defense while making its normally weak and average troops much stronger through other cards and teamwork. Multi-color decks blend these ideas to varying degrees, so there is plenty to keep you busy.
