Note: This is an expansion pack, it requires the original Duels of the Planeswalkers. A free version of this pack is also available if you merely wish to play against opponents who have the new content, but that version won’t let you use its cards and decks yourself.

$5 expansion packs continue to be the primary way of adding to this game’s content, and this time around we get access to three new decks, a few new cards for each of the already existing decks, additional Two-Headed Giant co-op levels, and some new puzzle levels as well. In other words, it’s much like the previous expansion pack though the exact content has of course changed.

While most of that content is fairly obvious in that the new cards for existing decks will be of varying utility, the new decks themselves bear more detail. If you complete the new campaign stages, you will receive access to three decks; Nicol Bolas’ "Eons of Evil" Black/Red/Blue deck shown in the previous expansion, along with "Heart of Worlds" (a Green/White deck built around the Landfall mechanic) and "Heat of Battle" (a typical mono-Red deck built around direct damage and creature summoning). The only catch is that the ’boss deck’ for this expansion is a mono-Black deck built around Vampire cards that establish their game plan extremely quickly, making for a frustrating match.

The White/Green deck is built around an interesting creature ability called Landfall; any creature that has it gains a benefit for the rest of the turn whenever its controller plays a new land. Most Landfall creatures are very weak for their cost, but are joined by creatures that can play additional lands in a single turn, giving Landfall-users a huge but brief boost in power. These effects can range from gaining new abilities, to increased power/toughness, or more impressively creating new 1/1 bird token creatures (it’s entirely possible to get more than a dozen of these in ideal circumstances). This makes the deck something of a one-trick pony, but I admit it is a very interesting trick.

The mono-Red deck is extremely straight-forward; virtually all it does is summon creatures and use direct damage effects. Very simple to play and generally consistent at what it does, this deck will have some obvious appeal... though I admit I hope it’s the last of these decks we see for a while; we now have plenty of variations on this basic idea, and it would be nice to see other deck ideas get their time in the spotlight.

Unfortunately, getting these decks is probably going to drive you berserk. The boss deck for this expansion is far and above most of the playable decks, full of incredibly unfair creatures (such as a 2/3 flier with Lifelink and Deathtouch for two black mana and one colorless) and all the support cards they need to succeed. It will crush most of the decks you could pick, and only a few semi-reliable choices have been found so far (most of them requiring ideal draws and/or exploiting an AI flaw). Strangely yet fortunately, beating this deck doesn’t unlock it for play; you get Eons of Evil instead. It’s just as well, since this deck is far better than most others in Duels of the Planeswalkers and would probably ruin the online aspect of the game if put in players’ hands.

Despite the sheer frustration of unlocking these decks, overall I think the expansion is worth your time. If you have any interest in one or more of the three deck types featured in this pack, it would probably be worth picking up for that alone. The additional stages are a nice bonus, and the new cards for existing decks might interest you; do some extra research if you want the full details on them. All in all, this expansion is a decent addition to Duels of the Planeswalkers and earns its $5/400 Microsoft Point price.