Magic the Gathering - Duels of the Planewalkers

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Soldato
Joined
15 Apr 2009
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Don't think I can see a thread in here on this game. It's on Steam with a starter pack for £6.99 anyone else got it?

One to play with friends or is the matchmaking good - any impressions etc?
 
I've got it and its good. It does have its limitations though- such as you can't build card decks from scratch you must use pre-made ones (that you can add a number of unlockable cards to). I think its a decent game provided you aren't an experienced magic player in which case you'd probably find it too limiting. I don't have any playing experience apart from the older Microprose PC version of the same name of many years ago.

The steam forum for the game has comprehensive discussions on its limitations. I've played through the single player campaign with one of the decks to try to get a feel for the game and just started to play ranked matches online so cant really comment on the multi player just yet.

While there are certainly flaws that need patching, I think this is good value for money.
 
to be fair, if you have never played magic or are just starting its really good. If on the other hand you play MTG then its not really worth it, you could put £12 in magic online and buy some commons and sit and play pauper which would be a lot more fun....
 
I was suckered into pre-ordering it with their promise of "online co-op" play.

Game is released and it turns out that what they meant was "local co-op with one player on the keyboard+mouse and a second player using a gamepad"!!!!

There's a 21+ page thread on the Steam forums complaining about this mis-advertising or bait'n'switch but, it's Valve, so I'm not holding my breath for a refund.

You can see a Wizards rep squirming over the 'confusion' here...
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15466658&postcount=92

and the Steam product page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/49400/
has been updated to say "Local Co-op" although the body of the text still says "ranked and unranked online single player and cooperative play".

Muppets!
 
Armitage Shanks said:
I've got it and its good. It does have its limitations though- such as you can't build card decks from scratch you must use pre-made ones (that you can add a number of unlockable cards to)
Click to expand...

Stopped reading there - the whole point of Magic is making your own killer deck. Fair enough, have a load of pre-made ones so people can get stuck in, but I totally don't understand not being able to build your own.
 
I am finding it lots of fun even with the limitations. You can tweak your decks. You cannot change the base deck but you can unlock cards for the deck add and remove those unlocked cards. So it’s not as bad as no deck editing.
 
Le_Petit_Lapin said:
Yeah, I bought it. MASSIVE dissappointment when I discovered you cant make your own deck. :( I cant even be arsed playing it.
Click to expand...

I know there has been some expressed dissapointment at the lack of deck building functionality, however i believe it actually makes allot of sense when you think about the format as its offered.

Firstly, DotP is intended to bring new players into the MTG fold. The main problem with deck building in MTG is that decks can quickly get imba and silly. With prebuilt decks the dev team at last have a chance of getting some sort of balance right which is essential in any serious computer game.

Secondly, a crucial aspect of MTG that is often forgotten in casual play is knowing your opponents deck better than your own deck to determine your play. A simple example being expect the cancel from Blue and either wait for a tap out to play a win card, or draw it out with some fodder. As such by investing time in DotP the player is able to identify what their opponent is playing and adjust their own play accordingly. This simply would not be possible with infinite deck variations.

(My only advice to anyone playing DotP is get those awful 'gain 1 life when <colour> is played' cards. Awful awful awful cards)
 
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But removing the ability to make your own completely customised deck is like ripping out the main principle behind the game in the first place!

Also "Land, Land Land, Land, Land" is surprisingly common due to bad deck design, which is doubly irritating becasue you cant do a damn thing about it.

For people that dont have it, the way it works is you have a load of preset "core" decks, and then a sideboard for each of those decks, which you unlock as you progress. Now you can add and remove stuff that was on the sideboard, but you cannot change any of the cards that were in the "core" deck.

For that reason I found it a massive dissappointment. I would rather have just re-purchased Microprose's version from the late nineties with a shiny skin on it.
 
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I think people want the moon on a stick here. Its only costs £6.99! Theres already a fully fledged magic the gathering online game or the real life version. This seems like it has been marketed badly, personally i'm not disappointed as I knew what to expect from this from reading about the xbox version.

Its cheap and cheerful and will probably do a decent job at recruiting new players to the full game.
 
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