f13.net

I am starting a thread on this because I bought it and I'm loving it so far. I haven't never really played M:tG before and I am enjoying the simple inexpensive option this game is providing. Lots to learn and fiddle with in the game, for sure worth the money, and DLC is only going to make it better.

Only a few minor complaints really, I highly recommend it.

Interested to know if anyone has tips for unlocking stuff quick: put the AI on stupid and play through the single player?

Also would love to hear some discussion on the decks if any more experienced M:tG players have anything to share. So far I've just been fiddling with the white equip/soldier deck, which is a bit boring, as well as fiddling with the artifact, vampires and illusions.

I bought the game in a previous form a long time ago and really liked it.  I just saw it again in its newest form ("Planeswalkers") on Steam and thought the price looked awesome to try out.  Did you get this through Steam?  If so, have you done any multiplayer?  Does that work well?

Multiplayer works for the most part. Have had some latency/sync issues, but those are generally short lived. As for unlocks, you can go back and play the guys without fully unlocked decks (the first go through of the campaign). Once you get a feel for which decks work well against that particular boss, it is pretty trivial to win 5 or 6 matches and unlock everything. That being said, I have only fully unlocked the UWB deck (I think it is that one..Ancient Depths or something)...got distracted by MTGO  :oh_i_see:

Feel free to give me a shout on Steam if you wanna get some MP in. I need to get through that section.

I end up going as far through the campaigns as I can with one deck to unlock as much as possible and if I get stuck, I go back to guys I've already beaten to unlock more cards. My favorite deck is the Sorin Markov vampire deck, though it isn't as effective as the version from the first Planeswalkers game. Multiplayer works just fine, in my experience. The archenemy games are just CRAZY. I've got it on Steam so if you see me on, drop me a line if you want to try a game.

As I've said elsewhere, this game's gotten me rehooked on Magic.  Playing the basic campaign is the best way to unlock cards, it can go pretty quickly that way.  If you just want to jump into MP, when you win a match there, it will unlock cards as well, just like in single player. 

Deckwise, the only one I can't stand at all is Sarkhan Vol's dragon deck.  Vamps and illusion are my favorites to play with.  I like Ancient Depths as well, but I play against it so much in the random MP matches that I'm getting rather sick of seeing it, so I've not been playing it much lately. 

I'm not in the Steam group yet, but my info's in that thread, so feel free to give me a shout if you ever want to play a game, if I'm not busy, I tend to be playing it. 

Yeah I got it through Steam. Multiplayer works well most times, though I find creating games and having others join works best for me. (Maybe because I have Australian latency and others get in before me to other games.)

If you see me on Steam ask me for a game. I'll probably be keen to play and try and unlock everything!

I got and enjoyed the new Planeswalkers game, especially the puzzle sections.  I consider it a hopeful sign that MTGO is using the developers of this game to revamp the shitty game client; there is no excuse for MTGO looking as bad as it does when this game comes out looking very attractive.

MTGO is ugly but I find the interface more playable, really.

The interface was really annoying me at first, but now I've gotten used to it I can manage. Though when there are a lot of cards on the board selecting things can be a bit tricky. I'm still using the mouse though, I guess keyboard will help fix that.

Unlocked 6 of the decks now. Like them all really, though some more than others. Some don't really come together until you get the unlocks and get rid of the fluff.

Hope the first expansion is soon, really enjoying the game.

Single color magic decks are really the most basic of basic.  Each color has it's own weaknesses of things it just doesn't deal well with so occasionally in Duels you might run up against a deck thats a natural foil for the one you are using.  Overall though, most of the true hoser type cards don't exist in Duels anyway, so that plus the lack of sideboarding mitigates some of those weaknesses.  For example, of my favorite decks to play is the all artifcat based Machinations deck: it has good critters that synergize well together plus some bombs like Etched Champion (protection from all colors as long as you control 3 artifacts), indestructbible Darksteel Colosuss, the multiple purpose Magister Sphinx (you can use it offensively to set your opponents life to 10, or defensively to bring your up to 10 if you're near death - i've done like 25+ life removal with it in an Archenemy match) Wurmcoil Engine and Mirrorworks.  A lot of those cards are very hard for other decks to deal with, but in real magic, you would leave yourself vulnerable to some cards which easily effect multiple artifacts.  Those really don't exist here so you normally only have to worry about regular 1 for 1 removal cards, or global sweepers which effect both players.  A lot of duels really just come down to speed, which is ok for new players, but much of the mid to late game strategy of Magic just doesn't get used much.

i.e. Love to have seen the unlocks for jace's realms of illusions deck give you a lot more counters, but even fully unlocked it's a poor version of a controll/counter deck with a bunch of critters which is not blue's strength.

My Steam username's Valatar, add me and we can get some games going.  On the one hand, it's a shame not to be able to fully customize a deck.  On the other, it's nice to never be up against some jackass who put down four hundred bucks on a deck full of rares.

Played a couple of game with Teleku. I was all over him and felt bad, as he hadn't had a MP game yet, but then he smashed me brutally in the third game.

Game is good fun. I just wish there were a few more unlockable cards so you could tweak decks in more than one direction. Currently it's more of a "get rid of the crap cards" rather than "what way am I going to play this" situation.

Could someone elaborate a little bit on what actually playing this game is like? I assume that you are basically just playing Magic: The Gathering with some various meta-game around that? Or is there more to it than that?

More specifically, I seem to be getting the impression that you cannot build your own custom decks, but instead use pre-built decks? Or is that just the beginning option, and later on you can build proper decks? Which various editions/releases/whatever-the-fuck-they're-called-now are included?

Easiest way to see it in action is download and try the demo.  The basic game is you start with a few premade decks and play against an AI opponent.  As you win games you unlock additional cards for your premade deck which get auto added to it (but you can also remove cards from it to stay at 60 total cards).  The unlockable cards are almost all "better" than the standard cards.  You cannot directly change your land make up - system auto adjust it.  Completeing campaign fights also unlocks additional pre-made decks - 10 total.  There is no true deckbuilding, just premades, which is why i call it cripple magic, but at the same time it is good fuin and a lot of content for $10.  On top of the base 1 on 1 games, there are challenges like the old "magic the puzzling" games from the Duelist years ago, plus you can play 2 headed giant games, and 3 player vs 1 ai Archenemy games online.  Well worth checking out if you're a magic fan.
BTW, all 10 of the premade decks and their unlockables are available to browse on Wizards site (http://www.wizards.com/magic/digital/duelsoftheplaneswalkers.aspx?x=mtg/digital/d12/decks).
They will eventually release expansions/DLC for this game like they did with the older version too and it is better than the older Duels game.

Got this last night.  It is fun, but difficult with the starting packs.  It is a bit annoying I can't really modify them until I starting getting more cards unlocked.  You get 60 cards in a pack and can't have less than 60 cards in your deck....

I can see that deck building will be the weakness for this game.  That's sad considering that's what's fun for me in the base game.  I assumed there would be a point where I could unlock my own deck to build later?  No?

I started playing this a few days ago. I only get 5 minutes to play anything at any one time with the newborn being such a handful, so this is perfect. But I am reminded of why I never got too deep into Magic back when it first came out: I'm a horrible multitask-er and trying to keep track of everything is difficult at best for me. But, I am having some fun in the campaign. Especially when I come up against an opponent that it takes me a few times to get past. On the easiest setting. Sigh. Like I said, I'm not very good at this.

Keep in mind you can hit pause timer any time you want to take stock of the game.  Helps with remembering things.

It's strange you feel that way, because I actually find the game to be very simple and easy to follow. The hard part is remembering cards, but the limited decks in this must be much easier than 'full' magic. There is little to no multitasking, it's mostly memory and strategy.

I will never play the full game on principle, though. The pricing is absurd.

Okay maybe there's not a lot of in game multitasking with this version, but there is in my house. I get into the middle of a match and I either get a "hey honey can you..." or the little guy decides he needs something but since he's 3 weeks old is only able to communicate in heart breaking sobs and screams. Nothing on this earth will do as much to break your concentration.

Every time I think I've worked through the issues I have with the interface in the game, something happens to throw that out the window.  I somehow accidentally selected the opponent's creature instead of mine for a Vampire's Bite, and that pretty much broke my momentum for the rest of the game. 

It definitely feels very clunky.  If it weren't for the fact that it was the cheapest way around to play Magic, I probably would've quit by now to be honest.

I haven't fooled around with the settings much, but most of my issues stem from the cards being just slightly too small for me to read and many times recognize unless I zoom in on them.   If I could just get them to be like 15% bigger, I'd never have to do that.  Plus, targetting the right thing wouldn't be as much of an issue.  Most the time I'm wasting time zooming in to just see what card was played....annoying.

That's because both of those decks I played with in the previous 2 games I had never actually touched before.   :-P  As I said, I figured I'd use it as a chance to try some new decks and unlock some cards.  Unfortunately I'm finding most of the decks just plain suck, in comparison to the Black or Blue/Green deck I normally play.  I think only the Red Chandra deck I've had any other real success with. 

I don't know if some of them power up heavily once you unlock some cards, but most of the decks just aren't worth it.  That's my only complaint so far, like the game otherwise.

Most decks are decent I've found (when fully unlocked). If I am better than someone I find I will win with nearly every deck...

Apart from Strength of Stone, which is HUGELY draw dependent. With a good draw there you can win often, with a bad one you have almost no chance.

And probably the green beast deck. I never play that one because I find it super boring, so I can't speak for how good it might be. I suspect it's pretty poor, though.

All the decks are significantly better with full unlocks (if you put the right cards in), though some have better unlocks than others.

Good News: There's finally DLC for this game.

Bad News: The DLC is simply unlocked versions of decks already in the game, and foil versions of the same.  :oh_i_see:

They need to bust out some crazy stuff, like Ninjas! I use to love my ninja deck.

See here for the three DLC decks and the DLC unlocks for existing decks. http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27792805/Decks,_their_strategies_and_deckeditting_ideas

It's just a matter of when it is released.

Any ideas of when the new decks will hit? They look interesting.

No idea. Months I'd say.

From what I've read elsewhere, they contain some cards from the Innistrad expansion that's out in I think September, so probably not until around then. 

For the previous Duels game, it was 3 months from original release.  I'd expect about the same.  Course, techincally they have already relased "DLC" - the ability to pay them to fully unlock decks for you or convert them into foils.
Do people really pay for that?

I was half-tempted to unlock a Blue deck for $1.

Someone must.  Seems silly to me though because even if you all you care about is unlocking the cards in the easiest fashion possible you can you turn it on easy, set the computer as the weakest deck against yours and knock it out in no time.  Though truth be told I don't know that unlocking things in the first place really adds anything to the game for me.  I just want to play magic, I don't need them to throw a goofy unlock system in to try and trick me into playing more.

I'm having fun opening the packs by playing the campaign.  Its actually what keeps me wanting to play different decks against different opponents.  Paying to have them unlocked seems pretty opposite of "fun" for me.  I suppose many just want to play multiplayer and have fully opened packs.  However, the AI seems to lack any technical mistakes, where I, on the other hand, make plenty.  Part of that is due to switching decks so often, but I kind of get bored with a deck if I play it too long. 

I've avoided putting it on easy yet.  I did lower it to medium finally, because I was tired of having the computer pull out legendary cards while I'm still just trying to get my 3rd or 4th land card...  I raise it up on decks I've opened fully for the challenge though.

I have played the heck out of this, but I think I have squeezed out every last drop. Multi-player is not much fun, with players just playing the best decks or swapping to them as soon as you beat them with anything else.

I don't know how many people go on to the card game after it, but I can't help feeling that they're missing out on a lot of people by not making planeswalkers more flexible and detailed. As it is I'm not sure if I'll bother getting the DLC unless it does more that just give a couple of new cards.

So, does anyone else think the blue deck is absurdly good compared to the rest of them?

Yes.

The illusion one? It doesn't strike me as tremendously out of line.

It might be that I just know how to play it better than the other decks, but I definitely win with it a majority of the time, and I often get beaten by it when I'm not using it. 

Depends. In my view it goes:

Blue - Dominates all apart from white (when played as a proper weenie deck)
White - Beats nearly all, dominates red, can struggle against black.
Black - Can get smashed by blue and red burn, but can clean up everyone else
Red Burn - Very good and will win most games if you're better unless you get Sworded.

I've kept some stats on my games recently. (I usually play the same person a couple of times, and I don't counter decks.)

Black: 13 games, 2 losses
Blue: 27 games, 7 losses (4 loses were me trying to take games off a decent player playing white, I won 3 times)
White: 19 games, 4 losses (nearly all to other white decks, half when they got Mystic early and I got zlich)
Red burn: 6 games, 1 loss

And, surprisingly, Dragons: 11 games, 4 losses. Nowhere near as poorly performed as the deck 'feels'.

Still, some of the other decks (Elves, Machination) can get killer draws even if they are weak most of the time.

SoS and Beasts are clearly the worst two in my view, though SoS can at least be fun to play. Ancient Depths is also really bad, but it can annihilate sometimes with a good draw, which happens only very very rarely for SoS and almost never for Beasts.

Um, assuming your build ancient depths appropriately I find it to be one of the strongest decks around. I'd certainly rank it and the blue illusion deck as the two clear 'top ranking' decks available, with White weenie / vampires closely behind. Assuming you pull a lot of cards out of the original deck, you can increase i's consistency  substantially - it's modelled on a successful standard deck type after all.

Umm... Ancient Depths is ass. It's nowhere near one of the best decks. It gets eaten up by the top three decks (especially Blue and Black), and loses to others (Burn, Elves) as well unless it gets a good draw. Hell, it even loses to the worst decks in the game unless it gets a good draw.

Hence my point around modifying the deck to increase consistency.

Not sure if you have played magic before, but the ancient depths deck is based on a very successful standard archetype, and by pulling out cards appropriately you can make it into an extremely strong and very consistent deck type. It really, really is not 'ass' by any means - it's clearly one of the strongest  decks available, and the magic community seems fairly in agreement on that?

The blue deck has an advantage over it, but vampires and elves should be losing to it 60%+ of the time generally. Neither has the capacity to deal with a deck that consistently gets a large creature with shroud onto the table early on.

You can't increase consistency to a winnable enough position with the deck as you only get one or a couple of the key cards you need to win certain matchups. "Consistently get shroud" is complete bullshit. If you are pulling out a skyswallower (2 of 60 cards) that often you are in the middle of a really lucky run. For those that have direct damage or unblockable creatures you also need to pull a Living Destiny to stay alive.

Sure, every now and then you will pull explore and co early, then throw down a skyswallower or kick replicate something nasty before they've had time to blink, but it is nowhere near 60% of the time.

If by the magic community you mean the online DotP2012 community then, nah, they don't. It's generally considered to be mid-tier, around Elves and Machinations. Blue, White, Burn and Black are pretty universally considered the top 4 decks. I hardly see anyone who has trimmed their deck even play it anymore.

In case you missed it, the expansion pack for this dropped yesterday for $4.99 on Steam. I bought it, and only got a few games of the campaign at lunch. The campaign is strange. There are two tiers. The first looks like normal campaign matches against a single opponent. The bottom tier looks like you have to beat 3 opponents to unlock the next part. I did unlock Liliana's black deck.

The bottom tier is a three-versus-you archenemy fight which is way more fun than the other way around.

I don't see it. Hmm. Am I stupid?

Hmm, found it.

They didn't have it pop up under news for the original version, and I had to search by release date to find it in the end. Pretty strange publicity.

That Auramancer deck is a mean little baby too; it can seriously mess up someone's day.  I'm not as keen on the other two thus far, but haven't experimented much.

Bah, needed something new to play.  Haven't seriously touched Magic since Ice Age.  Let's see what happens.   :oh_i_see:

That was pretty much the same for me except I played last year's edition and liked it fine. I didn't expect the boss to roll over so easily on the campaign though.

Hmm, 5 bucks for 3 new decks.  Probably worth it.

EDIT: Friend bought it and convinced me to buy it as well.  Just played a game with each of the new decks.  I don't like the Cloudburst deck, but the other two seem fairly fun to play.  Definitely worth 5 bucks to freshen up the game though if nothing else.  New unlocks for each deck + 3 new decks is well worth it for anyone who like the game.

Yeah, Cloudburst I'm still very iffy about.  I'm playing it to unlock some cards and see if that doesn't make things click better.

 You guys do know that they purposefully butchered this game and it's potential gameplay to herd gamers to MTG : O right? You are ok with a company that would do something like that?

 I mean, if you unpack the game's data files, all of the cards are there.. they are just restricted. The cards could be made available to every deck, and full deck customization could be easily implemented in a day or two by a modder... and yet they forced the game developer to restrict everything. They are worried that full deck customization and access to enough cards would make them lose money on all of the rich brats who spend 100s a year on foil cards and other stupid things. :)

 You guys should feel ashamed supporting a company that uses such tactics on their customers.

:awesome_for_real:

In before the comedy begins.  

I value your opinion so much.

I'll feed the troll.

Yes, I am fine with it. MtG is their (Wizards') IP, and they're free to do with it as they please as far as I'm concerned. If I want the full product, I can make a little MtG:O account, but this game scratches the itch just fine. Treat it like a demo of sorts, if that makes you feel better about playing a throttled MtG experience.

It has probably very little to do with IP.  Mechanically, it's not possible for MTGO to go full MP-coop (do they even have 3+ player play yet?).  They'd still end up restricting the decks to at the very least theme decks.  So, why not just have an entirely separate client for such?  Which is what they did.  Much easier to balance this way.

Fun so far.  Annihilator ability is pure cheese, though.   :uhrr:

I might believe that if I got hit with an ad for MTG:O every time I entered or exited the game. The most nefarious thing I can highlight about this game is that it's a good advertisement for any full form of MTG. It's a great $10 taster for the paper card game or the Online service that gives you access to full deck customization. Or, it's a cheap ass game that scratches my itch for MTG without requiring me to turn into Mr. Suitcase.

So really, what the fuck are you on about?

I don't really agree with the business model, I think they could make Planeswalkers a better game and make more money without ruing their other markets, but I'll still play it for $10.

Especially as it's not making me pay more because I'm Australian.

I love this game and all, but there is an add for MTG:O in the game. Not enough that it bothers me or lets me even remember where, but it is there.

Mtgo (which is free) does include dotp cards for free and usable in a dotp cards only format. If you want to play this with full deckbuilding.

I think the occasional card expansions for this format are something like $3-5 for a pack of a few hundred cards, and I'm not sure if you can use the format with a trial account, so you may have to pay the $10 to move from a trial to a real account...  though that gets you a $10 gift certificate to the store to buy the DOTP cards.

A new DLC pack came out about two weeks ago with two decks for two bucks (or one buck if you got it on the Thanksgiving sale, take that everyone who isn't in the US!  :oh_i_see: ).  Both decks are very nice, they're a white/red lifegain-beatdown deck and a mono-black zombie deck that kicks the crap out of the old mono-black vampire deck in my opinion.  While the old deck was some vampires, some skeletons, some graveyard control, some kitchen sink, the the new deck asks just two questions: Is it a zombie? and Is it dead?  If the answer to the first question is yes, then play it.  If the answer to the second is yes, pull it from your graveyard and play it.  It has a laser-sharp focus on its theme that I really appreciate, and it's always fun to let an opponent kill your creatures, just to instantly pull them out of the graveyard and slap them back on the table.

It's worth the insignificant price.

Did it add cards to the old decks too?

No.  Apparently older decks only receive card updates in full-fledged "expansion packs".  This was only a "deck pack", thus the lower price.

Is there a website/active forum where people post deck builds for this game?  Googling only gets me random random forum bs that's not very useful.  I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what to cut on a few decks and was looking for some ideas.

The official magic forum for the game seemed the best. Advice is a bit dodgy sometimes IMO.

Is there a group here on f13 that actively plays/competes a la Blood Bowl?  Can we get something going like that, or is it not possible due to how the game/client works?

It's more that the game doesn't have enough depth to get going in that way. Plus there are probably fewer players.

There is an mtgo forum in the graveyard.