EPTAs someone who's loved trading card games, since Pokemon, Magic the Gathering came naturally to me.
I was very pleased with both of Wizard's Duels of the Planeswalkers and I wanted to share a review with you to encourage you to try the game. If you're a trading card game enthusiast and you've tried digital forms like the GBA Pokemon Trading card game you're almost sure to enjoy this. If you're a Hearthstone enthusiast, you can enjoy some of the complexity of magic, learn the roots of the hearthstone game: the mechanics that hearthstone tried to simplify and the frustrations they tried to remove.
Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 and 2015 are both primarily single player games. You can play 2014 in a sealed format online against others, but it costs money to make more than 1 or 2 sealed decks and you can't do constructed for online play. In 2015, you can build your own decks, paying at most 14*2=28$ for all of the premium cards. But most deck archetypes are very strict and don't lead to experimentation because Gatherer's made the card pool so small. While the card pool is probably still as large as Hearthstone's, it just feels too limited compared to paper magic.
The single player game in 2014 is rather frustrating. Most of the decks you face in the campaign are instances. This means they draw the same and play the same every game. They never have a bad draw, and most get godlike draws (relentless rats draws maybe 5 lands and then 55 rats in a row). Only planes bosses and planeswalkers do not behave as instances. Most of the time these games are as much a game of deckbuilding strategy as they are just mulliganing your hand until you get something that can counter your opponent.
The best part of 2014 was unlocking cards, and the revenge campaign against just the bosses. As someone new to magic, it was really fun to see some of the old cards like Baneslayer Angel and Shivan Dragon in action. I was like a child again, experiencing the joy of discovery around every corner. I was also able to learn a lot about how the game functioned just from playing it in a controlled environment (eg. just when instants can be played and how burn decks function).
In 2014, changing the game difficulty from Mage (easy) to Planeswalker made the AI harder but in the wrong way. The AI got more cards at higher difficulties. I felt this was a really cheesy way to make the AI more difficult even if it was necessary since even though I was making "good" decisions I would lose games due to the inherent card disadvantage.
If you just play singleplayer, the games are 10$ each to (eventually) get all the cards in 2014, and 87% of the cards in 2015. You can use some codes to speed up the unlocking in 2014. A lot of people complain that duels of the planeswalkers is too expensive but compared to paper magic, each game costs less than some rare cards for over 100 hours of entertainment. (I have 79 hours on 2014 and 26 on 2015). The last 13% of cards in 2014 are premium and cost up to 28$ to get. you don't really need them unless you intend to play online.
Duels 2015 was in many ways a downgrade from 2014. The UI is much slower, almost nonresponsive. I ran both games in windowed mode and even then just hitting play took at least 5 seconds to lead to an action. Still, compared to MTGO (Magic the Gathering Online) or Cockatrice, the interface of Duels of the Planeswalkers is beautiful. Like an average looking girl in engineering.
Duels 2015 also has very few instances which is a plus.
Some of the decks in 2015 are almost impossible to beat on the default archmage difficulty when you're just starting and don't have any good cards. I recommend either going through the explore section of the first plane a few times to get more cards or lowering the difficulty.
Otherwise the only major difference is that you can deck build. Since the card pool is so small, the players who enjoy making extreme combo decks may not get as much enjoyment from the game as I do. People who enjoy playing strong cards or enjoy playing to win are the people who will enjoy this game the most. (Chant of the Mul'Daya deck in duels 2014 lets you play Eldrazi such as the mighty Emrakul the Aeons Torn). Collectors, and traders will find almost no enjoyment from Duels since the point of the game is to play it XD. You don't get to hold the cards.
The biggest downside of online magic is that you don't get the social aspect of being able to talk with others. Unlike hearthstone, you can type to other people online, and the community is nice, but of course the online experience is not the same as irl. The biggest plus is you can play anytime. 2015 is even available on the iPad! (Though there are bad reviews for the iPad).
- Addictiveness 5/5
- Cost 5/5
- Frustrating? Yes. Sometimes. Oh my god, give me a land! No no not that many lands!
- UI 2/5
- Bugs? How did my 11/11 Seraph of the Masses die to Anger of the Gods?
TL;DR Should you get it? Only if you're into single player experiences and trading card games. If you're a magic enthusiast you should try it out since it's only 10$, the cost of 3 packs. I recommend you get 2015 instead of 2014, then get 2014 if you liked 2015. Both are available on steam.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5TVp4OJ.png)
The game before this I got Beastmaster Ascension out and swung in with 8 6/6s for an OTK on turn 5.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Fx3fuoR.png)
That's all the white cards.
