Magic Duels: Short review

Magic Duels is the latest in the long line of constantly title changing Duels of the Planeswalkers products. It changes a couple things from the earlier products, though I haven't played last year's version (in spite of owning it) so I can't speak too keenly to how much was changed from there. I know there was some actual pay to win gating involved, of which there is not here, so breath easy if that came to mind.

The biggest change over is that Magic Duels is not only free to play with the usual cash stop circumstances to govern its possible longevity, but also that it promises to be updated on a regular basis as opposed to the previous yearly version with an expansion, built from the full back card pool.. They had originally hoped to get the first major update out last week, but pushed it back over QA issues that I can forgive, especially since I never paid for the game.

As such, this isn't going to be a super complicated, in depth review. I just want to give a general lowdown on the product, especially since it is ultimately two core things that make it easy to try - It is first and foremost Magic which is a well known product everyone should try at least once, and second it is completely free to give it a shot and honestly it is totally playable at the free level.

I've actually waffled around a lot on how to review this game, since it's hard to really not recommend, so I've decided on a very tight three main points of discussion review rather than meandering around and maybe missing the point.

The Good Magic Duels is a rebuild of the earlier games in the series and basically does so as a rather limited f2p game. I mean limited in both senses of the word; there isn't a lot to spend money on, and the game isn't especially massive anyway. It is designed around being a simple, casual introductory product. In a lot of ways it does feel like the game is limited in a way that will hurt its long term conversion rate - that is, the number of free players who pay money into the game - but for a casual game to play while sipping coffee, this game is close to ideal.

The best casual element, besides being well and open to most people's deck building styles (no combo just yet) is that packs can not contain duplicates past the number you're allowed to put in your deck. As opposed to other f2p games, where they'll happily pay you pennies on the dollar to "dust" or whatever additional cards, you can buy a certain number of packs per set and that is it. Sure, we're only on set one, but that's still a hell of a lot nicer than the way it works in other games. You grind coins at a rate of about a pack every 12 or so games, which is slow, but with dailies you tend to go a little bit faster at the least. Every card you open is essentially an additional card, though, as the rate of unplayable cards is pretty low and the above factor is really nice.

The game also has a guided deckbuilder, which I like the concept of, though it is a bit of a mixed bag. Still - if you were a new player, being able to pick an archetype and have the AI help you through building a new deck is probably of great help. The game provides enough dual lands, off the bat, that any of the two color decks will have at least a quasi-functional mana base.

You have a five games of five characters campaign, with lots of tutorials mixed in to get you up to speed on how the game implements the rules. Following that, you can play against the AI with random decks or play online, which I generally haven't bothered with too much. Online play isn't really all that profitable and generally comes down to whoever gets the better hand - the card pool isn't really deep enough for much besides the synergy decks (elf, thopters, etc) and basic aggro as of yet.

As a small bonus, the game adds "flip" planeswalkers as the first implementation of planeswalkers, a card type previously not in the game. Flip walkers start as creatures and undergo a little 'quest' to become a planeswalker. They're basically the best implementation of the card type and a lot of fun to play around with. All five of them are, essentially, an instant inclusion in every deck that can support them, which feels fine since they're all pretty general cards.

Still, the basic shell of the game is good. Once you get a handle on where the timer ticks and what it does, the game moves at a brisk pace and works against the AI or in online duels (mostly) just fine. It's not an astounding product, but it is magic, and magic is good.

The Bad There's a long list of multiple oddities in Duels. From my understanding, the product is meant to be constantly updating, so I'm going to ignore the bugs: They're going to fix them, but I do want to warn you I guess, it is a buggy product. It crashes, it pops up the stupid windows 7 "your color scheme durr" prompt (though that stopped by putting it into windowed mode, so there is that) and it has all sorts of weirdness when it comes to your collection. I ran into a common (though who knows how common) bug where I attempted to buy the last three packs from the first set, and it took my earned currency but did nothing. You have to report it to support, but they took day and a half to get it sorted out, plus gave me a small bonus for the hassle. Nothing really to complain about in that, sure it's a touch annoying, but no big deal.

The bug that always trips people up is that dailies require you to do the "archetype" quests using decks created in the deck wizard. You can't just use a random deck you made, which is annoying, but I honestly don't have much trouble completing them. Apparently they're getting removed in the next patch, so I guess there's no big deal really. I enjoy the variety, really, so it's a bit of a shame in that regard ... But I guess I could just make whatever I wanted, anyway, and play that.

The music is just plain weaker than earlier DOTP versions, especially the really great tracks in DOTP 2014, like Zendikar theme or the Main theme which I would actually listen to out of the game.

The campaigns, while fun and a little creative, are also brutally random and the deck design isn't very helpful. I would personally have built the campaign around demonstrating to new players how the various colors are flavored, which they did, but also which archetypes suit given colors ... Which they didn't really. The blue decks have random control, mill and aggro elements while the green decks ramp off into nowhere. They're just not as good an introduction as I would have liked.

I actually did all 15 of them with, I think, 2 losses - one to mana screw and one to actually losing albeit under somewhat random circumstances. One of them I actually broke the win condition, which was supposed to be 'surviving until turn 15'. Just ended up killing the dude instead.

Also the AI decks are ... Generally pretty random and built around specific cards, from each color, for its color make up. It is a bit dull, given there are archetypes available to all of them and it seems to use less than it should. I don't really know why the hard AIs decks are so lackluster, but you don't get to see as much of the game as you should.

It's also of note that the development attitude toward the two colorless lands in the game - Rogue's Passage and Foundry of the Consuls - is annoying. Players don't realize when they win over opposing mana screw, as the AI never reveals its hands. On the other hand, watching the AI perfectly chain spells in a three color deck with multiple colorless lands on the table is just flustering, and again, I really don't understand the thought that went into development. Even worse, it forces them into the deck wizard decks, which is just aggravating. There's nothing worse than losing to your own mana as the AI casually glides forward on three colors hitting all its symbols on five lands with two colorless lands.

The Ugly One of the biggest things that really stands out for Magic Origins, that might get worse or better, is the 4:3:2:1 split on deck building with commons, uncommons, rare and mythics. I've seen this done in other games and it is always bad. For one thing, it makes magic even higher variance than it usually is. It turns a lot of games into "who draws their rares", which is especially damning with the two rare board wipes. It also means a lot of themes may appear supported, but they aren't.

If you can't balance the product around having access to four of a card, the easier and better solution is to not put the card in the game. You end up with a lot of games, especially against the AI, where it throws down a string of rares and you just get money-rushed out. This doesn't highlight the good of Magic, it makes it look stupid. By treating them as something different, you make the game play worse.

There are two big other ugly things.

While I said I like the core concept of the deck wizard, and think the dailies should remain coupled to it for the sake of variety, the deck wizard in its current build is horrible and extremely unenjoyable. First and foremost, and this extends to AI decks as well, it doesn't make any decisions about which lands to put in. You (often) end up with your full allocation of colorless and enters the battlefield tapped lands, which can really screw a draw up and make for some incredibly unfun play. I talked about this earlier, but it really gets under your skin.

Second, it tends to make choices that lead to ... Very grindy, very slugfest decks of large monsters mashing into each other. While this is sort of fun if it goes well, the game simply doesn't have enough filtering or deck manipulation to control mana flood or mana screw, leading to some really hilariously awful games where you die mana flooded ... On four lands.

There is no reason to have put gates in over scry lands other than dumb, arbitrary limits. A bunch of other scry stuff is missing too, and I don't know why. Why bother with disperse when you could put voyager's end in, why not have lightning javelin or other scry options? The mediocre attempt at balance only makes for swingier, higher variance games and the deck wizard worsens this. Things like the BG elf deck refusing to offer you Elvish Visionary to put in your deck, or the aggro decks have no low drops and a bunch of tap lands teaches the wrong lessons. The game is an introductory product, which shouldn't be dumbed down (which it is) and instead guide players through learning and understanding the game.

The other thing is ... There are a lot of card choices and design choices that come from this weird, half-assed attitude toward introductory products. You can't cast during the upkeep phase, and passing priority isn't as explicit as I would like. There is also just a shallowness of cards that sort of surprises me, since the game ... Sells packs... And they surely could have focused on coding more cards. The game had a chance to start with multiple sets, maybe a selection of Khans block cards that could be easily coded, and instead just came out with as little as possible. Bare minimum isn't a great idea when it is your entire revenue stream, and people like choosing between things. The illusion of choice is a powerful one.
 
I've also read 2HG doesn't work properly, but I don't like 2HG for constructed, so I haven't tried it. My understanding is it tends to fail to connect (but the online component does that in general) and that it provides phantom coins that can't be spent. That's just weird stuff. There's lots of bugs in the game, that's for certain.

In conclusion Magic Duels is a reasonable introductory product that is supposed to update sometime in the next few weeks with a whole slew of new cards. That being said, WoTC really struggles with teaching people how to play, and all the voiced tutorials in the world can't turn a beginner into someone who gets the game. Theories of card economy and tempo are just completely absent.

Still - It is a free, and as you can tell, I've played a little bit every day since it came out. I've found it fun to play while painting or other hobbies, grinding gold or building decks to go along with things that require more brain power. I wish the project director either had a better idea what he or she was doing, or their hands weren't so tied (the game does stink of wotc's cargo cult slash focus group design problems) but it's still good.

I should note that for me, I don't mind grinding cards, trying out sub-optimal cards and just fooling around with the deck builder. It doesn't bother me to lose, here or there, to the AI or in matched games. The fun of the game is playing magic, but for some people, that isn't enough. If it isn't for you ... Well, like I said, it's a f2p game.