I wanted to do a follow up review to briefly address how the game has changed, but since this isn't an overly exciting prospect, I'm going to cut the usual introductory preamble short and just immediately go to a cut. That's not to say this is negative, but if you're not interested, why waste your time?
As I said, Magic Duels has now been patched three times, which brings the total number of cards up to 853 and it now offers five different packs in the store. A fair number of the new cards, of note, are added via the starter box and are therefore free to new players. I think it's like 5-9 per set. 3 updates and 5 sets. Which might sound a little odd, but following the Battle for Zendikar (set 2) delay, the developers pushed back set 3 and bundled it up with set 4. Set 4 and Set 5, however, released on time.
Set two was released late enough I think it diluted a lot of the would be fanfare, but the game still mostly improved barring a couple weird bugs. One of the oddest bugs, which has still not been adequately explained to me, was in the AI deck selector for Hard, which was until some additional patching the primary means to "do the f2p grind" and sort of forced onto players. During this period, the AI would generally select a deck based around blue and white, and with it a specific subset of removal cards. The forums were awash with complaining.
Set three and four were released on time for Set four's release, and it brought with it a huge influx of cards and most of the game's major bugs were fixed up. It also brought with it a design decision to change how the game interpreted priority, which is to say, when a player was allowed to make a move. This change unfortunately angered a lot of players for two particular reasons; first, it was incredibly annoying. The game would essentially "skip around" and feel unlike magic. Second, it was buggy. Some abilities did not engage with your opportunity to 'make a move', so the game would just ... Skip them, often losing players games or making cards less valuable than they should be. The forums were awash with complaining.
On the other hand, in reaction to the complaints about the AI for Set two's patch, the AI during the OGW+SOI patch era was extremely easy and buffs to the starter box made the game easier than ever to get into. The only problem was, well, the above issue. For one, it was pretty lame to lose games to bugginess like it emptying your mana pool before you use it under some circumstances, and for two, it's not really a good way to introduce Magic to anyone. It was essentially a game operating with 75% of magic's rules, instead of the 95% Duels usually had, which ended up feeling rather not like Magic at times.
I had planned to write a strategy guide to getting started for that period, but unfortunately, promises by the developers they'd patch the game's functioning back to "normal" eventually turned into an admission they only have the resources to patch with content patches, so it was going to wait. Since you don't want to recommend what ultimately comes off as a shakey product, I avoided doing the planned write up.Which was sort of regretful.
Set 5 is the current release, "Eldritch Moon". Compared to the previous two patches, there are three primary changes, at least insofar as relative comparisons between specific patches. The priority system has been switched back, which is good. In fact, the game is largely bug free at this point, except for an odd issue where loading a deck to play vs the AI (and only vs the AI, from what I've read and seen) can CTD the game.
Which is annoying, but not a big deal. There are also supposedly some priority system issues, where it doesn't or won't let you act in the way you're supposed to, but I'm not too certain about these. The game has some priority issues to begin with - I don't think you can end of combat spells, there's no upkeep unless triggered etc, for example - so a couple stray reports doesn't necessarily imply an issue.
The game has also seen some general QoL improvements, though one of these was adjusted down as well and there are some issues. Versus games have been slowly adjusted to be more rewarding over the last few sets, and with Eldritch Moon they've added quite a few "Versus match" specific Daily quests while bringing some of the daily quests down in payout. Other adjustments include some improvements to the deck filter in the deck builder, remembering this and that, and generally working a little smoother.
Unfortunately, this leads into the big issue of whether or not the game is "worth getting into" at this point.
With the advent of this patch, and set 5's introduction, the general power level of the AI Hard decks is moderately improved and is probably, relative to the available card pool, at its hardest. This is not to say I find it actively hard; rather, that's relative to what I have - which is everything - which is pretty hard on new players. The game's grind is now entirely massive, hundreds of hours of opening packs.If you like opening packs, the grind is reasonable. You don't grind for a lot of rewards at the start and then it slows to a trickle, 25 minutes to 50 minutes a day is probably 2.5 packs which is a pretty consistent run. But if you want to get to the end, you run into a long grind, and the other problem.
In tournament magic there are very few people who reach the end game of magic, and even then, they've still got very rare achievements to work toward. Magic Duels, on the other hand, has nothing at the top end and the developers have largely implied it never essentially will. So if you don't enjoy the grind, you're going to get to the end, and then find nothing. You can rank up in online play, but it doesn't do much other than give you a set of achievements once.
Basically, Magic Duels has lots of content, but has reached a point where it looks like the developers are given just enough to ship a patch each set and keeping that on track consumes nearly all of their resources. The game looks to have little expansion ahead of it, beyond the slow expansion of sets four times a year. It remains the best introductory product, both in terms of introducing a new player and for less experienced players an inexpensive means to try out the mechanics of new sets. For me, it remains a nice way to have a decent idea how a set players, or to play with sillier cards that aren't going to see much player in standard or in my cube.
I can't really offer new players much in the way of unique deck-building advice - you do all the campaigns which gives you quite a few packs, buy from whichever set you prefer (I think SoI is still the best starter) then you basically get your initial packs and start building mono-red and UW skies aggro into RB vampires til you can construct working midrange or ramp decks, but that takes a while. The grind is a bit silly in that the first two sets you finish (be is BFZ+ORI or SOI+EMN) are such a monumentally larger benefit than the next two, so while you still get new cards - and with them new decks - you find your existing decks don't improve as much.Anyway, I still think Duels is a solid product, with little change from my review from last year except the grind is deeper to go with the card pool being deeper. That's pretty acceptable, more content is more content, and beyond that not much else - now that we're in this version - has really changed beyond the game's dailies and versus matches being more rewarding
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