duel of the planeswalkers 2014

[mr friendly guy]

So I finally got it off steam for my PC. This is the latest instalment of Magic the Gathering's game for PC and tablets. So far I have only played mainly with Avacyn's glory (white deck with human weenies which get more powerful, supplemented with angels for the win), and the Sliver deck (red, white, green combo of slivers).

There is an RPG element / story mode (sort of), you help the planeswalker Chandra through her quest in revenge against another planeswalker known as Ramaz. The opponents are fun, and against Ramaz you fight in a mode which is a combination of Archenemy and Two headed giant. That is you and Chandra team up with 30 shared life as in two headed giant mode (so a spell that does 5 damage to all players, will do 10 damage to you since you share the life), while Ramaz starts off with 40 life similar to the Archenemy mode, but without arch enemy powers. The RPG element / story mode is very weak, composed of a few animations as you progress, while Chandra narrates all the clues you gather until you finally find Ramaz. For comparison, some fighting games like Injustice for all and DC vs Mortal Kombat had a better sense of story in one scene compared to the whole of DoTP 2014. Nevertheless having this type of RPG element does improve the game from previous editions IMO.

There is of course a revenge campaign again, where you fight the relevant planeswalkers again. So far I have unlocked only those two decks, and it seems the game won't even let me play some of the other decks (I assume it wants me to progress and unlock other accessible decks before I can try those).

It seems more "fluid" than the previous games with controls, and you also have the option of "attack with all creatures".

Other decks appear to be
a) a land intensive deck to summon up the Eldrazi which reminds me of Kiora Atua deck from DotP 2012

b) Ajani has an enchantment based white deck (with some life gaining element like his deck in DotP 2013). He has an enchantment granting a creature "protection from creatures" making it essentially unblockable. Coupled with a few other enchantments which pump up his creature, it becomes irritating to deal with.

c) Jace's has an illusion deck (as in 2012, but no milling deck like DoTP 2013 ).

d) Liliana has a zombie based deck

e) Garruk once again has a green creature deck

f) the Dimir guild has a blue/green deck, which has limited milling ability, but doesn't strike me as powerful (in milling terms) as say Jace's deck in DoTP 2013.

g) Chandra of course has her red based deck, which so far in my playtest seems weaker than previous decks, but it might be because I don't play well with pure red based decks.

Custom game allows you again to play two headed giant or multiplayer, up to 4 players. What I like about this custom game is that one can select to play or have the opponents play with a random deck

There is also a sealed deck format, which I haven't tried yet. The game does allow you to create your own deck in this format, at least up to two slots and if you want more, you can purchase it. Of course its not as flexible as the original duel of the planeswalkers way back in the 90s where you can create your own deck from any cards (as opposed to choosing the cards from boosters), which I suspect is because they want you to get into the real card game, so they can't let you create your own deck on a computer at a fraction of the cost to buy the real cards.

Generally I am happy with my purchase. Any one else tried this? What do you guys think?

[mr friendly guy]

Thread necro.

Well since no one else wants to discuss this I thought I will, especially since the new DLC is coming up in September.
I am surprise some MTG affectionados like Formless haven't commented yet.

Anyway I will comment on more stuff from the game.

1. Sealed Deck - not my cup of tea, but its not without its challenges.

You select cards from a random pool and create decks against your opponent who operates under the same limitations. I don't like it so much as the card choices are limited, and makes it hard to create a deck which meshes well together.

2. Online play - I love this part. Particularly Two headed giant format. It requires communication with your team mate, and there have been times where we have only won because we communicated.

Using the Eldrazi deck is more fun for two headed giant format. You have time to really bring out your creatures.

There a few downsides
a) playing with a team mate who doesn't speak the same language as you. It kind of limits team work, which IMO is integral to winning this format.

b) Some players just waste time reading the cards. One game got so bad all other players left because he/she/it had to continually pause the game to read the spells being cast even if it was exactly the same spell he cast a few turns ago.

c) team mates who don't have any idea how to work together - either they bad mouth you on the open channel instead of the private channel (and reveal what cards we have in hand),

or accidentally kills your creature by forcing everyone to sacrifice a creature, when one of the opponents doesn't even have a creature. Naturally he ran away after wiping out my 12/12 creature with annihilator 2. The opponents even thanked him.

But the most fun is

3. Modding the decks (ie game modifications by outside programmers)

Ha ha ha. Modding tools have gotten to the stage where you can not only download the preconstructed decks by modders, but they give you the tools to construct your own decks. This is more fun, because I find that sometimes I lose because my deck isn't as well constructed as it can be, and Wizards will never ever create a DotP with the ability to create your own decks because the game is meant to get you hooked into collecting the physical cards to create your own deck.

Since then I have tested my modded decks against the decks in game (and reconstructed decks from previous versions of DoTP) and they have acquitted themselves pretty well, without me stocking them full of restricted or banned cards.

[TheFeniX]

They ever fix this or this? I couldn't get a straight answer from anyone for 2013 which scared me away from it.

[mr friendly guy]

What exactly is the problem displayed on the scans? Its not obvious to me, but the battlefield for 2014 is quite different.

[Grumman]

I used to play Magic, and would be happy to play a game like DotP, but not the way it's been done by Wizards.

What exactly is the problem displayed on the scans? Its not obvious to me, but the battlefield for 2014 is quite different.

I think he's talking about the number of lands - you'd have to have incredibly bad luck to draw all of your lands and practically nothing else, like in that second screenshot.

[mr friendly guy]

Ah, that occasionally happens, but rarely. To clarify I mean you can draw lots of land (more than you like), but I have never had a draw with all land and nothing else.

BTW Grunman, what don't you like about DoTP. My main dislike was the lack of ability to create your own deck. However with the power of modding that no longer is a problem. No doubt Wizards would not be pleased that modders can create a deck in advance of the release, although we would be missing the challengers and RPG elements so we would still need to buy the DLC.

[Grumman]

BTW Grunman, what don't you like about DoTP. My main dislike was the lack of ability to create your own deck. However with the power of modding that no longer is a problem. No doubt Wizards would not be pleased that modders can create a deck in advance of the release, although we would be missing the challengers and RPG elements so we would still need to buy the DLC.

The restricted decks were certainly one of the more annoying things when I tried the demo - I wanted to see how a particular card worked, but Wizards only let you put one in the deck, so it took something like twenty or thirty restarts to get it. I was also disappointed that a game called Duel of the Planeswalkers didn't actually let you try the Planeswalker cards.

Apart from that, I dislike the Madden release strategy. I'd rather have one core game that gets expanded every year than half a dozen games that are incompatible with one another.

[mr friendly guy]

BTW Grunman, what don't you like about DoTP. My main dislike was the lack of ability to create your own deck. However with the power of modding that no longer is a problem. No doubt Wizards would not be pleased that modders can create a deck in advance of the release, although we would be missing the challengers and RPG elements so we would still need to buy the DLC.

The restricted decks were certainly one of the more annoying things when I tried the demo - I wanted to see how a particular card worked, but Wizards only let you put one in the deck, so it took something like twenty or thirty restarts to get it. I was also disappointed that a game called Duel of the Planeswalkers didn't actually let you try the Planeswalker cards.

Apart from that, I dislike the Madden release strategy. I'd rather have one core game that gets expanded every year than half a dozen games that are incompatible with one another.

Buddy, the power of modding fixes all that. The friendly folks at slightlymagic.net have created Planeswalker cards (although its a bit trick because the game doesn't support planeswalkers per se, so they coded it as a special type of enchantment immune to destroy enchantment spells).

Even the testing isn't a problem. Some of the modders have cards which give a "god mode" facility for testing. Literally it lets you bring out the card from your library and cast it without paying the cost. This is obviously to test if new cards you created work as expected.

I agree in principle of the core game with expansion, however DoTP 2014 runs quite differently from DoTP 2013, so they had to use a different one that's incompatible with previous versions. IMO it runs more smoothly and I am enjoying it better than DoTP 2013. And in what is becoming repetitive, mods have a way around this as well to an extent. They can recreate older decks from previous expansions if you want to play against them which renders the issue of having compatibility a bit moot IMO.