MtG:Duels of the Planeswalkers (2009) or WotC gets half a brain.

[Ionsniper]

Man I remember playing this game back in 98. The old school version. Never ebat it but was definately fun as hell making decks and such and playing against friends. Ill probably give this one a go.

[Elerion]

Old Shandalar is a bucket of fucking awesome, the only sad thing is I end up making roughly the same deck every time because of some gigantic design flaws:
First and biggest: When moving through dungeons you don't regain life after each battle.

It's a completely moronic requirement, because it makes life management the name of the game and invalidates any strategy that willingly takes damage in order to gain time/card advantage (like black suicide, or most classic blue control decks, or most combo decks).

Second: Endgame opponent HP is 30+
Again, completely ridiculous because it is very unfavourable for any deck trying to win on time advantage, like Sligh or Suicide.

Third: Opponents have 120+ card decks
Even more idiocy. Not only does it make games needlessly random because the computer has a poorly built deck that feeds him crap too often, it also invalidates any milling strategy.

Fourth: Circles of Protection and white's plethora of other sideboard cards are stupid overpowered when you know what color decks you will be facing. The other colors get dick all for color hosing, and often have no way to deal with the hosers.

As a result of all this, blue/white control with ivory towers and a fat finisher like Serra reigns even more supreme than it actually did during the day.

I have beat it with a White Weenie+splash variant too, but it was harder because of the health issue.


If I was remaking Shandalar, I would give all players 20hp, 60 card decks, max 4 of each card. Then opponent difficulty will be purely the strength of their decks and, if possible, their AI. Of course, add a bunch of more cards. Cherry pick if necessary, just because we want Necropotence doesn't mean we want Wooly Mammoths. Just because we want Jackal Pup, we don't need Dirtcowl Wurm.

[Zeitgeist]

Originally Posted by Elerion

Of course, add a bunch of more cards. Cherry pick if necessary, just because we want Necropotence doesn't mean we want Wooly Mammoths. Just because we want Jackal Pup, we don't need Dirtcowl Wurm.

QFT


I spend more time with that game than actually playing with friends in the beginning.
I never really explored the shandalar part and just went straight to "vs. PC".
Too bad the AI really sucked and you could basically win every time with your discard deck etc.

I wish this game would somehow be moddable so you could add all the cards you want to play versus your friends.

[tad10]

Elerion pretty much covered the issues with the Shandalar portion of the game. +1nets!

Edit: Just one funny issue I remember -- most (all?) of the multi-color AI decks don't have dual-lands -- just flat out retarded design.

Manalink 2.0 does add more cards.
List of new Cards in Manalink 2.0

It's really too bad Microprose didn't release the initial version of the game with TCP/IP. Would have been much more succesful.

[Intox]

Any one have any new info on this? Looking foward to a MTG coldcept saga is nice every once in a while.

[Lusiphur]

Originally Posted by Elerion

Second: Endgame opponent HP is 30+
Again, completely ridiculous because it is very unfavourable for any deck trying to win on time advantage, like Sligh or Suicide.

Shrug. I used to beat it with a Sligh variant every time.

It was an awesome game for its time that I wasted many, many happy hours on.

If the new one isn't too expensive on XBL I will be picking it up.

[Zarcath]

I got to play the demo today. Not sure what to say about it, it's magic on a console.

You're given about a 5 second idle window to perform actions during phases, with the option to pause the timer so you can think or take more actions. if you can't perform anything (tapped out, not enough mana, sorcery), it'll auto skip that phase. Turns take about 20-30 seconds to get through. When the computer performs actions you have to press Y to confirm (even if you can't respond to it, which can get annoying if you're tapped out).

I only had time to play one AI in the campaign mode. I started with a basic red starter and basic green. You can select what deck you want to use. Looks like the cardset is mostly based of tenth edition. I didn't see any hint of boosters or expanded cardsets in the demo. It looks like each AI opponent has 17 cards that you can unlock from beating them. I think you get 2 cards from the pool of 17 every win, I don't know if it's 2 new cards or you can get duplicates or what the criteria is for selection. When I beat the first opponent it offered me a shivan dragon and spark, if I unlocked the demo for the full game (which I can't yet).

Graphics are shiny, music choice is questionable. For some reason it didn't feel as fun as magic online. Maybe because you're pretty much "locked" into the game. In MTGO I can browse my cards and do trades while i'm dueling, or be in multiple duels.

I couldn't see the XBLive game options. For single player that's an option for co-op dueling, lets you use 2 controllers, and I guess you battle 1 computer as a team.

[RandomChanter]

Lol, if I can't truly make my own deck (fuck editing 17 cards), then forget it. Sure it's lame that older cards aren't in it, but I could deal with that.

50% of the fun of Magic is making your own deck and seeing how it fares. If it's cheap, maybe I'll look into it, but I'm not paying 1600 points for 50% of the fun of the game.

[Zarcath]

I'll have to play the 2nd AI but the first AI had a pool of 17 cards unto themselves. There were about 15 or so computer opponents, so if they all follow the 17 card guideline that's 255 cards (they probably have less the higher you go up). Again, I don't know if you only win 1x of that card or you just get access to it. It's only the demo so I can't win any cards, so I don't know what the deck editing is like. If you have to beat all of the computer AI just to build up your card pool though, that could get tedious fast.

[Hachima]

Have they announced a release date yet? Also is this some private demo you are playing?

[Zarcath]

Alright I was mistaken

There's 8 pre-constructed decks. 2 are available to you from the start. You unlock the other 6 by plaing through the campaign. The 6 other decks are spread out over 16 opponents. Each deck has 17 unlockable cards. Winning duels with a deck unlocks cards. It looks like you have to edit the pre-cons to get a custom deck and you're stuck using the 2 pre-con mono decks, you can't splash it with each other.

Playing a developer demo of the XBLA trial, no idea how old this build is.

blah, just ran into something annoying. So I attacked during my attack phase and waited for AI to declare blockers. Once he declared blockers, I responded with instants that destroyed his 2 blockers. But the game treated it as if my creatures had been blocked and the damage didn't go through to the player.

[Ronne]

Originally Posted by Zarcath

blah, just ran into something annoying. So I attacked during my attack phase and waited for AI to declare blockers. Once he declared blockers, I responded with instants that destroyed his 2 blockers. But the game treated it as if my creatures had been blocked and the damage didn't go through to the player.

That's how it should work. The attacking creatures are still blocked, even if the blocking creatures aren't there any more. They would need trample to get through at that point.

[Zeitgeist]

Originally Posted by Ronne

That's how it should work. The attacking creatures are still blocked, even if the blocking creatures aren't there any more. They would need trample to get through at that point.

I very much believe it behaved the same way with the old MtG game.
Honestly, I always thought this was a bug, but you never stop learning new things about the rules.

[Zarcath]

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure in MTGO, you declare blockers, at which point you can play instants in response to the blockers being declared, the instants resolve before the declaration of blockers. I'm pretty sure I wasn't given the opportunity to do that, it just went straight to my creatures being blocked.

Mechanics wise it's okay, just how they presented responses seems wrong. I'm not disputing how it resolved.

[Hathe]

Once I get my 360 HDD going I'll be giving this a try, sounds fun!