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Magic - Duel of the planeswalkers 2014

Picked up 2013 a few weeks ago. Played a bit. Still not sure what I'm doing half the time. And as complicated as some of the cards are, I can't imagine playing this game at a table.
 
CPA said:
Picked up 2013 a few weeks ago. Played a bit. Still not sure what I'm doing half the time. And as complicated as some of the cards are, I can't imagine playing this game at a table.
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I played a long time ago (end of elementary school) and don't remember it being all that complicated. I'm sure they've had a number of rule changes since then but it shouldn't be too hard.
 
TallBill said:
Comes out next week on steam. Will definitely be picking this up for $9.99. 2012 was decent and 2013 was a really decent $10 game. Hopefully 2014 stays in the same greatness.
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Year to year, what's the point of upgrading? new cards, decks, and campaigns?

hrm, maybe the better question for me to ask is: If I'm still playing the campaign in 2013 and intend to finish it, is there a point to purchasing 2014 right now?
 
I still have a bunch of friends that play magic. They are all hitting 30 now. Crazy though a lot of the cards from when we were kids are worth a fair amount. They showed me a box of cards they had and said that it was worth over 15k. Some of the individual cards are worth hundreds. Maybe I shouldn't have given them my cards when I quit😱

A PC game sounds more accessible. It seems like it's really expensive to play the game with the real cards.
 
We used to play when we were kids. After my brother went to college we gave all of the rare cards to some friends. Lord of the Pit, Birds of Paradise, Serra Angels, etc...
 
jaedaliu said:
Year to year, what's the point of upgrading? new cards, decks, and campaigns?

hrm, maybe the better question for me to ask is: If I'm still playing the campaign in 2013 and intend to finish it, is there a point to purchasing 2014 right now?
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No hurry. I enjoy the online play. A big change in 2014 is that they will have sealed deck tournaments.
 
TallBill said:
No hurry. I enjoy the online play. A big change in 2014 is that they will have sealed deck tournaments.
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Have they finally fixed the sync issues with online games? I played the first two games often with friends but we got tired of the sync issues and stopped playing.
 
I've never played Magic, how long can/does a game typically take? Could be a fun side-game for the guys I play with, and $10 is not bad at all.
 
darkewaffle said:
I've never played Magic, how long can/does a game typically take? Could be a fun side-game for the guys I play with, and $10 is not bad at all.
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I depends strongly on the game. Sometimes its 5 minutes. Other times it can be an epic battle. I think 15-30min for a game is a fair estimate though.

I'll have to check it out. Hope the UI is better 2013 was clearly a console port.
 
Let us know if the UI is any better for mouse use. The consolfied UI was always the biggest turn off in 2013. Also I wished I could scale my cards a bit biggger to read the text without having to zoom all the time.
 
I've always been tempted to pick these up, how do they handle the cards in this game, do you just get access to all of them or are you buying virtual packs or something like that? One of the things that got me away from playing was the big moneysink in trying to buy cards and such. Eventually I left and never go tback into it despite a few of my friends being crazy about it now.
 
Midwayman said:
Let us know if the UI is any better for mouse use. The consolfied UI was always the biggest turn off in 2013. Also I wished I could scale my cards a bit biggger to read the text without having to zoom all the time.
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I picked up M14 last week. The UI is basically the same as last year's. I never had any problems with the mouse control but you'll still need to zoom in on card texts you're unfamiliar with to read them.

Overall it's a bit better than last year's but basically serves the same purpose: an introduction to Magic: the Gathering trying to hook new/former players into playing the card game. The biggest addition to the game, the sealed deck, gets a big thumbs down from me.

In sealed deck you get to open 5 boosters and build a deck with the cards. Sounds fun but there's two problems one major and one minor. The minor one is that your AI opponents don't have the sometimes janky dual/tri colored decks that you'd see at a sealed deck tournament. Instead they have mono color decks with a slight theme. As you progress, they'll get a bit more difficult and to compensate the game gives you a new booster for every two opponents you beat.

The major problem is that the number of new sealed deck games you can play is limited. What the game gives you is a number of slots (2 with the base game, 3 others a $2 a piece DLC). With each slot you get to play a sealed deck but once you beat it you can't clear that slot and play with a new lot of cards. You're just left with the cards you opened to build another deck and play against the same opponents.

I know that the game is focused on new players and teaching them a bit about how the sealed deck (limited) format works but by limiting the slots the game loses most of it's replay value. If they set up a replayable sealed deck format that actually played like a real one with opponents with sometimes janky decks it would've been nice for casual players or former players who just had an itch to play the game again. Instead, the developers basically want you only to play the game to hook you into getting into the card game.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're someone who has an interest in getting into (or back into) Magic: the Gathering. Even then I'd caution you to try another card game (such as Android: Netrunner or Dominion) since MTG can be a money sink.
 
That's disappointing. Doesn't sound like a worthwhile upgrade over 2013. Still worth $10 if you own 2013?
 
Midwayman said:
That's disappointing. Doesn't sound like a worthwhile upgrade over 2013. Still worth $10 if you own 2013?
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Despite the negatives I feel like I still got my $10 out of the game. I don't play mtg anymore due to work and the fact that I don't want to sink the money needed to build a competitive deck. Instead I rather spend my time/money for boardgames. Still, there's nothing out there exactly like mtg so being able to play it even in a limited fashion is still fun. You'd probably get your money worth out of it but I just wish it was more than a gateway to playing the card game.

VashHT said:
I've always been tempted to pick these up, how do they handle the cards in this game, do you just get access to all of them or are you buying virtual packs or something like that? One of the things that got me away from playing was the big moneysink in trying to buy cards and such. Eventually I left and never go tback into it despite a few of my friends being crazy about it now.
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There's 10 decks in the game and you unlock them by progressing and beating opponents during a campaign. Then there's an additional 30 cards for each deck you can unlock. You unlock 1 card each time you beat an opponent. Other than that there's two sealed deck slots where you open five boosters, customize your deck, then gain additional boosters (up to two) for every two opponents you defeat in the sealed deck campaign. Once you use those slots you're stuck with the cards you got from the boosters and can't erase the slot to start a new campaign with a new set of cards.

The 10 decks are fairly easy to unlock although you'd really have to grind to unlock the 30 extra cards for each deck. They do let you preview the unlockable cards so at least you know if they're worth pursuing. There's a ton of DLC's for unlocking basically everything. It's $1 per deck unlock (includes the deck and 30 extra cards) and a dollar or two if you want to unlock a foil version. There's also 3 extra slots for the sealed deck campaign at two dollars a piece.
 
As someone who ONLY plays this game for Magic TGC, I think it's easy to 'get your money's worth'. Multiple decks, good computer AI, really clever challenge matches.
 
WotC really makes it difficult to play Magic casually. I enjoy the occasional draft with my buddies, which costs $9-12 per person based on the format, but it's too expensive to enjoy the interesting formats on a more consistent basis.

The fact that they limit your ability to play sealed in 2014 is just more proof of this. Every time I try to get into Magic again, I feel like I'm being nickel and dimed for every bit of play. I recognize that the value is there for a lot of people and that's fine, but when the cost of playing Magic just once every week (assuming you go pay for a draft every week at FNM or something) is higher than buying a new Steam game on sale... it's not a great value proposition for me when I can just play DotA or CS with my friends for free.

Even their online format is basically a copy of the physical format. You still have to pay for every card you play with (I recognize there are formats where you pay for a pack and play with it then lose it at the end but that seems even worse to me) and they don't capitalize on any of the benefits of digital gaming. I'd probably pay for a monthly subscription model where I could play unlimited drafts (and not worry about keeping any cards) but their business model hasn't really gotten there yet.

I have a lot of fun with MtG but I don't want to dedicate my disposable income to a single game. I bought DotP 2013 and it was wroth the $10, and maybe 2014 is worth another $10 but this sealed format being limited to 2 decks just really rubs me the wrong way.
 
Ichigo said:
WotC really makes it difficult to play Magic casually. I enjoy the occasional draft with my buddies, which costs $9-12 per person based on the format, but it's too expensive to enjoy the interesting formats on a more consistent basis.

The fact that they limit your ability to play sealed in 2014 is just more proof of this. Every time I try to get into Magic again, I feel like I'm being nickel and dimed for every bit of play. I recognize that the value is there for a lot of people and that's fine, but when the cost of playing Magic just once every week (assuming you go pay for a draft every week at FNM or something) is higher than buying a new Steam game on sale... it's not a great value proposition for me when I can just play DotA or CS with my friends for free.

Even their online format is basically a copy of the physical format. You still have to pay for every card you play with (I recognize there are formats where you pay for a pack and play with it then lose it at the end but that seems even worse to me) and they don't capitalize on any of the benefits of digital gaming. I'd probably pay for a monthly subscription model where I could play unlimited drafts (and not worry about keeping any cards) but their business model hasn't really gotten there yet.

I have a lot of fun with MtG but I don't want to dedicate my disposable income to a single game. I bought DotP 2013 and it was wroth the $10, and maybe 2014 is worth another $10 but this sealed format being limited to 2 decks just really rubs me the wrong way.
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that is why i don't get it. i love the game but not buying digital cards.
 
Well like I say, there's plenty of fun to be had buying nothing but the $10 game - and some more getting pretty inexpensive DLC.
 
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