For those not in the know, the Duels of the Planeswalkers series exists almost entirely as a sort of gateway drug to either the physical version of Magic: The Gathering or Magic Online. Starting with the 2012 edition, the cards represented and available gametypes serve two purposes - to give new players familiarity with the “state of the game”, and give veterans a chance to test drive unreleased cards a few weeks before the new Core Set releases.
It’s quite a brilliant little piece of marketing - players are given plenty to do, but there are small restrictions in place to attempt to drive you to playing the actual CCG, which generates plenty of cash from booster packs, premade decks and the casual variants, such as Commander (EDH!), Archenemy or Planechase.
So how’s this year’s model? Very similar to Duels 2012 - so much so, that I’m really only going to focus on what’s new or different. First up, the most obvious change is the culling of last year’s Archenemy campaign in favor of Planechase, whose physical counterpart recently got an update.
Planechasin'
Planechase is a standard free-for-all variant that brings two twists to the table: the Planar Deck and the Planar Die. The Planar Deck represents the various planes of the Multiverse you travel to and contains two types of special cards: Planes and Phenomenons. The Planar die can be rolled on your turn to attempt to planeswalk to (reveal) a new Plane card, or trigger the Chaos ability of the current plane. It can also do nothing, which seems to be the story of my life.
Planes have both passive abilities and a Chaos ability (more on that in a second). The passive effects vary wildly - such as restricting the number of creatures who can attack and block in a turn, or allowing players to cast enchantments as though they had the keyword ability of Flash.
Each Plane’s Chaos abilities are a little more drastic, and are tied into rolling the Planar die. If a player rolls the Chaos symbol, then crazy things can happen. My personal favorite plane gave all creatures entering the battlefield Haste and Double Strike, and its Chaos ability allows players to exile a creature they control from the board, then put it back into play instantly. I abused this one to drop a 43-point damage swing on my final opponent, which was especially satisfying since he was pestering me with fliers almost the whole match.
Phenomenons have instantaneous effect on the battlefield and usually exist to make everyone scramble to react. They can do things like reverse the turn order, which can really screw people over.
The campaign is fairly straightforward - you proceed through a series of matches against enemy Planeswalkers, unlock their decks for play, and keep going until you’ve taken down Nicol Bolas, the final Planeswalker and all-around bad dude in the Magic Multiverse. Once you’ve cleared it, you can take on the Revenge campaign for a greater challenge.
Rather than straight-up duels, there are new campaign matches called Encounters that challenge you to take on special scenarios. For instance, an early Encounter pits you against a player whose deck only contains one type of spell (a 1/1 flying creature), but he can cast one every turn (and he’s totally not building a tournament-legal deck). They ramp up significantly, but always offer similar situations - the enemy has a single strategy and their deck will be rather annoying.
Challenge mode returns, and unlike previous years, doesn’t pitch you a couple softballs to get things going. This was always my favorite game mode, and it’s disappointing that there are only 10 scenarios to take on.
The updated Deck Manager UI is a solid improvement.
Deck customization has always been a sticking point for critics of the series. There are 10 decks to unlock through playing the campaign (or dropping some microtransactions), and you unlock 30 extra cards per deck to shake things up a bit. Each match you win in standard modes unlocks a single card for the deck you’re using, though you can circumvent this by paying 99 cents to unlock all the cards in a deck. You’re still stuck with 24 lands per deck, which is way too many. You still can’t create a custom deck from scratch, but that’s not what the Duels series is about.
While customizing your deck you now have a display of the mana curve and spells/creatures spread, which helps visualize its flow, and is a nice touch for players of the physical game. A pre-match screen also rates each deck in several categories, such as speed, card synergy and creature size, giving you a bit of advance warning of what you’re facing. Thankfully, you can directly enter the deck manager from this screen if you want to make adjustments.
Naturally, the game offers multiplayer modes for everything that makes sense. You can play Duels, Free-for-All and Planechase online, with options for matchmaking or hosting a custom game. This is where the game shines, as playing against human opponents is always more entertaining than the uneven AI.
Sadly, with the removal of the original game’s Two-Headed Giant campaign and Archenemy, the only option for co-op this time around is hosting a Two-Headed Giant game from the multiplayer menu. Two-Headed Giant is a variant with two teams of two players, who have a shared life pool and take their turns at the same time.
You can set this up to play online and locally vs. the AI, or if you’re in a more competitive mood, you can open up the enemy slots to human players. Since we’re focused on co-op, I can tell you that though the AI can offer up a stiff challenge in this mode, it’s very easy to give yourselves an advantage by selecting decks you know are strong vs. your opponents, and the difficulty appears to be locked to the medium setting. Sadly, there’s not much more to say - the matchmaking is a breeze and I never found a shortage of people to play with or against, and everything works just as well as it has in years past. I just wish there were more options available - the lack of Archenemy really hurts.
I should also mention that though I ran through all of the multiplayer offerings on the PC side of things, the bulk of this review is based on my experience with the iPad version, which is fantastic. Touch interfaces and board/card games are a natural fit, and though there’s a little bit of UI wonkiness, having a version of Duels on the go is a huge plus. Unfortunately, there’s no option to play Two-Headed Giant in co-op in this version.
So here we are - an annual release of a successful game that mostly offers refinements and a change of content. All of the criticisms from last year’s game apply to Duels 2013 as well, but whether you’re a veteran of the physical game or someone looking to see just what the heck Magic is all about, this is about as good (and inexpensive) experience as you can currently get.