I received an e-mail last week:

What’s that you say? A review code? Why yes, don’t mind if I do!

I am not the target audience for Duels of the Planeswalkers. I play almost no computer games, platform video games, or any game that takes more than two minutes on our iPad. My limited spare time is taken up by paper Magic and regular Thursday-night casual games. The question for me is, “Is Duels of the Planeswalkers something for the casual Magic player?”

Some of the very early reports that I’d heard suggested that Duels was crashing regularly for people trying to run it on a first-generation iPad, so I opted to obtain the Steam version. My son Spencer and I loaded it up and started into the tutorial.

Before getting into the tutorial, a quick mention on the download: The download time was ridiculously short. Our home computer is generally old and slow, but the game loaded fast enough that it was practically instantaneous. Spencer, someone who has downloaded hundreds of games, described the download as “one of the fastest downloads ever.”

Tutorial

Before we started the tutorial, I knew what I wanted: I didn’t want to learn how to play Magic; I wanted to learn how to best use the game. “Is there a way to make the cards bigger so I can read them?” “How do I build or alter my decks?” What I expected to see was a tutorial that would explain how to play Magic.

The tutorial walked you through a basic game. Using a sixty-two-card deck, you played against the computer, the AI of which was pretty low. The decks were clearly stacked to ensure that you would see a variety of cards. It suggested the best attacks and set you up to win the game. The tutorial explained how to play Magic and how to use the system to play. The phases of the game were very well explained. It was surprisingly detailed without being confusing.

I was impressed by the clean layout and the artwork on the intermediate screens.

The actual tutorial provides an adequate explanation of how to play Magic to the uninitiated, and it made it easy for me to discover many of the shortcuts the game provides.

Planechase

After the tutorial, Spencer and I tried out Planechase. Hey, what do you want? I love multiplayer! We decided to start with a game against the computer, just to be sure we knew what we were doing with the interface. The animation was spectacular. The programmers went above and beyond ramping up the excitement level. The results of a planar die roll are certainly no mystery!

The game allows you to choose how many opponents you have. We chose three opponents and set the difficulty to Mage, the easiest level. It turns out this setting was far too low. The actual game was a little bit of a letdown. It took eight die rolls to finally change planes, and it was a little boring. Hardly a fault of the program, but it made the game a little less interesting. We did finally move to a variety of planes that kept the game moving. The opponents were attacking each other when they clearly should have been attacking us. We plan to try this again on much higher levels to have a more interesting game.

Our attempt to play against real opponents was the game’s real letdown. We were never able to connect to play against live opponents. “Connection failed. Please try again later,” has become very annoying. We tried to join other people’s games—without success. This is a serious failing for me, since this is the whole point of playing Duels to me.

Campaign

This setting creates games against various computer opponents with predictable decks. One deck plays Suntail Hawk every turn. Another plays a Shivan Dragon every turn. You work your way through the campaigns to unlock new decks. Each planeswalker has his or her own impressive screen.

I was less enamored with this option than Spencer. Spencer loved the idea of leveling up, while I felt that it was simply a chore to unlock the next deck.

Conclusion

Since the initial session, Spencer has played far more than I have. He enjoys the game, but he doesn’t feel that it is a good Magic simulation. He enjoys the game as a computer game, as opposed to alternative way to play Magic.

I enjoyed Duels, but with my limited free time, I don’t expect to play often. I don’t see myself giving up the time I spend with paper Magic to play Duels. We are still struggling to set up the stops in the game to allow combat tricks and tapping particular mana. I know these options are available, but we haven’t figured out how to get them.

I would recommend the game for those just learning to play, but for those of us who are as involved in Magic as anyone reading this article, Duels is only fun as a computer game that has a passing similarity to Magic. Once we are able to play with other live opponents, my opinion of Duels may change, but for now, I wouldn’t recommend it as anything more than a computer game.

Bruce Richard