It was the summer of 1994, and I was attending a summer camp somewhere in the mountains of Georgia. I was sitting at a picnic table by the camp lake, enjoying the sunny weather and waiting for my canoeing class to start, when I was approached by one of my friends. We had recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons and Battletech together, and he had found a new game that he thought I might be interested in. My friend handed me a small brown box, the words “Magic: The Gathering” printed clearly across its face, and changed my life forever.

As I thumbed through the cards that came in the starter deck, he explained what he knew of the game, of how you drew mana from lands to cast spells and how you had to reduce your opponent’s life from 20 to 0. The fantasy creatures and art enthralled me, and I will never forget the sensation of discovery that washed over me. We didn’t play a single game the entire time we were at camp, but I knew I had to get my hands on some of these cards when I got back to civilization.

Almost immediately upon returning from camp, I enrolled in the Blockbuster Video Game Championship and won first place at my local store. First place came with a copy of Virtua Racing and a chance to compete in Orlando for some sweet prizes. Problem was, I already owned a copy of Virtua Racers, and having two copies of what was then a $100 game did me no good. I took the unopened game to Wal-Mart, told them my grandmother had bought it for me for my birthday, but I had lost the receipt, and wondered if I could still return it. I walked out with $100 cash and headed straight for the local bookstore to finally buy my own Magic cards.

Why am I telling you this story in a Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 review? Because I don’t think people discover Magic like that anymore. In our hyperconnected world of Facebook and Twitter, where entire card sets are known before most players even open a pack of the expansion, and where any and all information you could want about a game and its popularity are only a Google search away, that sense of discovery is much harder to come by. To keep up with the times, Wizards has definitely had to change their approach to player acquisition over the past few years, and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 is certainly part of this plan. Make no mistake, this game is primarily designed with new players in mind, and is a great introductory tool if you’re trying to bring a new player into the game.

When you first open the game, you will be prompted to choose between one of three difficulty levels based on how much experience you have had with Magic as a whole. I played through most of the game on the hardest difficulty without much of a problem. The AI made solid plays throughout the game, and avoided anything extremely dumb for the most part. The CPU’s skill level still wasn’t perfect, and occasionally my computer opponent would make a boneheaded play, but these actions were few and far between.

The game runs smoothly, even on lower-end PCs, and the UI is pretty straightforward when playing a match. Almost everything you need to do in game can be done with a click of the mouse, though changing the camera angle from which you view the game is much easier if you use the keypad on a full-sized keyboard. Experienced Magic players may have a little bit of difficulty adjusting to the way that the game plays in Duels of the Planeswalker 2012, especially if they’ve played much Magic Online at all.

During each player’s main phase, a timer ticks down toward zero before automatically passing to the combat phase or the next player’s turn, though this can be stopped by clicking on the aptly named “stop timer” button. Hovering over a card and rolling your mouse wheel up will zoom into a larger view of any card, and in the case of permanent, allow you to use any activated abilities on the card. This same information can be accessed by right-clicking on a card, though for some reason during my testing, activated abilities did not always show up in the right-click menu. I couldn’t track down the entire reason for this inconsistency, but did notice that it usually happened during the combat phase.

The combat phase itself can be a little frustrating, as there is no indicator to say which part of the phase you are in. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no clear view of the stack. Creatures and spells hover above the playing field when still on the stack, and responding with another spell will cause that one to hover over the first. However, abilities that go on the stack only have a visual indicator of a purple ring swirling above the card that triggered them. These two issues combined can make for combat phases where you are starting and stopping the timer to try and cast a spell at the right time, only to realize that you either missed the part of the phase where you wanted to do something, or that you still need to wait a bit longer before activating an ability.

I’m fairly sure that a lot of the problems I was having during combat were because I was already familiar with Magic rules, and was trying to play the game like it was MTGO. I would suggest to anyone who has played Magic before to go into their settings and tweak the gameplay options to make the game make fewer of the decisions for you automatically. It’ll remove a lot of headache in the long run.

Like the previous Duels game, as you play through the campaign, you unlocked the decks of the planeswalkers you beat. The decks are a lot more powerful this time around, and include some incredibly fun rare and mythic cards to play with. Gideon’s deck even gets the Stoneforge Mystic, Kor Outfitter, Argentum Armor combo, while the new Blue/Green ’walker’s deck gets Primeval Titan, Kozilek, and Ulamog.

While you can’t build a completely customized deck, you can choose cards to cut from your deck when a more powerful card is unlocked through play. I was rather annoyed with the fact that unlocked cards are automatically added to your deck without you doing anything, even if you don’t want them. If you are playing through campaign mode, you have to exit out to the main menu, load up your deck in the deck editor, and then remove the cards that you just unlocked. It is not a huge annoyance, but I would much rather have seen an option to go directly to your deck in the deck editor after unlocking new cards instead of just having the game put them in there without removing anything else.

The addition of Archenemy is very cool, and I’m glad to see Wizards using such a fun multiplayer format instead of letting it fade completely. The matches run smoothly, and are a great way to play the game with your friends. The Archenemy cards can make the game a little swingy at times, but it’s fun, and that’s all that really matters.

My favorite parts of the game, actually, were the mini-challenges setup throughout the campaign mode. These challenges are very reminiscent of the Magic Puzzles that used to run in Duelist, and put you in a dire position where you only have a small amount of life. You have to survive your opponent’s combat phase, and then counterswing for lethal damage. The first few are mind-numbingly simple, but the ones later in the game are challenging and worth the effort to figure out.

So should you buy Duels of the Planeswalker 2012? If you like Magic, yes. While it might not help you master the Caw-Blade mirror, the game is only $9.99 and can provide several hours of entertainment, especially if you have friends who will play the multiplayer with you. This game is also the perfect gift for any friend you want to try and get into the game, or for new players you know who are just starting out. It provides great tutorials and a solid foundation that these players can use when they eventually transfer into paper Magic.

This is how Wizards plans to attract new players to the game, and I applaud it. Expect to see more digital games like this in the future, and more new players in your local game shop because of it.