Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers Preview - Finally, Custom Decks

[rofltehcat]

You mean like the tournies from 2014, or something else?

Wait, did they have that already? Without custom deck building?

Drafts basically means everyone brings 3 booster packs. Everyone gets one of the packs, opens it and may take one of the cards. Then everyone passes the rest of the pack to the next player on their left (you get the pack from the guy on your right), that one takes a cards and once everyone has picked you pass the packs on again until they are empty. Then you do the same thing, just right, then left again. So everyone has 45 cards and basically build a deck from those cards then play a small tourney with those decks.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wait, did they have that already? Without custom deck building?

You had a form of sealed draft in 2014 with custom decks, but you could only use it in the sealed drafts variant. If I recall correct, you also had limited deck slots, couldn't delete decks, and had to pay for more slots. My memory may be faulty, though, as I went back to playing 2013 when I discovered none of my friends wanted to buy 2014. I'm going off memory.

But they've managed to drag this out in very small increments, so....

 

[masticina]

So they saw heartstone and its success. And thought "oh dear I guess we now have to code for what we really didn't want to do"

Seriously magic the gathering always was about custom decks. Sure you had starter packs but you wanted more cards make that custom combo to kick down the other player.

hearstone is awesome. You can make the craziest combo's and just look at what totalbiscuit is doing with it. Themed decks gallore, okay not all work but... you know it is fun to see how it works.

So Magic you are joining the future. Something you should have done long long ago!

 

[RoBi3.0]

So they saw heartstone and its success. And thought "oh dear I guess we now have to code for what we really didn't want to do"

Seriously magic the gathering always was about custom decks. Sure you had starter packs but you wanted more cards make that custom combo to kick down the other player.

hearstone is awesome. You can make the craziest combo's and just look at what totalbiscuit is doing with it. Themed decks gallore, okay not all work but... you know it is fun to see how it works.

So Magic you are joining the future. Something you should have done long long ago!

I seriously doubt that Hearthstone has any effect on what Wizards is doing. This had more to do with giving the fans what they asked for.

Magic joined the future in 2002 when Wizards put out Magic the Gathering Online which is a direct translation for the magic paper game. It does just as well as paper magic and has it own tournament scene and everything, though recently server stability issues has put larger tournaments on hold.

If I had to guess WIzards thinks of DOtP as the gateway game which they hope to use to get people hooked and playing paper magic or MTGO. This is probably why custom DotP decks took so long to become a reality. Wizards wanted people moving on from DotP to get their magic fix. I bet they realized that they were going to make money no matter what so it didn't really matter. Plus the people that were going to move to other versions of magic are going to do so regardless.

 

[romanator0]

This was a cool article, but there was absolutely no mention of the thing I'm most worried about with regards to this game:

Do you know anything about the 'premium boosters' they mentioned several times in the official stuff? Do you know if they'll just for saving time or if they're required to get some cards? How much will they cost, how many would you need to get a full set of card? Basically if you have any information about the premium packs, I'm curious.

Also, will you be able to get 4 of each card, or only a set number?

This is what I'm worried about too. I get the feeling that you're not going to be able to unlock every card, at least not playsets, without buying the packs. If that's the case, then it really seems like this is going to be a super watered-down version of MTGO to me.

Building your own decks also means that online play is going to be abysmal in random matchups. Unless they work hard on good matchmaking, it's going to likely happen that you either run into someone way below your skill level playing a 100 card deck, or someone way above your skill playing a deck with 4-of every bomb rare. I suppose this is more like actual Magic... but I don't think it's a good thing to be. The DotP series has always felt more like it should be an entryway to the full game, with the paper version or MTGO being the point that it jumps too. Having it be more like those seems like it could drive newer players away.

There's actually rarity limitations on your card collections so you can only have 4 of every common, 3 of every uncommon, 2 of every rare and 1 of every mythic rare. So, as an example, no deck can ever run more than 1 Baneslayer Angel at a time.