Magic: The Gathering - Tactics
I honestly couldn't tell you where I heard about this game. It was mentioned in a group I'm a member of online and I Google searched it. Installed the Firefox add-in, then 1.1G of download later the game was ready to play. Mostly.
You can find the game here
Install and interface
No major technical hurdles, but there was a lot of stuff which wasn't clearly explained. Eventually, one of the boxes turned to 'Play,' so I hit that. Every time after that, it went to 'Play' within a few seconds of starting up.
It takes you to a series of tutorials, of which only one can be chosen. There is also a 'Home' button in the upper right. Don't push it, it exits the program. Until you've finished all of the tutorials.
Started the first tutorial and 'played' through it. Tried the second tutorial and the program crashed. Restarted it, then did the second tutorial. Tried the third tutorial and it crashed. When I loaded the program this time, I took note of the 'click here to report bugs' and clicked on it. It took me to a 'page not found.' Did some searching around the fora and found nothing useful. At all. Rather than wasting more time, I figured I'd just exit and reload after each battle for now until I decided if it was worth my time.
After the 8th tutorial, I was left with a screen with all of the tutorials, the 'skip tutorials' button and the 'Home' button. 'Skip Tutorials' took me to the main screen. But, every time I loaded the program (read: after every page I went to beyond the Home page or Tutorial page) it went back to the Tutorial page and I had to 'Skip Tutorial' again.
Once I got into actual games, the gameplay itself was extremely slow, which didn't help the mood set by the horrible UI issues I'd experienced thus far.
Mechanics
To get into the meat of the game, it's essentially Magic: The Gathering as a grid tactical board game. You have a 'Planeswalker' avatar who has spells to cast and creatures to summon which they draw from a deck you build (you start with a 'starter set' and can buy boosters to add new cards). If your Planeswalker dies, you lose the game. In most games, the goal is to kill all enemies (some with time limits, some with other goals hindered by the opponents on the board).
The board usually has an opposing Planeswalker who can cast spells and summon creatures which they direct to attack you and your creatures.
To those who have played Magic: The Gathering, you'll recognize most all of the spells and creatures and there are very few differences between them and their card counterparts.
Creatures (called Figures once summoned) have Attack equal to the card's Attack multiplied by 10 and Defense equal to the card's Defense multiplied by 10. They also have Movement, which is the distance they can move each turn, Speed which indicates how often they get to take actions, and Range (1 if a melee unit) which indicates how far a distance they may attack to, as well as any special abilities. A creature also can make 1 counterattack when attacked by another unit before its next action. If two creatures attack that unit before it can act again, it won't counterattack them.
My Planeswalker (Green) has 5 Attack, 200 Defense (20 life in Magic multiplied by 10), and something pretty average (5?) for Movement and Speed, Range 1. I don't know if other Planeswalkers have different statistics, but the ones I played against seemed to be the same as mine.
Spells which deal damage or heal do the same as their card counterparts multiplied by 10. Are we seeing a pattern here?
Keywords and other abilities have been changed in many cases. Tims (Tap to deal 1 damage to target creature of player) have a range and do 10 damage. Tramplers attack all targets adjacent in one cardinal direction. Vigilant creatures can counterattack multiple times per turn. Some have remained the same, though any damage and healing is multiplied by 10 from the card counterparts.
Many spells have been altered, mostly in logical ways. One good example is Fireball, which deals X damage (equal to extra mana spent times 10) to all targets in an area of effect, divided equally. This is the only time I've gotten creatures to a Defense total which wasn't a multiple of 5. Most spells can also only be cast in line-of-sight, so you can't heal a creature behind a tree, for instance.
Sometimes creatures will do critical hits (always happens if they have been flanked, a creature on the opposite side of attacker), which causes extra damage, which I observed always to be +50%.
Creatures normally do not recover lost Defense, it is completely ablative. Those of you who play Magic: The Gathering will see that this is a Huge difference.
Just like in the card game, you need Mana to cast spells, but you don't play lands to produce it, you automatically generate a certain amount of mana each turn. The amount appears to be n, where n is the turn number which you are currently on. The type of mana generated is based on the composition of your deck such that if you have a deck which is primarily Green with slightly less White, you might get 60% of your mana as Green and 40% White each turn. The exact composition is randomly generated, with each mana having 60% chance of being Green in this case.
As in the card game, if you have more cards than 7 in your hand when you end your turn, you must discard down to 7 cards.
Gameplay
The actual gameplay is kind of fun, but slow. You can command your Planeswalker to go into the heat of battle (though that seems pretty foolish with an Attack of 5, needing 2 hits to kill the weakest creatures and 40 hits to kill another Planeswalker), or to hide in the background summoning creatures which you send to do your dirty work.
A timeline to the left on the screen shows the upcoming turn order, allowing you to better coordinate your actions. One must note, though, that if a creature is summoned it will likely be close to the top of the turn order, thus it can be smart to avoid rushing an opposing Planeswalker just before their next action.
There are 2 ways to play. You can play against other players online, free play or in a tournament, where the other players may have spent money to get better cards and bought cards at auction. You can also play in single-player campaigns. There is a free short campaign, which is fairly well thought out and has a bit of variety in the fights, including limits on duration and invincible opponents which must be dealt with environmentally. Further campaigns may be purchased ($5 each, it appears). You will gain a few new cards as well as experience as you play games.
As you gain levels, you gain Talent points, which can be spent to buy Talents which give your Planeswalker special abilities. You can reset your Talents at any time (say, if you want to change your deck in such a way that your current setup makes no sense), but it will cost you 2 Gold (~$0.20) each time.
Much of the gameplay involves fighting off the opposing forces in an ablative war. Creatures tend not to last long, as they generally don't recover Defense. Some of the animations are interesting to watch, but get repetitive quickly.
What I liked
Most of the artwork is pretty good.
The tutorial was thorough, if it hand-held too much.
The free campaign is great for the price.
Variety in types of tournaments. Open tournaments cost 1 gold (~$0.10) and allow you to use any and all of your decks, top ranking player(s) may gain spells or a Booster. Draft Tournaments cost 20 gold (~$2.00) and you must have 3 Boosters (~$3.99 apiece), you keep the cards you draft in the tournament and the top players win Boosters (top gains 3, 2nd-4th gain 1 apiece, 5th-8th gain nothing).
What was passable
The voice acting was standard fare.
The music was uninspired and forgettable.
The choices in starter decks is extremely limited. There are two Green-White decks, two Red-Black decks, and a Blue-Black deck, if I remember correctly. That's right, no Green-Red & no White-Blue, and three decks with Black. That means that anyone who wants to do something different will need to put a lot of money into it. That said, the beginning choices are probably the most accessible to new players.
What bothered me
The direct porting of stats from Magic cards to tactical figures while changing the healing mechanics. In the card game, your creatures regain their hit points every turn, so if they are up against a creature which can't kill them, they shrug it off and keep going.
Now, I agree that in a tactical game, having the creatures restore hit points every turn is problematic at best. But, the creatures weren't designed for an ablative game. The Defense of creatures should have been adjusted with this in mind. As it stands, you have creatures which cost an arm and a leg to put out and last 2 turns because they got swarmed by a few Tims.
The UI is buggy.
The quality of multiplayer play is low for non-payers and the cost to be competitive is prohibitive.
Final words
I will probably sit down and play it again, but have little interest in paying for the game unless and until the quality gets better.
If you love Magic and/ or low-crunch tactical games, then give it a try. The first hit is free ;-)
Edit: I remembered where I heard about it. It was on Fetlife in a thread in a group for geeks
Edit: I confirmed that mana is n & clarified the mana composition.
You can find the game here
Install and interface
No major technical hurdles, but there was a lot of stuff which wasn't clearly explained. Eventually, one of the boxes turned to 'Play,' so I hit that. Every time after that, it went to 'Play' within a few seconds of starting up.
It takes you to a series of tutorials, of which only one can be chosen. There is also a 'Home' button in the upper right. Don't push it, it exits the program. Until you've finished all of the tutorials.
Started the first tutorial and 'played' through it. Tried the second tutorial and the program crashed. Restarted it, then did the second tutorial. Tried the third tutorial and it crashed. When I loaded the program this time, I took note of the 'click here to report bugs' and clicked on it. It took me to a 'page not found.' Did some searching around the fora and found nothing useful. At all. Rather than wasting more time, I figured I'd just exit and reload after each battle for now until I decided if it was worth my time.
After the 8th tutorial, I was left with a screen with all of the tutorials, the 'skip tutorials' button and the 'Home' button. 'Skip Tutorials' took me to the main screen. But, every time I loaded the program (read: after every page I went to beyond the Home page or Tutorial page) it went back to the Tutorial page and I had to 'Skip Tutorial' again.
Once I got into actual games, the gameplay itself was extremely slow, which didn't help the mood set by the horrible UI issues I'd experienced thus far.
Mechanics
To get into the meat of the game, it's essentially Magic: The Gathering as a grid tactical board game. You have a 'Planeswalker' avatar who has spells to cast and creatures to summon which they draw from a deck you build (you start with a 'starter set' and can buy boosters to add new cards). If your Planeswalker dies, you lose the game. In most games, the goal is to kill all enemies (some with time limits, some with other goals hindered by the opponents on the board).
The board usually has an opposing Planeswalker who can cast spells and summon creatures which they direct to attack you and your creatures.
To those who have played Magic: The Gathering, you'll recognize most all of the spells and creatures and there are very few differences between them and their card counterparts.
Creatures (called Figures once summoned) have Attack equal to the card's Attack multiplied by 10 and Defense equal to the card's Defense multiplied by 10. They also have Movement, which is the distance they can move each turn, Speed which indicates how often they get to take actions, and Range (1 if a melee unit) which indicates how far a distance they may attack to, as well as any special abilities. A creature also can make 1 counterattack when attacked by another unit before its next action. If two creatures attack that unit before it can act again, it won't counterattack them.
My Planeswalker (Green) has 5 Attack, 200 Defense (20 life in Magic multiplied by 10), and something pretty average (5?) for Movement and Speed, Range 1. I don't know if other Planeswalkers have different statistics, but the ones I played against seemed to be the same as mine.
Spells which deal damage or heal do the same as their card counterparts multiplied by 10. Are we seeing a pattern here?
Keywords and other abilities have been changed in many cases. Tims (Tap to deal 1 damage to target creature of player) have a range and do 10 damage. Tramplers attack all targets adjacent in one cardinal direction. Vigilant creatures can counterattack multiple times per turn. Some have remained the same, though any damage and healing is multiplied by 10 from the card counterparts.
Many spells have been altered, mostly in logical ways. One good example is Fireball, which deals X damage (equal to extra mana spent times 10) to all targets in an area of effect, divided equally. This is the only time I've gotten creatures to a Defense total which wasn't a multiple of 5. Most spells can also only be cast in line-of-sight, so you can't heal a creature behind a tree, for instance.
Sometimes creatures will do critical hits (always happens if they have been flanked, a creature on the opposite side of attacker), which causes extra damage, which I observed always to be +50%.
Creatures normally do not recover lost Defense, it is completely ablative. Those of you who play Magic: The Gathering will see that this is a Huge difference.
Just like in the card game, you need Mana to cast spells, but you don't play lands to produce it, you automatically generate a certain amount of mana each turn. The amount appears to be n, where n is the turn number which you are currently on. The type of mana generated is based on the composition of your deck such that if you have a deck which is primarily Green with slightly less White, you might get 60% of your mana as Green and 40% White each turn. The exact composition is randomly generated, with each mana having 60% chance of being Green in this case.
As in the card game, if you have more cards than 7 in your hand when you end your turn, you must discard down to 7 cards.
Gameplay
The actual gameplay is kind of fun, but slow. You can command your Planeswalker to go into the heat of battle (though that seems pretty foolish with an Attack of 5, needing 2 hits to kill the weakest creatures and 40 hits to kill another Planeswalker), or to hide in the background summoning creatures which you send to do your dirty work.
A timeline to the left on the screen shows the upcoming turn order, allowing you to better coordinate your actions. One must note, though, that if a creature is summoned it will likely be close to the top of the turn order, thus it can be smart to avoid rushing an opposing Planeswalker just before their next action.
There are 2 ways to play. You can play against other players online, free play or in a tournament, where the other players may have spent money to get better cards and bought cards at auction. You can also play in single-player campaigns. There is a free short campaign, which is fairly well thought out and has a bit of variety in the fights, including limits on duration and invincible opponents which must be dealt with environmentally. Further campaigns may be purchased ($5 each, it appears). You will gain a few new cards as well as experience as you play games.
As you gain levels, you gain Talent points, which can be spent to buy Talents which give your Planeswalker special abilities. You can reset your Talents at any time (say, if you want to change your deck in such a way that your current setup makes no sense), but it will cost you 2 Gold (~$0.20) each time.
Much of the gameplay involves fighting off the opposing forces in an ablative war. Creatures tend not to last long, as they generally don't recover Defense. Some of the animations are interesting to watch, but get repetitive quickly.
What I liked
Most of the artwork is pretty good.
The tutorial was thorough, if it hand-held too much.
The free campaign is great for the price.
Variety in types of tournaments. Open tournaments cost 1 gold (~$0.10) and allow you to use any and all of your decks, top ranking player(s) may gain spells or a Booster. Draft Tournaments cost 20 gold (~$2.00) and you must have 3 Boosters (~$3.99 apiece), you keep the cards you draft in the tournament and the top players win Boosters (top gains 3, 2nd-4th gain 1 apiece, 5th-8th gain nothing).
What was passable
The voice acting was standard fare.
The music was uninspired and forgettable.
The choices in starter decks is extremely limited. There are two Green-White decks, two Red-Black decks, and a Blue-Black deck, if I remember correctly. That's right, no Green-Red & no White-Blue, and three decks with Black. That means that anyone who wants to do something different will need to put a lot of money into it. That said, the beginning choices are probably the most accessible to new players.
What bothered me
The direct porting of stats from Magic cards to tactical figures while changing the healing mechanics. In the card game, your creatures regain their hit points every turn, so if they are up against a creature which can't kill them, they shrug it off and keep going.
Now, I agree that in a tactical game, having the creatures restore hit points every turn is problematic at best. But, the creatures weren't designed for an ablative game. The Defense of creatures should have been adjusted with this in mind. As it stands, you have creatures which cost an arm and a leg to put out and last 2 turns because they got swarmed by a few Tims.
The UI is buggy.
The quality of multiplayer play is low for non-payers and the cost to be competitive is prohibitive.
Final words
I will probably sit down and play it again, but have little interest in paying for the game unless and until the quality gets better.
If you love Magic and/ or low-crunch tactical games, then give it a try. The first hit is free ;-)
Edit: I remembered where I heard about it. It was on Fetlife in a thread in a group for geeks
Edit: I confirmed that mana is n & clarified the mana composition.