Duels of planeswalkers or Magic: The Gathering online?

[mr_p_bear]

I'm an old player (caught the tail eof Dark and hit my stride at Fallen Empires and Ice Age and I was looking at getting back into magic casually. Which game offers the best experience for someone looking for a casual experience with an eye towards learning the new mechanics?

[MallowOni]

That would definitely be Duels. MtGO is the full game experience and pretty much requires as much cash and time investment as the real game. Duels offers a limited amount of decks and deck customization - though you can go to slightlymagic.com and find more decks - so it's much more casual friendly.

[mr_p_bear]

Cool, thankfully, they have a demo. that I'll download.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by mr_p_bear:

I'm an old player (caught the tail eof Dark and hit my stride at Fallen Empires and Ice Age and I was looking at getting back into magic casually. Which game offers the best experience for someone looking for a casual experience with an eye towards learning the new mechanics?

I was pretty much the same. Since i don't plan to sink a lot of money into the game anymore Duels is the best way. It lacks a Deckbuilder but the Decks it offers are diverse enough, especially if you get the complete thing including extention and deck packs.

The only "new" rules from back in the day is: They removed Interrupts. Instants now work like Interrupts and that is about it.

There are some new abilities on some of the cards, but overall everything is very well explained, either via tooltip or by examining the card and pressing the "more information" button.

If you set the game AI to medium or hard it provides quite some challenge. The campaign mode is just to unlock Decks and Challenges repeat a series of cards so you can test your deck against certain strategies.

In that respect Duels is pretty straight forward. But honestly the biggest argument, which more than makes up for the lack of a Deckbuilder in Planeswalker, is the fact that you don't need to shell out tonns of money to get some useable decks.

The wikipedia article pretty much explains very well how Magic the gathering Online works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_Online#In-game_economy

[Da2x]

THEN THIS IS THE GAME FOR YOU WOOOOO COME AND PLAY WITH USSSS!!!!!

[Pumis]

Duels of planeswalkers is for casual players. For those players who wanted to play fun decks while others did instead of pay hundreds of euros for high tier deck. Also as people did already mention, you can mod this game to have any deck you want. (if you are going to play with your friends they need to have same mods too, what I have heard).

I never found it really fun when you are playing casual and someones comes against you with high tier or highly expensive deck. Kind of loses its meaning. (pauper format is good proof of this, people build cheap decks and there is always one as*hole who get's 4 sink holes and every expensive common he can find).

[pirimeister]

I have to second the comments of the previous posters (and thus very likely making MY post redundant), especially because I did what WotC wants obedient clients to do and got into MTGO last month. My idea was to build my favorite deck from DofP there and just have fun. I bought a pre-made deck they sell on their store so I could dip my feet in - Golgari Growth - while I assemble my "one true deck - Sepulchral Strenght.

Well, I've been beaten mercilessly by every deck and his dog, using the pre-made deck and plus had to postpone finishing the deck I want to use to next month, because I've already spent close to €50 buying the rares and mythic rares that make the deck work. (quick note: I've probably spent more than necessary due to not being aware of the finer details about card-buying from bots and my over-eagerness to get the deck complete in no time. A more experienced and/or less eager player would have done it for less.)

I still will be going back into it and get my deck done and play games but there's no doubt that the money and time invested in DotP is more rewarding, if, like me, you don't have time in RL for studying cards and their interections the way you have to, to be minimaly sucessfull, in MTGO. With the money I already spent in MTGO, I could have bought at least two full DotP games, although I was aware of that going in. In DotP, there's much more of a level playing field and it's easier to learn a deck, since you are limited to a certain pool of cards in each deck.

I, for one can't wait for the 2014 version, with - at last! - Android support (and lots of other great stuff, if those leaked achievements are legit). Having a galaxy note 2 and a tablet, I'll be happy to destroy my social relations and neglet my kids by playing this game everywhere and whenever I can.

[MallowOni]

Originally posted by pirimeister:

I, for one can't wait for the 2014 version, with - at last! - Android support (and lots of other great stuff, if those leaked achievements are legit). Having a galaxy note 2 and a tablet, I'll be happy to destroy my social relations and neglet my kids by playing this game everywhere and whenever I can.

High five for you, sir. I may not have kids, but I'll be glad to neglect someone else's kids and my social life for some MtG on the go.