Magic 2014 Impressions

"It's Magic!"

Stainless Steel Games' newbie-friendly digital take on fantasy collectible card game Magic: The Gathering has received its yearly update just recently in the form of Magic 2014. This version drops the 'Duels of The Planeswalkers' subtitle and does plenty to rejuvenate the series after a rather stagnant 2012 release, the biggest shake up coming in the form of a sealed play option, which mimics a real life Magic: The Gathering format where decks are built on the fly from booster packs opened there and then rather than from players' existing collections beforehand. Outside of sealed play, decks are still chosen from a predetermined list in the campaign and multiplayer, but Magic 2014 does offer far more freedom to customize them than previous iterations have. Manual 'tapping' (i.e. usage) of lands, the resource used to summon creatures and cast spells in game, and other minor changes also serve to edge the series ever closer to parity, rules wise, with Magic Online, game owners' Wizard's of The Coasts's own digital offering. That said, the two clearly cater to different audiences - Magic 2014 is aimed at those with no prior knowledge of the game, whereas Magic Online offers very little in the way of help to aspiring Planeswalkers and looks like Windows 95-era solitaire.

I thoroughly enjoyed Stainless Steel Games' original Duels of the Planeswalkers released back in 2009 and spent approximately eighteen months attending regular real life Magic events at my local games store after having my interest piqued by the 50 odd hours I'd sunk into the game. That isn't to say that Magic 2014 and its predecessors should be seen as interactive advertisements for 'real' Magic, however, as they're enjoyable games in there on right. I'd recommend Magic 2014 mainly to retired Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40,000 et al veterans such as myself that still have a soft spot for fantasy gaming, but really can't bring themselves to be shooting handfuls of D6 into the wee hours as adults.