Not too long ago, I was a huge Magic: The Gathering player. I frequented weekly tournaments, worked a job selling the cards/hosting tournaments in our store, reading sites about the game and generally obsessing about it. I wasn't a hardened player by any means, more casual, but I did play heavily and thought I was pretty good.

As such, hearing about the XBL version of the game (with a pricing scheme not fucking awful like MTG online) made me nostalgically happy. Being able to play a deep strategy game with my friends list for a relatively low (800 points) price? Sign me up.

So I downloaded and played through the trial (two matches against the A.I.) today to see if I would put my moon money where my mouth is. And in short, yes, I probably will.

*Warning, some possible MTG lingo follows*

To start off, Duels of the Planeswalkers lets you choose from either a green or red deck. The red is full of burn spells and cheap, quick creatures. The green has bigger dudes, pump spells, land fixing, and a splash of little guys. I quickly recognized the green deck was far superior (Troll Ascetic?!) and choose that.



The interface is very clean and easy to handle. RT zooms in on cards, the stick highlights cards, A is confirm, Y is switch phases -- it's all very intuitive. When you play a card, a small timer begins that allows the opponent to respond. You can stop the timer if you have an effect to play which is a good way to handle the constant back and forth of an MTG game and is a nice way to deal with the problem of the stack. Only once -- when I wanted to play a spell during blocking -- did I mis-click and get an unwanted result.

Things like not having to tap land (awesome!), icons denoting flying, trample, etc., pump spells appearing on the creatures power/toughness, are all great touches and make everything very easy for new players.

My biggest complaints were the lack of an "end of turn phase" (when many important spells/effects are played) and a generally very straight-forward A.I. and card pool. The A.I. is just plain not very good, constantly walking into simple traps and making questionable decisions. But obviously the best part of this game will be playing real people, so I won't hold that against it.

I think the full game -- with a nearly endless card pool (via DLC) and actual players to play against -- will be worth the 800 points. And if there were draft capabilities, dear God I may never get anything done again.