Magic: Duels Review

Magic: Duels is an electronic collectible card game (CCG) based on the Magic: The Gathering physical card game.

What is Great about this game:

- This game is a pretty faithful recreation of the Magic: The Gathering card game, likely the best collectible card game around for a few decades
- Unless you are deep into Magic already, this is by far the best entry point into the game as a whole and generally the best way to play some quick Magic duels
- Over the decades, Magic has become a deep and sometimes complicated game (which means lots of rules to track), and playing it electronically allows you to focus on just playing such a deep and strategic game - rather than focusing on rules adjudication
- The free-to-play mechanics of buying boosters is generally fair (if a bit grindy), but one huge improvement over the physical version of the game is that you cannot get more than the allotted cards, so the more boosters you get, the more likely they are to have few commons and more and more rare (i.e. better) cards

What is Good about this game:

- There is decent variety in the types of games you can play, but they could certainly stand to have more - perhaps have the campaign available to go through with your own deck
- The campaigns and tutorials are generally good at onboarding new players
- Good use of Steam features such as achievements, trading cards, etc

What is Bad about this game:

- The game is quite stingy in the way that it hands out coins to buy boosters.  It doesn't award coins for playing against friends or playing two-headed giant.  I think they are fixing the 2HG issue, but it still seems dumb that I can't earn even 5 coins for playing against a friend
- The amount of cards and card sets available to play with is fairly small right now.  It has plenty of gameplay possibilities just with what it has right now, but it's hard not to want some more of the vast number of card sets available in the physical game
- For such a relatively simple game graphically, the performance is generally a little slow both in connecting to the network and in gameplay

Conclusion:

Unless you are already a Magic afficianado, this is simply the best way to get into and play Magic which is the best collectible card game around.

9.5 / 10.0

Lamentable Spectator Top 10 Games of the Year for 2015

Lamentable Spectator Top 10 GOTY 2015

Time to publish another unorthodox GOTY list....

This was perhaps the best year in gaming in many many years for the Lamentable Spectator. Any of the top 5 from this list could have made it onto my number 1 in any lesser year. We had the best city-builder to be released in a decade or more, perhaps the best RPG ever made, and several strategy games and RPGs of special significance. What a great year to be a PC gamer!

1. Cities: Skylines - The best city-builder around. As new DLC comes out, I expect this title to make the list for possibly some years to come.
2. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Quite possibly the best RPG ever made.
3. Ashes of the Singularity - The most promising RTS in development right now. I put 40+ hours into an alpha.
4. Total War: Attila - The best mechanics in a Total War game to date if perhaps not the best setting.
5. Pillars of Eternity - A fantastic RPG in its own right that was unlucky enough to come out in the year of the Witcher 3.
6. Star Ruler 2 - A plucky little RTS/4X that has fantastic fleet combat and mod support.
7. Towerfall: Ascension - The most fun I have had playing co-op and vs video games in a long time.
8. Deathtrap - A hybrid ARPG/tower defense game with a ton of promise.
9. Wasteland 2 - A kickstarter darling that delivers on its promises.
10. Magic: Duels - Seems no year is complete for Lamentable Spectator without a Magic game making the top 10. This year was close as the game is too grindy and too expensive, but the foundation is there for something really special.

Here's hoping 2016 is as good as 2015 was...

Happy Holidays all!