Magic 2013

[Wizard_Mike]

Originally Posted by Thumpermat

First time i've been playing MtG ever and I really love the game.

But I'm honest, I do rely on the hint system for some choices.

Now, I've managed to win all the campaigns in Mage mode, most of my wins with the pack instinct deck, but now I'm stuck at the duel with Nicol Bolas, which I keep on losing with this deck, as well as with celestial lights and exalted darkness.

Any suggestions on how to defeat Bolas are welcome

A lot of it just comes down to getting lucky and pulling the right cards when you need them. I took him down with the dream puppets deck, but it took a bunch of tries.

Give the obedient dead deck a couple of tries. Whenever I get stuck on a duel I can't seem to beat with the dream puppets deck, I switch to obedient dead and manage to pull out a win. It's a pretty balanced deck of both creatures and enemy control.

[Apprunner]

Originally Posted by Thumpermat

First time i've been playing MtG ever and I really love the game.

But I'm honest, I do rely on the hint system for some choices.

Now, I've managed to win all the campaigns in Mage mode, most of my wins with the pack instinct deck, but now I'm stuck at the duel with Nicol Bolas, which I keep on losing with this deck, as well as with celestial lights and exalted darkness.

Any suggestions on how to defeat Bolas are welcome

i used the red deck (non-goblin) and got lucky with a lot of direct damage cards and lots of mana available. so i fireballed Nicol to death

[LeeDot]

I haven't really played Magic consistently since Homelands and I have to say this has really reignited both my love and hate of the game. (but the hate only comes in because the love is there in the first place.

I know deck construction can certainly help but it still seems like luck plays a huge role in the game. Even with the same deck I'll wind up with runs of either no mana for 3-4 turns in a row or literally nothing but mana for 5-6 turns in which case you're kind of screwed.

Also, specifically in regard to the client I've lost several matches because it didn't register a block correctly, it didn't read the card assigned to be used with body double so it spent the mana, used the spell and left me tapped out with nothing to show for it. Other notable greats include destroying a creature when I tried equip an artifact, or it skipping ahead because it thought I couldn't cast anything but I had creatures that I wanted to pump before the combat round began.

Anyhow, all that said it's a great game and I can certainly understand how something with the complexity of Magic could run into some bugs like that but they're really frustrating, particularly in online games.

[PCKid]

I'm fairly new to this and I've been playing the campaign now I've unlocked the planechase I notice you play against three other players and dice comes into it. How does the dice work it appears to be blank most times they roll? Also I can't work out how to roll when it's my turn at what stage do I roll and where do I press to roll? Do I even need to roll or can I just skip that?

Also how does one Players score go up instead of just 20 I noticed one of the players went to 34?

[wizards_jon]

Originally Posted by PCKid

I'm fairly new to this and I've been playing the campaign now I've unlocked the planechase I notice you play against three other players and dice comes into it. How does the dice work it appears to be blank most times they roll? Also I can't work out how to roll when it's my turn at what stage do I roll and where do I press to roll? Do I even need to roll or can I just skip that?

Also how does one Players score go up instead of just 20 I noticed one of the players went to 34?

Welcome to Duels 2013! Planechase is a really fun multiplayer format. The die is used to planeswalk you to different planes or trigger the ability on the planar card. Each plane has a different global effect on the game that can be triggered. For more details about Planechase, I recommend reading this article: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...ily/feature/51

To roll the die, press on the Planar card in the middle of the battlefield during your main phase. This will zoom up on the card where you will see the option to roll the die. Your first roll of the turn costs 0 mana. Your second is 1 mana, the third is 2 mana, and so on.

As far as life goes, there are cards that will gain you life so you can go over 20. That is why one of the other players went to 34.

[Royce]

I haven't played Magic since the late 90s but I am very excited to see how far it's evolved. Just gotta clear some space... like 2 gigs

[Sojourn]

Welcome to the forum, wizards_jon! It's awesome to have someone from Wizards here.

I know there have been many pages in this thread to read through, so I was wondering if you had seen the major issues our members were hoping would be addressed in an update. I've collected a few that I can remember off the top of my head; is there somewhere else we should be reporting them directly to WotC?

- Random cards being selected in one's hand, even when they're not playable. For example, the electric purple highlight popping up around a land card during your opponent's Combat phase -- definitely not playable, and very distracting, as that highlighted card blocks part of your view of the board.

- Planechase mode crashing consistently on first-gen iPads.

- Blocking during Combat: there have been reports with large numbers of creatures attacking/blocking that the arrowed lines get easily crisscrossed, making it difficult to accurately select which creature is blocking which, resulting in mistakes (and unhappy players who didn't realize it until combat damage went through).

- Attacking with multiple creatures at once (especially in decks that generate lots of tokens) is arduous at best. Having a way to select multiple creatures simultaneously, or at least not having to wait for each one to individually animate/tap on the board before moving to the next creature.

- General speed of play: a consensus seems to have somewhat been reached that the speed is a good compromise between giving time for opponents to respond to plays and letting the AI think, and not making the game drag too much. There are times when it feels much slower than playing the physical game, however, and one major way is when a player wants to pass the rest of their turn. For example, they don't have enough mana to play anything in their hand, and they don't want to attack during their Combat phase. They need to tap through (and wait through lots of animations) each individual phase, instead of just being able to pass the turn and giving their opponent the chance to react. Another example is the Combat phase of your opponent when you can't block their attack -- you still need to wait through several different animations (including the word "Block" sliding across the screen) before anything happens. Giving the option to skip some of these things would be nice, while still preserving the necessary reaction times for playing Instants, cards with Flash, etc.

- Searching through one's library for a card (like when playing a Squadron Hawk, for example) can be tricky -- skimming across the entire library can feel very imprecise, especially when the card is toward either the left or right side of the screen (I know I have to move my finger very . . . slowly . . . to not miss it when skimming).

- Discarding: Confusing for some players, especially when one has to discard more than one card at once -- there doesn't seem to be a visual cue that the card has been successfully discarded, so players feel like they have to repeatedly discard the same card or move on to other cards in their hand, not realizing they've been successful. Similarly (though a separate issue), when a spell can split its damage between multiple creatures, it's not visually clear that the first points of damage have been allocated. Visual indicators of successful parts if an action would be helpful.

- The achievement for defeating all ten Encounters does not appear to be unlocking in Game Center for many of our members.

Hope this helps, and thanks again for stopping by! Everyone else in this thread, was this a good summary of the things we hope to see changed?

[Plynx]

Fantastic summary, Sojourn.

I would like to add that the targeting of specific cards, like auras, is very hard in general even on uncluttered battlefields, so it's not just combat having these problems. Mis-targeting is a mistake that breaks a game, that can easily lose games and destroy the time investment. Sometimes the target goes off on one tap. Sometimes it takes two. While targeting you can no longer verify which card is which.

I can think of three solutions to this (maybe there are more besides).
- let us pinch to zoom at all times
- let us fan out cards before targeting in all cases
- show us what is targeted and let us cycle through targets with arrows after one is selected

I also feel that pressing stop on the other player's end phase is a pretty easy thing to mess up, and that's another way you can really mess up. I would like it to work like this, you press a pass button, and it pops up a diagram of the upcoming phases and you press the one on which you would want to stop passing (press stop). You can still press the hourglass as normal and pass to a different phase if you choose. Knowing both player's chosen stop points can eliminate a lot of the useless wait between phases, but even without that it would be helpful just to have a "pass" button.

And yes, the interface is invisibly modal, listening to input at times and not at others, sometimes buffering your taps and sometimes ignoring them. It would be nice if taps interrupted animations in progress. In my opinion input should take priority over display.

[Sojourn]

Thanks, Plynx!

I like your idea of passing and picking what phases you want to pass -- I was actually thinking of a similar solution, though visualizing it on the other end -- if your opponent passes, and you want to cast an instant, getting to pick which phase of their turn you want to play it during. Neat!

I also edited my previous post to include two more issues I remembered people mentioning en masse -- searching through their library for specific cards, and discarding multiple cards at once.

[amn624]

The UI is so damned frustrating!

One example of many encountered: creature equipment can regenerate creature. Creature blocks, no chance to regenerate. When and how exactly must the regeneration ability be triggered?

I can't even tap the card to do it as it remains under the creature.

Disappointed that this was not more carefully thought out for users.