Home News Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 preview from E3 2012

If you’re a fan of Stainless Games‘ take on Magic the Gathering, you’re in luck. The next iteration of their Duels of the Planeswalkers series is just around the corner.

No, you don’t have to wait until next year. (You can blame Detroit for the auto-inspired naming convention.) MTG:DOTP2k13 launches June 20 for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and (new!) iPad. Now you can nerd it up anywhere!

In the interim, we’ve scored a preview build of the game, and for the first time today you’ll get to see some of the decks and gameplay elements new to this year’s version.

Please keep in mind this is an incomplete build, so the final game will most likely have more features, decks, unlockable cards, and other content. That said, I’ll be updating this post with more information as I’m able to disseminate it.

That said, my first thought is that the game, while a small update from 2012, is a large improvement in terms of balance and presentation. Is that enough to warrant a yearly, one-time purchase of $10? For most Magic and Duels fans… yes.

 

Deck preview: Celestial Light

 

Deck preview: Born of Flame

 

Deck preview: Pack Instinct

 

Deck preview: Crosswinds

 

Celestial Light gameplay & UI overview

Game features and updates

The distinct possibility there are no mulligans in DOTP 2013!

A manual land tapping demonstration from WOTC.

More coming soon!

 

Full intro cutscene footage

17 replies to this post
  1. Celestial Light looks ridicugood. Born of Flame looks like they may have overdone nerfing Chandra’s deck.

    Now, watch as I get repeatedly curb-stomped by Chandra June 20 through December 12.

    Which is the day I project I will be tired of the game.

    • Yeah, I could see that. But the thing is Celestial only has a few dangerous creatures. If you can burn them off, the rest are overcosted and will eventually lost to attrition.

  2. No Black deck? Is it a latter unlockable or what?

    Looking at all four of these decks it would seem at first slice that Crosswinds is the most underwhelming. With some tweaking it could be better, but the large beats in the maindeck don’t make a whole lot of sense in my opinion, and considering the strange curve they went for it’s kind of boggling that it was the only deck of the four to not include any medallions for cost cutting.

    Celestial Light would appear to be the deck that needs the least tweaking. It can easily play as an early rushdown deck, but should that fail it can stall and, if you have the unlocks, hope for an alternate win condition from the Felidar Sovereign.

    As an aside seeing Baneslayer Angel makes me feel so damn old, because it reminds me of went Serra Angel was considered the five cost bomb because hey, 4/4 flying vigilance for five. Now, not so much.

  3. 1. All the decks you previewed are much funnier than their forerunner. exscpecially the green deck. finally a green removal hat makes sense! best thing of this card: you can kill flyers easily! better than this rediculous walls u had in d12. when i drafted it in innistrad my first thought was: this needs to be in dotp mono green. purpose fits, style fits, need for such a card fits. i first hoped the deck gets beast within for all around removal. but seeing the trend of power amound decks in this preview is see this card would had to much value for a single card. sadly theres no ambush viper. love this card in draft format and it is still viable for dotp. but with prey upon in it no complains from me. the sheer amount of super monsters in this deck makes me go into crazy enthusiasm! hope one dunglegrove is in the hidden 5 unlocks. would really miss this card!

    i love that chandra is a fusion of chandra and koth from d12. the mechanics presents themselves ins this way at least. koth had alot of creature ability and board wipes, while chandra has mana pump and burn as main mechanic. i dont see the nerf here. the burn spells are versatile and have a good mana/dmg ratio with a cheaper choose dmg among creatures with no extra-cost for dmg done. the dragons in the deck are for the dragons fans cuz the dragon deck will be out. i would cut them cuz of easy to burn target and any dmg spell is better than them. that u demise the 2 mana 1dmg to all c. and pl. i cant understand. most core cratures have just 1 toughness and this spell tooks them out. for 4 mana you do 2 dmg to all cratures. pretty fair deal, not the best one but still fair. i am more then sure that slagstom is amongst the not schown 5 unlockables. thats a card i would trade in for those. the land curse dragon is bad ass. altough when u discussed it i immediatly imagined to sacrifice those cursed mountains to kill this thing in a chandra-chandra stand off. hopefully i get the chance to get in such a situation!

    celestial light looks interesting. to just stall with your life-bar would be a nice prove that your wrong with your opinion that life gain is pointless in magic. true that you just can win with dmg. but on my prereleased seal on AVR i got simple stalled out by life gain and flying crushes. and with this deck you can achieve absurd life-amounts that can even make garruks monsters looks stupid. but for a final conclusion we need to know the last 5 unlocks. some crazy beefies need to be in so your life-stall gets u more than one winning condition or you have something like ob-ring or protection for your winning cards, like creature enters battlefield from graveyard with the hymn from the white/red deck in d12.

    personally love the blue deck. in d12 mono blue was nice, but broken in comparission to the other decks. to reduce counterspell to 3 or 4 cancels is the rifght decission when u give them something like the token mechanic. the draw card spell with rebound is insane when people dont throw their cards away. reound makes you to exile the sorcery and on your next upkeep u can recast it for FREE. consindering the legendary wizard u can have some nice combos. more interessting than boring illusions. the ,,little ponder” is also a nice addition than a simple divination.

    2. have to do some critizim to your preview:

    garruk: that we cant see overrun in this deck isnt such a problem. ofc it win games in a crature laydown. but we have SO much trample in this deck anyways with all the super mighty mythics you can unlock. i assume there is an overrun in the hidden unlocks, but this deck is much more of an stable creature advantage than simple overrun. the old version u just end up stalling whith a bunch of mediocre creatures without the ability to attack cuz opponent rather take the relativly low dmg or sacrifice his creature to block it and u end up having not enough creatures for further play. with this deck you get almost bad ass creatures on every mana spot in your deck construction, mana accellaration and late game creature early. this is the kind of pressure i want to create when going mono green. its possible that they cut overrun cuz it was to powerfull with such a crature power level or the winning cards so or so have trample. but i have to agree: there are much pettier artworks of blenchwood armor :) and the vigilance spiders arent bad cuz u get 4/4 vigilance on turn 4! of course a kessig reculsive turn 3 is better but perhaps to powerfull in this format. u have free attack and block and garanteed casualties on opponent side. better than old spiders :)

    black deck:
    considering the trailer the black deck is a lilliana discard plus zombies. loved the zombie deck in d12 and found some cards in the discard deck pretty underwhelming. a fusion would be awsome.

    thx for the preview, enjoyed watching it. cant wait to get my hands on this game!

    • Good points all aroudn. To be fair, only about 12% of the unlocks are shown here, there will be 30-40 per deck! So we will see crazy variation in decks online.

  4. To answer a few of your questions that you posed in the last video:
    “Tha Crossroads” (one of my all time favorite songs) was by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
    and
    From the Magic Official Rule Book:
    “Rebound” means “If this spell was cast from your hand, instead of putting it into your graveyard as it resolves, exile
    it and, at the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast this card from exile without paying
    its mana cost.”

  5. I can confirm- Serra Ascendent is not banned in 2-headed Giant and you can draw it in your opening hand. It is a turn 1 6/6 for W. Really puts the other team on a short clock if you ask me.

  6. Oi pessoal… eu tenho o jogo e gostaria de saber como faço para colokar 2 cores no deck…
    tentei mas num conseguir….
    obrigadooooooo

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