Home Editorial Balance The definitive Magic 2015: Duels of the Planeswalkers wishlist

After the releases of DotP12 on the 15th of June, DotP13 on the 20th of June, and DotP14 on the 26th of June, it seems only logical to expect another version of that game on the third of July this year. With it will come plenty of new decks just waiting for Top Tier Tactics’ competent and faultless* guides. What should also be hoped for are some actual engine advances. Knowing that the game is still four months away and that Stainless is definitely NOT Ubisoft, what is the harm in trying to make them improve their game?

1. Basic lands? In competitive Magic? Away with you, scrub!

It’s fact, proven by many a deck as well as DotP itself; Triple colour decks (and occasionally dual colour, if there are demanding costs) and above do not work using only basic lands, especially if green is not in the deck. Yet the game seems to despise nonbasic lands like they literally killed its mother or something. Something about the concept of a single land tapping for more than one colour being too confusing to new players or such excuses.

Here’s your solution, Stainless: Make the game’s automatic tapping use nonbasic lands last whenever possible, and when they are used to pay something, make a mana symbol float over that land’s text box to indicate what colour you will get from the tap. That took five seconds to think up, you can’t claim that none of your design employees ever had that idea.

I’m not asking for a manabase entirely of shocklands for each deck (though offering a single shockland as a promo could go a long way towards teaching players about the game), but even just a few guild gates would do a lot for deck stability.

2. People have phases. The game has phases. Ogres have… phases?

As stands, DotP largely mishandles priority and phases. Unless there are any triggers, the game directly skips to your main phase (as opposed to giving an upkeep, wherein you could crack fetching permanents with the mana you previously untapped and then draw from a library with fewer lands in it) and the active player can progress through her turn rapidly without giving the nonactive player a chance to pause the game at a specific point. (Seems like a minor issue, but if for instance your opponent controls Basandra, Battle Seraph, a card available in DotP13, then they can progress into combat without giving you a chance to tap or unsummon any of their creatures.)

Fixing this would not be hard either: Just include a mandatory priority timer during each player’s upkeep (since there are few cards in DotP that act differently if cast in a draw step, it should not be necessaary to include priority during that step) and perhaps add a proper cleanup step indication to further clarify exactly when the end of turn is.

3. Better decks… actually, just more

This one is more for Wizards than Stainless. It’s certain that we will once again see the choices of “green underpowered stompy deck with which you will spend an hour trying to beat the tutorial boss” and “underrated titankiller red burn deck”. Since the only decks lacking from DotP14 were White Aggro and Izzet Control and the game was as such perfectly balanced, the only request for further decks is more of the same variety. Maybe a real reanimation deck, Grixis style, or a Jund deck that effectively ramps and drops giant flying lizards on people’s faces. Maybe a genuinely colourless deck? The possibilities would be endless, if we could rely on some proper mana fixing. (Hint hint.)

Okay, it has to be said: DotP14 is so vastly imbalanced that a large amount of decks has no chance to win against the select few, unless the select few have terrible draws or are played very poorly. There will always be predators lest there is no strength from absent comparison**, but this game is absurd. The well-rounded, balanced decks like Warsmith are fine and enjoyable, make more of those, nothing below that power level, but particularly none above it.

It should also be mentioned that I personally find DotP’s decks very fragile, so that they rely on the free seven-card mulligan even when built for consistency. Thus, a player rebuilding a similiar version of them on paper would see poor results. That much for teaching people the game. I would prefer not to see twenty of forty total unlocks consumed by high-cost bombs of which any deck could support at most five. What is wrong with giving us less splashy cards that actually make the deck work and allow for more preference?

Alternatively, just make another artifact deck, I’ll be just as happy.

 4. Don’t attempt what you can’t do

Being a storywriter, I was excited to hear that DotP14 was going to feature a story and cutscenes. Only then to find out that the story literally consists of ten seconds of Elspeth musing over an animated drawing to plug Theros. Like, really? Really, Wizards? There are better ways to explain Elspeth being consumed by guilt because she fucked up Mirrodin, ones that don’t involve her landing face down in the mud next to some snake ladies. But I suppose you have to make some transitions to when, after crashing everybody’s party, Kitty Man takes her to that new non-Alara jungle plane to teach her the ways the worlds go.

What was I going on about? Oh right: If you are only going to end up with desperate money grabs, don’t make Sealed. Making decks is great, but why exactly do we have to pay to create a new deck, which makes for 90% of the fun in limited? We don’t get the paper versions, we can’t modify the cards in any way other than building decks in that very slot, and there’s no effort to you. Tell me, why couldn’t we just get four slots, and if we wanted another opening session, we just had to ditch one of our pools? I admit, I have paid for additional slots, but unlocking pixely cards that you will toss together only to be defeated by the hacker with 23 Brittle Effigies (or the immortal Izzet deck I built) is little satisfaction when it comes at the combined price of over three times the game’s original price! You know what I could do with that kind of money? Go do two REAL Sealed events, where I get to keep my cards and resell them for more per piece than I paid for the event!

* If you disagree with us, you are wrong. By definition.
** Just that I despise poetry does not mean I am incapable of it. Also, to quote a local expert: “Forest is unplayable in Standard right now.”

52 replies to this post
  1. A Keldon Megaliths once killed my Mother of Runes. It was literally the worst day in my life. From now on, I always make sure to cheat a Blood Moon into play against everyone I’m playing. I applaud Stainless’ brave stand against the mother-hating non-basic lands.

    • Aw, now that’s just an inappropriate deckbuilding twitch.

      Now, sticking a Perplexing Chimera into every deck you make, that’s normal behaviour. If nothing else, it allows you to grab Wrath effects for yourself. You can’t fire me I quiiiit!

      Chimeras are hardcore.

  2. Great points Toraka. I would like to see Grixis and Esper decks. How about a milling, or a speedy deck like Krenko’s “Goblin gangland?”

    • Could we not have another game dominated by the mistake that was Goblins? Could we not?

      I predict that we will see a rather graveyardy deck, and it will contain Viashino Skeleton, because screw you says Wizards.

  3. A working lobby ffs. Do you know much time I wasted going through room after room of 3-player 2HG rooms all waiting for that elusive 4th player?

    Better decks, better network code, better ways to handle tokens (the wait on some decks to process token generation is a crime) and some way to handle block assignment in mass creature decks.

    After the disgusting excuse of a game that was 2014, I will ignore DotP Magic.

    • I didn’t want to mention the ten minutes of trying and failing to connect to a game that Wing and I cut out between each match, but… Wing and I cut out at least ten minutes, often more, of failed connections.

    • So you’re the annoying person that keeps cycling through rooms. Stay like 10-20 seconds and a fourth will show up, geez.

      With that said, I agree that we need lobbies.

    • Haha, if I was in a hurry, I don’t even stay for that long. On a busy night, you have better odds of hitting a 4-player room than waiting for the 4th.

      Anyway, I’m give 2015 a wide berth unless it turn out to be awesome and on Steam sales.

      Voting with my wallet.

      • We’ll be sure to update you. Although, I’d see if we can’t get Wizards to give us free game codes, because what they’ve been doing lately is not so much worth my puny supplies of money.

        Also, >implying there’s even any reason to play 2HG. I tried it with Evil Mee once, and ran into the exact removal spam combo as expected. Well, and the 2HG BNG prerelease tournament, but I and my partner decided against attending after realising that the solo Sealed tourney the day before took six hours, and so would the 2HG one.

        Reminds me, if Wizards want to keep Sealed in the game, it can’t be as pointless a moneygrab as this one. The entire fun of Limited is that you put together a quick deck and toss it away before bothering with it for too long!

      • Thanks.

        I prefer 2HG because the combination and variety through teamwork, both for and against you, makes the matches more interesting compared to the the more singular focused deck builds in 1v1; there are many interesting cards you get to play in 2HG that are much less viable in a 1v1.

        The strength of 2012 decks + expansion kept me going back but I was severely disappointed in how boring majority of decks are in 2013 while retaining much of the problems of old. The lack of thought and care evident in this franchise is the CCG equivalent of CoD and thus deserve none of my money.

  4. Biggest thing I want which doesn’t impact PC too much because you can at least type but would be very helpful for Xbox and PlayStation players is an option to highlight cards so your teammate doesn’t (always) play their creatures only to have you Mutilate the board etc. DO IT!

    Speaking of that, also being able to suggest a card to play/not play with your AI partner would also be very helpful.

  5. To my mind the deck which epitomized everything wrong with 2014 was the illusions deck on release.

    It wasn’t that illusions was the most powerful deck, but rather that its central drawback should have been its vulnerability to targeted effects – but there weren’t that many of those in the early meta-game, so it ended up more powerful than it should have been.

    It was like the decks were drawn up in isolation to each other – something that became clearer as I tried to make the dragons deck work, or noticed how dominant AG was.

    So what I would like to see in 2015, is more of an emphasis on how the decks play together, with weaknesses being exploited across the board.

    As to sealed: include a sealed mode with no limits on how many packs you can open – except to charge for those packs. Sure it is pay to win and all of that, but then so is base MTG. This will also allow expansions to open up more packs with a wider pool of cards.

    • Disagreed. It would be the very definition of P2W, and your local store doesn’t let you buy more packs either, do they?

      I’d also disagree with the notion of P2W Magic… My average deck contains at most 12 rares and 3 Mythics. How many are really needed to make the deck work and can’t be substituted easily? (Or don’t even do less than their common counterparts; My Bant control deck contains Heliod more because I got him as seventh pick during the redraft than for any other reason.) About five and one per deck, at most.

      True, there’s the land of Shocklands… but why WOULD you play tournaments anyway?

      Back to the point. Even now Illusions’ drawbacks are laughable since anything that targets them is already lethal and they have a 50% chance of being completely unbeatable. They have only shifted out due to even more ridiculous and facesmashy (able to be played by smashing your face into a keyboard) decks being introduced.

      I’d personally love to see some subtle interactions between decks that actually make duels (not capitalised intentionally!) unique: Maybe one likes to destroy lands, but another runs Life from the Loam, or one deck uses Deserts for early defense wherein another runs Camels…
      Okay, too specific. Maybe we get nonbasic lands and one deck gets a Blood Moon to show it off, which really hoses another deck which likes to use fetch + Crucible of Worlds. Fine-grained interactions that give a tiny edge to one deck without making it one-sided.

  6. I’m ultra-noob at magic, having only played a few months, so I have no credibility regarding actual balance issues..
    I would just like to say that a simic deck would be awesome. :D

    And would generally like to see more color/style variations.. Too many mono-green stompy decks (Hunter’s Strength, Hunter’s Season, Elves.. Mul’Daya was awesome though.) And too many mono-white decks.. Though Bounce & Boon was also really fun.

    And regarding the first point here; NONE of the tri-color decks had any viability whatsoever.. So yeah, they definitely need something better than Terramorphic Expanses.

    • Here’s DotP14’s balance in a nutshell for you:
      Wizards made the decks in a simple Roshambo pattern, but then attention deficit struck and they shipped the game without ever implementing rock. Thus, scissors became OP.
      Once rock was added in paid DLC, no one was playing paper any more, so rock was OP.

      The dragons deck is an interesting piece, because it doesn’t actually have colour issues. The thing is, it has literally EIGHT maximum plays before 3 mana, and not necessarily good ones at that. The entire rest is consumed by (not necessarily good one at that) fixing and (terrible ones at that) high-costers. It is a lovely example of how to mana curve: NOT LIKE THAT.

      To think, the deck could have been a reasonable force with some earlier pressure, Rampant Growths, and probably a few of the RGB guys. You know, the ones that you can sacrifice FOUR TIMES.
      Okay, I’m basically saying that the deck could have been better if it had been less terrible.

  7. How about including a leeching, control deck? Golgaris’s “Sepulcral strength” was one of my favorite decks in dotp 2013.

  8. I wouldn’t mind a seal deck variant where the more you play the more packs you can open. I don’t want Pay to Win like in Hearthstone, but something where I can earn more packs by playing more. I like the Roshambo balance, but that needed to be worked on more before released.

    Also, they need to work on some of the rules. In Two-Headed Giant, you should be able to choose which head you are attacking. Most of the time that doesn’t matter, but it does with Annihilator.

    • You didn’t hear the rubbish news yet? As far as I’ve heard there will be NO Two Headed Giant in 2015 online. Oh and several people have said the “custom deck” idea isn’t as “custom” as you’d like to think.

      Not holding my breath for this one. That said, it’s no shock. Wizards aren’t a company known for listening to it’s player base.

  9. “Core decks

    -Ajani’s Enchantment control with Sphere of Safety and board wipes // Aura Beatdown.
    -Jace’s Draw-go control with mill finishers // Evasive Tempo. Not necessarily mill-focused, just curve-topped with mill bombs.
    -Liliana’s Death Combo. Lots of death triggers, sac outlets, and some cards with Morbid.
    -Chandra’s Tempo-burn with Young Pyromancer.
    -Garruk’s Hyper-Ramp. Similar to Chant of Mul Daya, but focused on 5-7 drops.
    -UG Tribal Merfolk with some hybrid white Merfolk.
    -W/G Aura with Bestow and Heroic.
    -R/B Tribal Minotaur with Boros Reckoner and Didgeridoo.
    -Mono-Black Devotion.
    -UW Flicker/Flash.

    Expansion

    -Nicol Bolas’s Grixis Control (Play as the Boss!)
    -R/G Tribal Wolves + Werewolves.
    -If the “Warlords of Khanar” rumors are true, Sarkhan’s Mono-Red Dragons. Turn it more into a Big Red deck with lots of creature kills at lower curves and big beaters at higher end rather than as a Dragon tribal.
    -If the “Warlords of Khanar” rumors are not true, whichever planeswalker is relevant to the Fall set.
    -Elspeth’s Mono-White Tokens.
    -U/B Hyper-Mill with Phenax, God of Deception.

    Deck Packs (Not in order)

    -W/B Bleeder with Souls of the Faultless.
    -B/G Reanimator/Dredge.
    -Tezzeret’s Mono-Blue Artifacts with some W/U and U/B hybrids.
    -Mono-Green Fog with non-damage win conditions. Or, 5-color Maze’s End.
    -U/R Spellslinger with Delver of Secrets.
    -W/R Battalion.”

    ^Found this wishlist elsewhere. I could live with this setup.

    • Ajani: Instead, we could also have interesting decks. And no, I’m not just butthurt because I can’t find a Sphere of Safety for my 30 enchantment deck.

      Jace: Not gonna happen. People prefer playing matches that are fun.

      Liliana: I love The Expendables, give me a chance to play it online!
      (There’s something fundamentally wrong with a deck that welcomes any chance to chump block. I just can’t place what.)

      Chandra: I suppose we need a titankiller. Look, the Pyro is cute and I almost centered a story about her, but that’s it, especially in a monoR DotP deck.

      Garruk: If your deck isn’t stuffed with 7+ cards that you cast by turn 4 anyway, you’re doing Green wrong. U/R/G ramp, please? I just want to see the Excessive Mana deck, I admit.

      Merfolk: Could be interesting, doesn’t have to.

      W/G: Cards that are less than 10 years old, in MY DotP? Away with you!

      Cows: Same as above, except that Ragemonger does everything Didgeridoo does, just better. Seriously, when it lands it’s a question of Dark Betrayal or death.

      Gary deck: Uh, no. I would prefer not to be drained for 10 to death by turn 5. If you haven’t seen what black devotion does, I have felt it.

      Flicker: Sure, I guess. Even though from experience and playing Venser’s duel deck, such a deck needs lots of scrying (on average, Venser scries 20 cards per game) and the game is currently not very intuitive as for scrying.

      Nicole Balls: If it’s even slightly balanced, it is not going to be a challenge played by the AI. Then again, neither was Ramaz and that dude literally stacked his deck. I suppose, if they want to make another set around the misconception that Black = ebul and White = gud.

      Twilight: The movie: The deck: I don’t expect it would be very competitive. Odd as that sounds, within the different game of DotP, none of your wolves is ever going to flip. Plus, they would need to make a solution for showing you the other side. Effort!

      Dragons: HAHAHAHAHAHA!

      Other deck: Muraganda. I’m calling it now.

      Elspeth: is a girl with daddy issues and too much angst to use any of her godlike powers and the only treatment she deserves is to be ignored like she wants!

      Mill: Sure, let’s take a low-powered game and stick in a deck which, as the only one in the game, gets an immortal god thing that will kill the enemy by itself.
      I’d equate DotP’s power level with a Sealed tournament where everyone had a good draft. Guess what god of heliodic orbs of gas soloed the final of just such a tournament for me on Friday?
      The point is, gods are powerful, especially if only some decks get them. (And only some will get them, because despite being mythic they’re not necessarily the best in each deck.) All decks will need some type of answer to them, even if those answers are so specific they won’t be run when they are unnecessary against most decks. If it sounds like I’m painting devils here, this is exactly what happened in DotP14 to make Warsmith and the enchantress deck powerful; All decks have answers, but there are about three permanents those answers would hit across all decks except those two.

      Bleeder: I take it back, this will be Twilight: The movie: The book: The deck. We’ll see how good it will be when a lot of slots are consumed by Taste of Blood and similiar.

      Dredge: Please no.

      Tezzeret: It’s the Esper deck I’ve always wanted!

      Turbofog: As amazing as it was to see Maze’s End on Game Day (and the bugger made top 8, too!) I would prefer a deck that can be beaten.

      Delver: You need to be a dick or Wing to play this deck. I think we can live without another Izzet LOLBURNIWIN deck for some time.

      Boros: I hate Boros and it could easily be Angels again. Don’t tell me they’ll fit it to the meta either; A battalion deck that fits with DotP midrange decks in tempo isn’t a battalion deck.

      I know these are not your suggestions, but here’s my thoughts on that lineup. Making pleasing decks is hard.

  10. Although since Ajani is looking to be W/G he’ll probably be the face of the WG Aura deck in this scenario. So the mono white core game deck will have to be replaced by Elspeth’s mono white tokens. Then the dlc spot can be filled by something never done in DOTP before. Perhaps a RBW Vampire/Human sac machine. Who knows.

  11. I have no time for paper Magic, but I thoroughly enjoy the card unlocking and casual style “arcade” format of DoTP.

    I think your basic land criticism is absolutely on point, and could open up viable, fun multi colour decks that could compete with simple one colour weenie/aggros. The phases idea however, might be a bit much for what is meant to be basically an advertisement for casual players to try magic. I think the format now gets the stack idea across quite well and the benefits to implementing more complex phase/priority timing would be minimal, especially to casual players.

    I had DoTP 2013 but never really got into it. But last year I did commit heavily to DoTP 2014. Now I am back on the ghost town that is 2013 unlocking decks, and lo and behold, the decks are way more interesting, innovative and plain fun to play. Sure at first glance it seems that the mill deck has no chance against goblins or the pre AG peacekeepers deck but at least you can play around with that type of build. Crosswinds is more fun than 85% of anything 2014 has to offer.

    It seems that some kind of laziness or malaise came over Wizards for 2014, where not enough thought was given to the synergies between the decks in the format. How could anyone think Avacyn’s Glory or MM were balanced enough to release into the meta? How could anyone sign off on that last green token deck period?

    I don’t want to be all doom and gloom though – the format is still fun. It is super rewarding to control and discard an AG player to death with Dimir, and there is joy in imagining the helpless terror an opponent must feel when you turbo-ramp Muldaya up. I would never have the time or money to invest in the dark hole that is real life magic or that crappy looking online version of it Wizards own. This is fun, easy, and scratches just enough of that itch for me.

    • Almost all decks in DotP13 were fun to face and had innovative ideas. Hell, even the infinite Time Warp combo Talrand’s deck was fun, especially since it was physically able to die. I remember having a blast with it. Let’s do that again.

      I admit that the draw step isn’t as relevant (especially since few people know that there’s actually priority there), but I couldn’t list all the times that I’ve upkeep’d something. (One good trick is to end your own turn to see if your opponent has any tricks, then upkeep his thing once you have priority again since you can’t check for tricks and cast something in the end step yourself. It opens you up to untapped mana, but little else. It’ll draw you odd looks at least once, but it works.)

      I’d tell you to invest the tiny bit of money into an FNM just to see its joy, but I do not (yet) get paid by Wizards, so you figure it out.

      Wizards makes decks using a dart board. Sometimes, it shows. Don’t worry, it works out most of the time.

      • It’s not even about the money, it’s about the time investment and getting into a hobby that I just don’t have the energy for anymore.

        DotP works perfectly for me precisely because of its acessibility and ease of use. I play boardgames once a week with a crew of guys and that is already more than enough to keep me going.

        About once a year we do a small sealed deck or sealed draft just to laugh at how insane the new cards are (most of us haven’t touched Magic since Homeland, that’s how old we are).

  12. Here’s the other thing, even though certain deck types usually imply certain cards being implemented, like monoblack devotion, this is DOTP we’re talking about. If it wants to throw in 8 black cards from the Lorwyn block it will.

    • The true thing is, black devotion decks work entirely and only because of Gary, Merchant of Assfondle. If you wouldn’t occasionally cringe at hearing “Gary for 8” from the adjacent duel to you, such decks would have no power at all.

      He’s a strong card, Gary is. Try him in multiplayer, Sanguine Bond not included. Oneshotting somebody out of the blue and down from 40 may get you punched in the face. Beware.

  13. I’d like to see a ridiculous attempt at a Maori deck. Lizards, Faeries and Octopuses.
    Would win over my heart? Yes.
    Would win? Never.

    • Ooh, then it can include Whelming Wave so that you can bounce everything except your octopi!

      Of which there are three.

      In the entire game.

      Was it too hard just to make a sorcery Evacuation, Wizards?

  14. Oh and one last thing, am I the only one that thinks Sealed is better off just dropped entirely?

    People complain about wanting to be able to completely customize decks from all cards in the game.
    That’s not really what DOTP is. MTG Online is that. Paper Magic is that. Cockatrice is that. DOTP is meant as a closed format. That’s what makes it fun. Think of it as the Fighting Game of Magic: The Gathering. By giving you a limited number of decks with specific themes, it creates a closed environment in which you are spared from the atrocious and inevitable net-decking players. You’re given a character list if you will, each with their own strengths, play-style and weaknesses and all even applicable to make shift tier lists. That’s what makes DOTP what it is.

    The downside of that being that they screw up (again inevitably) and make one or two demigod decks and let the rest crawl after in a state that makes them borderline playable in casual, let alone boxed in a closed environment with powerhouses.

    The way to fix this of course being not to just allow players to build whatever they want. It’s actually much more simple. JUST MAKE BALANCED AND INTERESTING DECKS. Go look at 1 on 1 fighting games if you need to. If they put forth any small amount of effort they could come up with a very balanced and fun, almost artful form of fighting with even periods of advantage and consistent wins for any deck played properly. One might even call this sort of gentleman’s brawling a “duel.” And given the nature of the duelists as being dimension sojourning mages, a functioning “duels of the planeswalkers.”

    • I wish I could “like” the above post. There is nothing wrong with the Duels of the Planeswalkers format, it does what it set out to do quite well: an arcade version of the paper magic game that is easy to pick up and play.

      Balance the decks out, make sure there are multiple ways to build them and ensure each has strategic strengths and weaknesses against the rest of the roster.

      Although I never got to play 2013 multiplayer, I actually can see the thought and foresight that went into most of those decks, which I think was a bit lacking in 2014.

  15. I am surprised to see that there has been no article written on the DOTP 2015 announcement trailer. Especially the seemingly lack of the game coming to the Sony consoles this year. I would love to hear Wizards or Stainless” reason for neglecting Playstation after all these years.

    • There would be if it was anything more than “Get that shit done before PAX.”

      So let’s do our best and datamine the crap out of it when we’re not supposed to! Using the following screenshots, we can determine: (which sounds basically the same as datamine… handy coincidence!)

      http://androidspin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/M15-Duels-Android-3.png
      http://i.computer-bild.de/imgs/5/6/7/2/3/5/3/Magic-2015-Duels-of-the-Planeswalkers-Exklusiv-angespielt-658×370-d2346629138151a6.jpg
      http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/images/slides/253/020/9/S2530209/slug/l/3-gameplay-english-1.jpg
      http://i.computer-bild.de/imgs/5/6/7/2/3/5/3/Magic-2015-Duels-of-the-Planeswalkers-Deck-Manager-658×370-87fbefaf54fa2b1e.jpg
      http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/94/c0/94c03b75fc28f1523aeb59da0e19ee67.JPG?itok=PirmdVF-
      http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/screenshots/Magic2015DuelsofthePlaneswalkers/M15610.jpg

      – The motherkilling nonbasics are still out.
      – Then however, we gain access to blocks that are younger than I am. And how we do, because Arbor Colossus is a beefcastle beyond imagination.
      – There’s a selfmilling zombie, and honestly who gives a crap.
      – The game now only treats main 1, combat, main 2, and likely End phase. That’s one way to deal with the messed up starting phases: NOT TO.
      – Though they give us full customisation which no one with a bit of brains asked for because full customisation equals P2W, you’re going to play 24:36 and you will enjoy it.
      – This line, as well as all others, starts with “Th”.
      – Then again, there is a separate Lands tab. ?
      – The game gets paid boosters (I have confirmation on the “paid”, I just forgot where) to promote hacking and turn the game into a nonbalanced, because seeded (boosters appearing in game are not real ones when Innistrad through Theros gets mixed up), MTGO. You know what’s good at being MTGO? Fucking MTGO!
      – Those hoping to experience the limited, preconstructed GAMEplay DotP used to offer have currently no hint that the GAME will feature any of what differed it from the rest of MTG.

      • Non basic lands are actually in dude. We have guild gates and also tri lands. Its also not P2W either since most of the premium cards are common/uncommon and they just help to create more diverse decks or add strategies. You cannot make decks win solely from the rares/mythics since most require you to build decks around them for them to work and there’s also the rarity restriction of 4/3/2/1. Also once you have max copies of a card you no longer find it in booster packs (normal ones and premium ones this applies to) so if you get two Arbor Colossus you will no longer get them in boosters.

      • Consider it being two months past now.

        Also, I am not sure you understand. Premium cards exist. They can be acquired only through paying. A player who does not pay can not have these cards. BY DEFINITION, a free player is worse off because she has less cards. Imagine the almighty Bolt was a premium card (which I can definitely see happen). No, the free player can do with Shock, why would he have access to the same cards. The paying player has better decks, due to more possibilities of which at least one has to be better. (Also, they kind of want to sell those things…)

        Pseudo-Pauper is seriously a factor that heavily discourages from buying. Oh, you want to build your deck around an engine card that you want four of but that happens to be rare or just anything but common? SHIT OUT OF LUCK! Brief list of things that this rule really hinders and all of which are confirmed to be in DotP15: The five Paragons. Goblin Rabblemaster. Chasm Skulker. Ajani’s Pridemate.

        You know, just to name those where you would definitely want four. There’s not even any discussion to this. The game has no right to break Magic’s rules. You are allowed four copies, that’s it! This system literally punishes you for playing, because the more you play, the more wasted your time becomes!

      • I do have to agree with you on the non 4 copies of every rarity. I think they should of gone 4/4/4/1 tbh. Would allow better decks and stop things like four Baneslayers.

  16. Great article Toraka, I really hope they don’t muck up 2015. I’ve enjoyed the Duels series far and away what I should have over the past 4 years, but if they lose what differentiates it from everything else, I’d have no reason to not just load up MTGO.

    • Well, at least DotP15 will satisfy your ink addiction for free.

      Unless, you know, you don’t want to grind five games for a booster pack, and have a spare moneyses…

      • Well you get a booster every game (only against the AI though ><). Apparently you eventually earn the "ability" to get boosters with real card amounts and rarity distributions that real boosters have.

      • Which SOUNDS awesome to get a booster for every game, until you consider that I have been playing Theros block Draft pretty much literally every Friday since Theros came out, and even I don’t havea complete set of even one of even just the Theros rares. Stochastics is a bitch, and even cutting things you already have will still give you grind aplenty.

        Oh, and boosters are sorted by each plane, so you can’t start unlocking the next plane’s 75 cards while you’re grinding out the rares. (Or rather, uncommons. Them Kiora’s Followers are impossible to find, yo.)

      • You can unlock the next planes cards even if you haven’t unlocked the previous planes cards. Not sure what’s making you think you’re blocked from unlocking cards from the Zendikar collection if you have hardly touched the Theros collection.

        Correct me if I read what you said wrong it just seemed that’s what you meant.

      • But you can’t unlock Innistrad cards while grinding in Theros, so to get those Theros cards, you’re stuck grinding out 4 card boosters.

        Oh, by the way, the game will have six planes: Theros, Ravnica, Innistrad, Shandalar (that limbo plane where core sets may or may not take place), Zendikar, and MIRRODIN PURE SCREW YOU PHYREXIA.

        Featuring over 300 cards! Enjoy unlocking a whopping 50 cards out of sets literally more than ten times as big! Best hope our darts landed on the right cards to pick out for DotP! (And by the looks of it, they did not. Can we just forget Thassa’s Bounty exists?)

        I would withhold interest on that game. By which I mean, don’t buy it.

      • The planes are Innistrad, Theros, Shandalar, Zendikar and Ravnica…where the hell are you getting Mirrodin from…. Also you can unlock Innistrad cards while you have the Theros plane unlocked and the reverse is true. You can only unlock Theros cards in Theros though but you can go back to the other planes to unlock those specific planes cards…there’s nothing wrong with this. Also I ask again why did you bring up Mirrodin when its not in the game unless you have info about that game that no one else knows.

        There are 5 planes with 5 main fights per plane and a encounter mode per plane (where you earn the rest of the cards specifically from whatever plane you’re on) which could have 1-5 random decks to fight against. I’m still puzzled why you brought up Mirrodin when there are only 5 planes in the game with a possible Alara DLC happening sometime.

      • MaRo specifically stated that the six Souls in M15 are named after the planes in DotP15. In addition to one soul of each colour and plane you mentioned, there is an artifact soul of New Phyrexia. Q.E.D.

      • Yes I know and only the green and the blue one are in the game. The red, white, black and colourless are not in DotP 2015. We already know all of the cards in the game based on the entire card list from all the videos shown. The only way the other souls are in is if they are added in last minute or as DLC. There is no Mirrodin plane because in the top dev himself has stated all the planes. Maro is talking about the core set and how each plane has a soul based on the planes in DotP 2015 not that every soul is in the game and if he was saying every one is in the game then he is wrong. There’s a lack of communication anyway at WotC so I’m not surprised. Yesterday the release date for the game was 16th-17th for all consoles apart from Ipad which is on the 9th and that was shown on there official calendar. Then it was changed and now its not listed….basically they don’t know what the hell they’re doing with their own game and that has been the problem since day one for DotP.

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