Reader Reviews

Magic The Gathering: Online (PC)

by Jos

Magic The Gathering: Online is a virtual representation of the table top fantasy themed trading card game. It is not a 3D reworking – it’s just the card game. As such it is about (among many things) collecting and trading cards, building decks, and duelling those decks – imagine a poker-top trumps-Panini-Pokemon smoothie and you’d be in the right ball park.

Some despise the game as a pimply-gimp paradise but if you can get past that, you’ll find there is much to enjoy. I’m not going to go into the details of the game – it’s too complicated to do it justice and stay in sight of the word limit. But please believe me that there is great depth of strategy and an absurd variety of ways it can be played. It constantly evolves, and has a dangerously addictive quality as you strive to trade or buy the right cards for the decks you plan to make.

The online version enables you to find an opponent at any time of day or night, helps you learn and stay within the rules of the game, offers a massive community of players, gives access to leagues and tournaments and provides an easy way to buy, trade and build your decks of cards. The rigmarole of playing is much easier online than in real life. That said, it is a complicated game and you need to persevere through a few “duels” till you find your feet.

There have been problems in the recent past. Server instability led to the removal of some functionality, and server downtime. Things are much better now though, with very good communication procedures to keep people up to date with what’s going on.

There is a free trial server available once you have installed the client which will let you play with pre-built decks to get a feel for the game. Then you can get a user account (and a pre-built deck of cards with the accompanying credit) for around $11 for use on the fully featured server.

And as an aside, they used the system to hold an invitational event at E3 this year. Which is nice.

General Game Info (Check out the Chad Ellis articles, Flash overview of the game, Game download (It’s big ~ 200 Meg +) and then it will update itself!.