Some thoughts about Planeswalkers.

The "fixed deck only" play is more or less set to make online matches as even as possible, but I'm guessing it's also to keep the game as limited as possible for a few reasons.

I don't know if that's to sell as many expansion packs as possible once players get bored of the same pre-built decks, or if Wizards of the Coast want video game players to start playing the physical card game which is designed in a way that it essentially has an unlimited spending cap for card decks, packs and expansion sets which have levels of rarity in addition to being randomly packed. Both, I'd imagine.

The fact that buying the game gives you a voucher for an exclusive physical card that you have to pick up at a M:TG retail outlet pretty much supports this: the card's only useful if you play the physical card game.

I also noticed that the expansion packs are already included in the base game's installation: buying the DLC only gives you a 100KB key to unlock the extra content. So basically it's already in the basic $10 game; you just have to pay more to access it.

I'm guessing that any future expansion sets will simply allow players to unlock more decks as opposed to actually "buying" new decks and downloading more cards.

And this is the real reason for the DLC/expansion set structuring and fixed deck set up of the game: you wouldn't have to buy new decks (or more accurately, pay to unlock them) as you could simply build new decks using the cards you already had access to. Naturally, they want to sell you more prebuilt decks rather than let you build your own.

Pretty sly.

That being said, the game still plays just like the physical card game without having to spend the hundreds on cards it would take to build all of the decks in the video game. Unfortunately, it takes out the most important aspect of M:TG, which is deck building and fine tuning.

But considering the base game and three current expansion sets cost $25 and allow you to play people online, it's still a lot cheaper than buying M:TG cards and playing people locally. As any player of the card game will tell you, $25 buys you next to nothing in physical cards. A mixed starter deck (that is unplayable since they're randomly packed) and about 4 booster packs (randomly packed cards). You'd be lucky to get one half decent playable deck out of that.

I've made decks out of mostly commons, designed to be as simple and fast as possible, but they are extremely boring to play with and were really little more than "test decks" to test more carefully constructed decks that were actually fun to play with.

A simple Red/Black deck full of direct damage, 4 dark rituals, 8 land destruction spells, a dozen goblins and 4 goblin grenades won more often than not, but was still really boring to play with.

If it weren't for the 4 card limit, a deck full of lighting bolts and mountains would probably win more often than not, but I don't know what kind of player would actually want to use such a deck.

I played well over ten years ago so Planeswalker has been fun, even without deck construction.

And $25 will buy you a single beat up Dual Land, which every Magic player knows speeds up any multi color deck. Naturally, 4 are better in a dual color deck. 12 in a tri-color deck. That's over $300 worth of dual lands alone that will speed up any tri-deck.

Point is, cards that demand a high after market price do so for a reason: decks using them work better and faster than those without. And that's one of the unfortunate things about playing M:TG

I never found red decks boring as long as you get to win.

However, I will not argue further that you can go about playing competitively cheaply because that is obviously not the case. I still remember spending good money on weekly drafts, release events, etc. Made me appreciate console gaming all the more as you definitely get more value for every €50 spent.

(Hope that Kotick does not hear this).

except for the part where you need to pour hundreds upon hundreds of dollars into it to be competitive and trust me I speak from experience.

I disagree with that, magic is such a cheap game

Warhammer you need to buy about a hundred models to give yourself decent tactical flexibilty required to fight against any race, and assuming you only want to play as 1 race. This would cost in the region of $500, and even then you would still be limited in your choice. PLus rulebooks and army books, which are updated way too freuqnelty, and every time they are the models are no longer tournament legal.

Magic the gathering can be played by buying a $30 deck, and customising it with $10 worth of commons and uncommons. I have decks made up purely from commons and uncommons and I wipe the floor with a friend who simply puts his rarest (and thus most mana intensive) cards in his deck with no thought for tactics.

Some thoughts about Planeswalkers.

The "fixed deck only" play is more or less set to make online matches as even as possible, but I'm guessing it's also to keep the game as limited as possible for a few reasons.

I don't know if that's to sell as many expansion packs as possible once players get bored of the same pre-built decks, or if Wizards of the Coast want video game players to start playing the physical card game which is designed in a way that it essentially has an unlimited spending cap for card decks, packs and expansion sets which have levels of rarity in addition to being randomly packed. Both, I'd imagine.

The fact that buying the game gives you a voucher for an exclusive physical card that you have to pick up at a M:TG retail outlet pretty much supports this: the card's only useful if you play the physical card game.

I also noticed that the expansion packs are already included in the base game's installation: buying the DLC only gives you a 100KB key to unlock the extra content. So basically it's already in the basic $10 game; you just have to pay more to access it.

I'm guessing that any future expansion sets will simply allow players to unlock more decks as opposed to actually "buying" new decks and downloading more cards.

And this is the real reason for the DLC/expansion set structuring and fixed deck set up of the game: you wouldn't have to buy new decks (or more accurately, pay to unlock them) as you could simply build new decks using the cards you already had access to. Naturally, they want to sell you more prebuilt decks rather than let you build your own.

Pretty sly.

That being said, the game still plays just like the physical card game without having to spend the hundreds on cards it would take to build all of the decks in the video game. Unfortunately, it takes out the most important aspect of M:TG, which is deck building and fine tuning.

But considering the base game and three current expansion sets cost $25 and allow you to play people online, it's still a lot cheaper than buying M:TG cards and playing people locally. As any player of the card game will tell you, $25 buys you next to nothing in physical cards. A mixed starter deck (that is unplayable since they're randomly packed) and about 4 booster packs (randomly packed cards). You'd be lucky to get one half decent playable deck out of that.