Magic: The Gathering – or Magic: The Encounter – has been attracting thousands of players around the world for more than two decades, although a part of them ends up abandoning the game after a brief approach, surely, due to the complexity it holds its game system and, why not say it, because of its classic card game condition . Perhaps for this reason, from Wizards of the Coast have wanted to bring such a vast world of magic, fantastic creatures and sorcery to a wider audience with the different digital deliveries of Magic, this new 2015 version being the ideal one to debut in the attractive universe of the called Planes Walkers . And the first thing we have to do – especially the first time users – is to attend toa complete and well done tutorial , narrated by a pleasant female voice in perfect Castilian, something that, on the other hand, is appreciated.
Thus, and for those who are not familiar with its game mechanics, the title proposes us to incarnate a Planeswalker , sorcerers with great powers that are capable of changing the plane of existence to be more effective in combat. Already in the introductory scene we will witness a short but intense combat between two Planeswalkers, with fateful results for one of them; we can say that this scene is very well done, giving us an idea of the high levels of production of Magic 2015. And is not because it is a title of interchangeable cards must neglect its staging, which as you will see in the different captures or trailer , it is attractive, entertaining and even spectacular by the always colorful arts of the letters, characters and other elements inherent in the saga.
At the start, each player draws up to seven cards from the deck; once on the table, we can see in more detail its content -both the symbols as well as the texts and the images- touching directly on them. Magic bases its cards on five types represented by groups of colors ; the green, our first color, will help us to begin to familiarize ourselves with the mechanics of the game, although later we will be able to choose the other colors. Thus, green represents Earth, with which we can invoke beings and monsters of great size and brute force; but first we must gather resources, the aforementioned manna, with what in each turn we can put these cards on the table to gather the manna necessary to cast spells or invoke more powerful creatures.
Over time we will gather decks of up to a hundred cards of all types and we can configure the decks to our own style of play . But let’s get to know the rest of card colors better; As we said before, we will start with green, although soon we will have access to blue, in reference to illusionary magic and water to steal cards or obstruct the rival, to red, fast attack cards based on fire, black, color of dark magic capable of invoking living dead or stealing life from the rival and, last but not least, white, the magic of light capable of invoking mythological beings and angels of great destructive power. The interface is clear and clean and we will quickly feel comfortable playing Magic as if it were a game table.
Something essential in this type of games is its interface and Magic 2015 uses a totally renewed aspect. We can drag the desired cards on the board, zoom in on them to view them in detail and decide our movements through different contextual icons located on the sides, such as attack or block, among other options. The cards discarded – of those creatures fallen in combat – will be canceled
automatically and the rest will recover the units of life lost, in order to continue being useful in the subsequent turns. Thus, it presents a typical gameplay of the genre, with which each confrontation will have a variable duration according to the given steps and the own randomness of the decks of cards.
