Magic on the XBox

So I decided to spring $10 to get the latest Magic The Gathering game on XBox Live (Duel of the Planeswalkers 2012). You know, apart from the occassional “Oops, I hit the wrong button or missed a timer” problem (which sometimes costs me a game), it’s actually a pretty decent way of scratching the itch.  Looks like there are ~8-10 decks, you can unlock 15 new cards per deck (and then start swapping), and then you have Archenemy games, where three decks face one (who starts with double life and gets to draw a scheme card, which is a free, powerful spell at the start of each turn. Things like “Pick an opponent, he either looses 2 lands or each of his teammates looses one”).

As for Magic itself, the only real issue for me is that there are several new keywords (at least one of which I’ve played, but no tooltip or obvious effect happened). I guess I’ll just look them up online. I do really like the idea of equipment enchantments (that attach to your characters but stick around when the character dies and can be attached to new characters).  Is it great? No. But unlocking each deck, beating each archenemy (and I think there’s a mode where you get to be the archenemy, playing against 3 decks) is fine. The AIs are reasonable. I suspect if I played against people it would be fine, too, but the AIs are fine for now.

And it’s only $10, and nobody is going to be stealing my cards.