i used the red deck (non-goblin) and got lucky with a lot of direct damage cards and lots of mana available. so i fireballed Nicol to death
I haven't really played Magic consistently since Homelands and I have to say this has really reignited both my love and hate of the game. (but the hate only comes in because the love is there in the first place. I know deck construction can certainly help but it still seems like luck plays a huge role in the game. Even with the same deck I'll wind up with runs of either no mana for 3-4 turns in a row or literally nothing but mana for 5-6 turns in which case you're kind of screwed. Also, specifically in regard to the client I've lost several matches because it didn't register a block correctly, it didn't read the card assigned to be used with body double so it spent the mana, used the spell and left me tapped out with nothing to show for it. Other notable greats include destroying a creature when I tried equip an artifact, or it skipping ahead because it thought I couldn't cast anything but I had creatures that I wanted to pump before the combat round began. Anyhow, all that said it's a great game and I can certainly understand how something with the complexity of Magic could run into some bugs like that but they're really frustrating, particularly in online games.
How do the die work? I'm fairly new to this and I've been playing the campaign now I've unlocked the planechase I notice you play against three other players and dice comes into it. How does the dice work it appears to be blank most times they roll? Also I can't work out how to roll when it's my turn at what stage do I roll and where do I press to roll? Do I even need to roll or can I just skip that? Also how does one Players score go up instead of just 20 I noticed one of the players went to 34?
Welcome to Duels 2013! Planechase is a really fun multiplayer format. The die is used to planeswalk you to different planes or trigger the ability on the planar card. Each plane has a different global effect on the game that can be triggered. For more details about Planechase, I recommend reading this article: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/51 To roll the die, press on the Planar card in the middle of the battlefield during your main phase. This will zoom up on the card where you will see the option to roll the die. Your first roll of the turn costs 0 mana. Your second is 1 mana, the third is 2 mana, and so on. As far as life goes, there are cards that will gain you life so you can go over 20. That is why one of the other players went to 34.
I haven't played Magic since the late 90s but I am very excited to see how far it's evolved. Just gotta clear some space... like 2 gigs
Welcome to the forum, wizards_jon! It's awesome to have someone from Wizards here. I know there have been many pages in this thread to read through, so I was wondering if you had seen the major issues our members were hoping would be addressed in an update. I've collected a few that I can remember off the top of my head; is there somewhere else we should be reporting them directly to WotC? - Random cards being selected in one's hand, even when they're not playable. For example, the electric purple highlight popping up around a land card during your opponent's Combat phase -- definitely not playable, and very distracting, as that highlighted card blocks part of your view of the board. - Planechase mode crashing consistently on first-gen iPads. - Blocking during Combat: there have been reports with large numbers of creatures attacking/blocking that the arrowed lines get easily crisscrossed, making it difficult to accurately select which creature is blocking which, resulting in mistakes (and unhappy players who didn't realize it until combat damage went through). - Attacking with multiple creatures at once (especially in decks that generate lots of tokens) is arduous at best. Having a way to select multiple creatures simultaneously, or at least not having to wait for each one to individually animate/tap on the board before moving to the next creature. - General speed of play: a consensus seems to have somewhat been reached that the speed is a good compromise between giving time for opponents to respond to plays and letting the AI think, and not making the game drag too much. There are times when it feels much slower than playing the physical game, however, and one major way is when a player wants to pass the rest of their turn. For example, they don't have enough mana to play anything in their hand, and they don't want to attack during their Combat phase. They need to tap through (and wait through lots of animations) each individual phase, instead of just being able to pass the turn and giving their opponent the chance to react. Another example is the Combat phase of your opponent when you can't block their attack -- you still need to wait through several different animations (including the word "Block" sliding across the screen) before anything happens. Giving the option to skip some of these things would be nice, while still preserving the necessary reaction times for playing Instants, cards with Flash, etc. - Searching through one's library for a card (like when playing a Squadron Hawk, for example) can be tricky -- skimming across the entire library can feel very imprecise, especially when the card is toward either the left or right side of the screen (I know I have to move my finger very . . . slowly . . . to not miss it when skimming). - Discarding: Confusing for some players, especially when one has to discard more than one card at once -- there doesn't seem to be a visual cue that the card has been successfully discarded, so players feel like they have to repeatedly discard the same card or move on to other cards in their hand, not realizing they've been successful. Similarly (though a separate issue), when a spell can split its damage between multiple creatures, it's not visually clear that the first points of damage have been allocated. Visual indicators of successful parts if an action would be helpful. - The achievement for defeating all ten Encounters does not appear to be unlocking in Game Center for many of our members. Hope this helps, and thanks again for stopping by! Everyone else in this thread, was this a good summary of the things we hope to see changed?
Fantastic summary, Sojourn. I would like to add that the targeting of specific cards, like auras, is very hard in general even on uncluttered battlefields, so it's not just combat having these problems. Mis-targeting is a mistake that breaks a game, that can easily lose games and destroy the time investment. Sometimes the target goes off on one tap. Sometimes it takes two. While targeting you can no longer verify which card is which. I can think of three solutions to this (maybe there are more besides). - let us pinch to zoom at all times - let us fan out cards before targeting in all cases - show us what is targeted and let us cycle through targets with arrows after one is selected I also feel that pressing stop on the other player's end phase is a pretty easy thing to mess up, and that's another way you can really mess up. I would like it to work like this, you press a pass button, and it pops up a diagram of the upcoming phases and you press the one on which you would want to stop passing (press stop). You can still press the hourglass as normal and pass to a different phase if you choose. Knowing both player's chosen stop points can eliminate a lot of the useless wait between phases, but even without that it would be helpful just to have a "pass" button. And yes, the interface is invisibly modal, listening to input at times and not at others, sometimes buffering your taps and sometimes ignoring them. It would be nice if taps interrupted animations in progress. In my opinion input should take priority over display.
Thanks, Plynx! I like your idea of passing and picking what phases you want to pass -- I was actually thinking of a similar solution, though visualizing it on the other end -- if your opponent passes, and you want to cast an instant, getting to pick which phase of their turn you want to play it during. Neat! I also edited my previous post to include two more issues I remembered people mentioning en masse -- searching through their library for specific cards, and discarding multiple cards at once.
The UI is so damned frustrating! One example of many encountered: creature equipment can regenerate creature. Creature blocks, no chance to regenerate. When and how exactly must the regeneration ability be triggered? I can't even tap the card to do it as it remains under the creature. Disappointed that this was not more carefully thought out for users.
Many thanks. DLed the PDF of the rules from your link. Loving this game. Gonna find a shop selling the physical cards and buy a set just to have them.
When you are declaring your blockers, that's all you can do. Once you have that all set and you hit the block button, freeze the timer and you'll be able to activate card abilities, play instants, etc.
I must activate the regeneration ability before the damage is dealt? For a game that is supposedly so precise on the rules, this makes absolutely zero sense. Like I said, the UI leaves much to be desired. But thanks for the quick response.
This is a revision of the regeneration rules from earlier days. Now you activate regeneration to put an effect on the stack that when it resolves, puts a "shield" on the creature that provides the regeneration effect and uses itself up. You can put multiple such "shields" on a creature. Once damage resolves, it's too late (unlike early versions of magic, where damage resolution was its own limited "phase" where damage prevention effects were supposed to be played).
That's just how regeneration works, even in the table top game. It's not a flaw of the UI. Next time you see a card with regeneration on it, double tap it and hit the more info button. It states that regeneration must be activated before the creature is killed. I do agree that it seems odd this way, as regeneration seems to imply ressurection, but that's just not the case.
For people who have trouble targeting a card that's being covered by another card,you can double tap that stack,select the card you want to target and under info there's the option "choose this card".
this is an awesome game experience. i have noticed a couple of other bugs not mentioned above by wizard mike... the solve ten encounters achievement bug (mentioned by many in this thread). the acheivment doesnt show up in game center or in-game player stats, even after being awarded it at the conclusion of the tenth encounter... also, when using some of the exile cards in the peacemaker deck (fiend hunter, etc.), if you touch the target card too early, the beam shows connecting the two cards, and the popup button says "finish," but if you hit "finish,", nothing happens. you need to tap the target card again. this is easy to avoid, but it is misleading, and leads a missed play.
When there is a finish button it's there because the triggered ability is optional. So you can opt. to choose manually or choose finish wich means you opt. not to use the ability. I agree this can be confusing.
Just won my first planechase 4 player. Played white/soldier deck. Only me and Ajani left. I thought i was dead after He had his 6/5 flyer out. I had no flying creatures to block and only six life. What does he do on his turn? Instead of just attacking, he Rolls the die, brings in a new plane that Kills every creature. Lol! Eventually i get 15 creatures out from another plane that lets me pull them from the grave, yet he continues to gain life, killing my 15/15 with an instant that gives him 15 life. Took quite a while to finally win after pacifying his last two blockers and get him down to zero cards in hand. I love the planechase mode. Really fun and unpredicatable.
It's a hard balance to strike between giving expert players fine control but keeping the game moving for newbies. Your list said 'make it faster and stop more often'. There are two specific points where I would like to place a stop that doesn't auto-resolve: combat damage and end of turn. I'm constantly missing the chance to do stuff EOT, and combat is confusing... I played against a pump creature and couldn't tell if he was about to resolve damage or add another pump, so wound up taking 6 damage instead of Unsummoning an 8/8.
