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PAX East Impressions: Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 | PSNStores

PAX East Impressions: Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012

Posted by on March 14th, 2011 | 0 Comments | Tags: ,

Though the title may claim otherwise, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 will not be releasing in 2012. Instead, we get to play Magic: The Gathering on our PS3s this summer! If you haven’t played the original Duels of the Planeswalkers, check out David’s review. The first game is a solid attempt at bringing the insanely popular trading card game to the PSN and XBLA. It featured a singleplayer campaign mode which allows you to unlock new decks and a few different multiplayer modes to play with friends on or offline. The main problem with the game, however, is that it had no deck builder. You play with pre-constructed decks and have no option to edit them in any meaningful way. DotP 2012 hasn’t revealed any deck building options just yet, but my fingers are crossed, as that would be a lovely feature.

One new feature that Wizards of the Coast was showing off is the Archenemy game type. I had never played Archenemy prior to the show, so I got thoroughly romped by the computer player and provided little help to my teammates. Here’s a wiki of the game type’s rules. It’s basically 3 vs. 1, with the Archenemy player having 40 life and control of a stack of “Scheme” cards. At the beginning of the Archenemy’s turn, he draws and plays a Scheme card. These Scheme cards are crazy powerful and have descriptions like, “Until the beginning of your next turn, any source that would do damage to any creature or player instead does double that damage” or “Choose target player. That player sacrifices 3 creatures.” It’s nuts, and takes a fair amount of teamwork and cunning to emerge victorious. My team of press people didn’t fare so well, but it did pique my interest in MtG, something the first Planeswalker game didn’t completely do. Seriously, if this game has a deck builder, I may very well abandon what little social life I currently have.

Again, the game is due out this summer. We’ll keep you posted when more (deck editor) news arises.