Sunday, September 4, 2011

Level 13 in Magic The Gathering: Tactics

You may recall my post from earlier in the week about the "Magic the Gathering: Tactics" game. The rest of the story here is that I went ahead and sprung for Chapters 2-5 in the solo game since SOE is having a two for one sale on Sony Station Points this weekend (through 5 September). I can handle $10 for that.

Keep in mind that I'm really only interested in the solo game at this point and haven't even really looked at tournament play or pick up pvp matches. I know that's probably where the "real fun" of the game (and online play) is, but I'm not really prepared for that yet.

Anyway, as of this morning, I'm up to Chapter 3 now.


WOOT! Chapter 1 was cake, but after the first mission or so of Chapter 2, the difficulty started to escalate. I had to rerun many of the missions just to figure out a good strategy of where to position my Planeswalker . . . and of course, hope and pray for good luck on my cards.

The final battle of Chapter 2 was one of these fights that was just beating the heck out of me. Basically you have an opponent Planeswalker across a chasm of ice that is impassable and you need to activate a bridge by clicking stones on each side of the chasm; however, there are just a horde of 10 attack / 10 health fire chucking goblins on that other side and a couple nasties on your own side as well. There are two dragon eggs at the far edges of the playing field that can summon 20 attack / 20 health dragons to fly across the chasm and help you unlock the bridge, but they just didn't stand a chance against all those goblins (and the opponent Planeswalker himself who liked to sacrifice your dragon).

Eventually what won this fight for me was hiding behind a rock to avoid the goblins and the luck of the draw put two archers in my deck. I put one on either side of the rock, buffed the heck out of them, and just plunked away the goblins one by one. until they were all dead.


After they were dead I was able to use the dragon eggs to fly across the chasm and win. WHEW.

Now that I'm halfway into the solo game now, I have to say that the game feels a little like the Fire Emblem games (with a definitely MTG flair), which if you're not familiar with those, a can feel safe recommending them. The dialog on Fire Emblem is about the cheesiest I've ever heard in a game, but gameplay itself is solid.

Anybody else try this game out? If you did, let me know your name, and I'll add you as a friend.

Happy dueling!

9 comments:

John Lifeglen said...

MTG as a tactics game?! What Magic is this? Muahaha, couldn't resist the cheesiness. I'll definitely be poking this to see what it does. Maybe a backflip or something cool. Hmm...

Thanks for letting us in on the secret. The group Skype with my MTG friends might explode with joy when I share it!

Blaze Shadowblade said...

Zynga has a fun free-to-play card game called warstorm that's pretty cool. You choose the cards for your deck and then choose the decks you want to use in a mission and the game plays out the battle for you as you watch your opponent either get squashed or get around to squashing you. Ditto and I both played it before.

Tesh said...

OK, the invocation of Fire Emblem sold me on this. I set my machine to download it and I'll dive in if I get time on Labor Day. I even loaded up on $10 of Station Cash, just in case I really do like it. Can't pass on a 50% off sale on something that I'm most likely to enjoy.

Thanks for the tip!

Friendly said...

Well I hope I didn't oversell it. I'm currently stuck on Chapter 3. YIKES. It's tough . . . almost TOO tough for my white green deck.

Friendly said...

Wait . . . beat it. Freaking Chapter 3 is awesome so far. I had to position my character just so to allow a break so I could run and touch the sword barrier stone. Won Chapter 3:1 without even summoning a monster.

Stingite said...

@Tesh: Actually, now that I think about it, fire emblem is much better than this game, but since I have limited experience with tactical games, I guess it's the only thing I have to compare it to.

The Overachieving Necromancer said...

Wow, impressive. The good mention of the Fire Emblem games, those are really frustrating, but fun. I love any game that has a Fire Emblem approach to it, I would consider getting it, but I would hate to play a game that I have no idea playing, but thanks for the idea.

Solo games are fun, but, if you want real solo play for video games, go with the N64 Legend of Zelda games, solo play at it's finest.

Tesh said...

*chuckle*

No worries. It's a game I kinda sorta meant to pick up anyway. I'm a sucker for tactics games.

I played through the demo, and it looks like it won't be as deep as FE, but that's OK. I still enjoy Band of Bugs, after all, and that one's pretty simple compared to FE or the touchstone Final Fantasy Tactics.

Stingite said...

@Tesh: OH YEAH! Band of bugs!! That's Ninjabee goodness right there! Fun fun game.