Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014

Modes

Single Player

• Campaign

Like with the previous games in the DotP series the main single player mode involves a succession of battles against increasingly difficult AI. Defeating an AI will unlock it's deck.

• Sealed Deck Campaign

New to DotP 2014 are the Sealed Decks, here you can create a deck from scratch from a random set of 80 cards that you get from booster packs. This is a campaign dedicated to using your Sealed Deck.

• Challenges

Challenges also return, these involve you and your AI opponent starting a game part way through with preset cards. The goal is to win the game in 1 round.

Multiplayer

• Competitive

Standard multiplayer modes including; Free-for-All (2-4 players) and Two-Headed Giant (4 players) [Two-Headed Giant is not available in the iPad version]

Decks

DotP 2014 offers 10 core decks right of the gate, each with 30 unlockable cards. Like in the previous game each deck has a 1-5 star rating in four different categories, what these stats are and a brief description of what they signify follows:

(Note: I'm not exactly happy with the way I'm phrasing this, if someone can think of a better way feel free to change it)

Core Decks

Chandra Nalaar's "Firewave" - Mono Red

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 3
• Deck Speed - 3
• Deck Flexibility - 5
• Card Synergy - 1

The Firewave deck is a pretty standard red burn deck, and uses several direct damage (which is damage dealt outside of combat) spell to directly attack your opponent and destroy their creatures. To support the spells, the deck contains several creatures which either rapidly gain in power when instants and sorceries are cast or can be returned from the graveyard when you opponent is damaged. To help push through the last points of damage the deck can take extra turns, at the risk of a guaranteed loss at the end of it!

Ajani Goldmane's "Guardians of Light" - Mono White

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 2
• Deck Speed - 3
• Deck Flexibility - 2
• Card Synergy - 5

Ajani's deck is focused on using aura enchantments to upgrade weak creatures to the point where they rival the best in the game. The auras can give creatures massive power and toughness increases and powerful abilities. One problem aura decks can have is card disadvantage, as destroying an enchanted creature also destroys each enchantment on the creature, in effect your opponent has used one card to remove two or more of yours. To counteract this the deck has several creatures which allow you to draw a card when you cast an enchantment spell, or to return auras from the graveyard.

Garruk Wildspeaker's "Hunter's Strength" - Mono Green

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 5
• Deck Speed - 3
• Deck Flexibility - 2
• Card Synergy - 1

(Description of Deck)

Zorislav's "Masks of Dimir" - Blue / Black

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 2
• Deck Speed - 4
• Deck Flexibility - 4
• Card Synergy - 2

The Masks of Dimir deck tries to avoid fair fight at all costs. Firstly it uses several creatures and spells to force your opponent to discard cards from their hand, reducing their options. When enemy creatures do enter the field they can either be returned to their owner's library, or kept 'tapped' so they cannot attack nor defend. All of these disruptive effects buy the deck time to cast its powerful, but expensive high end creatures, which can win the game almost by themselves. Another tactic the deck uses is turning opponent's creatures against them, by either creating clones of them or directly taking control of them, which allows for the deck to compensate for its lack of powerful creatures of its own.

Krufa's "Enter the Dracomancer" - Black / Red & Green

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 4
• Deck Speed - 2
• Deck Flexibility - 2
• Card Synergy - 4

(Description of Deck)

Sigismund's "Avacyn's Glory" - Mono White

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 1
• Deck Speed - 4
• Deck Flexibility - 2
• Card Synergy - 5

The Avacyn's Glory deck follows the aggressive "White Weenie" archetype, which seeks to power out several weak creatures early in the game, which can be strengthened en masse and eventually overwhelm your opponent. To facilitate the all out attack opponent's creatures can be "exiled", completely removing the creature in question from the game. If the first assault fails, the deck has a suite of powerful angel creatures which can finish the game off. This deck is heavily based around the "Innistrad" setting, taking the majority of its cards and the humans and angles theme from the set.

Jace Beleren's "Mind Maze" - Mono Blue

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 2
• Deck Speed - 5
• Deck Flexibility - 1
• Card Synergy - 4

(Description of Deck)

Liliana Vess' "Deadwalkers" - Mono Black

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 4
• Deck Speed - 2
• Deck Flexibility - 3
• Card Synergy - 3

(Description of Deck)

Girundar's "Chant of Mul Daya" - Mono Green

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 5
• Deck Speed - 1
• Deck Flexibility - 1
• Card Synergy - 5

Girundar's deck seeks to quickly increase the amount of lands in play, and so mana available, as fast as possible. It achieves this with cards that allow the player to grab lands straight from their library, or play more than one land per turn. This is in service of casting extraordinarily powerful, but equally expensive, creatures which can almost win the game on their own. The deck also has several cards which search the players library for the creature of their choice. The deck can be rather slow, and is left exposed to creatures while it concentrates on expanding the land base early in the game. It seeks to ameliorate this with delaying tactics, such as life gain.

Ess-Nelek's "Sliver Hive" - White / Red & Green

Full Deck List

• Creature Size - 4
• Deck Speed - 2
• Deck Flexibility - 1
• Card Synergy - 5

(Description of Deck)

System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

• OS: Windows 7/Vista/XP
• Processor: 2GHz CPU (Pentium 4 or equivalent)
• Memory: 1GB RAM (2GB for Vista and Windows 7)
• Hard Disk Space: 1.5 GB HDD
• Video Card: 512MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card
• Peripherals: Local Co-op requires a controller