Magic: The Gathering Online Preview

The Deck Editor allows you to build decks with a simple click and drag interface.

Playing cards have been a fundamental ingredient in gaming since the first ace of spades was inked on paper. Richard Garfield, inventor of Magic: The Gathering, introduced a new type of card game that would eventually captivate more than 6 million players in 52 countries. Wizards of the Coast, owner of the Magic: The Gathering brand, has decided to bring its proven formula to the budding online gaming market. The company, along with developer Leaping Lizard Software, is attempting to re-create the competitive experience that keeps players coming back for more.

Magic: The Gathering has grown over the years into a somewhat complicated strategy game, but essentially it remains a duel between you and an opponent, using spells to drop each other's life below 20 points. You use customized decks you have built to suit your play style. Contrasting styles call for different types of cards, and Magic relies on a system where five opposing elements represent their own variants of magical energy. White magic represents healing and light, black magic calls upon death and evil, red magic represents fire and chaos, green magic is of the natural sort, and blue magic conveys mastery over air and the mind. Each magic type summons its energies from a corresponding land type, namely mountains, forests, swamps, islands, and plains. You use cards representing these lands to draw up magical energy called mana, which powers your other spells. These other spells can deal damage directly to opponents or place a permanent enchantment on the table, which can change the pace of the game. Cards are predominantly played during your own turn, but you can surprise opponents as you follow your own strategies.

Spreadsheets and deck statistics can be used to predict the efficiency of your creations.

Summoning creatures is a reliable tactic, as they are capable of dealing damage every round as well as providing defense against your opponent's hordes. Creatures have a number of attributes that must be taken into consideration when they are selected--namely their power and toughness, which shows you how effective they are at dealing and receiving damage. Some creatures also have other useful abilities, such as flight. Magical artifacts, which are accessible to mages of all colors, round out a collection of spells and cards, which have grown to number many thousands. One of the greatest strengths of the Magic: The Gathering game is that the cards, and thus the options available, are constantly expanding, so the deck and play strategies that are required to defeat your opponents will constantly be changing.

There have been other PC games based on the Magic: The Gathering games, but those have mostly tried to create a storyline that would lend linearity to a game that was designed for player-to-player competition. Magic: The Gathering Online has abandoned these pretenses and places you in an environment that many will be familiar with--a room filled with fellow players and card tables. It's this bare-bones "get to the games" sort of tactic that has the current beta testers so excited about the future of Magic: The Gathering Online on both the casual and tournament levels of play.