

If you don't play Magic, I think you should. I've made new friends, developed rivalries, and through some intense wheeling and dealing even managed to reduce the cost of playing to almost zero. The art is immaculate and brings each addition to the game to life, be they subtle rule changes, twists on old cards or entire new card types. I don't regret it for a second because I get an unmatched amount of fun from watching the systems of Magic interact, devising the correct plays from twenty different bits of information spread across a half hour game and half a decade of learning. I'm writing this with a horrible dose of nerd-flu, having come back from a full weekend of playing five separate Magic tournaments at a local basement-turned-store. To get it out of the way early, I think Magic is one of the best games ever made. Of course, the answer is a little from deck A, a little from deck B. I've been playing the next iteration, Magic Duels Origins, to find out whether it manages to fix the series amid the move to an ever-updating free to play model, or whether it falls into the same trap (cards) all over again. Unfortunately last year's edition did almost as much work making me hate it as the original did making me love it. During that time, the game grew from gateway drug for its cardboard cousin into a full series in its own right, and one looked forward to by long-time fans and new players alike. I've been playing Magic regularly for the past five years, and the blame for all that lost time and money is the first Duels of the Planeswalkers.
