Are you a 90’s kid? Those were the times when most of the kids play Yu-Gi-Ohs and Pokemon cards. But do you know? There’s one more trading card game, one of the earliest of them, and still has an active community of over 20 million players around the world. It’s called Magic: The Gathering. It may have escaped us 90’s kids at the time, but the community around the game, including in Malaysia, is pretty strong currently. It’s a standard affair for these kinds of games to have some barrier to entry- the many different mechanics at play, deck building, and the biggest hurdle of all: cash.
Looks like Wizards of the Coast, the owners of Magic, have partnered up with Stainless Games to produce a free-to-play version of Magic to introduce new players to the game, called Magic Duels. It’s available on PC via Steam, iOS and also the Xbox One. Yup, free-to-play.
It’s been available for a while, and as someone who had never played a game of Magic, and only had some cursory knowledge of the game, it seems to be a good point of entry for anyone who just wanted to get their feet wet. With the rise of Hearthstone making trading card games cool again, and played very well in videogame format, it’s no surprise that a videogame version of Magic is now a thing. In fact, there used to be one each year, but Magic Duels is the latest one to be in the free to play format.
So, why write about it only today, you ask? We will do a bit of coverage of the game, and may do a review in the near future. So far it seems like an OK game that’s worth sharing about if there are folks looking for another card game to dabble with, or fans of Magic: The Gathering that haven’t heard of it until today.