Hi!

[frankzappa]

Hello everyone.

I have only been playing MTG for about a year and a half. I never played it in paper, but I played MTGO. I spent many hundreds of dollars making my decks on there... only to get more and more annoyed at the game as time went on, and as I got to understand the game more. I was disappointed at the direction of the most recent sets, and I was even more disappointed at the way people play the game in MTGO. I wont bore you with the details but it really got on my nerves to the point that I sold my account and all my cards. I got about a third of the price back so I lost a lot of money. I still enjoyed my time in MTGO, but it was very expensive and probably not worth it overall.

Anyway, months after quitting, I was reading a games forum and I heard that this Microprose version had been updated to work on modern OS's. Last time I tried I got nowhere fast, so I gave it a shot. It all installed with ease and I've spent the last few weeks playing through Shandalar and having an absolute blast!

With Shandalar complete, I started playing the duels and I've loved it. It's proper MTG.... but it's free!!! I also find it quite enjoyable playing against the AI. It plays with good decks, not the a&%hole-ish decks I'm used to from MTGO, and it's just generally more of a fun experience for me. I always felt like it lacked lots of the modern cards that I liked though, and the graphics are so bad with pretty terrible backgrounds for the board. So I started googling to see if I could modify the backgrounds myself.

Anyway, I came across this website... wow. I wasn't expecting this at all!! There were some new cards in the modern Microprose 2010 thing, but this is just incredible. I followed your wiki and downloaded Mana Link 2, the patches, and all the updates for cards, art, and the new deck editor. It all works perfectly on Win7 64bit, and I have to tell you I'm blown away. I feel guilty because I'm just a freeloader showing up from the internet and taking all this stuff and it's too good to be true! The game is gorgeous now. The card art is all photo quality, the backgrounds on the board are all gorgeous, and even all the buttons and stuff are improved. It really looks pleasing on the eyes now. But best of all, is all the cards!!!!! It's enormous! All my little favourites I haven't seen for ages, that weren't included in the Microprose 2010, it's all here. I can't believe it. I used to have a really fun deck that used Cruel Ultimatum and Violent Ultimatum and I just remade the deck. I can now play all my favourite decks and it's free!! It's like 20 Christmases in one for me. It's amazing because I can tweak the way the opponent plays too. The AI plays with real fun decks, not obnoxious ones, and I can set it up so that I don't see the cards I don't like very much. It's basically MTG on my terms, 100%. Hard to believe how cool this is...

So, thanks.. A lot. This is amazing. Hopefully once Christmas and New Year is out of the way, I'll see if there's anything I can do to help the 'cause'. I am good with Photoshop and have some basic knowledge of java, so we'll see. I noticed a couple of cards missing like Sanguine Bond, so maybe there will be something I can add. Looks like most stuff is there though. Anyway, thanks again to everyone who worked on this and made it available to the public. It's the greatest thing I've ever downloaded.

[stassy]

Good to see you having fun with the latest version
If you want cards added in the game, you could try your luck in the monthly Tournaments as their coding is the reward for winning.

[frankzappa]

Hehe nice! I might do that. I've found a few that I'd like to see some time, but there are already so many great cards for me to start making my favourite decks now I love it all.