Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013

[Miraika]

It's not ideal, but it's strictly better than the old system, and it'll work well on consoles. I do like that you can have it on all the time and just ignore it when it doesn't matter.

I guess the real question is whether mana tokens can be made to work with it (in the mods - I doubt they've put in any mana sources other than basic lands and maybe stuff like Moxes).

[GamerXYZ0]

This is gonna be "fun" when you play something with a high colorless cost while you have... say, 5 lands of each color you have. Especially when you accidentally press through it when it finally shows the combination you want.

It's like going from one extreme to the other. First "manually tapping mana is too slow, even though even the most impatient person in the world won't mind an almost unnoticable 2 or 3 seconds", and then "OK, you get manual tapping. But you get this needlessly slow system of doing so". Not saying I mind those extra seconds, no one should, but this time unlike finally allowing manual tapping, the slowdown is unnecessary. No wonder they first thought it would take too long, if this is all they could come up with.

[thefiremind]

From the Wizards site today:
"We are pleased to announce that the game will release globally on June 20th (although times will vary by platform and region) across all of our platforms: Steam, XBLA, PSN, and iTunes for iPad."

[daenon611]

steam got it, it's ordered ...

[Pesi]

Deck preview : (v=wYH_WXY1Z7A)

I post this because of Rhox Faithmender. I doubted such an effect could be programmed without at least SOME bugs, so this gives me hope for the background of the game. Perhaps Parallel lives and Doubling Season can be easily made now.

[thefiremind]

I post this because of Rhox Faithmender. I doubted such an effect could be programmed without at least SOME bugs, so this gives me hope for the background of the game. Perhaps Parallel lives and Doubling Season can be easily made now.

There's already a card like that in the game: Boon Reflection. But it's made for a challenge and there are 2 different copies, one that does nothing, and one that makes life gain x3 without overriding (what a poor idea! ). Anyway it would be easy to make a fully functional copy: I discovered that when you use override = true, what you do while overriding the original effect doesn't trigger the ability itself again.
If I could choose, I'd prefer to see a working Rhox (with no other words ).

That deck in the video made me smile because I already coded quite a lot of the cards it contains (Archon of Redemption, Landbind Ritual, Celestial Force, Felidar Sovereign...).

I like the new Pearl Medallion art and I hope they include all of the Medallions since it's impossible to find high-quality versions of the old arts.

[thefiremind]

Sorry for the double posting, but I wanted to announce that this week, the Wizards site will only give Magic 2013 previews that can be found in DotP2013. And in the meanwhile, we get to discover some information about the new game.

This article gives the most information:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... eature/199
I'll round it down to some important points:

• Planechase: We already knew about that. What we didn't know is actually a bad news for DotP2013: Planechase will substitute Archenemy.
• Encounters: It seems like a new kind of challenge, where you play a full match but the opponent's deck will always follow the same card order and the AI's strategy will always be the same. One of the encounters contains Cloudpost, so we can have higher hopes about improved support for mana abilities.
• New decks: The life gain deck has already been previewed in this topic. There will also be a Goblin deck and an Exalted deck. The latter contains the card preview of the article (check it on the article, it's a bomb for Exalted decks).
• End step: The article stays very vague about this, but I can assume they added a wait time on the end step so you can do things during that.
• Manual mana tapping: We already knew about that, but the article gives a confirmation: still no mana pool. The reason is explained with sentence that bothered me a lot: "Having to worry about which lands to tap just adds bookkeeping to Magic. More bookkeeping means less face-smashing. Less face-smashing is a problem." With this way of thinking, we won't see the game going very far.
• Player status screen: It will just be a sort of "Hall of fame" with achievements and statistics.

[MisterBenn]

There are more videos up now, here's what I've found:

Deck previews:


Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 Doesn't Have Mulligans?!:


UI / Settings and Celestial Light gameplay:


That "doesn't have mulligans" clip is interesting. He offers the caveat that previous press previews of DOTP games also didn't include mulligans, but he does observe that there is some "guidance" of the initial hand draws in the preview build as you receive 2-5 lands without fail and for some reason never draw the Serra Ascendant in your opening hand. It's worth following this guy, presumably a Liliana deck video will follow any day now and also the guy knows the game and is quite entertaining.

[thefiremind]

There's Future Sight as an unlockable in the blue deck! If they really improve the support for the mana ability (so that it doesn't assume that anything that has a mana ability doesn't have summoning sickness), I'll finally make that Myr deck that plays all the Myr it can from the top of the library!

EDIT: ...and the red deck contains Fireblast! If they included a flexible way to code alternative costs, many roads will open (for example, I don't think they'll include Phyrexian mana, but it could be easier to mimic).

[MisterBenn]

Yes there are a few indicators that some new methods will be available. The green deck has some Chroma abilities based on the number of green mana symbols on cards, I don't think that was possible before. I am really hoping for activated abilities from the hand and a decent transform mechanic.

[sadlyblue]

Unless they coded the predefine values, Primalcrux and Future Sight means they coded something like GetMana or GetManaGreen (and something for each other mana). And if Future Sight is coded correctly, it will be possible to code Snapcaster Mage and others.
Like to see how they coded Obsidian Fireheart. It's not that hard, but maybe they correctly, getting access to a way to change cards "in game".

But haven't seen:
- planeswalkers
- any card using put in play and attacking
- phyrexian mana
- counter activated ability
- cycling
- ...
Let's hope they haven't forgot.

About the mana pool, that's a shame they didn't took the time to code one... Maybe we could code one. Even if it's not that easy.

[thefiremind]

Like to see how they coded Obsidian Fireheart. It's not that hard, but maybe they correctly, getting access to a way to change cards "in game".

I think it will just have an ability that works in all zones and damages each player for an amount equal to the lands with blaze counters they control. I made something similar for Plague Sliver (except it worked only in play, of course).
EDIT: Now that I think about it, Obsidian Fireheart is more complex because two or more should be redundant (still only 1 damage for each land with a blaze counter), so it could still be interesting to see.

There's another good hint in the last video:

We have Changeling and... Poison! Note that it's not called Infect, but Poison, so don't get your hopes too high... if they implemented poison counters, but not Infect, there will still be the problem to deal damage and substitute it with counters if we want to code it ourselves. Let's also remember that it was just a demo.

[sadlyblue]

But Poison is for players, instead of the -1/-1 counters. Of course a creature can give poison to a player, but doesn't itself have poison (in the old days). So i think they coded Infect (just have no idea why they call it Poison). If this was stand up, i would say it's a way to prevent antivirus false positives lol
"you're computer is infected is has a copy of Glistener Elf"

[MisterBenn]

Obsidian Fireheart suggests you can filter and target by counters now (I presume you couldn't in 2012, I didn't know how) - I would have loved that when I made Power Conduit to make it more AI friendly.

I am really excited for the new release. I have no experience of MTG outside of the DOTP games, I just think of these games as turn based strategy games with very well thought out rules. Nonetheless I come back and play them a ridiculous amount for how cheap the game is, even with yearly releases and the odd DLC.

[thefiremind]

I'm quite astonished by a preview on the Wizards site today:

Did they really include such a strange ability in DotP2013? Really, if they coded this but not "PutIntoPlayTappedAndAttacking", I'll be upset.