Is there a way to get a copy of Magic Duels?

[kunde]

I very much enjoy the option to play Magic against the computer. I find it very relaxing compared to playing against people. So far I've played Forge and DotP 2014. I like the UI and atmosphere in DotP 2014 and the amount of options (draft & quest) in Forge. A combination of both would be ideal to me.

Anyway, I would like to try Magic Duels as well, but it's no longer available on Steam.

Is there anywhere to still get a copy? I only just read about it. It seems like such a shame to not have access to it, since it implemented so many cards.

[GamerXYZ0]

I don't know how much I'm allowed to help you with this (is it considered piracy even though it's F2P?), but in the "Magic Duels tests and results" topic I did see talk about using an emulator, so I guess that part is allowed? Anyway, don't expect to be able to put the game in your Steam account, the only way now is with an emulator.

The game has very recently been re-uploaded on a well-known Steam content sharing forum: if you find it, use its search function to search for Magic Duels and you'll find it. It still has SteamStub DRM (this is in addition to requiring Steam), so you need to find a patcher to remove this (find the version where the creator rewrote his program with an UI for easy use), as the emulator doesn't work with this (well, supposedly the emulator has an in-built patch for this, but it didn't work for me). After that rename the patched .exe back to MagicDuels.exe (back up the unpatched .exe).

Then, find Smart Steam Emulator, place its files in the same folder as your Magic Duels files, and edit SmartSteamEmu.ini: after Target = replace the name of the .exe with the .exe of Magic Duels (so if you renamed it back to MagicDueld.exe: Target = MagicDuels.exe), and as for AppId = 0 replace the 0 with 316010. Then all you have to do is start the game with SmartSteamLoader.exe (don't use the x64 version, it doesn't work for this game). Make this a shortcut for easy access.

There's a bug though. I don't know if it's the game's files, the SteamStub patch or Smart Steam Emulator, but the game crashes if you start it, UNLESS you reboot your PC. So, reboot your PC before starting this game. Other than that it seems stable though: I did have 1 crash during the deck builder (which is pretty annoying due to needing to reboot to play again), but other than that I have no problems building decks and dueling with them.