A kind of Magic

I've been playing Magic the Gathering since the revised edition. That'd make it some time around 1994 is memory serves. I've not bought more physical cards in a very long time but I do enjoy the occasional digital game.

Until today.

I picked up the very reasonably priced "Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013" as a pre-order because I have had some much fun with the earlier titles. And in the nearly 20 years I've been playing the game I have never been so bored as I was tonight.

It's not that it is a bad edition, far from it, the rules are enforced well, it is graphically and feature rich. But it also has a deck that while it may be incredible cleverly constructed it is just dull to play against.

This is the first battle you face in the 4 way free for all chain. I'm talking about Ajani, here's the game in action Yes that's him with 265 life and myself with 300. Now bear in mind you start with 20 and digest that for a moment. You can also see that he has 12 cards left in his deck and I have 62. You can win this game by not only beating your opponent into the ground but by making them run out of cards. What you can't see from this is the fact that he has a spell that when cast gets shuffled into his library, at the same time it's going to summon an army of cat people.

Now fair enough this is a perfectly valid strategy. He also has two creatures that heal him for each creature that enters play and another two that gain a token for each time he gains life. The animation time for one of these events is about a second give or take. Now he casts a spell that will bring in 21 cats. So we wait a second for the spell, then 2 seconds for each cat to give him a point of life and then for each point of life another 2 seconds to add the token to his creatures. EACH cat put into play takes 6 seconds so each turn I spend just over two minutes waiting for the computer to sort it's maths out with it;s fancy effects. The delay is important because you may be able to interrupt. When you don't want do, perhaps because it would give you no advantage, you just have to wait. And Wait. And Wait.

So the game is at a stalemate, neither can win until my card which grants me victory for having more than 40 life, is drawn. The fact that it awards you victory for 40 life and you can see my life is at 300 here should be a massive warning sign.

This is a great edition of Magic: The Gathering. But which idiot thought it was a good idea to put this deck in it?