Magic the Gathering - MicroProse RRP œ45
                 (Strategy card game on CD)

                      Reviewed by Sue

He was a humble cleric, looking deceptively weak and mild-mannered
in his snowy white robes. I was an apprentice magician, still a
novice at green magic, the magic of growth and natural
destruction. We built up our mana - his white, mine green - by
playing land cards - plains for him, forests for me. We summoned
creatures to fight on our behalf - he called up Benalish heroes,
Serra angels and a dainty Pegasus while I relied on war mammoths,
grizzly bears and Llanowar Elves. He cast Cup of Protection to
protect himself against my green spells ... I summoned a desert
twister which destroyed a battering ram he was using to protect
himself.

We fought long and hard, our life points gradually dropping.
Finally my basilisk faced his Pegasus and turned it to stone while
my Nap's Asp sneaked past his defenses and dealt the final blow.
The cleric offered me some cards or a clue to a nearby dungeon
before he skulked off. I took the cards - some would be useful,
others could be sold to buy food or trade for some more powerful
World Magic ....

This is a short tale of just one imaginary fight that could take
place in the land of Shandalar, a strange and terrifying place
inhabited by major and minor wizards and their minions. Five
magics are part of the land, each controlled by a colour - white,
red, black, green and blue. Each has its own strengths and
weaknesses; blue, for instance, is the magic of water and relies
of artifice and illusion for its strength.  I chose green for my
first proper game, because it has a nice balance of defensive and
offensive magic so I'll be tending to use that colour for examples
in this review.

Regular readers will know that I've been awaiting this game for
ages - about 2 years. In the meantime, I tried to get Alan
interested in playing the original card game ... without success.
Partly this was because it was hard to know if we were playing
correctly. Cards are drawn, played and discarded as in any
standard card game but even having read the rules, several times,
MtG is a complex game with distinct phases and sequences of play
which take some understanding. With the computer taking control of
these aspects of the game, you don't have to concern yourself
about them, and can just enjoy the game itself.

Magic the Gathering, then, is essentially a battle between two
characters using their own hands of cards. These hands are made up
of cards to produce mana (usually land cards) which are played and
the mana expended to cast spells - summoning creatures, casting
enchantments and so on - and these creature and enchantment cards
themselves are also in your hand.  It is important to have the
right balance of mana producing and mana consuming cards in your
hand; too much land and you will have loads of mana but nothing to
spend it on ...  too little and all those gorgeous creatures and
spells will go to waste! It is also important to be able to
produce the right colour mana for the creatures and spells in your
hand. As well as the five colours of mana, there is colourless
mana which can be any of these, and all spells need a certain
balance of colours eg to summon Llanowar Elves needs 1 green, but
Faerie Dragon needs 2 green and 2 colourless mana. It's no good
having a hand of forest cards (producing green mana) and wanting to
play creatures and spells that need blue, red, black or white
mana.

Generally a hand contains 1, 2 or rarely 3 colours of mana cards.
Otherwise getting the balance right is tricky. Even with a
well-balanced hand you can end up drawing all land cards, or
hardly any. It's, literally, the luck of the draw (or sod's law,
depending on how you feel at the time!).

At the start of a hand of MtG, you and your opponent have a
certain number of life points (default for a basic duel is 20).
The aim is to get your opponent's down to zero (or less) while
keeping yours positive. This is done by attacking him with
creatures and spells that you conjure.  When you select some of
your creatures to attack him, he can select some of his to defend,
according to certain rules.

All creatures have two figures on their cards - power and
toughness.  Power is the number of points they hit for, toughness
the number of hits they can take eg a creature marked 3/2 hits for
3 and will be destroyed if hit for 2 or more. There are provisos;
for instance some creatures have protection against another colour
eg the Black Knight has protection against white so generally
cannot be damaged by white creatures or spells. A White Knight has
first strike (ie it hits its opponent first) so if a White Knight
(2/2) meets a creature at 4/1, the knight would hit for 2, killing
its opponent (which can only be hit for 1) and this would die
before it could get in its hit for 4.

There are further rules in combat - flying creatures can only be
blocked by other flying creatures (logical when you think about
it).  Some creatures have swampwalk or forestwalk etc which means
they cannot be blocked if their opponent has swamps or forests in
play.  Some creatures have an ability called "trample"; normally
all damage is absorbed by a blocker but if a creature has trample,
the excess (ie that not used to kill the blocker) passes on to its
controller. One terrific green creature is Force of Nature which
has trample and is rated 8/8. So if it is blocked by, say,
Ironroot Treefolk (3/5) it will destroy the Treefolk (using 5) and
3 will damage the controller. The only drawback with Force of
Nature is that you have to pay 4 green mana each turn for its
upkeep or it is destroyed, doing 8 damage to you in the meantime!

Thinking of Force of Nature, a quick word about the cards
themselves. The art work on the originals is excellent and this is
accurately copied in the computerised version. All details of
power and toughness, upkeep, special abilities and so on are shown
clearly on the cards. Incidentally, this is in contrast to
Acclaim's Magic the Gathering : Battlemage version which is more
of a wargame - you have to remember all the creature details in
that game as just the picture is shown, not the text. And there
are a LOT of cards to remember - over 400 in this edition.

When cards are in play eg forests producing mana and creatures
attacking, they become "tapped" ie turned sideways. Tapped
creatures cannot block attackers so if your Thicket Basilisk
attacks in your turn, it can't defend you when it's your
opponent's turn to attack.  Quite often it's a fine balancing act
between attacking and saving your strength.

A word on cards other than land and creatures. These are many and
often have fascinating effects. There are enchantments, instants,
sorceries and artifacts. Some are played at different times, eg
Giant Growth is an instant and gives an extra 3/3 to a creature.
Handy if your Grizzly Bears (2/2) are attacked by an Ironroot
Treefolk (3/5) - boost the Grizzlies to 5/5 and they'll survive
the encounter. Cast the sorcery Desert Twister and you can
permanently destroy that pesky Cockatrice that's been causing you
grief.

There are several ways to play Magic the Gathering on the
computer. Since the basic game is the card-to-card combat, this is
well catered for in the form of the duel option. There are 60
decks already created, each named according to the type of
creature that would use it eg Beast Master, Winged Stallion,
Crusader, Dante.  Each of these has a theme - the Winged Stallion,
for example, only uses creatures and artifacts that fly; Beast
Master only uses animals. Some are 1 colour only, others use more.
You can select from these decks for both you and your opponent,
either or both can be random, or you can build a deck from
scratch. There are several difficulty levels and you can play a
single duel or gauntlet (several games) with an optional ante.

The deck builder is easy to use and will be popular with MtG fans
who will create custom decks for different games, many of which
are themed and have names. Using the computer game, they can test
out a deck, either by playing it against the computer's choice, or
getting the computer to play their deck against them. All the
possible cards are arranged along the bottom of the deck builder
screen and you just drag the ones you want onto the top half of
the screen using radio buttons to turn certain options (eg show
all creature cards) on and off. You can save these decks out and
distribute them if you want, say, through the Internet but I
haven't found any on there yet.

But if you want something to link the games together, you can
enter the world of Shandalar which I mentioned right at the start
of this review, This is where I've spent most of the last 2
months! You create your own character from a choice of 4
difficulty levels, the 5 basic colours and 14 faces, name your
character and set off on your adventure. The ultimate aim of the
game is to defeat the 5 wizards and the chief baddie, Arzakon. 

I haven't got that far yet but I've duelled many of their minions
- centaurs, witches, summoners and worse! Shandalar is a world
populated by many creatures who do the bidding of one wizard or
other. However, wise men in the villages, towns and towers will
help you by setting quests; complete one of these and you'll gain
help in one form or another ...  food, cards, a mana link
(effectively increasing your number of life points), or amulets
which can be traded for greater magic. There are also 10 dungeons
which contain rare and valuable cards such as Braingeyser and Mox
Emerald. These contain a certain type and colour of creature (eg
small green creatures) and have dungeon rules (eg some cards
permanently in effect). These must also be explored, riddles
answered and duels fought, if you are to be successful. Meanwhile
the wizards are capturing towns and creating mana taps - if one 
can get enough of these, he can cast the Spell of Dominion and 
rule all Shandalar, unless you can stop him. It's a constant 
battle to prevent this happening, as you have to dash from one 
end of the on-screen map to the other.

There are a few downsides. One is the lack of a multiplayer
option; null modem and Internet play don't seem to have been
implemented as promised.  I have crashed it a few times too.
However, there is already a patch and MicroProse are promising to
add multiplayer games and more cards in the future.

There's so much more to Magic the Gathering but I think I'd better
stop there. It sounds a lot more complicated to play than it is
because, basically, it is a very intuitive game. For those who,
like me, knew little about it to start, there is a built in FMV
tutorial featuring two rather enchanting (in more ways than one)
characters who explain how MtG works using examples and a bit of
input from you as you answer simple questions. It is a very
addictive game but useful to load for a short while - a couple of
duels - if you have half an hour to spare.

Minimum Specs: Windows 95, 
               quad speed CD, 
               486 DX4-100, 
               16 meg RAM,
               SVGA, 
               mouse, 
               90 meg hard disk space. 

Optional:      sound card. 

Recommended:   P120.
         






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