REVIEW OF MAGIC: THE GATHERING (PC-CDROM)

          Yet another opinion!  By William McCole

As a player of Magic (for about a year now) I immediately rushed
out to buy the full game, awaiting plush screens (it's not just
teddy bears) and amazing sounds. Since at the time I was buying
5th edition (the latest cards out) to replace my outdated 4th
Edition (no longer tournament legal in Type II tournaments) I saw
the game in a local shop (name withheld) and so, I bought it.

After watching it install and only briefly reading the manual (cos
it's so big!) I dived into the game to find out what all the hype
was about. The game itself plays very well and holds true to all
the rules of Magic, the card artwork is as good (if not better)
than the cards themselves and the sound is pretty good (try Goblin
Polka band!) Apart from this, there is Shandalar, where you take
part in a quest to kill 5 wizards (one of each of the colours in
Magic) and then the big evil wizard. Even if you are fed up with
this, you can create your own deck using any card from the 4th
edition, and some from other expansion sets.

The 2 main problems I had with Magic were the fact that the cards
were all out of date (to me anyway, I can't use any of the cards I
usually use in my tournaments in the game, which means I have to
keep changing strategies and cards when I use 'real' cards) and
the ease of which you can obtain rare and ultra rare cards in the
game. This is a good thing from some points of view, but I found
my deck became very powerful and difficult to manage.

Fortunately, I have a copy of the Magic Encyclopaedia (œ15) which
I can use to check out cards in other decks easily and also
riddles (it's not really cheating if it's for a good cause!)

Magic the computer game is more suited to novice magic players,
due to the easy deck manipulation systems and simplified play at
certain points. Certainly, when I first played M:TG on the PC, I
found that we had been playing the wrong rules and doing things
out of phase. After getting used to the slightly eccentric
computer AI system (and downloading the patch!) I found Magic very
easy to play, and completed it on the first 2 difficulty levels
without too much difficulty.
















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