MAGIC: THE GATHERING - BATTLEMAGE
  Playstation review by Stephanie L. Rhodes and Paul A. Hardy
                    Also on PC CD-ROM

MAGIC: THE GATHERING, AN OVERVIEW

Readers unfamiliar with the rules for Wizards of the Coast's
Collectible Card Game Magic: The Gathering (M:TG) are advised
first to read Sue Medley's review in SynTax #48 for explanations
of how to play. Here, though, is a brief recap:

Both players (or Planeswalkers) have a deck of between 40 and 240
cards, and 24 Life Points. One player draws seven cards from his
shuffled deck and lays down a Land card and, if possible, any
other non-Land card too), and then his opponent does the same. Now
players draw one card from their decks each turn and try to reduce
their opponent's Life Points to zero with the cards they have in
play.  Cards can be any of the following:


Land: Different Land types produce different Mana, the magical
power used to cast spells. Forests create Green Mana, Plains
generate White Mana, and Swamps allow the use of Black Mana, etc.
All the other cards in the deck are colour coded to show which
type of Mana is needed to put them initially into play.

Creatures: Creature cards have a Power/Toughness rating (ie.
Ironroot Treefolk have 3/5) which shows how much damage they can
inflict in battle and absorb before death. (Thus the Ironroot
Treefolk will inflict 3 points of damage in combat, and will need
to be hit for 5 or more points of damage before it is slain).

Artifacts: Artifact cards show magical objects which can be used
to change certain aspects of the game. For instance, Winter Orb
allows Mana to generate at one half the normal speed.

Sorceries: Sorcery cards are powerful spells which will usually
destroy creatures or artifacts, or inflict damage on the other
player. Useful sorcery cards include Flare and Lightning Bolt,

both of which will inflict damage against a Planeswalker or one of
his creatures.

Enchantments: Enchantments are different types of spells, which
will enchant creatures or artifacts already in play to alter their
natures.  Enchantments will often stay in play indefinitely, or
last only a single turn. For instance, Giant Growth gives any
creature +2/+2 (ie. +2 to Power and Toughness) until the
enchantment is countered or the creature affected by it is
destroyed.

When a player loses all his Life Points, he also loses the game.
Likewise, running out of cards to play also makes a player lose
the game - with no more spell resources to draw on, he is easily
at his opponent's mercy!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING - BATTLEMAGE:

Magic: The Gathering - Battlemage (M:TG-B) is a "real time
strategic warfare" game produced by Acclaim, based upon the
popular card game and fully endorsed by Wizards of the Coast.
Upon inserting the CD-ROM, the player is treated to an imaginative
and beautiful introduction sequence to the game featuring two
duelling Planeswalkers, after which the menu screen appears,
offering a choice of five well-drawn icons. These icons represent:

Archive: A comprehensive list of all 223 spells (cards) in the
game, showing all artwork, effects and Creature statistics
directly from their tabletop M:TG equivalents. The only thing
missing is the original cards' Flavour Text, which Acclaim must
have considered irrelevant to the gameplay. Novice players will
spend a lot of time browsing through the Archive, learning spell
effects, studying card artwork and learning Creatures' combat
statistics.

Duel: This allows two players to play head-to-head or one player
to battle against a CPU opponent. You may select to play one of
six Planeswalkers, each with various spells and tactics, and for
fair fights can even pitch each Planeswalker against himself, with
the same selection of cards available to each player.

Campaign: A single player only game, you may select to play as one
of the six Planeswalkers to try and conquer the world of
Dominaria.  You must conquer territories for Mana, defend them
against your enemies and try to vanquish your arch enemy, the
Battlemage Ravidel.

Options: From here you may tweak the game's difficulty level,
sound effects, music and control method.

Credits: A list of the wizards responsible for writing the game.

                           * * *

Most players will decide to have a few Duels before they tackle
the Campaign, if only to familiarise themselves with the controls
and gameplay. The duelling screens in the Campaign are exactly the
same as in Duel mode, and the Campaign is merely a series of Duels
with extra activity in between thrown in for good measure.
Learning to duel first is a priority, then.

The screen layout is logical. Player One's statistics are to the
left, Player Two's/CPU's to the right. Each player's Mana Pool is
represented as a bar graph at the top of the screen, with every
mana point generated adding one block of the appropriate colour to
the graph, which is temporarily depleted when Mana is used
(although it does slowly regenerate). Beside the Mana Pool is
shown each player's Tome (of cards in-hand, but not yet in play)
and the currently selected/last selected card in play is also
shown. Below these are the players' Life Points totals, shown as
small "gems" - a red gem equals 5 Life Points, and a blue gem
equals 1 Life Point. Finally, below these, is the main action
window, which shows a large portion of the battlefield and scrolls
when required.

In a two player mode, the screen is split in two for the
Playstation version, with Player One on the left of the screen and
Player Two on the right. If there is only one player (or you are
playing the Campaign game) your battleground screen area is the

whole of the bottom of the screen, without the split, and is thus
twice as wide.

The six Planeswalkers you are allowed to play in the Duels and the
Campaign will be familiar to most M:TG players. They are Jared
Carthalion, Tevesh Szat, Sandruu, Kristina, Leshrac and Greyadrone
Dihada, each with their own array of cards and different
strategies.  The only Planeswalker you cannot control in either
the Duels or the Campaign is Ravidel the Battlemage, who only
appears in the Campaign and always under CPU control.

Seeing as the Campaign is merely a collection of Duels linked by
territory gathering and creature encounters, we will have a look
at the Duel part of the game first, before we explore the Campaign
setting further.

THE DUEL:

As soon as the duel screen appears after you have selected your
chosen Wizard (and the one you wish to do battle with) you are
thrust straight into the action. It is at this time you will learn
to appreciate just how natural to the game the Playstation's
controller is.

The directional arrows simply move the cursor around the screen.

The R1 key allows you to view your current Tome, by expanding it
out over part of the battlefield map, with a second R1 press being
used to fold the Tome back into the top portion of the screen and
out of the way again.

The R2 and up/down directional arrows toggle between the two
Planeswalker locations, of you and your opponent.

The R2 and left/right arrows cycle through all your currently
available creatures in play, in a similar way to the Planeswalker
toggling above.  0nly your own creatures can be viewed this way,
and they already have to be somewhere on the battlefield.


The 'Square' button will select a creature unit, the 'X' button
will select a spell from the Tome or cast one already selected
(once it has been targeted with the 'Square' button) and the
'Triangle' button is used to reveal information about any selected
spell or creature you control or have in your Tome.

The 'Circle' button is used to cancel any action.

As soon as the duel begins, pressing R1 will give you access to
your Tome of spells, expanding it over part of the battlefield and
making it possible to select a card to use. The Tome is thus
represented by a single card at the top, with two rows of three
horizontal cards underneath it, the card at the top being the
'active' card. Moving the left/Right directional arrows will
revolve the cards in the tome either clockwise or anticlockwise,
so you can select a new 'active' card from the others in the Tome.
'X' will summon a creature if the card is 'active' and you have
enough mana to do so, or allow you to cast a spell (if the
'active' card is a spell) before targeting the effect with the
'Square' button. Placing a Land card is simply a matter of placing
the card in the 'active' position and then pressing 'X' - you will
automatically gain one mana of the correct colour.

An obvious problem with M:TG-B is the inability to reshuffle your
cards if you have no Land cards in your Tome at the beginning of
the Duel.  This puts you at a serious disadvantage if you have to
discard two or three cards (over two or three turns) before a
single Land cards appears!

The CPU keeps track of the passing of time in the game, as well as
the various Phases like Discard, Card Drawing and Upkeep. Any
effects which take place in a specific Phase will trigger
automatically, without the need for any input from the player.

Every 15 to 20 seconds, both players will receive a new card in
their Tomes, due to the beginning of a new turn. If you already
have seven cards when this happens, the card in the bottom
right-hand corner will begin to flash, and after 7 more seconds it
will vanish completely, being discarded. You can manipulate your

Tome during these 7 seconds though, and throw away your least
valuable card.

When a Land card is played, you gain your Mana point and all the
other Land cards in your deck become semi-transparent for the rest
of the turn (some 15 to 20 seconds). It is impossible to use
another Land card in this time, until the beginning of the next
turn, when the Land cards will return to normal and you can place
another one into play.  With this clever method, M:TG-B ensures
you do not play more than one Land card each turn.

The Mana Pool is well represented in the game, as a bar graph near
the top of the screen. Every Land card used adds one Mana block to
the bar graph, and the more coloured blocks you have in the graph,
the more Mana you have at your disposal. All five Mana colours are
represented, along with a sixth, colourless (which actually
appears as a golden colour). When Mana is used, the appropriate
section of the bar graph is reduced accordingly, although Mana
does restore slowly.

When summoned, Creatures in M:TG-B do not suffer from Summoning
Sickness but may be used immediately. Unfortunately, the
Power/Toughness statistics are not represented in numerical values
in the game itself, but rather as a small bar chart with a
coloured indicator showing the state of both statistics. The
effect is quite like a thermometer, but without any numerical
indication to show how many points of Power/Toughness are present
- so you find yourself trying to judge the coloured indicator to
the best of your ability, which is quite a task even with a little
practise. And the fact you cannot see enemy creatures' statistics
even if you click on the creature makes things much harder than
they need to be. As a result, I found myself having to write down
the Power/Toughness of every creature in the game (via the Archive
feature), and referring to my list every time I wanted to attack
an enemy creature with one of mine.  It is certainly by no means
the best way this data could have been presented, and personally I
would have preferred to see a straight numerical value (ie. 3/4)
for each creature in the game!  Creature combat will often take a
number of turns to resolve, which is another difference to the
standard tabletop game. Upon meeting, two creatures will fight,
tap, untap after so long and then fight again, repeating this
cycle until one or both of them are destroyed.

Thus two 1/1 Creatures will slay each other at the end of the turn
they initiated combat. Yet two battling 1/2 creatures will slay
each other after two turns, and two fighting 2/6 Creatures will
take three turns to slay each other! Hence a 1/1 Creature
attacking a 0/7 Wall would take seven turns to smash it to pieces
- something such a creature would never be able to do unaided in
the tabletop version.

Creature combat certainly takes some getting used to, and veteran
M:TG players will be horrified when their 1/3 Creature and its 2/2
opponent actually slay each other after two rounds of combat! Thus
combat becomes more than just having high Toughness creatures in
play to block enemy monsters, because after prolonged battles even
high Toughness scores can be reduced to zero.

After combat, wounded creatures heal, but very slowly indeed,
recovering something like 1 Toughness point every two or three
turns they are not involved in a skirmish. This is something else
veteran M:TG players will have to get used to - after combat the
Toughness of surviving creatures is not automatically returned to
its initial value.

It does make slaying larger creatures slightly easier though. For
instance if an enemy Ironroot Treefolk (3/5) slays your Grizzly
Bears (2/2) you can still finish off the Ironroot Treefolk with a
Lightning Bolt up to two turns after they have finished the
battle.

This is just as well too, as you cannot select multiple blockers
to intercept a single attacker. Creatures can use Flying,
Regeneration, Trample, First Strike and Landwalk, but there are no
Banding or Flanking procedures allowed.

When a Creature is dispatched to attack the rival Planeswalker you
will see it trudge across the landscape avoiding terrain features
like hills and rivers, until it arrives at its destination, hits
the Planeswalker, and then vanishes to reappear by your side,
tapped.  Then, when it untaps, it will set off toward the enemy
Planeswalker again. (Flying creatures will naturally fly over
terrain features, and so arrive at their destination quicker than
their land-bound counterparts).  If the creature is blocked en
route by an opponent's creature, if your being wins the battle it
will tap a short while and then await new orders from you - it
will not automatically resume its march to the enemy Planeswalker,
which can sometimes prove a little annoying.

Creatures with various types of Landwalk do not need to trudge all
the way across the landscape if their Landwalk conditions are met;
they simply vanish from their Master's side and appear within the
vicinity of the enemy Planeswalker, attacking him within five
seconds. This just gives the opponent time to block the creature
with one of his own, if he has any creatures untapped and near
enough to intercept when the creature appears. (This is another
departure from the standard M:TG rules (where Landwalk creatures
are actually unblockable) but actually works quite well for this
game, and does not diminish the strategies you adopt at all).

The battlefield graphics, although relatively small, are often
colourful and always well animated. The Creatures actually do look
like the pictures of the cards they represent (albeit from an
Ultima style angle) and the backgrounds are pleasing to the eye
too.

There are a number of musical scores to listen to as well (most of
them quite eerie and some downright depressing!) and whenever a
non-Land spell is cast - whether it be a Summon Creature,
Artifact, Sorcery or Enchantment - a crisp, pleasant sounding
female American voice announces what has just been brought into
play. In this way it is possible to listen to what your opponent
is up to, even when he is not on the screen and you are
concentrating on your own cards.

THE CAMPAIGN:

After the Campaign introduction sequence is out of the way, you
may select one of the six wizards from the standard Duel, to play
in the Campaign. Each Planeswalker begins with a stack of
predetermined cards which is the same for each Planeswalker every
time you play, and there is nothing that can be done to change
these initial cards.  You will, however, gain more cards as the
game progresses, but to begin with your Tome is always poorly
stocked. The Campaign is also a one player only game.

Much of the Campaign game takes place on a screen showing a map of
Corondor, which has thirty territories. All Planeswalkers begin
with one territory each, and whoever gains all thirty territories
- or who reduces Ravidel the Battlemage's territories owned to
zero and then beats him in combat - wins the game.

Whilst on the map screen, the game has three phases: Player
Movement, CPU Planeswalker Movement, and Tax Gathering.

Player Movement is simply a case of selecting a territory to have
a go at conquering. You may "attack" any territory which borders
one you already control, and so the more territories you own, the
more scope for advancement you have. If the territory you try to
conquer is already owned by a rival Planeswalker, you will more
than likely risk a confrontation with him. If this happens, the
Planeswalker will appear onscreen with some text, and under this
text will appear three choices for you to respond with; usually
two of these choices will result in you fighting the Planeswalker
for the territory, and the other will allow you to back down and
leave without bloodshed. If you back down and leave, you gain
nothing, but if you duel with the Planeswalker and win, you gain
the territory and any Mana the land there produces. Quite often,
you will receive bonus spells too, when you conquer a territory,
which will usually be Summon Creature cards and Sorceries.

If the territory you are trying to conquer is not owned by a rival
Planeswalker, you will quite often encounter one of the
territory's denizens. If this is the case, their picture will
appear with a text box, and three choices underneath to select haw
you wish. to respond to the situation. Sometimes, you will find
yourself having to make four or five choices as you 'converse'
with the encountered denizen, and you will be judged by your
responses. Sometimes you will gain money and extra cards for using
the correct responses - choose poor responses and you may find
cards and money being lost just as easily! Negotiate well and you
may even be granted the freedom of the territory, which will then
revert to your control. When this happens you will gain the Land
cards for Mana this territory can produce, and quite often bonus
spells for your trouble as well.

You can only try to conquer one territory every Player Movement
Phase and, whether you succeed in conquering a territory or not,
this first phase is then over.

CPU movement is the next phase, and this is where all the computer
controlled Planeswalkers try to conquer territories of their own,
which again must border their own lands. The territory a
Planeswalker attacks will flash briefly, and then you will receive
a text box signalling whether the attack was successful or a
failure. If it was successful, the Planeswalker gains another
territory. If it was a failure, the territory does not revert to
that Planeswalker's control. If a Planeswalker loses ail his
territories, he is out of the game (and the game ends, if this is
Ravidel).

If it is one of your territories which is attacked, the Duel
screen will appear, as you will have to fight for your terrain.
You will have to battle the attacking Planeswalker just as you
would in the standard Duel, with the cards that you have in your
Tome. If you win, you successfully manage to defend your territory
and it remains under your control. If you lose the duel, however,
you also lose the territory and any Land cards which go with it.
Hence, your Mana producing capability also goes down, and thus
your offensive capacity with it. So it is in your best interests
to do well when defending your territories.

Tax Gathering comes next, and you play no part in this phase - you
simply gain an income for every territory you own. As a result,
the more territories you own, the more cash you will receive in
this phase. Taels are the currency of Dominaria, and you will
often need plenty of Taels for non-Planeswalker encounters for
such things as buying spells and offering bribes.


It is worth pointing out that, no matter which character you
choose to play in the Campaign, the non-Planeswalker encounters
will always be the same. So if you know the correct responses to
conquer the territory of Knone as Kristina, the same responses
will work when you play Sandruu too, etc. The spells you receive
from certain encounters will sometimes be different though, more
geared to the colour of spells you already own. And there are just
so many non-Planeswalker encounters that this is a game you will
be playing for months rather than weeks, and even when you do
manage to complete it, you will inevitably try to complete it as
all six characters sooner or later!

THE TOME BUILDER:

There is a special part of the game called the Tome Builder, which
allows you to specify which cards (from the 223 different cards
available) you want to use in your Tome, or deck. You can create
your own decks, each having in them between 40 and 240 cards, and
save these to your Memory Card. These specially created Tomes can

then be used in Duel games against your friends or the CPU
opponents, but not in the Campaign game, for obvious reasons.

The Tome Builder is great in that it allows you to try out
different cards, and discover wonderful card combinations which
work very well together. I found this a brilliant addition to the
game, as it allowed me to practise with cards I have for the
tabletop version against a CPU opponent. Giving your opponent a
specially generated deck for the Duel is a great idea too, as you
can quickly develop strategies to counter his attacks and thus
learn something useful for the actual card game. It also helps to
prolong the lifespan of the software, as you can make the rival
Planeswalkers' decks as easy or as hard to beat as you require.

BATTLEMAGE: AN OPINIOM:

Magic: The Gathering - Battlemage is, above everything, a fun game
to play, and keeps the mind ticking over rather like a good game
of chess. The strategy element will appeal to wargamers, the

fantasy element to roleplayers, and neither will be disappointed
once they have gotten to grips with the game.

Veteran players of the tabletop version of M:TG will initially
make mistakes like I did, expecting it to play just like the CCG
version, when this is simply not the case. Okay, the idea is the
same and the basic rules, but there are subtle mechanical changes
which veteran tabletop players will have to learn to accept, such
as the multi-turn combat, the lack of an initial reshuffling of
cards, and the absence of creatures' summoning sickness. Such
things may seem sacrilegious at first, but once they are accepted
the game runs quite smoothly and actually plays better far these
changes. Due to its real time nature, Acclaim didn't have much
option I think, than to twist the odd rule here and there. They
did a good job though, and the ability to increase the game's
difficulty level as you become a more proficient player will add
to the game's longevity.

Okay, the game has only a fraction of the cards used in its
tabletop counterpart, and expansions look unlikely to appear, but
even so it is a good way to gain a grounding in the concepts of
M:TG and will surely bring more people into the hobby. The
rulebook is adequate but not very clear in its explanations at
times, which may puzzle some novices, but actually playing M:TG-B
will help to iron out some of the perplexity the rulebook does not
quash. And the graphical. nature of the game gives it a whole new
dimension - now you can actually see your Crash of Rhinos plough
through those Elvish Archers on their way to the rival
Planeswalker...

Whether you have played the tabletop version of M:TG before or
not, I am sure that M:TG-B will be one Playstation game you will
keep coming back to time and again. It is a great way for novices
to get a grounding in the game and learn same of the terminology
involved, and with a little perseverance even a new player will
warm to this exciting game and keep coming back for more. Veteran
M:TG addicts will find this game useful too, for quiet games by
themselves, or to brush up on strategies with the cards available,
so it should really keep everybody happy. Highly recommended!
                              - o -