If you're tired of the dozens of card-collecting games, or card-collecting games masquerading as role-playing games, on Android, here's your chance to play the game that started it all. Wizards of the Coast has just unleashed Magic 2015 Duels of the Planeswalkers and now the popular CCG is marching right into Android. Gather up your cards and build up your deck, because you will be fighting for your life.
Magic 2015's plot revolves once more around the Planeswalkers, powerful sorcerers that can travel between different planes of existence. This time however, one of them, Garruk Wildspeak, is hunting other planeswalkers. And you, dear player, are one of them. If the above sounded gibberish to you, or if this is totally your first brush with Magic the Gathering, fret not. The game will let take to a tutorial should you indicate that you've never played the game before. In fact, you won't be able to proceed to any other part of the game until you finish the tutorial. Luckily, you can override your chosen newbie level in the settings.
At it's very core, Magic is a game of strategy and luck, drawing cards, laying them out, and trying to read your opponent's moves and body language. At least, that's for the real-world version of the game. In this virtual edition, of course, you don't get to physically or even visually see your enemy. You do, however, get the next best thing: multiplayer support! So yes, you can pit your newly formed deck against friends or against random strangers in Magic 2015.
The quality of the game itself is impressive, granted it doesn't make use of graphically intensive 3D models and such. But the effects littered throughout the game and the interface and the animations judiciously used in almost every nook and cranny are nothing to dismiss. But the most eye-catching part of the game will most definitely be the artwork. Magic the Gathering is quite popular for the art and the artists it employs in the creation of cards and it is satisfying to see that this tradition carries over to the digital version of the game.
Magic 2015 is free to claim on Google Play Store but, surprise, surprise there are in-game purchases. But considering that part of the real, physical Magic game does revolve around buying booster packs and decks, it shouldn't be surprising to see this kind of business here as well. Some more hardcore MtG, as it is abbreviated, players will definitely prefer the face to face battles with real-world opponents, but for those who want to take up the lore, the game, and the fantasy in their pockets, Magic 2015 might be the key to those worlds.