Duels of the Planeswalkers

I just read a press release from Wizards of the Coast from a few months back regarding a new Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers and had a few comments.

The press release states the following: "This brand new game builds on the success of the original Duels of the Planeswalkers game". Which really got me excited since I loved that game. Then I read further and saw, "with all new graphics, decks, multiplayer format and more".

This line is discouraging since the original Duels of the Planeswalkers allowed you to build your own decks. This statement implies that it is not in fact anything like the original – with it’s sprawling maps and quests – but like the second one that came out a few years back. While that wasn’t a bad game, it really pales in comparison to the original.

I loved being able to wander around picking fights with lowly goblins to score a new card with which to enhance my deck, or sell for to buy cards later. Freeing cities to increase my life total felt like I was really accomplishing something. And defeating my first enemy mage, was a big accomplishment. Not to mention finally winning the game after many hours of adjusting my deck and increasing my life total.

I really miss the RPG elements of the game and do not understand why WotC continues to call this new, inferior game by the same name as that previous awesome title. Again, the newer game with the same name isn’t bad, and I like enjoy the puzzles, it doesn’t really offer anything more than playing the actual table-top card game – other than storing and sifting through cards (I had around 16,000 at last count). But even in this regard, the game is lacking as the number of cards is severely limited.

I hope Wizards really does release a new version of the original Duels of the Planeswalkers some day, and that they will rename their current game to something else to avoid confusion.