Over at backfortwoseconds.com you can catch a very detailed, and very interesting, full review of this game, however, here I plan on giving a far less experienced point of view on whether or not Magic: the Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers could be the Trading Card Game to win over us newbies to the genre...

I will confess that before being bullied (wink!) into spending 1000 MSPs on this game I was indeed a trading card game (TCG) virgin.  I never got the whole Pokemon thing when I was younger (other than thinking Squirtle had a pretty cute name) and Yu-Gi-Oh completely passed me by.  However, within moments of purchasing this game, I was flying through the campaign mode, and indeed careered past Mr McBoob himself, despite his veteran TCG status and his being the person to recommend the game in the first place...

Read on to see why, even if you haven't ventured here in the past, DotP may be the TCG for you...

The basic gist of the game is that you have a hand of cards and you have to play them whilst draining your opponent's life points.  You have land cards which you can play at a rate of one per turn, then creature cards, spells, elementals and artefacts.  All cards except for the land cards require a certain number of land cards in play before they themselves can be played, and the strategic element comes in when deciding whether to play a lot of low mana cards or a few high mana ones.  You also need to consider whether it's wiser to use all your cards for attack, or whether to keep some for defending against your opponent's attack.  To be honest, I'd say never leave yourself totally undefended, and I'd offer more strategic advice, but it entirely depends on the hand you draw and the opponent you're playing at the time, so it would be largely meaningless.  The only other useful thing I can say is to keep an eye on how many cards they have in their hand at any given time.  If they're hoarding then it would suggest they're either about to hit you with a load of instant magic cards, or they're stockpiling big hitters and going to take you out in a couple of turns, in which case you need to up the defensive.

Each time you win a hand you unlock a new card for the deck with which you are playing (there are five basic decks, plus a couple of combination decks) and you unlock new decks as you win games - you begin with green, and once you have unlocked others can alternate if you wish to better suit your opponent.  This is another strategic element to the game.  Personally I use the white and black decks a lot; there are more cards in white which restore your own life than in many of the others, and more in black that cause instant death to various creatures in other decks or are unblockable, but every so often a different deck will be a better call.  However, if you have unlocked 50% of the white deck, and switch to the green deck, you won't transfer the unlock - you'll only have as many unlocked cards as you have won hands with that deck; so, sometimes, it's worth switching around to open up more options, or even going back a few opponents and winning a few 'easier' games with a different hand to open up more cards.  Be warned though, once you win the final battle in campaign mode, even the 'easier' opponenets step it up a notch...

As well as the campaign option DotP also offers various challenges, of which, I am ashamed to say, I have only won two so far.  These are one-move games: you have your hand and are set the challenge of winning the game in one move only.  The first two are logical enough, but the third has foxed me for some time now (answers on a postcard please!) and annoyingly, you can't just skip it out and come back to it later; the fourth will remain locked until you have completed the third...  These are useful for making you think about the strategic element to the game, but at the same time, can lead to just trial and error, and not actually help you learn any strategy at all.  It's also highly unlikely that you'll find yourself in any of these exact situations in the game, so perhaps they're not much help, but more an added element of challenge to make you feel like you valuable MSPs have not been wasted.

There is the option to play on XBL too, though the one time I tried it wouldn't work (hmph!) but I can imagine it being pretty good fun to play against someone you know who is into this sort of thing, adding the personal challenge of kicking your friend's butt, and let's be honest, who doesn't like to do that once in a while?!

Overall, this is a really good, and highly addictive game.  I've spent many an hour sitting playing it, thinking "I'll just keep going til I beat this opponent" and finding myself there, hours later, no longer sitting but now lying on my stomach, feet waving in the air behind me, biting my bottom lip and running through all the possible gameplays in my head.  Frequently still on the same opponent.  But that to me is one of the signs of a good game: you don't realise it's been hours, it feels like only moments have passed, and that's gotta make it worth every penny.  Right?

4/5