The full-scale Magic Online is only available on Windows, but the Duels platform has been on mobile and console devices for several years. It was created to bring old players back into the game, by showcasing how good the cards have become since the era when many of us gave it up. It was resoundingly successful at this, and now Wizards has refocused on a multitude of still-secret successors to the role.

I greatly enjoyed several annual versions of this app (most of which will no longer work after 32-bit support drops from iOS 11). They each had their own mix of cards and decks that made each game unpredictable, yet interesting. In the newest version, the cards from the newest sets are unlocked six at a time, but you start with enough to build some decent decks. Then you can participate in ranked play where your opponents have a similar win/loss ratio as you hone your decks and strategies. The ability to build dozens of different decks with the same cards is a major strength of this game. However, you can’t simply buy the cards you want, you would have to buy them in 6-packs. Your deckbuilding is constrained by that, which is another thing that makes the format fun in its own way (you get a ton of use out of cards that would not normally see constructed play).

The game has decent handling of network issues like latency, disconnections, and syncing your collections, but these are naturally difficult problems and there are definitely hiccups. It doesn’t exactly have an offline mode, and will prompt you about connecting after every game, for instance. And, the inability to play 3-game matches, to use a sideboard, or to select the deck that you will play against are weaknesses. It has been announced that new sets are not coming to this platform; but I don’t fully believe that.

Since 1997, Wizards’ ability to fully digitize such a complex game has always been impressive, and they are still getting better at it. The technology partners they have for Magic Digital Next are sure to bring assets and experience of their own.

In the meantime, the current Magic Online platform has gotten very stable and has launched several new formats, such as 1v1 Commander and a draft event where you only play each opponent once. There are also draft formats that include out-of-print cards, and a healthy culture of streaming one’s games live to an audience. Cards are less expensive here, although drafting isn’t, but you can do it any time you want!

Magic is a great game for digital play: you never have to spend time shuffling; it shows you which cards you can cast and what you can target, and even has animations and color codes to display information you can use to play quickly and easily. However, in Duels I find that you sometimes miss your chance to react to a card if you’re not fast enough. The game’s help in understanding the rules is invaluable, and it almost always interprets them correctly, but sometimes you do lose because you failed to touch the screen in exactly the right manner (and the touch targets are sometimes obscured by the menus or by other cards). The AI does a great, but imperfect, job at choosing which lands to tap such that you maximize your options later in the turn.

The AI also gives you hints about which spells to cast and which targets to choose, and whether to use optional abilities that get triggered. Another field of enhanced AI is the deckbuilder, which offers an ‘auto-complete’ button. Even when I pick just one or two cards and then auto-complete the rest, it builds a great deck (although the choice of lands sometimes needs to be corrected).

Here are some tactics and concepts that Duels can be quite good at helping you understand:

1. Which phases of your turn allow you to use different types of spells
2. Knowing when it is a good idea to attack
3. Seeing the different tactics of different decks, and learning how they are connected to the identities of the five colors
4. Having a way to practice deck-building

Duels is an app I use daily and it is ultimately quite good at highlighting sides of Magic that I haven’t seen anywhere else. First of all, your collection is constrained so that you can only have one of each mythic, two of each rare, and three of each uncommon. Second, the most recent Core Set, known as Origins, is used, and I find those cards add a lot of cool flavors to the matches. In addition to those, certain cards from older editions are included as part of the base deckbuilding toolkit. And, one of the very best things about this app is the beautiful custom animations that are displayed for all the cards that have special abilities or storylines!

There is also a mobile app called Puzzle Quest, which lets you generate mana by matching gems in a grid (it actually shows you which gems to match). The game has creatures doing combat and other spell types from Magic, twisted to fit with just three creatures and some gems on the screen. Every mechanic from the expansions is recreated, and it’s impressive how well they can match the flavor of a Magic card with the same card in a different game. You can pick the order in which you play cards, and which cards go in each planeswalker’s deck. As you play matches, you can upgrade your planeswalkers to strengthen their abilities as well as their card selection and starting life totals.

The biggest leverage attainable in this game is when the disappearance of gems you match causes other gems to line up, generating additional mana. If you can perceive where such a cascade can occur, you might excel at Puzzle Quest. Tuning the decks and prioritizing which cards to play based on the opponents’ plays can also be leverage points. However, upgrading the planeswalkers and their abilities seems far more significant. I don’t know if the strategy of an expert player can overcome the upgrades of a more experienced planeswalker, and if so, I suspect the strategy is very complex and challenging to understand. Still, the game is good fun and awards upgrade chits at a reasonable pace even if you don’t purchase anything.