Magic The Gathering Arena of the Planeswalkers

It was 1995. A friend asked if I wanted to play a card game with him called Magic: The Gathering…

That’s how I got hooked on those shiny cards, which I collected in every way possible. The years went by, and I just kept buying more and more, with no regard for my budget.

However, a turning point came in my addiction. The pandemic made me give up all substances, and you could say I finally became clean…

until I bought my first board game. But that’s a story for another time.

I’ve always wanted to add this game to my collection, but I was a little worried about negative reviews and whether my wife would want to play it with me. Even though the game has long since been discontinued, I decided to buy a used copy something I normally would never do. But desperate times…

MTG Arena of Planeswalkers is a game for 2 to 5 players in which we take on the roles of powerful mages traveling between planes. Each mage commands a single color of mana and excels at what they do. Jace, the blue mage, is the Master of Illusions and can control his opponents’ spells and creatures. Chandra aggressively sets everything around her ablaze. Liliana summons hordes of zombies, which she can later resurrect from the grave. Gideon defends his companions with his white power. Nissa fires at enemies from a distance and increases the attack range of her units.

What I like most about this game is that every Planeswalker has something unique about them. They have a slightly different playstyle and different units they can summon. In my opinion, their powers from the card game have been brilliantly adapted to this miniatures battle game.

Jace is definitely going to be my favorite mage. His specialty in manipulating cards and his opponents’ units is just awesome. It feels like I’m playing my favorite color blue and counterspelling all of my opponent’s plays.

In my opinion, Gideon is the weakest of the bunch. It’s nice that he can boost his allies’ defense, but he lacks the tricks and explosive plays that other Planeswalkers provide.

MTG Arena of Planeswalkers uses the Heroscape mechanic. This means that on your turn, you activate one unit, move it, and then attack.

Attacking involves rolling the dice, hoping for as many swords as possible. Defending, on the other hand, uses the same dice to look for shields that will negate damage. It’s a simple exchange like that. Our rolls are also affected by various modifiers and our units’ abilities. The asymmetry of the magic colors is pretty good, and it’s something I definitely love in dueling games like this.

What definitely falls short of my expectations is how few terrain pieces are available in the game. Literally just 4 plastic raised platforms and 2 walls to hinder our movement and attacks. On the one hand, it’s cool that we can generate our own maps, but we won’t really feel much difference from one game to the next. Because of this, the board also feels so empty and flat, and I’m slowly beginning to understand the struggles of flat-earthers.

On the other hand, I really like that the game uses illustrations from Magic: The Gathering cards. It reminded me a bit of my addiction to the game and the many duels I fought while playing it. What surprised me was that the mage miniatures are fully painted. They could look better, especially considering their faces, but they’re not bad anyway. The rest of the miniatures, on the other hand, look like they were pulled straight out of old toy boxes somewhere in my parents’ basement. Still, it’s all acceptable considering when this game was released.

Summary

Overall, it’s a little hard for me to say whether I’m satisfied with my purchase of MTG Arena of Planeswalkers. I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic, given my long-standing addiction to the magic card board. The Planeswalkers’ abilities have been nicely ported over from the card game, and you can really feel that each one is highly asymmetrical. The gameplay itself, on the other hand, is very simple, but you can pull off some cool plays by combining the abilities of your units with the cards you play.

The only aspect that slightly dampens my experience with the game is the number of available terrains. This severely limits the variety of scenarios we can create on our own. Also, since the game is no longer being developed, I have to make do with what I have now, and in the future I might eventually buy some Heroscape tiles. But is it worth it?

Final verdict: In my opinion, the spark of MTG Arena of Planeswalkers was extinguished in 2015, and nothing will ever reignite it.

Pros
MTG atmosphere
Asymmetrical Planeswalkers
Combination of combat and spell cards
Magic addiction

Cons
Some colors of magic are stronger
Empty board
Limited variety of scenarios
Lack of game development