According to Steam I've played Magic: The Gathering, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 for about 30 hours. That's a long time to play something you hate, I admit. I had forgotten how much I loved Magic until the original DotP reminded me, but the original game had a huge flaw, in that it removed one of the most important parts of Magic: deck building. Yes, I know why they did it. They didn't want the really advanced people to use all the cards at their disposal to build some kind of super deck. What kind of nanny state garbage is that? They couldn't include a multiplayer mode for constructed decks versus the boxed decks? Magic is such a well-designed game that DotP is a ton of fun regardless of the stupid limitations, but if you've played the real card game  you'll be screaming in frustration at the designers' decision to only include half the damned game. Stainless Games did include one compromise in this version: the ability to add and remove SPECIFIC CARDS to and from your deck, i.e. a sideboard. While it's a nice gesture it's not nearly the same as giving smart players access to the full range of cards they unlock. Ugh. I'd rather play a legit version of MTG on my computer right now, but I'm going to load up Deus Ex: Human Revolution out of spite. 

According to Steam I've played Magic: The Gathering, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 for about 30 hours. That's a long time to play something you hate, I admit. I had forgotten how much I loved Magic until the original DotP reminded me, but the original game had a huge flaw, in that it removed one of the most important parts of Magic: deck building. Yes, I know why they did it. They didn't want the really advanced people to use all the cards at their disposal to build some kind of super deck. What kind of nanny state garbage is that? They couldn't include a multiplayer mode for constructed decks versus the boxed decks? Magic is such a well-designed game that DotP is a ton of fun regardless of the stupid limitations, but if you've played the real card game  you'll be screaming in frustration at the designers' decision to only include half the damned game. Stainless Games did include one compromise in this version: the ability to add and remove SPECIFIC CARDS to and from your deck, i.e. a sideboard. While it's a nice gesture it's not nearly the same as giving smart players access to the full range of cards they unlock. Ugh. I'd rather play a legit version of MTG on my computer right now, but I'm going to load up Deus Ex: Human Revolution out of spite. 

I've come to the conclusion that DotP is designed purely as an introductory tool. It's meant to be Magic boiled down to a pure essence that people can pick up and within 15 minutes understand the basics of Magic. I've watched no less than five of my friends, three of whom haven't played since high school and two who never played, pick up DotP and in less than an hour, they're getting up to speed and diving into the more nuanced parts of the game. Speaking as someone who tried no less than three times to get into the game in my earlier days, with friends trying to teach me but failing miserably, I picked up the original DotP, and within a week, I had gotten the cardboard crack bug and ran down to my local card shop and bought a deck. That's the point of this game - to be a super cheap, super forgiving way for novices to learn the rules of the game, and once they hit the built-in limits of the game, they've been sucked into MTG enough that they will branch into the real game, either in card form or via MTGO. WotC is a very talented pusher of cardboard crack, this is the infamous first hit.