Like the new portal shit too
It's so random, it's totally up my sleve
Btw, yesterday was release of MtG: Duels on Steam.
They took a lot of the recipe of HS and according to Anubis it's easier for f2p players to get an equal collection. You gather the gold a lot faster it seems, and against CPU opponents as well.
You can download it here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/316010/But yeh, warning atm: the servers are down a lot of time (i hope it's child bug), and when you play offline the game won't save your campaign progress
Few tips:
- AI cannot predict 'instants'. If you plan on playing CPU instead of humans a lot: throw in a bunch of instants (green has good one (primal bellow) and white too).
- In normal deck of 60 cards, roughly 22 should be lands. If you have a multi-colour deck, throw in the multi-colour lands that read: 'comes in tapped, except when you already own this or that basic land'. Use the 'mulligan' to redraw cards at the start of the game if you have less than 3 lands (2 is risky).
- At start, probably should use white, black or green. These are colours that don't require many cards to be useful.
- Rough meaning of colour:
Blue: Spells (non-destructive); flying; return to hand & tap abilities; library effects (draw cards; or move cards from the draw pile to the graveyard).
Green: Strong creatures; no flying (only reach as defence vs fly); mana/land abilities; Elves as major race.
White: Healing & protection; attack with masses; Humons as major race, also includes Angels.
Red: Spells (destructive); Goblins as major race; effects that boost attack.
Black: a bit of everything; Zombies as major race, as well as Demons; effects that take life; destroy creatures or that effect your graveyard.
Most often you find yourself combining two colours (more than that is hard land-wise). In quests too you are asked to complete fights with 2-colour decks. In MtG they are linked to certain 'guilds'. Due to cards being linked to a particular colour, there's really only 1 'basic' strategy for each colour-combination:
Azorius (white/blue): this is quite versatile, but heavy on Enchantments. A good combo here is to cast an unblockable blue creature and pimp it up with white/blue aura spells.
Dimir (blue/black): mind grinding/graveplundering deck: blue cards move cards from the library (the drawing pile) to the graveyard, black spells bring the graveyard ones to the board.
Rakdos (black/red): focus on doing damage: red spells that do damage to creatures/players, combined with black creatures that take opponent's life. Red creatures with haste are nice for this agressive deck too.
Gruul (red/green): overpower your enemy: big green creatures cast with green spells that increase mana. Red spells to give them haste and destroy enemy creatures.
Selesnya (green/white): spam the board with cheap minions & tokens; back them up with creatures that have power/toughness equal to the ammount of creatures you control + instants/enchantment that power up all of your creatures.
Orzhov (white/black): Gain life yourself, while taking health away from your opponent. Works well in any mode, particularly in modes with more players (as do any decks that make you gain health).
Izzet (blue/red): Spell-galore. Play creatures that benefit from or enhance spell effects.
Golgari (black/green): deck where you f*ck with your own graveyard. Use cards here that place cards into your graveyard and add green ones that bring creatures back from them. Cards with 'sacrifice' benefits come in handy.
Boros (red/white): good deck for an early head start. Aimed for melee-fighting. Best way to go is cast cheap creatures and powering them up with enchantments (both aura and general ones).
Simic (blue/green): Imo the weakest, but also the most fun. The best to do IMO is to include creatues that give benefits when they enter the battlefield. Combine them with creatures that force you to take other creatures back into your hand or use the blue spells for this. Then play the creatures again next turn to gain their entrance benefit once again. Fun part of this one is that it allows you to draw many cards; but it lacks destructive force.
At first, don't go for high synergy (you lack cards for this), go for cards that have intrinsic value: high attack/defence for the card's cost, cards that cast multiple creatures and cards of general purpose (cards that kill creatures or neutralizes them (e.g. enchantments that doesn't allow them to tap or doesnt allow them to attack/defend).
Steer clear from blue-red combinations at first. They are hard to play and you need a lot of cards to make them function properly.