Methadone for magic perhaps?

First, Planechase boxes come with 60 cards. That’s a complete, playable deck – in contrast to the decks Wizards released more recently. See, in “Alara” you got 42 cards, and 1 booster with 15 cards – basically, 2-3 cards you could integrate into your deck, this giving you hardly a full 60-card deck to play “out of the box”. And that’s what you’re talking about in your review. Instead of heading players to the collectible element of the game straight away (as in Alara), Planechase contains a complete 1-player set “out of the box”.

Second, the 6 plane cards differ in every set. That raises the motivation to buy more than one Planechase box. See, I thought that after buying the first set, buying another would get you lots of redundant stuff. Not at all! And now I can see how the 30 plane cards in all 5 sets create a huge set of scenarios, as alluded to in your reply’s final line.

I’ll certainly check this out at one point, since Planechase looks way more attractive than I initially thought. The high pricing remains a deterrent, since Dominion (both vanilla and the “Intrigue” expansion) now sell at the same price of a single Planechase box, and I’m more inclined to check out what the buzz surrounding Dominion is all about. Speaking of which, would be great to see you give a review of it. Is there a feature on your website where people can voice their desires for you to review games?

Stefan

Because in that case it’s the same thing all over again. Meaning I will gladly pass it and never look back.

I don’t even think that Planechase should be viewed necessarily as a starter pack for Magic. It is its own thing. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who wants an IN to Magic, and wants to build decks, collect cards, etc. I’d recommend it to those who want to PLAY Magic, on a casual basis, with big lashings of luck to level the playing field.

And I do prefer Planechase’s gameplay. It swings Magic way over into Cosmic Encounter turf. I’ll be playing with the Plane cards more often than not in future. You talk about the replayability factor – Planechase offers freakish new scenarios by the bucketload. You should give the “fiddly dice” a shot, you might love them!

Thanks for reviewing this and alerting me to the existence of the new MtG Starter Kits.

I’m totally with you in how to handle MtG – namely, have your friends and you buy two to three premade sets and having a go with them at each other. That’s how we did it with the previous release in the “Shards of Alara” trilogy. Each trilogy had 5 preconstructed decks which (for the most part) were balanced at each other, creating the balanced gameplay out of the box your review describes. See, my friends and I are casual gamers and not hobby (let alone, tournament) players, like you describe yourself. That’s why it matters to have two card decks that are not optimized in to the roof but balanced *against each other*. That’s why it matters that, for this sort of gameplay, you *avoid* buying boosters and thus ruining everyone’s fun in that group (your own, because now you start winning due to superior cards, not superior strategy; and other’s fun, because now they are losing not due to inferior strategy but inferior cards).

Having said all that, I think your review glosses over a couple if issues, this giving innocent buyers out there the wrong vibes. Planechase strikes me as the WRONG choice to get into this (wonderful) sort of Magic gameplay – because it is crassly overproduced and hence crassly overprized. None of the extra fiddly bits improve game play, and there’s absolutely no reason to spend FOURTY QUID on two decks when that amount of money can get you FOUR decks in the equally shiny “Shards of Alara” product line (minus the gimmicky dice).

So here’s my question, Rob. Do you really think 6 double-sized cards (the planes) and 1 custom made dice are worth the extra 10 quid per deck? Because not only could you replicate that game play by a single chart with 6 entries and an ordinary 6-sided die – you could, as I said already, get twice the number of preconstructed and balanced number of card decks to hit the table with your friends.

Stefan

PS. If you or anyone visiting this site have some knowledge in German, I’d recommend you to read my reviews of the Alara decks.

1. Alara: Conflux is reviewed here:
http://www.dnd-gate.de/gate3/page/index.php?id=2700

2. Alara: Reborn is reviewed here:
http://www.dnd-gate.de/gate3/page/index.php?id=2977

The long and short of it is this: if you don’t want to spend 40 quid go get the type of Magic experience Rob is talking about, buy either combination of sets

A) “Bant on the March” and “Esper Air Assault” – in the Conflux product line
B) “Legion Aloft” and “Unnatural Schemes” – in the Reborn product line

for half that prize. I hope to review Planechase in depth in the future, because I’ll be interested to see if (cutting out all the crap on production value and prizing) the new decks display greater tactical variety – and hence offer you better re-play value.