Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers

Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers was Wizards of the Coast's first serious attempt to bring Magic in digital form to a broad audience on PC and consoles, developed by Stainless Games and released in 2009. Unlike the later Arena, it didn't offer free deckbuilding from the entire card collection – the player progressed through a campaign against a series of AI opponents, gradually unlocking pre-built decks and could only upgrade them to a limited extent by adding cards from a small pool of rewards. This simplified approach made the game an ideal gateway for newcomers who wanted to learn Magic's basic mechanics – mana, card types, creature combat – without having to study the extensive rules of the paper game.

The game emphasized clarity and fast matches, and its controls were adapted for gamepad use as well, enabling releases on consoles alongside the PC version. Duels of the Planeswalkers came out as a series of yearly titles (2009 to 2015), each bringing a new set of decks, a campaign, and online multiplayer, similar to sports series released every year. The series was eventually replaced by Arena, which offered a more open and deeper approach to deckbuilding.

Both audibly and visually, the game benefited from classic Magic card illustrations complemented by simple animations and atmospheric music that underscored the fantasy tone of the various factions, while the campaign took the player through a series of duels against the planeswalkers the series is named after. Each yearly entry gradually added new sets of pre-built decks corresponding to the paper editions releasing at the time, so the game also served as a clear showcase of what Magic had to offer that particular year. Although titles in the series are no longer available for purchase today, at the time of release they played a key role in bringing to Magic a generation of players who otherwise might never have gotten into the paper version of the game, and they showed that a complex card game could be successfully made accessible even outside specialized game stores and player community hubs.

Why play: A historically interesting pick for those who want to see how Magic brought new players into the series in the era before Arena, even though the entries are no longer for sale today.