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by Ron Vitale
No matter if you're new to playing Magic online or are a veteran, here is a guide that will help you decide what software will work best for you. There are several different programs available. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. You might even choose to use more than one program, firing up one program to play certain type of games that another program won't allow you to play. With that said, here's a breakdown of the some of the better programs available.
Current version: 2.0
Download at: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/magiconline/downloadlinks
Price: Event tickets are $1, packs are retail price (currently $3.69 for a booster pack and $11.29 for a starter deck). You need to buy cards and then trade for them with other players. Playing games with the cards you purchased (unless you’re drafting or entering a tournament) is then free.
I won’t spend a lot of time explaining this product. Wizards of the Coast has enough help files on their site, but I’ll point you in the right direction. Magic Online (MTGO) allows you to play many different types of games online (drafting, sealed, Standard, casual, online extended, prismatic, etc.). An extremely positive sell point is that the playing board environment is extremely clean and well thought out. However, none of the older Magic sets are available for use (or purchase) in the game (Alpha up through Urza's block were not available in the game). With earlier sets unavailable, you’ll not be able to play Vintage games online. But if you’re not concerned about that, then MTGO has a lot to offer:
-A.I. to judge each game (great for beginners)
-You can trade the cards you purchase with other players
-Binder view so that you can view cards you own
-Draft online
-Play Emperor games (six players)
-Meet thousands of other players from around the globe
-Easy to use editor for building decks
-If you collect a full set of cards online, you can trade them in to obtain a full set of real life cards.
Many Magic players love using MTGO, but the game does have its drawbacks:
-Can’t play games with early card sets as mentioned above (Alpha up through Urza's block were never available in the game except for a few promo cards.)
-You do not own the cards but are renting them. If Wizards chooses to shut down the game for good, you won't be able to play. In the past, the MTGO servers would be down often and people could not play. Bugs in the game happened often in the first two years, but most of those problems have been resolved.
-If you’re not a good player or just don’t have time to draft, purchasing cards online can become expensive.
-New sets take a considerable amount of time to be included in the online game (usually several months after release).
Many people swear by MTGO, but the game isn't full proof. However, if you’re looking for a stable way of playing games of Magic online and you don’t mind spending some money, then this is the product for you. Just keep in mind that MTGO will not allow you to play certain types of games online. MTGO is not all inclusive. For an indepth breakdown of MTGO, visit the official Magic Online FAQ.
Current Version: 1.3.529
Download at: http://www.cardfloppers.com
Price: Free
OCTGN is another software program that allows you to play games of Magic: the Gathering online. The OCTGN acronym stands for: Online Card and Tabletop Games Network. Fans of the software pronounce “OCTGN” as OCTAGON. Here’s a full list of what you can do with OCTGN:
- English, Spanish, German, French and Italian language support available
- multiplayer games with up to 6 players
- spectator mode available for watching games
- draft games
- sealed games
- software skin is customizable
- built in chat client
- deck editor as well as the ability to import or export decks
- open source program
- Free: No adware or spyware.
- Once the fan made BitTorrent patch is downloaded and installed, you can play with over 11,000 Magic cards.
Here’s a screenshot that will show you a game with non-licensed cards.
When you download the game, be aware that it does not come with any cards. The intriguing aspect of OCTGN is that it can be used with many other card games. Most people use it for Magic but others do use it for VS. and homemade card sets.
To play Magic online with OCTGN, you will need to download a fan-made patch that consists of all the card images and a text document for all the cards. Remember, OCTGN does not come with any of the cards. You'll need to download and install the Type 1 patch that contains all of the cards. All you need to do is use BitTorrent (www.bittorrent.com) to download nearly every Magic card known to man in one huge 415Mb .zip file. The patch name is 2005_December_Type1_Magic-The_Gathering_OCTGN_Patch_Alpha-Rav.zip and the torrent file can be download here (you must have BitTorrent installed on your computer to get the .torrent file to work).
OCTGN mirrors a real life game because there is no A.I. You can see from the above screenshot an example of what an actual game looks like when playing a Vintage game. The play environment is exactly like playing in real life: Simply move your cards to the board, to your graveyard, or to the removed pile. That’s it. Although OCTGN does not contain an A.I., the software shines in allowing you to play multiplayer games, sealed, and draft. Add in that you can play with all the cards from Alpha up to Betrayers of Kamigawa and that's not a bad deal. There’s even some great rare cards in the Type 1 patch too: Unhinged, APAC, and Euro lands along with a few other gems. And finally, OCTGN comes with a decent deck editor that allows you to build, import, or export decks and a decent chat client that connects you to the irc channel where you can meet other players.
Current Version: 1.46
Download at: http://www.magic-league.com/download/apprentice.php
Price: Free
According to the legal statement in Apprentice: "This product is officially licensed by Wizards of the Coast. Wizards of the Coast is the exclusive sponsor of Apprentice." Back in 1996, Apprentice hit the Internet and online games of Magic started popping up all over IRC and in chat rooms. Apprentice is the grandfather of all online Magic games. Weighing at a light 1.12 MBs to download, Apprentice is a rather simplistic interface for playing games online. Installing it on your computer takes only a few seconds, and before you know it, you can build decks, load premade decks that come with the software, and play with someone online.
From loading the game on my computer and reviewing the cards that come with it, you have access to all cards from Alpha up through Urza's Destiny. Additional files will need to be downloaded to get a fully up-to-date version that contains the remaining Magic card sets.
What are the benefits of Apprentice? You can play some great games with you friend at any time through a TCP/IP connection. You can also play a solitaire game - basically, you can play goldfish. The software is easy to use, with the interface being simplistic and not at all fancy. Here's a list of what you can do with Apprentice:
-Sealed deck games are supported.
-You can play goldfish games to test out your deck
-After you install the game and all patches, you can play with all the cards.
-The game is easy to learn and a snap to install.
-You can load different themes for the background.
Unfortunately, the drawbacks are fairly numerous:
-Games with over two players are not supported.
-No Magic art is used for the cards. To be honest: The graphics leave much to be desired. If you've used Magic Online and then try Apprentice, you're going to click the uninstall button faster than an interrupt.
-Some of the program's functionality rather crude (but efficient).
Legally, the makers of Apprentice had to fight to allow Wizards of the Coast to sanction the game. Thousands of players had cried out for online play and Apprentice filled that need. But if you look at the graphics, it's clear to see that Magic art isn't used. The cards in no way, shape, or form resemble the Magic cards we all know and love. The wording on the cards are all correct (when you right mouse click on a card to view it), but the similarities end there.
Why would you want to use Apprentice? Testing, being on the road, or just for kicks. But Apprentice still has a fairly strong following.
Current Version: 0.94e
Download at: http://www.magicworkstation.com/
Price: Free, but $19.95 if you wish to have the ads removed from the game.
Magic Workstation tries really hard to look like MTGO (here's a screenshot). Does it succeed? A good many players out there swear by it becuase it's a good alternative to MTGO.
In Magic Workstation, you have access to a ton of cards, but although they have the artwork of Magic cards, the mana, card outline, and set symbols aren't true to the card. The borders are artificially drawn in and the mana symbols are not true to the cards. I don't know if this was done on purpose to try and avoid legal troubles, but the cards look odd in Magic Workstation. You do have the option of obtaining the real artwork to use for all the cards, but this feature is not part of the basic game. Yet you have to give the designers props for trying really hard to make the game like Magic Online. It's easy to build decks, search for cards, and a “connect to players” feature is built into the game. Another cool feature is that with Magic Workstation you can load up two decks and play in a solitaire mode which is great for play testing.
Here a list of what the company advertises on their site for what MWS can do:
-Go through most cards that have been released.
-Build decks and use numerous tools for card analysis and deck adjustment.
-You can print proxy-cards and test your decks in real life, without having to buy missing cards.
-You can play two player games online.
-Comes with a built-in chat program so you can quickly find an opponent over the Internet.
-Online tournaments are supported.
-MWS allows you to create, edit and even test your very own cards and game sets.
Again, the game environment looks a lot like Magic Online, but without the A.I. However, there does not appear to be a way to play sealed or draft.
Summing It All Up
Take some time to explore each of these ways to play games of Magic online. No matter if you’re new to the game or a veteran, each program has its own strengths and weaknesses. But one thing is certain: For a small amount of time investment, you can start playing games of Magic with people from all over the world. If you love MTGO that’s fine, stick with it. But if you get that urge to play Vintage, then try one of the other three programs out. Whatever you choose to play online, take some time out and have some fun with these games. Each one is worth checking out.
(Thanks go out to Iloveatogs for his excellent work on creating the banner and screenshots.)
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Magic Workstation has a built in sealed deck generator, but not a good one at all. You can download full art for the cards, along with cropped pictures if you want to see the oracle text. Also, at www.mwsdata.com, you can get themes for the cards, to have them appear just like regular Magic cards, including mana symbols. There is no way to draft using MWS, but if you join one of the leading MWS online leagues //www.o-gaming.com">O-Gaming, you can join draft tournaments there. They use a secure online java server for drafts, and also feature sealed deck tournaments, using the site for building them too.
Also, currently, uploading 2 different decks for solitaire mode is only available if you pay. Paying doesn't only remove the ads.
I prefer MWS over all the programs, mainly because of it's tournament support on O-Gaming, which features some of the nicest people I've ever met in its IRC chat room, and a great staff.
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Yeah, this is a huge problem for Limited play. By the time the set comes out online, the offline players have figured out the new format in some depth and I usually find I lose 30+ points of my rating while I play catch up.
The question is: can Wizards do anything about this ?
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Their goal is to release the set in MTGO one month after its physical release. This is faster than it was for earlier sets. I doubt there's anyway to trim the time off this with the current software architecture. WOTC's programmers are also working on MTGO v3.0, which they want to release next year. They're basically rebuilding the program from the ground up, getting rid of all the old Leaping Lizards code and fixing the problems from earlier versions. With 3.0 in place, the turnaround might be faster, but let's keep in mind that the programmers have to figure out how to code these spiffy new abilities the designers keep making. I think Mindslaver was the reason Mirrodin took abnormally long to appear on MTGO, since controlling the opponent's turn was a nightmare to code.
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Well, obviously MTGO has them, but for free tournaments, Magic Workstation has to be the best. Apprentice is old, out-dated, and may be easy, but the graphics are horrid. Also, Apprentice is very much less secure than MWS. MWS is just as easy to use as Apprentice, imo. It may look scarier, but it's not that hard at all.
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I've never played with MWS b4, but I started playing with apprentice a bit, but stopped shortly after 'cause the quality was so bad. I was thinking about getting on the Magic online bandwagon, but since I'm only a college student who perfers spending my $$ on real cards, I'm glad that I found OCTGN
If you're wondering why there are no printed downsides to OCTGN, it's because they've worked hard to make it that way. I haven't been using the program very long, but there are only a few minor buggy things- limited types of tokens, some connection concerns, and finding a game prismatic, RS, Tribal, Vanguard or emperor is really hard... but I probably won't switch...
One of the cooler things that I've loved is the flexability of OCTGN...the Betrayers patch for OCTGN was released the day after the spoiler list was availible on magicthegathering.com... that seemed absurd.
It's also really cool that the MTGeditor from http://mtglair.de/editor.shtml works well to create more cards that can be incorporated into the game... unless they are tokens
there's my 2 cents...
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I've tried MWS, but as a matter of preference (the fact that they make money off of the software bothers me--Wizards of the Coast owns the intellectual property for Magic--not MWS), I prefer OCTGN.
What I hoped to do is to create a simple reference guide for a user to come in and try one of the ones I mentioned. Sure, it's not an all inclusive articles, but if you're using MODO and don't know about MWS or OCTGN, you might use these programs to play Vintage.
Or maybe you're using Apprentice and didn't know what MWS or OCTGN looked like.
I think each person will find that they like a program for a certain reason. I'm not trying to say that one is better than the other, but that each player needs to find the program that works best for him/her.
www.CinderGirl.com
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Your statement that you only "rent" the cards on MTGO is not true. Do you own songs downloaded from iTunes? The songs have DRM so if Apple goes under or quits supporting iTunes the songs won't work. so aren't they "rented"? Where in the terms of service for MTGO does it say cards are rented? Rent implies you have to give them back. Not true. You are free to do whatever you like with cards you purchase, including trade, give them away, sell for tickets/pay-pal or even sell them on e-bay. At this stage, if WOTC was going to kill MTGO, you can bet that they'll simply quit producing magic cards altogether.
Why aren't there any disadvantages listed for OCTGN? You list the AI as an advantage of MTGO, but then you try and spin the lack of AI as an advantage for OCTGN. How is having zero rule enforcement a good thing? MTGO there is no way to cheat, and all rules must be followed. You can't play wrong. With no AI to enforce rules, on OCTGN you better hope that your opponent knows how to play as well as you do. I doubt that every random person you play against on OCTGN knows every rule and how every combo works. I see even at T1.5 tourneys people who play cards they don't know how to use. Who is going to settle a disagreement?
There is mention of being able to do draft and sealed decks in some of the games. One thing you don't mention is that on everything except MTGO, there is no incentive for someone to stay in the draft. If someone opens a pack and doesn't like it, what's to stop them from quitting? At least in MTGO, you invested some $ and can win something so you might as well stay in. I'd say that's a huge disadvantage if you're playing against random people.
Another thing you make no mention of is the type of decks people play on these different versions. With unlimited access to any card, doesn't that mean that people are more likely to play net-decks instead of creating their own? For some people that's a good thing, but for others, collecting is fun (it is a collectable card game after all). I thought it was kind of fun having to trade and make do with sub-par cards instead of always having four-of every card. It gets boring always knowing what deck you are playing after turn two. MTGO is like that in some of the rooms, but at least there are some people who play random junk or something original. Maybe your next article could be about the community, if any, that plays each program and what kind of environment it is.
You do provide a lot of good information. I just wish it wasn't in a fox-news "fair and balanced" biased way. Every single advantage for all the other programs is in MTGO except that cards aren't free. I'm still going to try out OCTGN, since I only do MTGO for drafts and to get full sets cheap and would like a way to play against friends who don't have the time to collect the full set.
P.S. Love the pick for magic workstation. Is that the card game from Might and Magic VII & VIII?
Note the last sentence. You don't own the cards. You don't even own the license to the cards. Wizards holds all the cards, so to speak.
Again, note the last sentence. If they kick you out for any reason, or even no reason at all, you have no right to physical cards or a refund. Basically, buying cards on MTGO is giving Wizards money for nothing.
EDIT: Ignore the errors in transcription... the quotes are directly from a text version of the TOS here.
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A) Voicing your political views in this thread is making it doomed to be flamed
B) You are clearly biased towards anyone against MTGO
Already been deemed unconstitutional (sorry had to poke fun at politics)
Research, before speaking my friend. In OCTGN if you quit while drafting, you get screwed over because you have a landless deck (unless its core set in which case you have a few), that has auto picks (it does these alphabetically). OCTGN is more towards the vintage player, the limited player who likes to practice…or the casual player. Disadvanatages… only a small group of people that use it…some minor bugs that are being squashed as we speak.
actually, I myself use OCTGN and play many random casual decks, combo…I in fact don’t have a single deck that could go win in type I or 1.5
Glad to see you have an open mind.
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Yet with MWS and OCTGN and Apprentice, when MTGO is down (and it's been down over the years), you can use one of those other softwares to play a game.
Or you don't have to use any of them. You can just stick with MTGO. It's your choice. However, many other users love MWS, Apprentice, and OCTGN.
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Again, I think it's a good idea for people to have different options. I know that many, many people love MTGO, but if the site goes down, or during the several months it takes for a new set to come online, or they want to play Vintage, then MWS, Apprentice, or OCTGN are good alternatives.
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Usage OCTGN [-x width] [-y height].....I would type it all out but I guess you get the idea. Anyone know what I can do?