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 Magic: the Gathering - Puzzle Quest is another licensed match-3 game by D3 Go. They made Puzzle Quest and Marvel Puzzle Quest and also some other non-match-3 stuff. I'm not gonna spend any effort explaining the match-3 part, y'all know how that works I like MTG, is this for me? Maybe! This is a licensed MTG-style coat of paint, definitely not MTG though. You play as a planeswalker. You've got three special abilities that you can activate when you match enough loyalty gems. You level up your planeswalker with Runes, which are pretty plentiful. Leveling them up increases the match bonus for certain colours, increases your max health, and improves the loyalty abilities. You can unlock more planeswalkers with Mana Crystals, which come at a decent rate. You have a deck of 10 different cards, draw random one each turn, and never run out. No wins via milling! There are some cards that benefit from the enemy having X cards in the graveyard, at least. Land isn't necessary to cast cards, as you get mana from card matches. You can only use cards that either share a colour with your planeswalker or are colourless. You can have up to 6 cards in hand, and can freely reorder or exile any on your turn. Making matches gains mana for the first card in your hand (and spills over to the next if you get more than you need). Any card with full mana will be cast, barring exceptions. Typical exceptions: a card you've disabled (by clicking the mana cost) so you won't cast it, cards that apply to specific situations (like targeting a creature, with no creature on the board), cards that actually have the decency to ask if you'd like to cast them, and creatures if you already have three creatures on the field. That's right, you can only have 3 dudes out at a time. If you want a different creature, you have to overwrite one of the three that's already there, or wait until one of them gets killed. Fortunately, if you cast a creature that you've already got on the board, instead of taking a slot it "reinforces" that creature, buffing it equal to its base power/toughness and triggering any effects if possible. A 1/1 reinforces into a 2/2, a 3/7 reinforces into a 6/14, etc. All creatures will attack on your turn if able. Creatures do not block unless they have defender, reach, or vigilance (and vigilant creatures won't block if it'll kill them, they value their own life more than yours). Creatures with berserk will target the first enemy creature even if it's a terrible idea. Fortunately you (and your foe) have way more than 20 health to start with, so you don't just get wrecked super fast. Damage dealt to creatures does not heal - if you can keep summoning some berserk/defender chumps, you can whittle down a huge creature eventually. Land, artifacts, and enchantments (mostly) go on the board with a certain about of shields. When one gets matched it loses a shield, and if it loses all it's destroyed. Vanguards (the equivalent of cardboard's planeswalker cards) also go on the board and can also be killed by getting matched too much, and there's no way for creatures to directly target them. Lands tend to convert gems to other colours, letting you do nice big cascades and cast huge cards. Despite all the changes, it still scratches the MTG itch for me (which is good because I am very bad at MTG). There's still the strategic deckbuilding aspect, and some fun problem solving with trying to figure out the best way out of whatever dumb situation you've gotten yourself into. There's none of the tactical combat, which is good for me because that is where I really suck at magic  This is freemium, right? Definitely. There's a whole lot of p2w deals on the store page (new planeswalkers that haven't been released yet, mythic cards, tons of runes/crystals/jewels). Tell me what to do I don't want to figure things out 0. Disable notifications for this app because you shouldn't let your game tell you when to play imo 1. Join a coaltion. I've got one called Lazylords from when I was active like four years ago, and nearly all the other members are inactive so I can just boot them no problem. Join every event on the Event page that doesn't cost crystals. Some of them are Coalition Events, which means you will get rewards from me/others playing even if you don't actually contribute any wins. Free poo poo, no effort! (also if you do eventually contribute then we will all get better prizes maybe) 2. Play through the Story matches, use your early crystals to buy the super-cheap starter planeswalkers so that you have one of every colour. Beating the story missions with each colour & completing the bonus objectives will get you more crystals. 3. Get a free booster pack from the Vault. iirc you can get one every 7 or 8 hours, so 3 a day if you minmax or 1 a day if you don't care. Still free poo poo! 4. Only buy 5-packs of cards, and ideally from the set that says "Latest Set". Just like MTG, cards rotate out of Standard, and can't be used in those events. The newest cards will stay playable longer and also the current set (Strixhaven) is pretty fun imo Gimme some resources i want to mixmax things Tier list of planeswalkers - hasn't been updated in a while but the ones it recommends are still very good. Keep in mind that a dual colour pw will take twice the runes to get to max level, and a tricolouw pw will take twice again (so 4x the cost of leveling a monocolour pw). But regardless of the list, any pw with good mana bonus(es) and abilities that don't rely on set-specific mechanics is a decent investment. Searchable card database - unfortunately also has not been updated in a while, missing lots of cards. You can make an account and manually check off the cards that you have (from older sets), and then search for stuff much easier than using the in-game search at least! What sucks about this game though - D3 is really bad at UI, so any time there's an update you can expect to need to click more times to do the same amount of stuff. If you've played any of their other mobile games, expect to have the same problems you've experienced before. - Online-only, and a big battery hog. Matches start chugging on my phone if there's too many fancy board effects happening. I've had it crash a few times towards the end of a long match, which is frustrating. Here's my phone's specs, if you've got something better than that then hopefully it'll work better for you! - You have to master cards (by playing them a lot) to level up your colour mastery in order to reach higher tiers for events to get better prizes. This means that if you stick with the same very-good cards you'll be stuck at the low tiers. You also need to do this to unlock the ability to mark a deck as your favourite so you don't have scroll to it - The aforementioned P2W. This doesn't matter so much at the lower tiers thankfully, but if you reach higher tiers you can expect to regularly be matched with people playing All The Good Cards - No way to directly challenge another player. You always play against the computer, and for most events you're playing against player-made decks, but there's no way to choose to fight your pal and see how your decks do against each other. - All your favourite cards will rotate out of Standard (unless they're from the game launch set) and you can't use them for standard events  . It's MTG, you should expect this. New sets get added at the same frequency as real-world sets, but delayed a few months because they need to figure out how to translate the new mechanics to a match-3 game and adjust all the mana costs and power/toughness.
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May 27, 2021 19:34
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:52 |
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tl:dr:
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May 27, 2021 19:38
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Anybody still play this?
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Jul 3, 2023 17:50
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i took a few years off but i'm playing again yeah
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Jul 3, 2023 22:59
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I just started playing it yesterday, go me. One thing I haven't figured out though, does the color you match matter, other than some planewalkers get bonuses from certain colors? Like if I have a green creature that costs eight mana to cast, do I have to specifically use all green mana to cast it, or will any color of mana fill the bubble?
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Jul 4, 2023 01:20
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yeah, you just get bonus mana for certain colours, and all colours will fill the bubble. there is one set that had cards that turns gems colourless and then they don't give mana (except for certain cards), but that set is from like 12 years ago and nobody uses any of those mechanics because they are both out of standard, and also kinda garbo
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Jul 4, 2023 04:25
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Do the pink mana jewels have a use other than buying rare packs?
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Jul 19, 2023 21:45
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nope for newer sets the 400 pink packs are generally better than the 120 pink packs because it'll only give the two highest rarities (masterwork and mythic) and also guarantees a non-duplicate
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Jul 23, 2023 18:03
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:52 |
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I brought my Drake posted:Do the pink mana jewels have a use other than buying rare packs? There are some cards (particularly vanguard support) which you can only buy with pink jewels that you can't with gold so typically those might be the best option but the pools for the rare packs are slightly different than regular ones which can give you better odds if you're trying to chase specific cards from the sets rotating in and out - which for anything not in standard is about as close as you can get to actually chasing a specific card from those sets.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:27
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