{"id":45629,"date":"2014-12-18T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=45629"},"modified":"2014-12-17T21:06:37","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T03:06:37","slug":"game-review-wizards-of-the-coast-garruks-revenge-duels-of-the-planeswalker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=45629","title":{"rendered":"Game Review: Wizards of the Coast &#8211; Garruk&#8217;s Revenge (Duels of the Planeswalker)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/RPC-Review-Banner.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"90\" \/><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Garruk&#8217;s Revenge<\/strong><br \/>\nGarruk&#8217;s Revenge is an expansion to Duels of the Planeswalker for Magic 2015.<br \/>\n<em>By Christopher J.N. Banks<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/3.-Gameplay.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-45630\" src=\"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/3.-Gameplay-300x169.png\" alt=\"3. Gameplay\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/3.-Gameplay-300x169.png 300w, http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/3.-Gameplay-150x84.png 150w, http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/3.-Gameplay.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Learn more about Garruk&#8217;s Revenge <a href=\"http:\/\/magic.wizards.com\/en\/articles\/archive\/news\/magic-2015-just-got-bigger-2014-10-21\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><br \/>\nFind other Magic: The Gathering posts <a href=\"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?tag=magic-the-gathering\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Garruk pushed his massive, muscular form steadily through branches and vines. Entire trees snapped and the marsh waters swirled as he pressed forward. A few meters in front of him a man, once a powerful Planeswalker, floundered and stumbled away as quick as he could will his legs to move. The chase, if you could call it that, for it was really just Garruk enjoying the preamble to the kill, lasted only a minute or two more. Finally, exhausted and gasping for breath, the man turned and fell to his knees, half submerged in the grimy water. \u201cGarruk, you have to listen, the curse!\u201d The Planeswalker\u2019s words ended in a horrid scream as Garruk took one final step forward and swept his massive axe across where the man\u2019s head had been. Garruk\u2019s visage spread into a smile as the bloodlust overwhelmed him. He let out a primal, rage-filled growl. The multiverse trembled. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Magic 2015 is back with its first mini-expansion. <em>Garruk\u2019s Revenge<\/em> spins the plot on the original and puts you in the role of Garruk himself as he stalks across the plane of Alara hunting his foes. I was excited to jump back into my Planeswalker, but slightly disappointed in what I found. The story mode forces you to use Garruk\u2019s deck, which I guess makes sense given you are taking on the Planeswalker\u2019s role, but does not allow for any deck customization. Instead, as you progress, your deck slowly builds in power automatically. The plot is thin and short, only five levels to play before the narrative concludes. To top it off the conclusion left me unfulfilled like a teenage boy at a church dance.<\/p>\n<p>As you progress you gain booster packs that you will eventually use with your own deck, but not until you\u2019ve tracked down all of Garruk\u2019s foes with his deck. This acts as a sort of delayed gratification as you won\u2019t be using those new cards with Garruk. Of course, you don\u2019t have to wait long, as the expansion is only 5 levels, which can be completed in just under an hour or so. Even then, the 50 or so unlocked cards are nice, but don\u2019t exactly dramatically change your card pool. However, some of the new cards fit nice into my little agro, white weenie deck, and the exalted mechanic strengthened it further.<\/p>\n<p>Visually and audibly the game didn\u2019t change in the slightest. It still uses the same UI, which I rather enjoy and think it actually a step forward in online Magic. I wouldn\u2019t be bothered if Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) used Magic 2015\u2019s UI instead of its own. But, I digress.<\/p>\n<p>The best thing this expansion did was get rid of the so called premium boosters which previously held certain cards that could only be unlocked with micro transactions. Now, those same cards can be unlocked simply by winning multiplayer games. This is a great step forward and I like to think the backlash against pay-to-win cards was so great that the Magic yearly series won\u2019t step into that realm again. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro even did fans of the series a solid by making the expansion free if you previously purchased the premium booster set.<\/p>\n<p>If you do journey into the multiplayer realm, don\u2019t ever expect to finish a game. I played 22 matches and my opponent ended up quitting in all but 4 of them, sometimes after the initial card draw and mulligan. Not surprisingly, those 4 games I completed were the four I lost. I understand the desire to concede if the game is lost, but conceding because your starting hand isn\u2019t perfect hindered my multiplayer experience. It would be nice if there was some sort of rating system they could tie into monthly card rewards to combat this. I\u2019m probably asking too much here for a base game. I guess I\u2019m just used to people slugging it out for every win opportunity when drafts cost real money on MTGO.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Garruk and his revenge brought with us achievements to unlock, which, if nothing else, are a fun way to entertain yourself. The expansion didn\u2019t add much, but at $4.99 I wasn\u2019t really expecting much. In the future, I\u2019d probably wait for a Steam sale to pick up additional expansions. But, if you need more Magic or were especially fond of Alara (one of the best draft formats in recent history), then the expansion is probably right up your ally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Garruk&#8217;s Revenge Garruk&#8217;s Revenge is an expansion to Duels of the Planeswalker for Magic 2015. By Christopher J.N. Banks Learn more about Garruk&#8217;s Revenge here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1935,169],"tags":[3521,3558,56],"class_list":["post-45629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-reviews","tag-headline","tag-magic-the-gathering","tag-wizards-of-the-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}