Tips & Tricks - Magic 2015 Duels of the Planeswalkers

When I play Duels 2015, I run into a lot of folks that aren't familiar with the basic settings of the game as well as newer players who tend to make common Magic mistakes.

This video is designed to help you get to know the basic settings in Magic 2015 Duels of the Planeswalkers and also to give you a few basic gameplay tips. This is more for newer players but a refresher never hurts.

Hopefully this will alleviate some confusion and improve your game in one fell swoop!

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Basic Tips & Tricks Overview:

• Get to know your settings menu.

• Turn off tips/hints if you're a more experienced player.

• Turn off (either or all) Anti-Aliasing, Shadows & Foils for better performance if you need to.

• If you play online, do everyone a favor by turning off your combat animations. Your opponents will thank you, and you'll save a bunch of time you could have used to play another game.

• Sort your hand by whichever variable makes you a more efficient player.

• Turning off simplified targeting allows you to target yourself or your permanents with your own abilities and spells and allows for some really cool combat tricks! This is for more advanced players. 

• Turn off hold priority to avoid having to click on a button to skip your main phases. 

• Turn off order blockers automatically. When you block an opponent's creatures, YOU get to decide which creatures get blocked first. This can give you a tactical or strategic advantage, and allows you to decide which creatures to pick off. If you have this option enabled, the game will do this for you; often, ending in unfavorable combat outcomes. 

• Keep always use optional abilities and auto resolution on. Optional abilities are cards that say "you may draw a card", and so on. Whenever you may draw a card, you probably should, and so you should leave this on to reduce micromanagement. Auto resolve resolves basic abilities automatically as they take place (usually abilities of your permanents which are favorable). Keeping this on also saves you time in manually resolving each ability.

• Auto land should always be off as it allows you to choose exactly how much land to put in your deck. This is important for deck testing and stability, and the number of lands will always change with the archetype of your deck. Keeping this option on allows the game to decide how many lands will be in your deck, often leading to unfavorable numbers.

• Try to play more reactively than proactively, especially if you play a control archetype.

• Only play spells and activate abilities before combat if it BENEFITS you during combat. Otherwise, always do everything in your second main phase. You give away less information and keep your opponents guessing. 

• You can always respond to spells with other spells so long as it's instant and you can pay the mana. If your creature gets countered, you can pause the timer and react with your own counterspell, countering the original counterspell and resolving your creature. 

I may have missed a few, so if you have your own tips and tricks, add them in the comments below!

-Scaryspikes