Daring Apprentice

Today we have guest post from Kestell, sharing his views on Magic: the Gathering and Reenen’s Daring Apprentice, an open-source, 3D, Apprentice-like M:tG tabletop.

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I’ll address some questions that I think people may have about Daring Apprentice.(DA)

1. What is Daring Apprentice?

Well, it’s for playing Magic: the Gathering on a PC. Currently, only for playing against yourself.

2. Why do I want to play Magic on a PC at all?

Assuming that you do want to play Magic at all, you fairly quickly run into a couple of bridges. Firstly there is the issue of MONEY… Magic cards costs money, and you can play with virtual cards without paying money .(unless of course you WANT to pay for virtual cards, then you can go to Magic Online)

Secondly, playing on a PC saves you a lot of time in sleeving, desleeving and, of course, shuffling your deck.

3. What makes DA better than the alternatives (Apprentice or Magic Workstation(MWS))?

To be honest, for 2 player play, it is not (yet) better. Because it cannot play 2 player yet.

But the deck editor is far superior to that of Apprentice or MWS. The deck editor is a SEARCH ENGINE, it is not a deck editor. It is perfect if you want to search out a combo piece, or all the elves that are standard legal and costs less than 3.

If you are building a Standard red deck that burns, you just want red, artifact and land cards. (So, i filter on Format “Standard”, Colors: Red, Artifact and land)

But the deck needs to have a low curve, so in DA, I can say only cards with converted mana cost 0-4. (change mana cost to converted, 0 to 4)
Now I filter on cards that have the word “damage” on. DA will pick up gold cards that are red unless you tick the “mono-colored” button.

Then DA is VERY good at decktesting.

I am currently testing for nationals 2008. I need to determine which deck is best. So I put the 1 netdeck in the one player’s hands, and another deck (netdeck or maybe a deck of my own) in the other player’s. Then i start playing for both players. MOST plays in magic are fairly obvious and don’t depend on what the other guy is holding. Obviously I continuously try to make the best play for both players. I actually prefer testing in this way, because this gives me a fair indication of which deck is better in the matchup; there are not as many playskill related issues that you can get if playtesting against a buddy. Also, when decktesting, you want to get in as many games as possible, you don’t want to sit and wait for an opponent thinking for several minutes when the game is effectively won by one player.

NEITHER APPRENTICE NOR MWS can do decktesting in this way. MWS can possibly do this if you have a registered (paid for) version.

Daring apprentice is a good midway between the simplicity of Apprentice and the cumbersome MWS with its bad shortcut keys.