Recently I promised a friend that I would make them a single player Magic: The Gathering experience. This is funny for a lot of reasons. Mostly that the person in question is a game designer who loves single player games, and I’m a game player who hates them. But a promise is a promise, and so I spent a lot of time playing single player magic.
And I have some thoughts.
I’m going to detail those thoughts, various game modes, and my experiences with them. I’m pulling them from this list on Board Game Geek.
Also, in case anyone who made any of these ends up reading this: please keep in mind, I’m a hater. I already don’t like single player board games. I’m doing this mostly for research on my end. Don’t make changes to your mods to try to please me of all people.
The Wrath of Zorr
The first one in the list, Wrath of Zorr, is possibly the least interesting to me, both from a play and design standpoint. It’s a standard game of Magic where you roll against a series of tables, resolving effects and creating tokens for the AI opponent.
Notably, it appears to be from 2013. The problem with this is that creature power has been substantially pushed up since then. I was able to grab one of my commander precons, shuffle in the commander, and beat it to death with ease.
Zorr’s turn 3 best outcome is arguably to get a 1/1 flier and kill spell, or a 1/1 flier and a 2/2 bear, whereas a 3/3 for 3 is practically the floor for creatures in the precon I was using.
Wrath of Zorr also requires the player to make a lot of decisions about what to kill, when to attack or block, and redefines existing magic terms, notably completely changing what “Exile” means in context.
I suspect that 15 years ago with creature power level much lower, this could have been a more interesting experience. As it was, I found it dull and clunky.
Aaron’s Solitaire – Moonfrog Edition
Aaron’s Solitaire is another single player variant that uses a single deck between the human and AI player. The player plays a normal game of Magic, and the AI plays cards off the top of the deck for free.
Aaron’s Solitaire suffers a bit from the same problem, despite coming out in 2019: creatures are too strong when they aren’t controlled by mana costs. This time though, it happens in a slightly different direction, because it allows cards like this to pop out on turn 1.
Do you know what happens when this occurs? You lose.
Same for this guy.
Again, I didn’t find this mode to feel very much like playing Magic, and I didn’t exactly have a great time.
Horde Mode + Garruk the Slayer
Horde Mode was the first one of these I’ve played that offered something that felt a bit closer to standard Magic experience. While the player plays a standard game of Magic, the opponent plays with an 80 card deck, and that deck also functions as their life. On each of their turns, the AI player resolves up to the top 3 cards of their deck (Stopping early for mythics/rares/uncommons) and then swings in with everything.
I’ll give Horde Mode some credit here. It was more fun than the other modes. But it was still not very fun, because I found it to mostly be a deckbuilding puzzle rather than a gameplay puzzle1, and the deck I built was this abomination.
Still, the deck as life was cool! I liked that.
Takeaways
Based on playing these, I came up with a few specific design goals for my single player variant.
- The game should play like Magic (no custom cards, no redefining keywords, all rules work normally), but it shouldn’t feel like a standard game of Magic.
- The player should have to make some interesting decisions about how to “play” the game. Meaning you shouldn’t be able to win with just deckbuilding. (Also, boardwipes and control lists should be at least somewhat pressured.)
- The AI’s actions should not be super random, and if anything, should be telegraphed to player within reason.
- The AI and player should be on roughly even power curves. The AI should be limited by mana costs to some extent.
Anyway, I made a prototype of it. The result was something I’m calling Spiderman Vs The Portal Master. It was well received, and probably violates a lot of copyrights. Given how well it went over, I’ll probably go back to it at some point and make a version I can release for folks to play if I find the energy.
- And despite what some people think, I do think Magic is a game about piloting decisions, and not just deckbuilding. ↩︎