Friday, September 2, 2011

Mage – 2,450 Cards, Offline AI, Multiplayer

Mage is lets you play offline against the computer or online against other players.  Mage has an AI that is better than Forge’s.  Mage's AI that can generate possible futures and chooses the best one.  While the AI is not as good as Magarena, it can still be quite surprising.

Mage also supports booster drafting and sealed with either computer or human players or both.  I've always found booster drafting to be infinitely fun.  Forge's boosting drafting is OK but since the AI is only average it doesn't always test my skills and I can beat the AI with pretty bad cards.  Mage should provide great fun drafting and playing sealed deck against the computer and your friends.

Mage has plenty of cards, 2,450 to be exact.  Mage implements many full sets like Magic 2011 and 2012 as well as Scars of Mirrodin and Mirridon Besieged.  The statistics for other sets are listed below.

(Updated these stats, thanks to North.)

Magic 2012: 182/249 (100%)
Magic 2011: 249/249 (100%)

Scars of Mirrodin: 220/249 (100%)
Mirrodin Besieged: 122/155 (100%)
New Phyrexia 148/170 (87%)

Zendikar: 186/253 (73%)
Worldwake: 77/145 (53%)
Rise of the Eldrazi: 162/248 (65%)

Mage is very unique because it also has multiplayer games.  People have asked me, “Will Forge every have multiplayer?” and I always respond, “No, because it is too freakin complicated.”  Obviously the makers of Mage don’t feel that way.

Mage offers multiplayer games and you can mix human and computer players.  Other multiplayer options include setting the “attacking options” which lets you attack multiple players, or only the player on your left or right.  You can also change the “range of influence” which is another way of asking “How many players will be affected by Wrath of God?”


Collection Viewer


Download Site - You want to download the "bundle" which has both the client and server.



To download the card images and mana symbols, click on the buttons “Images” and “Symbols” in the upper right corner. 

p.s.
--Mage is another fine project that uses Java. 

--Thanks to the Mage developers and supporters:

BetaSteward
Nantuko84
Eugen.Rivniy
North
maurer.it
Viserion
i_no_k
soulless
arching

8 comments:

nantuko84 said...

Hi! Today we finally uploaded next version - 0.7.5 we were working on since the middle of July.

So now you may update the information regarding the Mage. First of all we have 3673 cards now.
And not only M11, but also SOM, MBS and M12 are 100% implemented.

And if you are interested, we changed AI drafting so computer now uses statistics on human draft card picks from tcgplayer.com, so now AI started to draft more strong decks.

thanks for the blog entry about our program :)
enjoy Mage! =)

ag said...

I really like the idea of having complete sets to work with. Personally I prefer having a program with fewer cards but a few complete sets or (even better) blocks, because MTG sets are designed to work mechanically and thematically together, and even if a few cards are missing, it can affect the intended synergy of the possible decks. The AI news also sounds good, will give this a try.

zethfox said...

*clicks 'like' button*
I want to thank you for always giving some spot light to other mtg progs.
you review the games very positively and always shine on the good each program has to offer. That sets you apart from most blog "reviewing" sites, and i feel you deserve kudos for it.

Forge said...

zethfox - I only review stuff that I like. There is no need to be a critic and rip somebody else's hard work to shreds. And some programs are just impressive and I try to find the best ones.

nantuko84 - And not only M11, but also SOM, MBS and M12 are 100% implemented.

Very cool, I updated my post.

Forge said...

Mage has 2450 unique cards, 3673 including reprints.

Anonymous said...

As much as I love Mage, it does not have better AI than Forge. You may want to sample the latest version of it with a good deck from the forum. Sol and a few other devs have really tweaked it to brutal levels.

Chevy Pick-Up Turbocharger said...

I enjoyed your post. It’s a lot like college – we should absorb everything we can but ultimately you need to take what you’ve learned and apply it.

Anonymous said...

if you play Phantasmal Image on
a transforming card the game crash fyi.