(Forge lets you play Magic: The Gathering against the computer and it enforces all of the rules. Forge runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Forge uses Java and if you don't have Java installed you can get it from here.)Hold onto your hat because there is a brand-spanken new version of Forge with almost 300 new cards. Overall Forge now has a super, grand total of 2,624 cards. This version is crammed stuffed with a ton of great new cards and features that you will make you forget about your girlfriend, Facebook, and your new iPhone.
Forge now has one of the most memorable cards in Magic: Stasis (1U, Enchantment, Players skip their untap steps. At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Stasis unless you pay U). It is a fun card to use, not to play against. Build yourself a nice Stasis deck and have some fun. And yes the artwork is utter nonsense.
The deck builder screen now has filters which are VERY, VERY useful. Try them out.
The long list of rocking new cards includes Loxodon Gatekeeper and Kismet who always keeps your opponent’s creatures one step behind. Blue mages will dominate with Force of Will, Thwart, and Chronatog.
Loxodon Gatekeeper (and Kismet) – Artifacts, creatures, and lands your opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.
Force of Will – 3UU, Instant, You may pay 1 life and exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay Force of Will's mana cost. Counter target spell.
Thwart – 2UU, Instant, You may return three Islands you control to their owner's hand rather than pay Thwart's mana cost. Counter target spell.
Chronatog – 1U, Creature, 0: Chronatog gets +3/+3 until end of turn. You skip your next turn. Activate this ability only once each turn.
Timmy’s and people who love big, overcosted creatures will salivate at Cosmic Horror (3BBB, 7/7), Force of Nature (2GGGG, 8/8) and Krosan Cloudscraper (7GGG, 13/13). Old school players will appreciate echo and cumulative upkeep cards like Flamecore Elemental (2RR, 5/4 echo) and Illusionary Forces (3U, 4/4 flying, cumulative upkeep:U). Both timmy’s and old school players will appreciate Nicol Bolas (2UUBBRR, 7/7), Palladia-Mors (2WWRRGG, 7/7), and Vaevictis Asmadi (2BBRRGG, 7/7).
Players who love insane combos will jump at Donate (2U, Sorcery, Target player gains control of target permanent you control.) and Illusions of Grandeur (3U, Enchantment, Cumulative upkeep:2, When Illusions of Grandeur enters the battlefield, you gain 20 life. When Illusions of Grandeur leaves the battlefield, you lose 20 life.)
p.s.
Officially this version is named “01-01” because that is when it was released on the forums. For a complete list of changes check out the readme file.
Download Forge – version 01/01
Program Details (this information is also in the zip file above):
To run Forge double-click on the file "run-forge.jar".
For the card pictures, you should open the menu after the program is running. You can "Import Pictures" that you currently have on your hard drive or "Download Card LQ Pictures" which downloads "low quality" cards pictures from wizards.com. The "Download Card HQ Pictures" option is experimental and may or may not work on your computer. This downloads high quality cards pictures.
Epic improvement!
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that a lot of effort has been put into this version.
Thanks, keep it up!
Can you please explain to me what does the new milling feature do? Thanks again.
Hello, i think stasis art makes sense: While the white man spills water, the other side of the balance has the hands tied.
ReplyDeleteMilling: When you run out of cards from you library, you lose the game. It's that right?
Thanks again for this great piece of software.
Yeah that's right, with the feature checked, either player (AI or human) will lose when running out of cards.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, if Heap Space problems occur, try increasing your memory settings for Java. If that doesn't work, I strongly recommend switching back to using LQ cards.
Hey, this is great, thanks! One thing, the overall speed seems slower. Every time I move my mouse over a card, it now takes a split-second for the picture to appear in the RH window, and similarly clicks often take a second to register. Last version was totally zippy.
ReplyDeleteI installed this version directly over the previous one, and just overwrote all the files. I haven't downloaded new card pix with the new version, and am using the low qual pics.
Any ideas on how to speed it up? Or is the new version just slower?
Thanks much!
M.
Thank you for this game!
ReplyDeleteMore cards keep it interesting and AI is decent enough to provide a challenge - I need nothing more.
"Hey, this is great, thanks! One thing, the overall speed seems slower. Every time I move my mouse over a card, it now takes a split-second for the picture to appear in the RH window, and similarly clicks often take a second to register. Last version was totally zippy.
ReplyDeleteI installed this version directly over the previous one, and just overwrote all the files. I haven't downloaded new card pix with the new version, and am using the low qual pics.
Any ideas on how to speed it up? Or is the new version just slower?
Thanks much!
M."
Try getting the latest beta at:
http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=2115
It has a bunch of performance improvements.
Dennis, thanks for replying to my earlier comment. I downloaded and installed the beta, and while the performance is better, it still seems to be considerably worse than earlier verisons.
ReplyDeleteSo far, every game with the beta version starts out fairly snappy (although I still notice a very small pause before graphics redraw). But then every game at some point has slowed way way down, to the point that every click or button press takes a full second or two before the UI responds. Pretty much unplayable at that point. I've started 4 games, abandoned them all before the end. Have tried restarting several times.
I don't think it's just AI "thinking", because the pausing is happening at times where, AFAIK, the AI has no decisions to make. Like cicking OK for end of computer's turn.
Help?
I have no idea if this would work, but I'm running out of ideas, so try this:
ReplyDeleteOnce a game has started, hit Menu -> then uncheck Play sound.
Sound functionality is something that wasn't added until the 01-01 Beta, so that *might* help...
EDIT: actually sound wasn't added until 01/17, but 01/01 had some really bad code in the picture displaying part that caused some bad performance...
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'll test this on a lower end machine to see if I can reproduce these performance issues... It's weird, for some reason, currently the game runs faster on my laptop than it ever has.
Maybe I can package some kind of "light" version that has certain features disabled, like sound, different Look and Feels, etc. Is it possible that including some of the external libraries caused slowdowns?
I suspect that the new LAF display options can slow down a low end machine. Forge appears to be slightly faster using the default theme on my machine.
ReplyDeleteThe sound can cause a slight pause the first time it is used when tapping a land, after which tapping lands no longer creates the same pause.
hi there,
ReplyDeletegreat work again!
any progress on the performance issues? In the new version almost every game i play freezes to a point that finishing it would take half an hour (thought my new laptop was pretty quick..).Old version it happen too, though much less.
maybe this helps: i mostly play quest. when the game starts slowing down 1st game and still finish it, it's also immediately slow beginning of the 2nd game. if you finish a match slow and start a new match than it's fast again
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I have to confirm very poor performance in the quest mode, both in the official release and in the beta - much worse than in previous version. And it's not question of low end hardware - my computer is few years old, but it's quad-core with 4 gigs of RAM - very quickly, forge starts eating several hundred of MB, which is strange.
ReplyDeleteI would say memory leaks if it wasn't in Java :)
men now you mentioned Nicol Bolas, I remember something, a few time ago a expansion in which Nicol back as a Planewalker ruler of the plane known as Grixis, I thought the other four elder dragons, why those dragon don't come back as Planewalker an ruler of a plane, anyway each one had the color combination of each plane.
ReplyDeleteWhat an ridiculous collection of well completed articles, it seems like now-a-days everyone seems to be simply copy/pasting and stealing content material all the time, but I guess there's nonetheless hope in honest blogging.
ReplyDelete