The D20 Beat — Magic: Legends and Black Legend are making me cranky

I must have been wearing my cranky pants this week. I can’t remember playing a selection of role-playing games that left me feeling so annoyed before.

Let’s start with Magic: Legends, which launched an open beta this week. Cryptic’s game has some things going for it. Its adaption of cards is pretty neat. Each card goes into your deck as a power, and as you use them, the system deals you new cards to replace them. I’m playing a necromancer, so my deck has cards such as Scathe Zombies (summon three zombies that fight), Vicious Hunger (it summons four coffins that damages a monster in their middle), or Impale (an stab of necrotic energy that rips up through the earth). Two display at a time. You have mana (in reality, a cooldown) for using these. And as you use one, it disappears, and when the cooldown ends, a new one appears. It’s a clever way to adapt cards for an action-RPG.