Yesterday, I discussed Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, which I almost entirely attribute to getting me back into Magic around the time of Innistrad's release. Although I downloaded 2013's version, I didn't play it much. The 2014 version of the series, though, included Sealed play. I love Limited, so I was all too quick to jump into this one.

If you bought this game, you got two slots for Sealed decks for free, and could pay $2 each for up to eight more slots. I bought a few extra slots and made many awesome decks, but one stands out in memory as perhaps the cruelest I have ever been in my Magic-playing days, especially when you consider that DOTP is mainly a game for new and very casual players.

Here's the list:

No, that's not a typo. There were actually five Murders in this deck. (Although, to be fair, this game starts you with six packs, but gives you the chance to earn up to three more, meaning this was a Sealed deck from nine packs of a small set.)

The amount of rage quits and angry messages I got over this deck was amazing. New players do not like to lose to control decks, and for this format, you couldn't really get much more controlling than this. Most PS3 users don't use headsets, but I remember one guy who did and was freaking out about my making all my plays after my combat step or on his turn. I beat him in six of seven games before he finally refused a rematch. (I also never actually engaged him, acknowledged his rage, or sent him any messages. I try not to feed trolls when I can avoid it, but I'll let them burrow further under the bridge on their own all day long.)

I didn't spend nearly as long grinding this one as I did DOTP 2012, but I did play enough to reach 129th on the Sealed leader boards of nearly 30,000 players.

DOTP 2014 kept some additional stats that DOTP 2012 did not:

I find it hilarious that in 290 wins, I never once went above 20 life. I had a Mark of the Vampire in that UB deck and everything, not to mention other decks with Vampire Nighthawks and the like. I guess I just had some aggressive opponents.

A quick aside: while preparing this article, I noted that Rune-Scarred Demon was a barely above bulk a couple years ago, but is now nearly $4 retail. This should serve as a reminder that: 1) casual cards are pure gold, 2) you should just hold onto your bulk rares—they'll never be worth less and they might someday be worth a whole lot more.

Anyway, thanks for humoring me on my reminiscences about Duels of the Planeswalkers the last couple days. The series has established itself as a popular, workable, and  fun game—something MTGO has come nowhere close to doing.  I didn't purchase the 2015 version, and based on the reviews I've seen, this was probably a wise decision, as I heard it had a lot of problems. I, for one, hope 2016 is better. I would vastly prefer for MTGO move in the direction of DOTP rather than the reverse.