OK, it's not stellar but it's fine. If you've played any of these automated online Magic versions this is just the same but with a few more decks and a few more simulated opponents. For $5 you'll get at least 10 hours of game play so why is everybody below complaining? No suprises, but that's a good thing.

WoW! Garruks own deck for your pleasure what can be better?! I know! The 2nd fight in campain. This is no THE GARRUK wich we fight as the last boss on hes 2nd form. THis one is hes 1rst form deck with weak as hell cards no hard removals, really boring creatures and play. And what do you get when you play vs fully dark deck wich has hard removals, crazy vamp cards and fast creatures wich add to each other?! That's right! YOU get 10000 re-tries of the same fight, because he can kill all creatures you draw with 1 card, he can draw for himself, he can steal your life and fully heal himself, he has good pace. I had him by 1 hp 100 times, and each time he drew a card wich killed me or my creatures and he healed himself next turn... I mean I CAN't EVEN change Garruks deck to balance it out. But forget about this unbalanced fight because it goes on later. The campain is REALLY boring. I only bought is on sale for bonus cards, otherwise whole game isn't worth it, as it gives you your own deck, but lack of cards from mtg2014 is disturbing...

It's only by virtue of Humble Bundle that it this expansion resides in my collection. I decided though, if nothing else, that playing it might at least give me an opportunity to hammer in the final nail of the Duels 2015 coffin. After all, it deserves it.

The Garruk's Revenge expansion then, claims to add "hours of new gameplay" including "dozens of unique cards over multiple battles" with "five new single-player campaign levels" as well as the obligatory "much more".

In reality of course, the truth is hardly that rosy.

The first new addition is a five stage campaign game featuring Planeswalker Garruk (now as a playable character) as he fights through practically faceless enemies on an uninteresting quest to rid himself of the curse that he picked up during the last game.

There are no animated cutscenes this time around though, merely static screens of text explaining how Garruk has killed this guy and is now moving on to hunt this next guy and so on.

It doesn't exactly inspire.

Garruk wields a set deck that you can't make any changes to and neither may you alter any of the cards featured within. To say this lack of unrestricted deckbuilding works against the one strength of Duels 2015 is an understatement.

It perhaps wouldn't be so much of a problem though if your opponent's cards had been better thought out. One thing you'll discover quickly is how annoying the enemies are in this campaign, each of their decks featuring very specific tactics that your deck can sometimes feel a bit ill-prepared for.

Even then I was able to squeak out a win for each battle during my first try, leaving my entire playthrough of the new campaign at a mere 45 minutes in total. If there really are "hours of new gameplay" in this expansion, then I guess it must be somewhere I'm not looking? It could be a lie I suppose, but Wizards of the Coast wouldn't do a thing like that.

After completing the main side-quest, you are then able to equip your own deck and challenge those five levels again if you wish, but I can't imagine why anyone would really want to do that other than to grind the new expansion cards.

Yep, that feature is back again. After dropping your cash on this expansion, Wizards of the Coast will try to angle even more money out of your wallet by hiding the new cards behind grindy battles that can be skipped with a handy one-off payment.

You also have 51 new cards in the Alara plane that have been added and once you're done grinding them all into your collection you can start what is meant to be the real attraction of this expansion; adding the new cards into your existing decks.

Only there's another potential problem here and it actually concerns a fundamental aspect of card game design.

You see, Garruk's Revenge features a new set of cards that follow a linear approach to design. This means that the cards form a sort of group and they feel like they belong together as a result. Collectible cards designed in this fashion encourage (as well as sometimes force) players to construct decks that are based on a particular attribute, rather than the more freeform nature found in the modular approach of the Duels 2015 core game.

When you look at the Garruk's Revenge cards you'll see many artifact, exalted and multi-coloured cards that don't mix well with the existing cards from the base game and sort of require their own dedicated deck to work effectively.

Granted this isn't the case with every new card that has been introduced, but it's certainly something that has the chance to disappoint players looking to overhaul one of their favourite decks from the original game. You could approach it with the mindset of trying something new rather than relying on old strategies perhaps, but wouldn't it be nice to have both options accounted for in full?

I should also mention that this expansion was preempted by an update that removed the paid premium boosters and replaced them with more grindy (but free) battle boosters that reward you with cards for playing online. It was certainly a step in right direction but didn't really do anything to address the mountain of other inadequacies present in Duels 2015 already.

If it seems like I haven't said much though, it's because there's not much to work with on this one; it's that thin on the ground in terms of content that calling it an expansion in the first place seems incredibly ill-advised.

Clearly released with little faith and expected to fail, this lightweight expansion set is simply not worth your time or money.

Avoid.

Read the full review at my blog »

But I dont want to use Garruks deck... ♥♥♥♥ this.

Play as Garruk planeswalker. Game forces you to play with premade deck that focus on late-game and gets countered hard by almost all enemies in Alaran.

I like the game alot , but there bad lag finding games ,and the shufle crads for PvP is horrorabul . All land ,or all mobs the hole game gets me mad as hell ! Other then that i like the game a lot i get to play a lot more on the game then in real life helps out alot!

I just got this for the achievments and a few extra cards to build decks with. Other than that the whole expansion campain is just awful. You don't get to play as your own deck and story is far to short for what you have to pay for it.

If you got this expansion for free its totally worth it hehe!

Total rip off noting added need my money back!!!

You get four new enemies to fight. The first time through, you have to use Garruk's special deck. Although Garruk is a planeswalker, you still don't get to play with his actual planeswalker card. But hey, at least his deck includes several copies of an extremely expensive (nine mana!) card that can kill planeswalkers EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE NO PLANESWALKER CARDS IN THE GAME FOR YOU TO KILL. The first three enemies are pretty easy, but the boss has a synergy-tastic artifacts deck that is tough to beat with your deck that is loaded down with cards that don't have any valid targets in the entire game.