Magic: The Gathering, a game that has around six million players, in over seventy countries across the world, is now in your pocket and better then ever.  It is probably the most popular trading card game in the world and if you haven’t played it, you have probably seen it.  Of course it would go without saying that if you don’t play Magic, then you probably wouldn’t be interested in Wagic.  Wagic has been available for around six months, and can be found in the Maemo Extras repository, but it was the recent update to it has brought it back into my recognition.

 Wagic, if you haven’t gathered yet, is a Magic: The Gathering game, which imitates the game, and reduces it to a bunch of squares.  I should probably state that I am no MTG veteran, but have dabbled in it, so my analysis of Wagic is based on that and may miss many of the finer points to this great game.

It took me a little bit to work out they keys, and how it quite works with the game, but once that was out the way, I got to construct my deck.  It works like many card games, where you can build a desk from a preset hoard of cards.  More cards can be acquired as you go along too.  To save everyone else the trouble, the arrow keys work, enter is back, space is ok, and Q scrolls though the phases.  That’s about all I really needed.

Beyond needing to know the appropriate buttons to press, knowledge of the game does kind of give it meaning.  If you have those two things though, away you go.  As an average player to MTG, I found Wagic enjoyable, but of course not as good as the real thing.  It was a good time sink when I wanted to loose half an hour of my day, which generally only happens when I’m waiting in the doctor’s office.  Long games on the phone have never quite flown well with me, which is probably why Angry Birds does so well.

As far as lengthy games go though, I do like Wagic, and the fact that I don’t have to carry around anything but my trusty brick.  Many will miss the collecting of real cards aspect, but at least there is still a degree of that present.

Overall, I would defiantly recommend Wagic to any Magic: The Gathering players who don’t seem to get quite as many games in as you would want, and have the spare time.  If you can, stick to the real thing, but we can’t all be so lucky and have real friends.  Now back to my black and red deck.