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Magic Workstation Walkthrough
MWS play described
Before you start playing with other people, it's wise to try out the solitaire mode first to get used to the options and icons etc. Do: Game -> Test Deck in Solitaire Mode, like you can see at the left. Now you'll get a window where you can Load a different deck (If you don't you get the deck you had in the Deck Editor). You can set your Nick, the number of cards in opening hand, starting life total and a Starting Message, which doesn't matter much. Then click on Start Game and the following window will appear:
The cards at the bottom represent your Hand and the space above it is your play zone. In the middle you see icons that represent the phases of the turn. Above that is the play zone of the opponent, and above that you see the hand of the opponent. When you play with someone else instead of solitaire mode, you won't be able to see those cards, of course. On top you see the banner and the menu.
At the left there is the status of both players. At the top of the box you see the player's name and his/her life total. From top to bottom the icons below represent:
- Cards left in Library.
- Cards in Hand.
- Cards in Graveyard
- Cards removed from the game.
The colored circles can be used when you float a complicating/big amount of mana, to keep track of how much mana you have in your mana pool.
Further in the middle there are the Phases of the turn, in the following order: Untap Step, Upkeep Step, Draw Step and Main Phase. Then there are 5 Combat Phase steps. Then there's another Main Phase, followed by the End of turn and Cleanup Step. The last icon, Finish Turn, will end the turn if you click on it.
At the right you see the card where you have your mouse on and below that is a chat box. The buttons are standard lines of text u can say by pressing on them.
How to play?
Playing is pretty easy. You can move cards to your play zone by dragging them from your hand to it. Also do this with spells, to let your opponent see what your doing, and then drag it to the graveyard after the card resolved. You can do this by just dragging it to the graveyard icon, that I've described to you, or you can rightclick on it and choose 'Sacrifice'.
A lot of things can be done with Short-Cut keys or with the menu. At first, it might be hard to remember all the Short-Cut keys, so you can use the menus at first. I'll list the usefull commands, menu options here:
| Short-Cut | Menu | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+D or Doubleclick on Draw Phase | Action -> Draw | Draw a card. |
| Alt+Click or Doubleclick | Rightclick -> Tap | Tap a card in play. |
| Ctrl+U or Doubleclick on Untap Phase | Action -> Untap my perms | Untap all your permanents |
| Ctrl+M | Action -> Mulligan | Mulligan. (Moves hand to library, shuffles and draws 1 card less than you had). Note: This option also draws 7 cards when you have 0 cards in hand. This is handy at the start of the game. |
| Ctrl+I | Action -> Roll a Die | Roll a Die. (A window pops up) |
| Ctrl+ENTER or Click Finish Turn | Game -> Next Turn | Finishes your Turn |
| Ctrl+Space or Click Phases | Game -> Next Step | Proceeds the game to the next step |
| F11 | Rightclick Life Total or Game -> Decrement Life | Substracts 1 from Life Total |
| F12 | Rightclick Life Total or Game -> Increment Life | Adds 1 to Life Total |
Further a lot of actions with a certain card can be done by
Rightclicking on them. This will make a menu appear with a lot of options.
And if you wanna do something with your Life total, Deck, Hand, Graveyard,
or Removed From the Game zone, you can rightclick on those icons, and a good
chance is that the action you wanna do is there. The 'View' and 'Show' menus
on top should also be pretty straightforward. The 'Game' menu also shows
some nice Short-Cut keys that you can use, when you're getting more
experienced to MWS.
Other things you might need can be found in the menu, like 'Action -> Create a Token'. This will have a window pop up, where you can set the properties of the token. To get a Sideboard card with a wish, you can do 'View -> Sideboard'. To put cards into the graveyard, Removed From Game-pile or to the top of the Library, you can just drag cards to the desired icon and it will be moved to there.
Connect to an opponent
You can connect to an opponent from Magic Workstation Deck Editor by clicking to 'Game -> Connect to Opponent'. In MWS Play, you go to 'File -> New Game' and make sure the 'Connect via the Internet or LAN' on the top right is selected. The following window will appear:
You can wait if you have your opponent call to your IP, or you can enter the IP of the opponent and have your opponent wait. is being worked on by the MWS developers. After you connected, MWS Play will look the same as the Solitaire Mode, except that you can't view your opponent's hand anymore :D
mwsplay.net
If you are unable to host games due to a firewall or a router, you can still play through mwsplay.net, mwsgames.net, mwsTAL.no-ip.biz, 81.69.120.113, or pavouk.square.cz. You can type one of those names into the "Enter your opponent IP"-field, click on "Call" and you will see the following window:
Here you see a table with 4 columns. The first column are the nicks of players who request a game, or are currently using mwsplay.net. The 2nd column is the game description. The 3rd column shows how many players are in the game (2 max) and the 4th column will have Join buttons, which are games you can join. Do not join games that have as description that they are looking for a certain player!
You can also create a game yourself with the top left button. Other players will then see you in the list. Put as description: "PRIVATE - Mike only!" if you are to play vs Mike (example) in a tourney, league or casual match.
These were just the basics of Magic Workstation, but ....
The next page has a lot of cool tips that will make playing and deckbuiling a lot easier! Click here to read it!
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