Magic Mana Strike - The new Mobile MTG Game

Magic: Mana Strike is a spin-off game created by Netmarble for mobile phones. It brings MTG into the mobile real-time battlefield genre and is currently only available in certain parts of the world on the Android Play Store. Canada and Australia are two of the countries you can play this game, there are some workarounds if you have access to a VPN service which can route your traffic to Canada (See the end of this article).

Gameplay

Mana Strike reminds us of Clash Royale and League of Legends. You spend mana that you gain with a given interval to cast cards you draw to deploy your creatures and play your spells to damage the opponent's towers before finally attacking their main avatar. Simple and quick gameplay, each round lasts for 3 minutes before going into a "sudden death" mode.

You also have a Planeswalker that you can summon three times each game, it is a more powerful unit and has a special signature ability that can be used. You can summon creatures around your Planeswalker when it is on the battlefield if it is not there you can only summon them on your side of the battlefield. 

Deck Building

Before heading into the battle you need to select a planeswalker and build a deck. The deck must match the color identity of your Planeswalker but can also contain colorless spells.

There are creatures with different abilities, toughness, and power. Like in normal Magic the gathering, it varies if they can attack ground/air, and in addition, they also have a different range, movement speed, and other special abilities. All spells have a mana cost.

There are also Sorceries/Instants that have direct effects on the battlefield when you cast them like this Ratchet Bomb that does damage to all enemies in the area you cast it. 

You generate mana every 5-10 seconds and use those resources to play your spells, there is always something to do with the clock always ticking and never pausing to wait for your plays. The creatures you deploy walks towards their enemies and auto-battles the enemy units/towers.

Monetization

Like most mobile games this is free to play but have a "Battle Pass " and you can buy gold in the in-game store or wait for a cooldown to earn gold for free.

Here is how you play this right now

Since the game is still in a test phase chances are that you cannot play this unless you jump through some hoops. I will describe here how you can get access, to start off. You need to have a VPN service and set your location in a country where the game is available like Canada. If you have this service on the mobile you can most likely just open it up and visit the Play Store and download it. What we did was play it on PC by using a phone emulator and you do not even need to log into the Play store:

• Download the App Called BlueStacks for Windows, it is free
• Google: Magic Mana strike APK and download this package, remember to unpack it if it has been compressed.
• Be sure to start your VPN and set the location to Canada before opening BlueStacks. The game didn't want to start without faking my location.
• Open up BlueStack and select Install APK like in the screenshot below and open the .apk file you downloaded in step 2. The app will Install and you can play it from within BlueStack

Most VPN Services has a trial period, just remember to cancel your subscription after adding your credit card. Enjoy! While this game might not be for you, it is great to see Wizards expanding the MTG universe into more platforms and using external companies to develop these games so that it does not take away resources from their MTG Arena / Online Teams.