Magic Toolbox Impressions: So Useful, You Won't Believe It's Free

Yesterday Wizards of the Coast released its Magic: Toolbox application for iOS platforms (iPhoners - rejoice!), and one Andrew Reiner threatened to unfollow me on Twitter if I didn't check it out for him. Since the five scantily clad harem members I employ to keep me refreshed looked like they were getting tired of waving their palm fronds, I gave them a 20 minute break and headed over to the App Store to check out how useful this app actually is.

The app itself downloads quickly and cheaply (it's free) on a standard home Wi-Fi network, and though it takes a little bit to initially boot up, once you have it loaded on your phone it starts up right away. The menu screen is clean and informative and features eight initial buttons: Life Tracker, Deck Builder, Events, Players, Card Search, News, Content Update, and Store Locator.

The Life Tracker is a very handy tool that allows you to keep track of multiple players' lives. In addition you can also randomize several events including a coin flip, rolling a 6 or 20 sided die, and who gets to go first. It also keeps track of poison counters, how many times a Commander has been summoned, and a player's deck size, so all in all it's much more useful than the original abacus long time MtG players are familiar with.

Deck Builder (this part will also cover Card Search) allows you to create a deck in any of the supported MtG formats (Classic, Commander, Legacy, etc.), and perhaps coolest of all, it incorporates the Gatherer online card search function that Wizards of the Coast developed. Basically what this means, for those unfamiliar with MtG, is that you can choose what color(s) and format you want your deck to be and then search the entire library of Magic cards for what cards you want to include in your deck. You can refine the search based on card type, rarity, edition, text keyword; basically any sort of useful search criteria is included to narrow down what you're looking for. As someone who loves coming up with wacky themed Commander lists, Gatherer is an amazingly useful tool to have, and best of all it actually tells you what each card does.

Deck Builder also allows you to save multiple decks under whatever name you want (hi there, Counterburn Ragequit Deck) and you can make a wishlist of cards that hopefully you can afford once you off that rich uncle that's still clinging to life. Most of these will be dual lands and a Black Lotus, plus whatever nifty cards you happen to stumble across in Gatherer.

The Events portion is a very nice touch; it lists all of the officially sanctioned MtG events around the world and gives you the option to add them to your phone's calendar if you want a reminder, or you can highlight them within the app itself.

For tournaments, it gives you the location, format, and entry cost, as well as any pertinent information like web coverage details or special rules. This is a great way for Wizards of the Coast to get out information to the player base and ensure there's always a good crowd at events.

Players allows you to simply add more players to the Life Tracker portion, as well as add in players off your Friends List, presumably so you can customize names to whoever you're playing at the moment. It seems like there could be some further functionality for this in the future for online play or something similar.

News is basically a gateway to wizards.com and any Magic-related articles they have up, which is nice because it condenses all the official information you want/need in one easy to access location. This type of streamlining is very handy and makes it useful to stay abreast of what's happening in the MtG world.

Content Update features wallpapers, new editions as they're released, and presumably any other goodies Wizards of the Coast wants to make available. Definitely a nice little bonus feature to include in an app, especially since it's free. Finally, the Store Locator takes you to the official wizards.com website store locator page, which can be helpful if you find yourself in a new location and want to get a game or two in but don't know where to go. Again, Wizards is making it super easy for people to find places to play the game which is a great attitude to see.

As someone who enjoys playing MtG, I can honestly say that this app is an amazing deal at the cost of zero dollars. You get a multitude of useful functions, access to Gatherer in a clean, streamlined format, and up to the minute information from Wizards of the Coast about all things Magic related. If you own an iPhone or other iOS device and play MtG in any way shape or form, you really owe it to yourself to pick this up immediately. It's well made, functional, and again, it's free.

Magic Toolbox can be downloaded at the Apple Apps Store for free, and requires software version 4.3 to run (sorry older iPhone users).

Chris "Warcraft" Kluwe is the Minnesota Vikings' punter, Tripping Icarus' bass player, and Andrew Reiner's whipping boy.