Monday, February 28, 2011

Have an Android Phone?

Then you need:  MTG Deck Forge by Lagdroid

It is one of the most amazing MTG apps I have on my droid phone.  Everyone who has a space phone seems to have the life counter apps and such, but this app goes one step further.  It's a full deck builder suite of tools: Deck Builder, Gold fishing, Price Checker, Life Counter, and much more.  Now this app isn't the most intuitive off the bat, and I recommend reading the walk through and watching the videos.  Also, if you have any questions about the app, the dev has replied very quickly to my emails. 

Deck Building:
Basically you can build decks in this app save them to various formats to email or share.  This is the best feature.  I have a google group that we share deck lists and ideas for various formats and this app has let me brew up some decks amazingly fast.  It was a lot quicker then when I was using google docs spreadsheet to share with these guys.  You can set up your preference so that it auto adds 4 to the deck when you search up a card.

Gold Fishing
After making a deck, it allows you to gold fish some hands and check to see how the deck flows.  It keeps track of what turn you play a card and lets you see how a game will proceed. 

Price Checker
When it's time to trade, the phones come out nowadays.  What I hate most is how long this process takes when people check multiple sites.  This app rips data from 3 sources (more to come I hear) at real time and displays all the editions, prices and source.  It is as quick as typing in a card and waiting for the response. 

Card Search
Full high res image, oracle and original text, editions, and price.

Gatherer Like Functions:
I hate the new wizards gatherer.  It isn't as good as it used to be.  This is almost better then gatherer, it only needs sort by CMC for the output. 

While all this is great, this app still has a bit to go.  While it was well worth the $2.50 on the market that I paid, it still needs a bit of refinement. (its $5 now on the market)

The Bad:
Life Counter-  Has to be one of the worst I've seen.  Luckily, there are a ton of free apps that do this better.

# of Decks-  I've noticed with the more decks you save, the slower the app runs.  I keep my lists around 20 or so and I don't seem to have much of a slow down.  Go over that?  You will see significant lag (on my Droid X).

Non-Intuitive- It takes a bit to get used to, very hard for new people using the app to get comfortable using it.  I've heard some people return the app after 15 mins because they can't figure it out. 

But over all, this app gets a rating of A- because it does everything I need it to do but needs refinement. 

There is another app that you can get also its called Magic TG Tracker.  Its free (but with ads) and has a paid non-ad version.  Works about the same, less functionality but way more intuitive.

No comments:

Post a Comment