Magicgrove is a computer implementation of a trading card game: Magic: The Gathering. The goal of the project is to implement ai algorithms which can play the game at the same level as a casual human player. Currently there are 690 unique cards implemented, mostly from Urza's block (593 out of 616 cards are available).

To play the game you will need a Windows machine with .Net Framework 4.0 installed. A multiple core machine is recommended.

The game is written in C#. To build the game you will need Visual Studio 2012.

• Run build.bat to build the game and execute tests.
• Run build-notest.bat to build the game only.

The binaries are put into release directory.

Magic: The Gathering is a game with hidden state. On every move, computer simulates future moves and builds the game tree. Hidden information is not available during simulation (computer is not cheating). Every leaf node is scored and the best move is chosen according to min/max rule. Because the unpruned game tree would take too long to evaluate, heuristics are used to choose if the branch is expanded or not. Ai uses special rules for:

• target selection,
• timing of spells and abilities,
• X cost calculation,
• combat simulation,
• mana payments,
• repeated activations of abilities,
• special card decisions

The game currently uses 60 steps look ahead, the search time rarely exceeds 5 seconds (on quad core machine).

Limited decks are automatically generated from given starter and booster packs. Computer first creates multiple decks for various color combinations, and then chooses the one which wins a simulated tournament.

When you play a sealed tournament game most of the decks are pregenerated since generating 500 decks each time would be very time consuming.

Drafting AI is based on drafting strategies described here.

You can play either

• a single match,
• a sealed tournament with up to 500 players or
• a draft tournament.

You can save the game at any time by pressing alt-q and choosing Save game menu option.

To modify existing decks or add new ones you can use deck editor. Card library can be filtered by mana color or by searching for specific text in the cards. Card names are searched by default. To search other parts of the card specify field name followed by a colon. The following field names are supported:

• name
• text
• flavor
• type
• power
• toughness

Conditions can be joined by using AND or OR (note the uppercase). Queries use lucene query syntax.

text:flying AND power:5

This show only cards that have flying in the text and have power of 5.

Tapping lands is not needed in most of the cases, just click the spell and the mana will be payed automatically. If you want, you can also tap the lands manually. The mana will then be put into the manapool.

Priority is by default automatically passed for each step, except for First main (active turn), Second main (active turn) and Declare blockers (active & passive turns).

You can change defaults by clicking on corresponding step's button. A button has 4 states:

• Transparent - priority is automatically passed on active & passive turns.
• Green - priority is automatically passed on passive turns.
• Yellow - priority is automatically passed on active turn.
• Red - priority is never automatically passed.

When an opponent plays a spell auto priority passing is disabled.

• Spacebar - moves to next step (passes priority)
• Enter - confirms attackers or blockers selection
• Alt+q - displays in game menu screen.
• F11 - toggle between window and full screen mode

Game visuals can be tweaked by modifying the contents of the media folder.

If you wish you can add your own card pictures to the /media/cards folder or to the cards.zip file. Picture size has to be 410x326 pixels, their names must match corresponding card names. Basic lands have 15 versions eg. forest1.jpg, ... , forest15.jpg.

If you wish you can add your custom avatars to the media/avatars folder.

Additional battlefield backgrounds can be added to /media/images folder. The filename must start with the word 'battlefield' e.g battlefield-1.jpg, battlefield-2.png... At the start of the game a random battlefield background is chosen amongst all available.

Other images can also be replaced, as long as they have the same size as the originals.

The project source code is licensed under GPL-3 License.

Magic: The Gathering was created by Richard Garfield and is published and developed by Wizards of the Coast.

This project uses the following open source libraries:

• log4net
• caliburn.micro
• castle.windsor
• xunit
• psake
• costura
• lucene.net

In game menu quote: 'Is it a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes?' is by Douglas Adams.

Some graphics are taken from openclipart.org. Some loading messages are taken from here.