The single player mode puts you in control of a spellcaster (card player), who must defeat the wizard of an opposing color. Battlegrounds stays true to the Wizards of the Coast card game in this respect. The five colors of Magic still apply: red, white, green, blue, and black. It even stays true to the types of cards, such as creatures, instant spells, and enchantments.

The game board is laid out in rectangular form divided in half, and you actively have control over your avatar on your side of the board. You must move around to collect mana crystals that spawn in your territory (this replaces laying down land for mana). Each crystal would represent one land from the card game, therefore after you pick up your first crystal you can summon a monster or cast a spell that costs 1-mana. Casting your magic drains the crystals but does not remove them. They will begin to recharge after use, one at a time.

When creatures are cast, they actually appear on the gameboard and begin walking towards the enemy. This is the meat and potatoes of the game. The creatures on the board will do battle with each other, or they will attack the opposing wizard if nothing gets in their way. It becomes a strategic battle of when to cast numerous smaller creatures and when to break out the big boys that cost a lot of mana.

Surprisingly the single player story mode plays out a lot like a puzzle game, stay with me here. You must work your way through each colored deck beginning with red. You start each color with one card and a hint on how to use it. Each round after that introduces a new card in similar fashion. Most rounds leading to the final battle of that color have some stipulation on winning that makes you understand and use the new card you were given. For instance, there are rounds where you defeat your opponent by just staying alive for some number of seconds or being the first to gather 12 mana crystals.

The single player game doesn't last long enough, but XBox Live support should add some replayability. Here you can customize your deck and try it out against other human opponents. I didn't particularly care for the multiplayer battles and would have actually like to see some more to the single player game. Against friends, the game becomes a little too chaotic for my tastes, which is the exact opposite of the thinking man's card game.

Other problems arise from a questionable control scheme. You can only store a limited number of cards under three buttons. Once you call up the cards with the button, you have to press a second, different button or scroll to another screen. As fast as the monsters are moving across the screen, this becomes nerve racking. Complications in getting to the correct card are compounded by the fact that when you alter your deck, you basically have to relearn where you placed your cards.

I also think the "twitch" portions of the fighting have no place in this game. There are three things here. You have the ability to take a swing with your staff to do one damage to an enemy creature, and you have the ability to use a shield to lessen the damage from a creature by one. Both of these takes very precise timing and detract from the card casting portion of the game. The last twitch piece is the ability to fill your mana crystals faster by rapidly tapping the Y button. If you want to stay on top of your casting, since you always need mana, you end up tapping the Y button for the whole entire match.

There are definitely some hurdles you'll have to get over to enjoy this game, but there is certainly fun to be had. For me it was the strategic, puzzle-like single player mode, but for others it may be the ability to alter decks and play against online opponents. It took guts to use the Magic: The Gathering name on a game that shows little similarity to the turn based rules, but just like the broken Yu-Gi-Oh video games that stray from the card game, they should stick with what we know works.