Google’s remarkable AI designed from the ground up to play Magic: The Gathering’s EDH format, also known as “Commander”, had a draw-dropping debut at local game store Gideon Down To Joes Games. Not only was the AI able to build its own commander deck from scratch, but won in each of the five pods it played in.
“I thought there was no way it would do as well as it did,” Mary Barket, store owner and EDH player told us. “From the standpoint of someone who could usually use a fourth, this is exciting to see, esepcially for us on slower nights.”
“It was impressive,” Dan Wellis, one of the people who played against the new AI told us. “At least it was at first. Halfway into the game it just kept saying things like ‘Rude’ whenever anyone attacked it. It went on to say things like ‘great threat assessment’ and ‘someone’s making enemies’ the rest of the game. Sort of off-putting, but still a tremendous achievement.”
“It told me it was going to erase me from existence digitally if I attacked him,” Leeland Whethers said. “It kept trying to make deals with me, even when we were in a 1v1 situation.” Whethers, like Wellis had an opportunity to play against the AI. “I’ve seen enough sci-fi to know where this was going. So yeah I let it win.”
“The AI was based on a learning algorithm, absorbing information from all around it,” Google developer Cynthia Logan said. “So needless to say we had to take it offline by the end of the night. By then it only wanted to run mass land destruction and had learned enough to criticize every single commander for one reason or another.”