what format do you play?! I've only seen gameplay like that in sealed, and even then only in the worst sealed environments

That's my friends and their "casual" environment. <- Basically I'm not allowed to make my own decks and bring them anymore, because I won't stop being "too serious".

^ Since I don't have the money to actually compete at my local game store, I'm in that middle area where I really don't have a good mtg environment to play. And I'll say right now that both Duels and MTGO are ****.

So MTG. Great game. Can't play it ever because there's no way to. Hearthstone definitely has the advantage there. I can go get a game.

you could play on cockatrice

I don't know what the big problem with MTGO is. It is pretty stable now, and you can draft at literally any time day or night. What more could you want?

A UI that meets the minimum level where it doesn't ruin the experience for me.

Phrases I rarely get to use: "I agree with Jack wholeheartedly."

~SE++

I dunno, I find the Duels UI ten times more annoying than Magic Online. Magic without F6 is the worst.

Hearthstone

Interface
Simpler interface, works really well even on a phone. Animations, lines, and sound effects.

Combat
Yeah your opponent doesn't get to make choices, but how they attack on their turn and set up the board for your turn completely determines the options you have. I think the combat in Hearthstone has more interesting implications than that in Magic.

Mana
Colors are an interesting deckbuilding consideration in Magic, but the mana system can just completely ruin so many games where it could have been enjoyable.

Randomness
Decks in Hearthstone feel more consistent, and most of the randomness seems to be caused by cards themselves. On cards like Mad Bomber the randomness is really good in my opinion and allows for interesting decisions. On some cards the randomness is really bad like Ram Wrangler and Murloc Knight, but these cards ruin a lot less games than the mana system of Magic.

Mulligans
Mulliganing feels a lot less bad in Hearthstone.

Cost
The potential cost for a deck in Hearthstone is capped by the fact that it will probably play like 5-6 legendaries at most, and a handful of epics and rares. I don't know if this will remain true forever though since the problem I foresee is once they release enough mini-expansions some decks might use cards from many of them, some decks already use cards from both Naxx and BRM. There's always arena though, which is essentially free.

Rewards
MTG has promos and tournaments, but Wizards doesn't come to your house and reward you every time you play a game.


Magic

Draft
The best format between Hearthstone and Magic in my opinion. I think it's a lot more interesting than Hearthstone's arena, though Hearthstone's arena offers the nice advantage of being able to play your games whenever and not costing a money investment (even a cube takes a money investment, especially in terms of sleeves).

Lore
I feel like I can really connect with the images and lore of Magic cards, Hearthstone is often way too silly and I can only really experience that kind of connection with the mechanics of the cards. Also even though cards in Hearthstone are based on other Blizzard IPs, I don't feel like they really capture the feeling of those characters. Blizzard did a lot better with HotS in this regard, playing a Demon Hunter in HotS feels like playing a Demon Hunter in Diablo.

Clear and precise wording
It's kind of boggling how an expert player can sometimes not figure out how a new Hearthstone card works until they play with it. Also some of the underlying game mechanics like queued death resolution are so unintuitive in Hearthstone. I'm not saying the stack is perfect, but at least Wizards tells you how that works if you are interested and most else can be determined from card text.

Community
Blizzard's friends system isn't fantastic and Hearthstone doesn't have the LGS thing going for it. Reddit doesn't behave like a standard forum either. MTG connects people better since it is a physical game.

Archetypes
Since Magic has been around for awhile and has some mechanics that Hearthstone doesn't it also has some deck types that Hearthstone doesn't. However Hearthstone is definitely getting there, besides your standard burn, tempo, midrange, control, combo it has some wonky types of decks like fatigue decks, Handlock, and Freeze Mage.

Resource Disruption and Counterspells
Two things that Hearthstone is missing that limit options to interact with your opponent and win the game.

I think Hearthstone is better because:

• I have more fun playing it.
• Mana crystals > lands.
• Hero powers are cool. They help eliminate the bad feeling of having a dead Turn 2 or leaving mana open.
• Combat is more grokkable.
• Effects have more oomph.
• Wording is more straightforward and therefore more elegant and easier to understand.

What some people call dumbed down, I call refined.

Though I must admit that Magic has far better flavor, and has better protection against degenerate formats, whereas Hearthstone has none whatsoever.

I personally enjoy playing both Hearthstone & Magic Duels. Here are my points of what makes each good for me:

Hearthstone
Cheap to build a competitive deck
Dust mechanic
Has a tongue and cheek charm that I like
Games are far faster than magic
Mana screw isn't a thing
tavern brawl keeps things fresh and fun
Shared card pool, one login means you can play on your mobile device and PC and have the exact same collection.

Magic Duels
Relatively cheap to build a competitive deck
The booster mechanic where once you unlock max you see no more
Deep strategic gameplay
Each color is diverse and multiple stratifies can be applied
Offers a unique format which in magic is a good thing

In closing I will often play hearthstone on my lunch break at work or when I am playing a daily on mtgo and waiting for the next round, this is because your average hearthstone game lasts roughly 10 mins

@parad: true, true, true, grokkable comes at a cost, false, true

magic is a 20 year old game that is filled with massive design flaws that have been roughly patched up over time in awkward ways. It pioneered the TCG genre and if you look at any newer TCG they are going to do everything right that mtg does wrong, but despite mtg's myriad flaws, its age also lends it experience, and it will succeed as a design in ways that are much harder to pin down.

Minimalist, elegant designs are good but i think it is important not to consider the opposite a bad thing.

roguelikes and muds are two genres of games that i am very interested in the design of, and they throw minimalism and elegance under the bus in favor of loading their games up with massive quantities of often unrelated featurues. They're inaccessible, have steep learning curves, and contain so much information that you could play for hundreds of hours and still not know everything about the game, but I still consider their designs successful.

Beating NetHack is the proudest video game experience of my life.

Yeah, ascension is pretty darn awesome. I've got some others that rank pretty highly*, but none that are simply "Clear the game in its basic state)" which is part of why NetHack is amazing.

*

my dad has a story about the one time he managed to beat Rogue, and he ran around telling everyone and no one understood why he was excited because at the time computer games were dominated by text-based adventures so everyone just sort of assumed that if you'd made it of course you could beat it.