Here are some thoughts on some card games I recently tested. This is simply my own personal opinion and may not mirror the general opinion of any of the games.
I go ahead with the one I like the least: Gwent
This thing is the most boring card game I've palyed ina while. It's based on soem Witcher 3 minigame I've heard. I never played Wither 3 but if the entire minigame was like this, I cannot believe that they thought making an entire game out of this was a good idea. Bah, anyway, this might not reflect what others think about this game, so I just make this quick. Not, that there would be any deep gameplay aspects into this game.
Gwent recently launched into an open Beta and people were hyped for it, so I was curious why so many people praised the game so much and downloaded it. I was so much disappointed there. Gwent is pretty much a tug of war. Instead of reducing the enemy to zero hp, what every other card game does, they thought of something new. All cards played have a power stat and the cumulative power stats present your strength, if yours is higher than your opponents, you win. There is nothign more to it, the person who lays the cards with the bigger numbers wins and that's pretty much all. Of course there is more to it, you can lay down cards that damage opponent cards (like normal), to reduce the number of your opponent or some cards play additional cards from your deck, so you get your bigger number sooner.
The twist in this is, your hand gets not refreshed each turn, you don't draw cards after each turn, instead you have to manage your cards across 3 rounds and you have to win two of them. Playing all your cards in one turn might earn you a victory but after that you start the next round barehanded and cannot win any further matches. That's all there is to the game and while the different card abilities might make the game a little more interesting and give you soem sort of planning what to play in which round and which order, the game is so boringly presented that I couldn't dig further in. Tie this to the fact, that abilities are poorly explained and many cards don't give you good examples, what they actually do. You have to test anything and still won't fully udnerstand it in the end. Building your deck is also pretty much useless since you draw only a small amount of cards from your deck and the extra cards are just there for "okay, you cannot get all the big goons you want on your hand, there is a chance you get shit". Of course there are abilities that allow you to pull more cards from your deck but why? The game would perfectly function without this, would be the same game in the end.
Minion Masters
Another disaster. This one actually looks more interesting than Gwent but fails on the execution. Minion Masters plays a little like a "Moba card game" if you want to say it like this. Yo play in some sort of arena that is divided in two halfs and connected with two bridges, that your minions can cross. You can play minions only on your half but spells on any half, additonally you have a master (simply a hero, like in any game these days) that attacks every enemy minion that enters your arena side. Minions move and act automatically after you've placed them, they try to cross the nearest bridge and reach the enemy master (like the ancient in Dota), to attack him. If they coem across other minions, they will stop and attack them. If your minions cross a bridge, you will "claim" the bridge and it will generate xp for your master. Your master can get up to three bonus abilities, that enhance him, add additional cards to your deck or boost your minions. The masters have their own distinguish abilities, Scratbo for example summons a small creature once you summon another minion, at his highest level he summons two creatures for every minion you summon. So decks built around him are best filled with lot of spamable creatures to overwhelm the enemy master.
The game concept sounds nice but fails in multiple ways. Because the game runs in real time instead of roudn based, the person who can lay down his cards faster, usually gets the upper hand. Of course there is a mana restriction but the general tactic I found in many games is simply, that people play many cheap cards and swarm their opponent until he cannot react fast enough to answer all the threats. The game has the problem that there are AoE counters in the game but they are not plentiful enough, weak or simply rare to obtain.
On the field it's also hard to distinguish cards and what they do, if you don't have them yourself. If your opponent plays a rare card you never saw before, you don't know how to counter it. Many cards have their own role and are coutnered with something. Swarm creatures are cheap and come with multiple minions at once, are countered by AoE. Flying minions cannot be attacked by most ground units but still attack them, but they are countered by ranged units. Ranged units are... pretty much the solution to anythign I found out, that's why the standard ranged master is played so often. Ranged units have the benefit to deal damage from range, often come in big numbers and are cheap. Counters? Your own ranged creatures or strong spells. Decks full of spells don't function very well for the obvious reasont hat you still need enough minions to take down the enemy master.
Another very bad aspect are rewards. You lost? You get around 2-7 gold. You need 1000 for one card. A single, random card costs 1000 in this game. It doesn't help, that you get a free card per day because the free cards are crap. In fact, your starting cards are crap. The entire section of basic cards is terrible. The game is awefully balanced, most cards are useless and only a tiny amount is really good. And these cards are overpowered as hell. Good luck getting this cards. Adding to the fact, how much a single card costs and how little you are rewarded for playing, it will take forever to get anything useful or even winning your first match.
Doesn't look very good, if you then add a premium upgarde, that rewards you with double the amount of gold. "Pay to win much?"
I really would want to like this game. The idea is brilliant, the ake of Moba with card game sounds so nice. But they ruined the game with the fact, that everything is unbalanced and nearly unplayable for beginners.
Shardbound
There was an extra thread for this and boy, was Wingflier excited for this game. It surprises me, that he didn't already jump on the game, when the public Alpha launched.
Anyway, Shardbound is here but still unfinished (Early Access). The game plays similiar to Duelyst. Thay said it would be something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire emblem and I said already then, this game is not gonna be anything like that and I was 100% correct. It's not entirely the same as Duelyst but it is very close to it. There are some major differences, both in the style of cards and in general gameplay aspects.
In Duelyst you can play any creature next to anything you've played before. You can "grab" enemies with creature conga lines, if they are out of reach normally. This does not work here, because creatures can only be summoned on your starting side of the map. Additionaly maps are shaped different instead of just having a different background. This adds to the gameplay as well because of some rules. Ranged units can only attack enemies in line of sight, boulds and hills block this, your own units block this as well, you can use units to build a "shield wall" against ranged units just like with melee units. Duelyst does not offer this, ranged units (and Songhai because of this) were always top tier, because they could attack from anywhere, anyone, making it hard to coutner them unless you "grab" them as mentioned above or you use your removal spells/abilites. I liek Shardbounts way of dealing with this more.
Another difference is, units that attacked can still move afterwards, if they haven't already. In Duelyst an attack meant that your action was used, units with "povke" meant that you couldn't kill them and move away afterwards, in Shardbound you can hit and run, to distance yourself from the rest of the enemy mob. Shardbound has also no provoke, which means there is no way to force someone to attack a specific unit. Bodyblocking is currently the only way to do so.
There are currently 6 factions in the game plus a neutral one (that every faction has access to). I've played 3 of them and can only judge about them so far.
Steelsinger are a mechanic faction, that uses robots in battle. The robots can be upgraded on summon, if you add additional mana. This way, they get one of two extra abilities. You can either summon a cheap unit or a stronger but more expensive one. Additonally Steelsinger is the faction with the most ranged units and as it currently seems the strongest faction. I see Steelsinger more than anything else in the game and most of the time they win. The whole upgrade system is too strong because they play already strong creatures with additional abilities.
Packrunner was weak until it got a major overhaul. They were a simple swarm faction before, that relied on summoning "primals" and buffed them with specific cards, now they have more varity and more viability. Packrunenrs still are swarming creatures with primals and play very aggressive. They can now also bond cards, so two cards get the same ability but loose them, if any of the bonded creatures dies. Additonally primals now get benefits, if enemy creatures are injured. They get stronger or finish of injured enemies.
Landshaper use the whole map to your benefit. They use boulders as summoning anchor and because of this can summon units even on the enemy side (some other cards can do this as well but the boulder creatures are a little stronger). they also plant seedlings, that change the map to their liking, seedlings can heal neabry units or grow poisoning tiles. Landshapers are propably the faction that depends the most on what map you get.
An interesting take in Shardbound is, that your hero is not the only unit with an activateable ability. Some units have abilities, that you can use for mana, these abilities can used each round.
What I currently don't liek about the game is that it's full ov Placeholder Art. Almost every card has the same game model with the same animations. This makes mateches very confusing because everything looks the same except 2-4 cards. It makes it also harder to memorize the cards because there is no recognition value.
And like they said, they integrated Twitch so deep into the game, that it turns me a little off. I don't like how Twitch is handled nowadays and it shouldn't be an integral part of any game.
