Arcen Games

Other => Off Topic => : Wingflier July 31, 2016, 11:54:52 PM

: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier July 31, 2016, 11:54:52 PM
I decided to make a new one because the Hearthstone thread is about 800 pages long and it's not really about Hearthstone anymore. I mean I don't mind if we talk about HS here, but the overall Arcen community consensus is that it's not one of the better ones out there anymore, obviously with some exceptions of course. It's still probably the most popular anyway.

But the reason I wanted to make this thread was because I believe it was this forum which introduced me to Spectromancer, which was a fantastic little card game on Steam. It never grew super popular but it had a lot of really neat elements that made it different from other games. For example, you didn't build your own deck, you chose a class and were given a set of random cards each game, and were tasked to use them as efficiently as possible to secure the victory.

All in all it was great stuff, and the classes themselves were very unique and dynamic as well. It was a wonderful card game.

Well, I guess this same company has come out with a new one, this one seems to be much more for mass marketing because I believe it's free to play and it's got an online platform built-in. It's called Astral Heroes (http://astralheroes.com/en/home).

Here are some of the key features which really caught my eye, especially after having such a blast with Spectromancer:

*Thoroughly polished game balance, no useless cards
*Deep cards synergy
3 different game modes:
-Collect cards and build your own custom deck.
-Play with random pre-built decks
-Draft tournament: draft cards from random packs and use them to build your deck
*Sophisticated AI in addition to human rivals

-----

I think it's awesome that they're trying to make no useless cards. The dominant meta-narrative when it comes to card games nowadays is that useless cards are necessary for achieving overall balance and introducing players to the game. Here's an article (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28) written by Mark Rosewater of the Magic the Gathering development team in 2002, in which he makes the explicit claim that "By definition, some bad cards must exist."

He gives a very long and thoughtful reason as to why this is the case, and of course this is in response to the frustration of many players who have spent their hard earned money opening booster packs only to receive pure cow manure.

The thing is, I just don't agree with him. I still don't understand why all the cards can't be good, or at least why that can't be the design goal. Obviously there's always going to be a metagame that favors certain types of cards and decks over others, but that doesn't mean that certain cards should be designed de facto bad.

I've gotta be honest - Designing bad cards on purpose sounds more like a not-so-subtle business model to me than some logical and completely honest design decision created with the sole purpose of improving the game.

The trouble is, every game card game I've ever played has them. So everyone is following this model, and it's nice to see a company which is trying to break away from that.

Furthermore, Spectromancer's (their previous game) most fun mode was the random pre-built decks based on class. You could build your own decks but having the pre-built decks was awesome and the randomness and diversity of the classes kept you entertained for a long time, even just against the computers (which were damn good).

To know that you'll be able to have practically endless fun only using the pre-built random decks, without having to spend a penny or a second on the game just seems amazing to me. I'm excited to try it out.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 01, 2016, 02:58:17 AM
Okay, so far we got these games already in the other thread:

Duelyst (https://duelyst.com/)
Solforge (http://store.steampowered.com/app/232450/)
Chronicle (http://store.steampowered.com/app/205890/?snr=1_4_4__tab-PopularNewReleases)

I want to add some other games to the list.

Magic Duels (http://store.steampowered.com/app/316010)

Basically Magic the Gathering as online game. they had this before but it wasn't very popular except for hardcore players for mutliple reasons. It wasn't free. That's not entirely true, the client was free, the cards just weren't. You either had to buy cards in the store for real money relating to the current market value of cards. People who know printed TCG very well, esspecially MtG, will know that buying specific printed cards can be very expensive.
Magic Duels is now finally the free variant of the game, its engine is based on the "Duels of the planeswalker" game series they released once each year. Peopel who own these games know that they are very well designed in terms of gameplay but (except the last game) lacked a real deck builder, you had pre-defined decks with some minor card customization options. I haven't played Magic Duels myself but i believe it removes the deck restriction and is in its core more true to the real MtG. the reason why they suddenly release a free online TCg should be obvious. With the rising tide of online tradign card games there has been created a huge market that you can profit from. Also the interest for real TCGs gets lower since you can have your daily fix on card games faster and cheaper on the internet. Real hardcore fans will of course stay, but if you want to make big profit you have to increase the market. I think for people who want the MtG experience without the need of buying real life cards this is a good replacement.


Pox Nora (http://store.steampowered.com/app/201210/)

Pox Nora can be seen as the "ancestor" of Duelyst if you want to put it like this. it features similiar mechanics but is a LOT older. The first version was released around 2006 and was previusly owned by Sony Online Entertainment. 2011 it was closed down until 2014 it was sold to Desert Owl Games and rereleased with a better marketing system. Similiar to Duelyst it is a cardgame mixed with boardgame mechanics. Each player has runes (cards) that he can play. Cards can be only played in casting range which is first near your shrine. Your shrine is a giant building that generates Nora (mana) for you and has to be protected. If it falls, you loose.
To play cards you have to pay the Nora costs, stronger cards cost more just like in any other game with a mana mechanic. To get additional Nora each turn you can capture Nora fonts that are present on each map. Your enemy can do the same but if both players stay in the capture range of the same font, the font is negated for both. Capturing and holding fonts is a very important aspect of the game and if you cannot hold the position you will probably loose the game.
I could descripe stats and abilities of cards but the problem is, Pox Nora has TONS of these. So I will put it simply to give a basic understanding. Every card can be a champion or a spell (and some other minor cards like equipment which basically also counts as spell). Champions have different movement lengths, attack ranges and other stats. Additionally every champion has abilities, the most basic ability of every champion is an attack. It's importnant to know, the attck counts as seperate ability and can be different from each creature which means it can also have different effects.
Additoonally to the attack a champion can have one or more spells or other special abilities. And some champions can also have passive effects on them that are either pemanent active or active when a certain condition is met.
When a champion dies he leaves a Nora globe worth half his initial Nora costs in its spot. Both players can collect the globe by moving with another champion over it. This is important to know because a player that lost a champion can still manage to get half the costs back and with this not losing advantage.
Champions can only be placed aroudn the shrine or captured Nora fonts. Spells can however be casted in cast range. Cast range is generated by shrines, fonts and even champions. Everything outside the cast range cannot be targeted, so you cannot snipe a creature next to the enemy shrine if you have no creature nearby.
Every rune can be used multiple times however with a limit. When a champion is destroyed or a spell played, the rune goes into "cooldown" which is basically the graveyard in other games. After a number of turns you get the rune back to your hand. This allows unlimited use of runes.

The game is very complex and needs a lot of tactical awareness at all time. Therefor I see Duelyst as the "casual" version of Pox Nora which is easier to learn and master.
There are 8 different factions in the game that belong to either the "good" side or the "bad "side. Each fation has additional to its runes a special ability that affects the game. For example the undead faction has lower cooldowns on their runes, meaning they can "reanimate" dead champions faster. You can also mix two factions as long as the faction ratio is 50:50. If you mix two factions, you get a weaker version of the special ability of both factions.

The game is really interesting and worth to check out as long as you are not afraid of deep strategic games with a lot of factors and stats to keep in mind. I had a lot of fun with it and will probably pick it up again soem time soon since a new set has been released recently.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery August 01, 2016, 04:04:13 AM
I decided to make a new one because the Hearthstone thread is about 800 pages long and it's not really about Hearthstone anymore. I mean I don't mind if we talk about HS here, but the overall Arcen community consensus is that it's not one of the better ones out there anymore, obviously with some exceptions of course. It's still probably the most popular anyway.

But the reason I wanted to make this thread was because I believe it was this forum which introduced me to Spectromancer, which was a fantastic little card game on Steam. It never grew super popular but it had a lot of really neat elements that made it different from other games. For example, you didn't build your own deck, you chose a class and were given a set of random cards each game, and were tasked to use them as efficiently as possible to secure the victory.

All in all it was great stuff, and the classes themselves were very unique and dynamic as well. It was a wonderful card game.

Well, I guess this same company has come out with a new one, this one seems to be much more for mass marketing because I believe it's free to play and it's got an online platform built-in. It's called Astral Heroes (http://astralheroes.com/en/home).

Here are some of the key features which really caught my eye, especially after having such a blast with Spectromancer:

*Thoroughly polished game balance, no useless cards
*Deep cards synergy
3 different game modes:
-Collect cards and build your own custom deck.
-Play with random pre-built decks
-Draft tournament: draft cards from random packs and use them to build your deck
*Sophisticated AI in addition to human rivals

-----

I think it's awesome that they're trying to make no useless cards. The dominant meta-narrative when it comes to card games nowadays is that useless cards are necessary for achieving overall balance and introducing players to the game. Here's an article (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28) written by Mark Rosewater of the Magic the Gathering development team in 2002, in which he makes the explicit claim that "By definition, some bad cards must exist."

He gives a very long and thoughtful reason as to why this is the case, and of course this is in response to the frustration of many players who have spent their hard earned money opening booster packs only to receive pure cow manure.

The thing is, I just don't agree with him. I still don't understand why all the cards can't be good, or at least why that can't be the design goal. Obviously there's always going to be a metagame that favors certain types of cards and decks over others, but that doesn't mean that certain cards should be designed de facto bad.

I've gotta be honest - Designing bad cards on purpose sounds more like a not-so-subtle business model to me than some logical and completely honest design decision created with the sole purpose of improving the game.

The trouble is, every game card game I've ever played has them. So everyone is following this model, and it's nice to see a company which is trying to break away from that.

Furthermore, Spectromancer's (their previous game) most fun mode was the random pre-built decks based on class. You could build your own decks but having the pre-built decks was awesome and the randomness and diversity of the classes kept you entertained for a long time, even just against the computers (which were damn good).

To know that you'll be able to have practically endless fun only using the pre-built random decks, without having to spend a penny or a second on the game just seems amazing to me. I'm excited to try it out.


Okay, time for me to play my role as devil's advocate and be unpleasant and stuff:



The whole "no useless cards" idea just isn't going to work, honestly.  I don't believe it to be possible. 

It's just like in any other type of game design... balance is *difficult*.   Everyone that makes multiplayer games tries to get it right.   Everyone that makes multiplayer games never does.   Hell, it's hard enough in single-player games.   There are always "tiers", there are always good/useful things VS bad/useless things, and so on.

But card games are even harder to balance than most.  There's just too many cards, and in addition to this, any game of this type can only hold the community's attention by continuing to release new sets of cards over time.  Each time that happens, not only do they have to worry about the balance of the new set, but they have to worry about the balance of the new set in the context of every conceivable interaction with every possible card of the old set.  Every individual card has a chance of altering the meta a bit, very often in ways that were never forseen during the creation phase.   And then old cards may start to break down as other things enter the fray.

As for that feature list... isn't that basically the same feature list that EVERY card game tries to sell you on?


The one core thing though, to me, is the community:  "Is it big enough?" is always my question.  There's no point in playing one of these if the community isn't bloody HUGE, because it means taking 10000 years to find opponents, and only very, very rarely being matched up with one of equal skill.   Usually with this type of game, this is the problem I spot, and that ends my interest in them entirely and instantly.   And I know that these games boast AI opponents, but I've never seen one that isn't dumber than a sack of hammers.  Which is too bad, as if there was one that could provide genuine, constant challenge, well... as in most games I'd rather face an AI instead of the general unpleasantness of having to deal with another person.  But AI is just too bloody stupid as a whole, currently.  Granted, to be fair, I'm NOT the best judge of difficulty in... pretty much anything.  Which has been proven more than a few times.  But still, that's been my experience with AI in general.


I'd love to find some new card games myself, but it's been a LONG time since I've spotted one. 

I don't have too many opinions on the ones listed here, though Duelyst loses my interest with the bit that reminds me of FF Tactics.  I'd really rather just have the cards, thanks....

Overall though, aside from that one I'm willing to at least try any of them, it's not like I have much else to do... though not right away as currently the Arcen stuff will be taking up a lot of time.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 01, 2016, 04:50:40 AM
The whole "no useless cards" idea just isn't going to work, honestly.  I don't believe it to be possible. 

It's just like in any other type of game design... balance is *difficult*.   Everyone that makes multiplayer games tries to get it right.   Everyone that makes multiplayer games never does.   Hell, it's hard enough in single-player games.   There are always "tiers", there are always good/useful things VS bad/useless things, and so on.
I think I said in my introduction (or strongly implied) that perfect balance is not attainable.

There are always going to be certain decks and combinations of cards that outshine others, at least temporarily until the metagame shfits, usually as a result of new cards or card changes.

However, the point is that the goal of the design is to make all cards viable, the way that certain MOBAs attempt to make all heroes viable.

The reason that DotA 2 is the best MOBA out there, both in terms of competitive depth and in terms of e-sports and financial success, is that it does a wonderful job of making all the characters viable. Yes, some are always going to fit into the metagame better from patch to patch but, in the end they're all playable on the right team and in the right situation.

You're not understanding what I'm saying: Games like Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering are intentionally making bad cards. It's not a case of, oh well, this card isn't as good as we thought it was and we'll fix it eventually. It's a case of intentionally producing bad cards as some sort of design decision/business model.

I don't care that perfect balance is impossible to achieve, we all know that. I care that this is the goal in mind, and that the developers are just throwing a bunch of trash at us like they do in...well every other card game ever made.

As for that feature list... isn't that basically the same feature list that EVERY card game tries to sell you on?
I just got finished explaining (now twice), that every card game I've ever played up to this point (excluding Spectromancer, by the same company) is intentionally putting bad cards into the game. So no, that's definitely a new selling point that doesn't exist in the others.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery August 01, 2016, 08:06:41 AM
I've seen the article before;  to be honest, the only impression it had on me was "that's the best excuse he can think of?"   It always seemed like one of those long rants designed to seem like it's giving you info, while really just clouding things.  And the point you say he's making about it being "on purpose" conflicts with something else he very directly says. Let's look at this paragraph, just before his long rant:

“Bad” cards fall into the latter category. When I said, "Weak cards are a fundamental part of the game," what I was trying to say was that due to the nature of trading card games, it’s impossible not to have “bad” cards. They exist because they have to exist. R&D has no control over this. We never have. Alpha didn’t have “bad” cards because Richard Garfield didn’t know any better. It's just the nature of trading card games.

Kinda conflicting with his supposed overall message there.

Though, even if what he says is the case (and even then, he's only able to speak of HIS game, not... any of the others at all), I seriously doubt that all TCG designers (or even many at all) purposefully design sucky cards.   Magic can get away with it to a degree because it has 10 squillion cards. It's also the first, and the biggest (unless HS has gone further, heck if I know).  Hearthstone gets away with it.... sort of... because Blizzard is backing it, and they are the absolute grandmasters of getting players obsessed with their games, even when their games are made of issues and problems.  But basically everything else?  I really doubt that idea applies whatsoever.  MOST designers (particularly those that have anything resembling pride in what they make) will always prefer balance over... everything else.  Because why wouldn't they?   Whats-his-face there might have come up with some reasoning behind bad cards, but that doesn't mean it's good reasoning (not to me anyway, like I said, it reeks of "we couldn't think of a better excuse"), PARTICULARLY for smaller games that need to get off the ground and don't have seemingly unlimited resources behind them.  When you don't have 10 squillion cards and aren't Blizzard, when you aren't some sort of juggernaut, you cant afford to purposefully stick useless crap in your game.  That's wasted content and wasted development time, both of which mean little to the big guys yet are all-important to everyone else. And the small size of the game makes it hurt all the more (wheras in Magic's case, it has no effect at all; there's still TONS of useful cards due to the sheer number of total cards, and even though players get irked at crud cards in packs, they keep coming back anyway).  The percentage of "useless content" VS "useful content" is just too high when you start making derps on purpose when you've got a new game that's not been around for a million years and has very few total cards.

That's why I say it's "nothing new" when they say that in this case.   In fact, the ONLY thing it is, is a sentence designed to sell you the game, like all bullet-points.  I've never been one to care about what a developer's INTENTIONS are with something, to be honest... all I care about are the results.  Does the game ACTUALLY end up with super balanced cards?  Or does it not?  That's all I look at, since that's the only part that will have an actual effect on the gameplay.  What may or may not be going through the devs' heads is not of my concern or interest.   And one way or another, the chances of the game ending up in their promised state is next to nothing.  Frankly, it's EXACTLY the wrong kind of promise to make for that very reason.  Promising something that's basically impossible is... not a good move.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Aklyon August 01, 2016, 10:35:46 AM
Okay, so far we got these games already in the other thread:

Duelyst (https://duelyst.com/)
Solforge (http://store.steampowered.com/app/232450/)
Chronicle (http://store.steampowered.com/app/205890/?snr=1_4_4__tab-PopularNewReleases)

I want to add some other games to the list.

Magic Duels (http://store.steampowered.com/app/316010)

Basically Magic the Gathering as online game. they had this before but it wasn't very popular except for hardcore players for mutliple reasons. It wasn't free. That's not entirely true, the client was free, the cards just weren't. You either had to buy cards in the store for real money relating to the current market value of cards. People who know printed TCG very well, esspecially MtG, will know that buying specific printed cards can be very expensive.
Magic Duels is now finally the free variant of the game, its engine is based on the "Duels of the planeswalker" game series they released once each year. Peopel who own these games know that they are very well designed in terms of gameplay but (except the last game) lacked a real deck builder, you had pre-defined decks with some minor card customization options. I haven't played Magic Duels myself but i believe it removes the deck restriction and is in its core more true to the real MtG. the reason why they suddenly release a free online TCg should be obvious. With the rising tide of online tradign card games there has been created a huge market that you can profit from. Also the interest for real TCGs gets lower since you can have your daily fix on card games faster and cheaper on the internet. Real hardcore fans will of course stay, but if you want to make big profit you have to increase the market. I think for people who want the MtG experience without the need of buying real life cards this is a good replacement.


Pox Nora (http://store.steampowered.com/app/201210/)

Pox Nora can be seen as the "ancestor" of Duelyst if you want to put it like this. it features similiar mechanics but is a LOT older. The first version was released around 2006 and was previusly owned by Sony Online Entertainment. 2011 it was closed down until 2014 it was sold to Desert Owl Games and rereleased with a better marketing system. Similiar to Duelyst it is a cardgame mixed with boardgame mechanics. Each player has runes (cards) that he can play. Cards can be only played in casting range which is first near your shrine. Your shrine is a giant building that generates Nora (mana) for you and has to be protected. If it falls, you loose.
To play cards you have to pay the Nora costs, stronger cards cost more just like in any other game with a mana mechanic. To get additional Nora each turn you can capture Nora fonts that are present on each map. Your enemy can do the same but if both players stay in the capture range of the same font, the font is negated for both. Capturing and holding fonts is a very important aspect of the game and if you cannot hold the position you will probably loose the game.
I could descripe stats and abilities of cards but the problem is, Pox Nora has TONS of these. So I will put it simply to give a basic understanding. Every card can be a champion or a spell (and some other minor cards like equipment which basically also counts as spell). Champions have different movement lengths, attack ranges and other stats. Additionally every champion has abilities, the most basic ability of every champion is an attack. It's importnant to know, the attck counts as seperate ability and can be different from each creature which means it can also have different effects.
Additoonally to the attack a champion can have one or more spells or other special abilities. And some champions can also have passive effects on them that are either pemanent active or active when a certain condition is met.
When a champion dies he leaves a Nora globe worth half his initial Nora costs in its spot. Both players can collect the globe by moving with another champion over it. This is important to know because a player that lost a champion can still manage to get half the costs back and with this not losing advantage.
Champions can only be placed aroudn the shrine or captured Nora fonts. Spells can however be casted in cast range. Cast range is generated by shrines, fonts and even champions. Everything outside the cast range cannot be targeted, so you cannot snipe a creature next to the enemy shrine if you have no creature nearby.
Every rune can be used multiple times however with a limit. When a champion is destroyed or a spell played, the rune goes into "cooldown" which is basically the graveyard in other games. After a number of turns you get the rune back to your hand. This allows unlimited use of runes.

The game is very complex and needs a lot of tactical awareness at all time. Therefor I see Duelyst as the "casual" version of Pox Nora which is easier to learn and master.
There are 8 different factions in the game that belong to either the "good" side or the "bad "side. Each fation has additional to its runes a special ability that affects the game. For example the undead faction has lower cooldowns on their runes, meaning they can "reanimate" dead champions faster. You can also mix two factions as long as the faction ratio is 50:50. If you mix two factions, you get a weaker version of the special ability of both factions.

The game is really interesting and worth to check out as long as you are not afraid of deep strategic games with a lot of factors and stats to keep in mind. I had a lot of fun with it and will probably pick it up again soem time soon since a new set has been released recently.
Didn't we also have a Shadow Era thread at somepoint?
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 01, 2016, 11:22:05 AM
Kinda conflicting with his supposed overall message there.

Though, even if what he says is the case (and even then, he's only able to speak of HIS game, not... any of the others at all), I seriously doubt that all TCG designers (or even many at all) purposefully design sucky cards.
As you said, the message is overall very conflicting.

He seems to be torn between, "We make bad cards on purpose as a design decision to add skill to the game and ease new players into the meta" and "Bad cards are an inherent and unavoidable part of trading card games, no matter how much we attempt to circumvent them in our design."

Regardless, I don't agree with either. There is a difference between suboptimal/niche cards and flat-out bad cards. There are for example, cards that may not fit into the metagame, but statwise and effect-wise are still useful overall, and when the meta changes could be incredibly useful again; or alternatively, could be what leads to a major metagame shift.

But we aren't talking about suboptimal cards, we're talking about bad cards.

MOST designers (particularly those that have anything resembling pride in what they make) will always prefer balance over... everything else.  Because why wouldn't they?
Money of course. If you can sell overpowered cards for high prices while at the same time inundating the average player's deck with trash, there's a huge incentive to keep opening packs until you get good ones.

The better question is, why wouldn't a business make money their priority? In a Capitalistic society you should always expect people to put money first. Expecting anything more is a little idealistic in my opinion. I mean let's be real, Blizzard and Wizards of the Coast did not get to where they are without becoming extremely corporatized organizations. That doesn't mean that they don't care about their customers...in so far as they are making them money.

Promising something that's basically impossible is... not a good move.
As I've said before, intentionally avoiding bad cards as part of your design standard is not impossible. Suboptimal or niche cards? Of course, that's always going to be there.

Bad cards? Nope. This is intentional for sure.

I honestly don't think it would be that difficult to balance cards in a reasonable (non money grubbing fashion), and to update their stats every few months to reflect necessary changes. I also don't think it would be the most optimal business model, which it's why it's in these companies best interests to have you believe that creating balanced card sets is impossible.






: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 02, 2016, 12:27:55 AM
I just want to show the rewards of the July season of Chronicle and Solforge for those who don't play these games.

Chronicle:
(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/266095116622980607/9382021AFB52A2E8B5CA9FEADA358F53BBB0076E/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|1024:578&composite-to=*,*|1024:578&background-color=black)
Chronicle gives away each Season a new card back for people who achieved silver or higher. You also get a free booster pack (which is good since booster packs are really expensive and hard to come by in this game) and a new card. the card this time was sheep penguin who removes one base attack from your character but you get 5 gold for it. This may sound bad but in some deck it is good to have less attack than your opponent. In my opinion this card back looks a lot better than the one of the last season.


Solforge:
(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/266095116622999294/6BC69DFD46F12ED039DB6A8073736FA4866ECB14/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|1024:531&composite-to=*,*|1024:531&background-color=black)

Solforge gives away a lot more but Solforge lacks the cosmetic options that other TCGs have. It had client skins earlier but they weren't included when the new client came out. Instead you get a card with an alternate art (Ambriel Archangel, legendary Alloyin card). Alternate Art cards are basically what foil cards are to real card games. They have an alternate appearance, most are simply recolored versions of the original card but soem have also a complete new artwork.
This is how Ambriel Archangel looks normally: http://sites.cdn.stoneblade.com/cardart/combined-low/ambrielarchangel-combined-std.png
This is the alternate Art: http://solforgegame.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ambriel.png
As you can see, they've added soem kinf of glow effect to the card. This sin't very impressive but it's a free alternate art card, normally they cost gold (premium currency), so I don't except them to put that much effort into it.
Additionally you get 8 boosters, 4 basic and 4 raider unchained (last expansion) plus 15.000 silver to buy additionally booster packs or forge your cards.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Cyborg August 02, 2016, 09:35:42 PM
Not a fan of most card games. Asymmetric money grabs. It's not even about skill, but who can either pay to win or spend all day grinding decks. Poor matchmaking, imbalanced expansions that promote that cash treadmill, obsolete cards, need I go on?

Card games also suffer from the one HP stack problem. There is one HP target for each player, even if you add more cards. Contrast this with RTS games, which I think should be the closest design equivalent for card games.

That being said, I picked up sentinels of the multiverse during the summer sale, and I have been enjoying that as something a little bit different from most card games.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Logorouge August 02, 2016, 10:15:49 PM
Card games also suffer from the one HP stack problem. There is one HP target for each player, even if you add more cards.
I don't understand what you mean there. Maybe I'm mistranslating that part. Would you mind elaborating a bit? If it's a universal problem with that type of card game, I would be very interesting in knowing about it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Cyborg August 02, 2016, 10:45:05 PM
Card games also suffer from the one HP stack problem. There is one HP target for each player, even if you add more cards.
I don't understand what you mean there. Maybe I'm mistranslating that part. Would you mind elaborating a bit? If it's a universal problem with that type of card game, I would be very interesting in knowing about it.

Sure. For example, let's take the game of magic the gathering. You get 20 HP per player or whatever it is now (it's been a while), and the object of the game is to get that number to 0. There are various strategies that do not depend on monster battles to directly attack the HP stack. The singular HP stack.

And this is what I see as the problem. In a battle, the only way to win is by targeting this HP stack. There's only one of them (no choice). In some games, there are various ways of completely avoiding creatures to directly attack the HP stack. In a game like civilization, or RTS games, it's not one singular building. There isn't just one HP target. There's a choice, and that choice becomes strategy.

I think it's because these card games are based on the dueling wizard fantasy, and these cards are the extension of your wizard choices, rather than providing a more nuanced or strategic HP target(s).
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Logorouge August 03, 2016, 12:04:28 AM
And this is what I see as the problem. In a battle, the only way to win is by targeting this HP stack.
Ah, now I get it. Thanks.

The old games usually "solved" that problem by having alternate victory conditions, be it in the form of a ritual or a special creature, etc. But I guess digital games are a bit more shy about including such options.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 03, 2016, 01:47:28 AM
Yu-Gi-Oh has mutliple special ways to win the game but require of course the specific cards. The most common known is of course Exodia, a multi-part monster. You have to get all parts on your hand and win the game. Then there has been released some kind of spirit board that reveals each round a new letter on the field (in the form of spell cards) until you have formed out "Death" and win the game. This is easier o achieve then Exodia since the first card automatically searches the other cards for you from the deck but a single "destroy a spell card" effect can remove all of them.
Then there was the self destruction countdown. An emergency plan for players who couldn't win a match coul use this card and stall there opponent until the countdown reaches zero and both die.
There have been multiple special victory condition cards released afterwards and I don't know them all but they never have been a viable option for competetive decks because those victory conditions relied too much on certain cards and that your opponent cannot counter them (which was easy to do), so they were only played in fun decks.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery August 03, 2016, 02:10:52 AM
Card games also suffer from the one HP stack problem. There is one HP target for each player, even if you add more cards.
I don't understand what you mean there. Maybe I'm mistranslating that part. Would you mind elaborating a bit? If it's a universal problem with that type of card game, I would be very interesting in knowing about it.

Sure. For example, let's take the game of magic the gathering. You get 20 HP per player or whatever it is now (it's been a while), and the object of the game is to get that number to 0. There are various strategies that do not depend on monster battles to directly attack the HP stack. The singular HP stack.

And this is what I see as the problem. In a battle, the only way to win is by targeting this HP stack. There's only one of them (no choice). In some games, there are various ways of completely avoiding creatures to directly attack the HP stack. In a game like civilization, or RTS games, it's not one singular building. There isn't just one HP target. There's a choice, and that choice becomes strategy.

I think it's because these card games are based on the dueling wizard fantasy, and these cards are the extension of your wizard choices, rather than providing a more nuanced or strategic HP target(s).

That "focus" though that you perceive on the HP stack, honestly, means damn little in an actual match between players that know what they are doing.

Yes, in Magic, you could make a red deck (red being the best at direct damage) and try to just blast your opponent into oblivion in a focused fashion.   ....this is unlikely to work.  A few reasons, the prime one being your OPPONENT'S monsters.  The reason why that focus simply doesn't work is that, one way or another, you HAVE to deal with more than one target.  Your opponent will put out monsters of their own; if left unchecked, they *will* kill you.  Typically, you need to have your own monsters to block them.  And even with that, if you JUST focus your spells on the opponent, you're probably going to get flattened due to a major hole in your defenses, despite having monsters to block for you.   And some matchups will make this even harder.   Blue decks, for example, can simply cancel out even your most powerful damage spells as if they weren't there (for very little mana cost, no less... you could spend 8 mana on a massive attack... only to have it instantly blown out of the water by one common blue spell that costs just two blue mana)... and then use their own relatively weak monsters, along with the screwball effects that blue spells, monsters, and things tend to have, to basically beat you over the head with your own face.   White can heal itself constantly while barraging you with ever stronger monsters, and traditionally has access to ultra-spells like Armageddon (destroys all lands, AKA, the source of everything you do, essentially resetting the board... but leaving all of the creatures intact), or Wrath of God (kills everything instantly, other than the players).  Green can overwhelm you, quickly, with a barrage of monsters if you don't do something about them right away; they're not going to give you TIME to simply attack directly, you need defenses and ways of dealing with the large threats they'll drop onto the board.  Black... tends not to give a flying fart about HP, and will happily sacrifice it themselves for massive power.  This typically does NOT push black decks towards defeat... it's likely to push YOU towards defeat.   And that's just mono decks.  Most decks are dual color.  Black and blue, for instance, sacrificing HP for crazy spells, creatures, and attacks while at the same time simply deflecting your direct spells, or doing strange things like having creatures that force you to target them, giving your opponent even MORE room to sacrifice HP for power.  Things like that.

A true pure-damage deck is difficult to do, inadvisable, and you pretty much *have* to be using red magic in order to do it (the others simply cannot).  And even then, if you seriously have nothing but damage in your deck, you're probably going to lose.  Red decks usually use their direct spells to supplement their creatures, popping enemy creatures at unexpected times with instants, or doing things like blasting enemy land cards (red is good at this).  Among other things.

The point is, there's no weakness generated by the "HP stack".  If there was never any reason to target other stuff, the game would never have taken off, because that'd be really boring.   And by the way, it's not JUST creatures that need targeting... you often have to worry about somehow putting a stop to your opponent's enchantments, artifacts, and even special land cards, among other things.  And the methods of stopping major threats is rarely as simple as simply blasting them with a nuke.  It gets complicated.  In other words, there are MANY things that need attacking, and not always via "damage", and you cant ignore them.  There's no "one" central target.  Very frequently, there are many other targets MORE important (much more) than your opponent's HP.

This is all stuff I'm saying after so very many years of having been a fan of the game, by the way... it's not just speculation.   And different methods rotate in and out of popularity as the meta changes, and sometimes entirely new ways of winning show up as creative decks are made, forcing you to respond in ways you didn't have to before.   The game is like that.    As are most TCGs. 



: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 03, 2016, 02:28:26 AM
It's funny but Magic is basically "Stalemate the game". In other TCGs you will attack as often as you can because you want to destroy his creatures or his life points.
Magic the Gathering however transforms very soon into a starring contest. The one who blinks first is the most liekely to loose. Because the way Magic works it is not advised to make the first move. You are literally forced to wait until you draw the card that gives you the safety to attack without any risks. Why? Because in Magic you cannot target monsters, only the opponent directly. This means your opponent decides against which monsters you have to fight and no matter what you do, he will of course always choose monsters to hurt you the most. Since you can also block a single monster with as many monsters you want, the could easily overcome your strongest monster with simply putting all his defenses on it. Because of this single rule, neither player will make their first move unless they are 100% sure that they will not loose somethign valuable.
That's also the reasonw hy Magic is the slowest of all TCGs. You have rounds full of doing nothing. Of course you can say "but they lay out their cards, that's doing something." Well, yeah, not really, you do this in other card games too additionally to the action. MtG is the oldest of them all, that's why their rules are "outdated" compared to modern card games. However, it is also so strategic deep for the same reason, since it is so old it had much time at its hand to put new ways of strategy into it.

But then again, it still is a slow paced waiting contest for whoever looses patience first and attacks.

Btw, if you couldnt tell already by the text above, I love Magic. Because as stupid as this system sounds, it gives players a safety haven against players with a better collection. Even if your opponent has the overall better cards, he won't risk making the firt step, giving you time to prepare. You don't get crushed in two rounds like in other card games.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery August 03, 2016, 02:56:26 AM
It's funny but Magic is basically "Stalemate the game". In other TCGs you will attack as often as you can because you want to destroy his creatures or his life points.
Magic the Gathering however transforms very soon into a starring contest. The one who blinks first is the most liekely to loose. Because the way Magic works it is not advised to make the first move. You are literally forced to wait until you draw the card that gives you the safety to attack without any risks. Why? Because in Magic you cannot target monsters, only the opponent directly. This means your opponent decides against which monsters you have to fight and no matter what you do, he will of course always choose monsters to hurt you the most. Since you can also block a single monster with as many monsters you want, the could easily overcome your strongest monster with simply putting all his defenses on it. Because of this single rule, neither player will make their first move unless they are 100% sure that they will not loose somethign valuable.
That's also the reasonw hy Magic is the slowest of all TCGs. You have rounds full of doing nothing. Of course you can say "but they lay out their cards, that's doing something." Well, yeah, not really, you do this in other card games too additionally to the action. MtG is the oldest of them all, that's why their rules are "outdated" compared to modern card games. However, it is also so strategic deep for the same reason, since it is so old it had much time at its hand to put new ways of strategy into it.

But then again, it still is a slow paced waiting contest for whoever looses patience first and attacks.

Btw, if you couldnt tell already by the text above, I love Magic. Because as stupid as this system sounds, it gives players a safety haven against players with a better collection. Even if your opponent has the overall better cards, he won't risk making the firt step, giving you time to prepare. You don't get crushed in two rounds like in other card games.

Remember though, the ONLY things that cannot choose their targets whatsoever are creatures... and even then, that's only with direct attacks.  Creature ABILITIES can typically target whatever you want within the given type. Spells/enchantments/artifacts/abilities/whatever generally just target whatever you want, though they usually specifiy a type (choose any one land, choose any one creature, whatever, there's all sorts of choice variations).  You have plenty of choice.

Aggressive decks are plenty possible in this... you just have to know what you're doing.  Even with the non-targeting of creature assaults, it's never quite that simple.  It's not meant to be about choosing which creatures to attack; it's about choosing which ones will DO the attacking, and also about just how you're going to back them up and foil your opponent's defenses.  A bit of logic can let you figure out how to give your opponent few options, forcing them to block with the creature that you specifically want to kill off; in other words, by doing that, you have in fact just chosen your target instead of letting your opponent do the choosing.   One of my favorite parts of the game, that.  I love manipulating opponents into doing stuff; I'll often make the first move because of this, since manipulation is something I'm bloody fantastic at.  And sometimes taking what seems to be losses on purpose is exactly the way to do this.

Also, if creatures could always directly target other creatures, it'd be boring.

You're not supposed to attack with your strongest monster every time, yet you can still HAVE a strongest monster and a strategy built around it. 


That all being said, yes, it is the slowest TCG, but I've never seen "lack of aggression" as the reason behind it.  To me, the reason behind it is the very slow buildup of mana, which is also dependant on the cards drawn.  You also tend to just plain not draw cards all that fast.   I think this is why, in Hearthstone, you just plain get an extra max mana point every turn no matter what.  But in Magic, it's part of the cards; you have to not only wait to draw lands, you have to then wait to fill your hand with more spells.  This has always irritated me, but I cant deny that it DOES work in the end.

But it's also definitely nice to have much faster TCGs available to play, because Magic really is indeed just WAY too slow for some players.  I, personally, just have yet to find a fast one that I really like.  I mean, Hearthstone is okay... but I don't play it very much.  It gets a bit too stale.  Beyond that I just haven't found anything.  Irritating.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 03, 2016, 11:21:08 AM
There was a card game called "Duel Masters" which was designed by the same guys behind Magic but with the intend for a faster paced and more casual friendly system.
The whoel thing was basically Magic but with a refined system and probably for a younger generation.
There were soem rules that I prefer on Duel Masters over Magic but in terms of strategy Magic will beat it any day. but honestly, Magic beats every TCG to that, soooo no surprise here.
Anyway, the main reason why Duel Masters is faster paced is that Mana is not dependend on specific cards anymore (lands). instead every single card you had in your hand was potential mana. Cards could b turned around (some magic cards could do the same, dual creatures) and on the bottom you had  asmall colored number that indicates the amount of mana it gives. The basic set and the first expansions after that featured only cards that gave one mana for a specific color. later there have been combined cards that gave mana for two different colors. I think they intended in the beginnings to make cards that give more mana but I've never seen a card that could do that. They probably scrapped the idea in terms of balance.

The other major difference to Magic is that they removed the life point system. instead you die in one hit. HOWEVER, both players start with five shields. Shields are cards that you put from your deck upside down on the field. If a shield is destroyed, the player can put the card in its hand. Some cards have special effects that trigger if they have been a shield that got destroyed (shield trigger).
Additionally to that, not every creature can block, only creatures wit the ability "blocker". Most blockers cannot attack however, similiar to what walls are in Magic.
Creatures can attack other creatures, however onyl if the target creature is tapped 8meaning it used either  special ability or attacked last round). Cards have only one stat, attack, which means the stronger card always wins. This saves the time for c alculating health into account and also wipes more often the field from monsters.
The game is more simple than Magic but that makes it also a lot faster and easier to play. They implemented later a lot of the abilites they had in Magic (which makes sense since they are fromt he same company) like multi-colored cards or the ability to bypass enemy defenses. One of the best expansions were the one where they introduced evolution. Evolution cards worked only on a specific monster type on the field but then you had  astronger monster that could attack immediatly (no summoning restriction).

It was a very cool card game but it never came close to the success of Magic.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Mánagarmr August 03, 2016, 05:15:23 PM
Okay, so far we got these games already in the other thread:

Duelyst (https://duelyst.com/)
Solforge (http://store.steampowered.com/app/232450/)
Chronicle (http://store.steampowered.com/app/205890/?snr=1_4_4__tab-PopularNewReleases)

I want to add some other games to the list.

Magic Duels (http://store.steampowered.com/app/316010)

Basically Magic the Gathering as online game. they had this before but it wasn't very popular except for hardcore players for mutliple reasons. It wasn't free. That's not entirely true, the client was free, the cards just weren't. You either had to buy cards in the store for real money relating to the current market value of cards. People who know printed TCG very well, esspecially MtG, will know that buying specific printed cards can be very expensive.
Magic Duels is now finally the free variant of the game, its engine is based on the "Duels of the planeswalker" game series they released once each year. Peopel who own these games know that they are very well designed in terms of gameplay but (except the last game) lacked a real deck builder, you had pre-defined decks with some minor card customization options. I haven't played Magic Duels myself but i believe it removes the deck restriction and is in its core more true to the real MtG. the reason why they suddenly release a free online TCg should be obvious. With the rising tide of online tradign card games there has been created a huge market that you can profit from. Also the interest for real TCGs gets lower since you can have your daily fix on card games faster and cheaper on the internet. Real hardcore fans will of course stay, but if you want to make big profit you have to increase the market. I think for people who want the MtG experience without the need of buying real life cards this is a good replacement.


Pox Nora (http://store.steampowered.com/app/201210/)

Pox Nora can be seen as the "ancestor" of Duelyst if you want to put it like this. it features similiar mechanics but is a LOT older. The first version was released around 2006 and was previusly owned by Sony Online Entertainment. 2011 it was closed down until 2014 it was sold to Desert Owl Games and rereleased with a better marketing system. Similiar to Duelyst it is a cardgame mixed with boardgame mechanics. Each player has runes (cards) that he can play. Cards can be only played in casting range which is first near your shrine. Your shrine is a giant building that generates Nora (mana) for you and has to be protected. If it falls, you loose.
To play cards you have to pay the Nora costs, stronger cards cost more just like in any other game with a mana mechanic. To get additional Nora each turn you can capture Nora fonts that are present on each map. Your enemy can do the same but if both players stay in the capture range of the same font, the font is negated for both. Capturing and holding fonts is a very important aspect of the game and if you cannot hold the position you will probably loose the game.
I could descripe stats and abilities of cards but the problem is, Pox Nora has TONS of these. So I will put it simply to give a basic understanding. Every card can be a champion or a spell (and some other minor cards like equipment which basically also counts as spell). Champions have different movement lengths, attack ranges and other stats. Additionally every champion has abilities, the most basic ability of every champion is an attack. It's importnant to know, the attck counts as seperate ability and can be different from each creature which means it can also have different effects.
Additoonally to the attack a champion can have one or more spells or other special abilities. And some champions can also have passive effects on them that are either pemanent active or active when a certain condition is met.
When a champion dies he leaves a Nora globe worth half his initial Nora costs in its spot. Both players can collect the globe by moving with another champion over it. This is important to know because a player that lost a champion can still manage to get half the costs back and with this not losing advantage.
Champions can only be placed aroudn the shrine or captured Nora fonts. Spells can however be casted in cast range. Cast range is generated by shrines, fonts and even champions. Everything outside the cast range cannot be targeted, so you cannot snipe a creature next to the enemy shrine if you have no creature nearby.
Every rune can be used multiple times however with a limit. When a champion is destroyed or a spell played, the rune goes into "cooldown" which is basically the graveyard in other games. After a number of turns you get the rune back to your hand. This allows unlimited use of runes.

The game is very complex and needs a lot of tactical awareness at all time. Therefor I see Duelyst as the "casual" version of Pox Nora which is easier to learn and master.
There are 8 different factions in the game that belong to either the "good" side or the "bad "side. Each fation has additional to its runes a special ability that affects the game. For example the undead faction has lower cooldowns on their runes, meaning they can "reanimate" dead champions faster. You can also mix two factions as long as the faction ratio is 50:50. If you mix two factions, you get a weaker version of the special ability of both factions.

The game is really interesting and worth to check out as long as you are not afraid of deep strategic games with a lot of factors and stats to keep in mind. I had a lot of fun with it and will probably pick it up again soem time soon since a new set has been released recently.

Shadow Era! *rabble rabble*
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: eRe4s3r August 03, 2016, 10:27:00 PM
Match making, expansion model and what gameplay mode the developers favor is always the killer argument for card games imo... when it's a f2p focus, then match making can totally break constructed quickplay, especially when you constantly spew out new card expansions (which raises the price of entry for quickplay constructed exponentially for new players). Best example of how badly you can hug this up is Solforge, in their infinite wisdom, the only way you can play draft daily is by playing online and winning something a new player will never, ever manage due to broken MM. If you are not good at those draft matches (And how could you if your card selection is based on what you WANT to have in YOUR constructed deck, and not what you need in the Draft match), you will also not get any rewards for it. So it's an eternal spiral of salt, and the reviews on steam are proof how well this works out for the devs.

Nearly all f2p games with constructed mode have this problem, albeit in more or less severe form. Many f2p games will add massive entry barriers for the game mode they should actually promote (and that is draft/arena) and focus on constructed ranked instead, which is gonna be misery and pain for new players with no decent card selection. Especially when there aren't that many new players to actually be matched against.

So Imo what is a "good" card game mostly depends on how and when you play it in it's lifecycle... and what game mode the developers shove in your face for "free" play AND how the reward system is designed.

I need to take a longer look at Solforge sooner or later to fully formulate my rant on that btw ;p It has, imo, the absolute worst new player experience of any card game I ever tried. And this is a collection of issues, MM, expansions, booster pack prices, quest rewards, interface and even starter deck design. Everything is made with the sole purpose to punish you if you are a new player. And punish you so hard you either stop playing or start paying. But sadly for the devs, nowadays we live in a world of steam reviews.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 04, 2016, 01:45:25 AM
The problem with Solforge is indeed that new players don't have a chance. That's their own fault, you could get daily rewards from offline plays but they removed this with the arrival of the new client. Since than older players stand on the barricades to fight for the return of the AI match rewards. i hope they will come back but I doubt it. They somewhat are stuck int he thinking that if you give soemthing easy away for free then no one will buy the premium stuff. if this would have been the case they would have run out of money two years ago.
I made several suggestions int he Solforge forum to improve the experience for newer players, we will see if they consider it or not. The game itself is very good but with the current system they kidn of ruined it for new players and old players alike.

Plus some of the later campaign modes are really hard because they use special rules and the campaign is currently the best place to get soem of the best cards of the game (Forgeborn, Imprisoned Heralds). Especially the battle against Cercee is unfair. Every monster that deals battle damage to the opponent is immediately destroyed.
I'm currently stuck ont he Gauntlet quest that I need for my armor deck. You can play only one card per turn instead of two.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: eRe4s3r August 06, 2016, 06:37:50 AM
Sooo

The Elder Scrolls Legends (Open Beta started)

Played the campaign - Char level 11 and won my first 7 Arena wins failed at enemy 8 though..

Have to say, it has a pretty fair and fun starting phase, quests only work with online games or campaign/arena, but so far have not seen any "win" requirements. For 3 wins you get a card and 15 gold btw. No idea if that is finite or not, but that is a neat goody for winning and not overpowered. Card pack costs 100 gold

Something that makes constructed a bit weird - cards level up abilities the higher your character level is. And depending on your own character CLASS you get themed cards for that class (though you can craft them)

Crafting costs are OK I guess? I am at 750 souls and barely did anything, could in theory craft cards I need, if I knew yet what I need ;p

We'll see where this one goes, the campaign is fully voiced and quite fun btw for the 20 chapters that it lasts.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 06, 2016, 10:02:56 AM
Here are two rather unconventional card games. Let's start with the one that isn't actually a card game.

Talisman: Digital Edition
http://store.steampowered.com/app/247000/?l=german

Talisman is actually a board game but for some weird reason Humble Bundle featured it once in a card game bundle so whatever. In Talisman you play as a hero who seeks the Crown of Command who gives the wielder the power to control others. You compete against up to 5 other players and your goal is to reach it first and then use it to take over the other players. Each palyer selects a character at the start, each character has different abilities and stats. All characters have strength, craft, life, destiny and a gold coin. The players roll a die and move their character accordingly on the board in any direction. On each field they draw a card. Cards reveal the encounter on your field, this can be a monster, an event, a person or an item.
You fight monsters with either your strength or your craft stat depending on the monster you meet. Defeated monsters are collected as trophies or "experience points" you can exchange them for more stats. To reach the final tile of the board you have to "level up" your character and earn the "Talisman" which gives allows passage to the final field. On the last field you have to roll a die to determine if you can overpower the mind of other characters. If you succeed they loose a life point, you continue this until everyone except you is dead. Other characters can still come for you and kill you before this happens however. Okay, to be honest, the game is very complex but also fun at the same time. There is of course a huge luck involvement here. You need luck with your cards and your dice rolls.
The game has  alot of expansions that mainly add new characters to play and new cards that you can draw on fields. Some expansions also add new ending cards. Ending cards can be drawn before the start of the game to set which ending you play. the standard ending is the one where you collect the crown there are however other endings where you have o fight a boss at the final field or have to collect specific items. A few expansions also add new regions to the game that you can explore. You don't need any expansion however if you play with other people that own already said expansions. They share the expansion simnply with you and you can play them for free. the game itself however isn't.


Havenfall
http://havenfall.com/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=703325314&searchtext=
Havenfall has currently no game client or anything like that. The game is currently in development I think? There is a kickstarter campaign but I'm not sure if it's for a digital or printed version of the game.
You can still play it if you own Tabletop Simulator (which you should because it opens to you tons of cool board and card games FOR FREE after the initial purchase cost).
Simply download it fromt he Steam Workshop. Now Havenfall works entirely different than other card games. Instead of building a deck before the match, you build your deck during the match. Both players start with 10 cards as deck. These cards represent their starting resources. They can use the resources to buy new cards and place on the discard pile. once their starting cards run out they shuffle the discard pile and place it as deck. This can happen as many times as the deck runs out. Your deck gets eventually very fat, so you can "trash" cards, meaning you remove them from the game on purpose if you pay the fee.
There are two currencies, treasure which is valued in copper, silver and gold, and pixels. Treasure is used to buy cards for your deck. Pixels come in different colors and are used to either trash cards or activate special effects on a card. You obtain pixels by slaying monsters.
The goal of the game is to defeat boss monsters on the field. These give you points and the player with ten victory points wins the game.
Unlike other card games you don't directly attack. However, you can use cards to sabotage him so you beat the bosses first. The game is a little hard to understand first, more so because the rule book isn'r really well written but it has  an interesting concept with a nice twist.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 07, 2016, 03:30:10 PM
I recently got back to Pox Nora and I remmeber how great the game actually is. There recently has been a new set released but th enewest set is only aviable for real money in Pox Nora (such is life) but every other set is aviable for the ingame currency.
The only thing that I don't like about it is the clunky UI (the game is really old and you can see this). To modify decks you have to go to the website, you cannot do this ingame. If you click on the deck manager it will simply open the website for you. That's one of the more annyoing things in the game.
The other is, there are so many abiltiies, it is hard to remember all. In every match you start with reading the abilities of enemy monsters. It takes some time to keep some of the more common champions in mind.
Since you can take your time and read the abilities ingame it isn't such of a big deal but new players probably will have their "WTF?" moments.
still I can suggest this game for people who like deep tatctical games with a lot of different stuff to experiment with.

If you start the game,let me know so I can give you some basic information about it. If you know what faction you want to play mainly it is advised to get the faction avatar. This is not a card but a transformation for your shrine. You can transform ingame your shrine into a hero unit that has good stats but looses soem of the benefits of the shrine (including the ability to summon champions near it).
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 07, 2016, 04:53:23 PM
I was thinking about getting into Pox Nora again, as I played it in my childhood, but after reading some of the Steam reviews I'm pretty turned off to it. Some of the reviews are pretty damning. People are saying it's an extremely expensive cash cow, and now that you're telling me the latest expansion is money-only, that just makes it sound even worse. I might give it a try anyway, for old time's sake, but it's going to be hard to enjoy it when Duelyst is so similar and so generous with its rewards.

I went ahead and tried Elder Scrolls: Legends, because it seemed pretty cool. This Forbes article (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiBps3bpbDOAhUKTCYKHQLbAXEQqQIIIDAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Finsertcoin%2F2016%2F08%2F05%2Ffirst-impressions-of-the-elder-scrolls-legends-hearthstone-and-magics-lovechild%2F&usg=AFQjCNHgAVltUHG2qH6YWc3LBiY7k5wR_A&sig2=7f3J70dD7Wa0dVaK30FzlA) was calling it a mixture between Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering, which made it sound like a lot of fun!

Unfortunately, the same article points out a lot of its flaws, which for the most part I agree with.

Actually, one of the things I really like about Magic is the interaction between players that is missing in most card games. Most online card games now are like "Oh you take your turn. I take my turn. You take your turn. I take my turn." SNOOZE, SOMEONE KILL ME.

Where in Magic, it's much more active. You choose what minions you want to block the opponents attacks, and with all the different phases you can always jump in and interrupt what the opponent is doing with instant cards and such. As I said, it's much more interactive, it's less an individual masturbation session and then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best until your next turn.

So I was like "Wow, maybe Elder Scrolls can add some of that!"

Unfortunately, it did not. At least not in any meaningful way. The "Prophecy" mechanic in general just makes the game too luck based for me, which is unfortunate because it had the potential to be good, if it had been a little more original, and a little more like Magic and less like Hearthstone.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 07, 2016, 05:22:17 PM
That's been actually worse when Sony still owned the game. Back then there have been only be 3 or 4 sets been open for players to buy with ingame money, every other set has to be bought with real money. Nowyou cannot buy the latest set but when a new set is released it gets free for everyone.
So, it got better, not worse. It's also a lot easier to earn gold, you can get 200 per daily match (two matches against a randomly generated AI opponent) plus 200 if you complete both. You get also gold for a lot of other additional stuff and you can now sell cards for shards and then forge new cards with it ( a feature that many other TCGs have). And unlike other online card games you can trade in this one, which makes it a true trading card game.
Peopel that pay real money will still have an advantage but this will always be the case with games like this. You can speed up the process of colelcting cards, more cards mean you have more options to build a deck. A f2p player has only a few options at hand to buzild his deck and that limits him in his strategies, makes him more vulnerable for other decks that have more cards.

That's true in any online card game, even in Duelyst.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 07, 2016, 05:54:34 PM
I didn't realize Sony no longer owns the game.

Well anyway, like I said I'll give it a try. I'm giving Magic Duels a try too, so we'll see.

As I said, my biggest beef is with these games that progress so slowly and yet give you no chance of victory in matchmaking unless you pay an arm and a leg. At that point I'd rather just play Duelyst because it's so generous, in comparison to the other ones I've played.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 07, 2016, 06:01:51 PM
That's pretty much true. So far Chronicle and Duelyst are the fairest ones because the basic cards you get are always useful, even in veteran decks. every other game fails this concept, I'm failry sure because they fear that then no one would buy with money (which is rubbish, you just have to give them a good reason like cosmetics and stuff).

Overall Pox Nora has been improved a lot (in terms of balance and new player experience) but they didn't improve the client. At all. It still has the same flaws it had four years ago. sometimes champions don't react on the first command, some ability thumbnails don't show what they do, the ontrols aren't the best (why do i have to right click for scrolling across the map? Why does it not pan when it reaches the edge of the screen?). I wish they did some improvements on that. The only one I see is when an ability refers to another ability or effect, you now see what that effect does (for example when a unit is immune against knock-back it now also tells you what knock-back does, the game didn't do this before). I think the whole client needs a make over but this would take a lot of time (and money) to do and I guess they are not willing to do it or maybe cannot even afford it financially.
I still hate it that you have to adjust your decks on the website and cannot do so in the game. That slows down quick adjustments on your deck.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 09, 2016, 04:18:07 AM
I played Pox Nora  little more to see how the rewards are. they are actually very generous, I don't get what people want more.
You get 200 gold for each of the two daily matches plus 200 if you can beat both, makes 600 gold.
You always have 4 daily quests that give 350 gold each 8some give less but are easier to obtain), this gives around 1500 per day. This means you can get up to 2100 gold each day plus several more for normal games against other players. A new core card pack costs 2100 gold. So you can get at least that one each day. An extended card pack (contains cards from newer sets) costs 3510 gold. You might not get one each day but you can get one every two days at least. You can also save your money and buy a full box that contains ten booster packs (but you pay only for 9). This would take you around 9-10 days and you are guaranteed to get an exotic in the first pack you open, all other packs have the usual chance of 10% for an exotic and 5% for a legendary cards. Rarities include common, uncommon, rare, exotic, legendary.
And additionally you can also solve the monthly quests. These can give you 1500-3000 gold each and you have four each month. If you can solve all four, you get 500 shards. Shards are used for crafting specific cards like in other online card games. You can get shards also from scrapping cards you don't need or have too many from.


Now let's get to ranked. For reaching the first rank in ranked you get 1000 gold after the season. And you don't have to win. That's right, you can imrpove your rank by simply playing. Winnign a match gives you two points, losing one gives you only one point, so you get faster to higher ranks if you win. I don't know if this changes in higher ranks like in other TCGs where your first rank does not feature a penality for loosing but in higher brackets you loose points. You can simply reach the first rank by plaing 5 games, no matter if you win or loose.
Does this sound unfair in any way? Maybe for players who win because they don't get that much more compared to players that have lost. But except that I don't see why a f2p player has no chance of getting a lot of cards.


I also want to show something from Solforge.
I'm currently using this deck for ranked and it is surprisingly very effective.
AN Abominable Defenders

3x

    Abyssal Maw
    Citadel Guard
    Death Current
    Dr. Frankenbaum
    Ebonbound Warlord
    Graveborn Glutton
    Howl of Xith
    Vault Welder
    Xithian Direhound
    Xithian Rotfiend
The deck does not contain a single legendary or heroic card, most cards are easy obtainable and many are included in the starter cards. The idea behind the deck is to spam your abnominations and debuff enemy creatures with -attack/-health. Death Current is used to remove some of the more annoying creatures or to pinpoint a single creature for your debuffs. Additionally Graveborn Glutton and Dr Frankenbaum will eventually wear the enemy out because they do damage to him whenever they or an Abomination dies. Howl of Xith is both a damaging and healign spell, it does 3 damage to the opponent multiplied with your current rank, you also get healed the same amount of hp.
Current weaknesses are decks with "Vengeance: Spawn this", in other words, decks that have reanimated creatures. Zimus teh Undying is your worst nightmare because he comes back no matter what you do. To coutner this, put at least one Nanoswarm in the deck because that card removes all abilities and turns him to "Zimus keeps dying". Will you dominate wit this deck? No, because it lacks any heroics, you lack utility. However, you will have an easier time until you reach silver rank. From there upwards it gets however harder and harder.

The deck was taken from this post about good decks with only common cards and uncommon cards, however most decks are outdated, I foudn this however still viable.
https://solforgegame.com/forum/strategy-discussion/best-budget-deck-thread-6-or-less-legendary/#p182161
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 09, 2016, 08:06:37 AM
Tried Shadow Era:

Extremely disappointed.

The terrible animations and production value I could get over, but you can't even run the game in 1920x1080 (or what 99.9% of monitors use these days or higher), much less fullscreen mode.

The gameplay itself wasn't that interesting either. I was stuck with 1 commander at the very start, where in pretty much every other online card game I've played you get to choose from usually 7 or more at the start, without having to pay or play more than a few minutes to unlock them. It was bad...

I found another one called Hex: Shards of Fate (http://store.steampowered.com/app/410380/). I've been really liking it so far. It plays a lot like Magic the Gathering, with some fundamental differences such as 'hero abilities', classes, and a few new mechanics.

The production values seem solid, it's very enjoyable to play, and the "dungeon system" they've included looks like it could have a lot of potential. I'll let you know as I keep playing it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 09, 2016, 08:29:27 AM
I was hesitated to try out Hex because it got  alot of negative rebiews. then again, when it comes to F2P games, people jump easily on the "this is bad" wagon because it's easy to start these games (you don't have to buy it) but hard to get into it. people bounce off because they don't understand the mechanics well enough or don't know strategies that work and conclude that the game has to be pay to win. A game is not pay to win simply because you are bad at it, just saying.

Anyway, I will give it at least a try now but I'm already full on card games, so I will just test it.

Another side note, talisman (the board card game) has released a new expansion, Blood Moon. It's centered around a new NPC character, the werewolf. That's the second big expansion centered around an unplayable character, the first one was the reaper where a new figure was added to the board that hunts down players and if it reaches them, something bad (or with some luck good) might happen to them.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 12, 2016, 05:52:18 AM
We were discussing card game models recently, and whether or not the developers intentionally made bad cards.

Well, I'm sorry to say that I've got the smoking gun right here.

Currently in Hearthstone, the Priest is the worst class in the game and in the worst place it's ever been. Players were waiting for this new expansion, One Night in Bangcock or whatever, to give Priest the cards it needed to become competitive again. Instead, they revealed what some are calling the worst card in the game (Purify), and many players took this as an insult, and a total disconnect from what the community wants.

Dozens of threads were made on this topic, and the most popular Hearthstone streamer, Kripp, created a 15 minute video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cucw9HNp4KA) addressing this card. He basically slams Blizzard for the entire 15 minutes, essentially calling them imbeciles and liars (before the expansion details were released, they promised to fix Priest with the new cards). It's a roast.

In response, Blizzard creates a video in which their lead developer, Ben Brode, attempts to explain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot7nlHXPLqU) why they have intentionally put this terrible card in the game for an already terrible class. The results are cringeworthy. The guy spends 6 minutes making an utter ass of himself. It's difficult to concede that he even believes half the things he's saying to try and justify the card.

: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: eRe4s3r August 12, 2016, 09:58:34 AM
That response video is really weird, did he actually say they made a "bad card" intentionally because losing with a bad card with the worst class in the game is fun to him? Since when is losing fun?
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 12, 2016, 10:13:23 AM
That response video is really weird, did he actually say they made a "bad card" intentionally because losing with a bad card with the worst class in the game is fun to him? Since when is losing fun?
Since Dwarf Fortress.
I haven't seen the videos, will respond to it once I've done so.

I haven't played the new expansion nor have I seen the new card, so I cannot even say what it does. I only know about the rage because Nerf Now mentioned it in one comic. But even Jo seems to missed it according to the comic.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery August 12, 2016, 11:08:56 AM
That response video is really weird, did he actually say they made a "bad card" intentionally because losing with a bad card with the worst class in the game is fun to him? Since when is losing fun?
Since Dwarf Fortress.

Aye, pretty much the DF argument.

Though considering the sorts of games I play, I could also list entire genres that answer that same question.

Wether or not it fits CARD games though is a whole other matter. 

I had a brief look at the videos myself, and realized something:  It's been so long since I've played HS that I frankly haven't the foggiest damn clue what they're talking about half the time. 
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: eRe4s3r August 12, 2016, 12:01:16 PM
That response video is really weird, did he actually say they made a "bad card" intentionally because losing with a bad card with the worst class in the game is fun to him? Since when is losing fun?
Since Dwarf Fortress.

But DF is not a competitive multiplayer game ;) If it were it'd have a metacritic score of -9000 because of RNG
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 12, 2016, 02:04:47 PM
It was a joke anyway, so don't take it seriously.
The thing is, in card games everyone wants to win and this in all games. but someone has always to loose, that's the thing. And the looser will always feel that it was somehow unfair for him.

Anyway, I watched the two videos. The "justification" of the developer is bullshit at its best. he literally says int he first minute "We don't want to make every card good/viable" and then the rest of the video is just explaining why it's good to have  a bad card.
As far as I've understood what he said, he meant that soem cards need to be bad so some players may find interesting ways to play it. Uh... what?
So you just hope your players will find eventually  agood use for a card that you ADMITTED was designed terribly bad? You except ypur customers to give a bad card a reason to exist because you are too lazy to create a proper card for this class? Ouch.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: crazyroosterman August 12, 2016, 03:11:16 PM
It was a joke anyway, so don't take it seriously.
The thing is, in card games everyone wants to win and this in all games. but someone has always to loose, that's the thing. And the looser will always feel that it was somehow unfair for him.

Anyway, I watched the two videos. The "justification" of the developer is bullshit at its best. he literally says int he first minute "We don't want to make every card good/viable" and then the rest of the video is just explaining why it's good to have  a bad card.
As far as I've understood what he said, he meant that soem cards need to be bad so some players may find interesting ways to play it. Uh... what?
So you just hope your players will find eventually  agood use for a card that you ADMITTED was designed terribly bad? You except ypur customers to give a bad card a reason to exist because you are too lazy to create a proper card for this class? Ouch.
this doesn't surprise me at all considering how in response to the out cry to war song commander getting nerf sledgehammered was that ,new players think its a bad card, or at least something as equally as stupid as that.

now as much as I loving shitting on hearthstone I think its time to drag the train and get railed again so I'm going to put a link up to a game I used to play fairly causally but that I think was rather interesting called Infinity Wars http://store.steampowered.com/app/257730/ I don't remember very much about it asides from the fact that I was lane based with 2 lanes and 3 support slots for each player.
 in those slots you started out with 3 bodies of your choosing they cant attack unless you send them down to one of the fighting lanes their passives still count and you can still activate their ability's if they have  any.
they also had a thing were they'd have about 5 decks that got changed every so often were you could use these regardless of what you have which was pretty great for learning or if you didn't have much time for it like I did.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 15, 2016, 08:55:08 AM
Okay, two things. First about Hearthstone and its new expansion. I played the first mission (the free one) which was probably some of the weirdest matches I've ever seen. You roleplay as one big magician and have to defeat a demon who interrupts your party. The big thing is, your deck his literally zero minions, only magic cards. oh, the opponent starts also out with 30 armor (in fact, you do too). It was very weird to play and unlike everything I've ever seen (honestly, currently you see C'thun decks only, so there is no surprise in that). After I understood how the deck works, I could win the match.
You get two cards for that mission. A 2/2 minion that costs 1 mana. That's all, he does nothing, he is probably the most bland and boring minion that there is to exist. Since he is free, he will probably be good for new players since he can be summoned in the first turn, but with no effects I doubt more experencied players will make good use of him.
The other card however is more interesting. Firelands Portal. It costs 7 and deals 5 damage to a minion or player of choice, but you also get a free 5 cost minion on the field. It's a mage card of course and I except it to see in many mage decks.

I haven't played the second mission because I have to grind gold first. I will never pay real money for this scammy game.
However, you can see the cards in the second mission here: http://eu.battle.net/hearthstone/en/expansions-adventures/one-night-in-karazhan/the-parlor



Okay, the other thing I want to mention is that Chronicle has now daily login rewards. It's the same system as in Freemium games, log in each day and get improved rewards with each day. For the first day you get a free booster pack that's at least worth to get, you get also more on the way. After 18 days you get a free random ruby card. As a reminder, Chronicles rarities are from lowest to highest emerald, saphire, ruby, diamond. Since you don't know what ruby card you get, 18 days seems a lot. Also, if you skip one day and log in at the third, you won't start with the booster pack instead (as far as I've understood the mechanic) instead you get at day 3 your second reward.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 19, 2016, 02:33:29 PM
Just got a mail. It looks like Duelyst finally gets its first expansion. And about damn time. The expansion adds new 105 cards to the game. For 50$ you can pre-purchase the expansion, get an exclusive card back and 50 booster packs. That deal may be fair (price wise) but it's still a lot of money so I won't buy nor do I encourage/suggest anyone to do it. Unless of course you are all crazy about the game and think it's worth the money.
This will hopefully finally fix my main isse with the game: it has no varity at all. Since the game is still very young, there aren't many cards and after 10 matches you have basically seen most of them. And after 50 matches you will notice that you see the same cards over and over, teh sam etactics over and over, not much of varity. 105 new carda are a lot and will definitely fix this problem.

If you have subscribed to the newsletter, you get the same mail and can see a preview of some cards that are included int he new set.

Also, the new set will include the all new Battle Doge. When you open the mail you will see what I mean.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 23, 2016, 05:52:14 PM
It looks like Pox Nora is getting a PS4 release along a brand new client. That's right, after 10 years we finally get a new client. That's about time if you ask me. The current client works but it does not work good. It's sometimes laggy, buggy, the UI is not userfrienldy and you cannot get access to the shop or the deck manager like in other games. If you want to make tiny changes to your deck, forge a new card or buy a pack you always have to open a browser and open the website. And the website acts also slow as hell, loading  a single rune for details takes several seconds. That's not a good game where you can customize cards for your deck (selecting abilities).
However, they will finally integrate all this in the new client when it comes out.
The graphics and effects don't get an update but that's okay, the game looks fine the way it is, a little outdated but the game is ten years old and there are so many runes in the game it would take ages to change every single one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxg4kLSl8jo

The trailer states summer 2016 (which would be actually now) but they stated somewhere, but I cannot rmeember where, it will be pushed back to Q4 this year. I really hoped it would be sooner because that's what the game needs. But I'm happy that they finally make the refinements the game needs so hard. It's a really cool game with a good reward system but the terrible client turns many people off.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 23, 2016, 06:55:23 PM
Yeah the Pox Nora client is definitely one the biggest reasons I'm not playing it. That thing was created when I was practically a kid. It's older than molasses.

Pox Nora definitely seems interesting to me, though it's certainly a bit daunting with 1600+ cards. I just feel like the entry barrier is INSANE at that point, which is one of the reasons I'm glad I'm getting into Duelyst early, because it means I'll be able to keep up with all the new cards.

Speaking of which, the new expansion is coming out in a few days. So far, the cards which have been revealed just seem awesome. The battle pets mechanic in particular is bad ass, and I think many of the new cards are going to breathe new life into some of the less powerful classes.

I'm very very excited.

Also, the game was released on Steam today (http://store.steampowered.com/app/291410/), for anybody who wants to play!
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 23, 2016, 07:36:02 PM
Getting into Pox Nora is hard as newcomer. Even as veteran or old player you will get problems coming back because Desert Owl added a lot of new cards to the game and rebalanced the old ones (Zombies play entirely different now to what they did 5 years ago). But these changes are, so strange it may sound, for the better. the game feels a lot more balanced as it did before the owner change. In terms of both rewards and card balance. A lot of the older cards that were terrible have been improved. i won't say that every card is viable because that's hard with over 1000 cards. But the cards are balanced were they stand and even a seemingly terible card can be used in some cases.
Rewards are generous, I said this more then often enough, you can get tons of gold each day just from playing against the AI. Quests can be solved both for PVP matches and AI matches (some not because they directly state you have to play/win a pvp match but these are a minority).
If you play against other players, you get experience tokens (used to level up cards) if you play AI matches you get free cards from the faction you played in that match. if you played an Ironfist Stronghold deck, you will get an Ironfist Stronghold card. this system works perfecly fine, you play with your favourite faction and get rewarded with more cards for that faction.
Liek many other games of this type you can now also destroy cards and get shards for it, then use these shards to buy new cards you need. This makes building your dream deck very easy. In the recent week I imrpoved my Zombie deck a lot.

However, there still stands the point that new players will literally have no clue about the game. There is a detailed, playable tutorial that helps a lot but this does not help to consider what cards are good in what deck. For that reason I point to the forums of the game. I asked to improve my zombie deck and got some very useful tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxg4kLSl8jo
These tips helped me to remove terrible cards from my deck and select the right cards to put into it, they also gave me tips how to properly play the zombies.
There are multiple threads that adress decks of different themes and give example how to build these decks. I want toshow this general deck building guide, it does not exactly state what cards are good but it adresses the major aspects that every deck shoudl have.

http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/basic-battlegroup-guidelines.99/

It gives detailed information what types of different champions you need, what kinds of spells you should put into your deck and what counters you always need for your deck.
Besides that it would also be a good idea to check the 20 training decks out that the game offers. You can buy them for a minor amount of gold (and each week soem of them are free). They give you a good idea what types of card you need for that deck theme (for example a paladin oriented deck) and help you to test out the synergies of the cards.

Besides that tehre will always be an barrier. Old card games will have this problems because there are so many cards in them and it is not possible to learn them all in a short amount of time nor to understand which of them are good or bad.
If I look now at Yugioh, a card game I loved in the past, I can only shake my head. the game has chosen the the path to speed up things. The game gets faster with every expansion, I remember the days when it was a miracle if you could play a special summoned monster in one of your turns, now people pull this of int heir first turn and every turn after that. it's gotten so easy to summon a very powerful monster. And with the new pendulum system it's getting even more rodoculous. You can summon an unlimited amoutn of mosnters on your turn with the new pendulum system as long as you fulfill the requirements (which are easy to fulfill).
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 23, 2016, 07:47:35 PM
I want to check out Pox Nora but I'm just afraid that with all the craziness about having to do things in your browser I'll lose my mind. I mean I guess I could just do the quests every day until the new client comes out and solves that, I'm just not sure if it would be worth it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 23, 2016, 08:00:10 PM
My advice would be, wait. You can play your daily matches and commulate gold for the release of the new client but honestly I would wait. The only reason I'm playing is because I'm used to it already. It's still annoying but I can live with it. But its not comfortable at all and waiting 4 months isn't so long. You still can play Duelyst until then, the games are very similiar in terms of gameplay and with the new expansion there will be plenty of stuff to try out.
If you want to collect money until the client release, play dailies and use the trainign decks. You can buy them in the current game client with no problem (they cost 1000 gold each) and since you cannot modify them you never ever have to use the website. ´The training decks are good enough for daily matches, soem of them are even good enough to play ranked (but i wouldn't advice that except you really want the 1000 gold for the first rank).
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 23, 2016, 08:44:50 PM
How do I get the 1000 gold to buy the training deck? I might do just the dailies like you said. Pox Nora appeals to me and the client update might make it worth getting into again.

What faction do you think I would enjoy?

I generally like to play control in card games. I enjoy taking it to the lategame, playing huge minions, stealing my opponent's characters, things like that.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 23, 2016, 09:29:18 PM
Play daily matches. You can get up to 600 gold for them (plus additional gold for daily quests which work speerate from daily matches). These are predesigned matches against ai enemies. Most of them are fairly easy, only a handful are challenging and there was only one so far that I had to gave up. But I don't remember which one it was.
Before that you can play however the so called "walkthrough campaigns". These are campaigns that are centered around a faction deck. They give you a basic deck of said faction with the most common cards of the faction. For example the Shattered peaks use a lot of Voils, huge, sentient bats. They specialise in flying creatures with quick attacks but have a low tolerate rate against sonic attacks (since they are bats).
Either Underdepths or Forsaken Wastes migth be your faction of coice. Underdepths is more straightforward, they have very strong creatures that center around fire and blood. they either try to burn their opponents with fire each turn or splatter their blood across the field (literally). The blood that you splatter can be collected by any champion but hurts every champion that is not part of the demon or vampyire race. You will of course play demons and they will heal from the blood instead, which gives you an advantage on the field.

Or you might want to play a zombie deck like me. they don't take directly control of the opponent but they still turn your opponents creatures against him. Most zombies have the ability called "zombie apocalypse". Once you have 5 zombies or more (regardless if they possess the ability or not) the zombie gets an additional ability that allows him to convert killed enemies in more zombies. Soem zombies also have some utility spells, like the Affliction corpse that can cast a def debuff on enemies or the wandering zombie that spawns a second time after death. Playing zombies is all around overwhelming your enemy with creatures.
Here is  alist of all cards that allows to possess other creatures: https://poxbase.com/ability/175
As you can see, there aren't many and they are mainly in Forsaken Wastes. Possessin champions isn't popular because your opponent will most likely deplet his ap points (which are used to moce or cast actions each round) before ending his turn. So you won't have much use for a possessed enemy unless you can possess him for multiple turns. if you want to go that way, play Forsaken Wastes. They have also some other good control spells liek essence drain that drains half the HP of any champion and also cards like doom that kills enemy champions after a countdown. Soem of these cards are a little costly (in shards) or rare (in booster packs) but they are worth it.

If neither demons or zombies suits you, Forsaken Wastes have also Witches which are nice. Witches curse enemies, which means they remove some of the base stats (def, damage and speed) of each creature your opponent summons. The duration of this debuff depends on the number of witches you have in play. They can also "hex" your opponent, reducing his base damage to a significant amount (mostly around 60%). To complete the set, use Serkans touch which reduces the def, speed and damage of an opponent champion each turn. That's really terrible to see how a powerful card slowly decays. If you want to taunt your enemy, let it live, don't kill it. Then he cannot resummon it with its full stats. Witches also use all kinds of different spells that give you control.

If neither of them suits you, K'thir Forest has also some control abilities and powerful spells. Shattered Peaks has a card to "throw" and enemy champion out of the game for soem turns (until and falls screaming back to the ground) and the Voil Jester is one of the sickest control characters in game. Hecannot fight but he can disable abilities (except base attacks) from opponent, including all upgraded abilities. That thing is so sick, I'm wondering why it's a common card. Oh, and he also redirects damage from opponents back to them.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 25, 2016, 04:02:16 PM
I tried Poxnora again after like 10 years, and I just couldn't get into it.

You know what it reminded me of? Battle for Wesnoth, which is a Freeware game that's been in development for a long time as well. It offers the same sort of tile-based combat and mechanics as Pox Nora, except it's free, the graphics are a lot better, and everything is unlocked from the start so you don't have to spend thousands of hours unlocking everything or being at an unfair disadvantage.

My friends and I play Battle for Wesnoth all the time, it's one of our favorite games. I think I'd definitely choose that over Pox Nora, but that's just my personal preference.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 25, 2016, 04:26:46 PM
Is the steam version of Duelyst currently bugged? After the first game I'm always stuck in a loading screen.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 25, 2016, 09:58:45 PM
Is the steam version of Duelyst currently bugged? After the first game I'm always stuck in a loading screen.
It's not the Steam version it's just the game in general. The huge influx of new players has made the servers really laggy, so they're in the process of fixing it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 26, 2016, 06:47:46 AM
Damn, I wanted to grind gold for the new expansion so I can buy multiple packs when it comes out but with the current state I can abrely do one match.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier August 29, 2016, 07:16:14 PM
Damn, I wanted to grind gold for the new expansion so I can buy multiple packs when it comes out but with the current state I can abrely do one match.
Seems they fixed the problem, or it should be mostly fixed. I haven't experienced it much since it was first happening once the game was originally released to Steam. The Duelyst expansion drops tomorrow. I just reach 5000 gold so I'll have 50 packs to play around with. I'm super excited to see what I get.

So here's a list of 3 card games I recently tried:

1. Pox Nora

2. Hex - Magic clone with an actual better engine that any Magic online game out there, which is hilarious. But still, it's not Magic.

3. Infinity Wars - An interesting concept: Players take their turns simultaneously, and through the process of prediction and skill attempt to outwit each other. Still, it plays a bit like a Flash game and overall it didn't keep bringing me back.

4. The Skyrim card game - MEH

5. Astral Heroes - MEH

Here's a list I'm going to try:

1. Chronicle: Runescape Legends - This looks like it could be interesting, but I'll reserve judgment till I actually play it. I've never been big into Runescape so I'll probably not like it, and some people in the reviews were comparing it to Hearthstone, but it at least deserves a chance. It's supposed to have an RPG element to it so it could be neat.

2. Eternal card game - Kibler was showing this on his stream. It's supposed to be a hybrid of Magic and HS. I'll try it but I don't have high expectations.

3. Faeria - This game I'm the most interested in trying because it has a lot in common with Arcen's Skyward Collapse. Each player starts on an Island separated from each other, then they create tiles each turn which adds land to the map, and uses this land to play creatures. It looks really neat and it has a nice style. I'm definitely excited to try it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 August 29, 2016, 08:37:09 PM
Here is for once a non f2p game. I'm actually not sue if the onkine multiplayer works but it is listed on the store page so I guess yes?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/270790/

Etherlords 2. In my opinion one of the best card games for pc to exist.
Etherlords 2 is the sequel of Etherlords. Etherlords was a  game similiar to the "Heroes of Migth and Magic" franchise, you had your city at the start and your hero. You move your hero through the world map and collect resources and conquer structures. Eventually you will come across monters and enemy heroes. Like HoM&M you initiated battle but instead of a tactical boardgame battle you played a card battle. You could get cards from special shops and spend your collected resources there.
The goal as to destroy/conquer the enemy city.

Apparently players liked the card game the most about Etherlords, so the developers designed an entire game centered around the card fights: Etherlords 2.
Etherlords removed the ciry building aspect and the need to conquer structures, you still needed resources but they reduced the amount of ten to three. It was a rpg game with card fights whenever you reached a monster. Instead of multiple champions that you could hire, you played one character the whole game. Etherlords 2 featured 5 campaigns, two to select for the start and two additonal once you've beaten any from the starting camapigns. If you've beaten any of the later campaigns, you've unlocked the final campaign where you could play as the antagonist of the series.
The game features 5 races/factions, I honestly don't remember any of the names anymore, so I just give an overview what card types they used.
There was a forest faction that played insects, plants and tree folks, a mechanical faction that played grotesque cyborg creatures, an angel faction that played mostly flying creatures and powerful dragons and a babarian faction that played aggressive creatures like goblins and orcs.
The last faction, the antagonist of the series, were the pale ones, a colorless faction that played creatures with two modes, a physical and a "spirit" mode. I think you could mix the pale creatures with any other faction because they lacked a color. The color is an important theme of the series since it is linked to the mana in this world (called Ether in the game).

The card game can be described as Magic the Gathering. It's not similiar to it, it is the exact same thing with the exception of lands. Etherlords does not feature lands, you get Mana/Ether at the start of your turn and that increases on each turn. Etherlords does not use actual Magic cards but the concept is pretty much the same, they just invented their own cards for this game. That was probably the main reason why I liked the game so much. Another change to the concept was Ether burn or something like that. After a lot of turns passed, the players start to get damage at the start of their round. This damage increases each round and will kill the player eventually. This was introduced to fix stalemates. If both players cannot kill each other because their defenses are two strong, ether burn will eventually kill one of them. So if you played better then your opponent until this point (have more hp) you will win. It's a better solution instead of waiting until your deck is empty.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 September 01, 2016, 02:46:39 PM
Any good deck builds for the new Duelyst expansion? I somehow struggle to find what to put into my decks.

Btw, I'm currently runnign this deck (and one for the Raptor) on Chronicle: http://rscdecks.com/deck/99c6e5b61f50754cec4e005d

It's a Movran deck centered around Kalphites. The deck allows me to draw fast powerful kalphites and defeat them for a lot of armor while destroying enemy armor.
I need however a Kalphite queen which is a diamond card, so it will take me a long time to get my hand on one. But I can get one with Kalphite Egg Chamber.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Cyborg September 03, 2016, 01:12:41 PM
A little help please, for sentinels of the multiverse, some of the villains feel really grindy. I was in a single player match, and the villain had over 70 hit points, and there was no way I could keep up the damage and fight off the environment. How long should a single player game be? Can the environment ever help me? How do I get the DPS up?
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 September 03, 2016, 01:15:16 PM
Can you tell me what heroes you usally use, what expansions you own (if any), what villains you have trouble with, otherwise I cannot help you.

The length of a match varies with the villain you fight against. Some of the difficulty 4 villains take a lot of time to kill, the Chairman comes to my mind.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier September 04, 2016, 08:52:59 PM
Any good deck builds for the new Duelyst expansion? I somehow struggle to find what to put into my decks.
https://zyxthezyx.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/economy-class-duelyst-shimzar-edition/

Here's a good article on it. Hope this helps!
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 September 05, 2016, 04:21:59 PM
Yes, this helps me very much. I haven't tried them out yet but this is exactly I was looking for.
Thank you very much.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 September 09, 2016, 01:23:41 PM
Got my very first diamond card in Chronicle. First thing I did, I trashed it.
(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/257091902843660452/51C0E5B7CA2C63ED25094E3DC89E8E522BA4D5CA/)

The card was once really good, it dealt 3 damage plus 3 for every cannonball on your hand, so the maximum potential was 33 damage whith a minimum of 3. Now it does nto deal damage on it's own anymore and the damage was reduced to two per cannonball. So the max damage is 20 which is not bad but keep in mind, if you pull this off, you empty your entire hand afterwards, leaving your luck either to "my opponent dies through this" or "he does not die and I have to draw soemthign good next turn". Either way, there is one card that is much easier to use and a lot more common: http://chronicle.gamepedia.com/Earth_Blast
Earth Blast does exactly the same with the difference that it does count EVERY support card in hand, not only cannonballs and you can keep the cards at the end, giving you a better position against your opponent. The drawback of paying 6 gold is minor, Charos' ring let's you reduce the costs to three and Ali Morianne gives you three gold, both cards are basic cards, Earth Blast is  a common (Saphire) card.

At least I got 500 crystal shards for this card, so I'm one step closer to my Kalphite Queen.

: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 September 16, 2016, 09:37:26 PM
Sentinels of the Multiverse finally lets you preorder Season pass 2 on Steam. You will also get a Preview Pack that gives you some of the decks of season 2 to play with.
Season 2 will feature a new game mode where you fight against a team of villains instead of only one villain, each with their own deck. this creates more varity since you can combien team-villain decks as you want. Team-villains are weaker than classic villains but the combination possibilities keep the game interesting.
Note that there aren't any expansions out yet of season 2, all you get at the moment are some hero decks and an environment deck.
It features Setback, one of the most bizarre and interesting heroes to play with. Setbacks superpower is ultimate misfortune, any card he plays will also affect him negativly, he accumulates misfortune counters this way until he releases them for special abilites. Playing Setback is risky and most of the time not even rewarding but it can be funny.

Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/119955/
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Draco18s September 17, 2016, 04:07:10 PM
Sentinels of the Multiverse finally lets you preorder Season pass 2 on Steam. You will also get a Preview Pack that gives you some of the decks of season 2 to play with.

And if you purchase on anywhere mobile, Season 2 is discounted by $5.
If you want the Season 2 discount for Steam I think you have to go through Backerkit and pledge to the KS late.

Either way I'm waiting for an actual discount on Steam to pick up Season 2 there (already got it for my tablet, $5 discount isn't amazing but there might not be another one for a looong time).
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 September 21, 2016, 08:23:46 PM
Humble Bundle offers free cosmetics for Duelyst: https://www.humblebundle.com/
You get a card back, an emoji and an alternate art of a legendary card (along with the card itself).
If you register a new account, you also get 20 free booster packs (spirit orbs) which translate to 100 cards. That's a lot to start with, a decent amount for new players to design a competetive deck. Older accounts cannot get the 20 packs however, only the cosmetics and the free legendary.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier October 16, 2016, 01:24:28 PM
I've been playing Elder Scrolls: Legends again.

I had tried it before and for some reason I didn't like it. I guess it just seemed a little too generic, a little too much like Hearthstone and with not enough new mechanics to justify itself as its own game.

However, I started looking into it again because I saw a popular streamer (Kripp) playing it the other day.

They've changed a lot about it since I last played, and I think there's a lot of reasons to like it or at least to be interested in it compared to other popular games.

For one thing, there are essentially 5 classes of card (Agility, Endurance, Intelligent, Strength, Willpower), which is neat on its own, but what makes the game a lot deeper than say Hearthstone is that there are cross-class combinations. I guess in that sense it's similar to Magic, but it retains much of the fast-paced nature of online card games like HS.

So you kind of have the deck-building depth and complexity of a game like Magic the Gathering, but the action and intuitive fun of a game like Hearthstone.

There's a lot to like about this game, but the specific thing that got me back into it was that they added a "Solo Arena" feature, which retains all the awesome Arena mechanics of other card games (for those who didn't know, Arena is one of the best ways of earning cards and rewards in any game that has it), but Solo Arena is against the AI, so you get all the benefits of playing Arena without all the stress and frustration of playing against other people.

So like I said, I've been getting back into it. I'm pretty excited to see what it will be like once I have a large enough pool of cards to make an interesting constructed deck.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier October 17, 2016, 02:11:47 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/hIAOFEf.jpg)

The rewards are just ridiculous. 3 packs and 120 gold just for playing against the AI which you can do over and over.

There's no other card game that is nearly this generous.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 October 17, 2016, 03:27:13 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/hIAOFEf.jpg)

The rewards are just ridiculous. 3 packs and 120 gold just for playing against the AI which you can do over and over.

There's no other card game that is nearly this generous.
That's actually not a good sign. They probably had to do a 180° turnaround because people said the game wasn't very good. They had to do the same to TESO.
It may mean that the game is now better but at what costs? Giving out good rewards for free means always that they cut their own profits. This could mean ina  long run less support for the game.
This does not mean that this will happen but it can happen.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier October 17, 2016, 06:29:53 PM
That's actually not a good sign. They probably had to do a 180° turnaround because people said the game wasn't very good. They had to do the same to TESO.
Elder Scrolls Legends is still in beta, and it's made by a different company than TESO. Just because it's part of the Elder Scrolls Franchise doesn't mean it has any association with the MMO. The Warhammer franchise is huge spanning dozens of developers. Many of the games have done well, and many of them have done...not so well. But it's not fair to judge the success of one by the failure of another, or vice versa.

I haven't seen anyone saying anything negative about Elder Scrolls Legends, then again it's still in beta so most people hold their opinions until a full release of the game. It's more likely that the company creating the game is trying something new to distance itself from other, very similar card games, like Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering, both of which it takes obvious inspirations from.

It's also not necessarily the case that making packs easier to obtain ruins any kind of financial model of the game, it could just be that the companies that have been doing this before are being excessively greedy by giving such limited rewards even after their players have invested an immense amount of playtime. I think the cost for having the full Core Set of Duelyst cards averaged out to be around $800, and God only knows how many thousands it would be for the Hearthstone set. I don't want to think about it.

That's excessive, and I think these companies are well aware of that. Could be that Dire Wolf Digital is being a lot more fair than their competitors. Having said that, we'll see how long this lasts.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 October 20, 2016, 10:00:57 PM
Here's another one that features a card game about a well known franchise: https://www.pvzheroes.com/

In this case it's Plants vs Zombies. For people who don't know this, PvsZ is a good tower defense game with wacky characters where you fight zombies that invade your house with plants that you plant on your lawn. Plants shoot in one line at the zombies that move in that lane. Both plants and zombies can have various special abilities and like normal tower defense games, some plants counter specific zombies, some zombies counter plants.
The game was well praised for both the funny cartoon style and the deep gameplay.

The game got a (rather disappointing) sequel and two third person shooter spin offs (who are surprisingly good). Plants vs Zombies Heroes is now their attempt to get their (EA's) greedy hands on the card game market. The game is basically Hearthstone with plants and zombies, but also with a big twist: It's asymmetrical.

In best PvsZ manner you have the zombies on one side, the plants on the other, any side can be represented by players, you have different decks (and heroes) for zombies and plants. The plants and zombies have their own cards that are not a pure variation of te cards of the other side, they have totally different cards with different effects and a different playstyle.
Another thing that is untypical is, that both players share the same round. The zombie side starts and can play zombies (creatures), then the plant side can play plants (creatures) or powers (spells), then the zombie side can play again, but this time they can play tricks (spells) only to react on the enemy cards. After that the battle begins, creatures battle automatically what is in the same lane (or the enemy hero directly), you cannot choose what to attack.

Hero abilities work also differently here. Each hero has four abilities, but you cannot ast them like you want, instead you get one at the start of the game on your hand (as card) and the other three are randomly placed as "shields". Every time you take damage, the shield bar goes up, if its full you block the next attack and get one special ability and can play it either instantly or take it on the hand.
There are (like in the td game) five lanes, three in the middle and two side lanes. the side lanes are special in that way that one is elevated and one is water. You can only place aquatic cards on the water lane but anything on the elevated lane, however, some cards get a bonus on that one, for example the catapult plants from the td game.

There are some side specific differences that make the game more assymitrical, the plants can on one side play two plants in one lane (however, this has to be allowed by the card), for example you can place a torchwood in front of peashooters to get a damage bonus for the pea shooter. Or you can place wallnuts to protect your damaging plants. Its pretty much just like in the td game.
Zombies on the other hand can place "tombstone" zombies. These are hidden during the plant stage and cannot be targeted by spells. This allows you to surprise the enemy with unpreditcable zombies.

Now let's get to the most important point: Is it pay to win? Yes. Deeply. Like any free to play (and even those you have to buy) from Electronic Arts. You have two currencies, coins and gems. Coins are the normal currency and gems the premium currency that has to be bought with real money. You also get them from quests, a quest can give you 10-100 gems (depending on the difficulty). You also get them after a ranked season ends as reward (like the usual chests from any other trading card game).
Other than that? Tough luck, you cannot get them from matches.
Coins on the other end are rewarded after a match, regardless if you win or loose, but you get more for a victory of course.

So, what's the big problem? Well, you see, there are packs that can be bought only for diamonds, so called premium packs. These contain of course rare cards and are the ONLY way to obtain new heroes. You cannot unlock heroes via fighting them, you have to be lucky and get them from a booster pack. But that's not the worst. I could live if the cance of getting rarer cards would be higher ir anything but that's simply not the problem.
The problem is, the premium pack and the basic pack (the later is the only thing you can buy with coins) do not even share the same cards. The premium pack has entirely different cards, most likely more powerful cards, to divide the player base more than they should. It's a bad design t sort the "free to play peasonts" from the "paying customers". And the worst? Basic packs do not contain any rare cards. None. Only common cards. It's not that you have a "low" chance to obtain anything rare. You have no chance, not even a slight. They simply eliminate the risk that non-paying players might build up a strong deck and never consider buying gems.
Now, even if you can get gems from quests and ranked play, you need 100 for one pack and you will get STOMPED in ranked if you don't invest money. It's... really aweful.
I never play ranked because of this, I prefer to play single player (which allows you to fulfill the quests unlike other games) only.

It's funny however, that the game itself is very interesting and good. I had a lot of fun so far, however, the fun is only in single player matches. Aside fromt he huge pay to win aspect in this game, you should consider it.

However, there is no pc version at this point and I don't know if there ever will be. They promised one for plants vs zombies 2 and this was 5 years ago. So, you have to play it on your mobile phone.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: ptarth October 20, 2016, 11:52:20 PM
re:Sentinels
You can play 4 hero solo play. It's argued that the game is most balanced with 4 heroes, regardless of the number of players.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier October 23, 2016, 01:43:30 AM
Once again, the rewards in this game are absolutely incredible.

For example, in the Versus Arena, which is the version of Arena you play against people, you only have to get 7 wins in order to get the maximum rewards:

(https://i.imgur.com/hwnwBzh.jpg)

4 packs for 7 wins? Holy cow. In the other games you'll be lucky to get 2 packs for 12 wins, which is much, much harder to achieve.

Did I mention the rewards are insane for this game?

When you win 3 constructed games, you get not only gold, but a free card everytime, and it can even be a legendary card.

When you level up your hero (there are 50 levels) you get an extremely generous reward, and some of these even include extremely powerful legendary cards.

This game just throws good things at you. It's not that you don't have to make a time investment, but the payoff is vastly, vastly better than any other card game I've ever played. I don't even want to play Duelyst anymore because of how cheap it feels in its rewards compared to this.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Logorouge October 23, 2016, 11:26:25 AM
Such a generous online card game could be fun to try. But I'm wondering, since it's in Beta does that mean you'll lose all your cards at full release?
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier October 23, 2016, 02:01:55 PM
Such a generous online card game could be fun to try. But I'm wondering, since it's in Beta does that mean you'll lose all your cards at full release?
No you keep what you have.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Logorouge October 23, 2016, 02:07:10 PM
No you keep what you have.
Thank you. Looks like I have some downloading to do. :)
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier October 24, 2016, 03:10:17 PM
So there's a new card game that everyone's been raving about called Shadowverse.

At first it didn't seem like my cup of tea. For one thing it's mobile only, but I guess it's going to be released to Steam on the 26th, so in 2 days it will be a PC game.

It's made by a Japanese developer, so most of the playerbase at this point is Japanese. The pop Asian influence is well...obnoxiously apparent. Many of the cards and characters are scantily-clad anime girls with huge proportions, innocent faces, and usually a weapon of some sort. It's not just the anime characters though, the entire theme screams Japan.

If you can get past the art style (who I am kidding, some of you neckbeards will like it):

(https://i.imgur.com/A0xajaU.jpg)

The gameplay is supposed to be pretty good. I say supposed to because I've only seen people play it, I haven't actually tried playing it myself (not the biggest fan of mobile games).

What I will say is that some of the mechanics I've seen seem pretty neat. The unique claim to fame of the game is the "Evolve" mechanic (run Creationists!).

Essentially, every card in the game has 2 forms - its basic form and it's evolved form. The basic form usually has no abilities (though sometimes it does), but when you evolve a card, its stats increase and it sometimes unlocks a special ability of that card. In addition, when you evolve a card you can immediately use it to attack, so it can be used for that purpose even if you played it that turn and would otherwise have summoning sickness.

This leads to scenarios where, when playing and evolving a powerful card, you can completely alter the course of the game. The catch is that each player has a limited number of 'evolutions', and once they use them all they can't evolve again for the rest of the match. So you want to use them sparingly, and for maximum effect. There may be some cards which restore your evolution charges, but from what I understand these are pretty rare.

The heroes themselves are pretty unique from what I can see as well. The developers seem to have done a good job of giving each class a very specific mechanic that is unique to them, much moreso than say Hearthstone where the game obviously takes some inspiration from.

For example, there's a class that the cards have a kind of 'incubation time', where after being played it takes several turns (sometimes up to 5 or 6) before they finally 'hatch'. But when the cards hatch, they are extremely powerful for their cost. So the entire class revolves around this mechanic. There's another class that is spell-based. It has many expensive spells (way more expensive than you could ever hope to play), but everytime you cast a spell, it reduces the cost of all the other spells in her hand by one. So if you play enough spells, even the massively expensive spells that do insane things (like being able to take another turn) become playable.

So there's plenty of really interesting stuff like that. Personally I find the art style a little annoying, but if I like the gameplay enough I may still enjoy it. I guess we'll find out soon!
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 November 03, 2016, 12:48:50 PM
Okay, I played some more time in PvsZ Heroes. I think I overestimated the impact of rare/premium cards. To rule one thing out of the way, you can get plenty of premium packs from simply doing ranked mode if you are good enough. Quests, which also give gems, can also be solved with bot matches, however, while they claim these can rank from 10-100 they actually rank most of the time from 10-20.
You get also 3 special premium boosters if you finish the last hero quest on a hero (every hero has it's own quest line that you can finish, they don't level up like in other games). This booster contains only cards hat can be put into that hero deck but they are premium cards.

Heroes work differently like in hearthstone and its many clones. Instead of having a single class that is assigned to that one hero and only that one, you have multiple different classes and every hero consists of any two of the classes. That means you can put any cards of those two classes into the deck. For example, the zombie hero "Super Brainz" is made of the "brainy" class and the "sneaky" class.
The first class uses a lot of control spells and scientist zombies, the later one uses gravestones and antihero cards.

Bot zombies and plants have each 5 different classes and 10 different heroes. The classes mirror each other, but they still have their own individual traits that remain on them (since the game is assymetrical).

Ranked is easier than I first imagined. I win against opponents that have rarer/better cards than me and I see where the problem (for them) lies: The game requires a good amount of skill. The players I meet are so bad not because they have bad cards but because they play really dumb.
Plants vs Zombies needs you to outhink you opponent a lot, probably because it is so assymetrical. You have to know what the enemy could play on their turn and manage your resources (sun/brains) so you can still play something as response.
If you are playing plants it's also advised to look at the brainscounter of your opponent. Since zombies get another turn where they can play spells, if you don't manage to look through them your powerful plant will just crushed by a kill card. I mean, it's obvious if he saved 5 brains that he will play locust swam which kills any plant. and if I can foreseee it I won't play my best card that turn.
That amoutn of intelligence, that you need int his game, lack many players and people tht pay with real money are more often those that lack that. Because tehy cannot play good, they pay to get the good cards to fill the gap. Sadly tehy still get crushed in this game because even with worse cards you can simply outsmart your enemy. That's however good for tactical players like me, for the first zime like... forever I feel encouraged that my skill outshines my cards. I got two legendaries btw but I rarely get to play them because if you are good, you can end a game in the first 5 rounds. That's why people with rare cards struggle most of the time: They have high cost cards and cannot keep their defenses alive long enough until hte play their win cards.

That are the legendaries I have btw and I have to say, legendaries int his game are most of the time op:
http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/Zombot_Plank_Walker_(PvZH)
http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/Zombot_Sharktronic_Sub_(PvZH)

Zombot Plank walker is a 8 cost 6/6 card. The stats are bad at that point but it creates two other (random) pirate zombies which makes up for the cost. It also has the strikethrough ability which means even if it is blocked by a plant it still will hit the enemy hero for full damage. Unless it getskilled by squash, which probably is liekely to happen after eight turns.

Zombot Sharktronic Sub is probably the stronegr of the two, with 6 cost and 5/5 stats it isn't that great either (gargantuas are most of the time stronger) but it has the ability that anytime a plants takes damage, no matter how hight the damage was, the plant gets destroyed. The Zombot gets also a +1 attack boost if this happens. Even if the sub gets destroyed the next turn, if you pull this off right you can destroy a lot of plants with weak zombies in one turn. The source fo damage is irrelevant, it can be from other zombies, it can be from the sub itself or it can be from tricks but the plant will always be destroyed. To make it worse, the sub is (of course) amphibious and therefor you can play it on the water lane, which means you have a very strong water card that your opponent hs to counter. Most players underestimate the impact of the water lane. If your opponent has nothing to play on water, you simply can crush him every turn.
Like all big creatures the sub is a good target for removal/kill cards but liek I said before, I rarely even get at the point to play this card because matches never last so long.

The worst card is this anyway: http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/Zombot_1000
For 9 costs you get a complete enemy remover. The additional 9/9 creature is just the topping on that. It's C'thun all over again. Never saw this card in play to be honest but if i would I probably would rage about it. The plants have also a counterpart to it btw.

http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/The_Great_Zucchini
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier December 16, 2016, 07:24:06 PM
I've been meaning to update this thread for ages. I've been primarily playing two card games recently, Shadowverse and Elder Scrolls: Legends.

Shadowverse is actually a really well designed game, and has an elegant simplicity but also a hidden depth with its interesting evolution mechanic. It's a really good game and the developers are super generous with their rewards. They'll just give everyone dozens of packs for nothing, it's insane.

Elder Scrolls: Legends is just...I don't even have words for this game. lovably amazing. Definitely the deepest and most balanced card game I've ever played. The amount of classes and archetypes that are viable in that game is absolutely insane. The strategy, the counterplay, the mechanics. It's just incredible.

Finally, Duelyst just dropped it's second expansion, and this one's a doozie. One thing I really like about it is that (unlike their last expansion) it isn't luck-based. You can buy the entire thing for $20 or 3900 gold. It's actually a pretty incredible value because you're guaranteed to get the cards, and the cards themselves are a huge game changer.

I actually quit Duelyst for awhile because I felt like the developers didn't know what they were doing but they've done some major balance overhauls so now that this expansion has dropped I may go back and give it another chance.

Anyhow, try Shadowverse and Elder Scrolls Legends, especially ESL.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 December 22, 2016, 04:07:50 PM
Uh, I don't know what to say about the last Duelyst expansion. While I like that you basically get all cards for 20$, I don't like some of the cards int he expansion itself. They are too strong and if this isn't pay to win, than what?
The fact that everyone can get these eventually without any luck factors does not help this at all, it just means you will see these overpowered cards even more.

On of the worst cards is Grandmaster variax. It's a 7 7/7 card that has Opening Gambit "Your bloodborn spell costs now 3 Mana and is AWESOME".That "awesome" aspect is a little too strong actually. Even for a seven mana card this is ridiculous since you cannot stop Variax. If he is played, you get the bloodborn spell and keep it for the rest of the game.
Now, the spell itself. Variax is an Abyssian card and tehrefor can only be played there. He transforms the spell according to the general you play. The Shadowcreep general gets now a spell that creates 4/4 creatures on every shadowcreep you own.
The Wraithling spammer get's instead now two 5/5 wraithlings and transforms your other wraithlings as well.

For a 3 mana cost spell this is HUGE and you can spam this spell every turn without needing another card. Even if you have many strong group removals, eventually you will run out of cards whiel your opponent does not need any. That's Cthun all over again, but this time in Duelyst.
For a game that features so many removable effects I think it's a disaster to have a card with such big impact with NO REMOVAL CHANCE at all. I made the suggestion that the card effect should turn to dying effect or that it should only count as long as Variax is on the field. as it is now, you don't need himself to protect, play him and the rest is history.

Variax is btw not the only card that is so strong at this point,t here are others as well. Magmar got a card that deals 4 damage and let's you (and your opponent) draw a card. People now paly this together with Flame Warlock to deal a combined damage of 21. That keeps the plaer left with 4 HP and since you draw cards with this card, it is liekly that you draw all 6 cards you want. This card is played most often with Starseeker for obvious reasons. Healing is now required in any deck to counter this, but how often have ou played healing decks? I almost never. But you see now Abyssian decks with the sworn sister all the time because otherwise you just die too soon.

I hope ther ewill be some sort of balance very soon.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier January 23, 2017, 12:31:09 AM
Apparently Sol Forge is being canceled and the servers are going offline forever. That's what I heard anyway.

Now in terms of Duelyst, the expansion adds a lot of powerful stuff yes, but I'm hesitant to call any of it overpowered. Grandmaster Variax is indeed really strong, but it costs 7 mana, and you can't use its connected ability until the next turn, which makes it very situational.

In general Duelyst seems to have sped up quite a bit (each expansion seems to make the game faster), which is both a good and a bad thing. Good because faster games but bad because long-term control strategies seem harder and harder to pull off. In any case, I've beaten an Abyssian after they've used Variax on many occasions simply because the 7/7 they dropped on that turn didn't do anything, and I was free to hit her face until death.

On that note I'm playing a new card game now called Eternal (http://store.steampowered.com/app/531640/). It's made by the same people who created Elder Scrolls: Legends (currently my favorite), except where ESL is more of a Hearthstone clone where Eternal is more of a Magic the Gathering clone. Dire Wolf Digital (the developer) is a wonderful company, and they make fantastic games.

Eternal in particular is cool because it has a mobile app, which I've really enjoyed using. So I can just switch between PC and Tablet as needed.

: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 23, 2017, 01:04:47 AM
Didn't know that Solforge gets closed but I looked it up and you are right, at the end of this month it's gone. That's sad, I liked the game. But it does not come to any surprise, the game wasn't really popular and they had troubles to maintain it.
I'm wondering if their other game will vanish soon too...

I may have to change my statement on Variax. Let's be honest, the card is too strong as where it stands, even if you have to wait another turn to benefit from it. However liek you said, the game got so fast, that you see it rarely in games. Aggressive decks got even more popular than they were before. And every deck runs now healing because otherwise you cannot keep up long enough to pull out your combos. It's getting really pathetic at this point how aggressive the game has become. Because of this I played a very strong defenvise deck just to go the other way as everyone else (I do this often in card games, I like unusual playstyles fromt he current meta). I thought the deck would suck really hard but I was surprised that I managed to beat 3 of 4 matches with it.
It was a Lyonar Provoke deck with Highmane (the one that adds +2 attack). The game has almost onlyProvoke creatures as well as some utility spells/minions to deal with stuff that might get troublesome. The strategy is to let the enemy run into high health provoke units (which is a trait of Lyonar anyway) until he runs out of Steam, so I can hit back with Divine Bond and damage to the face. Many minions have high health but poot attack stats, that's why I took Highmane over the other girl, so I can buff them and make them a little stronger.
Surprisingly a lot players have now problems with heavy provoker decks despite that being always a thing from the beginning. But because the game got so fast and people dropped provokers mostly, no one excepts to play mainly these.

The deck really has some strong weaknesses and I wonder why I didn't get bashed hard already. Even the one lose I got was close.

You're not the only one that praises eternal. But everytime a new card game comes out, it's the same, epople praise it like it's the new Messiah of TCGs but eventually the popularity will dwindle. I will or will not look at it but since it's still in EA I propably wait until the full release, who knows what they will change until then.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier January 23, 2017, 01:55:33 AM
Well it's certainly not "the new messiah" of TCGs. I think whoever said that was exaggerating quite a bit. It's a good game, but it's probably inferior to actual Magic the Gathering in terms of depth and complexity. It's like a casual version of magic that doesn't cost thousands of dollars to play competitively. In fact, everything I've heard about Eternal, and supposedly one of the things that makes it so fantastic is that it's the most generous card game out there.

When you use the "Draft" mode, which is like Arena in HS or Duelyst, you actually get to keep all the cards you drafted...permanently, which is like holy shit. The game doesn't seem to be lacking in generosity at all. I've even heard players say that the game is so generous, they're not even sure how the developers are going to make money from it.

From what I hear it's even more generous than Elder Scrolls Legends, which I think is already incredibly generous. I've spent $10 on that game, mostly to support the developers vs. the $140 I've spent on Duelyst, and even with a fraction of the playtime, I think my ESL collection is significantly more complete than my Duelyst one. Of course Duelyst has more expansions (ESL is still technically in beta), but in ESL you can use the in-game mechanics like Solo Arena or dust farming against bots to guarantee packs and crafting material in a relatively short time. If Eternal is even more generous than this then...well holy cow.

But yes, I don't think eternal is like the savior of all card games, I think it's just a Magic the Gathering lite which is much more accessible and cheaper (understatement). Not to mention that if you want to play MTG online you have to use the MTGO client which is freaking 15 years old and god awful garbage. I guess there are some versions of MTG for Steam (Duels of the Planeswalkers) but I've always heard that these games are kind of an insult to the franchise.

Eternal, by comparison, is much more streamlined and enjoyable to play than any of the MTG clients. Usually MTG players do it in person.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery January 23, 2017, 06:18:17 PM
I guess there are some versions of MTG for Steam (Duels of the Planeswalkers) but I've always heard that these games are kind of an insult to the franchise.

As someone that's been a fan of MTG for ages, I can agree with this one.  I've tried them, went "bah", and just ignored them.  Magic Online may be old, but... it's still got everything it needs.  For those of us with no other way to play it, it's good that it's there.  I've never had issues with it myself.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 23, 2017, 07:28:30 PM
There is also Magic Duels which is a free Magic online game that is not hideous as Magic Online.
I have only played the tutotiral so far however but the game got recently a new expansion with 100 new cards and there are already 6 or 7 sets in the game.

Also I cannot find the Eternal Mobile App.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 25, 2017, 02:12:49 PM
Solforge also gave away all cards you got in draft mode and I didn't see anyone talking about that but whatever...

Finally reached Gold Rank in Duelyst for the first time. I searched for decks online and built one as close as possible. I still need some of the core cards for this deck but I managed to find good replacements.

I found also another card game on mobile phones: Mabinogi Duels.
It's a spin off TCG of the MMORPG witht he same name. However, the game shares little with the RPG, except some characters and I believe they are only in there for the sake of recognition value. Some spells of Mabinogi are present but most cards have nothing to do with mabinogi at all. But whatever, the card game itself is what counts.
This card game does not draw inspirations of Hearthstone for a change. I'm getting tired of these card games that just want to copy the most famous card games out there.
That does not mean that Mabinogi Duels has nothing in common with other card games, it just means it does not so to 100%. It's best describes as a mix of Solforge and Magic.
The game does not use a single mana resource but multiple ones. The resources are similiar to Magics colored mana but this time they are called "Nature, gold" and other stuff. Different card categories use different types of resoruces, items use gold, wild creatures use nature, undead use souls and so on.

The game uses the same lane system as in Solforge, cards are put in one of five lanes and can only attack the enemy in the same lane (or the other player if no enemy is present). Some cards have abilities that lets them attack enemies in other lanes, like archers, but you still cannot target wich one, the ability tells you, what enemy is targeted (for example elven archers only target enemies with the most HP).
Unlike other games, there is no auto-counter (which... kind of fits in the system of Mabinogi if I think about it), your cards act only on your turn, enemy cards only on their turn, which basically means that your cards can attack the enemy without receiving damage and vice versa.
Your cards and your character have levels. At some point you can level up your character. Normally you can play one card per turn (regardless of your resources) but you once you level up, you can have two actions or three actions (level 3 is the max). Additionally every card you play after that will have level 2/3. Cards on the field won't change however. If you don't have enough ressources, you can also use your extra actions to gather more resources (instead of playing lands like in Magic). Some cards provide also additional resources (for example a shrine).

The game feaures... a deep story for a singleplayer experience, which is kind of strange given the genre this is in. But the developers of Mabinogi seem to love rich stories, so whatever. The singleplayer campaign provides you with a fixed deck and some battles are scripted (for story purposes) but as always you can simply battle other players.
For some odd reason you can buy booster packs only with gems, which is the premium currency of the game. I might be wrong with that, I just started yesterday with the game, but at least it looks like this. You get however regular rewards in form of small boosters that give you a random single card. Not that great, I know.

What I really liek about this game however is, it's a fulyl fledged TCG. It's not a CCG. You CAn tarde cards with other players. there is even an open market for that. Don't have friends or find good offers on the market? There is even a NPC that soemtimes bothers you for a trade. You can haggle with him to ask for different cards or giv him different offers until you get what you like. This propably has it's limits though, but's a good solution for peopkle, who don't want to trade with other players because they fear to get ripped off. This way you also get a grasp of what your cards might actually be worth.

Also, the music is great. I never actually paid attention to music on card games because... it was always the same. But since this is Dev Cat and they are known to put great music int heir games, they did with this game again.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier January 25, 2017, 05:43:51 PM
Well, now two major gaming news sites have called Duelyst objectively better than Hearthstone.

That is QUITE a claim to make, and one that we can assume wasn't done with a profit motive, given that Blizzard is the richest PC gaming company that has ever existed, and Counterplay Games is essentially an indie developer which began with a Kickstarter.

Those two sites are PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/01/19/duelyst-patch-boss-battles-free-cards/

http://www.pcgamer.com/duelyst-stands-out-among-the-card-games-that-inspired-it/

That's pretty damn impressive.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 26, 2017, 01:12:32 AM
That's awesome. But at this point I guess no one doubts it that Duelyst is better. Hearthstone is still popular but it is also corrupted with several overpowered "Win cards" that make the entire game unfun. There are so many game breakers in Hearthstone, that I got no intention to return. Hearthstone has still it's community. However, the peopel that stay have their reasons (pro players, people that have a big collectiond and don't want to start again, people that don't even know that other card games exist).
Hearthstone is the biggest game around simply because it's Blizzard. And I see now each day the tv ad from Hearthstone. If a game appears everywhere and is talked a lot, it will of course get the most players.

I digged deeper into Mabinogi Duels. This one is very interesting. It might however not be suited for this community, I don't know, but I share my thoughts.

Wjhat I didn't realized at first is, you don't draw cards. At all. Every deck has only 12 cards and you have access to all these cards right from the beginning. That does not mean the game has no luck factor in it, but the luck factor isn't in the draw mechanic here, which is a risky approach but I like it. Since you have access to all cards at the start you can take a different approach at building your deck. In many card games you pack a lot of low level cards in the deck, so you have at least one low cost card in your first hand. Since this is not the case here, you can be more flexible int erms of what you put in your deck, you can decide what your first cards should be, what you want for the mid game, late game and so on.
The big breaker in your combos are of course the costs and the number of actions you can take. You get one of each resource at the start of your turn and you can spend actions to get one random resource, you can also sacrifice hand cards to get a resource of the same color.
Eventually you will run out of hand cards, 12 cards aren't that much. You can revive your grave (discarded/destroyed cards) with any action. This sacrifices some HP (according to the number of cards in the grave) but you will get every card in the grave back on your hand. This has however a penality, each revived card costs now one resource more than before.
Reviving cannot kill you, so if you have only 1 Hp left you can still get your cards back in hope of turning the game.

PvP in this game comes in two ways, the most common is PvE actually. The ranked mode in Mabinogi Duels works differently as other games, instead of one big leagure for everyone to climb, there are several arenas for different groups of players (new players, experienced players and so on) and instead of reseting each month, they reset after several days, the smalles one even after a few hours. That way you get faster your rewards and can try another time if you failed. Attending arenas costs gold but since you get gold with each match, you get that back quickly. However, there is a limit on how many matches you can play at each arena. For wins you get points (that define your rank at the end), win streaks get more points but are capped (depending on the arena).
Rewards vary from gold, to gems, to new boosters, depending ony our rank and the arena. I got two boosters of the older sets (5 new cards each) and 2 miniboosters of the newest set (1 card per booster) on the newbie arena rank 3. I also got 7 gems (which isn't much) and 755 gold. And tickets. I... still don't know what these are used for.
Arena works that way, that you register your deck and other players can get matched to it at any time, you don't play directly against them, the computer plays. That way the game removes long waiting times entirely, you just wait a few seconds for the opponent deck to load.
I'm not sure if loosing while the computer controls the deck does count but I think not. only the matches that you directly play count into your rank.

There is also a traditional PVP arena where you can directly fight opponents just like in other card games. This one is closed however until you reach level 9 (I've reached level 5 so far).
anyway, the pve mode is surprisingly fun and the AI does not play dumb (like in Duelyst, ugh, the Ai there is so frustratingly stupid).
Oh, a draft mode is also int here. I... don't know however if this is pvp or pve, I haven't tried yet.

Anyway, Mabinogi Duels tries really hard to make the game stand out from other card games. Maybe too hard? I really like the ideas but liek I said, this might not suit everyone.
Here's a link to the game rules anyway: http://devcat.nexon.com/duel/us/rule
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nexon.devcat.mabinogiduel.global&hl=de
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/mabinogi-duel/id1033398935?mt=8
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Mánagarmr January 26, 2017, 07:17:36 AM
To be entirely fair, it isn't at all difficult to be better than Hearthstone mechanically.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 26, 2017, 01:42:15 PM
But I don't care. The game is so unfun to play, that I cannot bother to dig deeper in the mechanics.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery January 26, 2017, 07:43:22 PM
I think what he means is "such and such game is objectively better" doesnt necessarily mean all that much here, when it comes to mechanics, since Hearthstone really ended up going for the super-simple method.  It's not at all hard to get a game to be mechanically better.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Mánagarmr January 27, 2017, 02:29:11 AM
Right. Hearthstone went with the flashy visuals and neat sound effects to stay entertaining, but for anyone remotely serious about competitive play, it gets boring relatively fast due to it's lack of interesting mechanics and wonky balance. It's definitely a fun casual game though.

I prefer Shadow Era for more serious play, but even that can be played casually. It's just not as pretty as Hearthstone.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier January 27, 2017, 03:22:18 AM
I completely agree with you guys about Hearthstone (oversimplified mechanics, too luck-based, primarily casual game).

However, it is overwhelmingly the most popular online card game, both casually and competitively, and its rabid fanbase would rip your head from your shoulders and beat you with it if you were to claim that its mechanics were easily overcome.

In this way it's not so different from League of Legends, which is essentially the MOBA equivalent. LoL is definitely the most popular of the bunch, and the most simple/casual, but do not say that to the playerbase.

Just the fact that these big gaming news sites would come out and say this knowing how much of their fanbase might react, or that they would stop collectively sucking Blizzard's giant e-peen for even 5 seconds is impressive.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery January 27, 2017, 05:12:57 AM
Yeah, pretty much.

What's always bugged me about Hearthstone is that the game seemed so much like it had tons of potential to it.  Like it could really expand into something awesome.  Which is why I'd been so excited by it originally.

But... in the end, that's all it was.  Potential.  They never WENT anywhere with that.  They could have, but they didn't, in the interest of securing the easy money.  It's a real shame.

Since then I have had a real hard time getting into this sort of thing.  Though, some of that is just my anti-social nature... I typically just dont want to deal with actual people most of the time, and I REALLY dont want to have to wait for them to take their turn.  And unfortunately we're still in an age where AI is basically braindead.

Closest I come to this sort of thing nowadays is Sentinels of the Multiverse, on Steam.  If you've not seen it, it's a superhero themed game, with a team of heroes working against one supervillain.  The big thing about it though for me is that while it plays like a true CCG, it's not a competitive game, and can even be played solo, and even with multiple players it's a PvE sort of thing, as players only control the hero decks.  The villain deck (and environment deck) runs on it's own, and has no need for actual AI.

And I absolutely love it.  It's just the sort of experience I'd been looking for but without the massive hassle of dealing with other players.  It has alot of depth to it and there's TONS of content, though getting ALL of it is expensive (like the physical version it's bundled into groups of expansions).  So much replay value though.  Switching out even a single hero from one game to the next can change the whole thing up.  I"m very impressed at it.  Complexity is good, it's not hard to learn the basics but the difficulty can get very high, and certain heroes are stupidly hard to use (like Absolute Zero, who at first glance seems entirely dedicated towards shoving exploding fireballs up his own nose; I know in theory how he's supposed to work but it always goes horribly wrong).

....ANd I dont have to wait for anyone to sit there and slowly think about what they're doing,   That's great.

Seems to be a very popular game, too, as geeky card games and such go.  I've even seen cosplays from it.   I *might* try to see if I can get friends to try it, because that could get hilarious, but they'd have to stop playing Dark Souls, Resident Evil, or JRPG Of THe Month for five damn minutes first.

...Seriously, Dark Souls.  I'm so tired of it at this point.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Mánagarmr January 27, 2017, 07:45:21 AM
...Seriously, Dark Souls.  I'm so tired of it at this point.
Funny, I don't know of anyone who still plays even Dark Souls 3, aside from myself, because I still haven't finished it. But I'm rarely in Windows these days so it sees very little play.

But I recognize the feeling. Was the same for me when Skyrim was released, and Fallout 3, and Fallout 4...and basically any big, overrated AAA boredom-simulator recently.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier January 27, 2017, 10:51:28 AM
Holy crap dude, concerning Skyrim (or as Mana said, boredom simulator 2014):

I knew everyone was into this game, and I essentially built a bomb shelter and attempted to avoid the hype, letting it pass over me until it was gone. Unfortunately for me the hype is still going. My brother-in-law plays it (and Fallout 4), and he got my sister playing it.

My dad has had a piece of crap laptop for the last 10 years, and he finally decided to invest in a worthy gaming machine (seriously I had to talk him into it, originally he was going for integrated graphics so that he could have a "rotatable touchscreen" [kill me]). I was very excited about this as it would open up a lot of options for co-op games that we could finally play together that, hitherto his computer was too shit to play.

Unfortunately, my sister introduced him to Skyrim first and now that's all he does. He's literally unemployed and all I see him doing is sitting on Steam playing Skryim. I went to see him on vacation this Christmas so he could show me what was so damn exciting about it. We connected the laptop to the big screen TV to get the ultimate effect, and after about 20 minutes of it, I believe I would have been more content watching paint dry.

I think that in my duration there on vacation, which was about 2 weeks, I must have seen him go through the beginning sequence of the game like 15 times. If you haven't played it, it's this sequence where you literally can't do anything for about 20 minutes, and you're being carted off with a bunch of other prisoners to the chopping block for some unnamed crime. It's essentially a movie, just with much, much shittier graphics and terrible acting.

Well anyway, about 10 seconds before the executioner cuts your head off a dragon shows up (big surprise) and saves you. Except I guess technically it wasn't saving you, that was just an accident. It just happened to attack the moment before your head was separated from your body.

So queue this overdramatic movie sequence of people running around as a badly animated dragon kind of half-assedly breaths fire and walks around smacking people every so often. I guess it's supposed to create tension and suspense, but given that you're invincible during this time, I suppose it was lost on me.

What was this rant even about? Oh well, now you have to read it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery January 27, 2017, 06:20:43 PM
...Seriously, Dark Souls.  I'm so tired of it at this point.
Funny, I don't know of anyone who still plays even Dark Souls 3, aside from myself, because I still haven't finished it. But I'm rarely in Windows these days so it sees very little play.

But I recognize the feeling. Was the same for me when Skyrim was released, and Fallout 3, and Fallout 4...and basically any big, overrated AAA boredom-simulator recently.

Ugh, freaking Fallout.  THat's the OTHER thing everyone I know plays.  Over and over and over.  Yet another "expansive" open world OMG SO MANY THINGS TO DO game.  I swear, for games with so many things to do, it always feels to me that there's next to nothing to do, because it's all so bloody easy/mindless.

And "AAA boredom simulator" is a term I'm now going to make a point of using as much as possible.


Holy crap dude, concerning Skyrim (or as Mana said, boredom simulator 2014):

I knew everyone was into this game, and I essentially built a bomb shelter and attempted to avoid the hype, letting it pass over me until it was gone. Unfortunately for me the hype is still going. My brother-in-law plays it (and Fallout 4), and he got my sister playing it.

My dad has had a piece of crap laptop for the last 10 years, and he finally decided to invest in a worthy gaming machine (seriously I had to talk him into it, originally he was going for integrated graphics so that he could have a "rotatable touchscreen" [kill me]). I was very excited about this as it would open up a lot of options for co-op games that we could finally play together that, hitherto his computer was too shit to play.

Unfortunately, my sister introduced him to Skyrim first and now that's all he does. He's literally unemployed and all I see him doing is sitting on Steam playing Skryim. I went to see him on vacation this Christmas so he could show me what was so damn exciting about it. We connected the laptop to the big screen TV to get the ultimate effect, and after about 20 minutes of it, I believe I would have been more content watching paint dry.

I think that in my duration there on vacation, which was about 2 weeks, I must have seen him go through the beginning sequence of the game like 15 times. If you haven't played it, it's this sequence where you literally can't do anything for about 20 minutes, and you're being carted off with a bunch of other prisoners to the chopping block for some unnamed crime. It's essentially a movie, just with much, much shittier graphics and terrible acting.

Well anyway, about 10 seconds before the executioner cuts your head off a dragon shows up (big surprise) and saves you. Except I guess technically it wasn't saving you, that was just an accident. It just happened to attack the moment before your head was separated from your body.

So queue this overdramatic movie sequence of people running around as a badly animated dragon kind of half-assedly breaths fire and walks around smacking people every so often. I guess it's supposed to create tension and suspense, but given that you're invincible during this time, I suppose it was lost on me.

What was this rant even about? Oh well, now you have to read it.

Ah yes, freaking Skyrim.  I dont understand that any more than I do Fallout.   I have the game, bought it to at least give it a try, I spent a few hours with it to give it a fair go, and.... bleh.   I dont get it any more than you do.

It doesnt help that half the stuff in the game is pointless.  Like, you get all these skills and a millionty different spells, right, but you DONT NEED ANY OF THEM.  Combat is of the totally brainless sort, enemies are dumber than stumps, and it's like alot of JRPGs in that te ONLY times you'll use certain heavier spells is against very specific boss fights, yet even then you dont really need to.  All these extensive stats and items and magic and none of it has a bit of meaning (yet you'll still get people babbling enthusiastically about their amaaaaazing character build, because it's so very very hard, isnt it).  It's just there so that it can be said to be there.  Same with half of the freaking game world.  LOTS of space, not much in it.   And then 8 squillion stupid talky bits.  Every tiny little task must be preceeded with a conversation tree.  And whatever.  Ugh. 


I can understand, to a point, the appeal of an "open world" game.  But the only one I've ever liked was Just Cause 2.  THAT game, I freaking loved.  It didn't bother with "unnecessary" crap, is a huge part of it.  It didn't pretend to have much of a storyline for instance:  Your goal was literally to cause as much chaos as you could on the island to destabilize the local military or... whatever.  It gave you the barest minimum, said "these are the bad guys, telling you so that you recognize them", and then it just lets you go.  Tasks that you do arent prefaced with totally pointless dialogue.  For example one goal is often taking down these various military bases on the island (focal points of challenge for the game, usually also involving a major fight against some large military machine).  You dont have to talk to characters to get the mystical Lump of Destiny to open the door to whatever, you just scale the damn fence when you damn well feel like going for it (or do something like grab a plane, fly over, and parachute down into the center of it, because why shouldnt you be able to do that?).  And then other things are put in very clearly just for fun/challenge like the flying courses, which have *zero* story to them, it's just "Hey, wanna grab this plane and fly through this daredevil course?  Why?  Why not?".  Gameplay elements are clearly made to be just outright FUN and exciting rather than thematic, such as the whole grappling-hook / parachute thing, which is about as realistic as a unicorn but holy freaking crap was it a blast to use, and it allowed for alot of vertical gameplay and creative area design.   Also the game was COLORFUL.  Tropical island, you see.    It was an open world sandbox game that A: actually offered real challenge and excitement (combat was really fun, and you could approach it in all sorts of ways), and B: it didn't pretend to have some big "deep" story or whatever just because "Well that's what AAA games do".   Hell, later in the game it starts throwing ninjas at you.  They teleport.  Why?  Because why the bloody hell not?  Ninjas are fun, so they added some damn ninjas.  THAT is game design I can understand.

Overall it was the direct opposite of ALL other "open world" games I"ve ever seen.  It wasnt this drab, run down world, it didn't have the endless talking, and it didn't have mechanics shoehorned in JUST because "well it fits the theme".  Instead it had things thrown in because the devs thought it'd be A: fun or B: hilarious.  THe game did well, but naturally it didn't get anywhere NEAR stuff like SKyrim or Assassin's Creed or Watch Dogs or all of those that people go bonkers over.

As always, it baffles me.  Hell, friends of mine had that response too.  They'll play the boredom festivals of Skyrim and Fallout, but introduce them to something that's very specifically designed to just be exciting and fun, and "oh, but it's not all DEEP with a STORY" seemed to be the response.  So of course I was the only one who played it.   They got to romp verrrrryyyyyyyyy slowly around Skyrim while engaging in super awkward "battle" with braindead foes one at at a time, wheras I got to Batman my way around this awesome place at high speeds (with NO RESTRICTIONS on where I could go, and of course I could grab vehicles if Iwanted to) and do things like have crazy rooftop battles (not because of a scripted reason, its' just where the battle happened to take place), knock dudes off of said rooftop with a giant soundwave gun (hilarious way to end an otherwise difficult battle against a "miniboss" sort of character), or latch an enemy onto a semi and watch it drive away like that.   It was just plain FUN.

Try to explain that to most people these days and it's like trying to explain quantum mechanics to a small poodle.  I'll never understand how something like Skyrim could be considered to be a good time, I really wont.


There, that's my own mini-rant over with. 
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 28, 2017, 06:39:56 PM
My WLan does not work, so I have to type this with my mobile phone. I will keep it short:
There is a reason why these games are popular and why many people play and praise and not all of this is because of hype or stupidity or marketing. I dont like it when people call games call these "Boredom Simulator" because they dont like the genre. I dont go out and call Visual Novels "Picture Book Simulator" because I dont like them. There are simply games that are liked by different people, I would NEVER touch Postal and its many sequels and spin off titles but because of this I wont call the game out as stupid for mindless people. And I even know people that play this.

Also, keep in mind that not every single game has to be a challenge, either for mind or body (reaction time). Sometimes you want something simple, something easy that is still fun. Open World games are for these people. That does not make them or their playerbase stupid, just simple.
These are different words and U would appreciate if you would use them correctly.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery January 28, 2017, 08:37:40 PM
This all may be true, but what really gets me is that due to the way it's all handled... and due to things like graphics-obsession in the industry... people usually wont even TRY other things that may, in fact, prove to be quite a bit better.  I mean, hell:  Nobody can deny that Skyrim was STUFFED with issues.  Bethesda's games are bloody legendary for being terribly buggy.  I know that bugs are hard to deal with in development, but the sheer level of it in those is inexcusable.  This is a developer I genuinely see as very lazy.

Yet because of the many trends I complain about all the time, devs like Bethesda are given a free pass.  Games of decidedly low quality are touted as the best, and nobody even TRIES anything else.   Hell, even I'm willing to at least try stuff. 

Feh, I dunno.  Call it an expression of general frustration at the industry overall rather than JUST unpleasantness directed at specific games.  As you've likely noticed,I sound like this all the time, heh.  I hope nobody gets TOO bothered by it. I certainly never mean to offend.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Mánagarmr January 30, 2017, 01:53:38 AM
I dunno. I'd rather watch a movie than "enjoy" Bethesda's failing attempts at making a visual novel. Those facial animations and that voice acting can scare anyone to hell.

There are games that absolutely are not really games, but more an experience. Like Firewatch, for instance. Now I haven't played it myself, but a lot of people have and have said it had a profound effect on them because you actually got to know the characters.

Skyrim is the blandest of bland cardboard cutouts and about as deep as a tiny puddle in a drizzle, topped by amazingly boring mechanics. I guess it appeals to the casual crowd, but for anyone craving any kind of interaction or challenge it's just soul-crushingly boring. Add on top of that the thousands of grating bugs and an interface designed specifically to make you cut your thumbs off and shove them in your eye sockets...well, you get the idea.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 January 30, 2017, 07:39:18 PM
I dont agree on that but I dont feel like explaining why I think Skyrim is a great game. In the end, its my experience, not yours.
Also, dont play Firewatch. You will get disappointed.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 February 01, 2017, 01:20:24 PM
Finally got my internet back, can now play Duelyst again. They are working for a mobile version anyway, but until then I need my PC to play.
Playing Mabinogi Duel was however very fun, will continue to play it.

The arena system is interesting but one of my main complaints is, that the game has a weird system when it comes to multiple cards of the same type.
One thing to notice is, with new sets being released, all carda are included int hese as well but with a new artwork. While this is nothing new in older TCGs, Magic does this very often because they have so many cards but some of the older cards are still staple, in video games you dont need this because if you want to change the artwork, you can simply change the old card instead of rereleasing it.
I wondered about this some time until I noticed why they do this: There is no card cap like in other card games. Normally you have a cap of 2, 3 or 4 cards at max because thats the max you can put in a deck. You don't need more because you can put the same amount of cards an as many decks as possible.

In real card games this is of course not true, if you have a card in one deck, but want to use it in another, you either need a new copy of it or have to take it from that deck.
Mabinogi Duel tries to simulate this... somehow. Basically, if you havea card in one deck, you still can put it into another deck, but you can use the card only once in arena registered decks. This means if you register a deck with the card "firebolt" (a classic Mabinogi spell, lol) to a arena, but create a new deck with the same card, you cannot register the second deck to arenas. You can use the deck in friendly duels, in AI missions and the story mode but the rewards of these are rather low and they are not considered "ranked". The reason why this is that way is not because they want to simulate real card games but because you can enter multiple decks at once in the same arena (depending on the arena), for example the Rookie PvE arena has space for two decks. Each deck earns individually points and can get individually rewards, so basically you can get twice the same reward if you would use the same deck twice. That way the system ensures you HAVE to ue other cards, so you get a different result. Or you just need two of each card. because of this, trading is even more needed because good players gather important, staple cards for their multiple decks, cards like hunt, surprise attack, trap in the castle and so on. These cards are so valuable, that veteran players have a lot of them. The other, more rare cards, are maybe good but because they are situational for "specific types of decks" you don't need more than one of them.

PvP arena (which lets you directly duel an enemy instead of an AI deck) works a little differently. It still applies the "every card counts once" rule but the points of each deck are count together instead individually. That means you get only one reward but you need more points for better ranks and the rewards are generally better.

It's interesting to note, that PvE can earn you points while being offline because the AI will of course win also duels. If it does so, you get points. The AI itself gets also stronger, the better you have performed in Arena during your matches. It does not get smarter or anything but it gets a boost on its resources at the start of the match. The opponent starts also with less HP, but your Ai will face stronger opponents than, that have defeated already many other enemies. It's a little complicated, if you are interested int he concept (which is really, really interesting), you can read it up here:
http://mabinogiduelwiki.com/index.php/PvE

Also, don't think it's easy to accumuluate points in PvE just because you play against the AI. The AI may be not so smart as real players but it is definetely smarter than AIs in other card games.

If anyone ever gets this game, I'm ready for some trades and helpful tips.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Toranth February 01, 2017, 05:45:54 PM
Finally got my internet back, can now play Duelyst again. They are working for a mobile version anyway, but until then I need my PC to play.

Yeah, Duelyst... I think I may be pretty much done with that game.  It's too fast - most games were 4-5 turns total.  Sometimes, it'd be a guaranteed loss by the end of turn 2.  Combine that with the out-of-hand 20 damage kill decks, and it was 90% RNG and 100% netdecking.
I did every Daily Challenge, and mostly enjoyed them (I loved that part of the original Duelist Magazine), but they've been replaced by "Boss Battles", playable for reward once every two weeks.  Just not enough there to keep my interest.  I'll try for a bit longer, but I think this is the end.

Switched to Eternal, which was being talked up here, and I'm certainly enjoying the longer games.  I'll have a better opinion in a few weeks, though, after I have some experience under my belt.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier February 02, 2017, 01:03:31 AM
Awesome Toranth, let me know how it goes.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 February 28, 2017, 11:21:42 PM
Started to play Eternal, I like the "Casual Magic" approach. It rememebrs me of my old days of "Duel Master". A simpler Magic the Gathering for people that don't want to learn 1000 cards and effects at once. Seriously, nowadays you need a encyclopedia to play this properly. Problem with magic (the real one, not any digital attempts) is, that they stopped to write down what the effects exactly do on cards and just write down the keyword. Logically to save space, so you can hammer more effects down on a single card. But if you don't know every single effect out from your mind, you have to consult a guide for this o just ask your opponent. Who might not be entirely honest to you, to get an advantage.
Anyway, I will enjoy Eternal for the calmer singleplayer sessions. I don't see why I should play ranked at all because singleplayer gives me everythign I need. I get quick matches, I get very decent rewards (seriously, almost for every win you get a card or even a full pack) and what I really love about this game, no stupid deck limit, no faction limit. Build your deck as much as you like, go with 200+ cards in one deck if you want and include all 5 factions. I hate it when card games limit you to "30" cards or similiar bullshit while you know that you just need that one single card to maximize your synergy. However, the lower deck limit is icredibly high, even higehr than in Magic (which is funny because they are literally the same game), so... milling cards are must haves for your decks.

Mabinogi Duel has released a crossover event booster today. It's aviable for five days and costs the normal amount of 30 jewels. Less with tickets. Soem cards are okay, some are aweful but a few cards are really powerful. what makes this booster so different compared to the normal cards is, that some cards have the effect that they negate abilities of creatures. As far as I know, no other card did that before but than again, Mabinogi Duel has already over 1000 cards and I don't know every single one.
Also, "Capture" should be pretty much in every deck from now on. You want to get the cards from your opponent, so you get their effects.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: WolfWhiteFire March 01, 2017, 04:18:20 PM
Yeah Eternal is a fairly fun game, some lore would be nice though it is only in a sort of alpha stage right now, leaving room for lots of improvement, I like how it has a mobile app that I sometimes use to play it on the go as well. It is pretty generous at the moment in terms of what cards it gives you. The discord channel has a beginner question section that I have found very useful whenever I have a question. The game is also free, and unlike my experience with magic you don't have to spend a ridiculous sum of money or (not sure if this applies to eternal as well, I haven't played enough yet, but...) copy the meta decks in order to do well. Some lore, which I have been told will eventually be added, would really add a lot to the game in my opinion though. But hey, it is pretty decent even though it is far from complete.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 March 02, 2017, 02:06:30 AM
Some lore could be nice, I would be interested in to know more about this fantasy western world. I love this shit. I'm a huge fan of "The Dark Tower" from Stephen King. However, I don't think in card games has to be lore at all. I can just play the card game for the game itself. And this comes from someone who is a fan of good story in video games.
Mabinogi Duel has however a very good story mode, one that I haven't seen so far done in another card game.

Come to think of Mabinogi Duel, I got yesterday a shareable gift from the game. I can share 5 gems with 8 other firends currently until 9th march. If you register to the game and give me your playername, I can give you 5 gems as head start. A small reminder, a normal booster pack costs 30 gems, most of the time less because you have tickets that reduce the price around 10-20%.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: WolfWhiteFire March 02, 2017, 04:20:00 PM
I just made an account for the game called WolfFlame, because my regular name for stuff was too long for the game, and I didn't really have any better ideas. What exactly is this event going on by the way? Also thanks.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 March 02, 2017, 04:42:56 PM
Send friend request, you just have to accept it, then I will sent the gift to you.
Blaze Blue Cossover event. Characters of Blazeblue (I think this is a fighting game?) are made into cards. Some of them are really terrible, but some are just awesome. You can get them from a booster for a limited time, there will be three different boosters and each one will last five days. The current (first) one is still aviable for two days left. The signature card (card on the front cover of the pack) is"Ragna the Blooddge". I don't know him but I guess he is an important Character in Blaze Blue. Anyway, his effect is really great. His Stats not so much to be honest. He absorbs HP from the nearest oppenent to him at teh end of each turn. At the start of each turn he looses HP but also damages the enemy hero in the process. If left unanswered, he will eventually wear down the enemy or even kill him. For 3 light he is also cheap to play, excellent for the second round to have initial threat to be answered.

The one card however, that really spins out of control, is Tsubaki. Card starts out weak but snowballs hard if you can protect her. Her effect allows her to gather energy (tokens put on the card) each turn and she deals the amount of eenrgy she has as damage to three random enemies (or to the same enemy, if there are less than three). Starts with 1 energy (2 on level 3) but if you can keep her alive, she will kill everything on the very turn your opponents summons a card. Since there don't exist rush cards int he game, all he can do is kill or capture her. Best used with spell counter to protect her from instakills.

There are some other good cards but these two are the ones that stick out the most.


Addiotionally there is an event arena that allows only creatures to be played, no spells. I guess because Blazeblue is a fighting game and they want to match the situation? Anyway, this is an interesting concept for a card game that relies so much on removal spells.

They recently also increased the rewards for arena again after they decreased it soem time ago. I'm happy they stick to the old values again because the newer rewards weren't really helpful. Now you can get 6 jewels in Rookie arena even if you don't get a place at all. With two registered decks this means 12 jewels which is half a booster with a 20% price reduction ticket. All you have to do is play one match per deck and win or loose accordingly. If you play more and reach silver rank, you can get even more jewels.

If you need some help in terms of cards or what to build into a deck, I can help as well. I got soem good knowledge on the game and know, what's good or bad. The game is actually easy to learn and master.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: WolfWhiteFire March 02, 2017, 04:56:09 PM
Seems a bit buggy, I have played maybe 5 minutes and there is a message icon even though I checked and have no new messages, and the game crashed while I was deciding whether to accept Cat Merchant's trade offer.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 March 02, 2017, 05:22:53 PM
The message thing is kind of... silly. You have to click another tab on the message site and then go back to the tab with the messages. Happens most of the times with the tickets.

Don't trade with the cat merchant, at least not until you know the value of your cards. He makes most of the time deals that aren't that great but sometimes he can give you true valuable cards you want at any time. That's how I got my Angel Orperia card.

On terms of crashs: That migth just be your ohone running out of memory. of course this is to soem extend the fault of the game because it seems not be fully optimised. Closing other apps before might help.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: WolfWhiteFire March 02, 2017, 06:22:21 PM
So when the cat merchant offers you a deal and multiple cards are shown on his side, does that mean that you get those cards if you accept or that you can choose one of those cards if you accept?
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 March 02, 2017, 07:15:39 PM
You get all these cards and you give all cards he wants. You can however ask for different cards, either on your side or on his side. if he offers soemtign good, you might want to ask if you can give him other cards.
Best is, that you first learn what the staple cards are in this game. This are cards, that are good in general, the wiki also gives you an idea in which mode they are better (PvE or PvP)l: http://mabinogiduelwiki.com/index.php/Staple
Might not be entirely up to date, some cards got nerfed, also the newest se is not in.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 April 23, 2017, 03:13:46 AM
Playing a lot of Plants vs Zombies Heroes lately. They've released a new challenge mode that allows you to play a challenge each day of the week to gather event points (points you need to unlock the current event card), which makes it a lot easier to get event cards. After you finished all 7 challenges in the week, you get a free premium pack (I don't know why they still call it that because there are no basic packs anymore).
In my opinion "Electric Boogaloo" needs a serious buff and the newly introduced event cards don't fix the problem at all. Well, maybe a little.
But first let me explain something because I doubt anyone plays this game or at least as much as I do.
In PvsZ Heroes heroes are made of two classes instead of one hero being a class in himself (like in any other Hearthstone clone, I mean card game to this day). Because of this system, you have a wider varity of cards you can use on your heroes but they still relate to the strategies, the hero can use. More so because unlike mentioned clones, there are no neutral cards in Heroes that benefit all heroes.

The game has also the feature that it has asynchronous rounds. Zombies get the first round but can only play creatures, plants than get the next round and can play both creatures and spell and react to placed zombies, then zombies can play spells and react to created threats, after that the battle starts and all zombies and plants battle each other if they sit in the same lane, otherwise they attack the opponent hero directly.
Because of this system, plants and zombies use different cards, because plants can counter pretty much any zombie without zombies having the ability to play new zombies to block damage, some zombies get for example the "gravestone" trait which allows them to be played safely as "gravestone" where they are immune to damage and spells (unless its gravebuster). Plants however get creatures that can be played in the same lane, using one plant to tank damage of incoming gravestone zombies for example while the other deals damage. They have strong control spells to secure that they are still safe, even with the extra turn on the zombie side.

Now back to Electric Boogaloo. He is a disco-themed zombie hero and his classes are crazy and beastly. Crazy cards are strong creatures with lot of damage, but little hp, basically almost every creature in that tribe has only 1 hp which means even a 1 cost plant can kill it easily. Plus, almost no gravestones (not that it would save it, blocked is blocked). Since zombies play first, you can basically not use your cards to block plants but they can do it the other way. Then there is the annoying card "sour grapes" which costs 4 sun and deals 1 damage to each zombie. In Electric Boogaloos case this means his entire field is down. Electric Boogaloo relies on running down the opponent with cheap creatures that deal huge damage but can easily be removed.
His other class, beastly, allows him to play more tanky but weaker creatures but offers him some strong removal spells like locust swarm which destroys any plant for 5 brains. His main strategy is to swarm the board quickly with cheap but strong zombies to finish the opponent hero quickly. You can use disco zombie to play two creatures for 3 brains, which offers a nice start but both creatures have only 1 health and can easily be taking down. A common strategy is to swarm the field with disco zombies and then play a flamenco zombie which deals 2 direct damage to the opponent for evey dance related zombie.With a field of 3 dance zombies plus the fourth flamenco zombie (fifth lane is water and there are no dance zombies for the water lane) you can deal a max of 8 damage (of 20 max hp).
The problem with this strategy is, Eleectric Boogallo has no draw mechanics. None. His entire theme is centered around plaing a lot of cheap creatures but he runs out quickly of cards because he has zero cards to draw new cards except one of his super powers that let's him get one new card. It's pretty much over once you have only one card in your hand, since all his zombies can be instakilled and he cannot draw enough cards to make up for it.
I hope "Secret Agent" (which will come out soon as event card) will help him a little. It let's you pull back one zombie from the field and gives it a +3/+3 boost. That way you can recycle your already used cards and give them a much needed stat boost. Like Flamenco Zombie, use his ability twice if you didn't get enough damage the first time. For only 1 cost it is also a cheap card which fits in Boogaloos theme.

Until then he is pretty much defenseless in most situations unless you are evry lucky with your draws while the opponent has terrible draws.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 May 04, 2017, 12:59:36 PM
Huh, surprisingly the Zombie High Diver (http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/Zombie_High_Diver) is better than I thought. The zombie has very average stats (3 brains, 2/3) plus the gravestone trait. If placed on the elevated lane, he moves to the water lane and gets +1/+1. A 3/4 card int he water lane is very strong for 3 costs, no amphibious plant card with the same costs can deal with it. You can even buff this zombie more if you use headstone carver which gives gravaestone zombies additional +1/+1, making it a 4/5 card. At first I underestimated this card but then I realized that pretty much every deck that does not have access to ambphibious cards has a hard time. The player has to use his strong removals on the card which means he has to divide his control crads between the high diver and my other cards.

On another note, Duelyst has released a new game mode, called "Rift mode". Rift mode gives you a deck with only basic cards at the start and you can play against other decks. If you win or loose, you accumalte xp, once you have enough, your deck levels up and you get an upgrade point. You can use this upgrade point to replace any card of the deck with another one. the game prompts you 6 randomly chosen cards fromt he game, you can even get cards from other factions and use them in your deck. You can win and losse as many times as you want in this mode, he ends at the end of the month and instead you have a "Rift Rating" which acts as measurement how good you are with the deck. Wins net you more points, losses reduce your rating. Appearently there are no rewards for now but they might give out something for high performers at the end of the month. The mode is really interesting for experimenting and testing new strategies and it keeps the game fresh between the usual ranked grind.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 May 25, 2017, 10:27:57 PM
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.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Misery May 26, 2017, 08:36:54 AM
Minion Masters was never meant to be a proper TCG of any sort, or even remotely like one.

Look up Clash Royale, if you've never seen that game (ultra-popular competitive mobile game).   Minion Masters is basically a clone of that.

It's a real shame, too.  This is from the same developer that made Forced Showdown, which is absolutely fantastic.  I was really disappointed to see them jumping on this particular bandwagon after putting out that awesomeness previously.  So I didn't really bother with this one myself.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 May 26, 2017, 10:07:44 AM
Okay, I looked up Clash Royale and yes, it's literally the sam egame. And to no surprise, it's from Supercell, the company behind Hay Day and Clash of Clans. Even the look is almost the same. I cannot express my antipathy enough for this game. I still cannot believe, people think it's a great game. And because of this it does not surprise me, that people take it directly from Supercell's greedy hands.
Clash of Clans was the most awreful example of Freemium gaming where it took a week to finish a single building. An entire week to wait until you can use that building! Of course if you don't intend to pay for it to go faster.
Peopel tried to copy the popular formular of Clash of Clans all over and it does not surprise me, that now people attempt to do so with their next "hit".

Anyway, here is another good game I found.
Labyrinth

Labyrinth is not a traditional trading card game, it's more like a RPG with collectible cards. I really like this one, so far it's the most interesting one from what I've seen recently. I can only recommend this to people, who want to try out something new from the typical Hearthstone clone attempts.
In Labyrinth you play as a group of 3 adventurers that stepped into a dungeon and your goal is to defeat the boss. Each character has his own deck that you can customize and like in a typical RPG, you have typical roles that each character fills. You have the traditional warrior that stands on the front and takes mostof the hits while dealing damage out himself, you have the mage who casts spells from the background to hurt the enemy or support your team and you have the thief who can move quickly across the board and backstabs enemies.
There are more roles and you can customize your party to your liking. You start with 4 different characters and more can be bought fromt he in-game store.
Cards are either tied to a character class or to a specific character (signature card), the character class specifies what the role of the character is an how his deck is played, the character himself has different abilities that are unique to him.
Matches in Labyrinth work asynchronous, the active player plays the dungeon party (his 3 hero decks) while the other side is played by the AI. The dungeon/boss deck is created by players and cannot directly be played, the idea behind the game is to design a challenging dungeon experience for other players and predict, how the AI would react and what cards you should put into the deck.

Matches are turn-based on a 3d grid. You can move the active character around and lay down a card. Each card has "tick" costs that show how long the action lasts, that you played. At the top of the screen is a bar the shows the order of the characters, that can act, if you play a card, your active character moves that many ticks to the right, stronger cards mean that it takes a longer time until you can play a new card. That way the game generates a dynamic turn order instead of the stiff "your turn, enemy's turn, your turn, enemy's turn"-system that everyone else creates. You can influence directly, how many times you can attack, before the opponents react or if you want to take a risk and deal big damage but are vulnerable for several ticks. Soem cards can hasten or slow the tick counter.
The goal in a match is to kill the boss, you automatically win, even if all other minions are still alive (similiar to defeating the general/hero in Duelyst/Shardbound). You loose, if all 3 characters die but as long as a single character is still alive, you can continue the fight.
The boss plays minions, traps and attacks acording to his deck and all minions he plays act individually.
Each character class generates a special resource (similiar to mana) through various means, warriors add up rage if they deal damage for an example. These resources can be used to play special cards or get additonal effects on cards.
Most cards are attacks but some cards are equipment, that allows your hero to ply a standard card each turn and not relying on his card draws. Each hero stars with some standard equipment, additional equipment can be placed in your deck to replace it during a match.
After dungeon runs, your heros level up, which gives them "perk stars". These can be used to activate special "perk cards" that give your hero passive abilities. Perk cards are obtained through leveling or through packs and are essential for your hero strategy. They give you the permanent boost to not rely on your card draws.
Overall the game looks very good and so far I had fun with it. Fromt he reveiws however I hear, that the game is unfair balanced to new players ina  way, that you are matched with stronger players, that play longer than you and have better cards (many mention "p2w") and beat you easily. I cannot say so myself but I haven't played it very long so far, I just beat the tutorial and played some matches afterwards.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Draco18s May 26, 2017, 11:11:02 AM
I inadvertently played Spellstone last night.

It was shit, just like I'd assumed from the ads. Your creatures are lined up with the enemy's and each can only attack directly across the divide. As things die (when the turn ends), the whole line shifts to the left.

Your hand is 3 cards, some creatures take multiple turns to simmon, and the occasional rare critter has an ability that deals an extra damage to a random opponent.

There's no sense of strategy at all. Just summon something, wait for the attacks to play out, repeat.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 May 26, 2017, 11:51:43 AM
This is from Kongregate, right? I've seen this on the app store. I've played this one shortly and was quickly bored with the execution.
Want to know what's worse? they made the same game multiple times, just with different artworks/themes. There is another one with a sci-fi theme and I rmember at least a third one but don't knwo what the theme of that one was.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Draco18s May 26, 2017, 02:20:32 PM
Yep. Kongregate. I got suckered into it because the ui offered me an easy badge I didn't have. Played just long enough to acquire it.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier May 28, 2017, 07:42:02 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/b1Fi4ES.jpg)

I finally hit Legend in Elder Scrolls: Legends.

Honestly, I've played a lot of amazing online card games. But ESL is the one I keep coming back to. I finally hit Legend after about 6 months of playing, though I was never trying really hard.

The point is, I already have most of the entire game's collection (including the expansion) without needing to spend a dollar.

I've paid $10 basically just to support the company (just some cosmetic shit), but the game itself is the most generous Online Card Game I've ever played, and you can make any deck you want relatively quickly just by playing an hour a day.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 May 29, 2017, 06:39:38 PM
Gratz on that.
Because you compliment the game all the time, I finally picked it up and finished the campaign. I like the idea, that you can level up your cards to make them more useful, what I don't like is, that most upgradable cards are shit until you upgrade them.
The game is pretty much Hearthstone all over again but which card games nowadyas aren't? The lane mechanic however is a good idea. It gives players a better chance that their minions stay on the board for a round instead of just getting one shotted directly after placed. It also adds some tactics on placement.
General I like this more than Hearthstone because it builds on the generally good system of Hearthstone, but improves on that formular. hearthstone would be actually a really good game, if they would have enhanced the whole system and wouldn't hug up the balancing with each new expansion.


Because you mentioned generous rewards, Shardbound is really generous too. You get a reward for the first win of the day and rewards after several wins ina  week. Additionally you can play on so-called shardfalls. These shardfalls have three conditions, the first two are always "Play with any faction" and "win iwth any faction" the thrid is randomly decided. Fulfilling any condition breaks one of the nine locks of the vault on the shard, breakign a vault results in a big reward. The first vault of the day gives the most rewards. Basically after 9 macthes, 5 victories or 3 wins with all 3 conditions you can get your daily bonus. Opening a vault gives you Chroma (needed to buy packs) and packs.
A pack contains 3 randoms cards of a single rarity (all could be common or all could be legendary) but you can choose only one to keep. Since boxes come regulary, even if you get only one card per pack, you soon get a nice collection. I recommend getting first a good amount of neutral cards, so you have some good cards in all factions, so you can unlock the basic cards of that factions easier.
I've also played the remaining factions and can now tell what the others do.

Wayfinders are centered aroudn spells, similiar to what Songhai in Duelyst does. However, unlike Songhai, they are not a strong control faction and instead use spells to buff their minions. They also have a lot of minions that get a boost if they are on a hill. Additionally they play 2/1 token flyers, which opens up a lot of free movement for them which relates to their name of being "wayfinders".

Fatekeepers are more of a control faction, mostly they mess with time manipulation which translates into playing minions (own and opposing ones) back to the hand, swapping cards fom your hand with ones from your deck, drawning extra cards and teleporting minions around on the field. They mill through there deck with constant draw mechanics and many minions even benefit from drawing these cards, some get a stat boost for example. Fatekeeper can be a really annyoing but otherwise a little underwhelming faction. if you don't get the control over the board, you loose, because fatekeepers lack strong minions that other factions have.

Bloodbinder is the typical death faction that we've seen a hundred times and will see another hundred times. Bloodbinders spam the board with 1/1 zombie-like "Thralls", similiar to the Abyssians in Duelyst. Their cards synergize with teh Thralls, either if Thralls die, they get a boost, they can "consume" Thralls to appear anywhere on the field or you simply can resummon thralls from your graveyard (among other minions), it's pretty much a "zombie apocalypse" deck, where you try to overwhelm your foe with many cheap and replacable minions whiel preparing your big threats in the background.


I've played also Royal Clash, wouldn't imagined that I find soemthign worse then Minion Masters. Since this is from Supercell, this shouldn't have surprised me, then again, no other card game (and it is a card game in a way, even if it's in real time) does this. What I'm talking about is the fact, that you have to wait real time until you can open a pack. Basically, the gives you chests for victories, these chests contain gold and of course cards you need for your deck. The thing is, the most basic chest (not counting the chests from the tutorial) take 3 hours to open. And you can open only one chest at a time. Plus, you can store only 5 chests at once, any other chest after that gets discarded.
You can speed up the process with gems, of course. The next chest after that one lasts 8 hours, wouldn't surprise me, if they have chests, that take a whole day to unlock. Whoever came up with this concept should better kicked out. From the 10th floor of a building. Seriously, this is the most cancerous concept I've ever seen in a card game, this is already garbage in these freemium games but in a card game, that requires you to constantly update your deck, this is not tolerable. Deleted the shit directly after that.
To kick you even more in the nuts, you can level up cards, so they are stronger, so basically every double you get, adds to the xp of the cards instead of getting shards or anything like that, to buy cards directly fromt he collection screen. This also means that two players with the same cards might still be unequal because one player has his cards leveled up more. Oh, plus, the more cards you've leveled up, the stronger is your kign level which increases the hp and strentgh of your hero and towers (who are the endgoal of the game). Really nice, yeah.
How can this comnpany still get away with this ripoffs? Advertisements, probably. You see their shitty ads in literally every other free game and always on top in the app store. Nice bribing system there, Apple.
Minion Masters almost looks like a nice game compared to this. Almost. I'm just playing it 'til my achievment percentage is above my average.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier May 30, 2017, 11:24:01 AM
Very much in the spirit of this discussion, here is a list of 9 card games which aren't Hearthstone:

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-9-best-digital-card-games-that-arent-hearthstone/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

This is a very good list, and these 9 games are probably among the best alternatives to the original Online Card Game giant.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: eRe4s3r May 30, 2017, 04:32:11 PM
After reading this I finally remembered I still have that game installed and straight away won solo arena in ES: Legends (9 victories, 2 losses) first time and gotta say that was pretty fun, and I even got a pretty decent neutral unique out of it (card pack, 140 gold, 3 cards, 90 crystals) so that was pretty good rewards actually. Although my casual matches all put me against people with heavy combo and unique decks I flat out can't compete against unless I put in tons of removal and silence in my deck... (I have a pilfer/drain deck with some decent synergies, but it ain't competitive yet). Not an immensely huge fan of upgrading cards via leveling, but I can see why they did that, it gives you a pretty strong incentive to continue playing even if you lose in matches.

My only problem is that I feel like I should be grinding the addon campaign unlock (3000 gold...) because its got new cards, right?

What I don't get about ES: Legends is how card packs work. When it says core card pack, does that mean I don't get expansion cards AT ALL. So I really gotta grind (or pay) to unlock the 2nd campaign to get access to THOSE card packs?
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: Wingflier May 30, 2017, 08:32:54 PM
Concerning people's thoughts on the "card upgrade" system:

I hated that as well, in fact it was one of the main reasons I originally quit the game for awhile before eventually coming back to it and falling in love.

The thing about the card upgrade system is that yes, it's stupid, but someone once explained it to me in a way that made me see it completely differently. Instead of viewing it as a card upgrade system, just pretend you don't own the card(s) at all, and at certain levels, the game is giving you awesome cards for free. That seems much more reasonable and exciting than playing with shitty cards until you hit a specific level and they're actually worth using.

Because the truth is, the cards you get (when they're upgraded) are often incredibly powerful, but prior to that they're garbage. So just pretending you're getting great cards for free (you are) is a much better way of looking at it.

In any case, the card upgrade system is more like a card unlocking system, and once you've maxed our your account level (it doesn't take that long) you never have to deal with it again anyway. From there you can simply build your collection as you see fit.
: Re: Online Card Games Thread
: TheVampire100 June 11, 2017, 05:49:30 PM
(https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/plantsvszombies/images/0/00/Galacticgardens.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/360?cb=20170607210644)

Plants vs Zombies Heroes released their first expansion set, Galactic Gardens. And this at a time when I never excepted it. I thought they would only introduce new cards through the vent card system (which is nice to get soem free cards here and there but terrible to introduce a constant stream of new crads). Anyway, new card set and oh boy, it is awesome. Season 1 (which runs like... forever) will also finally end and people will get rewards depending on their rank, new seasons won't take multiple years anymore, now any season will last exactly 5 years from 2 ongoing.
Back to the set, it's space themed with the title "Galactic Gardens".
There are multiple new keywords, some exclusive to one of the factions.

Conjure gives you a card of the same tribe ont he hand and adds a special ability to it. An excellent way to get a replacement for a card just played and keep pressure on the enemy.

Double Strike was in the game before but didn't had a keyword because only the Repeater and the Bananasaurus Rex had the ability. It allows you to attack twice per turn unless you die after the first attack. Exclusive to Plants.

Hunt moves a plant or zombie to a free lane if an enemy card is played there. Basically it allows you to block lanes, even if your opponent tries to evade it. This is of course more useful to zombies than to plants and because of this, zombies have more cards with this trait.

Overshoot is zombie exclusive and gives an amazing buff to the crazy class (in which this originates). Overshoot deals damage to ots value to the enemy hero before the actual fight int he lane happens, this means you can deal guaranteed damage. If the lane is not blocked, you deal damage a second time (with your attack value). Crazy tribe always had the problem that they have very high attack power but very little health and therefor are way to easy to block and remove, overshoot gives you unblockable damage.


In general the set buffs crazy tribe a lot, which means this could finally bring Electric Boogallo and Z-Mech back into regular ranked gaming.


A cool new feature of the game are the new environment cards. These cards are played liek tricks but change any of the 3 ground lanes into a new lane type that adds new effetcs to zombies or plants played there. The only way to remove an environment is to play an environment yourself there, kinda like field spells in Yu-Gi-Oh. Problem with this is, there are no cards that destroy environments besides environemts themselves, which means a deck without them has no counter against them. Having these cards in your deck is now required. There are some cards that benefit, when being in an environment, even if it's fromt he opponent, but these won't change the fact, that you have a disadvantage in the lane.
If you have sparks, the first thing you should do is craft some environments for all class tribes.

Here's a list with all new cards: http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Gardens

Additionally, you can get now for a limited time 2 free packs from Galactic Gardens which enables you a nice head start and gives you the much needed environment cards.
I keep my eyes open on what cards are currently excellent in the new patch and what you should definitely get.