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So the [Duel of Champions] CCG is pretty fun.
Echo
Per Aspera Ad InferiSuper Moderator, Moderator mod
Per Aspera Ad InferiSuper Moderator, Moderator mod
<-- clicky the linky!Oh dear, I've gone and gotten hooked on a CCG. This will be a shitty OP for a bit while I get it written up properly.
Duel of whatnow?
If you've played Magic, you know how it works, pretty much. What's interesting in DoC is that you have lanes for your cards. That's right, they got a bit of MOBA in my CCG!
You have four lanes, with two slots in each lane, for a total of eight slots you can play cards in, and the same for the enemy. The lanes have two ranks: front and rear rank. You can play different kinds of cards in different ranks:
* Melee card: these can only be played in the front rank. They can only attack what's in front of them, so if the enemy half of the lane has a melee card and a shooter card, you'll have to punch your way through the opposing melee card first before you can get to the creamy shooter card.
* Shooter card: these can only be played in the rear rank, and they can attack both the front and rear rank in the lane - thus shooters. So far all shooters I've seen are also immune to Retaliation. (More on that later.)
* Flyer card: these can go in both front and rear ranks, but like melee cards can only attack the front-most enemy card in a lane.
Free stuff!
Here are a bunch of promo codes you can use that will give you some neat starting bonuses.
A3D-WER-Q8E-DF2-E4J
M3R1-XMAS-2YOU-FROM-D3VS
TH4NK5FBF4N5
5ORRY54TURD4Y
WE-ARE-NO-TROLLS
M3R1-XMAS-2YOU-FROM-D3VS
TH4NK5FBF4N5
5ORRY54TURD4Y
WE-ARE-NO-TROLLS
Factions
You have a bunch of factions. They kinda-sorta correspond to a mix of colors from Magic. With exceptions, of course.
Haven: think "white" from Magic. Healing, shielding, preventing damage, that kind of stuff.
Necropolis: think "black" from Magic. Necromancy, dealing damage over time, draining life.
Stronghold: think "red" from Magic. All about combat, typically with emphasis on melee cards too. Spells are for wimps. Lots of cheap, weak creatures.
Sanctuary: think "blue" from Magic. Control, manipulation of the board, preventing the enemy from doing stuff.
Inferno: also a bit towards red, like Stronghold, but with more spells and ranged combat. Also heavier creatures than Stronghold.
Neutral: pretty much everything.
The Hero!
That's right, you have a hero for your deck - this is the foundation you build your deck around. You pick a hero of a faction, and you are then limited to creatures of that faction and the neutral faction; and spells of the schools the hero can cast.
Magic schools
Your hero for your deck knows a bunch of magic schools, which limits the spells you can have in your deck - can't have them if you can't cast them!
Some of the typical stuff from the schools:
Water: control, debuffing, manipulating, preventing combat.
Earth: regeneration, buffing, preventing damage.
Primal: debuffing. (...well, I only have two cards here yet...)
Fire: Damage! Duh.
Air: shielding, debuffining, damage, manipulating, preventing combat. Kind of the jack of all trades.
Light: Healing, buffing, smiting the heathen with bolts of lightning.
Dark: necromancy stuff. Life steal, picking through the graveyard late at night for corpses to return to your hand...
Well, that'll do for a shitty OP for the moment. Work in progress.
Here's a video of the finals in some championship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBmZyyl37JkAnd here's one with commentary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6UdgPAFK2s
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Doesn't have quite as robust a single-player experience as Kingdoms CCG or as straightforward a one as Shadow Era, though, which is too bad. Their campaign goes from difficult to "Ha ha, no," pretty early, though that may be a function of my picking Necropolis.
So far, my experience has been that Necropolis actually plays closer to White Control or Blue w/ removal in its default incarnation; there's a serious dearth of offense but it's durable and manages the board handily. If different heroes change spell schools, pairing it with something other than Water could change that.
Sanctuary, based on one totally grueling match I finally managed to win, has the green / blue "This is a giant thing, ha ha!" thing going on, for those who like that, and Stronghold is a particularly interactive version of Red that actually seems like a lot of fun if you got it tuned.
E: Kingdoms, not Legends.
World's Largest Dungeon 4E as Torbera
BSG Exodus Game 17 as Tom Zarek
Twilight Imperium Game 7 as Muaat
Yeah, I ground out a "Box," in the premium currency and several packs. Protip for other people: The hero cards have 4 points worth of might / magic / morale, potentially plus abilities, and varying spell access, so even within the same faction you get different deck-building options depending on who's in charge. Necropolis plays like black weenie with the ghost-buffing guy you'll encounter in Mission 2, for example.
World's Largest Dungeon 4E as Torbera
BSG Exodus Game 17 as Tom Zarek
Twilight Imperium Game 7 as Muaat
It's a collectible card game. Without trading. Let that sink in for a minute.
The starter decks feel really... unfocused? After jumping in to matchmaking and going up against someone with a much more fleshed out Necro deck I got stomped really hard. But you're totally at the mercy of the packs with whether or not you'll get something for your deck or not.
The overall gameplay is pretty good. I still feel like these lane based games are missing... something. This one is better than some others that I've played, but I really feel like the concept of the 'utility creature' is missing. Stuff like tappers or the Guild Mages in current MTG - they aren't there to battle, but they take up a slot on the battlefield and just exert this constant pressure. there's no way to just be like "no blocks, take 2" instead you've got to let your guy chump block when you're still at 20 health. It feels really foreign compared to Magic and my knee jerk reaction is that it's bad. That might be wrong, I'm still undecided.
I'm probably oversimplifying. I have to admit that the free to play hook of: play a few games --> get a pack for playing - is fucking amazing and I do love that. I'll see where it goes, but I'm not sure this one is going to keep me interested.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Sure, random cards in boosters, that's part of the business model. But if you have a card in one saved deck, you can't have the same card in another deck. That's just a silly, annoying artificial limitation. There's nothing preventing me from just deleting the deck and reusing the card in another deck.
There are cards like that. I fought a guy that had a card that was immune to spell damage and magic creatures, had no attack/retaliation, and made his spells cost one less.
This is the closest thing I've found, though it's not super browseable.
http://www.mmdoc.net/card_list/list/
I opened one of those! The spiders are not remarkably good but they do have their uses, notably blocking up magic attackers, like you said.
The utility creatures appear to live mostly in the Sanctuary pile, fwiw.
This one's got a little bit of the same problem as Shadow Era, where most decks are functionally control decks, after further play, but it's not a bad design at all.
World's Largest Dungeon 4E as Torbera
BSG Exodus Game 17 as Tom Zarek
Twilight Imperium Game 7 as Muaat
Also, yay an iOS version!
Wait fuck only for iPad. Sigh. LET MY PHONE PLAY TOO.
edit: why did they send me a french confirmation email. Wha?
Boosters (12 cards) for the base set are 12500 gold. You get 10k gold each time you level up, and 300-500 gold for a win, depending on some obscure parameters.
There's also a "premium" booster for 18k gold - also 12 cards, but three of them will be "foil"! Woo, digital sparkles!
The boosters for the Void Rising expansion set costs funbucks - 1200 funbucks for a box of 10 boosters (120 cards); I think it's 225 funbucks per expansion booster otherwise.
1200 funbucks is 15 euros. 15 euros for 120 cards is pretty solid compared to Magic, assuming you're willing to blow money on this.
You also get a small amount of funbucks from completing the solo campaign missions.
Picked Haven, seems neat. Opened some boosters and got some cards that sound cool.
The deck customiser is horrible though, all the cards are too small to read. Which compounded with the fact that I am terrible at these games means I have no idea what to do with my deck.
Also to clarify:
All heroes are the same except for their faction and magic schools, which effect what cards you can have in your deck (faction+neutral creatures and blessings then specific schools of magic?)
Digging it so far, though I wish more was made of the seperate lanes/battlefields thing. I thought the central slot for each was gonna be some form of constant enchantment (though the fact that firemines effect the AI who put them there to is glorious).
Right-click them to zoom in. It's pretty obvious that they focus on making this an iPad game and polishing the Windows port isn't all that important.
Some heroes have extra abilities they can use, at the cost of less health etc. Different heroes also have different starting levels in might/magic/resources.
Currently playing: DI:Riptide, Eador:MotBW, FE:A, MH3U
It appears to be for ongoing effects that hit that entire row; you'll notice some parallel small slots along the columns, which can apparently be home to stuff like tornadoes.
World's Largest Dungeon 4E as Torbera
BSG Exodus Game 17 as Tom Zarek
Twilight Imperium Game 7 as Muaat
Also while I think the expansion cards are buy only you can get a mixed pack booster with the in game cash.
EDIT: Also I can't resist not buying the foil version of each pack. God help me.
Here are some codes to redeem in game and have no limits on how many people can use them. Might want to add it to the OP so people here can get some free shizz.
M3R1-XMAS-2YOU-FROM-D3VS
TH4NK5FBF4N5
5ORRY54TURD4Y
WE-ARE-NO-TROLLS
I can confirm they all work and I think when it was all said and done I got like 3 or 4 premium boosters, a special Christmas art campfire card, 10k gold and some seals (maybe 100?).
If you have ambitions to build a competitive deck or break even the modest 800-1000 Elo range? Don't bother. Due to the random nature of card acquisition, the extreme rarity of cards essential to every deck, and the fact that xp gains slow dramatically after level 15, you simply can't unlock what you need by playing. And if you decide to buy power, you're looking at a few hundred dollars before your deck is where it needs to be. At a minimum.
And when I say dramatically, I mean DRAMATICALLY. You basically stop leveling, and your gold gain is effectively cut to around 1/3 to 1/2 of what you get used to at the lower levels. They are very transparently trying to hook you on the rush of opening those packs early, then gate your fix behind a pay wall.
Oh, and once you do break into the upper tier? Get ready to have all the fun sucked out of the game. The meta-defining deck is a stall/combo setup that abuses constant board wipes and global damage prevention while setting up a OTK around the 15th turn. You either play that, play a deck built to counter that, or lose.
A great illustration connecting my first point to my second: One of the best ways to counter mass removal is creatures that can attack when they enter play ("haste" in MtG parlance). Unfortunately, there is exactly one usable creature with that ability available to most decks and it's insanely rare. I have found only one in about 60 booster packs. Think about that.
To restate: Due to balance problems, the competitive scene lacks all variety. And due to carefully making crucial cards for every deck OBSCENELY rare, the superficially reasonable pricing scheme is revealed as deeply exploitative.
Sorry to rant, but I felt you all should know what you're getting into.
4 premium boosters
1 normal booster
10K gold.
Also a gold booster for five games.
Near as I can tell anyway.
This is also what I've been gleaning from the official forums. It's probably impossible to keep an online CCG dynamic without the constant card churn Magic and L5R were both pretty guilty of, but it's weird to me to see so few of them stabilizing around aggro decks.
World's Largest Dungeon 4E as Torbera
BSG Exodus Game 17 as Tom Zarek
Twilight Imperium Game 7 as Muaat
Seriously, even my pimping Total Xormage deck wont kill him. If a pun in the name doesn't help then what will?
Seems pretty solid so far.
Is there a general rule of thumb on how I should be setting up decks cost/type structure wise to try and solve that problem?
That said, I also nabbed the Knight haven guy who gives +1 hp to all melee creatures and that is hoooooot. My 2/1/5 chargers having a little extra help is a big deal.
FYI: Image above links to my webcomic, and is (mostly) SFW. Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
FYI: Image above links to my webcomic, and is (mostly) SFW. Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
I also have a deck full of melee units with lash and area attack.
It's not quite worked out yet, but when it does I'm gonna spam paste STAMPEEEDE between every attack like a tool.
The returns are abysmal (lol). Something like 50 for commons, 300 for uncommons, 1000 for rares, and 2000 for mythics.
I think there's other rarities but I have no idea what the hell any of them are called.
Edit: Foil cards...ugh...WHHHHHHHY. WHO CAAAAARES.
FYI: Image above links to my webcomic, and is (mostly) SFW. Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Just FYI, if you're looking to optimize an inferno rush deck you pretty much have to go Garant. While Xorm's ability is nice and he can occasionally get out a very fast 3-drop, he can't use Teleport or Town Portal, two tools that are essential to breaking through defenses.
Teleporting a Ravager to an empty row is 2 mana for 6 damage, it's ridiculously efficient. It also forces your opponent to spread their defenders (as does Fireball), making it harder to establish board control. And Town Portal directly counters their attempt to spread by getting you a tempo and free damage via any row with only one defender.
http://www.mmdoc.net/show_deck/130/
This is probably the best I-Rush deck for new players. It's 4/4/1, but you can coast on 4/2/1 for most of the game if you need the card draw. There are a number of substitutions to make once you have better cards, notably Dark Assassin and Gao Deathseeker.
If you absolutely must use Xorm, pack 4 Pile of Gold's and pray you get a good initial draw, because that turn 1-2 Juggernaut is all he has going for him.
I grumbled about only being allowed to have a card in one single deck, and they responded that they're evaluating getting rid of that.
(ping @Inquisitor)