Star Realms
I used to really enjoy the online version of this game. Saddly that is no longer true. While I would HIGHLY reccomend this game for the Campaign Mode, the Online Mode is another matter ENTIRELY!!!! Once you reach level 5, you must win a number of sucsessfull wins to advance onwords, but each loss counts you backwords on that total. THIS, is not a problem. THE PROBLEM, is that many players have found a way to “HACK” either the timeclock, or the game itself! I have found myself ready to acquire a good card, only to have my game freeze. Then reload. Not only do I lose precious time during this reloaded “Glitch”. But often it will undo my card purchases or even worse, my bases will be destroyed or my health slashed in half. All of which being impossible with the card’s the opponet had availible to play. Now, I KNOW I’m not the best player. I admit that freely. But after almost 500 games, I STILL CAN’T GET EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH TO LEVEL 7! This means With the losses counting against me, I have only managed to go up 1 LEVEL in almost 500 games!!!
– Real player with 561.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Card Battler Deckbuilding Games.
I’ve enjoyed Star Realms for many year. It is an entertaining deckbuilder game, which is easy to learn. A huge number of cards have been added to this game over the years, and the core sets (5€) are definitely worth the value, while a lot of the smaller dlc (2-4€) is a bit pricey. Although skill does play a part in winning, I would definitely say that a large part of winning comes down to the luck of the draw. And the expansions increase the luck factor quite a bit. I would still say that it is quite enjoyable, and I take it as a challenge, when my opponent start out quite a bit better off than me. Sadly I will not be giving this game my recommendation, based on the recent addition to this game, in the form of Star Realms Arena, which is a particular nasty way of introducing gambling into a kid friendly game.
– Real player with 516.5 hrs in game
Dragon Call
If you are looking for a new and fun deck building card game that is not ‘pay2win’ this will keep you entertained with several different Hero’s that have varied abilities and card pools.
– Real player with 97.4 hrs in game
All the joy o a CCG without the microtransactions, the rules are pretty intuitive and if your familiar with hearthstone and shadowverse youll catch on extremely quick, translation can be a bit wonky but once you understand what means what its easy.
PRO tip if you buy it your 1st run click the gear in the top right, from there you can change language to english
Another issue I found is if your trying to use the chatbox or add a friend ID be in windowed mode as the virtual keyboard will not work in full screen infact it can crash your game
– Real player with 83.9 hrs in game
Spectromancer
This is not a TCG (trading card game) and that’s what makes it so great.
There is no card collection or deck building, each game you get a random selection of 12 basic cards out of the game’s pool of 48 basic cards and 4 special cards from the class of your choosing.
“So what if I get completely screwed over and only get bad cards?” - That doesn’t happen because a) the game is incredibly balanced, every card has its use and strength b) the selection isn’t totally random, the game makes sure that you have 2 healing cards every game and that it’s a fair mix of low and high cost cards ad that you always have board clear cards.
– Real player with 309.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Card Battler Strategy Games.
Recommended ONLY for single-player mode’s interesting challenges. In multiplayer, those who buy the expansions and use the newer classes have massive advantages.
In SPECTROMANCER, you play as a magic caster that has access to 5 ‘elements’: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and (whichever class you choose) and the play is similar to the combat between players in a trading card game like Magic The Gathering. Each of the two opposing characters take turns casting spells of different costs. You gain 1 point of energy in each element (plus your chosen class ‘element’ (such as Cleric, Mechanic, Illusion, etc), and you choose which spell to play or creature to summon. To me, the biggest draw to the game is that once the match starts and you see which spells you have, you can play the same spells over and over if you choose or save up for a more powerful spell.
– Real player with 209.7 hrs in game
Prismata
The easiest way to describe Prismata is to call it a RTS-themed (think Starcraft) chess. Chess comparison comes from the fact it has 0 RNG of any kind and no hidden info so the game is deterministic i.e. one of the players has a guaranteed win based on the starting positions. But just like Chess, Prismata is incredibly complex where solving it is impossible.
Players start with 6 or 7 Drones that harvest gold (2nd player starts with 1 extra drone to compensate), gold buys you technology structures that produce blue/red/green resources (not official names, but that’s the accepted naming convention in the community). Subsequently gold and tech resources buy attackers/defenders and your goal is to kill opponent’s units while protecting your fragile drones and attackers. Sounds simple at its core.
– Real player with 981.4 hrs in game
EDIT: I almost don’t believe it. Within two days the devs released an update that addressed several of these issues. That’s just awesome. You hardly see that happen for any game these days.
Thumbs up for quality of life updates, and a great strategy game. There’s still room for improvement with drone defaulting to block and such, oh well. Game is good though.
Outdated:
I really want to love Prismata. At a glance, this could be the first truly free to play strategy “card” game without any of the pay to win nonsense, and a potentially fantastic game at that. But for a game that tries so hard to be different than all the others in its genre, why are there so many familiar disappointments?
– Real player with 203.9 hrs in game