Allsorts 5 - CCGs and Tacticus

llsorts 5

Warhammer 40000: Tacticus

Every so often I see a mobile game that peaks my interest enough to give it a go. But 9/10 I’m instantly turned off by that “mobile” feel. It’s hard to describe, but it’s most prominent characteristics are a blatant paywall only acceptable on the mobile market, cartoony art style and streamlined and shallow gameplay. Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus is that game and ultimately feels like a shallow XCOM. The battlefield is about 50 or so hexes and enemies come at you, take damage, you trade, and repeat. There’s no real depth in rock-paper-scissors-etc combos or weapons. At least not at the start enough to keep me interested. Especially considering I’m eager to go back to XCOM2 and yet to play the (apparently) fantastic DLC. Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters also came out around the same time and if I’m going to play a squad game tactics game that doesn’t jerk of all over the Primaris range.

Warhammer Combat Cards

Forgettable and uninspired are the two words that come to mind. Not only is the gameplay lacking any kind of depth a good CCG needs, the cart art is literally just the miniatures slapped on a card. Compare this to Horus Heresy Legion where the card art is so good it expands the setting of HH more than any other medium to date. So much so that the wiki uses the card art.

Horus Heresy: Legions

Rounding out at 2700 words I was going to make Horus Heresy Legion its own game entry. But considering it’s neither a paid game nor originally on my backlog or wishlist I’ll leave it among the rest of my latest CCG phase. When I had the itch to play a new Warhammer 40k game, I never could have imagined that I would become so smitten with this game. This game is everything Combat Cards isn’t. The card art brings the the 30k world to life like no other media I've experienced. The over the top voice acting and fluff feels accurate to the books and the synergy/mechanics is extremely clever in capturing the personality of each warlord (Primarch) and their faction. The game expands out the Imperial Guard, Dark/Mechanicus, Cultists and Solar Auxila – some of the biggest factions of this universe that have no presence on the tabletop in 30k. It even ties them back to the Legions in interesting ways. Salamanders can buff infantry while Word Bearers can ritually sacrifice them. The gameplay plays very similar to Hearthstone, with the key difference being your Warlord is a card on the table and partakes in combat, in addition to having a passive and active ability. Seems simple but has huge repercussions on the gameplay with entire deck strategy built around solo warlords like the beasts Raum, Angron, Sevatar and of course the classic dualists Corswain, Lucius and Sigismund. I gravitated toward the Dark Angels naturally and was not disappointed. To my surprise literally my first Dark Angels crate had the rarest card in the game Lion fucking el Johnson… I thought this was a beginner crate mechanic or perhaps the Primarch’s weren’t rare but I wouldn’t get another Primarch warlord until 100 hours and 1000 Exterminatus crates later when I was graced with the glory of Perturabo. But who am I to question RNGesus... 

The Dark Angels have two main mechanics – Hexagrammaton (or Trigrammaton) where the angels of death are split into Raven, Death and Dread wings. On top of this many troops have a quest. Which you choose from one of three – attack warlord, destroy a troop, be targeted by a tactic – which if completed activates an effect. Not only does this feel ‘Knights of the Round Table’ AF but adds an element of strategy that the Lion was known for. You need to pre-empt what the enemy will do next. Tactics removal solo warlord deck? Choose be targeted by a tactic. They have board control? Choose destroy a troop. You have board control? Warlord. It is amazing. It's many layers of strategy before you even get into the many many cards such as Hexagrammaton (summon 3 cards that died), or a shielded dreadnought that deals 4 damage to all enemies upon completing its quest. The Lion’s ability of drawing a wing of his choice is fittingly tacitcal - as you can focus on one or two wings to synergise and then if you have a card or two in other wings you can draw those cards whenever you need it. For example Onyx is a Ravenwing card that deals 5 damage if you have a Dreadwing on the table. So wait until you do and then draw Onyx. Surprisingly however it was Aloceri that I fell in love with. His ability is give a random troop flank. Now combine this with some of my favourite cards like Astrovel who gives all Astartes +1/+1 on play (rally) and when destroying an enemy – with flank is amazing. Double-down on this with Knights Cenobium who gives +2/+2 to all Astartes in your hand, play and deck when finishing a quest and oh boy – flank is absolutely terrifying. There are plenty of other cards that have amazing synergy like Prisoner Custody, Deathwing Protocol, Praetor Rhamiel and too many more to list. 

The best Dark Angels card - pair it with Always on Duty to gain frontline and another quest for +4/+4 and he becomes an absolute beast! 

Each crate is paired with three factions and neutrals. Dark Angels had titans (gross) and Defenders of Caliban (cool but not Astartes). What surprised me was how much this game made me fall in love with factions I cared very little about. The main example of this was the factions of the Exterminatus crate; Alpha Legion, Night Lords and Iron Warriors. Originally I liked the Night Lords but couldn’t care less about the other two – now they’re among my favourite 30k factions. Alpha Legion focuses on putting many many traps in your opponents deck and stunning/sabotaging their troops to delay until the inevitable RNG chaos ensue <3 with synergy around your opponents card draws causing damage and buffing your own troops – it’s fucking amazing. Iron Warriors have a fun siege mechanic (load one turn, destroy enemies the next) while Night Lords are all about terror and forcing the enemies to not attack. After playing them I want to read about the attrition of the Iron Warriors and their brutal utilitarian methods or how the Alpha Legion operate as masters of subterfuge and explore the nuances of their We Are Legion culture.

Traps stun, destroy and damage the enemy Warlords. Secret orders have troops act for you. Such as in this case (attack your own warlord instead of the targeted player). Whoops.

Iron Warriors siege abilities can have some nasty buffs.

I loved almost every faction I played (and the ones I didn’t play but fought) from the overpowered Custodes who first strike you (enemy can’t retaliate of it’s a finishing blow) but can’t draw cards so essentially are a deck of one man army as per the lore. Or the Mechanicus warlord who can summon two automatons per turn, buff it 1+/1+ automatically and then give everything Blessings of Chaos for three Marks of Chaos or the Space Wolves with their pack attack mechanic. The game had me so obsessed that I was ready to jump right into their upcoming 40k CCG Warpforge. That was until the updated released a month ago. Oh boy… I'm glad I waited on this one to write it up - because the overhaul update has ruined what was not only the best CCG game I've ever played, but one of the very best Warhammer 40k games. A few months ago I was recommending this game to every friend who had a remote interest in 40k. Now I wouldn't wish this upon the worst people I know as too harsh a punishment. But in all seriousness the update has destroyed this game. The three daily crates have been replaced by a shallow "gamified" battle pass (gross). Previously you could choose which faction to focus your challenge crate on and build up cards. But along with 250 gold crates (up from 100 gold) for new expansion cards it appears they've removed this challenge crate to funnel people into the store to pay money. All in all the expansion feels like a final cash grab to soak up any microtransactions before they jump ship to their new game Warpforge. Not only will I be uninstalling Horus Heresy: Legions, it's ruined all the hype I had for their new card game.

The Rewards use to be so enjoyable as your daily routine. A classic example of what isn't broken, shouldn't be fixed. 

They made a few changes (free crate, free event, which I of course abused with 0-3 runs) that made me decide to play more. But I burnt out hard. In one day I used 60 tickets. It started with a reasonable 3 10x runs. But after going 3-3 (1 off a green chest) and then two 1-3 runs I just said fuck it and went all in. Told myself if I didn't get a single red I was done. I got two greens - one of which was a 7-3 that was 1 win off a red. Normally this would be fine if it was a skill issue - but almost every loss was to the new EC cards and Fulgrim or Lucius - a blatant power shift to push people to buy more cards. Opening the chests I did still get about 10 legendries and 10-20 epics. But that's out of 60+ chests. So what's my point? First we need to speak on the meta game. The game has crates, grouping factions that you might not enjoy for starters. There is no crafting system to protect you from duplicates of which give you gems. Those gems can be spent in the shop and are worth a certain amount based on rarity. 

To sell/buy cards is:

• 5/20 common
• 20/100 rare 
• 100/400 epic 
• 400/1600 legendary

So you grind a chest to complete a collection which could take hundreds of hours depending on your luck. If you need on average lets say 5 epics and legendries to round out a collection that’ll cost you 10,000 gems – that’s 2000 common or 500 rare cards…. Then you need to hope those cards are in the rotating shop of the 40+ factions that can show up every day and the cards you need are in that shop… The only way to explain it is downright predatory.

The business practices are rotting a once great game inside out.

After opening over 70 chests and seeing 300 cards back to back it's clear that the update wasn't the beginning but an escalation of a cancerous business model that's always hovered over the game. Out of 300 cards so many were duplicates to the point that I earnt 3000+ gems. If you went off commons only that's 600 duplicate cards… and with no way to craft or earn cards other than really stingy controlled shop it's hard to keep playing a game designed to grind you out of your hard earned cash. That aside I would have totally paid up if I saw anything of value. But $30 sub a month for a bunch of cards is ridiculous. Spotify and Netflix is $16. You're saying your service is of more value than all the music, movies and television one could want on the planet? What a joke.

Business tactics are as duplicitous as Alpha Legion!

After seeing duplicate after duplicate in this event binge I realised how numbing this game is. It's a fun game but my god the metagame is awful and they've done themselves a real disservice. Now with the battle pass doubling down on this no new players will get out and only the sweaty whales and hardcore players will be left - which I felt like I got a taste for in the recent event. It's a real shame because at its core this is an amazing game. And even now I want to go craft new decks for Sevatar, Perturabo and "Alpharius". Or get back into my favourite faction: The Lion and build a Hexagrammaton and Invicible Reason deck along with my new legendary Knight-Praetor Rhamiel and hunt down that final Deathwing Champion legendary card to round out my collection! But I can't bring myself to continue supporting the game - even just as a F2P player adding to the player pool to encourage people to pay for this game. I did my dash, used up my resources and now it's time to close the chapter on a game I never would have imagined I'd play and enjoy as much as I did. I had one last hurrah and tried DG. Poison is fun but OP with no way to counter stacking up to 30 DMG by mid game. Literally no card will counter this… it’s another blatant example of release it OP for the moniezz and then nerf it later. I opened 7 crates in a row and every card was a duplicate – all in all reaffirming my issue above. RIP.  I have a love hate relationship with this game. It’s hard to give up and I keep returning. Despite it’s issues this is an amazing game with so much depth and fun to be had, with a lot of love for the source material that that is overshadowed and let down by greedy business practice. 

The campaigns are a lot of fun. It’s a real shame. I might come back to play the campaigns and open a free crate every now and then. 

 GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

After playing more than my fair share of Gwent in The Witcher 3 the official card game is something I’d been meaning to get to for a long time. HHL put me in the mood for CCGs so I decided to jump in. At first glance it was still the same old Gwent i.e. win the first game, bait the second round, win the last, generate cards if you can. But it’s anything but. The spies have been reworked so you can't spam for extra cards and instead focus on debuffing the enemies. In general card draw is from minimal to non-existent beyond a balanced hand draw. Instead you have a resource cap for your deck and cards are worth a certain amount and you can combine any number of cards as long as the total falls below this cap. I choose my initial faction perfectly – the Dryads are a lot of fun with mechanics around symbiosis (summon a treant when you use a spell card) and vitality letting you add temporary health that boosts a unit each turn. Which you can stack and synergise with other abilities that proc of it like one card of a Dryad and Human lover that lets you summon a Dryard Youth every turn. This is reduced by its Vitality so keep it at 4 and you'll be summoning a Youth every turn. It’s a lot of fun when you can stack some powerful cards turn 1, saving your best cards, bait them turn 2 and destroy them turn 3.

It took a fraction of the time to develop your faction in Gwent compare to HHL. I actually bought cards as they seemed like decent value.

I dipped before I explored the other factions but Nilfgard, Vampires and Criminals (the new faction) look like a lot of fun. They did an amazing job expanding the existing factions into sub-factions. For example Scoia'tael have dwarves, elves and Dryads and you can focus on any of the three or create a hybrid. Monsters have Insectoids/swarm decks, Wild Hunt which are A LOT of fun, and Vampires/Ghouls with devour mechanics, etc. As fun as it is Gwent can't shake the feeling of a game made inside a game, that’s been expanded on. There’s a crazy amount of depth in the cards, but not in how you can play/attack in the game as they all funnel back to an arbitrary power score. It’d be amazing to see a Hearthstone/HHL warlord style game in the Witcher universe. Like Horus Heresy the card art in Gwent is absolutely phenomenal bringing the world to life in a new way. The games did this very well but here there's more depth given to the different cultures like Dryads, Dwarves, Criminals, Nilfgaard, etc in a way that the games don’t do. Bringing many factions from the books to life in the same way HHL did better than the tabletop. The metagame on the other hand is far better than HHL with an amazing crafting system where you can use destroy cards for dust and craft literally any card in the game. Overall it’s a fun game but there wasn’t anything to keep me coming back. I suspect I’ll return to this one after finishing the books and/or Season 3 of the show. But who knows, maybe I’ll just play the apparently phenomenal Thronebreaker instead.