If you haven't invested in hearthstone or new to online card games, might i recommend "Eternal"

[Naer]

It's on the steam store, pretty baby new. Played heathstone for a few minutes and also some Magic the gathering on mobile. Eternal blows them away i think

 

[Newbian]

Does it have trading / actual game chat / more modes then just a single game against another person?

The first two these days seems to be lacking as it ruined the point of a multiplayer game a lot especially for hosted tournaments over previous types.

 

[Rifter]

Played for a few hours, the RNG is fucked. Way to many mana screwed games. Let me know when they fix it.

 

[Craig234]

I feel badly for the devs of some of these games, where there seem to be a lot of them, and great games, but the competition is terrible. There's a good sized learning curve to play them to know all the cards, so people are going to be picky. I like Spellweaver (referral code in sticky), but it seems to be having a hard time with players also.

One interesting thing is that I'll play a tournament and look at the ten players showing on the screen and it's like looking at the UN - no more than two might be from the same country, and they're from all over the world including places like Russia and Syria.

 

[Naer]

no annoying story lines, my kind of game tbh. Yeah, i agree that if they made a bunch of these games, the player pools would be divided, but this game seems different. Like i said, i only played a few minutes of Hearthstone. Eternal seems like a relaxing secondary game to the first person shooter game i play. and i find it neat having senority. Once im finished with the campaign to get all the reward cards, I'll then make a decision on whether i want to support this card game

 

[ImpulsE69]

I played through a few things of the "tutorial?" and already don't like it. They don't explain blocking very well aside from flying units, but even that didn't make sense. I'd see things get offered blocking and other times not offered blocking - using the same cards. They throw a completely different set of cards and powers in your lap w/o warning as well in going through it, so that was confusing also. Basically the tutorial needs better explaining of how the game works and strategies if it not the same as other card games. Whatever the next campaign part I'm supposed to do, the opponent is way more powerful than whatever I am playing, and the RNG is just...bad. I don't like the mana system at all and having to rely on drawing for them or drawing units (because it pretty much gives you exactly the opposite of what you actually need at the time). So far, two thumbs down.

It's early access though, so maybe it will get better.

 

[jimrawr]

Ive played MTG from revised, and Hearthstone since 2014. Eternal is way more like MTG but with the GUI of Hearthstone. Very fun game. Much better than Hearthstone IMO.

 

[akenbennu]

Draft mode is much more like an MtG draft and you get to keep the selected cards. Very F2P friendly. (I've been playing for about a month.)

 

[Rifter]

Soooooo, the GF installed this on the weekend and asked me for some help building a deck, as im way more into CCG's than she is, ive played MTG for years and years, probably played over 10k mtg games in my lifetime, used to play in tournaments the whole 9 yards. After spending some time helping her out and getting her going it kinda grew on me after my first time when i wasnt that impressed last week when i tried it.

The RNG is messed up, of that there is no doubt, but ive created a red deck thats 80% 4 mana or less to cast, with 30% of it 1 mana and the majority 2 or 3. This seems to give me a fighting chance even when mana screwed. Ive won multiple gauntlet last level matches with only 2 or 3 land so this relieved some of the RNG is fucking you pains. And like MTG this games does well with low casting cost weenie decks.

My main issue now that ive had alot of time with it is the cards, or lack there of, there just simply is not enough cards for good deck differentiation, there is pretty much only one really good viable option per color. Sure you can make a few different decks of each color and minor variations of the power decks for each color and there is lots of dual color options. But you see people complaining about the warcry decks for example because there is pretty much one dominant deck type per color so people will play it. This stems from the fact that there is pretty much only one or two legendary cards per color which are designed to work with only certain cards for the power deck of that color. This would be like the Lord of Atlantis being the only blue rare in MTG, obviously then everyone would build merfolk decks. They really need to add alot of cards to give it more variety, i realize its early access and that this is probably coming as they add content. But until then people are going to get bored of playing the power decks all the time, hopefully they add content at a fast pace.

Im now Interested in seeing how this works out in the long run.

 

[Rifter]

The new card set adds some variety, there is now multiple viable decks of each color.

Ive got about 150 hours into this game now. Im loving the fact that it has a andriod client so i can easily play from the couch or bed.

 

[akenbennu]

Eternal received a patch today improving the starter campaign and voiceover effects.

 

[pontifex]

installed and played the campaign and did some gauntlets so far.

Campaign was pretty easy except for the 1st Vara match. I tried that like 7 times before I beat it.

I can rarely get past the 4th gauntlet match.Made to the last gauntlet match once but that was crazy. not sure how I could beat that. First turn the AI laid down 2x 3 power creatures and just kept getting more and I'm, wtf? how the hell did he do that? All I was getting was crap cards and couldn't do anything.

Also seems like when I stun a creature it only lasts for 1 turn but when they stun mine, it lasts for 2 turns.

 

[pontifex]

Every time I get to like the last 2 or 3 enemies in gauntlet I get a crap draw/redraw or I won't draw any good cards. I'll either have power but no good cards to play, or i'll have good cards but no power to play them.

 

[Rifter]

Every time I get to like the last 2 or 3 enemies in gauntlet I get a crap draw/redraw or I won't draw any good cards. I'll either have power but no good cards to play, or i'll have good cards but no power to play them.

This happens to me alot to, they say the RNG isnt broken but i disagree, sometimes it just fucks you hard for no reason for a few games.

also the gauntlet can be brutal, i can beat it fairly regularly with my top 2 or 3 decks but i recommend you play the forge or Vs. Forge to build up your card supply and then Vs once you get a few decks together.

 

[akenbennu]

The last Gauntlet match always has a weird rule that favors the AI deck in that game.

 

[pontifex]

I dislike that extra rule thing on the last gauntlet. The game is already tough enough without it.
I bought gems to buy the 2nd quest series and every match has some extra thing that helps the AI in some way. It's really dumb. And the last one even cheats! Granted it does tell you it will, I think it's totally unnecessary.

Lately like 90% of my first draws are 1 power. I redraw and most of the time they are 2 power, and a lot of times it's only 1 color. I was stuck with all 1 color power and all another color cards (except for like 1 or 2 high cost cards of the color I did have) the and drew only that 1 color the whole game. I played nothing the entire game. Was really annoying and needless to say I lost that match.

 

[akenbennu]

Bumping this again since Eternal is officially in full release now and has a new set coming out in the next couple of weeks.

 

[Naer]

Bumping this again since Eternal is officially in full release now and has a new set coming out in the next couple of weeks.

word, recently started playing heavily lately. It's good game to play with coffee. Works well with my logitech gamepad

 

[DrMrLordX]

So how does Eternal stack up against Artifact? I've seen a lot of criticism over Artifact being p2w. Supposedly it's less of a problem now but still. I know very little about Eternal, and I may look at it later if I get the chance . . .

 

[Craig234]

spellweaver is still a good, free to play card game.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I tried out Eternal and found it to be rather nice. There's no obvious reason to pay $20 up front for Artifact when you can play a solid game in Eternal for free, unless you're looking to hawk cards on the Steam marketplace (then Artifact may be up your alley).

Getting cards, event tickets, and campaigns is stupid easy as well. Just keep hammering Gauntlets to get freebies. Typically you get three loot chests with gold + a card or maybe even a free pack. Hell in one chest I got a ticket for a starter draft gauntlet against AI opponents. Got to keep the entire deck, plus got more rewards from winning the . . . whatever they call it. It was like a gauntlet, but I had to draft cards to add to a starter deck and play that. Wound up with a Time + Nature deck that worked pretty well.

The five starter decks you get are functional. With a little tweaking, the starting Justice deck can be pretty powerful.

Multiplayer seems okay. I would like to see more game modes. M:tG has things like Emporer and Two-Headed Giant which can be fun. There are also some old dead styles that are not currently supported by MTGO (that I know of) like 5-colored star which are fun, if a bit chaotic.

Some of the game's critics claim that mana balance is a problem. You either get too few sigil cards or too many. Which I guess is one of the problems with Eternal being based so heavily on an M:tG like formula. Since Eternal insists on using the kind of system they do, it pays to balance casting costs against the amount of sigils you have in your deck and against the tools you use to help you get more mana. Or power or whatever you want to call it. I do really like how they've fixed the land balance problem from M:tG with the influence system; instead of having to have exact colors of mana, you instead have influence requirements on each card, so that as long as you have that total amount of influence and the right amount of mana to play the card, you can play it. If you play 3 Justice and 7 Shadow sigils, you can play any number of Justice cards so long as none of them require more than 3 Justice influence and so long as the total cost for all of them does not exceed 10.

Anyway to summarize, all it really takes is: don't use so many expensive cards, and use a lot of cards that either let you draw more cards or let you pull sigils directly out of your deck (each color has at least one common card that lets you do that, and then there's a colorless card that lets you do it in any deck; these are "deck holes" that effectively give you a 67-card deck instead of the 75-card minimum).

Once I get a larger collection and get more used to the sets in the game, I will go back to a 33% mana strategy for more aggressive deck design. Which would be 25 sigils out of 75. For now I use the recommended 30.

 

[akenbennu]

I tried out Eternal and found it to be rather nice. There's no obvious reason to pay $20 up front for Artifact when you can play a solid game in Eternal for free, unless you're looking to hawk cards on the Steam marketplace (then Artifact may be up your alley).

Getting cards, event tickets, and campaigns is stupid easy as well. Just keep hammering Gauntlets to get freebies. Typically you get three loot chests with gold + a card or maybe even a free pack. Hell in one chest I got a ticket for a starter draft gauntlet against AI opponents. Got to keep the entire deck, plus got more rewards from winning the . . . whatever they call it. It was like a gauntlet, but I had to draft cards to add to a starter deck and play that. Wound up with a Time + Nature deck that worked pretty well.

The five starter decks you get are functional. With a little tweaking, the starting Justice deck can be pretty powerful.

Multiplayer seems okay. I would like to see more game modes. M:tG has things like Emporer and Two-Headed Giant which can be fun. There are also some old dead styles that are not currently supported by MTGO (that I know of) like 5-colored star which are fun, if a bit chaotic.

Some of the game's critics claim that mana balance is a problem. You either get too few sigil cards or too many. Which I guess is one of the problems with Eternal being based so heavily on an M:tG like formula. Since Eternal insists on using the kind of system they do, it pays to balance casting costs against the amount of sigils you have in your deck and against the tools you use to help you get more mana. Or power or whatever you want to call it. I do really like how they've fixed the land balance problem from M:tG with the influence system; instead of having to have exact colors of mana, you instead have influence requirements on each card, so that as long as you have that total amount of influence and the right amount of mana to play the card, you can play it. If you play 3 Justice and 7 Shadow sigils, you can play any number of Justice cards so long as none of them require more than 3 Justice influence and so long as the total cost for all of them does not exceed 10.

Anyway to summarize, all it really takes is: don't use so many expensive cards, and use a lot of cards that either let you draw more cards or let you pull sigils directly out of your deck (each color has at least one common card that lets you do that, and then there's a colorless card that lets you do it in any deck; these are "deck holes" that effectively give you a 67-card deck instead of the 75-card minimum).

Once I get a larger collection and get more used to the sets in the game, I will go back to a 33% mana strategy for more aggressive deck design. Which would be 25 sigils out of 75. For now I use the recommended 30.

The monthly sealed mode is a really good value for getting new cards too. Something like 12k gold for at least 18 packs at the end of the month no matter where you finish.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The monthly sealed mode is a really good value for getting new cards too. Something like 12k gold for at least 18 packs at the end of the month no matter where you finish.

That ain't bad. Haven't tried it yet. Presumably I just missed the sealed event with it being Dec 31st.