Elder Scrolls - Legends (Card Game)

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Kuro

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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The folks at Bethesda/Direwolf Digital finally started spilling the beans on their Digital Card Game offering, Elder Scrolls: Legends.

The Elder Scrolls Legends

Being designed by a couple Magic the Gathering pros, so should be interesting to see how it works out. Doesn't look particularly paradigm-shifting. Only reason it was on my radar initially was Luis Scott-Vargas on design.

-Board is divided into two lanes, with shifting "terrain" modifier to each lane that changes how cards play in that lane (and you can play cards that change/set a lane's Terrain). Creature can attack other creatures in their lane, but not in the other lane; most AOE seems restricted to one lane.
-Game has 5 colors like Magic, but no colored mana; Hearthstone-style turn-by-turn mana progression. Decks are restricted to using 2 colors.
-Game has a solo campaign that rewards cards, or purchasing Booster Packs. Common/Uncommon cards can "level up" in rarity/strength through play. Same rarity system as Hearthstone, including 1/deck Legendaries.
-In the solo campaign, you choose a race/class and that biases what reward cards you get.
-Game also has Arena as a straight rip-off of Hearthstone, choose race+class, then pick cards from sets of 3 until you have a 30 card deck.
-Game has weeaboo-fightan-CCG-style Life-break system. As you lose life and drop below certain life thresholds, your "runes" blow up and you draw cards; it's a system for getting back into a game you are losing. Various cards care about runes breaking, or the # of runes you or your opponent have left. You start at 30 life and 6 runes, with the runes breaking as you dip below their 5-life-increment thresholds. Some cards have the "Prophecy" keyword, and if you draw them off a Rune Break you get to immediately play them for free... but they mostly seem like shit outside of being cast that way, so are likely a non-factor.
-It's a creature combat game, with spells and equipment. Hearthstone style creature combat, with non-recovering creature health and the ability to directly attack your opponent's critters.
-Some cards have a cost in the lower right hand corner you can pay to transform them into stronger cards. Should be a nice mechanic for converting early game cards into mid or late game cards. The base versions of these cards seem weaker than similarly costed cards, as a cost for the flexibility.
-Potions and other Consumeables go to your "support area" and you can click them to get effects. These cards have Charges that are expended as you use them.
-Current card layout is ugly as shit and looks like something a 13-year-old drew in their notebook in 1998.
-Beta begins tonight, and they'll be taking in waves over the weekend as they do their reveal at PAX.
 

eXarc

Molten Core Raider
1,603
501
Looks interesting. Definitely have my eye on this, but yeah doesn't strike me as genre-altering. But who cares? Could be fun.
 

Caliane

Golden Baronet of the Realm
14,424
9,797
neat.


oh god that board is hideous. hahah

took me a while to understand your lanes description. it looked to me, via the screenshots, just one lane ala hearthstone. but, I think I see. its left and right lanes. 4 quadrants. your left and right, and their left and right lanes.
how does attack/defend work?

There is a vid.

Looking at the cards. this really just looks like hearthstone.
I assume "guard" is taunt, and how blocking is done.
 

Rogosh

Lord Nagafen Raider
894
230
Got lucky enough to get in to beta this week, this game is like hearthstone taken to the next level. The 2 lanes require more strategy and the pace of the game is alot faster than hearthstone as well. Get in beta if you can, its worth it.
 

Valderen

Space Pirate
<Bronze Donator>
4,437
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I just got into beta for this as well. Played for about 30 minutes, it looks pretty interesting.

The two lanes is nice strategy, especially since they can have effects in them...for example, a shadow lane makes all creatures summoned in that lane have cover(stealth) for 1 turn.

There's also, Ongoing effects that are permanent...like all creatures have 0/+1. There are cards that can remove them, but they cannot be attacked.

Too bad it's not on iPad, I rarely play Hearthstone at the computer and unlikely to play this much either...and timing sucks with Overwatch that just came out. I'll play a bit more though, since it looks pretty interesting.
 

jooka

marco esquandolas
<Bronze Donator>
14,367
6,087
Just got an invite to this, will be checking out tonight if I find time. Anyone still playing? Any tips for getting started?
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
It's pretty killer - NDA is officially off so feel free to ask any questions - although I just got in about a week ago, so I'm no expert (Rank 9 for PVP)
 

Sludig

Silver Baronet of the Realm
8,852
9,131
To me it looked like a mix of heathstone but also ripping a lot from the Might and Magic CCG that didnt get a lot of traction versus hearthstone. (Had like 6 lanes, 2 columns per side, so a ton of effects that effect line vs column vs...)
 

Kuro

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
8,264
20,917
Playing since wave 1 of invites, it's a pretty solid game. Don't see it ever eclipsing something like hearthstone, though. It has enough cards that you feel like there's always something out there that you want, but is generous enough with cards that you don't feel like it's something you *lack*. Most effects are found at various efficiency-levels on different cards, so you can generally find a good enough bit of filler to plug the hole until you get what you want.

The AI Arena can be a bit bullshit sometimes. Like, games you just lose because your draft deck was never offered a "deal 1-2 damage to everything in a lane" card and their randomly decided starting-bonus rogered you. Then you'll have AI arenas where you win without any even remote chance of losing, because the random bonus effects are on decks you're well matched against, instead of something your draft deck was already on the bad foot against.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
Kuro - I can see feeling that way about Solo Arena the first few times - but really no effect from the lanes is too surprising for me now at around 8 deep now. Not to mention learning interactions that boost commons higher in value + learning my favored colors. (Currently Agility/Intellect)
 

jooka

marco esquandolas
<Bronze Donator>
14,367
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I got up to I think chapter 25 last. Couldn't make a deck to beat him the few times I tried. Gonna give it a go again tonight.

Like the game so far but only have played the PvE stuff so far. Hearthstone devs need to take look as the tavern brawls in hearthstone suck compared to the modes I played in the tutorial stuff.
 

kudos

<Banned>
2,363
695

Anyone play this? I watched it on Twitch the other night and made me want to play so bad. It's in beta and available to download now. It looked like a more mature version of Hearthstone.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends
 

Taho

N00b
370
18
I downloaded today and messed around some. Seems fairly interesting. I've never played MtG, but people say it's a cross between HS and MtG. There is definitely alot taken from HS such as card rarity, the way you open packs, the Arena set up and rewards, the gold cost of packs, etc. Deck size is 50 cards and you can have up to 3 of one card (barring certain unique legendaries). I will probably keep playing to see how it all shakes out... I've been pretty bored with HS lately anyway.
 

Famm

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
11,041
794
Is this just an open beta weekend or THE open beta? Was wondering if progress is going to save towards the real live game.
 

DaliLhama

Golden Squire
136
48
Its really not that bad, lots of cool game/card mechanics. But very, very plain to look at ..could use some beautifying i guess? Very playable and fun.
 

Dragonaut

Molten Core Raider
41
47
I've been playing for a couple of hours now, doing a bunch of the single player campaign stuff. Four things strike me:

The spells I've seen so far have been incredibly primitive. They're so basic that I can't imagine making a spell-based deck of any kind. I've also seen no potential for meaningful combos, and removal is both scarce and weak. In other words, everything is purely zoo-style board control with small and mid-sized minions. It's the only thing I've seen so far. I haven't seen nearly all spells, but of the ones I have, hardly any would lend themselves to any kind of control deck or combo setup.

I read an article where the game's developers touted Legends as "the game they wanted Hearthstone to be." I assumed that this meant a card game with simple, accessible mechanics but without Hearthstone's absurd levels of randomness which heavily compromises the game's competitive integrity. That thoguht had me very interested, but I've since discovered that Legends has possibly even more RNG between cards with random effects and the Prophecy mechanic.

I haven't played any constructed games yet, just the campaign, and in campaign games the board is either a single lane or two split lanes. In the split lane setup, playing minions in the right lane means they get stealth. In some campaigns, playing a minion in the left lane means it gets a free random buff or something like that. Is this a thing in constructed play? It's really weird and jarring to have these odd, varying rulesets.

In Legends, going second gives you the mana elixir or whatever it's called, which is (in HS terms) a free coin on three separate turns of your choosing. This is insanely powerful and makes going second feel vastly superior to going first. What's the deal with this? In Hearthstone, which is very similar in gameplay terms, it was established that the coin (i.e. a single one-time use of elixir) roughly equalized the average win rate of going first and second. Surely this game's version, with its 3x 1 mana, increases win rate much more than that. This effect completely gamechanging and I can't see how this is balanced.
 

Taho

N00b
370
18
To comment on your coin point... HS gives you the coin plus an extra card, not just the coin. That being said, so far I also prefer going second with the mana elixer. It helps you curve out much smoother if you don't draw the perfect starting hand.

Also, in Versus, it's always 2 lanes... one shadow and one regular. Those other lane types are just for PvE afaik to make things varied and interesting.

I can't really comment on your first point about the meta and deck types because I've only been playing 2 days and have seen only a small fraction of the cards.
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
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I dismissed this game at first because of how much time/money I've invested in Hearthstone. But nearly everything I've read about the game says it's categorically better than Hearthstone while still not dealing with the RNG aspect. Is there anything objectively worse about this game compared to Hearthstone? There are some fundamental problems about Hearthstone that are really starting to annoy me, might be time to try a different game.