Ubisoft’s most recent take on the the Might & Magic franchise has given birth to an entirely new genre never before imagined for the M&M series (well personally for me at least), a collectable card game.
Based on the M&M universe, the creatures and abilities in Duel of Champions will definitely be familiar to fans of the Might & Magic franchise. The game features the 5 factions who sets the pillar of the M&M universe- Haven, Inferno, Necropolis, Stronghold and the recently added Sanctuary. Each with four different heroes to suit different play styles and opens a variety of strategic approach, a multitude of cards obtainable by purchasing booster packs, a short single player campaign mode which acts as a stepping stone for new players (or an incredibly condensed tutorial) and a fairly large active online community. The game is free to play with an optional micro transactions model that involves buying additional booster packs which can be obtained in the game without spending a dime anyway. Bless you developers!
I am a huge fan of the boards and card game genre, I played tons of Magic The Gathering in the past, including the very sleek iOS port, spent many hours on Ascension, Spectromancer, the brilliant free-to-play Shadow Era and the recently released Solforge. (And of course many more which may be a tad excessive to state) Generally I play these type of games on my iPad or any other mobile devices because of the convenience of a simulated digital game environment. That means the game would create all the play cards, board pieces, roll the dice and check the rules for you but most importantly, it saves a lot of time compared to playing the actual physical board game where you have to place each individual game component and position it in a completely OCD fashion.
Some cards sparkle when they are wrapped in exotic rare foils!
Duel of Champion stays true to it’s franchise’s roots with it’s iconic lane control playstyle and maintain a good representation of the personality of each faction. Gameplay plays out comparatively to Magic 2013 with it’s resource management elements, a little bit of Spectromancer/Solforge/Kard Combat with it’s lane based combat system and introduces deck building elements which is a refreshing change for the iOS market of card games. The art quality of the cards and play board is sleek and beautiful, again pretty similar to Magic 2013 with a very polished quality. Deck building brings in the ability to customise your decks and allows a variety of playstyles and strategy. Shadow Era does this particularly well where they limit the amount of duplicate cards you can have in your deck.
The gameplay at it’s core is deep and highly strategic, more so even than Magic which is very hard for any game to accomplish for me on a personal level. Despite being exposed to a multitude of TCGs over the years, the majority of games don’t resonate with me the way Magic 2013 has. So you’re going to read a lot of comparison between Magic because that is one of my favorite card games of all time and any game that has the capacity to compete with Magic will be horribly scrutinized down to it’s core game mechanics. Heh heh heh. Back to mechanics, each play will be given a Hero card at the start to the end of the game similar to Magic, losing your Hero means losing the game. Each player can hold a minimum of 50 cards and a maximum of 200 cards at any time. But unlike Magic, Duel of Champions’ playing field is fought in two columns of four rows between each player. The two columns is split between the front and back portion of the player’s army, or creature cards. Only melee creatures can occupy the front line while the range creatures take the back and flying creatures being able to occupy both, makes perfect sense really. This really forces the player to make strategic decisions and maximize the potential efficiency of each creatures by placing them in tactical positions.
8 health points remaining?! Hah!
Aside from creature cards, each deck also consists of spells, items and event cards. Each player has to have 8 event cards in it’s deck and the game will compile the event cards from each player and randomly play them during each round. These cards are effects that will change the flow of combat during each turn, examples of event cards can increase the damage of magic cards or allow you to sacrifice one health for a card during that turn. This will usually have the potential to turn the tides of battles, but often can be anticipated just by knowing what kind of event cards you have in your deck. Spell cards works like any other spell card in a TCG game, these cards often functions as instantaneous damage to creatures and Heroes, buffs and debuffs for your minion and your opponent’s and sometimes having the ability to heal your creatures as well. Expecto Patronum!
Outside of combat, Duel of Champions features an intuitive deck manager with the ability to create your own custom decks where you can experiment with an endless amount of strategies. I’ve not test if you are able to compose a deck made entire out the same creature, that should prove rather interesting. The game also features an achievement system, an in-game leaderboard and the Infernal Pit.
Infernal Pit? What on earth might that be you ask? Well, you basically sacrifice your cards to the fiery depth of the Infernal Pit in hopes to obtain a random shown card which updates every few hours. (Sometimes of incredibly high rarity)
Cards for the Card God!
Now let’s talk about the microtrasctions business model in Duel of Champions. Before we go on, let me clarify that whatever can be obtained in the game, can be done so without spending any form of money, just that it will take BILLIONS of ingame hours to accumulate enough of the game’s currency to buy booster packs, expansion boxes and full decks. The game has two main currency- Gold and Seals.
Golds are awarded every time you win or lose a match, (you are awarded gold for losing only during multiplayer matches) other factors includes the amount of creatures you have on the playing field, the amount of excessive damage dealt at the end of the game and the actualy length of the match, where the longer the match results in more gold obtained for both players. Seals on the other hand, are much harder to earn — they are awarded only when you win a single-player campaign match and when you progress a level for your profile.
You can however, choose to purchase Gold and Seals by spending money, essentially speeding up the process required to actually earn your way to obtain those really shiny rare cards. I have yet to spend a dime on Duel of Champions honestly, because of how well paced the game rewards me with booster packs and enough seals to purchase those big expansion boxes (worth 10 or more booster packs) that I never actually needed to spend any form of cash. But some might encounter some difficulty with the campaign bosses just like I did and you might be tempted to purchase some currency to purchase additional cards. Here is the rundown of the price(note that it is in pounds) and exchange rate of the ingame currency system:
That is fairly expensive don’t you think?
No?
You rich ninny!
To give you a rough idea of how much a booster pack or expansion box is worth, here is quick overview:
The Serious Box?
I’ve been playing Duel of Champions on my iPad for an ungodly amout of playtime and I’ve been enjoying the multiplayer aspect of the game immensly, single player campaign- not so much considering i’ve been stuck on a Necropolis boss fight which I could not seemingly find an opportunity to get the upper hand. But overall, I’ve been having a lot of fun with the game, incredibly satisfying when you win an online match by the way, just want to point that out. The eufloria of outsmarting your opponent’s thoughfully planned out strategy and just steamroll him into oblivion is always something you will not get tired of doing. Duel of Champions might have officially dethroned Magic 2013 for me and that is something very few games to none can achieve (Fingers crossed for the upcoming Magic 2014) and for that, the game deserves an honourable score of:
92/100
The guys at Ubisoft Entertainment were kind enough to release these codes to expand your arsenal of beautiful cards:
– A3D-WER-Q8E-DF2-E4J (10 000 Gold + 3 Premium packs)
– M3R1-XMAS-2YOU-FROM-D3VS (just one Campfire)
You can redeem these codes only through the PC version of Duel of Champions by accessing the Store tab.
(The iPad version cannot redeem codes at the moment)
You can download the game for the PC here and the iPad version here as well as visiting their official website here.
That’s just showing off, fancy pants!
Update
Man, is it great to finally write about video games again! I went on a short hiatus from reviewing video games due to developer interviews, there are however still more to come of course. I already scheduled and also in the progress of editing an interview I did with the Trese Brothers- the developers of Star Traders which I reviewed a few months back. Also an upcoming interview with 11 Bit Studios, developers of the recently released Anomaly 2, the fine gentlemen at 11 Bit Studios were kind enough to pass me some copies of the game so there will be giveaway to some lucky readers.
I am in the process of writing another Might & Magic game, Clash of Heroes, it has a very intriguing match 3 style gameplay system with a lengthly story narrative campaign. I’ve been enjoying the game for awhile too and I believe I’ve played enough to justify writing a lengthy review for M&M Clash of Heroes. The only downside to the game for me on a personal level is that it incorporates anime art style which I do not quite fancy.
On a side note relating to the TCG market, the recent annoucement of Hex MMO: Shards of Fate on Kickstarter and Blizzard’s Hearthstone has me getting all dizzy and excited and I cannot wait for either of those games to be released! It is a good year for TCG fans indeed!