KickStarter Faeria - digital TCG/board game hybrid

[Frusciante]

Just found this kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1464350149/faeria-strategy-card-game

Its basically a TCG and board game combined. The concept looks really interesting. Best thing: its not P2win, so no spending hundreds of dollars on booster packs just to compete.

Second best thing: you can pledge 15$ and try their beta immediately. So if you dont like it you can just cancel your pledge.

Some info:

''What if you were to reinvent Magic: the Gathering but had a board in the gameplay's foundations? In Faëria, your lands not only serve as a resource: your lands are the battlefield.

You no longer question yourself with binary choices like "Do I attack or not?” - Instead you have to deal with land placement, resource gathering, creature and structure positioning, and how to invest your action points every turn. The layout of your lands is essential to victory because each of your land is where you’re allowed to play your cards from your hand.

Creatures and structures interact with the lands given their types: certain creatures have more power on forests, others combat immunity on deserts, etc. Event cards let you destroy the terrain or reshape it, others let you teleport creatures. The terrain offers a layer of depth that opens up a stunning strategic dimension, something never seen before in the Tradable Card Game genre.''

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

This is a game that I have some experience with, both through watching several streams of it, and having actually played it for a while. I'll toss out my impressions.

The Good
+ Sans beta bugs (none of which are malicious, beyond forcing a browser refresh), this game runs very smoothly on my awfully outdated computer. I've been able to run it alongside two active streams and with NwN2, with only minor slowdown at worst.
+ It sounds very lovely, and looks beautiful. Though these are elements that might be muted/washed away over time, they make the game very nice to get into initially.
+ Easy to learn, though the tutorial isn't very clear at the moment. I'm not about 'hard to master', but it definitely has more to play around with than Hearthstone / Scrolls.
+ Plenty of tactical variety, though dependent on draws (obviously). You can gain an advantage over your opponent through economy, positioning, swarming, rushing and using unique unit abilities, such as 'Curse' (damages the enemy 'Orb'(Nexus) when you step on their tiles).
+ Plenty of special abilities. Aquatic can move over lake tiles, or those without land. Flying can of course fly over anything. Haste units can act the moment they're summoned. Charge # can move in a straight line equal to the #. Ranged attacks, energy (action points, basically) accumulation, land type bonuses. There's plenty of things to make cards unique from one another.
+ There's three primary resources to consider, each deck using them / providing them differently. Faeria is a resource type on the board, and you have to move units to capture it as it spawns (once every three total turns). Gold is a resource you gain per turn, or gain through special units and spending action points on it. Action Points allow you to create a prairie (one per turn), shape the prairie (lake, forest, mountain, desert - each related to a deck), draw a card or earn gold. Action Points are typically limited to three, but there are ways to earn more per turn (typically with forest decks). Summoning cards and moving units doesn't take action points.
+ Five card types; Common, Uncommon, Exceptional, Rare, Legendary. The latter two tiers typically tend to explore a lot more with quirky, but not always good abilities.
+ Five deck types; Forest, Lake, Desert, Mountain, Human (aka colourless/landless), each feeling distinct from one another.

The Bad
- Like Scrolls, the game - at present - heavily suffers from needing to either be very lucky, very grindy, or to interact with the trade when it comes to getting new cards. I don't know if you can currently sell excess cards, or if it's planned to be included, so the only way to get in-game currency is, of course, to play games. You currently have to win about two/three games (or one long game) to get an eight-card pack of Commons and Uncommons for all decks, and there's no option to get land specific packs. It's satisfying to get those packs, as usual, but it's definitely a chore to get each one sooner, rather than later. Especially the latter tiers.
- Like anything, it does suffer from community bias towards decks. It's boring to fight the flavour of the week over, and over, and over again. Especially if you don't have the luck of getting the cards you need to counter them.
- The interface, being Flash, can be finnicky and unfun to use. The game runs smoothly in itself, but the UI not as much. This may be optimised, but I suspect it's a simply a problem of Flash.
- This is my most important point: Games can literally be lost on the starting hand. You have the option for a single redraw if you get a bad hand, and if you end up with another? There's no automatic draw function. You have to spend your action points to draw another card, which puts you behind in growing land to reach faeria or earning gold. I cannot stress enough how crippling the RNG is to this game. With both your economy and card draws tethered to action points (there are economy cards that score additional draws, usually for a gold/faeria cost), you are screwed more than usual with TCGs with every bad draw. Short games are very common, and the longer, more satisfying and tactical games are, sadly, hard to come by (though when you get them, they're fantastic), because a game can simply stop when a player winds up with a bad hand and bad economy simultaneously.

 

[Frusciante]

This is a game that I have some experience with, both through watching several streams of it, and having actually played it for a while. I'll toss out my impressions.

(......)

- This is my most important point: Games can literally be lost on the starting hand. You have the option for a single redraw if you get a bad hand, and if you end up with another? There's no automatic draw function. You have to spend your action points to draw another card, which puts you behind in growing land to reach faeria or earning gold. I cannot stress enough how crippling the RNG is to this game. With both your economy and card draws tethered to action points (there are economy cards that score additional draws, usually for a gold/faeria cost), you are screwed more than usual with TCGs with every bad draw. Short games are very common, and the longer, more satisfying and tactical games are, sadly, hard to come by (though when you get them, they're fantastic), because a game can simply stop when a player winds up with a bad hand and bad economy simultaneously.

Ok, thanks for you impressions. Sounds good overall. Your last negative point is the only thing that truly bothers me. But maybe they'll change it overtime?

Anyway, I just backed for the beta acces so am going to try it out tonight.

Edit: how would you rate it against Scrolls? Better or worse?

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

That's fairly difficult to answer, honestly. My personal experience hasn't suffered too badly from the RNG, but it's a problem that I've witnessed a lot in streams with higher level players and their substantially more complete decks - you won't run into it often early on. Just for the sheer potential that Faeria has, and the fact that there's many, many more traits for cards to have compared to Scrolls, I'd say that Faeria is better (far, far better when the RNG is good for both players). Opening up a new card pack is definitely more exciting in Faeria. Just be prepared for a number of games that could end without any feeling of reward for the victory (or a feeling of sour luck on a loss).

 

[Frusciante]

I've played 14 games now (8 wins, 6 losses). Overall impression is really good. Better than I expected honestly.

The core gameplay is really interesting and well developed. Its still a beta so there is basically only ranked pvp matches right now but the game itself is really well made, UI looks good etc. Even the placeholder art looks pretty good for now atleast.

Most of all the pacing of the game is good, there is almost never a dull moment. There is always a lot of different tactical options. Lots of different strategies possible.

I have played a green/blue deck in the beginning. Currently using Red/Blue.

Edit: they also managed to finally get some attention from the press:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danieltack/2013/10/16/faeria-preview-fantastic-fantasy-tactics/

http://2p.com/2306745_1/Faeria-A-suprising-evolution-in-the-trading-card-game-by-Craizyfists.htm

http://indiestatik.com/2013/10/09/faeria/