Card Hunter - the non ccg

[Xilren's Twin]

Short version - Card Hunter is a browser native, turn based tactical combat game that most resembles 4ED D&D with an early 80's D&D tongue in cheek aesthetic.  You control a party of 3 characters who’s equipment gives them the “cards” they assemble into a “deck” from which they randomly draw from each turn to perform actions.  Cards are used for movement, attack, defense, buffs/debuffs, ability boosts and disadvantages.  You alternate turns with your opponent each playing one card at a time to resolve combat.  Free to play with ability to buy in game currency (pizza slices) to purchase extra chests of loot, bonus items from chests via membership in a vip club, alternate art for character tokens, and locked adventures with guaranteed high level loot.  Has a fairly large single player campaign, and multiplayer matches (which can also be played vs the AI if no one is available).  Decent fun if you like turn based tactics games with D&D flavor.  Currently in beta but adding lots of people daily.  Took me like a week to get in after applying.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Longer version – First off this is most definitely not any sort of online CCG like Magic or Hex (quite frankly I think it’s misnamed).  It’s also not any sort of RPG despite all the D&D trappings.  What it is, is a decent fantasy tactical game.  Modules are presented as a series of 1-4 battles, and are played out on what looks like a cardboard map with cutout figures just like you would expect to see modern D&D played today.  However instead of at wills/encounter/daily powers, you draw cards each turn from your equipment based deck.  Each piece of equipment adds 2-6 cards to your deck.  A weapon might at 6 attack cards (3 of 1 card, 2 of another, 1 of a third).  Your armor might add 3 armor cards.  Your class skill might at 3 cards (1 boost, 1 attack, 1 move).  Boots might add 3 movement cards, or 2 move and 1 armor, etc.  Each equipment slot on its own will add some basic cards to your deck, so when you put a real piece of equipment in it you are really just swapping new cards in for those basic ones.

You start with a hand of 5 cards per character, and the round goes until both you and your opponent have chosen to Pass with no actions.  The first player to Pass gets to go first on the following round, which can be quite important.  Your characters are only allowed to keep 2 cards in hand when ending a round, and when the new round begins, your draw 2 cards plus 1 bonus move card (which is based on your race), apply status effects, and start alternating actions again. Positioning/facing, terrain, line of sight, range are key as well.  While you cannot exhaust your deck, later rounds tend to have much less actions than the beginning ones unless you’ve been holding a bunch of cards.  There is no rolling to hit, but there is a random element in both the card drawing, and defensive rolls.  If you have armor cards or block/parry type cards, when attacked you roll a D6 to see if it meets or exceeds the value on the card to see if the defensive works.  For blocks, it will stop an attack entirely.  For Armor, it reduces the incoming damage.  So my even if my armor has a damage reduction of 4, if the D6 stat is 5+, it’s only going to work half the time compared to DR2 armor with a D6 of 3+

Combat is resolved by Victory Stars; you get 2 by killing enemy creatures  or 1 for occupying more Victory squares than your opponent when a round ends (assuming the map has any).  After battle, you open a chest containing 1-4 random items, then move to the next battle.  You always start a battle with your full party at full health.  Completing all the battles in a module also grants experience – enough experience you level up which may increase your health, might grant an additional equipment slot, and allows you to use higher level gear.

There’s really no character building; the game is about adjusting your gear to give you the best kind of cards for a given challenge, but until you get to level 6-7 you don’t even have to do that much.  Melee attacks might be bashing, chopping, piercing or slashing and some defense is better against those (simple again, bashing is not very effective against oozes).  Magic attacks are different elemental types; cleric stuff can be holy or unholy, etc.  You will end up with a lot of loot but b/c there’s never just one “best”

The complexity starts to increase as they keep introducing more utility cards, cards with disadvantages, multi-type cards and synergy cards.  For example they are move/attack combo cards, so a weapon that gives a bunch of those might be quite useful for a slow moving dwarf warrior.  There’s heal/damage cards which might heal you for 2 now, but then poison you for the next 2 rounds.  Buff/damage cards that increase your damage but apply an attack to the character when the card is cast on them (i.e. +2 damage for 2 rounds, target character attacked for 1 damage when given the buff, but that damage might be reduced to 0 by the targets armor).  Attacks that move the target, attacks that apply DoTs, drain attacks, hard to block attacks, armor piercing attacks, terrain affects (walls of fire, pools of acid) plus meta stuff like making your target discard a card, or powerful attacks you can use at the cost of a discard from your hand.  Some items have good cards and 1-2 bad ones (disadvantages), so you have to decide if they are worth the risk to use.  If you draw a disadvantage it automatically triggers.  Having a disadvantage of say “play with your hand revealed” may not be that big a deal; having your mage draw one that says “take 2 damage for each spell in your hand” might well kill him if drawn at the wrong time.  Might be worth it for the 2 sweet attack spells on it though…

Multi-player is always 3 x 3, and tries to use rankings for “even” fights.  You get a chest for winning, and the more wins you have in a day, the better chests you can get.   Playing the campaign you will be given 1 fighter, 1 cleric and 1 wizard of the race of your choice.  You can spend the in game gold your earn on gear, or recruit additional level 1 characters.  So if you wanted to run a 2 fighter 1 cleric party you could.  You can repeat campaign adventures after a reset timer elapses; if you try to take higher level characters into a lower level module they will get down leveled and won’t get any XP.

The alternate currency (pizza) runs about 30-35 slices for $1.  Buying chest of random loot runs 30 to 150.  Alternate token art is 80, locked adventures are 40.  Playing through the single player campaign thus far has gotten me about 120 pizza just b/c I didn’t spend it on the crap they gave me the pizza to try out.

Personally, I think it’s a decent time waster to play until something more interesting finally comes along (cough HEX cough) especially since it’s free.  I do like the art aesthetic and loving pokes at D&D; I grew up with 80s D&D – I suspect the guys that made this did too.  Plenty of let’s play videos about if people want to look more.

[Ginaz]

I've been playing this, too.  It certainly doesn't seem to be a CCG because I haven't been able to figure out how or if you can trade with other players but its a fun little time waster that I've put about 10 hours or so into the past few weeks.  I liked it MUCH better than Scrolls, for what its worth, but I don't think serious players *cough**Schild**cough* will care for it.

[schild]

I already commented on this in the infinity wars thread. Scrolls also, which looks dreadful. I believe i called Card Hunter nothing more than D&D 4.0.

[Pezzle]

This game is fun enough, but the cash shop pricing insures I will never spend a dime.  $87 a year for club membership at the best rate.  Not sure how much dungeons cost.  A slight distraction I guess?

[pxib]

Personally, I think it’s a decent time waster to play until something more interesting finally comes along...

That about covers it. If it were the combat system of a larger game with other systems, or if it there the mechanical part of a story-heavy game there'd be more there there. As it stands it's just a cute toy with more breadth than depth... more tactically complex than your average flash game grinder with a cash shop, less immersive than most RPGs. I'd play it as a board game.

[Bann]

I was invited into beta - played it for a few hours first day... It was cool? I sort of forgot about it till the emailed me with some beta keys to hand out. Post when you activate one and I'll go ahead and mark it as such.

[Xilren's Twin]

I was invited into beta - played it for a few hours first day... It was cool? I sort of forgot about it till the emailed me with some beta keys to hand out. Post when you activate one and I'll go ahead and mark it as such.

Yeah i got 3 keys to hand out today myself.  PM me if you want one after Bann's are gone.

[Ginaz]

I have 3 beta keys, too.  If anyone is interested, send me a PM and I'll send one out.

[ezrast]

I used the SPQW one. Thanks, I think.

[Kitsune]

Apparently some people were douchebags and used those other two keys without posting to let anyone know; they both came up as used when I tried them.

[Ard]

I've got 3 keys as well still, pm if you still need one, since I'm not going to post them for the above reason.

[Bann]

I was invited into beta - played it for a few hours first day... It was cool? I sort of forgot about it till the emailed me with some beta keys to hand out. Post when you activate one and I'll go ahead and mark it as such.


all codes claimed

Yeah i got 3 keys to hand out today myself.  PM me if you want one after Bann's are gone.

[Xilren's Twin]

I was invited into beta - played it for a few hours first day... It was cool? I sort of forgot about it till the emailed me with some beta keys to hand out. Post when you activate one and I'll go ahead and mark it as such.

Yeah i got 3 keys to hand out today myself.  PM me if you want one after Bann's are gone.

Bann's are gone; i've got 2 left.

[Ironwood]

Still ?

[Xilren's Twin]

Still ?

Yep; either it's easy enough to get in no one else needs one, or there is very little interest 

[Ironwood]

This is a rather odd game.

I do wish they'd make the board look a little less like an Escher tho.

[Ironwood]

This game IS fun.  I am trying to put a longer write up than that together, though I suspect I won't say anything that hasn't already been said.

[Xilren's Twin]

BTW, this game will go live as of Sept 12th.  Still will be free to play, but apparently you can buy a $25 starter kit which unlocks all the pve quests or something.

[Ironwood]

I can't see myself ever paying for it.  In that sense, it seems like mega-fail.

That said, ain't dipped the toe in PvP yet and you know how mental people get if it's a competition and you can pay to win.

[Ironwood]

Cock-roach level is pissing me off, not least because they implement doors as monsters, which means other monsters can pass through locked doors.

Fuck sake.

[Xilren's Twin]

Cock-roach level is pissing me off, not least because they implement doors as monsters, which means other monsters can pass through locked doors.
Fuck sake.

Yeah that one sucks, especially b/c the char in the locked room is randomly chosen.  However, my clear least favorite maps are the ones with nothing but ranged, teleporting sprites/demons.
Thank goodness for walls of stone and fire.

[Ironwood]

Oddly, wall of fire works on the door.  Down in two turns.

But this one is clearly just luck of the draw and I'm not a fan of that.

/yes, I should have worked that out sooner.

[Margalis]

Weird game.

The metaphor is all over the place, it's part board game, part flash game, part card game and part D&D.

They do a good job of mixing up the scenarios and enemy types - that's probably the strongest part of the game. The actual gameplay becomes very samey very fast - at first when you level up you are getting new equipment slots, but pretty quickly the amount of new stuff you are seeing dwindles. It's also impossible to tell what enemies are about until you've fought them once, so you can take all slashing weapons against guys immune to slashing weapons and be screwed. There are 3 character slots and 3 types of characters, so there isn't much room or reason to experiment.

The economy seems borked. Maybe they expect you to buy resources? Because when I complete a dungeon I get like 10 gold worth of items I can sell and the shop has things that cost like 250. I can't buy anything with gold.

The presentation makes the game feel very slight. It's hard to feel heroic when the framework is explicitly that you are a playing a game, and I hate the sound effects from the dungeon master guy. I get what they were going for, but the level of dorky nebbishness is off-putting.

I agree that it needs something like a plot or to be part of a larger game or something to bind it together a little more. At least something to work towards like beating a boss or clearing a section of the map. As it is it's just a series of challenges that are fun enough but after putting it down I don't have much desire to pick up again and certainly not to pay.

[Ironwood]

And now, Queues.

What the almighty fuck.