Eternal, Free-to-Play CCG

http://store.steampowered.com/app/531640/

I know, I know. My eyes glaze over when I see a new free-to-play card game. And I wouldn’t have given this a second thought if not for a few reasons:

  • There are quite a few Magic pros on the design and development teams.
  • It has a very friendly and easy-to-read interface.
  • It attempts to balance Hearthstone’s ease of play with some of Magic’s play choices (casting spells on an opponent’s turn, for example).
  • Mobile client for phones and tablets.

And now, I’ve put about thirty hours into it since Thanksgiving. For being early access, I haven’t run into any bugs or crashes. Has anyone else tried it?

I’ve played quite a lot of it. I like it. The different game formats are clever:

  • Gauntlet - play a constructed deck against a bunch of AI opponents, no entry fee, prize based on how many wins you get before you lose a game
  • Ranked - play a constructed deck against a human opponent, no entry fee, small prize for winning
  • Forge - 25 picks between three options (like HS Arena), then play against a series of AI opponents, medium entry fee, prize based on how many wins you get before you lose two games. You almost certainly can’t win your entry fee back but you get to keep the cards you picked
  • Draft - 48 cards in four packs (like MtG drafting), but asynchronous, then play against human opponents, large entry fee, prize based on how many wins you get before you lose three games. If you win 6 games you just about get your entry fee back, 7 and you make a small profit.

The draft implementation is neat. The way they make it async but still feel like a real draft is that you’re dropped into a previously recorded draft replacing one of the players, so you still have the experience of reading signals from the drafters on either side.

There are also quests like HS. I haven’t put any money into it yet and it hasn’t been too frustrating.

I only have one minor interface problem and I’m not sure what a good way would be to fix it. It would be nice if the game didn’t only wait for you to click “continue” when you have a legal play since that leaks some information about your hand, but the alternative is for the game to require a click to continue every time a play could possibly be made, and I suspect that’s overall more annoying.

Heard about this elsewhere just this morning and fired it up. Pretty neat. I might just be done with Magic/HS at this point, though. We’ll see.

Just don’t tell @LordGek. Otherwise, he’ll come here and praise it…

You bastage! How dare you wake me from my Qt3 board slumber.

I do actually enjoy it, especially due to the Gauntlet, a free mode it is easy to earn boosters from and the AI is actually competent. I also love how you never know ahead of time which deck you’ll be facing and, as it is single elimination, one loss and you’re booted. The format has you dueling 6 random AI opponents and then a special match as the seventh duel. In this special duel there will be some wacky global effect modifying the game and while it will effect both you and the AI the same way, you’ll always be facing an opponent AI who’s deck is specifically designed to take advantage of the new mechanics tweak, like something you’d see in a Hearthstone Tavern Brawl. If you do manage to beat the final baddy, new tougher enemy decks are thrown into the pool of random opponents you’ll face your next time through (well at least for the first 4-5x you beat them).

I have been playing a fair amount of MtG: Duels and am looking for another card game to try. I’m debating whether to give this or Hex a run. It looks like Eternal is a bit more streamlined (and still raw I presume since it’s Early Access) while Hex has a full PvE mode similar to the old MtG Shandalar games.

I am most interested in the single-play experience for now, as I don’t plan on spending wads of cash like my old days of paper Magic shudder. I will throw in some bucks to support development if I end up liking either/both games.

Hex is probably better as a single-player experience. It’s also closer to Magic as far as how the turns are structured. Eternal has some single-player modes, but nothing like the Hex campaign.

But everything’s free, too, so no harm in trying it all!

Hex is the head and shoulders leader in the digital card game market as far as singleplayer experience, at least as far as I’ve seen. I don’t think anyone else offers remotely the same level of support or unique content for PvE. And some of them (coughHearthstonecough) want to charge for the little they do offer, whereas Hex’s PvE is 100% free. (You may want PvP cards to use in PvE, admittedly, and those either cost money or a bunch of gold for anything above commons.)

YMMV what game is best for competitive play.

I had no clue Hex had single-player modes, much less as f2p. Somehow I had written this off as a full on MTG clone, with everything inherent with that (buying cards, competitive head-to-head, etc.). Not to derail from Eternal, but time to go look up Hex.

Even though PVE is free I think there is a lot of grinding. You will probably want to spend some money to get a good deck for the SP campaigns.

If anyone decides to play and you need some cards give a holler. I have a lot of commons and UC in my collection.

Grinding is fine. I like tinkering with these games, but rarely do I turn into a consistent player. Just being able to tool around for a bit is okay, but thanks for settings expectations appropriately.

I’ve been playing a lot of this. It’s definitely a Magic-like game with a Hearthstone-like interface, and it sort of has the best of both worlds; the variety of Magic with the quick action of Hearthstone. Although you can still get mana screwed/flooded.

It includes a lot of effects that could only be done online; like “warcry” which gives +1/+1 to the next creature or equipment in your deck, and the fact that creatures usually keep any modifications even in your hand or the discard pile.

It also seems pretty generous with cards, packs, and coins. I haven’t spent anything yet, and although I lose more than I win, I don’t always lose.

Lately I’ve been playing this instead of Hex. And I really like Hex.

They’re currently running an event where you can get a playset each of five new cards. You get one of each card for your first versus win of the day. When the event is over, the cards will become part of the first set packs.

I think that this kind of between-set release (they did one in December, too) is one of the things that sets Eternal apart. You get a steady drip of new cards to keep things fresh between the big sets.

I accidentally discovered something. Don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature. If one of your cards is stunned and you have a silence card, you can use it to remove the stun. And of course any abilities the card has as well.

Nice!

I’ve got a pretty decent Shimmerpack/Deranged Dragomancer deck going. It relies on getting out a lot of cheap creatures and then making them large. I guess I must be on the right track, because they just increased the cost of Shimmerpack! Shimmerpack is a cost 8 4/4, when you play it you can transmogrify any of your in-play creatures into copies of it. Deranged Dragomancer turns a creature (possibly itself) into a 5/5 at the start of every turn. Fun stuff!

This is…this is really good. I want a better deckbuilding interface, but I’m really impressed with the structure of the game and the balancing right now.

I really like how it reworks the whole concept of ‘priority’ from MTG into “you can play this ONE SPECIFIC KIND OF CARD at these SUPER SPECIFIC TIMES” so you still get to have combat tricks and counterspells and such, but really don’t sacrifice much in terms of flow.

Works surprisingly well on a gamepad in Big Picture mode also, btw. And the Android client isn’t garbage.

Most of my annoyance with deckbuilding is in how the cards are organized. Basic power cards are sorted at the beginning of their color, which means you have to click or tap back several pages when it’s time to fill in your deck with basics. And the colorless “grab one power from your deck” spell is sorted at the beginning of everything, even though all of the other colorless cards are sorted at the end.

It’d be nice if some of the filtering options besides color (like card type, maybe) were accessible from the main deckbuilding screen instead of on a separate menu, but that’s a minor annoyance. And I’m only annoyed on mobile – doing all of the fiddly crap with a keyboard and mouse is much easier.

Oh god, no deckbuilding on mobile. That way lies madness.

Can anyone comment on how this compares to Elder Scrolls: Legends? I like that game and still play it semi-regularly.