Yeah, building a deck is often 90% of the game in MTG and watching it go off the remaining 10. No other game has ever been able to capture the same feeling you get from stumbling on a card with a weird effect and thinking, “hmmm…” (“Clock of Omens feels abusable…what about pairing it with Myr Turbine…?”)
Competitive Magic decks I think tend to be rather boring in this regard, but non-competitive Magic is totally where it’s at for me. Feels something like playing BattleBots with a grabbag of wacky parts designed by someone else. I mean look at this weird shit: Enter the Infinite · Gatecrash (GTC) #34 · Scryfall Magic: The Gathering Search
And yeah, @Harkonis the mana problems are real and a source of frustration, although it is pretty integral to the game at this point and I believe exerts a strong influence on card design.
I like Magic, and mana-flood or mana-screw don’t bother me as much as some players. But then I’ve never played all that seriously. I also like that Magic is a physical card game; face-to-face play is great.
For a virtual card game, though, I think LOR is better. I prefer its UI to that of MTGA, and the single-player Path of Champions is brilliant.
Heck, I think LOR is better than Hearthstone. Hearthstone’s single-player modes aren’t nearly as interesting, and its ranked play is tedious, to me. There’s some randomness in LOR, but it’s not as crazy as in Hearthstone. The only thing I like better about Hearthstone is the Arena. LOR’s first shot at limited play, Expeditions, wasn’t as good. LOR has withdrawn Expeditions while it works on something better.
I don’t really think of Magic (and Eternal, and other deckbuild-for-resources games) and LOR (and Hearthstone, and other resources-granted-per-turn games) as the same genre. Sure, they share a lot of things, but there are fundamental differences that make them very different experiences. I happen to enjoy both, but I know plenty of folks who only like one or the other.
To me they are card games where you build a deck of cards that interact with each other outside the game and play other people. That’s a pretty fundamental similarity. I would classify games like Slay the Spire, etc. differently, as Dominionlikes, but there’s unquestionably a straight line between MTG and LoR to me, whereas the line between MTG and StS is decidedly curved (although still a line, more or less).
Another thing I love about both Magic and LOR is the artwork. Magic cards are a thing of beauty, and the foil system is a delight. LOR also prioritizes art. Every day I maximize a card or two just to look at the beautiful artwork in full-screen mode. I do wish LOR’s “prismatic style” fancy-cards were more dazzling, though I do like the special champion cards I got from the latest event. The mastery frames are nice but not fantastic. .
Gwent’s artwork doesn’t appeal to me as much, but I did like the animated “foil” cards. Hearthstone’s “gold” effect is nice, but the underlying art is stylized Blizzard stuff, which is very nice, but not quite my cup of tea.
lol. It’s still beautiful art, though. @Kolbex is right that some LoR art is a bit cartoony, but I kinda like that. Personally I find it more vibrant than MtG art, but it’s a matter of taste, and both are wonderful. Almost every day I press the “eye” icon to look at LoR art full screen.
And yep, I still play every day, almost exclusively the Path of Champions. I’m taking my time so I don’t finish the existing content. Maybe 3-4 games a day. Another batch of heroes will keep me happy a while. I also hope they come up with a new draft/limited mode.
There’s been another massive update to this game, and my favorite part, Path of Champions, the single player campaign has recieved a lot of new stuff and champions.
Honestly, the amount of fun I’ve had for free in this game, prompted me to get the event pass this time around, because I felt really bad about having this much fun, for free and wanted to incentivize the developers to keep adding to the solo thing.
I cannot recommend this enough!
This is me as well - I play 5 matches at least every day, to get the shard thingies to unlock new champions and levels.
They, for literally the -fourth- time, decide to switch over development attention to Path of Champions again. This time over the normal PvP side of the game even. After announcing PoC abandonment three times the pendulum hit the other side yet again.
As the statement mentions, whiplash is the right word.
I think a core problem for them is that their pipeline is really bad. They were mentioning last year how they aren’t going to produce the guardians (selectable characters that show up on your side of the board and emote in response to game events) anymore because they’re just too expensive to make. But a AAA artist and animator should be able to pump out an original one of those things in a couple weeks and less for variants/reskins. It’s just a model, a rig, a half dozen animations or so, and maybe a particle effect or two if it’s a premium one.
Some other potential money-makers, like card frames and the like, they tried one mediocre attempt and then were either unable or unwilling to make further iterations or improvements. Wasted effort.
At times it seemed like they were going out of their way to avoid making money. And unless they’re planning on cloning Hearthstone with new single player content (i.e. overpriced missions that reward a selection of the new cards that otherwise require massive grinding or buying another way) I don’t see how they’re going to do any better given what they’ve already failed at.
It’s unfortunate because I like the core game better than any of the others available.
Heh, I stopped playing shortly after they announced they were taking the focus off Path of Champions, by far my favorite mode. So if they’re re-orienting back toward PoC, I may give it another try now.
Yeah, it’s weird how they made that announcement about diverting away from POC, and then nothing seemed to come of it. But I’m not complaining, I still love that mode and play it exclusively in LOR. And the new announcement that they’re going to keep expanding it is great.
