Age of Rivals

[tgb]

Civ re-imagined as a CCG.

I'm on this like Matrix on a roofied-up co-ed.

Here's a look at the tutorial

[tgb]

So I picked it up (of course) and so far I played one skirmish match on Normal against the AI and lost by a point. It's interesting. 99% of the strategy is deciding what cards to purchase for the hand of 8 that comprises your "kingdom", since every card has a special ability, and it's the synergy of those abilities that makes all the difference. The other 1% is assigning damage following combat. One phase of the game is completely hands-off and seems kind of superfluous, as thought is was thrown in to make to make the whole thing seem deeper.

I may try a game later against a real person to see how that goes.

Anyway here's some guy playing it if you're curious.

[Alefroth]

I'm on this like Matrix on a roofied-up co-ed.

Ouch. Brutal.

[Isgrimnur]

Bad form!

[tgb]

This game is terrific.

I was wrong about it being a CCG - it's more of a deck builder, with a really nifty system for, um, building decks. The AI is challenging, there's a cool progression game with challenges for unlocking new cards and characters, and I even enjoy playing on-line, which is extremely rare for me. That's because it's real easy to find an opponent, and games almost never take more than 10 minutes or so.

Plus the developers are very active on the Steam forums, and have already made several adjustments to play based on customer requests.

If you're not playing it you're really missing out.

[tgb]

Learn how to play with Mr. Tom

[dbemont]

Got it and played some yesterday evening. Very interesting game, although I think I would have been pretty discouraged without the Tom Chick video. Thanks.

The doubts at this point:
1) To me, it looks like a long-term issue that you cannot prune your deck, limiting whole lines of strategy. You add cards, but never in any sort of focused way. The only real control over your deck is through the rivals.
2) I only played on "normal" but the AI never won a hand against me, even as I was learning. Could be a fluke, but I suspect it's not doing any strategy at all, since I hardly had a clue myself. Maybe the "hard" level is better? I hope so, because I have no interest in multi-player, and I have a sense that that is the direction they want to funnel players.
3) I had one important rules issue. My understanding is that you only get dealt previously ruined cards if you have more of them than your opponent. But I had hands where both of us were dealt previously ruined cards, so that can't be right.

If it turns out the higher level AI can play the game, I think this will be well worth the money.

[tgb]

I don't completely understand how ruined cards show up again myself.

As to beating the AI, obviously luck of the draw is going to have something to do with it - but I can tell you the AI on "Hard" is brutal. I've only beaten it a couple of times.