Like, wow...

Of late we've been heading back to trading card games (TCGs) whatwith the arrival of World of Warcraft (WoW): TCG from Upper Deck Entertainment. We weren't really that interested in the game so much as to rush out and buy a starter to try the mechanic like we did for Lord Of The Rings TCG by Decipher (of course, LotR:TCG was released after The Fellowship movie was screened, and we were still enthralled by the Nazgul at that point) when we upped and bought the Deluxe Starter set.

When a friend bought some starters and boosters for WoW we then had a chance to explore the mechanics and game. First card we'd glanced upon was a Rebecca Guay! Whoa. That made a good impression. The game idea was pretty simple: pick a hero, build a deck based on the hero class by throwing in allies and equipment and quests, whack enemy heroes. Somehow, that's when the nitpicking started...

The game is expensive to invest in. Other TCGs cost on average RM35 per starter and RM11. WoW costs RM57 per starter and RM15 per booster. Plus the fact that the starter contains only 30 cards plus 2 boosters.

The card pool me friend had was limited for deck construction. There were 9 classes of heroes to choose from! So our Undead Priest had only one equipment in the whole pool of cards he could use, but it went against our deck strategy of emptying the opponent's hand. But then again Priests probably don't go around bashing people with their staves all that often, nor would Priests actually be able to do a Barbarian War Cry we guess...

Allies make up the brunt of the army, and thankfully they aren't as limited. Like 'Mechs in Battletech:TCG, they're just aligned with one side and many can fit into your deck. Now if only we had more that helped our Undead Priest but so far the allies we've got somewhat complemented the deck.

Combat is done by targetting individual allies or heroes to whack. Hmmm. Somehow this bit seems problematic, because weak allies probably won't survive to see the light of day (of the next turn) if they're just marked for death each time they show their face. At least in Battletech 'Mech's can only target slower 'Mechs and in Star Wars (by WotC) speed determines initiative irregardless of player turn.

Quests are twofold: they work as resources and card fetchers. But as resources they're not really that necessary, as any card can be played face-down as a resource in the first place. This throws up the question, "Is it still necessary to build a deck of 33% resource?" and we thinks, "Not really. We'll just pick a few quests that fetches allies."

Given the card pool limitations, we had an Undead Priest (Omedus the Punisher) deck that does a one-off direct damage of (7 minus cards in target opponent's hand), very very few cards to cause an opponent to discard, plenty of allies and 9 quests. The deck is pretty much anything goes.

Early playtesting finds that numerous allies, with added fact of the ability to target nearly ally/hero during combat pushes advantage to whoever has stronger and/or more allies in play. Tension is fairly balanced with the choice of playing a card as a resource or holding it back for later. We have yet to do a multiplayer game, and am looking forward to introducing the 'It' multiplayer variant (ahhh Battletech days...).

Damn, it turned out to be a WoW:TCG report. And while we were playing WoW, our minds kept thinking back to Battletech.

Nevermind, onwards with the preview card, next post.