I dunno, I wanted a new game to try and Minecraft was just so excellent I jumped in and joined the early beta tonight. I knew full well it was a CCG hex tile strategy game, and while I’m aware of that genre I’m not well versed in it.
Seems fun, so far. Like I said, I’ve historically been terrible at this sort of game. Jumping in, it seems neat. Nothing earth-shattering or groundbreaking like Minecraft, but it seems like a fun strategy game. I don’t like that it made me pick a starter deck with little background info. I think I made a mistake picking the “Energy” deck, as the AI has been handily schooling me with “Growth”. Got through the tutorial OK, but I’m ashamed to say that even the easiest AI “trial” challenge has beaten me three games now. Just gotta get used to this sort of strategy game, I guess. And I’m far too timid (so far) to even try playing an actual human opponent. But I have enjoyed it so far.
I was thinking of getting it, but I’m really not sure. I tend to get bored of CCGs very quickly. Though I get the impression that this isn’t a literal CCG in that there’s no microtransactions that require you to buy booster packs. From your description it’s not just a CCG though? I was under the impression that it was just another Magic/Pokemon/Yu-gi-oh/Hearthstone, but it’s a hex tile too? I might look into it more than I had.
I’m probably the wrong guy to ask about these things as CCGs and hex-tile strat games aren’t my strong point, but:
I’d say limited hex tiles? Haven’t gotten too far yet. So far it seems like you and your opponent both get a 4x5 grid of hex tiles to place units, but there’s a divide down the middle separating the sides. You can move some units around your own hex tiles. I haven’t seen yet if you ever get to move units to your opponent’s hex tiles.
It sounds like there will be (or maybe already are?) microtransactions. Not sure if they’re in place yet, unless I really, really get into the game I won’t be paying real $ for any cards. So far what I’ve seen - you get in-game gold for winning, that gold you can spend on cards in the in-game store. Which seems fine to me. I have read that Mojang claims you will never need to spend real money (past the initial purchase) to be competitive, we’ll see.
I guess it makes sense if they use, essentially, the League of Legends model. Where you can use in-game points to get stuff, but real money will get you there faster.
