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 Shardbound is a free-to-play Tactical CCG currently in early access on Steam developed by Spiritwalk Games. This team is made up primarily of a number of core developers of the ill-fated game Dawngate, a MOBA that showed good promise and a killer art style royally hosed over and put down before it could take off by EA Games. What the hell is a Tactical CCG? The core of the game is collecting cards in the form of units and spells to build an army (deck) with which you then pilot against other people. In that aspect it's not too different from other CCGs you may have played like Hearthstone or Shadowverse. What's added here though is a tile-based playing field that your hero and their units traverse during play which adds a significant amount of depth to the strategy involved such as line of sight and high ground vs low ground.  I'm allergic to Early Access games. Shardbound currently gets weekly (!!) patches that tweaks balance with factions and cards and adds features as well. As of the time of writing a proper ranked play mode was just added and the game also has extensive twitch support and integration for you streamers out there. The main downside of the early access is that a large number of cards currently have placeholder assets featuring generic soldiers. They are producing assets for cards with every patch however and naturally the goal is to have all of the base set with proper unique assets by proper launch. What's this stuff about Twitch integration? Streamers and stream junkies rejoice because this game really puts a big focus on you. Streamers will actually be featured in-game on various player's world maps as their own shards. Players can opt to go to those shards to interact directly with the streamer such as playing a game against them or submitting a deck for them to try out and play next. Streamers and their audience can directly interact without the need to fill up friend lists or directly meet up beforehand. Plus everyone can progress their daily objectives with each other while doing all of this. It creates a cool way to make streaming a natural flow of the game, let streamers and their audiences interact easily, and it even gets names out there on player's radars for those less big-time twitch names too!  I already play a "free" CCG though, I don't have the money for this. Card boxes are earned pretty easily and quickly here without ever investing money. On top of earning in-game currency to purchase card boxes with you can also earn boxes directly through daily shards and gameplay achievements. How do these card boxes work then? These actually function a little differently than a traditional booster pack. When you open a card box it will give you 3 cards of the same rarity (Common, Rare, Epic, or Legendary) and you then choose one of those cards to take. While it does make amassing a collection slower (although this is offset a bit by the speed of getting boxes) it does mean when you get a cool Epic or Legendary box you end up with several options of what is most useful to you rather than just getting tossed a garbage tier card or a card for a faction you don't play and just having to deal with it.  Okay I'm interested... what are these Factions you mentioned? Think of Factions just like heroes from Hearthstone & Shadowverse or even like colors from Magic the Gathering. A hero your army captain and every hero has access to their own set of cards and have their own distinct playstyles. As of right now there are six factions to choose from.  Director Petra (Red) Hero Ability: (2) Add a random Modular Gizmo to your hand. Do you like robots? Do you like buffing your minions into beef town both on the field and in your hand? This is the faction for you! Red is all about getting big minions on the field. The cards generated from Petra's ability include a variety of buffs as well as cheap minions that can be played for extra mana to give a benefit. Such as paying 2 extra mana to give a minion Flying. There are also a variety of cards that reduce the mana cost of cards in hand to help you get your big guns out sooner. Flavor wise, it's all robots and mechs around these parts.  General Vardan (Green) Hero Ability: (2) Add a random Blessing card to your hand. Big boy Vardan here is all about manipulating and interacting with the field of battle itself. He has spells that destroy boulders, spells that turn enemies into boulders, minions that are summoned next to boulders... Vardan just really likes rocks okay. His ability gives him cards to beef up himself and his minions, with more a focus on defense and longevity. A number of his minions also have a quality called Loyalty which buffs them when they are standing next to Vardan, encouraging a more aggressive strategy. Flavor wise, his cards are all about nature featuring plants and lots of rocky companions.  Professor Mori (Blue) Hero Ability: (2) Teleport an enemy minion in line of sight up to 2 tiles. Do you enjoy denying your opponent fun? Do you like the idea of booping their minions all over the place and otherwise making it a pain in the rear end to get anything done? Perhaps you played Blue decks in Magic the Gathering? Professor Mori is your girl. Mori is all about control. She can manipulate enemy unit placement, debuff enemy units with things such as stuns and roots, bounce units back to the enemy's hand, and all sorts of other trickeries to keep the game under her thumb. She also boasts great card draw potential. Flavor wise, her cards are very magicy and spacey in theme.  Oathkeeper Juro (Yellow) Hero Ability: (2) Dash to a location up to 2 tiles away. Transform into a Primal/Human. Juro here is all about playing mega-aggressively. He can swarm the field with a lot of units in a short time and his ability as well as a number of his spells give him a huge amount of mobility to stay glued to your face. A majority of his units have the Primal designation which gets various synergies and buffs from other cards. This can also include Juro himself since his hero ability turns him into a primal too. If you don't care for the fancier strategies and just want to run at their face, Juro is your wild child. Flavor wise, his cards are focused on savage beasts and primalistic themes.  Baroness Sabine (Purple) Hero Ability: (2) Deal 1 damage to a unit in line of sight and restore 1 health to your hero. Sabine is all about the graveyard and sacrificing her own life or minions for benefits. She can flood the field with 1/1 thralls or she can play bigger creatures that benefit from a full graveyard or her own life being low. She can be deceptively hard to kill due to her ability to constantly throw out more creatures, drain health, or bring things back from the dead. Flavor wise, her cards are all focused on spooky stuff like the undead and curses.  Venerator Wynn Hero Ability: (2) Give a friendly minion +1 Attack this turn. Only an idiot fights close enough to get punched. Wynn is all about range. He has a lot of direct damage spells and a lot of his minions are ranged or have flight. A number of his minions also have an ability called Surpremacy which gives them an attack buff if they are on High Ground. The game plan here is to deal your damage from relative safety, setting up ranged units on high ground to create a large danger zone, and generally make it a dangerous problem for the enemy to approach you well. Flavor wise, Wynn's cards all have a fanatical, angelic look and theme to them. Okay that all sounds pretty rad, where do I give this a shot? The game is in early access and is available right now on Steam! Useful Links: Shardbound Subreddit New Player's Guide Shardveil Card Database
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May 19, 2017 00:05
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Also I wanna just show off how lovely the models are for stuff. The reason that there's a lot of placeholder art currently during early access is because they spend a lot of time on making these units look really great as well as have cool personality in their handful of voice lines. The goal is to make every unit feel suitably unique rather than just some random card and every faction will start to feel unique and alive as we move forward towards official release and more cards get assets.      
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May 20, 2017 07:44
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