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Brian Modreski
United States
Thornton
Colorado
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Card games about dueling wizards aren't exactly in rare supply. I haven't actually tried to figure out if they outnumber building monuments in Egypt for a theme, but its got to be close.
Print and play card games offering a CCG level of card variety about dueling wizards are something else.
Introduction
The concept is straightforward, and if you've played any CCGs before, you can skip right over this intro.
The players take on the role of dueling wizards, using spells and magical creatures to fight each other. Each player builds a deck of cards (in this case, exactly 40 cards). During the game, cards are drawn from the deck and played to attack the other player, defend against your opponent's attacks, or cause a variety of special effects.
Many cards will force your opponent to take "damage", discarding cards from the top of their deck. When your deck runs out, you lose.
Building a deck takes place outside of the game; you come to a game with a deck ready to play. For many CCG players, this is part of the draw. There are many more than 40 cards available in Elemental Clash, and you can combine them in nearly infinite combinations.
Gameplay Mechanics
There are three basic kinds of cards in Elemental Clash. Creatures are various beasties such as goblins and dragons that stay in play over several turns and attack your opponent or defend you from your enemy. Spells are (usually) played, have an effect once, and are then discarded. Elemental Stones form the basis for playing your other cards.
Each turn, you can play one Elemental Stone. As the name suggests, they come in different flavors; fire, earth, air, water, and neutral stones. To play any other cards, you'll need a stack of elemental stones. Each card has an energy stone requirement; a Fire Dragon, for example, requires 3 stones, and is the fire element.
You can either start a new stack with a stone, or add to an existing one. A stack provides energy of the element of the stone on the bottom of the pile (which clearly shows as you stack them down in a column). Playing a card must get all the energy from one stack. So, if you have a stack of 2 fire stones, and another stack of 2 fire stones, you can't play your 3 cost dragon. On the other hand, a stack of 3 fire stones and a lone fire stone would let you cast the dragon, but wouldn't let you play out two 2 cost Goblin Warriors in the same turn.
When you play a card, you place it on top of a stack of stones, blocking it for the rest of the turn.
When you play a creature, it waits there until your next turn, when you move it out into the play field. A creature can be placed in your attack or defense zone. A creature in the attack zone can be used to damage your opponent or your opponent's creatures in their attack zone, while creatures in the defense zone can get in the way of attackers - and are not vulnerable to being attacked themselves.
Attack your opponent (and don't get blocked) and your creature will make them take damage - discarding cards from the top of their deck - equal to its attack score. Run them out of cards and you win.
Attack an opponent's creature (or get blocked while attacking) and your creatures do damage to each other. If one takes damage equal to its defense, its eliminated from play.
That's the nuts and bolts of how the game works. If you've played other CCGs, a lot of this sounds very familiar. But how does it come together?
How does it play?
The quick answer: quite well (with a caveat that I'll explain in a moment). The rules are simple enough to start playing quickly, and games move at a brisk pace. However, it offers a lot of interaction and choices.
Unliked many CCGs, the rules and card interactions are pretty clear cut. Maybe not something that you could build an intensely competitive tournament around, but nothing that will cause problems in casual play.
Games are fast and can be quite exciting. Now here's the caveat I mentioned. They are exciting if both players get a good draw. This is a general flaw with games where you have to get a good mix of resources (energy stones) and things to play with them. If one player draws a bad mix, the game can be decided very quickly and not be very fun. When both players get rolling, it stays an exciting duel.
The down sides
The art. Which is actually very functional and doesn't look bad, but the greyscale drawings don't look good either. The art actually reminds me of old medieval style drawings that one sometimes sees of dragons and the like. Its perfectly workable as game images, but it isn't something where you'll say "that's a cool picture!". (Though the dragons are decently neat).
The abbreviations. If there's one thing that confuses you about trying to play EC, its probably the abbreviations. None of them are terribly complicated, but looking at 'DPT' and 'SB' can be quite confusing at first.
The rules feel like a draft. They work, they tell you how to play, but they are in need of a lot of polishing. It sounds like that's in progress however.
The big problem is the potential for the dud games due to (to borrow a popular MtG term) getting "mana screwed". This is somewhat mitigated by being able to stack stones as you choose, but if you don't have enough that's no use. There are several ways to avoid this - one option is to allow a misdeal, where you can redraw once if you dislike your starting hand. I've played with an option to, after drawing a card, miss the rest of your turn to place your hand on the bottom of your Spellbook (the draw pile) and draw as many cards as you had. This did away with the problem. But finding a solution everyone you play with can agree on might be a challenge!
The up sides
The gameplay. Its solid, its fun and its fast moving.
The customization. Even within the two 40 card "starter" decks you can start to see a lot of different ways to combine the cards. For example, fire has cards that damage the caster when played. Why not mix them with some cards that have an effect when they get discarded by damage to get some handy usage out of your harmful cards?
The price and collectiblity. Its print and play. Print out whatever cards you want, with a lot of variety provided. With that said, if you like the game at all I'd imagine you'll want to get nicer cards from, for example, the Game Crafter, which EC has been made available through. But its still cards of your choice at a very basic price.
One of the unique advantages EC has, at least at the moment, is that is being put together by one guy, who sounds like he's interested in the feedback and input of players, making it easy to adopt new ideas into the game and fix problems.
Mechanically, there are several neat ideas.
I like the choices involved in stacking stones to create the energy you need to play.
I also enjoy the dynamics of moving creatures between attack and defense. I initially overlooked the value of the defense zone, but started seeing a lot of possibility not just for using one creature to defend others, but also for using it to keep a handy creature safe until I got cards to use it more effectively.
You should pass on Elemental Clash if...
* You dislike randomness in games. The card draw adds a lot of luck to gameplay.
* You like strategies all laid out in the basic game rules. Like most CCGs, EC is all about the interactions of different cards each of which have unique effects.
* You already have a good amount of a CCG you like. While fun, EC doesn't offer any stunning revelations in gameplay. If you already enjoy MtG or Shadowfist or whatever and have ready opponents, EC probably won't offer a lot to you.
You should try Elemental Clash if...
* You enjoy finding ways to combine game elements in interesting or winning ways.
* You've wanted to try a CCG but have been put off by the collectibility, cost, or complexity.
* You've got a group that would like to play a CCG where everyone is on an even footing.
Its a great introduction to a CCG style game. Which isn't to say that its only good as an introduction; you should be able to keep playing it quite happilly.
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Hey Nonny Mouse
United States
Longmont
Colorado
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Thanks for the review!
StormKnight wrote: The big problem is the potential for the dud games due to (to borrow a popular MtG term) getting "mana screwed". This is somewhat mitigated by being able to stack stones as you choose, but if you don't have enough that's no use. There are several ways to avoid this - one option is to allow a misdeal, where you can redraw once if you dislike your starting hand. I've played with an option to, after drawing a card, miss the rest of your turn to place your hand on the bottom of your Spellbook (the draw pile) and draw as many cards as you had. This did away with the problem. But finding a solution everyone you play with can agree on might be a challenge!
This seems like a pretty big downside, in 2009. It is a well-known problem, and people have managed to design around it for a while now.
Having played it, would a Duel Masters Trading Card Game style system work? That is, can you just play your other cards as energy stones of their element?
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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hey bwian!
there is going to be a mechanic similar to the duel masters way of playing other cards as energy sources in upcoming set "otherworld".
it is called "transform".
here's the rules text for cards with "transform":
Transform: You may play this card face-down as an Element-Stone that produces Neutral Energy. During your Main-Phase, you may flip this card and put it onto a suitable ES-pile.
It doesn't fix the "manascrew" problem, but it allows you to play decks with fewer element stones.
as for implementing a duel masters style rule, i most probably won't do that, as it would make element stones superfluos. i wouldn't want that...
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Chris Snyder
United States
Selinsgrove
Pennsylvania
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Good review, Brian. Well written.
StormKnight wrote:
The big problem is the potential for the dud games due to (to borrow a popular MtG term) getting "mana screwed". This is somewhat mitigated by being able to stack stones as you choose, but if you don't have enough that's no use. There are several ways to avoid this - one option is to allow a misdeal, where you can redraw once if you dislike your starting hand. I've played with an option to, after drawing a card, miss the rest of your turn to place your hand on the bottom of your Spellbook (the draw pile) and draw as many cards as you had. This did away with the problem. But finding a solution everyone you play with can agree on might be a challenge!
I agree that this problem occurs in most CCGs and is partially solvable through deck construction. As I was reading this paragraph though, an idea popped into my mind. How about a house rule something like this:
"Instead of playing an Energy Stone on his turn, a player may move ONE Energy Stone in play from one pile to another, even if this means forming a new pile."
Perhaps the stone being moved would have to be one that's currently on top of the pile. Maybe allow the player to rearrange more than one energy stone at a time. Just thoughts. I guess it'd have to be playtested a bit.
Anyway, it's nice to see the evolution of a CCG that isn't collectible. That's the reason I got away from playing Magic and many other CCGs. Let's hope that Elemental Clash is never sold in random booster packs!
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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Driver 8 wrote: Let's hope that Elemental Clash is never sold in random booster packs!
HAHAHA! mark his words! here and now i solemnly swear that i'll never do that!
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Brian Modreski
United States
Thornton
Colorado
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Quote: I agree that this problem occurs in most CCGs and is partially solvable through deck construction.
I actually don't entirely agree on either of these. A lot of CCGs, such as VteS, Wyvern and Magi-Nation didn't use resource cards but instead gave an allocation of resources at the start of the game. Other CCGs can have the problem, but have rules to mitigate it. For example, in both Shadowfist and Legend of the Five Rings you can discard your available cards to draw more. Shadowfist also has very low "getting started" resource requirements, and L5R gives each player a resource to start the game and defensive cards that can be played freely.
As far as deck construction, you can balance resources with resource-requiring cards to give a good mix, but that's about the best you can do. Its still possible to get bad draws, which lead to a bad game through no fault of the players.
Quote: Instead of playing an Energy Stone on his turn, a player may move ONE Energy Stone in play from one pile to another, even if this means forming a new pile.
Personally, I found the decisions about how to play your Energy Stones to be an interesting part of EC, with some tough decisions involved (do I add the Water Stone to my Fire stack so I can get the cost III fire creature, or do I really want to be able to cast my Water cards?). I think being able to move stones would drastically reduce that.
I still like the idea of a simple rule to let players redraw hands. There are a variety of ways it could be done, but I don't think it takes a lot to minimize the problem to where its not likely to be an issue.
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Dan Brooke
United States
North Dakota
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I'd like to point out that the 4.0 game has:
-Color art on each card
-Available from TheGameCrafter.com so you don't have to print your own.
-Official rules allowing a player to put as many cards as they wish from their hand to the bottom of the draw deck, draw that many cards from the top, and skip their "main phase"
Didn't want anyone to read this and think that these points in the original post had not been addressed at all.
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