Royal Decree isn't a second copy of your best Gold card, especially in decks that can thin efficiently. Instead, it's just "one less gold card".

It's fine when you lack 4 solid Gold cards, but it's an easy cut when you have 4 legit options.

Geralt:Igni is great. It's extremely useful vs. consume, Skellige, and Elves.

As for the Crones, yes, it's annoying to have another thing you need to mulligan away, and sometimes I won't use my third mulligan at the start if I have 1x Crones and no Biting Frost in hand. But it's 20 power in one play, which makes it an amazing play first round to generate card advantage, especially if you go second, because it's reasonable to have more power than them after playing just one card, following them playing 2. That card advantage can really snowball and get you to Round 3 with card advantage. I wouldn't try to save them until Round 3, though, that usually hurts more than it helps because if you can't avoid having two in hand, you're basically screwed.

I've checked out Card Hunter. The mechanics can be described as simplified AD&D with cards. Each item you wear on your hero gives him/her 3 or 6 effects, each of them represented by a card. For example, a sword may give you two hits for 4 points of damage at range 1 (4/1), two 3/2 hits, one 6/1 hit, and a parry card (automatically applied to the first melee attack on your hero). And an armor item may give you an armor 3 with 50% chance effect (subtracts 3 points of damage from an attack on your hero if you roll 4 or more on a regular 6-sided dice, shown as 4+), armor 2 at 3+ and armor 1 unconditional. All these effects are shuffled together and form the hero's deck. The battlefield is pretty much a checkerboard with some unpassable or hard to pass cells arranged around, different for each mission. At the beginning of each turn, each hero (you get 3) and enemies draw 2 cards from the deck and one move card, and can only use those effects in any order (with a few exceptions). After that, it's Baldur's Gate, you use available effects to move around and do damage to monsters, then hit the Next Turn button. After winning a mission, you get a chest with random loot as a reward; enemies don't drop stuff when they die.

Items are a big deal and there are lots of them and most of them are garbage. The game wants you to pay $$ to get cool stuff and you will run into the $$ extortion on every corner. Even with $$ you can't get exactly what you want unless you see it on sale in a shop, which only sell a small set of items and refresh their inventory periodically. Most sold items are still garbage or require a certain level (which is a good thing for balance, mind you). Otherwise, your dollars get you random stuff: chests to crack with random crap, random additional loot, unlocked pay-only missions with, I suppose, random loot (never bought one of those). And it's greedy: like, $10 buys you a week of "club membership", which means you get additional random loot after each mission, 95% of which, I assure you, will be either crap or unusable due to various requirements on the hero. Because you can see what you are not getting if you are not a club member, they try to tempt you with it. And you can't sell your crap. The game promises you will be able to later in the campaign, but I'm level 7 and still unable to do that. My accumulated unsellable crap takes several pages to scroll through.

Items are also the biggest problem with this game. It's a pain to compare two items. It's a pain to even look at an item and say whether it's any good. You need to go through every card and evaluate it. And then evaluate them all together. And then evaluate synergy with your other crap. So, which weapon is better: one that gives 2x 4/1 bash, 2x 3/2 pierce, 1x 6/1 hard-to-block stab, 1x parry... or one with 3x 3/1 penetrating pierce, 2x 5/1 stab, and 1x 3/1 slash that can also hit your hero for 3 if you lose a dice roll? Magic damage is even worse, because distances are more varied. You'll have to make dozens and dozens of such comparisons and it is downright exhausting.

There is no story, you just wander between missions and shops on the map, slowly exploring into higher-level territory. Each mission has a story, told in textual descriptions of what is going on, also there is a pseudo-GM, which is initially your tutor, but later just a comic relief (with some good jokes tho).

The graphics are that of a browser-based game, which it is (you can play in a browser or download a client on Steam). The browser version wants Flash and therefore doesn't work on iPhones. Card art is drawn by a kid, a talentless one. Maybe the son of the programmer. There is multiplayer, but I haven't tried it because I'm sure I'll be annihilated: I didn't pay any $$. The multiplayer seems fairly advanced, though, with players creating/joining guilds, individual leaderboard, guild leaderboard, the list of currently online games which you can join to spectate etc. There's chat! (a clear advantage over Duels, haha)

Overall, I think this is not a game that can get us Magic players hooked. We've seen better. It simplistic, the mechanics are not deep enough (AD&D like), wearables all look the same, and most of them are, you'll have to sift through enormous loads of garbage to find good items, the grind is real even if you pay $$. And it's greedy. Is it good for anything? Sure, it's good for a week or two of number-crunching grind if you miss classic AD&D games like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. Those games are still better, though.

Thanks for that, ive heard nothing but amazing things and am glad to finally have a reason to not go down that rabbit hole

Fair point about Royal Decree. I followed your advice and crafted the crones and the deck thinning effect is manifesting itself quite a bit - thinking of swapping Royal Decree out for Geralt (the only other gold card I have unfortunately).

The crones have been a mixed bag and I actually somewhat regret crafting them. Point is I usually don't find a board in which I want to play the crones. They add 20 power - that makes it likely the opponent will simply pass, especially if I'm already ahead or have some rows covered with weather. 20 power is also the trigger point for Geralt: Igni. The theoretical card advantage only happens if my opponent cannot pass, but there's no easy way to guarantee that. Furthermore if I don't play them in round 1 they just keep adding mulligan issues (what's worse than mulliganing a Brewess into the other Brewess?). There are also other, cheaper ways to get that card advantage - via Earth Elemental and the Harpy. The Crones are still great tempo and sometimes I fall so far behind they're the only thing that stops my opponent from passing. However I still wonder about at what might have been: perhaps instead of crafting the crones, I could've gone for crafting more Drowners, White Frost / Skillege Storm, Fire Elemental, Water Hag.

idk, what's done is done.

Played a lot more with the crones and took it out of my deck in frustration. Problems:

1) They make the mulligan a lot more inconsistent. With the crones you almost effectively constrain yourself to mulliganing the Biting Frosts and the extra crones. I've also had several games where I couldn't mulligan because of the "threat" of drawing crones.
2) To deal with #1, it's ideal to play them in round 1, which improves the mulligans for rounds 2 and 3. But their purpose then is to threaten to pass. For example, if Alice plays Earth Elemental (6 power) and Bob plays crones (20 power), Alice can't follow up with another Earth Elemental because Bob will just pass and either go 2 cards up for subsequent rounds or win the round. This is at odds with a weather deck. If Alice plays crones and Bob plays Manticore for example, Alice can't follow up with Wild Hunt Hound because she's only adding six power to the board. All the tempo is effectively lost.

I'd run crones in a deck where the other 22 cards are Manticores. By adding 9 power every turn I would always threaten to pass. In this deck I'd sooner run something else. Losing the deck thinning effect does suck, though.

The pressure they put on your mulligan is deck-dependent. Also, a common strategy is to throw them away completely with the intention of using them as a R3 power play. If you draw one Crone and mulligan it away, you don't mind pulling the trigger on that third mulligan.

Are you familiar with blacklisting?

So you cut the card because it was too likely to win the round?

By blacklisting do you mean the card you just mulled you cannot draw again in a mulligan in that same round? There are three crones though, and three rounds of mulligans, and other cards to mulligan (Biting Frosts, Ogroids if no frost-setter, looking for gold cards / Clear Skies vs. Dagon, etc).

@divinevert - no, I cut the card because it's inconsistent with the deck's gameplan.

Yes, that's what I mean. Sequencing the mulligan is an art in itself and you kinda have to keep it in mind when deckbuilding.

It's consistent in that it's easy enough to set it up to generate 20 power on Turn 1. And Turn 2/3 are only bad if you draw the other two of them consecutively (which with about 13 cards left in deck, is only a 1/156 shot of happening). In early rounds, it's usually rare you use a frost-setter, so having 4 of them in your deck (2 Hounds, Caranthir, Eredin/Dagon), so I don't really view the Frost Giants as must-mulls. Sure, sometimes planning requires you to skip your third mulligan before the start of the game, but that's because the general grip is fine (1x Crone, 0x Biting Frost).

If you go 2nd the first round, leading with Crones will almost always net you (a) 2 card advantage going into Round 2 or (b) force them to try to combo out with NR right away. Both are good situations going forward and obviously the thinning is great.

Where are you at, rank-wise?

I'm like 55-23 right now.

Tried that once, opponent happily took the win, passed round 2, then blew up everything with Kambi in round 3 while I looked on in disbelief. I mean yeah, it was the first time ever I played against Kambi, but after seeing it the first time one of the best defenses is to win round 1, and the crones-into-pass play doesn't do that. Then there was the time opponent played Foltest R1T1, and I could see no reason why he wouldn't pass, since his future plays are buffed while I'm down three silver cards, and he wouldn't even be taking a card disadvantage into later rounds.

I also don't see why you say it's usually rare you use a frost-setter in the early rounds, since it's extremely common I use one, possibly more, in round 1. They synergize with too many of my other cards (Drowner, Frost Giant, Jotunn, Imlerith, Wild Hunt Warrior ...). And if you don't have / use a frost-setter, why wouldn't the Frost Giants be must-mulls? They're just 5 power vanilla creatures otherwise. I've actually taken to playing Geralt first over Frost Giant if there's no frost on the board, since otherwise the Giant just dies to Triss Merigold, giving her a pseudo-17 power.

Finally it's only fair to compare the crones vs. 3 other silver cards. Competitors could be Nithral (hits a crucial breakpoint to kill 3/6/9 health minions, of which there are quite a few, e.g. Arachas), White Frost, Fire Elemental, Water Hag, and so on. Are the crones really worth the lost consistency + loss of these effects?

I don't doubt that the crones could be good, just not in the deck I have (or possibly my playstyle).

Fair enough. They are great for me, but don't run them if they hurt you.

I don't even remember, I haven't logged on since my D3 obsession took root. I'm about 1500 MMR and have wins somewhere in the 20s and losses less than 10. Let's just guess 25-8 until I check. Played Queensguard and NG Reveal, but I mostly slum it up in casual with my NR brew. Which is probably super bad now that weather has been changed, I really should get back into it.....

Mine stats are not so good 225-184. 4k mmr now. After reaching 3700 its hard to push cause opponent will punish u for every mistake u make. With queensguard it s easy to climb ranked btw.

I tried playing Fable Fortune last night. Total ripoff of Hearthstone. In my first ten packs I got a mythic and a Fabled rarity card which is nuts but the gameplay is going to get old fast. I'll finish the trial and that's it I think

That awkward moment were you actually liked card hunter and spent 30 euros on it...

Wouldn't suggest it as an alternative to magic tho, it's a deck building game, but more of a board strategy game than a tcg and it's main strenght is coop play...

Also their in game marketing is atrociously annoying.

I'm still devoting one or two nights a week to Card Hunter. But it's falling apart, I just can't get enough synergy into my character's decks, and they started getting their asses kicked at dungeon levels 15+ in the campaign. Jesus, that ocean of crappy random unsynergistic garbage, I really want a "banish this item to hell forever, I don't wanna see it anymore" button. Even in the rare item shops, all the rare crap is just crap. I have like 1500 gold for weeks and nothing to spend it on. Custom reequipping (aka "sideboarding" in Magic) for particular dungeons is a pain, because when you want to go back, you need to re-evaluate loads of items in your inventory again, unless you try REALLY hard to remember how they look among dozens of similar looking crap. This game had potential, but they really killed it when they made items hard to evaluate/compare.

They recently released a elder scrolls: legends client for phone (iOS/android) so, since I'm on holidays and don't have a PC to play Duels on, I decided to take a crack at it.

First impressions: Its not bad. The grind isn't too terrible, I've been playing for less than a week and I've got nearly 50% of the core set unlocked.

Matchmaking is much faster and consistent than Duels, though you do face some Op decks you have no chance against now and then. I put together an orc-tribal aggroish deck and can win over 50% of my games on avenge, not bad for a newbie.
No mana-screw and bonus magicka gems for the player who goes 2nd are interesting mechanics to reduce the RNG effect, but then you have profecies that are completely random and sometimes game-turning.
Games are rather short, usually not lasting more than 10 rounds, so you can play a game or 2 if you want to kill a few minutes without being dragged into hour long games.
What I don't like is that very often your Last turn, your left helpless to stop a lethal attack if you don't draw the right cards.

So, my experience is positive. Its a nice game, that is fun but isn't as deep as Magic. I can't compare it to hearthstone and other games I've never tried, but I do like that the cardpool is limited and knowable if you spend some time, crafting also adds an extra element that lets you make key cards without having to wait for that lucky booster.