If that X is simply a disparity in age then that doesn't imply there's something inherently wrong with the game though. That's kinda my beef here.

It would be easy to get players of any CCG other than Magic to give Gwent a fair shake. Magic players are a special lot (and I don't mean that in a nice way at all), and will be the hardest to please when they try any other CCG.

Hakeem is a good ambassador for Gwent cuz he's not approaching this from a "magic sux" kind of way at all.* Let's remember that Hakeem was one of the BIGGEST fans of Duels for a long time, so if he's into Gwent this deeply, it probably means it'll scratch a similar itch for us.


*this was the way most Hearthstone players tried to convince people to play it. They would crap all over Magic's mana screw as a way to convince Magic players to think that Hearthstone is in some ways better. The problem is that a lot of us like that element of chance, randomness and luck cuz we can build to minimize that. I don't want cartoons spoon-feeding me mana. Others might, not me.

I can recomend Gwent. I havent had too much time to play lately but it feels extremely skill intensive and is very rewarding from what I played. Shadowverse is also really fun and you are given tons of free content as F2P. I cant recomend HS, blizzard is just too greedy and F2P is a miserable and unsustainable experience

I will give a little Gwent disclaimer for people who are looking to fill that Magic Duels sized hole in their lives. This game is very generous as far as its F2P rewards are structured, but coming from Duels it's not going to feel that way.

If you want to have the kind of experience I'm raving about, you're going to need a decent collection and you get that by spending your time or your money.

If you choose F2P, it will be fast compared to Hearthstone levels of grinding to build up your collection, but you will be stuck playing the same deck for a while and it will be a grind. Keep that in mind.

Also, do your research when deciding what to craft and what decks to go for. If you're smart about it, collection building is a lot easier than if you just spend resources all willy nilly without putting in the effort.

Or you could just be like me and drop a heap of cash in their pockets. $$$$BOYZ UNITE!

I have a couple recomendations, although I'm not sure if they match the OP's requirements, but not everyone needs what the OP needs and I felt compelled to share:

For those of you with ios I recomend YuGiOh Duel Links. It is a polished and accurate implementation of the quick play rules. Your mileage may vary as all the problems that paper YuGiOh have are present (most of the cards are terrible, card text is often tiny).
It is free to play but they make you work for the free cards, there is a steady stream of in game events that let you earn cards. It is a bit of a grind, and it uses the characters and voices from the original show.

I also recomend Card Hunter on Steam, it adds strategic grid-based combat into the mix. You control a team of three heroes whom you equip with items, each item adds cards to that characters deck. It has an old school pen and paper feel and again it is very polished. The neat thing about the equipment is that many items will add both good and bad cards into that character's deck.
It is free to play but there is a purchaseable currency that lets you do various things.

I used to play the xbox YuGiOh online game. Good times, destroying randoms with chaos goodstuff while they tried and failed miserably to make some tribal deck or other work (I think GBs was the only viable tribal deck in that game IIRC). God that game was awful but digital TCGs weren't that big of a deal then so options were sorely limited.

I love Gwent but it's not super deep. The card pool for each type of pretty meh. 100 games in with a deck and you've got the deck mapped out vs. each other build. It's very much like Hearthstone. Easy to play, difficult to master, but certainly not difficult to get very damn close to mastering.

Anyone coming from Magic to Gwent is going to be able to understand every concept you've spoken about in about 10 minutes.

oh man, i don't know how you Sjok can bad-talk Gwent but not mind YuGuyOh (disclaimer: I haven't tried Gwent yet). I tried YyGuyOh on xbox and i wanted to pull my eyes out of the sockets. Christ, it was boring.

Oh Psych's point, I've also heard amazing things about Card Hunter but I don't want to lose people to Steam

On my side, I know that i'll eventually get into Gwent, I just don't plan on doing it anytime soon. I'll probably play Gems of War and finish that first.

All this talk of Gwent has given me a hankering to play the Witcher 3 again.

Has anyone been watching E3? So disappointing. I've got nothing I'm looking forward to apart from maybe the remaster of FF12 which is underrated but it's not exactly lightning my balls on fire with excitement. Kingdom Hearts 3 needs to hurry the f*ck up.

Yeah disappointing, but i'm looking forward AC Origins.

Are they showing us were all the glitches come from?

Hopefully it's more like Black Flag than Syndicate.

but the best parts of Black Flag are getting their own game! Skull and Bones! That was one of the only things that excited me from E3.

A Way Out looked cool too

I do find it great that the worst parts of Black flag was the actual assassin creed stuff haha

Like i'd be thinking "man, i have to stop plundering the 7 seas and go back to trailing a guy for 40 minutes just to find out he knew the entire time"

yeah like Havana was SUCH A DRAG in that game cuz you all you wanted to do was get back to your ship but there was SO MANY missions to do first in Havana, I couldn't take it anymore

the DLC, Freedom Cry, was one of the best I've ever played tho. I've never felt so justified killing bad guys.

First off I am still going to be playing magic duels for several more months. Now with that said I would like something else to play while waiting for the new magic next card game. I am looking at the free cards games on steam and I see in no particular order a few that caught my eye so far. Hex shards of fate, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Eternal card game. These games all look kind of like Hearthstone. I have not played Hearthstone because it looks to cartoony for my taste.
These other games may be to cartoony for me also. I can't decide if I want to try one of them or not. I sure do not want to play Hearthstone.

Second, Am I the only person on this forum that thinks the Magic MMORPG could be good? I am excited to hear about it's development. I come from an Everquest background for MMORPGs. Playing a necromancer that is a cross between Lilliana and an Everquest necromancer would be my dream character. What about an Arlin Cord and Everquest style Ranger mashup? That would be so much fun.

If the game is from the City of Heroes people, then at the very least the process of creating your own planeswalker and customizing them should be fun.

That's about all I expect from it.

You know , honestly depth isn't even the biggest issue for me with Gwent. It's the core mechanics themselves. I just don't like how it plays. Not my cup of tea, but if you like it - I can certainly understand.

Gwent does look pretty basic and not actually like an actual battle card game since it seems like you're just trying to keep your cards in play and hit a certain score and nothing else.
Nothing wrong with that I suppose but it just seems like a completely different style of card game that is for quick fun and not the same as MtG, Hearthstone or other such card games.

I think Gwent is more of a board game than a card game, if that makes any sense. It's not a bad thing either.