Hi All,
Over the last week or so I downloaded and started to play the Digital CCG from the Elder Scrolls franchise as I was getting a bit bored with duels and fancied having a go at something else for a bit. As the title suggests this is my first impressions coming from a purely MTG background (no Hearthstone) and may help other non-goblins decide if they want to give it a shot or not.
Installing
So the first thing that was noticeable to me is that this is not available on Steam so you need to download a Bethesda program and create a new account to play it. This was annoying but it was relatively pain free but the BIG WATCH OUT is that your user name that you create your account with Bethesda is not changeable and will also be your in-game name with no option to change what is being displayed. This really sucked as my account user name is not what I want my avatar to be.
F2P
So like Duels and Hearthstone the game is free to download and enter but it is micro transactions are very similar to HS so you almost have to spend at least $100 to build a somewhat competitive deck, if you don't you will get roflstomped by the AI and ladder opponents, so for those who like to try to grind out a F2P game this will not work here as it would take more hours than are in a day to get anywhere.
It works like this, coins are used to buy packs of cards which will give you 6 random cards that can be duplicates of cards you already have even after reaching the maximum playable number in a deck for each card (3, 2 or 1 depending on the card, not rarity). So the extra cards above the maximum can then be broken down into 'Soul Shards' which can be used to summon/craft any card you want at iirc 5x the cost of the shards you get for destroying a card of the same rarity (i.e if you get 20 shards for a rare card then summoning another rare will cost 100 shards). They also have a kind of foil/gold version of each card which is worth more shards. These cards as well as a gold border also have a soft animation on them which is pretty neat.
So in summary coins are used to buy packs and arena tickets and soul shards are used to craft cards. 1 pack of cards is 100 coins and an arena ticket is 150. You get coins by winning ladder matches and competing in the solo or P2P arena.
Game Modes
There are 5 types of game modes you can play:
- Practice vs the AI
- Story/Campaign
- Ladder or practice versus a human opponent
- Solo Arena
- Arena vs. human opponent
Story mode is like the campaign in duels you are given decks and it is a bit like a tutorial to start and you play until it is completed to get the rewards from it.
Practice mode vs the AI is also similar to duels with 3 modes of difficulty but the MAJOR difference is the AI in ESL is really hard to beat on Expert mode. From what I can tell the hard difficulty just gives the AI access to better cards and it cheats its ass off by having what seems like the exact right card to answer you plays when in top deck mode
This means you need to have a very strong deck to consistently beat the expert AI the lower difficulties can also be tricky but with lower powered cards the AI has less game winning option to screw you with. If you try to play the medium or expert difficulty with a starter deck you will lose most of the time.
The rewards for winning in the practice mode are soul shards (not coins) at a rate of 5,10 or 15 depending on the difficulty. Crafting a legendary card costs 1,200 shards and these are naturally the hardest to find through packs, so that is 80 wins vs the expert AI for one big card, that will take a long time.
Ladder matches vs other players are actually easier in the beginning than playing the AI and here you are rewarded with coins and sometimes cards as well so this is probably a better place to start grinding although it is still quite hard to win as it seems a lot of people pay significant sums of money and net deck to get started
Solo Arena requires 150 coins or a ticket which you can buy with real money(~$1.50) to enter and in arena mode you build a deck of 30 cards by picking from an offered 3 cards at a time normally ending up with a trashcan fire of a deck. You then face up to 9 AI battles with sometimes different rules in play that either handicap you or boost the AI. The arena is also really tough to get through all 9 battles without loosing 3 times and when you do you move up in rank and the next arena will be harder still until it becomes almost impossible to win. You get decent rewards for competing in the arena so you probably only need to win 3/9 battles to break even.
PvP Arena is the same as the solo except no mechanics favoring your opponent specifically and you are playing other draft decks built the same way like you did but there is ofc a large element of luck here. You also need to pay coins or use a ticket for this arena as well.
Throughout all of this you will be leveling up with EXP and each level you get a bonus prize and an upgraded version of a card. You can craft directly the upgraded version but this will transform your base card into the better version.
Game Play
The game play to me seems like a offspring of MTG and Hearthstone as there are clear elements from each like the colors segregation from magic and the turn based play and increasing magicka per turn that is not color specific from HS.
In ESL you cannot interact with your opponent on their turn except by RNG procs that certain cards haves when runes are destroyed but that is not controlled by you so you cant on purpose kill their new creature when they cast it even if you have available mana and the spell in hand.
Each player starts with 30 life and every 5 life points they have a rune which when destroyed draws that person a card. This is probably the best mechanic in the game that is different from MTG or HS (i'm sure other CCG have something like it) and it makes for very interesting battle strategy, do you attack for 2 damage and draw your opponent a card and potentially trigger a prophecy proc or sit back and wait for a better board state.
Prophecy is a mechanic or 'keyword' on some cards that means if they are drawn when a rune is destroyed you can cast them for free. There are a large number of powerful effect that have prophecy such as destroy creature or direct damage spells or guard/taunt creatures that stop you attacking face. Thus the tactics around rune breaking are pretty cool, with some opting for one large attack of 10 or more to avoid the potential proc on the two last runes.
Creatures can only attack one at a time and they can attack only face or other creatures in their 'lane' (there is one card that has text that lets it attack anywhere). If an opposing creature in your lane has guard it must be attacked before any other creature or opponent and there are tonnes of these guard effects around. There is no flying keyword or evasion that I can see except for moving a creature to a different lane, so all creatures can attack and block each other.
There are two lanes to the game board and while the rules for each lane can sometimes change with special battles in the arena, the normal rules are one 'Field Lane' and one 'Shadow Lane' the field lane is normal with no special effects and the shadow lane means that new creatures are not attackable by the opponents creatures on their next turn. They can still be targeted by actions (spells) though.
Summary/TLDR
Overall I have to say I quite like the game so far although it is far more rage inducing than duels
The game UI is very polished and the battle visual and sound effects are great, this is where the game is far superior to duels as it has been designed as a digital card game and not a port of a paper game. The card art is pretty good although not close to MTG standards but better than Hearthstone with its childish cartoon style. The game play is more complex than HS but less than MTG so somewhere in the middle but I like the rune and lane mechanics that make you think differently to how you approach MTG battles. The games really resolve around making favorable trades on the battlefield or overwhelming your opponents board either early (aggro), late (control), or a mix of both (mid-range). As you can't play on their turn there is no counter spell mechanic so you are only responding to the board or what you think they will be playing next. This makes things simpler than MTG but does speed up games even when they are control vs control although you can sometimes still get 15min+ matches.
As mentioned at the start though this game is expensive so you cannot reasonably expect to play this for free and have any fun and you must be careful of overspending as this game is a money sink requiring you to spend a very large sum to get all the cards. So unless you don't care about money you will probably want to spend about 60-100 bucks and then play for the rest.
Sorry for the epic post but I thought I would give this community my first impression of this game 1 week in. Let me know if anyone else has played it and what you think?
