By James Plafke from geek.com
Any hardcore mobile gamer can tell you that both iTunes and the Google Play store are inundated with shallow collectible card game clones where strategy is stripped out in favor of microtransactions and nearly automated play. Most of the time, you can barely call the games CCGs — you simply match up one “card’s” stats with an opponent’s and the higher numbers win. While certain mechanics from this new rash of games are here to stay — like “fusing” units to increase stats, or spending stamina points to be able to play — various games have broken free from the chains of mobile mediocrity and provide a truly deep experience. They are few and far between in the current mobile gaming landscape, but these six titles stand out from the rabble, and may even take some time away from your console sessions.
Nao is basically noob-stomping Square Enix in this PvP battle.
Heavenstrike Rivals
Despite the seemingly nonsensical and dramatic name, Heavenstrike Rivals is a great mobile CCG. You can earn both powerful cards (basically units) and the game’s premium currency, Cores, for free by playing through the game’s single-player story mode. Once you’ve built a sufficient deck, called a squad, you can take your units into battle against other players from around the world or in special matches against AI, earning new rewards in different ranked PvP leagues and timed events.
In both single-player and PvP, battles take place on a 7 x 3 grid where players can summon units from a maximum pool of 10 mana, with two mana generating at the start of each player’s turn. Units have a set number of spaces they can move per turn, and once they reach the perch on which the opponent stands, they’ll attack and damage the opponent’s health, winning the match when it reaches zero. Units not only have different stats and skills, but both can be leveled up in power.
Heavenstrike Rivals not only sports depth, but features gorgeous art and a Final Fantasy pedigree: Ryoma Ito, character designer for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, designed characters for the game, and Ryo Yamazaki, music composer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, did the music.
Heavenstrike Rivals is perhaps the most in-depth CCG designed specifically for mobile, and you can not only start playing for free, but easily earn a viable squad for free as well just by playing through the story.
Space dogs are good at combat math.
Calculords
A unique take on a digital CCG, Calculords combines the genre’s traditional units and collect-em-all mentality with a new twist on summoning mana. Instead of plopping down land cards like in Magic: the Gathering or having a finite number of mana generate at the start of each turn (as is the current industry trend), Calculords makes you do (somewhat) simple math to summon your units.
You have two decks: one loaded with your units, and one loaded with single-digit numbers. Both decks randomly draw cards per turn, but in order to summon a unit to send down the lane and damage your opponent, you have to meet their summoning cost by adding, subtracting, or multiplying numbers from your number deck. The more powerful a unit, the more difficult its summoning cost is to reach — six is easy peasy to math, but 113 wouldn’t be. You get bonuses if you use up all of your number and unit cards per turn — including getting to summon again — so the challenge lies in mathing just right.
Calculords is not only fun, but the retro art style looks great, and the game is packed with humor. It’s cheap at just three bucks, and the (even cheaper) in-app purchases unlock new card sets to earn, so you can’t pay your way to victory.
Garrosh doesn’t have a chance.
Hearthstone
Duh. Moving on.
You can definitely see the titular cards and castles.
Cards and Castles
At first glance, Cards and Castles looks more like a lane-based CCG than a more traditional tabletop CCG, but the more you play, the more it becomes apparent that it’s aping Blizzard’s Hearthstone and adding lanes. You use cards to summon units, perform feats of skill or magic, or construct buildings that bestow squad-wide enchantments, then aim your army at the opponent’s base by moving them around the field. Being able to move units around the field is a fun mechanic for a CCG, but below the cutesy exterior lies a game that owes its whole foundation to Blizzard’s mega-popular digital CCG.
Each player’s base has 30 life — like Hearthstone — and you automatically regenerate your mana at the beginning of each turn, with two being added to the max until you reach 10 — likeHearthstone. There are single-player campaigns that you can purchase to unlock the ability to earn new cards (like Hearthstone), and there’s a draft mode that costs and pays out rewards in almost the exact same manner as Hearthstone. You can even hold a max of three quests per day that, when completed, will award you with in-game currency. Like Hearthstone.
With Cards and Castles, though, imitation is the best form of flattery. The game is good, the cutesy visuals are appealing, and adding the units’ field movement into the mix — opposed to Hearthstone’s static cards-on-a-table schtick — is refreshing and adds an extra layer of strategy that can help counteract the randomness of drawing from a deck. If you like the rewards structure of Hearthstone and are clamoring for some SRPG elements like in, say, Fire Emblem, then this is the game you should bring into the bathroom.
The whole “nights” thing is more noticeable when you aren’t looking at digital cardboard.
Card City Nights
Unlike most CCGs, Card City Nights is strictly a single-player affair. The game doesn’t even have in-app purchases — you simply earn cards throughout the campaign. Even though the replayability of a CCG is primarily thanks to surprising your opponent with your sweet rare cards — and having human opponents in the first place — what makes Card City Nights a staple in any digital CCG collection is the amazing coloring book-like aesthetics, and that the game mechanics are very similar to Final Fantasy IX’s Tetra Master. Remember how, after playing FFVIII and FFIX, you always wanted either Triple Triad or Tetra Master as official, standalone games? For now, Card City Nights is the closest you’re going to get (unless you live in Japan, where the Japanese App Store recently received a standalone version of Triple Triad).
You’ll walk around a coloring book-like town, tapping on hot spot locations that eventually lead to card battles. Unlike Tetra Master, where players place cards on the same board, CCN gives players their own boards for their own cards. Each card has arrows that “link” to other cards so long as the arrows are pointing the right way, just like Tetra Master. So, matching up cards (on your own board) with certain affects — like damaging the opponent, or generating defense points for yourself — is how to gain advantages and defeat opponents.
For a cheap single-player game, Card City Nights not only has impressive visuals and a fun story, but has surprisingly deep, fairly unique gameplay. Best of all, you don’t need to have an internet connection available to play (unlike almost any mobile CCG), so you can scratch that CCG itch while on the train home from work, or when you’re stuck in an elevator.
Grids are the new unorganized table.
Scrolls
iOS (in development), Android: Free to try
After Minecraft changed the gaming landscape, fans eagerly wondered what their new favorite game developer would do next. The answer was Scrolls, a lane-based digital CCG. It didn’t take the world by storm like Minecraft did — then again, nothing else has — but it’s a fun, unique implementation of a digital CCG.
Gameplay is similar to the other lane-based entrants on this list; you spend mana to summon units, then your units mosey down their lanes with the goal of damaging your opponent’s idols at the other end. Once three out of five idols are smashed, a victor is declared and the loser pours over his decks, tweaking them throughout the night in shame. Whereas in other games summoning mana is often automatically generated per turn, Scrollsrequires players to sacrifice cards from their own hands to increase their total mana.
You can earn in-game currency and purchase cards and packs from the in-game shop, or you can shell out real cash for premium currency to purchase those very same cards and packs. The game has cross-platform play on PC, Mac, and Android, and an iOS version is on the way.
The best of the best
Of course, we didn’t include any incarnation of Magic: the Gatheringon mobile because, c’mon, if you’re actively looking for a new CCG, chances are you’ve already made some kind of decision about MtG. For now, these six digital CCGs are the best you’ll find on the major mobile platforms. They offer strategy and depth that’s unparalleled on mobile, and most are either constantly updating with new content or unique live events, or pack enough depth under the hood to begin with.
You can’t go wrong with any of the above, unless, of course, you have an addiction to opening packs that previously ruined your life. Then you’re boned.
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