Great CCG resurrected with an extreme aggro problem due to overdraw.
Ah its the old card game Duelyst, a classic and one of my favourite card games back when I played it in 2016-2018. The sleek digital designs and the sound effects are back. One neat factor that I don't remember being in the original is 3 separate skins you can choose from for each faction which is sick.
If you don't know much about Duelyst here's the jist. It's similar to Faeria (2017) or Pawnbarian (2020) in that all three games have a relationship between using cards in hand to control a fixed tile based board state. In Duelyst you vie for positional control to try and kill the enemy general with Spells and Monsters. Your health pool in Duelyst moves as being attached to said general, and first to deplete the enemy health pool wins.
Usually the early game will involve racing towards and controlling the center of the board and the 3 mana pools in the center column, then the rest of the game is managing your resources for clearing enemies while attacking that enemy general until they lose all the health and you win.
Now the original game, and Faeria much like it are 2 of my favourite Card Games of all time but Duelyst 2 has a pacing issue, at least for me, based on my limited gaming experience and what has been mentioned in this impressions video by an old player.
He puts a really fine point on the change to 2 draw. He oulines that during the really old beta of the original game, it was 2 draw with a 3 card starting hand, and was switched to 1 draw 5 card hand. 'There was a quite vocal i guess section of the community who felt that 2 draw...it was a regularly unique thing, it differentiated Duelyst from other games'. He then goes on to say that the result of this is that it makes your games far more agressive, mentioning that he would often be 1 off lethal by turn 3 and never have to worry about refueling. The other effect he points to is that it means that high cost monsters become functionally useless because of how much consistent removal the extra draw gives you.
Trying to play stall or control archetypes in a game that gives you 2 draw a turn becomes impossible. Trying to 'out value' the opponent becomes functionally meaningless and agressive builds are even more consistent than it otherwise would be. Even in my very short play through with practice decks I've noticed that I was consistently ending the game by turn 4 or 5 instead of the longer games I remember.
The knock on effect is that it trivializes what makes Duelyst so great, the board state of the game. If you can rush your enemy down before the game really opens up it prevents the more interesting play styles and match ups from being viable, thereby constraining the unique tug of war effect that you tend to prize in using resources mindfully in skilled play. One reason being that in order not to waste your resources due to the hand cap being 6 you have to constantly play small minions and cheap spells from your hand so as not to overdraw. This affects not only the way decks are built and the pace of the game, but also how cards will be designed and balanced. Games will be fast and based on trying to make for first 2-4 turns feel fair, games will end as fast as they start, etc. None of this fits into the aesthetic and appeal of a card game about advanced wars style board strategy, why would I play a game like this for early game bullshit combo tricks when I could just play Yu Gi Oh?
Beyond that they do have the legacy mode so you can still play the older version of the game, and you have Duelyst.gg if you want to play a more active version of that. Otherwise my experience with Duelyst has absolutely been a lesson in realizing that Card Draw matters a lot in how card games are designed. Not only just in how many cards you can draw but also how much you can mulligan or replace cards. In this game you can mulligan any of the cards individually in your hand, and swap 1 card out for another meaning that the amount of consistency in getting power creep openings is at an all time high. These are not just 'small distinctions', having high opportunities to pull off broken combos affect design space and game pace so tremendously that the 1 card draw per turn rule is a given for a reason.
Beyond all of that, I tend to believe that one of the best ways to come to grasps with card value in these games is through the draft mode, which unfortunately isn't online yet for this game. Meaning that the only way for new players to test out if card combos are good are by risking trying them in ladder play. It doesn't help that the UI is missing some qualify of life for experimentation. For example minion cards like Pandora which read "At the end of your turn, summon a random Spirit on a random nearby space" don't really indicate what a 'spirit' is or does. These cards are niche and slow, and probably cost too much mana to put in your deck anyway but the fact I cant find out what a 'spirit' does from hovering over it doesn't help.
All in all this is just Duelyst with a card engine that has overheated the whole system into an outright aggro frenzy. Anybody interested in playing a CCG like this is better off poking into to the previously mentioned Faeria these days for multiplayer or Pawnbarian for Single Player. Or just playing non card tactical combat grid games like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem where there's a story conjoined to that grid based tactics. Duelyst 2 is a manifestation of the current state of virtual CCGs' in a post-COVID economy. Desperately tinkering to be different from the pack, to 'revive' the player base with every energy they can muster, and often undermining the very appeal of what they could offer as a result. Nonetheless since its still in the early phases, if these factors change I'll let you know in a followup post down the line.
Ah its the old card game Duelyst, a classic and one of my favourite card games back when I played it in 2016-2018. The sleek digital designs and the sound effects are back. One neat factor that I don't remember being in the original is 3 separate skins you can choose from for each faction which is sick.
If you don't know much about Duelyst here's the jist. It's similar to Faeria (2017) or Pawnbarian (2020) in that all three games have a relationship between using cards in hand to control a fixed tile based board state. In Duelyst you vie for positional control to try and kill the enemy general with Spells and Monsters. Your health pool in Duelyst moves as being attached to said general, and first to deplete the enemy health pool wins.
Usually the early game will involve racing towards and controlling the center of the board and the 3 mana pools in the center column, then the rest of the game is managing your resources for clearing enemies while attacking that enemy general until they lose all the health and you win.
Now the original game, and Faeria much like it are 2 of my favourite Card Games of all time but Duelyst 2 has a pacing issue, at least for me, based on my limited gaming experience and what has been mentioned in this impressions video by an old player.
He puts a really fine point on the change to 2 draw. He oulines that during the really old beta of the original game, it was 2 draw with a 3 card starting hand, and was switched to 1 draw 5 card hand. 'There was a quite vocal i guess section of the community who felt that 2 draw...it was a regularly unique thing, it differentiated Duelyst from other games'. He then goes on to say that the result of this is that it makes your games far more agressive, mentioning that he would often be 1 off lethal by turn 3 and never have to worry about refueling. The other effect he points to is that it means that high cost monsters become functionally useless because of how much consistent removal the extra draw gives you.
Trying to play stall or control archetypes in a game that gives you 2 draw a turn becomes impossible. Trying to 'out value' the opponent becomes functionally meaningless and agressive builds are even more consistent than it otherwise would be. Even in my very short play through with practice decks I've noticed that I was consistently ending the game by turn 4 or 5 instead of the longer games I remember.
The knock on effect is that it trivializes what makes Duelyst so great, the board state of the game. If you can rush your enemy down before the game really opens up it prevents the more interesting play styles and match ups from being viable, thereby constraining the unique tug of war effect that you tend to prize in using resources mindfully in skilled play. One reason being that in order not to waste your resources due to the hand cap being 6 you have to constantly play small minions and cheap spells from your hand so as not to overdraw. This affects not only the way decks are built and the pace of the game, but also how cards will be designed and balanced. Games will be fast and based on trying to make for first 2-4 turns feel fair, games will end as fast as they start, etc. None of this fits into the aesthetic and appeal of a card game about advanced wars style board strategy, why would I play a game like this for early game bullshit combo tricks when I could just play Yu Gi Oh?
Beyond that they do have the legacy mode so you can still play the older version of the game, and you have Duelyst.gg if you want to play a more active version of that. Otherwise my experience with Duelyst has absolutely been a lesson in realizing that Card Draw matters a lot in how card games are designed. Not only just in how many cards you can draw but also how much you can mulligan or replace cards. In this game you can mulligan any of the cards individually in your hand, and swap 1 card out for another meaning that the amount of consistency in getting power creep openings is at an all time high. These are not just 'small distinctions', having high opportunities to pull off broken combos affect design space and game pace so tremendously that the 1 card draw per turn rule is a given for a reason.
Beyond all of that, I tend to believe that one of the best ways to come to grasps with card value in these games is through the draft mode, which unfortunately isn't online yet for this game. Meaning that the only way for new players to test out if card combos are good are by risking trying them in ladder play. It doesn't help that the UI is missing some qualify of life for experimentation. For example minion cards like Pandora which read "At the end of your turn, summon a random Spirit on a random nearby space" don't really indicate what a 'spirit' is or does. These cards are niche and slow, and probably cost too much mana to put in your deck anyway but the fact I cant find out what a 'spirit' does from hovering over it doesn't help.
All in all this is just Duelyst with a card engine that has overheated the whole system into an outright aggro frenzy. Anybody interested in playing a CCG like this is better off poking into to the previously mentioned Faeria these days for multiplayer or Pawnbarian for Single Player. Or just playing non card tactical combat grid games like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem where there's a story conjoined to that grid based tactics. Duelyst 2 is a manifestation of the current state of virtual CCGs' in a post-COVID economy. Desperately tinkering to be different from the pack, to 'revive' the player base with every energy they can muster, and often undermining the very appeal of what they could offer as a result. Nonetheless since its still in the early phases, if these factors change I'll let you know in a followup post down the line.