It sure wasn’t hard to find mobile card games at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, friends. Slightly more difficult was finding one that varied all that much from the template laid down by Blizzard’s Hearthstone. Which is not to say that the more familiar ones were bad or anything, as some of them had some interesting rules of their own and such, but it does mean that when I came across one that did something really different, it stood out quite well. Spree Entertainment’s Fiend Legion was one such effort, and it’s made all the sweeter by the fact that the game should be out relatively soon.
The best way to describe Fiend Legion is if you took a collectible card game and mashed it together with a turn-based strategy game. Eschewing the familiar table-top setting for its battles, Fiend Legion has you play your cards onto a hex grid map where positioning matters just as much as it does in any tactical strategy game. Your goal is to take out the enemy leader, and you’ll naturally need to protect your own while doing that.
The first phase of your turn is very much like a card game. You’ll draw cards, decide which ones to play based on your available resources, and so on. You can also place energy generators regardless of the cards you’re holding, but they’ll cost you precious energy to build, so you can’t just go hog wild with them. Once you’ve played your cards, the game then becomes a turn-based tactical strategy game. Whichever units are available and ready to attack can be moved (provided you have the action points to do so) and made to tackle a target of your choosing. You can go after enemy units, try to demolish their energy generators, or go straight for the leader. Your call.
Fiend Legion can be enjoyed in single-player or multi-player, though you’ll obviously want to find a human to play against if you want the best challenge. The game is already soft-launched on Android and the iOS version should be coming through within a couple of weeks pending approval. Naturally, it will continue to be added to as time goes on. The game is free to start, with extra card packs and hero-related things available through an in-game shop that takes two different kinds of currency. Both currencies can be earned through playing the game or bought via IAPs. Fiend Legion is a fun cross of two familiar genres, and one you’ll want to watch out for if you have an interest in either.
