Looking back at previous board game reviews on this site, they're usually quite a bit late compared to other sites. What they really need to do is hire someone just to review ios board games.
how do i identify a common or champions "attack value" ? i see the amount of dice he can use his cost and his life.. just got whipped by a double 6 freakin roll by guild dwarve summoner. can someone explain please?
The attack value on the shield is the amount of dice that character will roll, if a 3 or above is rolled it will cause 1 damage per dice, each die being independent. So a roll of 2 3's is as good as 2 6's. Unless of course an effect is linked to a certain value, ie goblin slinger will only score a wound on rolls of 4 and above rather than 3.
It's ludicrous to hold the belief that board gaming is somehow so niche that it deserves no space on the front page for news, other than when editors feel like supporting their favorite games like Magic. And the whole point is to have a broader audience exposed to these kind of games, rather than more physics based puzzlers.
Strangiato-----I am still experiencing very frequent crashing issues on my Ipad 1. Often, I can only play a turn in one of my online matches before it crashes and goes back to the Ipad home screen. Is this crashing issue something that you can improve on in future updates or is it simply a problem inherent with the specs of the Ipad 1? I plan on getting an Ipad 3 (or 4) before the end of the year.
In some ways, I feel like its actually doing the game a favor by not being mentioned. =P Mostly people who actively searched or heard of the game and want to try to learn and like the game. For most people, this game has too much going against it. The tutorial isn't the first thing forced on first start. It's easy to lose the tutorial which is an immediate turn off. By default, the game is set for playing against another person instead of CPU and its not clear how to switch to CPU unless you poke on every button. (And I just learned to pick random AI, you have to double tap random AI. I've been single tapping random AI and hitting load). Third, while the AI isn't too hard and will make questionable decisions sometimes once you figure out the game, to most, the AI is simply too hard. I think we even see people here really trying to like this game just get frustrated. This game is a table top game, played with cards, uses dice (which throws in randomness), and you can customize your decks...all of which does not have mass appeal otherwise these games will be more popular. While its one anecdotal story, I tried getting my brother into the game (he's a fan of SRPGs) and he also having a hard time wrapping his head around the game. If this game gets more exposure, Playdek may need to prepare for a lot of 1 star reviews complaint about the difficulty of the game, the difficulty of understanding the game, how the game isn't really "free"..and any other usual complaints. I'm not knocking Playdek nor the source game or anything. I think the majority of the game is implemented and the source material has a lot of depth. But to attract the casual people, easier difficulty and some kind of a compaign or extended tutorial is needed (like the Magic 2013 app). Just blindly throwing people into the game after a barebone tutorial doesn't help. Heck, with the Nightfall sale, I looked at that games main thread and see a lot of parallel there. Sounds like people have a hard time figuring why they won or lost in Nightfall despite learning the minimal rules of how to play. If Playdek just keeps making good implementation of board games without putting in an extended tutorial, it's probably difficult to expand their audience to the general public.
while we're there. the Dice tapping when opponent attacks is very annoying on iPhone. mostly bc sometimes there's push notifications from other apps and they might send you out of the game and such. the abilities really need to be reworked as well. maybe like a popup prompt asking of you can't to use the ability. as of now it's too easy to activate things accidentally
There's no reason for Playdek to want to hide from the spotlight. If the game isn't beginner friendly and this supposed heat does hit them then they will hopefully learn to make this and future products that much more beginner friendly to improve sales. Any lack of quality or features in the app does not let TA off the hook here, not in the least.
Here to vent. Basically becoming another statistic. Id like to think I am reasonably intelligent. But just against the AI, I have not even won yet. Switched from elves to dwarves (just want to stick with 2 or a few decks for now so I can learn them). Still I can't win. A close one just then, and actually I ended up in a dominating position, but of course, the AI gets a bloody good roll and it's yet another defeat. The AI seems to be able to play both defensively and attackingly depending on the situation, and it does it damn well!! I wouldn't like the see the AI dumbed down, hell no. But damn!!
Nice when an AI, hopefully not cheating, can put up such a good challenge! I think this is what messed me up as well since I can organize an attack or hole up and defend...but not both all that well.
Lol..yeah, I wish they would use the system in the SRPGs or civilization that I tried. Add an option so on 1st touch of a unit will pop up a menu for move, abilities or cancel. I know that'll really me on when on the iPod touch. Dragging on the left side of the card for normal attacks and the right side for abilities, while convinent, is not intuitive at all and hard on the iPod touch's tiny screen. lol.. Well, to be fair, I think this game should have at least a mention. In either case, I think even from comments here and on boardgamegeeks, Playdek should have enough complaints and suggestions (including having a campaign or extended tutorial) to work on. ;-)
I must be a good player then, because I find the AI to be generally fairly easy. They can put up a good fight if I play with Vanguards though, mainly because Vanguards suck.
To everyone losing to AI, the first day I got the game I tried testing different factions and I lost like 10 games in a row, not fun at all. But the key here is to learn two factions at one time, learn your enemy's abilities and deck, not his strategy and learn your own deck and abilities. Learning to beat the AI is not going to help a lot online. Use it to learn game mechanics, not game strategies.
Is there any specific tactic that you find works well then heringer? Originally I was just going straight for the AI's hero and wasting away my Cards to keep a stream of units on the board, but I found before long I was out of units and the AI still had at least 10. So then I went defensive and try and run the AI out of cards before going for the kill.....still no luck.
I completely agree on the dice rolling. Is there a good reason why I need to tap the dice each time the opponent rolls? Why can't it just show me the dice roll and then whether the attack was successful or not by showing another wound mark on my guy?
@tops2 i can understand where you are coming from. i myself play many card games both on ios devices and others in physical forms. not having an in depth tutorial may well hurt the game for people that are new to it. usually with the average card game im usually fairly quick to understand and grasp the concepts and rules and strategys most card games lay out before you. but the tutorial aspect can be said for new players who may have minimal experience with more than one or two card games. people who openly accuse a card game of being misleading in its freemium tag are GROSLY misinformed and lazy and quite possibly very thick in the head. trading card games 1. more than 50% of the time card games are collectible and your going in blind and you have to buy boosters or card packs. games of thrones, summoner wars and ascension and others do offer the security of one payment fo a full product or expansion. why doesnt the game get reviewed?? i will agree qiuet heavily that puzzlers take up alot of space in reviews which can get quite annoying. for whatever its worth who cares if the game doesnt get reviewed. i think its great at least im not getting ripped by wizards. yeh...SURE banking on new players might have got it good reviews...but for the many who have played it for so long no how limited ad how big its drawbacks are. just enjoy the game. but yes on an ending note their tutorials could be better. there ends my rant
Just keep trying and tweaking your strategy. Go slow, don't summon too many units, learn when to kill your own units, and learn from your mistakes. Don't give up! I'm finally able to beat the AI's majority of the times with the starting faction. At least for the AI, I only summon champions and warriors, and build magic with the rest of the commons. You can learn to exploit warriors moving up to attack, then at then end of turn teleport back to your wall. I've been hanging around back or around the "line of scrimmage"..and in most of my games now against the AI they've been running out of cards. I had a lucky start my last game against the orcs, and rushed the wall, blocked all the sides of the wall where it could summon, killed the wall..and by the time I killed the wall, he had 9 magic built up. Then it was my 5-6 units against the orcs summoner. What a rush... Haha..I think it depends on if people's minds is wired for these games. I've never been a big SRPG fan so it's hard to learn positioning. On a separate parallel, some people can never get used to virtual controls, or tilting in games, or play first person shooters or bullet hell games.. Sometimes it's hard when trying new genre of games (this is the case for me for Summoner Wars). Lol..I lost over 20 times just with the Phoenix Elves before the first win. Lost ~10 more times before the second win. But now i can finally beat the AI (with only one faction thou), but actually having fun...and not frustrated all the time. I'd say I've been pretty stubborn with this game and trying to learn it. ;-) @Faemanx: yeah..I'm glad I picked Ascension as my first step into these card/board-ish games. The basic mechanics was easy to get started, as you can bumble through it, slowly learning tactics, while getting seem wins (which is the incentive to keep trying). It definitely helped me when finally tried the Magic 2013 app and other freemium card games in knowing the basic game play mechanics..strategy is another topic. Lol.. Anyways.. Sorry if I sound argumentive or whatever which isn't my intent. Just trying to mention some reasons why not everyone loves this game, and maybe help Playdek with some constructive ideas. Glad we're having a friendly dialog about the game. =)
I think that's to cut down on people whining about the dice cheating >_> They should add an option to disable that prompt.
I try to save Magic to buy Champion units and I don't have any problems discarding anything that isn't a hero for magic. Also, killing your own units can help if you think they are about to be killed by the enemy. As for chasing the enemy summoner, it's something that usually happens in the endgame, when I win the battlefield and the AI doesn't have enough firepower to stop me. What factions are you using? The Phoenix Elves are actually quite good. Also, get to know your enemy's cards.
More bugs. I see many games disappearing. I had four ... Now I checked since I have two new ones and I only see these two?! is online playing so broken? And before you start saying it was the time thingie, no. They were games with 300 hours to go.
