As of yesterday the Elder Scrolls Legends card game went into open beta. You can get it here:
https://legends.bethesda.net/It is a digital collectible card game set in the Elder Scrolls universe. I have been playing for about a week in the closed beta and so far I have been really enjoying my time with it. It is heavily inspired by games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone.
Much like Magic the game pits two players against each other, the players can use creatures and actions to try to reduce their opponents life total to zero. There are four card types that can be played. Support cards are cards that have a lasting effect on the game. From my experience so far there are two main types of support cards, ones that are activateable and ones that have a lasting effect. For example there is a support card that gives all of your creatures +1/+1. For an example of an activateable support card there's one that can be activated to do damage to enemy creatures. The activateable support cards can only be activated once per turn and have a limited amount of charges. Then there are creatures which can be played in one of two lanes (I'll get to lanes later), up to 4 creatures in each lane can be played. Creatures can have keywords that give them certain abilities much like M:TG or hearthstone. For example a creature with the "guard" keyword must be destroyed before opposing creatures can attack the player or non-guard creatures. Then there are actions, actions are much like spells in hearthstone, they can do things like fill a lane with 1/1 creatures, do damage, heal etc... And Finally we have the item card type. These cards are buff cards that can give your creatures bonuses.
Cards all have a magicka cost associated with them. Each turn your maximum magicka is increased by 1, up to a maximum of 12 (though there are cards that can give you bonus magicka that can let you pass this limit, I've had 15 before). Creature cards can be played in one of two lanes. The left lane is the field lane and there are no bonuses associated with it. The right lane is the shadow lane and creatures summoned into the shadow lane cannot be attacked by other creatures for their first turn (unless they have charge and attack on their first turn, then they are no longer concealed). Creatures can still be targeted by actions while they are concealed. Creatures can only attack creatures in their own lane, or they can attack the opposing player. Creatures that have an ability activated on summoning can target creatures in other lanes with this ability, for example there is a creature that does 1 damage to another creature when summoned. You could summon this creature in the left lane and target a creature in either lane to do 1 damage to.
The game uses a rune system. You start the game at 30 life and once your life is reduced to a certain threshold a rune is broken. You lose a rune at 25, 20, 15, 10 and 5 life. Each time one of your runes is broken you draw a card. Some cards have the "prophecy" tag. These cards can be played immediately after one of your runes is broken if it is drawn. For example if my enemy attacked me and brought me to 25 health, and I drew a creature with the prophecy tag I could play it immediately.
There are several different ways to play the game. There is a story campaign which pits you against the AI. These matches usually have special rules that you will not find in other modes. It is quite similar to "adventures" in Hearthstone, though there is more effort put into the story side of things.
There is a practice mode in which you play against the AI. I don't know much about it as I haven't tried using it.
There is also versus mode which pits you against other players. You can either play a casual match or play on the ladder. The reward for playing on the ladder is that at the end of a season (they are 1 month long) you get a card rewarded to you based on your rank.
Much like Hearthstone there is an Arena mode. There are two different ways to play arena. You can face the AI and try to beat 9 AI opponents. Or you can play against other players. In the arena you build your deck much like you do in Hearthstone's arena mode. You're given 3 cards to chose from and you pick one card to add to your deck. You do this until you have 30 cards. When you're playing against the AI in arena you also get to pick another card to add to your deck every time you win a match. You lose once you reach 3 defeats and are rewarded based on how many wins you achieved. It costs 150 gold to enter the arena.
Now onto deck building. You can have 50 to 70 cards in your deck. Cards are divided into six different categories (similar to colours in M:TG). Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Endurance and Neutral. Neutral cards can go in any deck. Decks can only have two of the other categories. For example you could have a deck that consisted Intelligence, strength and neutral cards. There are also some rarer cards that belong to two categories. There are four different rarity levels, common, rare, epic and legendary. You can put up to 3 copies of a card in your deck with the exception of legendary cards which can only be a one of in a deck. Some of the cards you start the game with can be leveled up. These cards can be leveled by leveling up your player character (you gain experience by playing matches). Some cards level up into another card, or they give you the choice to level it up into one of two different cards.
Cards can be gained by buying them with in game currency (1 pack for 100 gold) or through buying packs with real money. Each pack contains six cards and one card is guaranteed to be of rare quality or better. You can also gain cards by playing in versus mode. Every third win in versus mode gets you a random card and a bit of gold. Another way you can get cards is based on what Avatar you chose when you started playing the game. For example I picked a Dark Elf avatar when I started playing and after a certain amount of levels gained I get a bonus Dark Elf cards.
As with Hearthstone cards can also be crafted. When you get a card you don't want you can disenchant it into soul gems. You can then use these soul gems to craft other cards. How many soul gems it takes to craft a card depends on its rarity. You can also get soul gems as a reward from playing in the arena.
The game also has a quest system. Each day you get to pick between one of two quests. These quests offer gold as a reward. An example of a quest would be "Play X number of creatures in the shadow lane" or "Destroy X number of creatures with abilities".
I like what I've seen so far. Even though it is heavily influenced by other games in the genre it seems to hit all the right buttons for me. It isn't as flashy or as colourful as Hearthstone but I don't really think that is a bad thing. The audio and visuals are all very well done. The card art is beautiful and the music is pretty decent. Outside of Hearthstone this is the only digital CCG that has kept me coming back for more. I really like the Elder Scrolls theme and I look forward to seeing how this game progresses.
