One Hours into Faeria

  Over the last couple of years, there has been an explosion of online trading card games that seem to be out to set themselves up as the next Hearthstone.  There are several variations on the whole playing creatures in order to chip away at enemy health pool till you defeat them.  Faeria by Abrakam SA is very much a trading card game but they redesign it in a way that adds tactics and strategy.  Wanting to try it out, I set my clock to one hour and played Faeria.

The Experience:

  Faeria starts out by greeting you right away with a tutorial.  There isn't too much lore dropped on you as you are taken through a set of levels to show you how to play the game.    

  The game is pretty simple in that you will start out with three cards in your hand.  You will gain faeria, which is your energy, every round that you can spend toward you cards.  You gain additional faeria through spells or being on nodes next to wells that are in four fixed positions on the board.  Before you play any creatures you must have land to put them on.  You are able to put down two planes a turn or one specialty land.  Some units can only spawn in a certain type of land and need a certain amount of them on the board.  You win the round by destroying the enemy orb, which starts off at 20 health on the other side of the board.  

  This laying of the land is what makes Faeria such a unique experience.  The cards themselves are important but how you place the land can give you distinct advantages on the field.  For example, if you start to build straight to your enemies orb you can start assaulting them with high powered creatures faster.  Each creature can only move a node at a time unless otherwise specified so getting them there fast is important.  If you drop a huge creature too far back you will see a bunch of small ones slowly pound it to death before it can reach the enemy.  Then again you don't want to leave yourself defenceless. Placement is everything. 

  The artwork is also well done with the cards all seeming to have had plenty of effort put into them.  The aesthetic of a real fantasy world is expressed on every card and I didn't see any cards I felt had fallen through the cracks. 

  My only issue with this game comes from burn out of the genre as a whole.  The deck building system is right out of Hearthstone and having to buy bundles of boosters to make a deck feels a little daunting.  Then again a booster in this game is only $0.99 so they aren't asking too much.  That is if you don't feel the need to get a certain card.  Then it's up in the air the cost it will take to get to that card. There is a crafting system, which can somewhat blunt this process.

  From what I have seen so far the cards do not do too much to play with the game board either. You will have cards that can move on more the one polygon at a time or another that lays down a type of land but you it never felt like a real play at the board ever existed.  Maybe I was expecting more of the creatures could destroy land or maybe convert existing ones.  Just more variation to the taunt, charge, and flying cards that we see in every card game would be a welcome change.

  All in all it felts like a pretty tightly made trading card game with tactic strategy added in.  I wouldn't say it has the wow factor to lead the pack in any way but it's not a bad experience and at least brings something new to the genre.  It's free to play so if you are in the search of a new trading card game with unique elements, it's worth the peek.

TL;DR:

  Faeria is a trading card game with tactic elements added in.  It's well made but fatigue has left me wary about building up yet another deck in another game.  If you are in the hunt for a new one or looking for a trading card game that adds something new to the gameplay, it's free and worth trying out.