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Legends of Runeterra

nimateb

Augur
Joined
Oct 19, 2013
Messages
123
New CCG from Riot, I'm not a CCG player but I find it extremely fun and viable to play free, anyone tried it?
 

jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,488
Since open beta actually, yes. It's well balanced and very fun to play, indeed. Their "arena" approach is also exellent, with basically free token every week for everyone and *not so hard to return investment* for skill players. Honestly, I can't think of any worth noticing downside (well, there's an jarring issue that game do not always "remember" the chosen mode but it's so minor, although Riot cannot fix it for all this time).

Solution for donate/FTP balance is quite interesting as well and I'm wondering about wild cards: will they apply for forthcoming expantion cards? Probably not, but if so, that would be whole new hight for FTP CCD playing (in that case LoR will beat even the most generous CCD I've ever seen - Gwent).
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
2,323
Location
Illinois
Been playing this steadily (Though lightly) since open beta started and... It's alright. Not as complicated as MTG, not as simple as Hearthstone, fairly FTP generous (But with a big caveat) and the game itself and players tend to be quick so it's good in that regard. I don't give two shits about the LoL setting or lore or know any of it, but eh. One really positive note I will mention is I like how you can get a fullscreen view on all the card art. I don't think the art in Runeterra's anything to write home about, but I like that the option's there at least. I enjoyed admiring the Gwent art and I'd like a big fullscreen art mode for MTGA, so I'm glad Runeterra has it even if the art itself doesn't do much for me.

The caveat on FTP is it's currently pretty cheap to build competitive decks, but it's because competitive decks are mostly all commons and rares at the moment. As soon as they un-fuck the epics and heroes (Or add new, more powerful ones in future sets) the price for competitive decks will skyrocket. Getting the gems and wildcards for epics and heroes is slow going, and it's not all that important currently but if that design philosophy changes it could get more unfriendly. But at the moment at least I've been enjoying playing a game or two of it a day.
 

jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,488
The caveat on FTP is it's currently pretty cheap to build competitive decks, but it's because competitive decks are mostly all commons and rares at the moment. As soon as they un-fuck the epics and heroes (Or add new, more powerful ones in future sets) the price for competitive decks will skyrocket. Getting the gems and wildcards for epics and heroes is slow going
Well, it's beta, we have pleeenty of time before the first expansion, so I'm sure even by playing 1-2 game per day and more importantly, at least 1-2 expedition per week we'll have pretty much everything by that time with massive amount of gems on top of that (I have 30k now and I didn't donate/had 24x7 sessions). Besides, there always will be some at least tier2 cheap competitive deck available with 3 heroes max in it. Since their philosophy about *heroes have to be supported* (hopefully they'll nerf Heckram hard) there will be hardly any decks in the future with more than 6-9 heroes, so again - not expensive.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
It's very similar to Magic: The Gathering, but simplified. Right now there still aren't too many cards so it's viable to grind a full collection in a month or so, but you waste a lot of time doing that. After a while the game ceases to be interesting though. The automatic growth of mana per turn instead of dealing with mana flood and mana screw is a step up for the most part, but you still deal with a lot of random chance determining who wins and who loses.

Generally speaking you want to get at least 3 wins against other players per day and do all 3 expeditions per week. You can also chain-concede matches against other players and against (separate exp caps) AI for more exp to get goodies faster. It also helps to avoid spending wild cards early so you don't get duplicate commons and can use the wild cards to fill out the cards you really want later. Always reroll any quest that gives 1000 exp. If you get lucky it turns into a 1500 exp quest instead. I think if you have a friend you can also win trade for faster exp and there might be separate exp caps for friend matches. You can get a full card collection in one month of dedicated grinding or a bit over two months if you take shit more slowly. After a while the novelty dies and all this shit starts to feel like a chore though.
 
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jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,488
I'm pleased with the overall variety of decks so far. Devs're goin' very carefully with monthly balancing changes yet still the ability to play basically almost every combination of regions is amazing. Currently having a blast with relatively old Fiora deck in the prev-masters league where guys are have no idea how to play against it and it's hilarious. (In fairness, many players are testing stuff right now)
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
2,323
Location
Illinois
They just patched it so you get either a random champion or a champion wildcard from the weekly rewards now, so that removes a big part of the price concern was I talking about for the future. Especially since the champion wildcard is at the highest "Easy tier", of 3 platinum chests. Which you should hit easily getting like one win a day and doing your quests.
 

nimateb

Augur
Joined
Oct 19, 2013
Messages
123
I've been playing this a lot since the open beta, I have an almost full collection and 30 k of shards to get most cards once the game leaves beta on may. I got to platinum rank and hopped on a reddit tournament, had a blast! I recommend it as a CCG noob, very fun game. Also it's coming on mobile.
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

Time Mage
Patron
Joined
Apr 30, 2020
Messages
3,292
Location
Arborea
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Played for a good bit but saw no reason to play it over MTGA. Its deeper than Hearthstone but there are too many cards and abilties with split second (at instant speed without response time) for my taste. Both Hearthstone and MTGA hooked me deeper on release (Hs due to amazing UI and aesthetics, MTG due to amazing gameplay)

I heavily dislike that the progression mechanic is entirely dependant on Riots generosity. The weekly chest is only about 40% of your ingame advancements, the rest comes from the xp which unlocks rewards on a battle pass style system. While that is generous, there is nothing stopping Riot from nerving those battlepasses after they have gathered a larger playerbase. I prefer my CCGs with progression mechanics that are harder to tamper with. WOTC does their best to nerf the rewards in MTGA every patch since they are really generous, but they fail since those are really hard to stealthily reduce.
 

Dawkinsfan69

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
Jun 3, 2016
Messages
2,815
Location
inside ur mom ᕦ( ▀̿ Ĺ̯ ▀̿ )ᕤ
gave this a shot to try out their draft mode (they call it expedition) and it's pretty damn FUN and cheap. IDK if it's as good as MTG draft but it's waaaaay better than hearthstone arena (which has become [or maybe always was] a fucking joke of a game mode that devs seemingly don't give half a thousandth of a shit about)

I like the mechanics, really feels a LOT like MTG except there are fewer "stops", which is kinda annoying when I blow myself out because I assumed I'd be able to cast an instant spell AFTER a first striker attacks but BEFORE the blocking creature deals damage (hint: you can't do that!). So I guess it's a bit annoying getting used to these minor differences but once I figure it out it'll be fine. Still, definitely a huge step up from HS in every department besides art (I still think HS has best art don't @ me)

What makes me want to play this most is that draft mode is WAY cheaper in this than either HS or MTG. MTG thinks they're cute by charging $3-$10(!!!!) fucking dollars EVERY time you want to play the mode. In this game an expedition is essentially two drafts, since you get to start a new draft for free after your first one ends. They give a free token each week, so you get two free drafts per week from that, then every now and then you can get another free draft from the f2p currency that accumulates ***passively by playing DRAFT***, then if you have an insane amount of free time and still want more draft the price comes out to a little less than $1 per. Every expedition past the third per week is free also (hell yea but i dont have enough time to play that much lol)

compare that to mtg or hs where if you want to f2p draft you need to spend a crazy amount of time grinding out daily quests in bullshit netdeck standard zero-fun mode or if you want to pay for it they charge out the ass
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
2,323
Location
Illinois
Yeah, getting used to the sequencing in Runeterra's a bit of a trip compared to MTG but once you figure out how it works it's fairly well done. It doesn't have quite as much in the way of potential mindgames as something like Artifact had, but there's still some strategy in "Do I take this pass so we move to the next round or do I play a card and give my opponent a chance to respond" on occasion.

I haven't even done a single Runeterra draft yet. I probably have like 30+ fucking expedition tokens banked but I'm still digging playing constructed. I sometimes think I should try some of the more control-oriented decks, but the thing I like about Runeterra constructed that makes it stand out from MTG is how it's so much more based around combat and rubbing summons together. So then I end up playing a lot of shit like frost decks with combat tricks because combat tricks are almost never dead cards in Runeterra.

Speaking of which though, DAWKINS. Did they nerf "Deep" in draft? I heard that was hilariously powerful at launch because you have a smaller decksize in limited so it triggers easier, so you just force draft as many deep cards as you can and then shit out big seamonsters. I've pulled two Nautilus so one of these days I'll have to make a seamonster deck in constructed.
 

Dawkinsfan69

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
Jun 3, 2016
Messages
2,815
Location
inside ur mom ᕦ( ▀̿ Ĺ̯ ▀̿ )ᕤ
Speaking of which though, DAWKINS. Did they nerf "Deep" in draft? I heard that was hilariously powerful at launch because you have a smaller decksize in limited so it triggers easier, so you just force draft as many deep cards as you can and then shit out big seamonsters. I've pulled two Nautilus so one of these days I'll have to make a seamonster deck in constructed.

I've only done one draft so far (last week), so I'm not sure if they've nerfed or not BUT one of my draft decks was a Deep deck with Naut as the champion and it was the easiest 7 win I think I've ever gotten in a card game. The deck seemed stupid strong, there wasn't much decision making on my part it was mostly "dump cards from my deck as fast as possible then play this big stupid 12/12 that they can't deal with and win" and it worked every game. Soo if it hasn't been nerfed it probably should be, seemed too easy to get both the dump cards and the deep payoff monsters and idk how other draft decks could deal with that. I think the sea monster theme is really cool but gameplay wise it was kinda stupid easy to play.

My other draft deck was a frostbite control deck that was way more interesting to play, lots of cool decision making and I had a ton of fun with that deck.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
2,323
Location
Illinois
As an aside, they added "Gauntlet" to Runeterra, which looks like it might be their FNM equivalent. Thus far there's no sign up fee and they're trying alternate formats (Currently singleton) and you get bonus XP the deeper you can get in a 7 wins 2 losses run. Kinda fun. The disadvantage of singleton in Runeterra is P&Z seems flat out the best for it. Typically good removal, card draw, and some decent generic hero dudes. Not to mention P&Z has the only two singleton focused cards anyway. Been having success with P&Z/Bilgewater hybrid since the pirates give you some card stealing and a few late game bombs like the big dick shark dude. Opponents have all been P&Z too but the other faction has been much more varied.

I'm still surprised I'm playing this. Ridiculously casually, but still playing regardless.
 

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