Duel of Champions

I wanted to play hearthstone recently, but failed to get a key from the pcgamer giveaway, so i looked for a free to play card game that was similar to hearthstone and ended up finding this game

Duel of Champions is a collectible card game set in the might and magic universe and is a lot of fun
You can get it from here http://www.duelofchampions.com/

The board has 5 columns

The 2 columns on the left are for your creatures, the middle column is for spell cards that effect the row that the card is played in, and the right 2 columns are for enemy creatures

A deck contains 1 hero card, 8 event cards, and 50-200 other cards


A hero card is just your hero, during the game its not actually a card you play, just a card that you pick when you build your deck to determine the hero you play as
The heroes have hero powers similar to hearthstone, except the 3 that you can start with, they dont have a hero power (they can draw 1 card for 1 mana, but all of the heroes can do that in addition to a hero power), for example the hero ive been using can give +1 hp to all melee creatures i summon for that turn
In addition to hero powers your hero also has 3 stats, might, magic, and fortune
Once per turn you can choose to increase 1 of those stats and cards require you to have certain stats in order to play them, they dont get spent when you play a card, its just a requirement to play a card, for example a high cost card might require 6 might and 1 magic, creature cards generally have a high might requirement to play, spell cards need magic to play, and fortunes require fortune
Different heroes start with different stats, so picking a hero that starts with 3 might 0 magic and 1 fortune wont make for a good spell focused deck since youll need to spend extra turns increasing your magic so that you can play spell cards


Event cards are shared between players, a new 1 is drawn every turn and can be used by either player, these cards dont have a stat requirement and generally effect both players or the whole board, some of the more powerful ones that ive seen let you deal 1 damage to everything (including your own stuff), and the ability to give +1 attack to all creatures that you summon for that turn


The other cards are creatures, spells and fortunes

Creatures have 3 types, shooters, flyers, and melee, shooters have to go in the back column, and melee has to go in the front, flyers can be put anywhere
The creature in that screenshot is a flyer, costs 2 mana to play, requires 2 might, has 2 attack, does 1 retaliation damage, has 4 health, and has no special abilities
Retaliation damage is the damage the creature does to a creature when it gets attacked, so if the creature in the screenshot is attacked it only does 1 dmg to its attacker
Shooters are immune to retaliation (since they are ranged and shoot the enemy creature), and retaliation damage is only done if the creature being attacked lives (unless they have preemptive strike or retribution)
Creatures can only attack the enemy hero directly if the enemy doesnt have creatures on the same row as your creatures, so you can block yourself by putting a creature in the same row that your enemy just put a creature
There are a ton of different creature abilities, preemptive strike lets a creature deal its retaliation damage before the attacking creature gets to attack, and retribution lets a dieing creature deal its retaliation to its killer, theres also enrage, sweep, infect, charge, berserk, quick attack, life drain, regenerate, heal, guard, attack anywhere, double attack, blast, incorporeal, and many others
Very few creatures have battle cries, the ones ive seen are very powerful though, like taking 2 creature cards from your graveyard and putting them back into your hand
Creatures can either attack or move to another square on the board each turn, they cant attack when you first summon them (unless they have quick attack)


Spells are what you expect, they deal direct damage, move creatures around, prevent creatures from attacking, heal creatures and your hero, and enchant creatures with the abilities i listed above
The spell in the screen shot costs 4 mana to cast, requires 4 magic, and deals 2 damage to all enemy creatures
The 0/3 you see at the bottom of the card in the screeshot above is how many of that card i have, i have 3 total and all 3 are being used in my decks


Fortune cards are like utility cards, they can buff your stats, give you card draw, give you more mana for that turn, increase spell damage, stuff like that


There are 6 factions and 7 schools of magic
Heroes belong to 1 faction and can only use neutral cards and cards from the faction he belongs to
Schools of magic only apply to spell cards, and heroes can only cast spells from certain schools of magic, most can use 2 schools of magic, some only use 1 and a few can use 3

The game has a campaign mode and a full tutorial to teach you how to play so if anything i said here seemed confusing the tutorial explains it better
You can get gold and seals from playing the campaign, gold is currency to buy deck packs, seals are what you get if you spend real money but the campaign gives you about 1000 of them and about 50k gold, which is enough to get 100ish cards, i used the seals it gave me on a hero pack that gave 6 heroes and some cards, you need heroes if you want to make more decks since every deck requires 1 hero and you only start with 1
You can also use the codes below to get about 150 cards and some seals, gold, and tournament tickets (go to the shop, click redeem code, and enter these 1 at a time there):

TH4NK5FBF4N5

5ORRY54TURD4Y

WE-ARE-NO-TROLLS

THANK5-4-THE-F4CEBOOK-LUV

MMDOC-H4S-THE-B3ST-FANS

HAPPY-BIRTHDAY-DOC

http://www.penny-arcade.com/static/duelofchampions will generate a code too


There is a match making system that uses ELO, i think it works pretty well, ive won 3 games and lost 3 games so it seems to match me up against even opponents
The game also has tournaments which require tickets, as far as i can tell the only way to get them is to use seals, you get 5 for free if you use all the codes i posted
I havent done a tourny yet so i dont know how they work



When you start out your given the choice of 3 types of decks, i dont remember what the other 2 were but i picked necropolis, which is like an undead deck where you can life steal, poison, and take creatures back from your graveyard, its kindve like a black deck in magic

The default necropolis deck sucks, i got to the last battle of the tutorial and could not beat it with the cards they gave me, mainly because the cards you start with are always the same, and they dont work well together, i had to take out some of those cards out of the deck so that it would give me a different hand at the start of that battle and i was able to beat it like that

Now that ive unlocked 200ish cards i improved that necropolis deck so that its awesome and really fun to play
Theres a creature ability called infect that will poison enemy creatures when that creature attacks them (it doesnt trigger on retaliation), it pretty much guarantees that a creature will die, eventually, and it might be a bit OP since as far as i know theres no way to remove the poison
I also made a deck from scratch that uses healing and regeneration to keep heavy hitting creatures alive, its basically like a paladin deck, i actually made it in an attempt to build a deck that can counter infect, it does pretty well
The only other way to counter infect, that i know of, is to kill the creature that can infect you before it has the chance, which can be difficult, the best way ive found is to just ignore the row that has an infect creature until you pull something that can kill it, maybe throw some little creatures in its way so it cant deal damage to you

My decks have about 60 cards in them, which is the number i usually go with since that was the standard in magic, the more cards you have the less likely you are to pull the things you want, so far i havent seen any decks that try to cause you to run out of cards (when you have no cards left to draw from you take 1 damage when you go to draw) so having so few cards hasnt been a problem, most of the people i see have 60-70 in their deck

Building a deck is pretty hard, i got lucky with the first deck i made from scratch since i made it without really knowing what i was doing in terms of stats, i tried to make a 3rd one, an aggro deck, and failed miserably, the stat requirements on the cards were all over the place and made it impossible to play half my deck without spend 5 turns boosting the stat that the cards required
You have to account for mana costs and stat requirements when making a deck which makes it much more complicated, its like building a tri-color deck in magic

The campaign is really annoying at times, there was 1 battle where the AI played nothing but incorporeal creatures (incorporeal takes half damage from non-magic attacks, some creatures have magic attacks, forgot to mention that above, it doesnt do anything other then deal full damage to incorporeal as far as i know) and none of the stuff i pulled did magic damage so i was doing so little damage that i just had to survive until he ran out of cards and lost
Most of the campaign missions are like that, where the AI will play 1 type of thing, the final mission is a bitch and i havent beat it yet, its not as annoying as the incorporeal one

Ive played 7 matches against other people now, only 1 of them said anything, up until that guy said something i didnt even know it was possible to talk to your opponent, he said GG right before i was about to kill him and it came up in the battle history and freaked me out for a second, it comes up in green so before i read anything i thought i activated a trap or something that would screw me over (as far as i know there are no trap cards that are activated on the other persons turn, but since i havent played that much of it theres a lot i havent seen yet)
The people seem to be nice enough, no one has sat there to run out their turn time when they were losing just to annoy you
Also there must be a lot of people playing because when i hit the play button it takes 2-5 seconds to find someone, which i think is weird since i havent seen or heard of this game before yesterday

Once you complete the campaign you gain gold much slower, the campaign gives around 50k gold which makes you think its relatively easy to get, but then you play online and only get 700-900 gold per match and realize that its harder then you thought
Decks cost 62k-125k gold, they are pre built decks that you can modify, ive been getting reinforcement packs, you get 12 random cards, 1 of them will be rare, unique, or legendary, for 12k gold, there are other pack types but those seem to be the best value, small packs get you 2 cards for 2k, but they are only common or uncommon cards so they suck

You can also get gold by leveling up earning achievements, or logging in every day
You gain exp from the campaign up to level 3, after that you level by playing against people, 7 matches has got me to level 4, you get around 10k gold and 100-200 seals every time you level up, from what i can tell you level doesnt do anything else other than act as a milestone for getting gold and seals
There are 100s of achievements in the game, they give deck packs for when you achieve them, winning 5 games in a row against other players only gives you 2 small deck packs, so 4 common or uncommon cards for a win streak of 5, and having more then 150 cards in your collection gets you 2 reinforcement packs, so 24 cards, 2 of which will be rare, what sense does that make, a 5 win streak should get you at least a reinforcement pack since thats way harder to do then getting 150 cards

Looks pretty baller + Homm 3 is one of my favorite games of all time

We should play

I added more cards to my necro deck, the total number of cards you have includes the 8 event cards and the hero card which isnt something that you actually draw from your deck into your hand during the game so i added 9 more cards to get up to 60 usable cards, i then added 4 more cause i wanted duplicates of some spells i already had, so its up to 73 cards now

I have 8 cards that can raise the dead now, all of them are conditional though, 4 of them require that the opponent has more creatures on the field than i do, and the other 4 require the opponent to have more cards in his hand then i do
I can combine that with a creature that has a battle cry that raises 2 creatures from my graveyard, so i play that card, get 2 creatures, if the enemy kills it i raise it with 1 of those 8 cards and play it again to raise 2 more creatures (it has 7 hp, life steal and is incorporeal so killing it is pretty hard), i did this twice in 1 game today
I had played the creature that raises 2 creatures and had 7 spots on my side of the battle field filled with creatures, my opponent had nothing on his side but had 10 cards in his hand, he used 6 of those cards to wipe my board, the 2 cards i had were the ones that raise the dead when my opponent has more cards then me, so i raised the one that raises more and played 4 creatures (i top decked 1 of them), he used 2 more cards to kill it again, and played a powerful creature (which he mustve top decked) to save himself (he has 2 cards now), so i mind controlled his creature (which i top decked) and used my last card to raise him again to play 3 more creatures, so 5 of the creatures on my side of the board were stuff he had just killed, 1 was his creature, and 1 was a crappy creature i played to try to keep less cards then him
When my side was full again, and stronger than it was before he used all his removal, he said "this is bullshit" and left
It was hilarious, i told him that he shouldnt have killed the 1 with the battle cry so many times but he didnt respond

Infect isnt as powerful as i originally thought, if you play smart enough you can avoid being infected unless you get really unlucky with the draw (or if the other person gets lucky and pulls nothing but infect), also even if you do get infected it takes several turns for high costs creatures to die, where as something like double attack in another deck could kill a high cost creature on your turn with the same health loss as using infect and the creature wont have a chance to attack you back on its next turn since its dead
Other decks have stuff like charge and sweep which can attack multiple enemies at the same time which is more effective since hitting the back line can be difficult some times and people generally put important stuff on the back line to protect it so that all your infect hits the stuff in the front
Also infect needs to deal at least 1 damage to actually infect a creature so if you can reduce the damage the creature does to 0 it cant infect you (incorporeal, melee guard, cripple, and some other stuff can do this)

Some tips:

Dont put a creature in a row where the opponent has enough damage to kill it in 1 turn, unless you absolutely need to block the incoming damage
On the first turn of the game people might play a 2/2 so if you play a 2/2 in the same row on your turn to block that 2 damage you will lose a creature and deal no damage to his, play your creature on a different row and just take that 2 damage to your health and once you can play something with 3 or more health (which should be your next turn) put it on that row to deal with it

Melee guard and heal stacks, so 2 melee guard 2 creatures played next to each other will reduce 4 damage from melee attacks for both of them, and 2 clerics played next to each other will heal double

Incorporeal reduces damage by half rounded down, so 3 non-magic damage will only do 1 damage

Anything that says "combat damage" requires at least 1 point of damage to happen, hitting them for 0 damage isnt enough to trigger cards that say "combat damage" (realized this the hard way)

Only put stat points into stats as you need them to play the cards you have, since you can only increase 1 stat per turn you should prioritize the stats your cards need the most of

Dont use event cards that benefit your opponent (like each player draws a card), unless you are loosing and desperate for an answer to what he has, the same goes for using cards that hurt both of you
One of my event cards is deal 1 damage to all creatures, its only been used once, by me, and it was against a deck that stacked heal and regeneration, my damage output only let me lower stuff to 1 hp and if i ended my turn there everything would heal back to full so without that 1 damage from the event card i wouldve lost (i killed some of my stuff too, but it turned the battle around for me in the long run)

Only put event cards that hurt or benefit both players into your deck (just dont use them until you absolutely need them) if you put event cards that benefit 1 person into your deck you can give an advantage to your opponent, or allow your opponent to turn the game around into his favor (since event cards are shared)
Other people might have event cards that benefit 1 player, so just use his if you need to (by not putting cards like that in your deck you are lowering the chance that the opponent can use that type of card)

pat 11220=/=1487

Yeah i used my ubisoft account to log in, since the game is made by ubisoft, and i made it years ago
I probably tried 1487 back then and it was taken, thats the only reason why my name wouldnt have 1487
I have no idea why i picked 11220 though, but yeah, my name on it is Pat11220, add me

i'd rather find pat1487 and become friends with him.

so, there seems to be an 'ipad' version but not a regular mac version, which is one of the dumbest things i've seen in awhile.
ill see later if i can get the pc version to work with crossover on my computer

I assumed there was a mac client since theres an android version
Hopefully you can get it working

Theres an expansion for the game coming out tomorrow, it adds a new faction type called academy as well as 148 new cards and some new creature abilities like magic guard which reduces the dmg magic attacks do and range reflect which reflects damage done by shooter creatures, and some others like evade, spell resist, phased and ambush
And a bunch of other stuff



I played against a guy that used cards to return creatures to my hand rather then trying to kill my creatures, it was really annoying, he even had a card that let him take any card from my deck and put it into his hand, he of course took the 1 that can resurrect 2 creatures and played it to get back 2 big creatures that i killed, and then on his next turn he discarded a card to deal 2 damage to me (i had 1 hp left but couldve survived for 1 turn where i may have been able to turn it around with mind control and some luck on the card draws, it was such a good deck
My deck cant really handle creatures going back into my hand, they are either supposed to stay alive or die 1 at a time so i can bring them back

At level 5 you unlock the infernal pit, which allows you to break down your unwanted cards into gold

The amount of gold you get from them is so low that its not worth it, a common is 50 gold and an epic is 2000 (2k gold gets you 2 commons, it would take 6 epics to have a 15% chance at getting another epic by getting a reinforcement pack), so breaking cards down for gold is almost pointless, the 1 good thing about that system is that the more cards you break down at once gives you a higher chance of getting a special card that the pit offers you (i broke down 5 cards and had a 17% chance to get the special card, i got lucky and ended up getting it)
The special card is usually a premium rare or higher and it tells you what it is before you break any cards down so you know whether or not you should try for it
Its still not really worth it imo, unless you have a bunch of completely worthless cards

The expansion also added the altar of wishes, which lets you get exactly the card you want by spending wildcards
Wildcards are only found in the herald of the void pack (for 18.5k gold you get 1 wild card and 12 other cards) and in all the packs that you spend real money on (i think you get 3-5 in those), all the other packs for gold only have a 15% chance of having a wildcard, the best cards for your deck costs 7-10 wildcards, commons cost 1 wildcard

I really hate the altar of wishes because people can spend a bunch of real money on packs and rack up wildcards to basically buy all the good cards for the deck they play (if you dont use real money it takes about 92k gold for 5 wildcards, which will get you 1 rare card of your choosing, or 130k gold for 7 wild cards, which gets you 1 epic), at least before if people spent real money the cards they got were random, now they can directly use real money to get exactly what they want
That randomness is what was keeping it from being pay to win, now i would consider it to be pay to win
Im still going to play it since its fun but im not going to seriously try to play in tournaments (ill probably play 1 just to see how much pay to win there really is, especially since i ended up with 13 tourney tickets) and im not even going to try to get high ELO, ill intentionally keep it low if i have to, to try to avoid people who bought their deck since people with low elo are more likely to have decks that dont have much real money spent on them

does anyone else play this besides pat? add me, my account name is ffslayer9

it seems like the campaign is alot harder than actual human opponents. ive only played against pat and one other person so far, but so far the campaign opponents always have some sort of op deck strategy where their deck contains all of like 3 certain type of strong cards and the game pace is faster in campaign games.

and pat do you happen to know around wat high elo is? im 1-0 and im at 37 elo. in that game, i made a BILLION mistakes and was still able to win which was pretty cool so im wondering when it gets tough.

High elo is 1000+, 1671 is the elo that the top player currently has

I won 8 games in a row to get to almost 300 elo which is where i started losing, i got bumped down to about 190 elo, then started wining again and am now sitting around 230 elo
The main deck that i lose to is the inferno aggro deck i was talking about, the one with the 6/4/4 on turn 4, and all the other really strong creatures that deck has early game, a lot of people play it (im pretty sure they all copied the same build that someone posted somewhere since all the decks are identical as far as i can tell, or they copied it after losing to it like i attempted to do, but i dont have the right cards to do it) and youll start seeing it at about 200 elo, so expect to start losing then (if you can survive until turn 7 you should be able to beat that deck, whenever i survived to turn 7 against that deck ive been able to beat it)

I almost have enough cards to make a 4th deck, im making a spell focused stronghold deck as my 4th deck, once i get the box i should have enough cards to finish it
Im trying to recreate all the kinds of decks i used to played in magic, the necro deck is like a black deck i used to play that raised stuff from the graveyard, the haven deck is like a white heal/buff deck (without the buffs since i havent really got any buffs that haven can use yet), the inferno deck is like a green/red aggro deck, and stronghold is like a red/blue spell deck

for anyone that hasnt tried the game yet or that didnt get to use the codes that have now expired that pat posted above:

alienware arena is doing a giveaway for a starter box which gives you 120 cards for any accounts that are less than 6 hours old and there are only a few keys left for this offer. i have a key for anyone that isnt able to get one