Scrolls out in Beta

Dammit, I'm waiting patiently for Cardhunter. I've been hemming on Scrolls but I think I'll wait for Garfield on this one. Can you talk about it, hotseat?

Sure. The whole thing is set up like a tabletop RPG session using standees. After some tutorial stuff, the core of the campaign (I haven't touched MP and perhaps never will) is an overland map dotted with locations. You take your party to a location and start a 'module', including classic D&D-style art on the 'scenario book' for the module.

You outfit your party with gear that you either find or buy, and the novel concept here is that the gear represents EVERYTHING regarding your abilities, including the ability to move! Yes, if you don't have a 'walk', 'run', etc. card, your figure can't move. This sounds scary when you hear it, but in practice it's pretty novel and leads to interesting situations.

Each piece of gear imparts a set of cards to each character's deck, so you could find yourself comparing two weapons and evaluating which one gave you the more desired set of cards. It's really cool.

When you start an adventure in the module, which is really to say you are starting a tactical battle, the display changes to a simple grid-based map that looks like several Ravenloft tiles put together. Your minis are placed on the map, as well as the minis of the enemy side. Each turn you can play one card from ONE of your figures' hands. A card is a move action, an attack, a buff, etc. Positioning is only a factor in terms of range and when dealing with armor; most armor can't block an attack from behind. Enemies generally turn to face their attacker, so if you get an enemy in between two heroes, you can essentially take turns backstabbing him.

Heroes level up, and each victory gets you loot. You can pay real money for better loot, but I've yet to feel any desire to do that. The game is great though, and I'd not feel bad about paying for it. In fact I'd gladly pay a one-time fee for an iOS version. It runs on flash, so no ipad....

Card Hunter is very good. I would say, though, that you get gold very, very slowly. It's clearly tuned to buy extra. The loot drops aren't bad but they generally aren't exactly what you want---you'd like to buy stuff in the store. But most of the items that you sell in the store are worth almost nothing on sale, so it's really hard to buy the stuff you want in the store.

The gameplay is *rock* solid and has tons of interesting card management elements. This game will be great, it's just a question of tuning the spend real money/spend fake money stuff.

If you have specific questions I can answer them.

Thanks so much, guys! That's awesome info. So maybe I'll play Scrolls until I get in the Card Hunter beta.

I just got into the Card Hunter beta. Quite fun.

So I finally got into the Card Hunter beta a week or two ago and I'm not sure I like it. I find it quite repetitive. You level up and get the ability to hold more gear, but it just dilutes the deck each character plays from. Sure, you can change the gear but the deck is still huge and there's a lot of luck.

Also, I refuse to buy "pizza" so I can unlock some of the adventures. I also refuse to buy gold.

My party is on level 7, but I think I'm done with it. Not sure I'm intersted in Scrolls. I think what I really want is Magic, but I need leagues and they're not coming back any time soon.

I'm the same as above... I played it rather intensely for the first week or two after I got into beta, but I got everything i need from it. It's a very cool system (cards=equipment) but I ran out of energy for it, I felt like I had a gotten what the game was putting down.

Have you tried Scrolls, Gary?

No, I haven't.

Gary Sax wrote: I'm the same as above... I played it rather intensely for the first week or two after I got into beta, but I got everything i need from it. It's a very cool system (cards=equipment) but I ran out of energy for it, I felt like I had a gotten what the game was putting down.

I kind of feel the same about Card Hunter. I'm up to the point when I have to somehow get gems to be able to use the better equipment I've picked up, but I'm not sure I can be arsed anymore. It is a clever system as a card/board game hybrid but it kind of flatlines into sameness.