I’ve been playing this really fun online TCG called Warstorm and wish I played it earlier. For starters, it was not originally created on Facebook but rather, is a port onto Facebook. Which means having neighbours isn’t going to help you as much as other Facebook games. It may look like Magic at first glance but is really completely different. There is no summoning sickness for example, and you are not allowed to use detailed tactics and control. You just build your squad and the computer will take over and pit your squad against the enemy squad in automatic battle.
To a person who has played magic, this may seem really dumb since you can control everything in magic. But as the game creators put it, Warstorm puts you in the combat boots of a general choosing the correct squad to do the job. You are not a Captain or a Lieutenant on the ground directing specific combat maneuvers. You just select the men and junior commanders for each squad, choose the squads you want to deploy and set them loose on your enemy. There is an inherent luck factor involved but if you have better tactics (choose the correct cards) and cards than your opponent, it is unlikely that you will lose at all.
The first big difference from magic is that one squad only consists of a hero and 6 other cards (for a maximum of 7 cards) which can either be artifacts, spells or soldiers/creatures. The heroes I’ve seen so far can utilise a minimum of four creatures and a maximum of 2 artifacts or spells. So if your hero commands 6 creatures, you cannot utilise artifacts and spells. Since the victory condition in Warstorm is either killing all your opponent’s creatures or reducing his morale (life in magic) to zero, choosing the correct hero for the correct type of battle is crucial. You don’t want all your creatures to die too quickly, because you will lose even if you still have plenty of morale.
To provide a glimpse of the depth of strategy involved in Warstorm, I am going to compare the difference between 2-squad battles (total of 14 cards in the deck) and one squad battles (7 cards in the deck). As a Magic player first-hand, I would expect choosing cards with very low delay (equivalent to mana cost in magic) as a good strategy for one squad battles. Turns out that this is exactly what you DON’T want to do in one squad battles. Using a good mixture of creatures with different abilities, some artifacts and a longer delays is what turns out to work best in one squad battles. I’m providing pretty advanced strategy here because I realise its the easiest to plan for 2 squad and 4 squad battles, but 3 squad and 1 squad battles are still eluding me (especially the bloody 3 squad battles). But what I know is that for one squad battles, variety works best.
For 2 squad battles, the best strategy is to just use a ton of monsters with low delay (like the weenie concept in magic) and just rush your opponent. For my 2 squad battles i have a total of 8 creatures with 2-turn delay, 2 attack and 2 defense. And they just rush rape my opponent’s morale to zero before he has a chance of bringing out any high delay (more powerful) monsters. Don’t have to use advanced spells or artifacts seriously.
The battles may be automated, but if you don’t pay attention to the automated battles running, it is very unlikely you will be able to improve your card selection decisions for any particular battle. I find this really refreshing and interesting, and its counter-intuitive in a sense. After losing about 6 battles to a very strong army and watching every battle, I greatly improved my selection strategy for 3 squad battles and crushed the enemy with a 25 morale difference.
In a nutshell, it is a fairly complicated game and definitely worth playing. However a problem is that you should have to spend some money to at least get more squads for multi-squad battles, because the game only gives you 2 to start with.
Actually, heroes can be found in virtual card packs sometimes, which can be acquired with “silver” (earn-able through battles in the game)
You dont need to spend a penny on any Zynga game to progress, they just make out like you do. Ive only been playing Warstorm for 4 days, have 12 heroes and 160 other cards. All purchased with silver you earn from in game battles.