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[Scrolls] Decay is out!
Echo
ski-bapba-dapModerator, Administrator admin
ski-bapba-dapModerator, Administrator admin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdZpx2vyCm0Scrolls is Bethesda's Mojang's second game after Minecraft. And it's a... collectible card scroll game! Currently available with the same beta buy-in model as Minecraft, you can get it for 15 Euros or 20 American pesos. Don't worry, you don't have to spend more money on it after that. Unless your really want to, but more on that in a bit.
What the what?
Cards are "scrolls" in Scrolls. Yeah, really surprising. you build a deck with a minimum of 50 cards scrolls, a maximum of three copies of any one card scroll. Then you fight!
Yeah, it's not traditional TCG-style combat. You have a hex grid split into two sides - you're always on the left side, the enemy is always down on the right. On your turn, you can take one of two actions: sacrifice a scroll for one resource, or sacrifice a scroll to draw two new scrolls. The resources are what you pay to play the scrolls.
The goal is to destroy three of the enemy's five idols on the other side of the battlefield.
Resources
The resources are the factions, kind of like colors in Magic. You have:
Order: military dudes, that set up tons of troops around one heavy hitter that will buff anything around him and then steamroll you. They have lots of movement-related spells to help their dudes move around the board faster, or prevent your dudes from moving at all.
Growth: Bunnies. And wolves. And vikings. Think "lots of burly men with beards and axes". And bunnies. Growth has a heavy focus on buffing individual creatures that often start out on the weaker side of the spectrum, turning them into monstrous killing machines. Yes, the bunnies too. Oh god the bunnies
Energy: Machines. Artillery. Explosions. Robots. Robots with artillery causing explosions. You get it. Plenty of direct-damage spells to zap you with.
Decay: Not available yet, but I'll take a wild guess and say undead, necromancers, damage over time spells, resurrecting killed units, that kind of stuff.
Pay to win?
Nope. After the initial purchase, you can buy Mojang funbucks called Shards. You can buy individual cards with these, but also with gold. See, each week you have six random cards (two common, two uncommon, two rare) available to buy, so you don't have to pray for the Gods of the Random Booster to provide. You can pay for these cards with in-game gold, or with shards. Seven days later, you get new cards here.
Shards can also buy purely cosmetic stuff for your avatar and other starter decks - which, again, is also available for gold if you don't want to spend more money. Fairly reasonable gold prices too.
The meat of the purchases, the 10-scroll random booster pack, can only be bought with gold. No pay to win there! It's 1000 gold for 10 scrolls, two uncommons and one rare guaranteed. Apart from that, you can buy one random scroll for a specific resource for 175 gold each.
They're pretty generous with gold if you win a game - expect 300+ gold from a ranked win. There are also "trials" that set you up in a funky scenario oh god not the bunnies again that give a one-time reward.
Arcadians to play with
There's a chat channel called "Penny Arcade" (with a space) that a bunch of people hang out in when online.
Various resources
- Online Deck Builder: build decks, share links.
- Scrolls Prices: estimated market prices for trading.
Echo on
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Posts
... I like hexes.
You misunderstand! I love hex-based make-mans-fight games. Cutting out the map-wandering grind from HoMM , King's Bounty, and Disciples is, in a way, a public service!
... but it does mean that 2013 continues to be the year where indie devs steal all my money.
edit: Maybe it's cause Scrolls looks much more like a game with objectives than Minecraft.
"Shouldn't there be a board, or pieces or something to Jenga?"
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
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However this balance thing doesn't apply to the precon deck you start with.
Growth and Energy are the best precons to start with.
I'd say energy is better straight outta the box but growth gets much better with relatively few tweaks and will probably overtake it due in strength due to ease of use
Order however is a harder to play faction and the precon is missing some very key elements plus order rares are going for very high prices as they have some very nice ones (speed and imperials resources I'm looking at you).
Basically when it comes down to mono resource play starting at precon newbie I'd say:
Granted a very good player could probably use any of these decks to destroy average players. But no one picking up the game for the first time is gonna be that good.
If you want to see just how this could be done Blinky (one of the best alpha players) used the energy precon to beat a hard bot (I win more often than lose in ranked but I stand no chance against a hard bot) and did an AAR that can be found here
This does look pretty entertaining though.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Like the interactions between Vengeance Veil, Resonant Helm, and Kabonk.
So we can buy this thing now? Interesting.
Got Heritage and some Memorials? Drop Heritage on Memorials, Kabonk them, cash in three scrolls.
Then play the card that draws a structure and do it again!
This is Mojang.
By the time they're done, there will be 10 resource types, multiple texture packs, and modded servers that have unique blacklists of prohibited scrolls.
I don't know, does it have mod support? It doesn't really look like it has a lot in common with Minecraft's design philosophy.
I got to 656 ranking 2 days ago gonna work on getting higher after work today.
It may look like HoMM - I thought the same thing - but it plays more like a more-flexible version of Duel of Champions; the hexes are lanes which control targeting, and you can shift guys (but not structures) around some. I'm not regretting the buy-in as yet, though if I can't find my way to a higher-tempo Energy set-up I will be a little bummed. Pretty sure dual-faction decks are an option, too.
the big thing is this is not $20 for a TCG starter set this is $20 for absolutely everything (given a reasonable amount of playtime).
I'm seeing a LOT of Order players, probably about twice as many as either of the other types. It takes a little while to get going (the precons aren't very interesting), but when you start to get a decent collection, you can see how many different strategies there are. Its going to be great fun working out which ones are viable.
The last game that got me to this point had an amusing ending. Had to choose to win by either casting essence feast or by saccing essence feast (for resources) and cast god hand instead. I feel I made the right choice by winning with essence feast.
It isn't letting me log in, today.
Edit: Also broke rank 500 which is nice
Or, in the case of Memorials: I kill my own shit? I get cards!