[Sitdown #5] Favaro’s Deck

“What do you want to eat?”

That’s the one question that everyone asks each other whenever they go out with their friends and family.

The power of choice that exists nowadays has become a double-edged sword that has become a paradox – there are always alternatives to everything and I personally find that we spend just too much time making the decision to do either this or that.

Do you prefer Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings?

Do you want to have a McSpicy or a double McSpicy?

There are alternatives everywhere and in the context of games, there are so many genres. Best part is, each genre probably can be divided again by the sheer volume of different game titles that all provide us with the same thing – fun.

I play Hearthstone. Most people do. Some don’t, they play another type of digital card game. Have you heard of Shadowverse? I heard about it too, and that’s why, my guest for today is Yong Kiat. A friend of mine and a hardcore gamer.

 

Mr Chng Yong Kiat himself.

 

J: How long have you been playing Shadowverse?

YL: Since the release of its 2nd expansion I believe, which would be somewhere around mid-September 2016.

 

 

J: For the benefit of my curiosity and my readers, what is Shadowverse and how different is it from other digital card games like Hearthstone, Duelyst and Gwent?

YK: Shadowverse (SV) is a collectible card game (CCG) [1] that features art from Cygames [2], creators of popular games in the east like Rage of Bahamut and Granblue Fantasy.

The game pits you as a Leader character against another player (or A.I) in a 1v1 scenario with a deck of 40 (or 30 in arena mode) cards. Both of you will use a combination of Followers (basically your minions, with attack and health), Spells as well as Amulets (cards that have a semi-permanent effect but take up a slot on the field) to defeat the other party before your opponent does the same to you. Followers which hit 0 health upon battle or being affected by spells will be destroyed and converted into a shadow (basically the graveyard), so usually no cards on the field are permanent outside of amulets.

Both players start with one Play Point orb (called PP) which is used to play their cards, and assuming no other card effects are involved which may influence this, will gain +1 PP per turn to gradually play more and more powerful cards.

There are seven classes in the game, which each caters to players who prefer a different playstyle. They are:

• Swordcraft: It mainly focus on having powerful followers, as well as followers who can attack immediately upon being summoned. Tend to have lacklustre spells and amulets as a result.
• Dragoncraft: A ramp-orientated class that uses their early turns to increase their amount of Play Point orbs and tries to use the advantage gained from doing so to close the game out before the opponent can recover.
• Havencraft: A control-oriented class that tries to keep their opponent’s board under control while also building their own. Their amulets usually have a “countdown” attached to them, which upon reaching zero will destroy said amulet to activate a special effect. Their win conditions are also amongst the most powerful in the game if they get to the later part of a match.
• Shadowcraft: A board-orientated class which works on trying to build and maintain a board to gradually overwhelm the opponent. They are also capable of manipulating Shadows, and tend to have many followers with Last Word effects (effects which activate upon said follower being destroyed).
• Runecraft: A spell-orientated class that has spells ranging from relatively powerful to outright game ending. Their unique trait is that cards from their craft tend to become more and more powerful the more spells are cast, be it an increase in damage or a decrease in PP cost.
• Bloodcraft: A class that focuses on living life on the edge – putting themselves in danger by reducing their overall life in half in order to gain an advantage over the opponent and close out the game.
• Forestcraft: A class that is orientated towards playing flashy combos to finish off the opponent. As a result, they tend to be able to easily generate “tokens” to put into their hand to be played before another card to activate a combo.

While I cannot speak for Gwent as I’m not particularly interested in that game and as a result have not tried it out, I have actually played Hearthstone and Duelyst before so I’ll focus more on the differences between SV and those two games.

The most obvious and in my opinion both its most controversial selling point is the art style. As Cygames is primarily a Japanese-based company, practically all of the artwork in the game are anime-styled. Whether they are cute girls wielding weapons or world ending dragons, the influence of anime is very obvious in the game.

Leader characters are also fully voiced and do react in pain when attacked, and there are plenty of different leader skins to choose from, including some from different collaborations with other games and/or companies. The most recent one involves a collaboration with the widely popular Fate/Stay Night [3] series wherein one can buy a leader skin to play as characters from said series, like Saber, Lancer, Archer, etc.

 

Isn’t that Saber?

 

Another thing that separates SV from its competitors is its evolution mechanic: unlike Hearthstone or Duelyst wherein one player just drops a card and the other tries to counter it during their turn, midway through the game the “Evolution” mechanic is unlocked for both players. What this does is that it allows a player to choose a follower that they have summoned (be it this turn or the last) and evolve it, usually providing a stats boost and/or a special evolution effect. Followers which have been summoned on the turn itself will also be able to attack immediately if they are evolved and are usually done so to swing the board in the evolving player’s favour.

This back-and-forth evolving usually results in a power spike [4] midway through the game as both players frantically try to take control of the board using their evolution points while also minimizing their losses. Most times, the player that manages to do so will have a significant advantage in the game, although this may drastically change once it reaches the late game.

Which brings to me one final point that in my opinion makes SV really fun compared to games like Hearthstone and Duelyst: win conditions. While the latter two games have tried to avoid strong “I-win” cards in the late game, SV outright embraces it.

Combo decks are encouraged instead of discouraged in the game, and most combo decks are capable of outright killing the other player from full health, once they manage to assemble their combo pieces. Forestcraft and Runecraft are quite well renowned in the community for their combos – the former focuses around constantly bouncing a 2 PP follower that gets stronger with every card played before it to finish the opponent off in an OTK [5] (usually by playing 0 cost cards that were set up beforehand). The latter has a deck that features an 18 PP spell which lowers it cost by 1 for each spell cast before it while it is in your hand. When cast, it provides the Runecraft player an additional turn, which they usually combo with by summoning a giant follower to utterly destroy your leader with.

Control decks don’t lack in win conditions either – I mentioned that Havencraft has some of the most powerful late game win conditions earlier: Heavenly Aegis is a 9 PP follower that when evolved can deal 10 damage (half of your leader’s maximum health) and completely ignores any effects and damage it may take from both you and your opponent’s card effects. Enstatued Seraph is an Amulet that will tick down four separate times, and at the end of the final tick, instantly win you the game.

 

I’ve played too many card games to know this ain’t looking good at all.

 

J: That’s some in-depth analysis you got there and I like it. Next, what do you think is the reason people shy away from card games compared to other genre of games?

YK: A huge reason in my opinion is that card games tend to be slower in comparison to other genres – sometimes quite a lot of thinking is required for both parties, and as a result, games may take a while to fully play out. Compared to something like a MOBA or FPS in which the player is constantly seeing action, card games may come off as a tad boring.

There may also be people who think the ‘skill’ factor is non-existent in a card game, and you can win simply by drawing the perfect cards you need for any situation.

Another turn off may be the art style, and this applies to games like Duelyst as well as SV. The former features pixel art and the latter anime art, both of which tend to be frowned on by a majority of players in the west.

 

Looks fine by me but I still prefer my golden Hearthstone cards.

 

J: Most games in this genre (card games) always end in either a total stomp, or it boils down to a top-deck. Do you think that luck is the biggest factor in card games?

YK: As I mentioned in the earlier question, there certainly are people who think that luck is the largest influencing factor in card games. I do agree with this sentence to a certain extent, as the very nature of a card game is directly affected by RNG thanks to card draws being a thing.

At the same time though, a player’s decision making skills and how they play around cards their opponents might have are also important and will significantly impact win rates for them. While aggro decks may be looked down on and seen as a scummy way to play the game, when I picked it up myself I realized that simply praying you can play your cards on the PP curve and just going ham on the opponent leader resulted in a lower win rate than when I considered playing around my opponent’s cards and knowing when to trade instead.

 

What a rank.

 

J: What would you like to see in future digital card games?

YK: Definitely would like to see more mechanics that take advantage of the fact that a digital card game is, well, digital. Mechanics like Discover [6] in Hearthstone are a prime example of this – while the RNG aspect of the mechanic is generally bad in my opinion, the fact that it pulls a card that would otherwise not exist in your deck is quite interesting.

 

J: Thank you for your time and informative answers. Any shoutouts?

YK: Shoutout to the SV subreddit community as well as the Steam community for being so receiving of my SV wallpapers.

 

 

Is it a common theme to give a shoutout to Reddit?

 

Notes

[1]A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) or customizable card game, is a kind of card game that first emerged in 1993 and consists of specially designed sets of playing cards. Successful CCGs typically have upwards of thousands of unique cards, with the first developed, and most successful one, Magic: The Gathering, now having over 17,000. – Wikipedia
[2]Cygames, Inc. is a video game development studio established in 2011 by CyberAgent, a Japanese web services company. – Wikipedia
[3]Fate/stay night (フェイト／ステイナイト, Feito/sutei naito?) is a Japanese eroge visual novel game created by TYPE-MOON, which was originally released on January 30, 2004. It is TYPE-MOON’s first commercial work, following its transition from a doujin soft visual novel group. – TYPE MOON WIKI
[4] A power spike is a period of time during any regular game of League of Legends when a champion becomes significantly more powerful than they previously were. – Team Dignitas
[5]A One Turn Kill (OTK) is achieved when a player wins a Duel in the space of a single turn, as soon as said player has the appropriate cards in hand and has control over the duel. This is similar to a First Turn Kill, but the latter is pulled off during the player’s first turn, while an OTK can be accomplished at any point of the duel (meaning that all FTKs are OTKs, but not all OTKs are FTKs). – Urban Dictionary
[6]Discover is a mechanic in Hearthstone that allows the player to choose from three different pseudo-randomly selected cards, with the chosen option usually generated and added to their hand. – Hearthstone Wiki