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Feels barebones but nonetheless a promising strategy card game | Full Review - Tavern Brawls

2K View2023-07-12

ARCANE RUSH: Battlegrounds

7.7

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In Tavern Brawls, players engage in thrilling card battles with tactical and resource management elements, choose a hero character to lead the battles, strategize your cards, and watch them battle it out... automatically.

🟩Pros

+The best of strategy card and auto chess mechanics

+No non-sense battle resolution

+Strategic Depth

🟥Cons

-Emphasis on same-race combos limits overall synergies

-Lack of real-time PvP

-Difficulty spike and intense grinding needed to progress even early in the game

📝Notable points:

These pros and cons are based on the soft launch version of Tavern Brawls available on Android and iOS. Some aspects of the game may have been updated or changed since the time of writing.

Tavern Brawls' gameplay features a card battle system with tactical and resource management elements. Players choose a hero character to lead the battle, each with their own unique characteristics and modifiers. For example, one hero may have higher base health at the start, while another may possess an activated skill to buff a card of their choice per round.

The fundamental gameplay revolves around a straightforward mechanic. In each round, players are granted an increasing amount of gold, which they can use to purchase and deploy randomized cards with their own characteristics, offensive and defensive ratings. Strategic placement of units becomes crucial, following the conventions of auto chess, it determines the outcome of battles based on the highest offensive and lowest defensive ratings of the combatant’s decks. Proper gold management and clever utilization of card effect synergies are also vital aspects of the game.

The artwork and elements featured in these cards revolve around traditional fantasy tropes familiar to us all: Orcs, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. The cards are intricately detailed, visually distinct from each other, and easy to identify. Unlike Auto Chess but similar to Hearthstone, the game features no-nonsense card battle action—conflicts are resolved directly without showy or flashy animations or prolonged presentations. It's a simple interaction of cards bumping into each other and inflicting damage.

Tavern Brawls offers two distinct modes: Arena and Fight mode. While I couldn't find how to activate the supposedly PvP mode Arena and play it, I was able to play the Fight mode which is – as far as I know — in singleplayer. It's somewhat surprising to see the lack of an actual PvP mode in a card game, as the game seems to be predominantly played in single-player mode at the moment.

The aforementioned card battle format is featured in Fight mode, but there is a slight asymmetry in terms of how damage is dealt to opposing heroes. As the player, your hero has certain health points that are slowly deducted every time you lose a round. If you lose all your health points, you lose the match. On the other hand, the enemy doesn't have health points to deplete. Instead, every round you win earns you a trophy, and accumulating a certain number of trophies results in a match win.

The combat is engaging, fun, and offers strategic and varied card battle action. However, one limitation of the game lies in its encouragement of same-race combos within the deck lineup, limiting the potential combinations and synergies. More diversity in deck-building options could enhance strategic depth and add further excitement to the gameplay.

The single-player aspect I've tried becomes increasingly difficult, and by the Silver rank, the difficulty spike becomes so high that it's almost impossible to gain all the trophies in a match. It requires intense grinding to progress further. Although the game features leaderboards and potentially an option to combat other players' decks in an asymmetric player mode down the line, those elements were not available during the soft launch.

As a free-to-play and live service game, Tavern Brawls also includes progression elements tied to the cards. You can upgrade their initial stats using gold and resources gathered by playing the game or by purchasing them with real money. This aspect introduces some pay-to-win elements into the game.

Overall, as it is in this soft launch, the game feels very barebones right now, which isn't always a bad thing. However, objectively speaking, there isn't much to do in the game at the moment. Many aspects feels simple and lacking. The menus, upgrading mechanics, resource system, seasonal battle pass, and even the in-game store all feel underdeveloped and incomplete.

Conclusion:

Tavern Brawls is a captivating new mobile game that combines the best elements of card battles and auto chess into one streamlined package. While it does have some drawbacks, such as limited deck-building options, current lack of PvP, and pay-to-win elements, the game's engaging gameplay and potential for future updates make it a worthwhile title to try for any strategy card game fans.

Mentioned games

ARCANE RUSH: Battlegrounds

7.7

StrategyFantasyPvPCard

Get

If Hearthstone and Auto Chess had a baby | First Impressions - Tavern Brawls

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