An interesting online card game (free)

I tried this out, and although incredibly addicting, its also very simple, and-for me at least- very frustrating, if there are any other games like this though online I would like to try them, I realise that I need new games to beat people up, because my games are overplayed, or cost money.

I myself found only three things frustrating.

1) Lack of REAL PvP.  A computer AI is typically a bad player.  This IS in development however, so eventually you'll get to play 1 on 1 with other real life players (not just their decks)

2) Only a small number of decks to play against when fighting the computer.  Gets kind of boring when playing against the same decks all the time.  And if you play against a player deck...

3) ...many players in the top 50 decks are all playing a mega cheese deck.  There are very slight changes, but the principle is the same:  Play a big dragon for 10 or so, then churn out half price dragons using the Parallel Universe card over and over.

What are you having trouble with?

The game is pretty neat.  I think they need to make the dragons a little smaller and more varied between colors.  Parallel universe is a little too cheap for the effect.  Half priced dragons or a copy of an enemy creature with all of its buffs is a little much for 5.  My only complaint is that it is really difficult to break into a new color.  You need 6 or so pillars of the appropirate color (about 36 coins), and a few hundred coins worth of cards to make it worth it.  Playing against the level 2 computer player you only get 4-9 payout, however, I suppose you could get lucky and win some high coin value cards in the slot machine.

Combo interactions are a little rare for the computer to use.  Angels + the guy that can block for you is pretty brutal if you don't have a flock of dragons.  I've only seen the computer use one method for drawing extra cards, but it is a really good one.

I recommend not starting with Darkness.  It is an ok color, but it doesn't have that many mean tricks.  You have some scalable direct damage (which works the same way as direct damage works in puzzle quest/galactrix), the black dragon, and reusable methods for applying infect (1 damage per turn to a creature, pretty powerful, but slow).  There is the possibility of doing some resource starvation on your opponent but it is too slow and unreliable compared to the colors that have a reusable method for destroying permanents.

Time looks like a lot of fun lots of creatures with good abilities and removal that puts the target back on top of the owners library.  The computer doesn't take advantage of it (or maybe the copies don't get the ability to copy themselves), but dejavu (I think it is a time creature) looks crazy powerful.  Combine white (for blessing) and time (for dejavu) and you should be able to crank out a ton of 4/4 or better creatures that refuse to die.  I think this archtype might be able to outpace the horde of dragons (if you draw a dejavu and blessing in your opening hand, with 6 copies of each in a 30 card deck I think that will be pretty common).  This plan is pretty resource hungry, but should out pace a dragon horde by a hair if they don't immediately kill your first dejavu or play a spectacular defensive item (defensive items range from laughable to insane).  The parallel universe plan is limited by the number of cards that they draw, while this is only limited by how many time resources you generate per turn (unless I'm mistaken and the clones can't copy themselves, which doesn't seem right considering how perfect the parallel universe clones are).

Darn it, reading the above it looks like I convinced myself to farm for the cards for that deck.  I might look for other boost spells, but Blessing is the only impressive one I've seen so far (+3/+3 for fairly cheap).  It would be disappointing to build the deck and find out that the clones can't copy themselves.  I haven't tried playing against any of the player decks (I'm not confident my darkness deck is even passable), so maybe somebody has already tried this, or maybe it just doesn't compare to the dragon strategy.

Darkness has Steal which is an excellent card.  I always have one of those in my deck just in case someone pulls out something really mean (and I play Time/Gravity).

But yeah, darkness is sort of weak on its own.  I'd suggest adding some Death as well.  The Nightfall card combined with boneyards and the millions of ways of killing off other creatures will net you a TON of 2/2 skeletons.  Don't sound like much, but when you face 23 of them at once, it hurts alot.  Throw in a few plague cards and a vulture or two and you can have a bit of fun there.

The idea of the burrowers however is not to starve the other guy of quanta, but to get you more faster.

The Deja Vu only clones itself once unfortunately, so no cloning the clone.  But yes, any of the boosting cards like Blessing or Plate armor will make the clone that much better.  I would instead do something liek a Deja Vu with blessings, then Parralel Universe THEN clone those two.

But if you want a fast reproduction deck with lots of little monsters, do Air and Life.  Play the Firefly queens and make lots of Fire flies.  With the queens high HP, its very hard for things to kill her off before she brings out a swarm of flies.  Its one of the few decks I have some real trouble beating.

Yeah, I started out with a time deck, with some darkness added in, and it worked well, until all of a sudden the computer just wouldn't stop kicking my ass, so I changed that deck a bunch until I finally decided "screw it" and started a new deck, so I started death with some darkness (yay double boneyards with nightfall) but it is reallllly slow going with the adding new cards, but it is more stable. I will miss the fate eggs though from the time deck.....nothing better than having dragons come out at cost 3

I just played this evil, evil game for two hours straight. I'm running a Gravity/Earth deck with a splash of Time for Fate Eggs and turning Grabloids into Shriekers. So... much... chaos and destruction. Go Otyughs, go! Eat the puny little enemies and get BIGGERRR!

(Somebody please take this game away from me. :[ )

You haven't sunk to my level yet. 

I have my original starter Darkness / Aether get out big dragons and keep the enemy down with Infection / Direct damage.  Dragons + Parallel Universe kills pretty quick; I'd recommend sticking to straight aether or picking an element that doesn't have toughness 5 Dragons instead of Darkness.  Darkness is still nice for steal, which can save your booty (darn defensive items).  This deck just didn't hack it vs level 3, but was pretty good for level 2.

I have an Air / Life deck that tries to abuse Firefly Queen + Rustler to put a freak ton of fireflies into play, works great against level 3 AI, dies horribly to top 50 decks.  My only creatures in the deck are Firefly Queen and Rustler.  Firefly Queen makes Fireflies, which are 3/2 and produce white quanta each turn.  The rustler can turn a single white into 2 green any number of times, so a single ruslter means I can support any number of Queens in play.  I splashed darkness for steal, but the deck still needs a way to deal with Otyughs.  Eventually they get fat and bloated from eating fireflies all day and eat my Queens.  This deck still dies to dragons occasionally, but only if they have good removal (reverse time, chaos, etc) and a good defensive item.

After losing to this one top 50 deck a bunch of times and to a weaker version that the computer plays I tried making a Death / Gravity deck.  Boneyard + Virus + Vulture + Otyughs = Huge Vultures, Dragon Eating Otyughs, and a freak ton of skeletons.  I haven't worked out the magic of the top 50 deck, but I need a way to deal with fire shield, phase shield, and those crazy rare weapons that the computer uses all the time.  I think I'm a little too light on pillars in this deck, and that I need to add in a defensive item or two.  I love saccing a Virus to infect an enemy dragon, getting 3 or so Skeletons, eating a skeleton, and next turn eating the dragon for more skeletons.  Sometimes I'll even eat baby Otyughs to get skeletons.  I haven't tried changing my element over to Death yet, so that could be part of the problem I'm having with this deck.  I find that the level 3 computer tends to edge me out by a few life points or the deck completely stalls lacking resources.  This deck will rarely lose to the Firefly Queen Rush, but has problems with Dragons.  To tweak it I'm thinking fewer Boneyards (6 is too many for a 30 card deck), more Vultures, more virus, more pillars, and either a splash of black (for steal) or time (for hasten and procrastination).

Speaking of the AI, the computer sometimes makes some bone headed choices.  Like killing a firefly when it could have killed a queen, or killing a Queen when the Rustler was the better (if humble) choice.  It will sometimes steal my crappy cloud shield when it had a much better shield and the upperhand because of it.  Sometimes it decides to play only semi useful cards when it has broken as heck weapon abilities it could use.  The rare time weapon basically wins games on its own; gosh darn reusable reverse time.

it is a great pass time