Duelyst, I'm enjoying it

[DrPraetor]

Duelyst is a game where you play MtG, except you put the monsters on a grid and walk them back and forth to punch eachother.

It also has turn-to-turn persistence in damage, a mana ramp-up that isn't dependent on what you draw, time walk costs 9 mana, and some other minor refinements.

So compared to the alternative forms of the genre that I've seen, it is most-strictly Magic the Gathering + Final Fantasy Tactics, and I think better implemented.

Per the previous thread on whatever other game... Runestone I think? ... it absolutely is play-to-win, in that you can buy cards which gives you an advantage. You can also win cards as prizes for playing, which I've been doing and have had no trouble setting up a decent-enough set for free. BUT, if I wanted to compete at the highest level I think I would need to give them some money.

So, the #1 thing is, it's reasonably balanced and they do a good job of using the design space. Oddly enough, my biggest complaint at the moment is a lot of the designators don't make sense - what is a Vespyr? Why are only some otherwise-similar monsters "Arcanysts" (based on the art, an Arcanyst is a wizard who is also a mutant?) For some reason, the Vietnamese version of the wiki is especially well-maintained. Is that why my opponents in the morning-time US are so much better, because they're Vietnamese?

I'm a sucker for good pixel art.


So it's Final Fantasy Tactics + Magic Cards. In fact, I think this game got it's start *literally* with people putting magic cards on a grid and walking them around. It has persistent damage (like Shadowfist) but damage doesn't reduce the damage you inflict (unlike Shadowfist.)
The strategic element of the game revolves heavily around the special rules of the monsters you summon, and thus "Dispel" (which is Larcenous Mist and Return to the Center from Shadowfist - it blanks the target rules text and drops all states and tokens) is super-important, as well as the expected-good-outcome of a tactics game, unit-placement and mobility issues matter a lot.
Rarity is Orange (Ultrarare, 900p) > Purple (Rare, 350p) > Blue (Uncommon, 100p) > White (Common, 40p). Anything without a colored triangle is "basic" and you get three of them in your collection automatically. The points costs are "spirit", you can trade cards in for spirit at 350/100/20/10, and you can win spirit points by playing in the Arena with a drafted deck instead of doing regular play.

The teams are:
WhiteLyonar - Knights and Lions and Knights with Lions for Arms. Forming Voltron is neutral, unfortunately.
Signature schticks are Provoke (adjacent things have to attack you), Zeal (your unit gets a bonus while adjacent to your general), and healing spells. Docs suggest this is the easiest faction to start with, but it is not.

RedSonghai - Would be "team Yellow Face", ninjas and ninja spells and vaguely oriental beasties, except I think this was made by Vietnamese people.
Signature schticks are Ranged (what it says on the tin), Backstab (+damage and no retaliation if directly behind your target), and direct damaging spells. Some of their units are Arcanysts but only one card in the entire game cares (and it's neutral). Plays very aggressively, my second best faction. If Vietnamese people dress up like they're Japanese, what do you call it? It always annoys me when anti-Israeli Arab sentiments are called "anti-semitism"... for a lot of reasons but for starters Arabs are also semites.

BlueVetruvian - Team Egyptian Steam Punk. Stylistically, these are the Necrons from WH40K.
Signature schticks are Blast (hit all enemies in a line), Summon Dervish (dervishes are 2/2s that die at the end of the turn), and card-drawing spells. Has a sub-faction which are "Dervish" and "Structure" (structures only exist to summon dervishes every turn), and some of their guys care about what is a Dervish. You get a bunch of what are obviously mutant-wizards but they aren't Arcanysts for whatever reason?

BlackAbyssian - Team death magic, but gets no obvious undead (they're mostly wraiths, which may or may not be ghosts).
Signature schtick is Deathwatch (something happens whenever a unit on either side dies), and they get lots of effects to spam wraithlings, which you then get killed. You also lots of spells to sacrifice your units, natch; and, you get "Shadow Creep" which causes spaces to inflict damage at the end of your turn. Because the synergies for this faction are so obvious, it's by-far the easiest to play at the beginning. Guide suggests to start with Lyonar this is wrong.

Green #1Magmar - The Reptites from Chrono Trigger.
Signature schticks are Growth (you get +X/+X tokens every turn) and Rebirth (turn into an egg when killed, which hatches on your turn if not hit again.) You get some evolution-themed spells which make no sense. Has the biggest stuff.

Green #2Vanar - Wizards in parkas? I probably just don't recognize the source material for this one.
Signature schticks are Infiltrate (you get some bonus while on the opponent's side of the board) and walls. Has a subsuit of creatures which are Vespyr - which I think are supposed to be ice elementals? BUT, not all the elementals are Vespyr and not all the Vespyr look like elementals, so I dunno. As with Green, you get a grab bag of stuff - your direct damage spells are smaller but they have useful side-effects, and you get a bunch of multi-purpose spells that transform things into other things. This is my strongest suit, at the moment, since it plays aggressively but can also gimp the opponent effectively (it gets a dispel that also deals direct damage).

ArtifactNeutral - "Artifact" means something different (equip. for your General), all Neutral stuff is all dudes.
Unlike MtG, Neutral Stuff isn't nerfed especially, so if your team had mediocre guys then you just use neutral guys. The most important neutral units are the Ephemeral Shroud and the Lightbender because they dispel (see above) other units when they enter play, and that is a huge deal. They come in several subsuits:
Arcanyst (Songhai also has some of these) - tend to be wizards, they do cool stuff and the Owlbeast Sage (but no other cards care?) makes your Arcanysts +0/+2 every time you cast a spell.
Golem - Golems have no special powers and thus high Att/Def for their cost, which is generally lame, except there are a few Golems that buff all your Golems so that is a thing.
Mech - If you summon 5 of them, you get VoltronMechazor - who is an 8 with ranged that can't be targeted by spells.

[Username17]

Songhai was an empire in West Africa. Magmar is a pokemon.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Looking up the artists for Duelyst brings up...

Glauber Kotaki is one of the character artists (is he the lead one? I'm not sure)
http://glauberkotaki.com/

Ah, he also did Deep Dungeons of Doom's pixel art, that was a good looking game. He has some articles on gamaustra talking about art: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GlauberK ... requot.php
And is actively **** on social media.

Alex McDonald from Canada is another one, though it sounds like he was working freelance but I'm not sure which monsters he did. Here's some of his work:
http://cannonbreedpixels.tumblr.com/
He's pretty pleasant on social media.

Anton Fadeev, from Russia, does environments:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/shant?album_id=1357

Project lead (game designer?) is an ex-Blizzard producer, Keith lee (https://twitter.com/keithlee0)

If Vietnamese people dress up like they're Japanese, what do you call it?

Seems more of a general "wRPG Oriental Adventure expansion" style than anything particularly Japanese, (like how the "Christian knight" faction is generally 'knight-ish' and not particularly Italian) I don't know if Glauber has Vietnamese blood, but he seems to be a Brazilian citizen. My guess is the Blizzard guy wanted something blizzard looking. A quick shot at likely influences...

The Songhai 'faction symbol' looks like a samurai mask with the head crest but the shape of the face is more 'generalized', like the guys in 300 or the hollywood 47 ronin movie. The tusks are more Southeast Asian, like on Barong. Split chin is a pretty Blizzard thing to do.

Kaido assassin...


His hat could be vietnamese or Japanese or southern Chinese or any part of East Asia with a rainy season. The shirt's the kind that got more popular after the Qing dynasty in China, Vietnamese adopted similar fashion at some point. That big cleaver is a FF7 buster sword, closest thing to that in real life is a Song dynasty zhanmadao ("horse cleaver"). If you stuck that guy in a Japanese game he'd be percieved as "That's Yun/Yang from Street Fighter III with a hat and buster sword"

Jade Monk...

That kind of waist armor is characteristic of Buddhist guardian deities in East Asia, which is based off of ancient Chinese armor from 600's to 1500's.

That Storm Kage looks like it has a gundam face as an homage. That kind of ring on its back is a stylization of a scarf or power auras found on Buddhist guardian deities.

Songhai is also kind of an odd name, as there actually was a Songhai empire but it's... West African.


----

How long does a turn usually take? FFT is fun as a single player game, the multiplayer versions take a looong while for fights to end though.

[Archmage]

It is a pretty quick playing game and there is a turn timer.

Also, it takes way more out of Hearthstone, design-wise, than MtG (there are no actions you can take to interrupt your opponent during their turn, for example).