14 DAY TRIAL // Conquest of Champions is a free-to-play game that attempts to blend collectible card game mechanics with turn-based tactical warfare, available on Steam Early Access.
The concept of having your played cards turn into units on a tactical board is not a novel one by any means, and card games have been expanding in the digital realm over the past few years, making use of the uniqueness of the medium in order to provide various additional gameplay elements that would be impossible in traditional cardboard tabletop encounters.
Kihon Inc.’s Conquest of Champions is one such title, integrating some of the aspects that make Magic: The Gathering popular with some of the ones that make Warhammer the premier miniatures wargame.
The premise is simple, you choose a hero from one of the three available factions and then proceed to smashing face in a tactical way, earning new cards and various other rewards along the way, and fine-tuning your deck in order to suit your play style and improve your odds of emerging victorious.
The game takes advantage of its digital nature to allow for multiple sessions of asynchronous multiplayer to be open at the same time, making it easy to play a couple of turns whenever it’s most convenient for you and not forcing you to sit glued to the computer until the duel is over, permitting you to extend your match over several days.
For now, there isn’t too much single player content, only practice battles against each of the enemy heroes, and the AI isn’t much of an opponent, as it never is in this kind of games, but the devs intend to offer a full campaign in the final version of Conquest of Champions.
The actual gameplay seems a bit complicated at first, as the tactical board comes with many options in addition to the classic hand management of collectible card games. Resources (mana) are generated by physical points on the map, which you can both capture and lose, and your ability to make the most out of your cards will be directly linked to how fast you can acquire the necessary resources for an explosive start.
Resource nodes can be upgraded with specific cards, so some of your deck will consist of cards similar in function to the traditional gems or lands, increasing your total resource output.
In addition to this, each map has several spawn points where creatures can be summoned, and capturing the ones in the middle of the battleground make all the difference when it comes to how fast you can deploy troops to where they’re needed.
The main objective during battles is to destroy the enemy’s two towers before they destroy your own, and the means to do it is by judiciously employing creatures to dish out and soak damage, while at the same time protecting your hero and using his abilities to your advantage.
The game is rich with opportunities for strategic play and experimentation with various different approaches, and rounds are balanced enough so that early rushing is not always the winning strategy.
This is done mainly through the way Conquest of Champions manages the actions you can perform during each of your turns. Technically, the more you progress the more micromanagent you have to do with your ever-growing army, and the developers decided to add a layer of tactical decision making with the introduction of a limited number of actions you can take each turn.
Moving a creature costs one point and attacking costs one point, and you can get a few more actions once per turn by sacrificing some resources, limiting the number of offensive actions you can perform and preventing boards from getting overcrowded with the cheapest creatures.
In addition to this, the developers are taking advantage of the unique nature of the digital medium by having their creatures come with various abilities, ranging from the banal, such as being able to move and attack the first turn they enter the battlefield, to more interesting ones, such as dividing all the damage they take across all friendly creatures present on the battlefield or giving health/attack bonuses to their allies.
The range at which a creature can attack and their freedom of movement is also a factor to keep in mind, as some creatures will find it easier than other to sprint into the fray or to get out of harm’s way.
The arsenal that you have at your disposal is completed by various one-shot spells that either deal damage, remove the defenses of more armored foes, draw cards or have a similar impact on the state of the battlefield, and by equippable items that confer various bonuses to your creatures, but are lost when they fall in battle.
Fighting in online matches will reward you with various items, from currency to new cards and components, allowing you to customize your deck and expand on your options.
The game’s crafting system allows you to create various recipes, and the Fusion system lets you burn unneeded or redundant cards (you can only have 2 of the same card in any given deck) in order to “level up” the card in question, giving it slight bonuses.
It’s a bit convoluted, and it would have been a much better idea to have a clearer system where you can easily get the cards you want by disenchanting your old ones, similar to how Hearthstone pulls it off, but there’s still time.
There are also some issues regarding the interface being a bit clunky, as well as the instances of pay to win, where players simply have much better cards than you, which could be resolved by implementing a simpler and more potent crafting system, that lets you also craft heroes, for example.
But overall, Conquest of Champions has a lot going for it, with nice visuals and solid mechanics, as well as a complex tactical gameplay blending the best of both CCG and turn-based strategy worlds.
It shows a lot of promise, and if the devs manage to keep the community satisfied and implement all the planned features in a balanced way, it’s surely going to be a serious player in the growing digital CCG arena.
