Review: Shadow Era

I have been an avid Magic: The Gathering player for many a year, albeit casually. I started playing in the era of Ice Age and 4th Edition, whenIcy Manipulator and Zuran's Orb were awesome and when Shivan Dragons and Serra Angels were the top tier creatures. As such I have a great fondness for trading card games in general. When a friend of mine introduced me to Shadow Era, a browser based trading card game built on the Unity Player, a few months back, it was with much anticipation that I checked it out. I have to say I was a bit disappointed, though the making of a good game was in place, there were still many missing pieces. Certain abilities did not work yet and there were cards that worked with other cards that didn't exist. Needless to say I was not a happy camper.



Recently however, it was brought to my attention that with the latest patches, many of the issues I had with the game previously had been addressed. As such I paid it a visit again and as they say the second time's a charm. The game is more akin to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game than Magic: The Gathering, borrowing many concepts from Blizzard's TCG option. Each player has a deck which must have a minimum of 30 cards, one of which must be their Hero. There is no upper limit to deck sizes. There are also no "resource" cards or "land" cards ala MTG. Instead a player can choose to sacrifice one of the cards in their hand to add to their resource pool at the beginning of each turn.

There are two factions in the game, Human and Shadow, and the cards in your deck must correspond to the right faction and type your hero is. Heroes gather shadow energy every turn, which some heroes, like Zaladar above, can use to activate abilities. There are a slew of cards which you can add into your deck of which the most popular are allies.



Ally cards are the creatures of the game. They are the ones you will be using to do most of the attacking. They can attack either the opposing hero or other allies. The attacker always deals damage first and if the defending creature is still alive, it gets to retaliate. Allies come in all shapes and sizes and have quite a number of diverse abilities. One ability of note is Defender. An ally with Defender can intercept attacks meant for heroes, taking the damage in their stead. Normally heroes just have to suck up the damage when attacked. Unfortunately as of now, there are no creatures with Defender in game that I know of. There is however an Ability card that grants an ally Defender.



Next come the Ability cards. These cards are pretty much the spell cards in the game. There are abilities that work immediately, while there are others which have the Ongoing property, which means they remain in play continuously generating their effect.



Last but not least are the Item, Armour and Weapon cards. These cards are equipped to the hero and a hero can only have one Armour and Weapon equipped at all times. Items and Armours can provide a bunch of different effects and the benefits they provide can range from card advantage to powering up your allies. Weapons grant a interesting effect. They allow your Hero to attack. This is very good as it provides you a constant source of damage which cannot be easily removed.



Shadow Era is free to play, and has two in game currencies. Crystals and Gold. You gain Gold from winning duels, either against the AI or in PvP. You gain Crystals in small amounts in when you level and at certain milestones, but they can also be purchased with a real money. Gold is the medium of transaction for individual cards, while booster and pre-constructed decks must be purchased with Crystals.



Shadow Era is definately the best browser based TCG that I've seen in a while and I'd recommend you give it a try. Shadow Era can be played at http://shadowera.com and has an app available for the iPhone as well. So you can play it even while you are on the move. I'm looking forward to seeing the advances in this game.