What the $^@# is Wrong?

Elements is a fresh new look of the world of collectible card games online and is created by Zanzarino Webdesign.  Many people expect that there is something that involves spending money for special content, or to gain a quick advantage over your competition, but not in this case.  This game is 100% funded by ad revenue and player donations, which is a refreshing concept for many players.

The game is logically more simplistic than Magic The Gathering, but has the potential to have vastly more challenging deck designs in it’s maturity due to there being 12 different “colors”.

The turn structure is a simplified version of what you would expect from Magic.

1. Draw
2. Main Phase
3. End of Turn
   1. Creatures deal damage and Gain Life
   2. Draw quantum from pillars/towers
   3. Draw quantum from your Mark
   4. Weapon deals damage
   5. Pass the turn

To win the game, there are two simple ways.  You can either deck your opponent or reduce them to 0 damage.  With a limit on deck sizes of 30-60 cards, it can be tough to stall and deck your opponent, so the main method of kill is to reduce your opponent to 0 life.  This sometimes can be a tedious task seeing as each player starts with 100 life.

At the end of turn, you cannot interrupt the process, and there is no blocking.  The only time you can play spells or use creature or weapons abilities is during your Main phase.  You also cannot play at all during your opponents turn.  Just assume that there is a “Teferi” type global effect.

One thing that Magic players are used to is having your mana pool empty at the end of your turn.  In Elements, this is not the case.  Your Quantum pool never empties at the end of a turn or phase, so you can save up to cast that big dragon on turn 4 or 5.

Also, taking a page out of World of Warcraft CCG, creature’s hit points do not come back at the end of turn or phase.  So you can slowly chop down a creature using a weapon like Eagle Eye, and then devouring it using your Otyugh or Scarab.

The game has increasing difficulties for playing against the AI.  There are levels 1-6, where level 6 are labeled the False Gods which do not like to play by the rules.  They get to draw 2 cards a turn, have 200 hit points, and their marks provide them with 3 quantum of their color each turn.  As you go up in the difficulties, the more you bet per game, and the greater the reward.  When you beat the opponent, you get a chance to spin the wheel to gain cards without spending gold on them in the Bazaar.

In reality, each card is two cards.  With 1500 gold in the game, you can upgrade each card into an improved version.  For example, a Horned Frog is a 3/3 for 2 Life quantum, and the upgraded version, Giant Frog, is a 5/3 for 2 Life quantum.  You gain 2 more damage a turn for the one time cost of 1500 gold for one card.

Now.. wtf is wrong with the game.

Well, not too much.  The game is balanced, clean layout, no lag, easy to navigate, and a lot of fun to play.

However, pvp could use more work.  In previous versions, the pvp has been plagued with desync issues where if you desync’d, the game would continue in a bugged fashion and in the end, both players were recorded with a victory.  Once the pvp is tweaked and optimized, pvp can be the core of the game, and it can provide and promote a healthy pvp community where a ladder and tournaments could be held.  Right now, the core of the game is battling the False Gods and trying to create a deck to optimize the win % against the false gods.

The game could use more cards.  This is being taken care of as we speak with the most recent versions.  The developer has created 8 new cards which are currently being deployed. But, like with all CCG’s, the more cards in the card pool, the better.

Another item that should be addressed is implementing a competitive marketplace for selling rare or upgraded cards to other players.  Right now, you can only buy non-upgraded, non-rare cards from the server.  A competitive marketplace or trading post could open up the game to more user interaction.

This game has a bright future, so please keep your eye on it.  Feel free to try it out.

I give the game a solid 4 out of 5.  One the pvp community is strengthened by reducing desyncs and implementing tournaments or a ladder, it will get a solid 5 out of 5.

If you want to play a pvp game, let me know.  My in-game name is SaumZ, and I also frequent the Elements chat room.

SaumZ