Might & Magic Duel of Champions

Genre: Free to play Trading Card Game MMO
Platform: Windows
Developer: UbiSoft

Overview

Might & Magic: Duel of Champions (MMDoC) this is a free to play trading card game where players get to build their own deck of cards made up from various heroes, monsters, spells, fortunes and events and go head-to-head against other players in one-on-one arena battles trying to destroy the enemy hero. The game is made up of hundreds of different cards, from common and easy to get cards to rarer and even legendary cards that can be used in infinite numbers of ways to create your own tactics and strategies in battle. Completely free to play players are able to access all the game’s content without ever spending a penny.

The Game
The purpose of the game is to try and beat your opponent in one-on-one combat using a number of different cards in your available deck that you have hand-picked depending upon your strategy. Players take it in turn to place as many cards as their resources will allow, resources that are built up over time and are required to place different types of cards. Cards of all types will have a resource prerequisite that needs to be met before that card can be played, typically each card type (Creature, Spell or Fortune) has its own resource, but some cards, particularly creatures, may have prerequisites on more than one resource type.

As well as resources players accumulate action points each turn (starting with one action point in the first turn), each card has an action point cost to actually be played, so players must choose wisely which cards to put down during their turn. The more powerful the card the higher its action point cost and resource prerequisites will be, ensuring players cannot simply throw down powerful cards from the offset.

One of the main aspects is the game board where players can place creatures/units that can be then used to try and attack the enemy hero in an attempt to reduce it to 0 hit points, which would win in the game. To counter this players must put down their own creatures to block and direct line of sight to their own hero, which ensures played unit cannot attack it directly and must fight their way through the units blocking its path.

Players must have a minimum of 59 cards in their deck and a maximum of 200, cards which are drawn at random from your face down deck during a fight. Potential the strategy is staggering and new attack combos and tactics are created all the time with the constant stream of new cards being added to the game.

Key Features

- Over 300 unique cards
- Six unique factions
- Infinite number of tactics and strategy
- Beautifully detailed card artwork
- Earn gold and seals by playing to buy new card packs
- Three expansions adding even more cards

Playable Factions
There are six available factions within the game, each faction focuses on a different style of gameplay and has creatures unique to it:

Haven - very defence focused this faction focuses on protection and healing and building up formations with your units, a variety of units often bolstering defences and healing adjacent cards that builds up an unprecedented level of defence.

Necropolis - focusing on poisonous damage over time attacks and the ability to resurrect their units that have been killed and bring them back into battle, wave after wave as your poisons slowly wear down your opponents’ defences in a battle of attrition.

Inferno - extremely offensive and aggressive this faction hits hard and utilises devastating sweep attacks that can attack multiple opponents at once whilst opening up gaps for more heavy hitting brutes, putting some truth to the adage a good defence is a strong offense.

Stronghold - this faction relies on sacrificing minions to build up stronger units with their unique enraged abilities that bolster their attacks and retaliation for every ally that is killed, forcing your opponent to think carefully about each of your units that it kills making you tougher in the process.

Sanctuary - bolstering adjacent allies with their honour ability, which improves attack and retaliation abilities, as well as utilising their tactical outmanoeuvre feature to move the position of your enemy units making this deck Masters of the battlefield.

Academy - focusing on magic and the unique feature of this deck is that it is able to destroy on played cards in their opponents’ deck, once an opponent has no remaining cards to play the instantly take damage to their hero and each turn.

Neutral - whilst not a faction per se there are a number of neutral creatures that can be used by every faction within the game, offering a variety of unique abilities and waste to pad out your main deck.

The Cards
A player begins the game by choosing from one of the three starter decks: Haven, Necropolis or Inferno, were each deck is made up of a chosen hero, creature cards, spell cards, fortune cards and event cards.

Hero Card - each player must have a single hero from one of the available factions, these heroes will determine what school of magic your spells can be from, which faction units you can use, what you’re starting resources are and some more powerful heroes even have unique abilities that they can perform in battle such as discarding cards for resource points or granting bonuses to played units. Each turn the hero can increase one of their resources (Might, Magic or Destiny), draw a random card from their deck or, if available, use their special ability, which will require action points that are accumulated automatically on each new turn.

Creature Cards - you can only use units from your heroes’ faction, as well as the neutral creatures that are available to all factions. Every creature has a number of hit points, an attack value and a retaliation value (which determines how much damage they deal back to a creature that attacks it). Many creatures also have special abilities that they can perform, such as moving and attacking in the same turn on giving boosts to adjacent Allied units. Creatures require the Might resource to be placed.

Spell Cards - spells are used in a number of different ways, from attacking creatures in play, moving creatures around the battlefield, healing and damaging heroes directly, and many, many more uses. Each spell comes from a school of magic, each hero has one or more schools of magic available to it, meaning players cannot have any spells other than those from a magic school their hero knows. Spell cards require the Magic resource to be placed.

Fortune Cards - similar to spells fortune cards help bolster allies, build up resources and generally manage your deck, i.e. letting you search through it for a specific card, draw extra cards, discard cards and other tactical strategies. Fortune cards require the Destiny resource to be placed.

Event Cards - event cards are shuffled into a random pile and to are automatically drawn each turn and can be played by either player on their turn, discarding it when used. Players must have at least eight event cards in their deck each, the cards you choose combined with the ones your opponent has chosen at a whole new element of strategy to the game.

Acquiring Cards
players can acquire cards by initially going through the PVE tutorial playing against AI opponents, but typically they can be bought from the store with gold, which is acquired simply by playing matches, and “seals”, which in many ways is the games premium currency. Seals are earned as you level up, as by playing games you will earn XP, and also by completing various achievements, as well as being purchasable with real-world currency.

From the store players can purchase packs of cards and boxes (for more money but which have more cards), which will give a huge selection of random cards, meaning players won’t necessarily get the cards they want/need for their deck. However MMDOC has also implemented two handy features for players:

Infernal Pit - here players can sacrifice unwonted/duplicate cards to earn gold, which they can use to buy more packs and potentially get more chances at acquiring the cards they need (though still random). As well as this if a player offers up enough cards, or particularly rare cards, they can acquire a featured card, which changes daily.

Alter of Wishes - with packs and boxes, and through achievements, players occasionally acquire a wild card. Using the alter of wishes players can spend these wild cards to purchase any card that they currently have, as often players will want more than one of a specific card within their deck.

Minimum System Requirement

Operating System : Windows XP SP2
Processor : 2 GHz
Memory : 512 of RAM
Hard Drive Space : 200Mb
Graphics: DirectX 9.0c or higher compatible Graphics Card, 256 VRAM, shader model 2_0 or higher