Introduction

So SOE recently released their latest Norrathian endeavor, Legends of Norrath: Oathbound. A digitized collectable/trading card game set in the world of Norrath. I, myself and the geek that is me have always been an avid fan of CCG’s as I know them (SOE prefers the term Trading Card Game or TCG to the other alternative that I know which is Collectable Card Game or CCG) dating back to the mother of them all Magic: The Gathering which I started playing shortly after they stopped selling the black edged limited edition and released their first expansion Arabian Nights. Since those days I have played all manners of CCG’s including but not limited to Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (aka Jyhad), 7^th Sea, Legend of the Five Rings, Net Runner, BattleTech and Shadowfist. So when I heard about the new game and its beta, I was excited. Not just a little, not just a lot, but more excited about any impending beta than I think I ever have been before.

Unfortunately I was not one of the lucky fan faire attendees which automatically got into the beta so after some cajoling, bribing, begging, threats of violence and a series of events which will never see the light of print I managed to get myself into the beta. After logging into the client I was given the choice to either go to the main menu or start playing through the tutorials, I went for the tutorials as while I believe the only way to truly learn a game is to play it, some basic knowledge might just help me actually play.

The Tutorial

The tutorial to me was fairly straight forward, but as mentioned in the above segment I am what some may call a card game veteran, although a lot of the concepts may have different names to the games I have played the core to them is much the same in most card games (Exerting, Readying etc…), I can see how people that have had no previous experience with this sort of game play could get confused. The tutorials were at times over explaining a few points and at others could have done with use of more of the colourful green arrows they use to highlight what they are talking about.

The tutorial is separated into eleven separate parts, the first ten explaining slowly but surely the different elements of the game, what all the symbols mean, how the turn progresses, what you can do and what you cannot do. Eventually after making your way through all ten you come up against the final challenge and that is to take your learning and play your first game against the AI opponent (in the guise of the Seventh Hammer).

I feel (and Valendur said the same thing to me) that I learned more about playing the game in that single final test than I did in the preceding 10 tutorial steps. Maybe SOE should think of revising the strategy to less of a “explain everything” tutorial more to a “let them try things and tell them as they try” I know if I was a person who was “just trying because I was bored” I might never have made it past the tutorial in its current guise.

The LoN world proper

Once the tutorials were over I was returned to the main menu, here you have a screen with the latest release information, links to various areas and information on the game. There were many links to the forums and articles posted on the main web site. I decided the first thing I would do is look at what cards I had so I went to the collection manager. I was given the Mage deck which by all accounts is one of the most numerous (I have yet to see a player using the scout deck). The mechanism is quite interesting, your cards are delivered and you receive notification and you select ok. Any unopenned packets that you have will be staring you in the face within the collection manager. When you double-click on an unopenned packet, it opens a window which shows you the contents. You get to browse through and read what is within each packet and when you are satisfied, you can close the window. The packet leaves your unopened area and the individual cards are added to your collection.

Once you have all your cards your collection manager enables you to look through all of them and read them, decide for yourself if they are good or not. This also is where you can set for yourself how many of each card you actually want, if this means you have a surplus they are marked for trade, if a deficit they are marked as needed.

Next after reading through my cards I figured, ok now let’s refine my deck. From each screen there is a pop out window on the left side of the client which acts as a universal menu, in there you can get anywhere so within 2 clicks I was inside the deck builder and I came across my first real surprise of the game.

Customs Avatars. That’s right you are not only limited to the avatar cards that are provided with in the starter decks. Using the avatar creation tool you can create a large variety of different avatars that can be used to strengthen various deck strategies, I myself would never have gotten past certain scenario missions if I had not been using a specific avatar. There are 6 races you can choose from, each race has 3 different abilities it can pick from, most of them involve exerting the avatar (exerting means you cannot use the card again until your next ready phase) to produce an effect, for example the ability which made one scenario level beatable for me was that by spending 2 power and exerting my avatar I was able to ready all my forces at a quest (I’ll explain in a minute). On top of these racial abilities you are face with a couple of universal choices which affect your attack, defense and health, Finally you pick a name for your avatar, unfortunately this requires the universal MMO road block of coming up with something no-one has already picked as they are unique, which I don’t quite understand the need for when you already have a unique handle for the client.

In addition to being able to create your decks from scratch, or indeed make tweaks to existing decks, there is also a deck wizard which will take you step by step through the deck building process and only show you a small selection of cards to pick from, now I noticed this was flawed, if I selected certain combinations I would reach steps where I was to pick 5 cards for the step and only had 2 available as such could not progress with the wizard.

The Game Itself

Ok now for the meat of the topic at hand, the game that your all here to read about. Each player takes on the role of a denizen of the world of Norrath charged by the Seventh Hammer to do it’s bidding, you are one of the Oathbound, powerful figures who command various powers and lead armies into battle.

The objective of each game is to beat your opponent either by killing their avatar or by completing 4 quests. The play area is divided into two halves, one is your quest and the other is your opponents, each of these is again divided twice again giving each of you a place to play your units at each quest.

You start the game with a hand of 7 cards and 3 power with which you can cast your cards, this rises as each player completes quests or plays cards which increase power. Each player then plays a turn one after each other and a turn breaks down thus.

Draw Phase : Simply draw two cards and move on (the player who starts the game skips this on their first turn, to balance out the advantage they get for starting).

Quest Phase : During this phase if you have an ability in play which has level tokens you are required to attempt either of the two quests in play, if your opponent has units at this quest you must engage them in combat, however win or lose you get to apply an ability to the quest and hopefully advance it closer to completion.

Ready Phase : At this time all you can do and must in fact is un-exert all your cards this makes them all usable again, highly useful as your about to enter the meaty section of your turn.

Main Phase : This is where you play most of your cards and perform most of your offensive game play. You may play cards, attempt raids at quests, and perform any of the abilities on your units.

The different types of cards that are at your disposable fall into the following categories:

Quests : You must have four and only four of these in your deck, they are kept in a separate pile and are played in ascending order as you complete each quest (lvl 2 quest starts in play and then upgrades to lvl 4, lvl 5 and finally lvl 6).

Abilities : For the magic using types these are typically your spells and a lot of these are named after comparable abilities in the existing EQ games. Abilities provide certain effects when played but by and large serve 2 functions first many of them may be exerted to provide additional defense for your avatar, and they also provide the level tokens to complete a quest. A quest requires a certain number of tokens to be placed at it, the first player to do so completes the quest and gains one of the 4 quest tokens needed to win the game.

Item : very simply these are cards representing various things your avatar carries, they can take the form of armour, weapons, charms etc. Certain limitations are in place like their main game counterparts, you may only wear one helmet for example, if you play another the existing one is destroyed and you may draw a card. Items provide a myriad of effects, some are exerted for attack or damage bonus (mainly weapons) while others for defense (armour) others provide other useful powers (the Crown of King Tranix adds 2 to your Avatars Health).

Tactics : These are your up your sleeve cards and are played as and when they are required, whether for that little extra oomph in attack or to stop an attacking creature killing one of your units.

Units : Your loyal followers each of them will have attributes and powers of their own although for the most part will have a lot less health than your avatar, they provide both your offence and defense @ raids.

As well as being able to play these various cards during your main phase you may also instigate a raid at each quest once per turn (although there are cards which allow for additional raids). Raids always end up in a combat situation, either against your opponents units if he has any at the quest, or against the opponents avatar itself.

A Little on Combat

Combat involves all four of the main attributes unit cards and your avatar possesses Attack, Defence, Damage Bonus & Health. Starting with the offensive player each player may either play a card or perform an action with one of their cards in play. They may exert a creature to provide attack (in the offense) or defense (guess when?) the appropriate number of the creature is added to the total of the combat, when both players have run out of options or have chosen to pass in a row then the combat is ended and we move to the resolution. Here the winning side may exert a unit for its damage bonus and then the losing player applies the relevant damage either whatever was attacked.

The Light Side of LoN

Or “Whats good about the game”, well simply put SoE have managed to release what in myexperience appears to be a very sturdy and enjoyable trading card game. Most of the issues I have with the game are external to the game itself and will most likely be fixed easily enough sooner or later.

One of the big up sides like I mentioned earlier is the ability to create your own custom avatar. This is a huge plus in my mind as this expands your ability to come up with different strategies ten fold. A key factor for any game that your going towant to play for a considerable amount of time.

Another plus side is the very reasonable angle SOE have taken when it comes to their free play vs paid for content. It only takes the purchase of a single booster to unlock the paid for content and if your content to stick with the starter your given for free there is no need to ever pay a bean (although you can still add to your collection from EQ or EQ2 purchased / obtained cards).

The Murky Shadows

Or “Ok this sucks” stuff. The game client has a lot of instances where the graphics can defor, primarily when it comes to the hovering over cards to see the larger versions. This will probably get fixed soon though. The client also seems to be suffering from some sort of memory leak or what have you, after spending a few hours playing the game everything starts to slow to a horrible crawl and the games hang for a second or two at certain parts. Again I see this being fixed soon.

Now for my Number One gripe against the game. The payment options for the store are so limited that it takes only the 4 or 5 biggest US credit cards, now for an international game with an international audience I find this to be hugely dissapointing. SOE should seriously look into expanding the avenues of payment to include more card types (The UK Maestro debit card for one) and maybe even paypal.

The Final Verdict

No review / guide / rambling should be considered complete without a hugely biased and opinionated closing segment where someone with no real qualification to do so applies some sort of rating to a product. And here is mine, Legends of Norrath : Oathbound has the potential to be a giant among the TCG arena, while I feel it wont ever reach the titanic heights of Magic: The Gathering I do feel that it will succeed further than pretty much any and all other competition. SOE have played a very shrewd game in how they have linked the game into their existing products and if this acumen continues they will enjoy a great deal of success using all three games as a portal to the others.

Geeks out of Ten: 8.73

- Trevor Edgar aka “Monte - The Geek”