Eternal Card Game (I—Factions & Resources)

A few weeks ago I tried out Eternal, a digital card game in the style of Hearthstone and Duelyst, and it's the only one I enjoy anywhere near as much as Magic, so I'd be remiss not to write about it. At a high level, its implementation is the closest to Magic's I've seen, differentiating itself primarily in two ways: First, it sets into action many of the "If we could re-create Magic knowing what we know now" refinements, and second, it makes delightful use of the platform in its mechanics.

There are five factions that work the same way the five colors work.

• Shadow (purple) aligns with Black. 
• Fire (red) aligns with Red.
Right now, you're thinking, oh cool, they line up 1:1. Well…
• Justice (green) aligns with White.
• Time (yellow) aligns with Blue.
• Primal (blue) aligns with Green.
Except it's not even that easy.

Edit 7/10 [ The last three mix things up more than that. Justice thematically aligns with White and it's got a Smite the Monstrous equivalent and a Day of Judgment, etc; But it also gets Giant Growth, -1/-0, hexproof and morbid. Time values what Blue values, but also gets Llanowar Elves, Sedge Scorpion, Gravity Well, and Sun Sentinel. Primal (the only adjective among nouns) behaves like green but also gets Leap, Negate, Iron Will, and Pyroclasm.

It's clear the developers made many conscious choices to differentiate Eternal's factions from Magic's colors. Some of them were strong—Time does a great job feeling like a faction that cares about and manipulates time, and Primal feels very cohesive too—and some were not—Shadow and Fire are basically carbon copies of Black and Red, and it's also really confusing seeing green-, yellow-, and blue-colored cards that don't align with Green, White, and Blue. ] Edit 7/10

As with nearly all non-Magic CCGs, the cost to play a card is presented as a simple integer, but there is still a color requirement indicated by a number of influence icons next to the cost. Torch costs 1 power (mana) to cast, and you must have at least one Fire influence to cast it. Note that you could cast four Torches with four power and a single Fire influence, where you'd need {R}{R}{R}{R} to cast four Lightning Bolts.

Eternal's lands work the same way Magic's do, down to having default versions ('sigils' rather than 'basic') that omit the text of how they actually work, as well as more complex ones.

'Depleted' is the keyword for "enters play tapped," except that Eternal doesn't actually use tapping. When you attack with or otherwise exhaust a unit (creature), it just becomes faded; and your power (land) aren't even displayed as cards in play—instead you get a Hearthstone-style tracker that shows how much power you have remaining this turn and what your maximum power is (how much power you'll have next turn). 3/5, for example. That saves a ton of room on the board, which is terribly clever given that people play this game on smaller devices. And since you're only tracking power and overall influence, you can never "tap your lands" wrong. (This is an instance of shedding complexity that is 10% strategically interesting and 90% distracting and annoying.)

As long as we're on the subject, I'd be remiss not to share Eternal's dual lands. Four sets in, there are currently three tight cycles. Every power card increases your maximum power by 1 (there are no Cabal Strongholds); these dual lands increase your influence in two factions at once, which is pretty effective considering that color requirements in Eternal very closely match those in Magic.

There are colorless cards in Eternal, the most noteworthy being Seek Power, which is a one-mana Lay of the Land any deck can cast. Since we're talking about ways Eternal helps players play their cards, let's talk about the mulligan rules.

You initially see an entirely random seven-card hand. If you prefer, you get one mulligan: A new seven-card hand which the system fixes to guarantee it has between 2 and 4 power cards. There's a game designer purist in me that shifts in his seat a bit at the inelegance of a mulligan system that is only feasible via a computer and that squints suspiciously at exactly what the algorithm might be. Fortunately, there's also a game designer realist in me who jumps on his chair and pumps his fist in the air in support of a solution to a huge percentage of non-games, and who happily recognizes that it doesn't matter how complicated the algorithm is, this game will only ever be played on a computer, so why the hell wouldn't we let the computer make it better where it can.

There's a lot more I'd like to talk about, and I'll save that for another post, but if you're too eager not to read more, here's an Eternal starter guide.

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV