Monday, November 18, 2013
So GREE, a mobile app company from Japan, have decided to join the TCG world and thus released their first TCG called Sieg Krone. They had promoted the TCG lots of times in many card shops as well as ads, hyping Sieg Krone up and hoping to make it a big game. It also doubles as a "mobile game" as well since you can create your own card from your phone using their list of pre-loaded artworks or your own ones and put one (only one) in play. Okay, this sounds good and all but...with all the hype from GREE Japan, I was a little disappointed after that with some of the flaws of the TCG mechanics.
Now, I'm no game developer like a friend of mine, but as someone who have played loads of card games in the past, I was a little surprised by how a game company actually managed to make a potentially good TCG, bad. Okay, before I go on to the bad side of things, let me have a quick run down on how the game works. You can get in-depth how to from the following wiki but I'm going to just give a basic idea how the game goes.
Game Requirements
You require a deck of 50 cards of up to 4 copies of a card in a deck. You win when you deal 5 damages to the opponent or your opponent is unable to "Charge" during his "Charge Phase".
Type of cards
There's 2 types of cards, character cards and skill cards. Character comes in 3 colors; red, blue and green. Skill card does not have a color.
Game Start
So you start by drawing 5 cards and no redraws are allowed. The first player charges 3 cards to the charge zone. This is called a "Charge Phase" where the player will place 3 cards into the "Action Area". Subsequent turns, both players will charge 4 cards at the start of their turn. The action area is where resources are placed. You use it to draw cards at the beginning of the turn and as resources to pay for costs of the cards so you need to make sure you have enough cards both in had and the "Action Area".
Main Phase
You can do multiple things during your main phase - call Characters, use Skills, Evolution and Awake (refer to the wiki for more info). There's an area in the playmat called the "Base Area" where you call out your character cards. You can call out as many as you like as long as you can pay the cost.
Battle Phase
You attack your opponent with your character cards. The battle phase will take a couple of times to get use to. You basically try to kill off your opponent's characters cards to 0BP. If you have more BP than your opponent, you win. While it is not mentioned in the wiki, you may need to declare which characters battle with which characters. As mentioned, the battle phase will take some time to get used to.
Damage Step
Whoever loses the battle will take damage by revealing 2 cards from the top of their deck, choose one of them to be sent to the Damage Area while the remaining card is called up to the Base Area at no cost. During this time, some cards have skills that can be used when called up this way. If the card is a skill card, add that to hand instead.
That's the basic idea on how it is played. Of course there are other things to consider but I am simply putting up the basics. Now on to the ugly...
First, there's no limits on how many character cards can be at the base area at any one time. Duel Masters have a similar concept, where there's no limits to how much monsters can be summon at a time as long as you can pay the cost. But unlike Duel Masters, Sieg Krone does not have the concept of "Summoning Sickness" where a character can't be use for battle during the turn it is called. So the bad thing about having too many character in a side is that the match loses its balance quickly. Sure you only take one damage at during each battle but if you have an army of 3 while the opponent have an army of 10, and you can't attack or defend, the game will become one sided very quickly. After playing Sieg Krone with a few other players that tried it out, and all of us came to the same conclusion after a couple of games - there need to be a limit on how many characters can be placed in the Base Area. We currently agree that the best limitation would be 4 which balances the game very well.
Secondly. there's no healing in the game. There's no heal mechanism like Vanguard, Duel Monsters, Colossus Order or like other TCG. The idea of having a healing or recovery mechanism will be an additional plus to the game, granting players who is about to lose that giant leap of faith hoping for a heal to trigger up or cancelling that damage which was taken during the turn. Of course this kind of card will need to be restricted up to 4 per deck.
Lastly, they may need to revamp their battle system. While I do personally think it's okay now, but it is very very confusing as it is. I think having a "one on one" type of battle would be a better idea, while keeping the "Assist Character" and Skill cards.
So yeah, this is my two cents for Sieg Krone. While I believe it has a potential to be a good TCG, the way the game play is set now is too much luck dependent, much more than Vanguard or Weiss Schwarz to be honest. The designs of the cards are great, but sadly, the design of the game really needs a revamp.
