Deviants’ Factions, a new trading cards game using the Immutable X marketplace, is currently offering a free-to-play alpha version to everyone. This deck-building game runs in a web browser and features a few interesting mechanics.
Signing up for the Deviants’ Faction alpha is pretty simple. Barely an inconvenience! You just need to connect your wallet on the Deviants website and link it to the IMX marketplace (or just sign a message if already linked to IMX). New players are given a random username and avatar. Players choose one of twelve, pre-made decks to use for their match. Then it’s just a matter of clicking play and off you go!
Deviants plans to open up deckbuilding to its players on August 30th. Players can purchase packs on the official site. The game will feature some sort of play-to-earn option via tournaments with their own tokens, but at the moment, none of that is implemented yet.
Since the game is free to play and doesn’t require downloads, NFT ownership, or anything like that, it’s definitely worth a look for anyone interested in TCG-type games.
Deviants’ Factions is a typical TCG in some ways. Two players assemble a deck of cards and then meet on the battlefield until only one is left standing. But Deviants has some interesting differences. For one, each deck only consists of eight (8) cards! Also, the game board features slots, or lanes, that are auto-assigned from left to right as the players add cards to the table.
How to Play Deviants Faction
Each Character card played has stats for attack and hit points, as well as various abilities. In addition, there are Tech cards. These cards provide buffs for your team and/or debuffs for the other team.
Each player also has an HQ, based on the faction they chose. Not only does this HQ function as the player avatar (when the HQ health hits zero you lose), but they also have buffs and effects of their own.
The game begins with a blank board, and both players start with three cards. Each player has one opportunity to put their hand back in their deck, re-shuffle, and draw three new cards before the game starts.
The game runs in four phases, or steps — the Draw step (skipped on the first turn), the Dev step where cards are played, the Fight step, and the End Step. Everything except for the Dev step happens simultaneously for both sides, with attacks starting in the leftmost column and moving to the right. So placement matters! Some cards even have abilities that will only work if they are in certain lanes.
Deviant Factions features an interesting mechanic where no attacks or abilities happen for the first three turns. This gives players a chance to set up their board before the action starts. And there certainly is a lot of action — with buffs, debuffs, angled attacks, blast attacks, column shifting, and more. Usually on every turn!
Deviants’ Factions has a lot of card interaction going on. Abilities from Technologies and Characters can trigger during any of the turn phases! In fact, there is so much going on during a game, that it’s hard to keep up with at times! I highly recommend checking out the tutorials before you plan a match.
With only eight cards, it is very possible to play all of your cards during a match. When that happens, the game autoplays itself until the end. Which is both interesting and kind of strange at the same time.
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