Knights versus Zombies
Knights versus Zombies is a combat card game in which you will be able to lead the knights or the zombies, in the initial stages, to achieve your essential mission and to win the game. The essential mission depends from the faction that you are controlling. For example, knights exile with faith points to their enemies, zombies rise as living deads to the criatures of other players, mages spell at their rivals, etc.
You will use a tiny deck (20 cards), but not because of this the game is less dynamic than games with greater decks. One of the keys about you don’t need lots of cards is that energy system is almost removed. Instead of using cards of resource or similar, you roll a 20-sided die and play the card that corresponds to the number of the result.
This has several advantages. The first one is that you won’t be spending the first turns getting energy to start playing or getting blocked your game because the cards you needed to develop your strategy don’t appear, abandoning you to the good luck of the other players.
No. What will happen is that you will roll the 20-sided die and you will have to play the card the number of die indicates, yes or yes. This oblies you to adapt to your situation, that will be changing every time that each player rolls the dice, yes, but it also reduces the analysis-paralisis. If a card that won’t be suitable for your strategy has to be played, you are out of luck, but all players are in the same situation than you. There is no a deck made with more expensive cards than yours, here is the 20-sided die which rules.
Despite of this, you can use the economy points, that you will generate in a growing mode through the development of the game. But don’t asume you have them assured, they are only effective if in a 6-sided die you obtain 5 or 6. Later the turn, more dice you roll. With these points you will be able to buy the card that you want, but they are a very scarce and impredictable resource.
However, once you have played a card in battle, you have to use it. In each deck there are 16 criatures and 4 spells. Criatures are asociated to a chess piece (King, Bishop, Rook, Pawn…) and their function is defined by the identity of the chess piece they represent.
For instance, King is the supreme leader of the faction. Queen is the second character who rules, Knights are the powerful attacking creatures, Bishops are the ones who use magic, Rooks protect the second line and Pawns are the minions of faction.
Each faction is asimetric and plays in a different manner, but all their criatures respect this pattern of chess pieces. Then there are 4 spells that trigger several effects over the game cards.
A criature has a life value, a defence value and an attack value. Life value represents how many damages can support before going to graveyard deck. Once there it can be recovered, but we have to spend economy points, the die has to give the respective value or you’ll have to use resurrection skills.
Attack value determines how many life is removed from a criature, and the defence value shows that how many damages neutralizes before that attacks disminishes life’s creature. This system is quite simple, but it can be altered by skills, curses, etc., so you will have to take into account the situation of the game in each moment.
Later, each card has its own basic skill and its powerful skills. We only can activate a basic skill per turn, but we can choose the one we want to activate. However, powerful skills only can be used with economy points or with the result of 20-sided die over a card that is already in battle.
Almost all criatures and spells have their own basic and powerful skills. Because of that, it is different to play with merchant than with orcs, not only skills are different, because they are directed to win in a completely different way.
There are more layers inside the game. You will be able to set truces that help you in order not to be crashed in a weakness moment, or to use heroes that will strength your strategy. You also can finish the game in any moment, given that the player who has scored most until that moment, even if anybody has achieved their essential mission, nearer you are, more point do you have.
Later you can play it with lots of people in the same game, in a all against all. All alliances are possible but only the player that achieves their essential mission or scores most wins. This makes that diplomacy in a game of 3 or more players is crucial.
All players play with the same difficulty, because decks are defined and they are the same for all players, inside the factions that exists in the game (knights, zombies, merchants, elves, dwarves, orcs and mages). This removed the pression of changing your deck that is present in other card games if you play in competitive mode.
Finally, you will be able to train your skills playing all your sides yourself, and even, to play by pure amusing with no necessity of meeting with your friends to play a game. This is due to, because there is no hidden information (beyond your mental plans about how to crush the cards you enemy has now), you can play with the both sides in the best way you can, having an excellent solo mode.
If you want a game that takes little from your time to learn, with a defined system of decks, without typical mana problems, that you can play with all your friends simultaneously and that surprises you in each turn, Knights versus Zombies is the chance that you were waiting.