What Happens When Poker And TCGs Collide
I try to avoid lazy comparisons when I can, but Heroes of Magic & Cards’ DNA is so clear that it’s impossible to ignore. You are trying to make poker-like tricks with playing cards in your hand, and those tricks fuel attacks and defences within a roguelike deckbuilder. Every match is Balatro running with a baton before passing it to Slay the Spire.
As a massive fan of roguelike deckbuilders, I was rubbing my hands with glee. It might be an obvious elevator pitch, but it’s one that makes sense and triggers the imagination. I’d bought my ticket and was well on board.
Not, As It Happens, Set In The Heroes Of Might & Magic Universe
There are a fair few moving parts in Heroes of Magic & Cards, but the primary engines are the abilities and the playing cards themselves. Abilities are chosen at the game’s campfires, and you have room for five as standard. They are your combat actions, and they can range from focused attacks to AOE to card-draw to defensive moves that stack armour on your character. You don’t draw these abilities: they sit forever on the left-hand side of the game screen, and the only limitations are their cooldowns. You are limited by how many times you can play them per turn, or per combat.
To pay for these abilities, you need to play tricks from your hand of cards. The earlier abilities on a run are dead-simple: they will demand one or two black/red cards. You can be fairly sure that you will have these cards in your hand. But as the run progresses and you fine-tune your deck, the abilities become more demanding about what they require. They might ask for flushes, straights or doubles. These are the abilities that have real horsepower.
Let’s switch over to the card deck. You’re given a bog-standard deck of cards at the start of the game, but – through the run’s many events and rewards – you can begin to tinker. In a very Balatro-esque fashion, you can strip out the cards – or suits – you don’t like, and apply enchantments to the cards that you do like. Our favourite enchantments would offer gold whenever they were played; bring a partner card along for the ride; or would grow over the course of a combat match-up. The aim is to reach a point where every trick comes with a buffet of after-effects and chain reactions.
Kick, Punch, It’s All In The Mind
Combat is reasonably standard, with single or multiple enemies taking turns to attack, defend, buff or debuff. Your turn will often be defined by what they are planning, saving some cards for armour or ailment removal. Bosses in particular need your attention: they have a habit of attaching defects to your cards, so you have to be careful which cards you play, and when.
Zoom out, and you have a very familiar pathing system – at least, if you’ve played pretty much any other roguelike deckbuilder. You’re picking your path and reaping the benefits. There’s a high proportion of combat nodes, but you can also stop at tents for a choice of health or an item reward; shops for stocking up; events for a variety of effects; campfires for a choice of abilities (and, oddly, some incidental minigames like fishing and blackjack); and chests for your choice of relic.
Heroes of Magic & Cards absolutely LOVES a relic. It’s entirely possible to break the game’s relic menu and have more than it can possibly display (mostly because a Compass relic is fairly common and swaps events for relics, which is ACE). But they’re also hugely powerful, and in my case winning a run was largely dependent on whether I landed certain relics. One relic plays very similarly to Slay the Spire’s Spinning Top and gives you two cards if you empty your hand, and I have very royally exploited that.
Death By Black Dragon
There are three acts to defeat and bosses at the end of each. Heroes of Magic & Cards does a good job of cycling the bosses round, so it’s entirely possible to avoid the one that you hate (damn you, Black Dragon). There are also three characters to choose from, each with their own spin on the abilities and relics that you will encounter. My favourite was Felstorm, who had a natty ability to draw cards depending on the number of cards you have played in a row. Basically, if you have a deck designed to draw cards, then Felstorm sits there and says “why not draw more cards?”. Ashclaw, a shapeshifter with a wolf and owl form, is a close second.
A boring cynic would say that this has all been done before, to varying degrees. We’re inundated with roguelike deckbuilders, so what does Heroes of Magic & Cards do that makes it different? The answer to that is mostly “not much, but it does it really, really well”. While it is definitely in awe of some of its gaming ancestors, it pilfers well and with depth. The relic pool is crazily deep, and it’s possible to become disgustingly powerful. I’m still finding new enchantments for the cards, and the same goes for the events.
Progression-wise, there’s lots to unlock, too. While there are only three characters – which is admittedly on the low side – they each come with deck variants and a set of different starting relics. Plus the enemies are really well designed. Even the most basic bear or brigand has a unique approach that you have to accommodate.
Doesn’t Quite Steal Your Free Time Like Spire Does
If there’s a concern it’s that I don’t feel the narcotic-like need to play over and over with Heroes of Magic & Cards. I tend to play a run every so often, rather than no-life it. That’s mostly down to how the runs can blend together into one, and there’s a few reasons for that.
Unlike Balatro, you don’t have a stupendous ability to carve out chunks of your deck. There are enchantments that remove two or three cards, but you have a huge basic deck that you are pulling from. I rarely found myself in a situation where I had trimmed the deck to be only a set number of cards and suits, which left some pattern-matching relics and abilities feeling pointless.
I also found some relics and abilities to be essential for every deck. They were so baseline powerful – like card draw, for example – that I picked them every time. Other relics and abilities were so situational and minor that I rarely picked them. The result was a deck that, again, felt somewhat homogenous. I was playing the same shape of deck every time, regardless of character.
We’re getting a little nitpicky here, but I also found myself comparing Heroes of Magic & Cards to games like Monster Train and Slay the Spire, where you can find linchpin cards that allow you to go all-in on a build type. They are so dominant and powerful that you feel determined to build something imbalanced using them as the central building block. That never happens in Heroes of Magic & Cards, largely because the deck of cards is so big from the start, the enchantments are consequently limited in power, and the relics are generally multipurpose.
Not Quite A-list, But Firmly Near The Top Of The B-List
These finicky complaints stop Heroes of Magic & Cards from reaching the upper echelons of roguelike deckbuilders. It’s great fun to play in bursts, and absolutely has the depth of its competitors, but it also doesn’t drag you back to play, over and over. There’s not enough build variety and imbalance to leave a nagging need to return.
As a deck-head who loves a card game, though, I had a whale of a time with Heroes of Magic & Cards. It’s clearly in love with some of the giants of the genre, but not so much that it’s outright stealing, and there’s strategy and depth at every turn. The meshing of Balatro poker tricks and Slay the Spire’s structure is as strong as chainmail. If it falters, it’s in its run-variety – too often, I felt like I had played my deck before – but altogether, Heroes of Magic & Cards is a meaty and satisfying roguelike deckbuilder.
Important Links
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/heroes-of-magic-cards/9nsx26z0km21
