Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels released last Thursday and, to be honest, when I first tried it, it didn’t grab me. I don’t know if I was in the wrong state of mind for looking at a card battler that day or if the graphics weren’t my style, but for some reason I found the gameplay confusing and unengaging despite the somewhat lengthy tutorial. After my youngest son’s encouragement to give it another look, I jumped in again this week and I can honestly say I’m really happy I did. Card Monsters is actually a solid little card battler with some unique gameplay twists that set it apart from other popular CCGs like Hearthstone and Elder Scrolls Legends .
Card Monsters Gameplay Overview
As with most card battlers, the object of Card Monsters is to destroy all your opponent’s monsters. A player’s hand consists of eight monsters and eight items. Monsters are your troops and items are things like weapons, armor and spells that can be equipped to enhance your monsters. There are three slots in which players can deploy monsters and each monster has a slot to equip an item. Each turn, players receive three crystals/manna for laying monsters or equipping items. If all of your manna isn’t used that turn, what’s left over is added to manna for your next turn. The really tricky thing about Card Monsters is the positions from which you play your cards.
Monsters come in one of four attack styles: Magic, Melee, Ranged and Chaos. There are three slots where players can deploy Monsters which are labeled with number one (center), two (left) and three (right). Players must place cards in numbered order. You can place any monster you want to in any slot, but the slots only allow specific monsters to attack from them. Slot one allows attack by Magic, Chaos or Melee monsters, while slots two and three allow for Magic, Chaos or Ranged attackers. Since cards must be deployed in numbered order, it takes real strategy to design a good deck and deploy cards effectively. In addition to having attack styles, monsters and items also come in six different colors/races so to equip an item on a specific monster, the item’s color must match. One exception is the silver class of items, which can be placed on any monster, but the cost to equip them is higher. Card Monsters makes itself even a little more complex in that specific attack types target different things. For example, melee attackers always attack the monster right in front of them first, while ranged attackers will prioritize attacking the monster in the corner diagonal from it.
There are a wide variety of cards and items available in the game and with each level you move up, you have the opportunity to get better and rarer cards in your packs. Once I got the hang of things, I spent the better part of yesterday obsessively grinding through the levels and tweaking my deck. A slightly annoying part of the game is that you have to wait until level 15 to save more than one deck. This makes it aggravating to test new things because you don’t want to forget a good deck that was working for you. Card Monsters allows for two modes of gameplay currently -- an Arena mode for PvP battles that are either ranked and unranked, and an Events mode where players battle for special card packs and prizes. There are seasons for the ranked Arena mode, at the end of which players receive prizes depending on their Arena level. At level 11 players can unlock guilds, but currently they don’t have a lot of purpose. In a Facebook Live Q&A session , the developers did indicate more is coming in terms of guild wars and such, but for now they are focused on ironing out any bugs that have arisen after the worldwide release.
As I mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of the graphics as the design seems somewhat juvenile, but this is just a personal preference. If you’re a sucker for card battlers, Card Monsters is well worth checking out. The download is free and available now on both the Apple App and Google Play stores.
