Friday Timewaster

Duel of Champions is a CCG based on the venerable Might & Magic franchise. It's free-to-play and easier to learn than Magic: The Gathering. It separates itself from the latter game by adding a few twists like strategic physical positioning of cards and random persistent effects and electives (called events) which affect both players. The average match lasts about 15 minutes, though they can push up to 45 minutes if you're very evenly matched with your opponent. If you like M:TG by don't have oodles of money to spend playing the online version, I encourage you to give it a spin. Nothing to lose but a very small download.

If you decide to try it, I'll offer a couple pieces of advice. First, once you have completed the tutorial and the first part of the single player campaign, you should have a sufficient quantity of the rare currency type to buy The Box booster pack. You'll find online matches much more manageable after that, as you'll get a few rare cards in it. Secondly, like modern M:TG the matches tend to be creature-heavy. Spell-based decks are very difficult to play and depend too much on luck, in my opinion. Keep your spell card counts low, bulk up on inexpensive creatures, and you'll probably find you're more competitive.

If the preceding made no sense to you whatsoever, it's a complex card game. Think of it as bridge, poker and cribbage all mixed up with a large dollop of Dungeons & Dragons.


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