DC Dual Force is often called an attempt Warner Bros. Entertainment make your own Marvel Snap . In fact, about DC Dual Force became known even before the announcement Marvel Snap, It’s just that the development has been delayed – the project was planned to be released last year. It still hasn’t been released, but I got access to closed beta testing and became convinced that the new product has practically nothing in common with Snap.

Slow superheroes

If Marvel Snap famous for its five-minute matches, then DC Dual Force gameplay is much closer to Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering . Suffice it to say that the decks here consist of as many as 40 cards – their compilation takes much more time. Accordingly, matches are longer – about 15 minutes.

The playing field is divided into 12 cells – six each for the player and his opponent. Two cells on each side are occupied by leaders, famous superheroes, who mostly observe what is happening from the side and do not attack. Roughly speaking, the leader is a nexus from Legends of Runeterra: he has more health than normal creatures, but once both leaders are destroyed, the game will end. The difference is that leaders accumulate a kind of “ultimate”, unique for each character, and can use it every few turns. Someone gains attack power and is able to eliminate the target, someone generates cards, and so on.

The remaining four spaces on the field are occupied by creatures, and the system works much the same as in the recent Wildfrost: cards in front protect those behind leaders. To eliminate the enemy leader with normal attacks, you must first defeat the interfering recruits. Therefore, it is necessary to place creatures on the field with the expectation that they will be able to take the majority of the blows – if there are few healing cards or minions, each blow inflicted on the leader can significantly weaken the player.

Habitual mana or energy in DC Dual Force No. Instead, they added a resource system that greatly limits what you can do. On the first turn you have a unit of bronze resource – you can play one card with a bronze icon. The second resource already has two units. And on the third, one of the two bronze units turns into silver, that is, you get the opportunity to play one “bronze” card and one “silver”. A silver resource can be spent on playing a “bronze” card, but then it will still be lost. That is, it’s not Marvel Snap, where on the sixth move you can put five or six cheap cards on the table – here a resource unit is always equal to one card.

For this reason, when building a deck, it is very important to keep track of how many cards of each value you put in. Add too many cards with a gold icon and there will be nothing to play at the beginning of the game. Overdo it with “bronze” – you will greatly increase the chances of drawing weak cards in the last turns. The ability to shuffle the deck before the start of the battle and replace the starting cards greatly helps not to lose on the very first turns, making it possible to temporarily get rid of expensive creatures.

Tactical Thinking

When the deck is successfully constructed and an opponent is found, the fun begins – for me, every match in DC Dual Force comparable to a fascinating mathematical puzzle in which you try to use limited resources as efficiently as possible. All creatures have different abilities, and there are enough keywords that you often have to right-click on cards and read the explanations. Deploy is the local equivalent of the "Battle Cry" from Hearthstone. Shield – “Divine Shield” from the same place. Guard – "Taunt": these cards protect all leaders and creatures on your field and should be eliminated first.

There are cards that https://monsterwincasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ do something at the beginning or end of a turn – for example, generate silver resources or increase the health of leaders. There are cards that belong to the same category, and when played, synergy arises between them – like the inmates of Arkham, of which there are more than two dozen. Penguin, for example, gives +1/+1 to every cellmate on the field, hand, and deck when one of them eliminates an enemy Recruit or Leader. But it only has three “lives”, so simply placing it on a cell is pointless – you should do this only if you can get a bonus on the same move. Or put it in the back row and protect it with another creature, hoping for a miracle.

There are plenty of opportunities to strengthen your recruits, make enemy creatures weaker, influence the “ult” charge of your own and other leaders, and so on. Some characters have camouflage and cannot be attacked until the next turn, some are hunters and ignore this rule. Several cards have the Lethal keyword – they defeat any recruit with one blow, but they usually have only one “life”. Attack and health work exactly as in Hearthstone – what is the attack of your target, how much health will you lose when trying to attack it.

In addition to recruit cards, there are action cards, and their price is the same – one bronze, silver or gold resource unit.

It’s especially fun to look for the most successful synergies between leaders and the cards that are associated with them. Although there are many leaders here, there are only five classes as such, so Shazam and Zatanna may have the same cards, as well as Batman and Green Arrow. Before you build your deck, you need to choose two leaders and then draw 20 cards for each. Decks with characters of the same person will not be the most successful.

You need to look at the “ults” of the leaders. Not only can Harley Quinn attack every two turns, but she also draws a card if her hand is empty, so her deck needs to be constructed accordingly. “Shazam” creates five free “Lightning Bolt” cards every three turns that deal damage to the enemy – among the creatures associated with it, one receives an increase in stats for each card played, and another gives all recruits +1/+1 for using spells, so these “Lightning Bolts” are useful not only for eliminating enemy creatures. And “Batgirl” allows one of the recruits to activate the Deploy ability again, which also opens up many possibilities.

Knowing that Batgirl’s ultimate gives her three attack units, you can easily understand what mistake I made in this video.

Since this is a closed beta test, the balance is still poor. Some leaders require too much effort from the player. “Black Adam’s “ulta,” for example, gives him +10 to attack, but you need to charge it for as many as 10 moves, and the process speeds up only if you place creatures with an attack rating of 5 or more on the field. At the same time, playing for “Batman” seems like cheating – every two turns he generates free gadgets, among which there is not a single useless one. With them you can deal damage and return recruits to your hand to heal them and allow them to activate abilities again. The starting deck with Batman and Wonder Woman, initially available in beta, wins almost every match – when I wanted to quickly earn coins for fresh sets of cards, I just took this deck and played almost with my eyes closed.

Something to read

Everything described above is relevant for normal battles against AI and other users. But one of the key features DC Dual Force is located in another section of the menu called "Comics". This is a kind of PvE mode in which real comics are played out. The beta version includes only the graphic novel Justice League Vol. 1: Origin – about the origin of the Justice League and how Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg and Green Lantern save the world once again. Of course, they didn’t transfer all 192 pages – only passages with battles were selected.

First you read a couple of pages of a comic with simple animations (fire, flying hair, etc.), and then you participate in battles with AI, mainly facing alien parademons. The rules of the game remain familiar, but the opponent usually only has one leader with a huge supply of health, and all decks are drawn up in advance. You draw cards, play them on the usual field and try to stay alive, which is not at all difficult.

There is no nonlinearity, but it is possible to make decisions on which bonuses in battles depend. When Batman first meets Superman and begins to fight, the player is asked to choose which weapon he will take with him. If you click on the stun gun, then each time you play a card your opponent will receive an additional two units of damage. If you choose Nerve Gas, Batman will automatically eliminate the first minion of each rank played by Superman. And at the end of the comic, you are asked to choose which superhero you will fight the final boss. I’m not sure that this will affect the replayability of the novels, but the idea is interesting – you can adjust the gameplay to your playing style.

The descriptions of some cards include short summaries about the characters with their name and the date of their first appearance in the comics.

In addition, in the first comic there is an episode with a puzzle, where within six moves you need to change the red icons in the cells to blue. A special deck was created for this – cards unique to this riddle. This idea may sound stupid, but I was not without pleasure solving this puzzle – in other short stories I would also like to see similar episodes that distract from the classic battles. Completing one novel takes about half an hour.

In the full version, comics will be added to the game every week. According to the beta, DC Dual Force will offer a local equivalent of the battle pass for $10, but some comics will be available even to those who will not buy it. Holders of the “pass” are promised a mountain of gifts: unlimited access to all novels (past and future), and 10 sets of cards every month, and some promotional cards that cannot be obtained otherwise, and daily rewards. There are also a lot of goods outside the pass: sets of cards with leaders attached to them, and shirts. Prices are unknown, so it’s difficult to draw conclusions. But in beta, you had to win ten matches to save up gold for a new set of five cards – not an easy task for those with little time to play.

Overall gameplay DC Dual Force left a pleasant impression. Much is taken from other card games, including some card abilities, but in this regard it is difficult to come up with something new. The main thing is how it all fits together and what ideas the developers were able to implement. The idea with two leaders who need to be protected on a tiny field is great. Finding synergies between cards, tactically using the abilities of superheroes, solving mathematical equations to most effectively eliminate enemy recruits – the game is captivating with all of this.

It’s a pity, the battles don’t look too exciting, especially after Marvel Snap with its unique animations for many maps and locations. Everything here is mundane – cards attack each other, leaders talk, but are voiced lousy. The animations seem somewhat sluggish, and if you put actions in a queue at the end of your turn, the chain may be interrupted when the time of your turn expires, which after Hearthstone seems very unusual. The field is strange – as if it were some kind of Batman gadget. Watching the game from the outside, in my opinion, is not very exciting, especially if you don’t understand which cards do what. This is true for many card games, but from a game based on the DC universe you expect a more casual focus.

On the other hand, for fans of card games with long games and the need to think a lot DC Dual Force you might like. Apparently, this is why the creators are focusing primarily on the PC audience – a release on mobile platforms will take place someday later. Deck building is like a puzzle, and matches are even more like exciting puzzles in which you constantly make decisions. There is also an unusual PvE mode, which will be constantly updated. I’m not sure that the game will be a resounding success and millions of downloads, but it deserves attention – this is not just an attempt to put together something for the sake of competition with another comic book publisher.