Hey guys! Today I got something new to present. This is probably going to be a one-off just present you a pretty cool card game I found a couple of days ago and it seems great so far, but you never know, I think I'm getting hooked right now. The main appeal of the game is that it is mostly focused on a 2v2 mode which gives a cool and different dynamic to a card game. You can play it with your buddy and make some crazy strategies with two decks that synergize with one another, enabling you to be really creative with your strategy. The game is made by Rockgames Studio, an independent game developer from Brazil. I gotta give it to them, they've made an interesting game right here. ManaRocks is a free-2-play game that you can find on Steam.

Unlocking Cards is Easy

This is something I really like because the game feels more accessible. The game isn't forcing you to grind for months to unlock the cards and really start enjoying the game. Instead, you unlock them through the story mode where you battle different bosses and after each victory, you unlock their cards and even whole pre-made decks that can give you an idea for the strategies involving those cards. As in any card game, bots are quite easy to beat so even beginners won't struggle too much to progress further and increase their collection. There are over 200 cards currently in the game and they keep releasing more as more bosses are added in the story mode. You can unlock ALL of the cards in this mode in just a couple of hours.

Deckbuilding Gives A Lot of Options

For starters, there are 6 Heroes to choose from. But unlike most card games, that doesn't constrict you to use only cards that belong in that class. Rather, you can choose to play any cards but there are some incentives to build around the cards that "belong" to your class, and we will talk about that a bit later. There are 3 types of cards, Creatures, Sorceries, and Artifacts.

Creatures are exactly what you'd expect. They have attack and health that determine their stats and of course, some of them have a tribal tag that often involves some kind of synergies. They can also have effects that trigger when played, destroyed, or meet specific conditions.

Sorceries, aka Spells are also nothing really new. You use them to control the board, heal, deal damage, buff creatures, and whatnot.

Artifacts are similar to relics/weapons but instead of equipping them to your hero, you can put in play 2 of them at the same time, and both you and your dueling partner can use them. They have a durability stat that most often shows you how many times they can be used to do a certain thing. Some relics are reactionary and get used up when your opponent (or you) makes a specific action, like summoning a creature or using a sorcery.

Hero Powers Keep Evolving

If you are a Gods Unchained or Hearthstone player, you should be familiar with the Hero (God) Power concept. In this game, every Hero can level up their Power during the game, by playing cards of their color so even though you can use any cards in your deck, you are incentivized to use the cards with the color that corresponds to your hero. As it evolves, it gets stronger and even gains additional effects that can create a bigger impact later in the game. And when you level it up to max level (4) you trigger a really strong effect, but only once per game.

Unique Mana System

Each turn you get 1 max hero mana. Hero mana is always of your color and a maximum you can get is 9 mana, except if you get more mana with some effects. As you might've noticed in the deckbuilding image, cards can have their mana cost split into a colored and uncolored (grey) mana. In-game, uncolored mana will be shown as if it is of the color that corresponds to your hero.

In the example above, you can see that we got 3 mana and are able to play a card that costs 1 Yellow and two Green mana but we only have Green and are still able to play it. What happens when we do that is that 1 mana got converted to yellow. Throughout the turns, we will still only increase our main mana (in this case) but now we will always have 1 yellow to spend too. Because of this, now we will effectively have less mana if we want to play cards of our main color so you need to be careful when doing so. You can repeat this for other colors too and you will always convert your main mana to these colors. Playing multiple colored decks has the advantage of wast options and types of effects but the downside is that you will have a harder time using your mana efficiently.

It is a bit confusing at first but playing a couple of games will help you grasp the way this system works. I find this concept pretty unique and interesting. It gives you a lot more to think about when crafting your deck.

Fighting With Creatures - Backline and Frontline

Normally, when you play a creature it enters the board in the Frontline and it can attack right away. You can choose to trade with your opponent's creature or if they don't have anything in frontline you can attack their hero directly. When a creature attacks it goes in the backline until the beginning of your next turn.

When trading, if you are attacking a creature in the frontline, creatures attack each other and deal with their damage. If the defending creature is in the backline, they don't retaliate with their damage so you gotta think twice before spending your attack action that sends your creature in the backline. You can't attack backline creatures if your opponent has something on the frontline.

There are some exceptions though. Creatures with Sneak keyword, are always in the backline but they can still attack and the rules above are applied normally, but they never retaliate when defending. Creatures with Alert keyword, are always in the frontline even if you attack with them, meaning they are the best defenders of your other units and your hero.

2v2 Action

In 2v2 matches, both players on the same team share one side of the board. You both have your own mana and play at the same time. You can see your partner's hand so it is easier to make a plan before committing your mana. You can have up to 6 creatures and 2 artifacts on the board. Both of you can decide to attack with creatures and use artifacts so having some communication with your partner really helps so I recommend you to have your buddy on discord to develop your strategy more easily.

To win the game you need to kill both opponent's heroes. But when you kill one of them, they continue to play, although they aren't able to use their hero power for the rest of the game, so focusing on one opponent at the time seems like the way to go. Primarily you'd want to focus a hero with more threatening or more leveled up hero power.

Building your deck for a 2v2 goes to another whole level, where both you and your partner can adapt to each other and create really crazy strategies that in a 1v1 just wouldn't be possible. It also makes different decks viable that wouldn't be as playable without the support from the second deck.

Cosmetics

For a card game, there are quite a lot of cosmetics you can work with. For the cards, there are three parts as you can see in the image, Back, Border, and Center. You can also change the frame around your hero and a frame around your nickname. There are plenty of emotes to choose from also.

You unlock some cosmetics while leveling up your account, by doing daily and even weekly missions (quests) and just by playing the ranked mode.

There is also like a Season Pass, here called a Mana Pass, that gives you extra cosmetics and other rewards. This is the only thing in the game that you need to pay for, to buy coins, and get your Pass but this is also made in a generous way. Because while you are leveling up during the season, you unlock coins that can pay for your next season and so on, so you actually need to make only one purchase and you are good for every new season if you are planning to play the game at least somewhat actively.

I gotta admit my friend and I had quite some fun playing together, coming up with wacky strategies. We played some funny Milling decks that focus on clearing and controlling the board the whole game while we force our opponents to deck out and lose by dying to fatigue damage. It's just a totally new experience, at least for me, to build a deck along with another player and to work out what are plan is each turn. It can get quite messy sometimes when we miscommunicate our intentions but its funny when we see that it happened to our opponents as well.

I highly encourage you guys to try the game out. It is free, and as I said, you can get your in no time and enjoy the game fully.

Thank you for reading!

,z3ll