Great TCG, one of the best I – Cabals: Magic & Battle Cards Review

I was stupid huge into Magic: The Gathering in its early years, only quitting the game out of frustration with the endless money milking and mechanics recycling (but missing it over a decade later all the same). What made M:TG the game it was, as opposed to the countless wannabes that followed, was that the game design had come before anything else. So, it is no small thing when I say that Cabals is the first TCG that I've played since that first M:TG game in 1995 that I see the game comes before the setting and, most importantly, before attempting to milk the players of their money. This is a wonderful little game and it doesn't take long to grasp the fundamentals - a fine example of the "easy to learn, difficult to master" catch phrase. It plays tight and fast and is its own game. It's not trying to be M:TG (*cough*Shadow Era*cough), and it's not trying to figure out how to draw some nebulous link between an expensive licensed property and playing cards like so many of the TCGs that have come and gone in the past two decades, card games where the game was obviously an after thought to the commercial product. Instead, you can see that the designers had a cohesive vision for the game and have executed it near flawlessly with a stripped down set of mechanics that, instead of being bogged down in numerous turn phases and arcane timing resolutions, find their complexity through a set of varied game boards that change the way you need to approach each game. The artwork is distinctive and good stuff, albeit nothing amazing, and the back story, like M:TG, works with the card game to give it framework. The interface is about as close to perfect as you're going to get on a small screen like this (although there is room for improvement for some things like the opposing player name and a log of moves). The weakest point to the game is that it has a relatively small card set (~20 cards per faction) and not a huge variety of deck strategies. On the other hand, even with such a small card pool, factions are fairly distinct and there actually are balanced deck strategies. Still, an expansion is planned for early 2012 and the designers have a road map to carry this game through the foreseeable future. For the grand old price of $0 they set you up with a constructed starter favoring one of the four factions and enough premium currency to grab a booster and some singles. There is a solid single player "campaign" where you can take on ever increasingly better AIs. Playing through the single player portion of the game (while connected to the internet) earns additional free random cards, even uncommons and rares, and a future update will allow unwanted and extra cards to be traded in for cards you do need and want. If you do find you like the game and want more, the cost is very reasonable, and they sell singles and playable "box sets" at fair prices. It's a good compromise with most conventions of physical TCGs supported, but adapted to the digital existence. If you've ever enjoyed TCGs at all, give this game a chance.
Review by Chip H. on Cabals: Magic & Battle Cards.