Any hardcore mobile gamer can tell you that both iTunes and the Google Play store are inundated with shallow collectible card game clones where strategy is stripped out in favor of microtransactions and nearly automated play. Most of the time, you can barely call the games CCGs — you simply match up one “card’s” stats with an opponent’s and the higher numbers win. While certain mechanics from this new rash of games are here to stay — like “fusing” units to increase stats, or spending stamina points to be able to play — various games have broken free from the chains of mobile mediocrity and provide a truly deep experience. They are few and far between in the current mobile gaming landscape, however, these nine titles stand out from the rabble, and may even take some time away from your console sessions.
Heavenstrike Rivals
iOS, Android: Free
Despite the seemingly nonsensical and dramatic name, Heavenstrike Rivals is a great mobile CCG. You can earn both powerful cards (basically units) and the game’s premium currency, Cores, for free by playing through the game’s single-player story mode and recurring missions. Once you’ve built a sufficient deck, called a squad, you can take your units into battle against other players from around the world or in special matches against AI, earning new rewards in different ranked PvP leagues and timed events.
In both single-player and PvP, battles take place on a 7 x 3 grid where players can summon units from a maximum pool of 10 mana, with two mana generating at the start of each player’s turn. Units have a set number of spaces they can move per turn, and once they reach the perch on which the opponent stands, they’ll attack and damage the opponent’s health, winning the match when it reaches zero. Units not only have different stats and skills, however, both can be leveled up in power.
Heavenstrike Rivals not only sports depth, however, features gorgeous art and a Final Fantasy pedigree: Ryoma Ito, character designer for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, designed characters for the game, and Ryo Yamazaki, music composer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, did the music.
Heavenstrike Rivals is perhaps the most in-depth CCG designed specifically for mobile, and you can not only start playing for free, however, easily earn a viable squad for free as well just by playing through the story.
Calculords
iOS, Android: $2.99
A unique take on a digital CCG, Calculords combines the genre’s traditional units and collect-em-all mentality with a new twist on summoning mana. Instead of plopping down land cards like in Magic: the Gathering or having a finite number of mana generate at the start of each turn (as is the current industry trend), Calculords makes you do (somewhat) simple math to summon your units.
You have two decks: one loaded with your units, and one loaded with single-digit numbers. Both decks randomly draw cards per turn, however, in order to summon a unit to send down the lane and damage your opponent, you have to meet their summoning cost by adding, subtracting, or multiplying numbers from your number deck. The more powerful a unit, the more difficult its summoning cost is to reach — six is easy peasy to math, however, 113 wouldn’t be. You get bonuses if you use up all of your number and unit cards per turn — including getting to summon again — so the challenge lies in mathing just right.
Calculords is not only fun, however, the retro art style looks great, and the game is packed with humor. It’s cheap at just three bucks, and the (even cheaper) in-app purchases unlock new card sets to earn, so you can’t pay your way to victory.
Hearthstone
iOS, Android: Free
Duh. Moving on.
Cards and Castle>
iOS, Android: Free
At first glance, Cards and Castles looks more like a lane-based CCG than a more traditional tabletop CCG, however, the more you play, the more it becomes apparent that it’s aping Blizzard’s Hearthstone and adding lanes. You use cards to summon units, perform feats of skill or magic, or construct buildings that bestow squad-wide enchantments, then aim your army at the opponent’s base by moving them around the field. Being able to move units around the field is a fun mechanic for a CCG, however, below the cutesy exterior lies a game that owes its whole foundation to Blizzard’s mega-popular digital CCG.
Each player’s base has 30 life — like Hearthstone — and you automatically regenerate your mana at the beginning of each turn, with two being added to the max until you reach 10 — like Hearthstone. There are single-player campaigns that you can purchase to unlock the ability to earn new cards (like Hearthstone), and there’s a draft mode that costs and pays out rewards in nearly the exact same manner as Hearthstone. You can even hold a max of three quests per day that, when completed, will award you with in-game currency. Like Hearthstone.
With Cards and Castles, though, imitation is the best form of flattery. The game is good, the cutesy visuals are appealing, and adding the units’ field movement into the mix — opposed to Hearthstone’s static cards-on-a-table schtick — is refreshing and adds an extra layer of strategy that can help counteract the randomness of drawing from a deck. If you like the rewards structure of Hearthstone and are clamoring for some SRPG elements like in, say, Fire Emblem, then this is the game you should bring into the bathroom.
Card City Nights
iOS, Android: $1.99
Unlike most CCGs, Card City Nights is strictly a single player affair. The game doesn’t even have in-app purchases — you simply earn cards throughout the campaign. Even though the replayability of a CCG is primarily thanks to surprising your opponent with your sweet rare cards — and having human opponents in the first place — what makes Card City Nights a staple in any digital CCG collection is the amazing coloring book-like aesthetics, and that the game mechanics are very similar to Final Fantasy IX’s Tetra Master. Remember how, after playing FFVIII and FFIX, you always wanted either Triple Triad or Tetra Master as official, standalone games? For now, Card City Nights is the closest you’re going to get (unless you’re a masochist and love the terrible rendition of Triple Triad available through the Final Fantasy Portal app).
You’ll walk around a coloring book-like town, tapping on hot spot locations that eventually lead to card battles. Unlike Tetra Master, where players place cards on the same board, CCN gives players their own boards for their own cards. Each card has arrows that “link” to other cards so long as the arrows are pointing the right way, just like Tetra Master. So, matching up cards (on your own board) with certain affects — like damaging the opponent, or generating defense points for yourself — is how to gain advantages and defeat opponents.
For a cheap single-player game, Card City Nights not only has impressive visuals and a fun story, however, has surprisingly deep, fairly unique gameplay. Best of all, you don’t need to have an internet connection available to play (unlike nearly any mobile CCG), so you can scratch that CCG itch while on the train home from work, or when you’re stuck in an elevator.
Scrolls
iOS (no longer in development), Android: Free to try
Mojang announced that the servers will be shut down July 1, 2016, however, proceeds will go to making sure the game is playable for as long as possible.
After Minecraft changed the gaming landscape, fans eagerly wondered what their new favorite game developer would do next. The answer was Scrolls, a lane-based digital CCG. It didn’t take the world by storm like Minecraft did — then again, nothing else has — however, it’s a fun, unique implementation of a digital CCG.
Gameplay is similar to the other lane-based entrants on this list; you spend mana to summon units, then your units mosey down their lanes with the goal of damaging your opponent’s idols at the other end. Once three out of five idols are smashed, a victor is declared and the loser pours over his decks, tweaking them throughout the night in shame. Whereas in other games summoning mana is often automatically generated per turn, Scrolls requires players to sacrifice cards from their own hands to increase their total mana.
You can earn in-game currency and purchase cards and packs from the in-game shop, or you can shell out real cash for premium currency to purchase those very same cards and packs. The game has cross-platform play on PC, Mac, and Android. An iOS version was on the way, however, development for that was stopped.
Earthcore: Shattered Elements
iOS: Free
Unlike most popular CCGs, the main method of determining combat in Earthcore: Shattered Elements eschews numbers in favor of colors — water, fire, earth — presented as elements in a rock-paper-scissors format. Water beats fire, fire beats earth, earth beats water. Each round, players place a card in one of three slots in their respective rows, and at the end of each phase, the elements of the cards directly across from one another are compared. Cards do, in fact, have numbers — risk values — however, those numbers only determine how much damage to deal to a player when their card loses an element comparison.
The game has a few modes you’d expect and want in a CCG, like a single-player campaign where you can earn (a surprisingly decent amount of) cards to get started, the player-versus-player endgame, and special events and tournaments. Games are fast, however, the limitation to three cards per round doesn’t actually diminish the strategy, as cards have various skills you can activate to quickly change the course of battle.
Earthcore is definitely freemium — spend real money to buy card packs — however, unlike most free mobile games, there isn’t a stamina or energy gauge arbitrarily limiting how several matches you can play per hour, so you can grind to your heart’s content. It doesn’t take very long to earn enough in-game currency to purchase card packs without spending real cash, however, after you finish the single-player campaign, the grind does become more real.
Earthcore also has a very welcome feature that may seem strange to count as such: the game is set in the portrait orientation. This implies you can play with one hand and one thumb — you won’t need to put down your sandwich, or frantically grab hold of the bus or train’s pole every time you pass over a bump during your morning commute.
Magic: The Gathering – Puzzle Quest
iOS: Free, Android: Free
Unlike the other Puzzle Quest tie-ins — the Marvel and Adventure Time flavors — Magic: The Gathering – Puzzle Quest isn’t just a new coat of paint on top of old mechanics. Sure, you still match gems for mana, however, you not only assume the role of different Planeswalkers that can cast different powers, you also build a deck using familiar CCG mechanics.
The single player campaign is barely fleshed out; it’s nothing more than MtGPQ matches against the AI with various artwork displayed as the setting — there’s no real story here. You earn two types of in-game currency — a premium currency that can buy premium card packs, and a more plentiful type that doubles as character experience. Once you build a decent deck, you can take your Planeswalker online to duel real-life people for both currency and leaderboard ranking.
The quest, currency, and event mechanics are what you’d expect from a free-to-play mobile game nowadays — you even need to check in with a central server, and thus can’t play without data of WiFi available — however, the game is both surprisingly fun and deep.
Mavenfall
iOS: Free, Android: Coming soon
Blue Tea Games’ Mavenfall — don’t let the somewhat cringe-worthy name fool you — is a pretty good, unique mobile CCG. The game consists of what can be considered two decks. One “deck” is composed of your Mavens (five allowed per “deck” out of over 20 total choices), which are hero characters that have their own unique set of cards, which in turn compose your second “deck.” Your hand consists of cards you draw (up to three per turn) from each of your Maven’s class decks, and can be cast within the confines of the standard mana mechanic where you gain an extra mana per turn up to a total of 10. Your goal is to use these cards to wipe out your opponent’s team of Mavens.
The game has the usual list of digital CCG features — unranked and ranked ladder PvP, a set of single player missions that get you some mavens and their cards, and various ways to earn both in-game and premium currency. The game has an appealing hand-drawn art style, and considering the amount of mavens you can use and encounter (each with their own unique set of cards), the game is pretty deep.
If there are any complaints, it’s that, for some reason, the game seems pretty harsh on mobile batteries; my brand-new iPhone 6S has about a five-to-seven percent battery loss per match, and matches are pretty quick. The cash shop prices are also pretty rough: a pack of 10 cards (standard size) from the premium currency pull (higher chances for better stuff) costs about $35. Considering there are over 20 mavens, and each maven has up to eight cards per their unique deck, the prices are insanely steep. These prices aren’t like other CCGs, where $50 will get you a very large chunk of a current set; in Mavenfall, $50 won’t even get you two packs, or 20 cards. To be fair, there are multiple ways to earn premium currency for free to get you started, however, eventually those avenues slow to a trickle — an obvious move to get you hooked.
Aside from the battery and pricing issues, the game is extremely well done, and you can get a pretty robust set without spending a dime.
The best of the best
We didn’t include any “real” Magic: The Gathering affairs on mobile because, c’mon, if you’re actively looking for a new CCG, chances are you’ve already made some kind of decision about traditional MtG. For now, these nine digital CCGs are the best you’ll find on the major mobile platforms. They offer strategy and depth that’s unparalleled on mobile, and most are either constantly updating with new content or unique live events, or pack enough depth under the hood to begin with.
You can’t go wrong with any of the above, unless, of course, you have an addiction to opening packs that previously ruined your life. Then you’re boned.