Intro

Combine the lanes, heroes, creeps and in-game upgrades from MOBAs with deckbuilding, randomisation and spells from CCGs and you get Artifact.

Useless fluff bit

I started playing Magic: The Gathering in 1996. In the past 25 years i have played dozens of CCGs as well as other games with deck-building. It takes some effort to pique my interest and/or surprise me. Artifact did, i'll give it that.

Actual review

Artifact is quite different from most CCGs because of its breadth, in part literally. The Elder Scrolls: Legends has two lanes with four spaces each. Artifact has three lanes with five spaces each - almost double the total amount. It's kind of like playing three games at once. Except it is way more complex.

You have attack, defend, keep track of heroes, remember when dead heroes return, get gold from slaying enemies, buy items with gold, equip items with mana, cast spells with mana, use abilities with mana, remember that creeps spawn, keep track of various cooldowns of abilities, remember lane rules, remember tower rules, manage the limited amount of movement abilities, remember that spells/units can only be cast in a lane with a hero of the right colour. And on top of all that there are a bunch of keyword abilities that don't always work like you expect. Et cetera.

Why it doesn't work

Artifact is really impressive because it manages to cram a ton of stuff into one game while still keeping it playable. Some of the elements are things i also imagined as part of the CCG that i would love to make. I really want to like it. But i don't.

First of all, the presentation is lacking. The board is too big. From what i understand originally you would only view one lane at a time and that is telling. Cards are too small. The symbols too vague. Hovering over cards doesn't enlarge them (epic fail). Double-clicking shows the stats but you still have to hover over the abilities/items. And this is shown on a somewhat transparant screen with visual effects (see screenshot below). Spells are the worst. Half the time you have no idea what happened.

Secondly, the game doesn't feel dynamic. Unit movement is limited to a few abilities and items. Once placed they can usually only attack enemies placed in front of them (or the enemy tower). Playing cards from your hand is limited by the colour of the heroes in a lane. No hero? No spells/units. And you need the little mana you have for everything. It feels stiff compared to TESL, Legends Of Runeterra, Scrolls and the like.

Thirdly, it just takes too long. You have to manage three lanes, keep track of tons of stuff, use the store and figure out what happened on a crowded board before you can think about destroying two of the three enemy towers. I enjoy the complexity, but i don't enjoy playing the game. At least, not enough to warrant investing lots of time into it. I think if Artifact had just two lanes and a store that just showed three items (no upgrading the store, etc.) it would've already helped a lot.

Finally, the game has only four different colours/factions and from what i gather 310 cards in total. And nothing will be added in the future, so you're stuck with that.

Conclusion

Richard Garfield made one of my favourite games of all time - SolForge. In this CCG each player had one lane with five spaces. Units could only attack units in the opposite space. Movement was mostly limited to a keyword ability. It was a nice simple game.

He also made Kings of Tokyo, another nice simple game in which you play a monster and you fight other monsters. You would earn money and buy abilities with it. It's a fun, quick game.

At some point after this he decided to take those two, stick them onto MtG, poured some Scrolls over it and add a bunch of other stuff and called it a game. It's neither simple nor quick. That's where it went wrong.