Clash of the Dragons on Facebook offers a simplistic take on collectible card games

If you're like me, and have a love for collectible card games (CCGs), but don't have an active group to play them with in the real world, you're likely clamoring for a card game to play digitally, at any time, whether you're with friends or not. 5th Planet Games may not have reinvented the wheel when it comes to their Facebook CCG Clash of the Dragons, but they have streamlined the battle process enough to satisfy both casual gamers and give established fans a way to scratch that itch in between real world battles.

Clash of the Dragons offers a fairly cliche story in a fantasy setting, as you travel across a map fighting monsters and other enemies of varying strengths, earning experience points and spending energy as you go. Each fight requires you to spend a certain amount of energy to even enter, which limits your gameplay sessions to a shorter duration, but once you enter into battle, they can take quite a bit of time to complete depending on how larger you or your opponent's deck happen to be.

You see, instead of having an intricate health system, your health here is determined solely by the number of cards you have in your deck, with the object being to make your opponent spend or otherwise lose all of their cards before the same can happen to you. There tend to be just two numbers on each card. In the top left is the amount of damage the card does, and on the right is the amount of defense points you're given for when your opponent fights back on their next turn.

For instance, the Lesser Lightning Bolt card does two damage, and has one defense point. After playing it, I would force my enemy to discard two cards from its hand, and would gain a single defense point on my own deck. If they then counterattacked with an attack of two points, I would only have to discard one card, instead of two.

Battle becomes slightly more complicated with the inclusion of buff and healing cards, with buffs giving you some sort of status enhancement that holds until you complete another task (for instance, you may receive a chance to score a critical hit the next time you use a weapon card, rather than magic), and healing cards allowing you to pull cards out of the discard pile (the graveyard) and put them back in your deck.

For the most part, that pretty much sums up each battle (I told you it was fairly streamlined). You'll play in turn-based combat until one of you runs out of cards, and if you happen to win, you'll receive the spoils: coins, experience points, etc. Outside of the campaign, there are two multiplayer modes to take part in. The first is straight up player-vs-player card combat, which sees you taking on another real-world player, while the other places you on the same team as other real-world players, being placed against a larger boss to combine you efforts. If you have friends that play the game, you can also play against their decks when they're not around, just to give yourself something to do.

All told, the gameplay in Clash of the Dragons, outside of each battle, is fairly limited. You can spend skill points to boost the stats of your character, and you'll unlock classes as you level up that will give you more specific advantages in battle. You'll also be able to craft new, stronger cards by using leftover cards that may not be worthwhile in your deck any longer, but it seems as though actually acquiring enough cards to craft might take some time (as card packs cost quite a few coins each, or can also be purchased with premium currency).

Will Clash of the Dragons be strong enough to battle the likes of Magic: The Gathering, even in the real world? That's highly unlikely (as it sits at just 48,000 monthly players), but if you've always been interested in the most simple mechanics associated with a collectible card game, but didn't want to be overwhelmed by a multitude of rules, this one is a pretty great place to start.

Play Clash of the Dragons on Facebook -->

Do you enjoy collectible card games? Have you ever found a digital version that is as good as playing a card game in the real world? What do you think of Clash of the Dragons? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.