Flawed Tactics

This review was originally negative. That will not change. However to explain the problem I’m going to explain my most recent run as of this review. I was screwed. My biggest problem with the game is the market. It is present in all forms of the game regardless of if you are solo. This market tracks the popular creatures and spells with adjustments accordingly. In theory this balances out costs based on usage. In reality it takes the best stuff, most powerful strategies, and coolest ideas then makes them all unviable. This includes the starting creatures. This day I found all of the good stuff overpriced as usual. That was fine for early rounds because filling the board with quantity had a quality all its own. Unfortunately I was progressing through difficulties and spam wasn't really cutting it. My cheap roster included a bunch of things that nobody wanted; that included me. However I had a plan to beat the system. There is a sheep that multiplies every round its on the board. Zero attack; cheap for a reason. There was also a spell that would transform a creature into something random. This was a bad plan because anyone would obviously take better cards from the start, but at least it was A plan. Every round I tried to get something decent out until a sheep landed in the back to populate. Then the rolling began and it went poorly. Partly its because some better monster have a set up and other times I got garbage anyway. This run in question started bumpy. Each run you can lose twice before the wipe. I edged out a tie before taking a loss; mole and flower were good, but not game enders. I started to get a field, but nothing amazing. Near the end I got swarmed by bunnies and they consumed everything. With game on the line I doubled down. The one expensive spell I had was the ability to field more monsters; I invested heavily. Thanks to aggressive breeding and poor rolls I had a wall of cheap bodies to tank hits. The one thing I didn’t have was good range. In place of a real strategy it was throwing cacti, shrubs, rage monsters; whatever I’d been given to swarm. It was enough until the final round. I got lined up against a similar wall except they had a developed back line complete with someone practicing necromancy. My backline was a dude lobbing softballs. However in my back pocket I had a bunch of those absolute garbage spells. Specifically the one that turns your own monsters into assassins letting me select the target. The fight started and the mole popped up right next to that healer followed by my entire offense flowing in behind. Turns out the one monster who needed that revive was the healer with it. Rest of that backline collapsed turning into a flank. A brutal win for an incremental increase. What my story omits are the many runs that had no hope. The tens of attempts where things never came together or enemy (seemingly not suffering from current economy) was simply oppressive. I think the game has a good idea that is also a fundamental flaw.