Vanguard Exiles

It's got a great foundation. However, this DEFINITELY is an early access game. The replayability factor is, as it stands, lacking. There are core functions and features missing, for example, a decklist, or a form of personal progression outside of the roguelike element.

Very fun auto battler

Edit: May 18, 2026: The devs are amazing and have sacrificed so much for this game. Recent updates have made a lot of really massive improvements to the game. New zones are fantastic, actions are diverse and fun, many mechanics have improved. The devs are extremely involved with their players and take feedback seriously, often discussing things in Discord. Many improvements to the game have come as a result. I love this game and consider myself one of its biggest stans, so understand that my following criticisms come from a place of passion. The game is absolutely beautiful, clever, strategically interesting, and tons of fun. It has tons of potential and the core concept is really something special. I still 100% recommend picking it up and trying it. I sincerely hope that I can come back to this review in a few months and update it after the game's direction improves closer to its version 1 release. That being said... The current state of the game is worrisome. I'm a competitive player, so my review comes from there. Currently, I don't have confidence that this game will offer much to players who want to hone their skills vs. other players in any serious competitive manner. I hope to be proven wrong. Much of my gripes are balance-related but extend to fundamental design issues. The devs, in some ways, seem... resistant to balance tuning. The game features "basic" units, which are the foundation of a squad in a lot of ways. They are the units you start each game with, and the only unit that appears every buy round and costs 0 gold. These basic units are grossly imbalanced. It has been an issue since I started playing and the current iteration is worse than ever. Devs have been very resistant to tuning these despite feedback, even going so far as to drastically change other parts of the game to marginalize the role of these early units. In my opinion, this marked a major turning point towards some really bad design decisions. The economy has been tweaked to accelerate income in the later game, allowing purchase of powerful units. Costed units globally saw their stats increased(which I like). I fear that the goal here was to make basic units less important by making high costed units more important. The result to me is a game that is unbalanced in even more areas than it was before. Card stats are extremely coarse and this has been a recurring barrier to balance because changes that change a stat by only 1 integer can change a card from unplayable to overpowered. Certain combat mechanics have been problematic and make me question decision making. There is a stat called ranged evade that makes ranged attacks miss at up to 50% rate. One faction's basic unit, the Skeleton, has this. Another faction's basic unit is the Ranger, which is a ranged attacker(lol). This basically means if you bring Rangers to a Skeleton fight, you lose before the match begins. There are more examples like this of mechanics that seem like they weren't well thought-out in terms of how they play and impact the game. I know not everyone is a sweaty try-hard like me but this game really does have the potential to offer a very engaging competitive, strategic experience. I've have had the pleasure of meeting, chatting with, and playing against some great players who share a similar competitive passion for the game. If The Tea Division wants to capture and retain this demographic, they will need to greatly improve how the game is balanced. In an ideal world with infinite time and resources, I'd love to see a more serious approach to balance tuning and design. Maybe TTD could hire someone to take on this role. Part of it is data collection(and the ability to analyze it properly). Part of it needs to be heuristics and understanding how the game is played at different skill levels and by different types of players. At one point in early access we had a series of experimental patches on a separate test build of the game with great results. I think the ability to quickly iterate and test balance changes should be a permanent fixture of the development pipeline in *some* capacity. Edit: October 1, 2025 - See my [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/2745490/eventcomments/599665005654424037/#c599665005654617671]writeup on the current state of the game with the v0.3.3.3348 major update.[/url] Original review: Clever, elegant, and fun game. You draft your army from a deck, after every round like most auto battlers. The deck mechanic is really cool. You get 4 deck slots. Decks are completely randomly generated with no user customization, which might seem like a letdown at first but here's the cool part: every day you can choose one of your decks to completely reroll, so you end up maintaining a "stable" of 3 or 4 of your favorite decks. Because deck composition is more or less out of your control other than which ones you choose to keep, each deck feels really distinct. You end up learning how to play each one. Unlike other strategy games where you might carefully craft your deck, and everyone is running around with manicured meta decks, this game focuses more on the exploration of the cards you are dealt(just like real life! har har). The "meta" in this game, if there even is one, is thus filled with interesting and diverse experiences. I feel like whoever designed this game should make a card game because they would probably be good at it. This is an early access game. So far, that has been a positive aspect of the game for me. The discord channel is filled with discussions about the game, its development, people making suggestions, and sharing excitement about 1v1 matches. The community seems pretty friendly and mature except for this one guy(you know who you are). If you like auto battlers, this one is worth trying out in my opinion. Jump in Discord and hang out. Read my [url=https://www.notion.so/Guide-by-nodnarb21-1e3b6ce09b7080acbf6ec32afc6e5e74?source=copy_link]Vanguard Exiles Guide[/url]