More often than not, flash strategy card games have disappointed so I was quite pleased when I opened up Necronomicon 2.0 and started playing. The game will please any Magic: The Gathering fan and is fun even for the casual gamer. The rules are pretty simple and the effects are pretty basic in this game. You cast spells to damage your opponent or prevent damage and summon creatures in order to kill your enemy. There are ranks in this game and the goal is to try to reach rank 30 before your opponent does. Advancing in rank unlocks more cards but you don’t get new cards every round.

The game centers around two things, life and sanity. Life is your health and if it drops to or below zero, you die. Sanity is kind of like your “Mana” that you need to cast spells. You cannot cast spells that make you go below -10 sanity. Cards are one of a few types. They either let you summon a creature, damage the opponent, gain life, or gain sanity. Creatures work differently in this game that in Magic because they do not actually attack. Rather, they counter-attack after your opponent has damaged you. The damage they do on the counter attack is their attack power minus the attack power of whatever creature your opponent has. So, in this respect, they are a retro-active and not pro-active source of damage. You can only have one creature at a time so having a lot of creature cards won’t help you. The main dealers of damage will be your damage cards as that is what you will be playing most of the time.

One thing I really liked about this game is the difficulty level. It doesn’t feel like you are playing against a retarded monkey or a magical genie which makes the AI fairly balanced. I didn’t win my first game because I did not understand the mechanics very well, yet I was able to pick up and win afterwards.

One thing to note on the game mechanics is that taint cards are very powerful. The number of taint points you have is the amount of life you lose at the end of each turn. They are cumulative and can stack up. You can’t get rid of them except using specific cards so if you don’t draw the right cards and are tainted, your pretty screwed. Taint cannot kill you, it will only take you down to one life. If you are at one life, the taint will go away. However, if you are heavily tainted, it will cost you the game as you will have to use your turns just to counter the effects of taint. Its also a decent way to kill your opponent.

A lot of this game depends on luck of the draw though and playing counters to whatever your opponent is playing. Making cards work together in harmony is also important. For instance invulnerability against next attack cards go very well with strong monster cards as you will not take damage from your opponent’s next attack but your monster will damage him. Always save a few banish cards to kill your opponent’s monsters that get in the way. It takes a while to win your way up to level 30 and every few rounds will present new challenges and new cards to use.

Although this game is not as in-depth as Magic: The gathering and the deck is not nearly as deep, it has enough variety and substance for a casual card game. If you want to play a flash card game with magic and sorcery, check this game out.

Other plays:

Mini Moto — Race around many tracks in pocket racers.

Save the Witness — Keep the witness alive from would-be killers.

Tags: necronomicon

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Strategy/war Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.