Board Game Arena

Has anyone tried this yet? It took me days to be able to get on, then I was so angered by the "tutorial" that I did not finish it. The game starts by giving you 35000 gold coins. You HAVE to push a button to accept them. Then you have to spend them. There appear to be various options, but you have to choose the most expensive one. After you have 8 cards you have to assemble a deck. I wanted draft mode, I dont even want cards or a deck, but whatever. BTW, did I mention that the terms of service CLEARLY say that they can remove content you have bought and paid for for no reason and they do not have to compensate you in any way? Back on topic. The decks I think cost points to "forge". They can only be used so many times before they must be forged again. Probably not for free. Also I think you have to buy "potions" if you want unlimited games for a period of time. I'm not sure about those last ones cause it was at this point I quit the app. I may go back later but I was upset. Also, the art is done in some kind of painting style... I didn't really like it, but that's kinda minor. My main worry is that they may remove this game from bga to force people onto the app. Sorry for the rant. I LOVE this game, but this app is so disappointing...

EDIT: The developer responded to my review and said ghe game is completely free to play, so that makes some of it better. Not sure what kind of time investment we're talking here. Potions may be a subscription service though. I cant tell.

2nd EDIT: I made a deck. I was forced to play immediately. There was no explanation at all. I thought noble problem... but i was trying to figure out why the opponent wasn't limited to 6 mana to start - different rules i guess - when I was attacked. I guess it's real time for real. It didn't wait for me to move. Then I thought I better get to playing fast, but I couldn't figure out how to play a card. I couldn't find any instructions on the interface. I couldn't talk to the other player to ask. I just watched myself lose in real time. I FELT STUPID. It was embarrassing. If I had known I would have spent real money not to have that experience.

Hello,
I tried the app as well but I did not have the rule issue you mention. The rules in the app seemed correct to me. However, after playing for a few days, I uninstalled the app because it was too frustrating, for the following reasons:

1) it is very difficult to find a draft game, most often than not the game would wait for an opponent forever
2) the cards to play are at the bottom of the screen, so it is very easy to misclick on the home button. Then it seems impossible to get back to your game, the app just reloads and you get a lost. Since losses are punished (you must pay for your deck again after 10 losses), it felt like a double punishment. And it happens too frequently unfortunately.
3) the ui is confusing: when you buy a chest, it says 'get a chest plus a card of your choice'. You actually get to choose between 3 cards and that's all. what is in the chest then ? Frustrating
4) you win gold only when you win, and even lose gold when you lose. But after a few won games, I got paired only with opponents with great cards (e.g. vortex) so basically not a chance to win with my starter deck. So unless I spend real money, I see no possibility to progress at all. It is fair for the developper because they have to earn money somewhat, but it will not attract a lot of people unfortunately, which would make point 1 worst.

Cheers

I forgot to mention the progress path: the app unlocks bags of gold, and cards. I could get the bags of gold with a random amount but I could not get the cards... How to unlock them ? They don't appear in my collection.

Yes I had that too. There seemed to be some bugs. I guess that will be fixed.

I re-installed the game and played for a few days. I could understand how the progress path works: the unlocked cards can be found in the chests you buy afterwards. Also the "+" in the chest description is just a bullet, it does not mean there is something in addition.

The app crashes a lot randomly (still frustrating), but I heard this will be corrected in the next release.

The waiting time for draft is still long. It seems nobody plays draft.

The potential to have a great app is here, let's wait and see how it turns out !