[Review] Animation Throwdown: The Quest For Cards

[Veritable]

Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards

Welcome to my review of Animation Throwdown: The Quest For Cards that is available on Steam / iOS / Android.

This is a Collectible Card Game, featuring your favorite characters and objects from Family Guy, Futurama, American Dad, Bob's Burgers and King of the Hill.

The entire goal is to increase your decks power so much, that you can get into the top 25 in the Rumble! The Rumble! is a guild vs. guild deck vs. deck battle, where you are pitted against a guild to test each others decks. The winner gets moved up the ladder based on how many points they gain each round. These points are based on how badly you beat your opponent. The better you do against an opponent, the closer to 1000 points per round you get. You only get 10 shots to get +100 points, so if you even take 1 damage, it is reduced by 1.

So obviously, as this game is deck based, the micro transactions are going to be Pay To Win. And this game has no shortage of it. The Shop allows you to purchase packs of card ala-every-other-CCG.

Card Packs:

• Super Epic Pack -> 250 Gems
• The Golden Pack -> 1,000 Golden Turds
• Super Epic Pack x10 -> 2500 Gems
• Super Starter Pack -> $19.99
• Super Epic Sale -> $9.99
• Chainsaw Box -> 450 Gems
• Freezer Burn Box -> 450 Gems
• Basic Pack -> 1,000 Coins
• Rare Pack -> 150 Gems
• Buy Max -> Multiples of 1000 Coins (Changes depending how many coins you have)

Now, I am not going to explain what each one gives, but I will explain what the FREE one gives, and you will note that everything else is above that.

Currencies

So the Coins are the free currency you get from doing Adventure (story), Arena (pvp) and Rumble (GvG) modes in the game. The amount varies depending on whether you win or lose, and also how high you go in the ladder for each (or level in the Adventure mode).

So the two options that are 'Coin' based are really only one, and the other is a Sanity check so you don't have to constantly open packs all day long. So the 1,000 Coin pack gives you a random card that is Grey (common) or a potential to be Green (rare). After opening around 30 packs now, I have gotten about 5 rare items from each single pack, and a lot of Giggitywatt cards (will explain these later). The important thing to know about this, is that while the grey cards are excellent for starter decks, they are easily outmatched within 3 days of playing.

There are only 3 purposes of common cards in this game.

1. New Players so they can play/participate in game modes
2. Learning Combos for Main Quests
3. Recycling to upgrade the important cards

Rumbles (Guild vs. Guild)

So I have just hit one week exactly of playing this game, and I have about 20 hours of actual in-game play-time. So far, I have upgraded all of the cards that I have started with, recycled a lot of uncommon cards to do so. And beyond that, I have been learning as many combos as I can to progress, while trying to complete the main mission quests to get free epic / legendary (blue and purple) card packs.

The rumble works great if you get into a guild that does something useful with their life. But this only works if the players in the guild actually work in the Rumble!. Each guild can only have 50 players, and you cannot kick players from the guild once a rumble starts. So that gives you a 30 minute window between rumbles to do guild management every week. This sucks.

Our guild has 50 members, but right now 45 are active.So between the start of the rumble, 5 players stopped playing. In our rumbles this week, we have averaged 12 players in each battle. That's right 12... if a player loses all 10 matches, they will give 50 points to the groups score. So if a 50 person active guild that has new players, loses every single battle, in the 6 days of the rumble with 3 matches per day. the guild would accumulate 45,000 points. That is enough to get Tier 17 which is 500 Coins and 200 Epic Stones. Epic stones, in multiples of 1,000, are used to buy a random epic (blue) card. So yes, even if you afk farm it, you could get _something_ out of the game. Not really worth the time imo but, it can be done.

In the meantime you have people playing along side these afk players in the group, that you can't kick until the rumble is over, that are decimating your chances of getting better rewards. It's a horrible system and they need to fix it.

So lets talk about recycling and upgrading cards.

Recycling / Upgrading Cards

The Giggitywatt cards are an uncommon recycle only card, that give you 5 points for upgrades. I would suggest not recycling them until you finish the questline, or until you want to upgrade that awesome card you get (a purple one for example). They are needed for the quest to recycle 30 Cards. So keep at least 30, they're not hard to get especially since you can only ever buy uncommon cards essentially. getting 30k coins is pretty simple.

Upgrading your cards will increase attack/health and can give potential bonus' to the character like, leech on hit, gain attack on hit, personal brick wall defense, or even a fence to protect cards on either side of it from taking damage.

Once you have two cards of the same power level and as their highest level, you can Fuse them together to increase their power even further until the card itself "maxes out". The higher level cards have more 'levels' to them, so you will be spending more watts to upgrade them.(for example, Rare has 4 levels, but Epic has 5, Legendary has 6).

Your Hero

On top of this, you have your 'character' that you choose for a deck. You can have 3 different decks, so you can have different characters for different decks. It's really necessary because you have different buffs for specific animation groups. I have been using Louise from Bob's Burgers as soon as I got her, because she has some pretty useful stats.

• Louise Rank 2: Cripple 1 - Reduces attack of a random enemy unit by 1 for a turn.
• Louise Rank 3: Punch 1 - A Random Enemy unit takes 1 damage, Cripple 1
• Louise Rank 4: Cheer 1 - Increases Attack of a random friendly bob's burgers unit by 1 for a turn, Cripple 1, Punch 1
• Louise Rank 5: Cripple 2 (2 attack reduction)
• Louise Rank 6: Cheer 2 (+2 Attack to unit)
• Louise Rank 7: Max Health is now 48
• Louise Rank 8: Punch 2 (+2 damage to random unit)
• Louise Rank 9: Cripple 3
• Louise Rank 10: Cheer 3

When you do Arena's, you can target tokens which are used to upgrade Heros. These cost 100 Coins to change and it is a random choice. So yes, it can get expensive but at least there is a way to target it. The big problem is that you HAVE to do this in order to complete the quest line. I am stuck on Level 5 right now after a week, and I have to get to level 7 in order to complete the next quest. It's going to probably take at least a week to get to level 7, where it took a week to get to level 5. If you have to do a quest for Level 10, I'm just going to quit playing...

However, you can buy these tokens kind of.

Starter Packs

The Super Starter Pack ($19.99) Includes:

• 3x Epic Cards
• 2.5k Gems
• 200 Watts
• 250 Legendary Stones
• 5x +5 hero Tokens
• 10x +10 Energy

OLD INFO (see update below): You get 5x +5 Hero Tokens, and it doesn't say Random, so I am assuming that you can specify what hero you get to spend it on. Looking at it that way, that's 25 tokens. To get from Level 5 to Level 6 with Louise I need 35 tokens. So... yea, it is definitely a "starter" item, because after level 3 or 4 it becomes useless. (Level 3 takes maybe 3 days to get to by the way).

**UPDATE:
The 5x tokens ARE random, so this is even WORSE. You have zero control on what hero you can apply them to, so you are better off targeting during Arenas rather than spending money on this pack.

And a side note about the Stones, as they are rewards from completing the Rumble and Challenges in the game (Challenges are like a personal Rumble! rather than guild). You get 250 Legendary Stones, so after spending $80 with this pack, you automatically get a Legendary (Purple Card) from the stones. The different stones just get combined in groups of 1,000 to purchase said card.

Mythic Stones / Cards

Also, there are Mythic Stones which come from packs like the Chainsaw Box and Freezer Burn Box. This the only way to get these Mythic Stones. The way the boxes work, is there a pool of cards in the box, and you spend 450 Gems to open the box and remove a card (which is permanently removed from the box). So every time you pull say a blue card, there is one less blue card to get and an increased chance of getting a purple card.

These Mythic Stones are used to buy these Mythic Cards (for 250 stones each) in the crafting section. These are extremely over powered, and if you pay $40 for the pack that gives you the stones, you will be hated by any opponent the moment you put this card down.

Here are the cards with their stats:

Mythic Leela: 18 Attack, 35 Health, +8 Attack to Cards on either Side, 10 Random Damage to an Enemy, -6 Attack to All Opponents
Mythic Louise: 8 Attack, 54 Health, +8 Attack when you play a combo, +6 to all friendly units by 6 for a turn, -11 Damage Reduction Effects when attack (More on this in a sec)
Mythic Peggy: 12 Attack, 45 Health, 8 Damage to card that attacks it, Restores 4 health to all friendly damaged cards, 10 Damage Each Turn to any card that attacks this card
Mythic Stan: 14 Attack, 42 Health, Blocks 10 Damage when Attacked, Deals 6 Damage to enemies adjacent to the one this attacks, Gain 5 Attack after dealing damage
Mythic Stewie: 9 Attack, 51 Health, Prevent 4 damage dealt to other friendly cards, 8 Damage to random enemy, heals for 13 health after dealing damage.

Ok so a quit note on the -11 Damage Reduction Effect that Louise gets. There is a "Party Surfboard" challenge up right now, and the card that is played reduces the attack of all enemies by 1. So this card would let you hit for the full 8 damage every attack even after the npc plays 12 cards (where 11 of them are attacking and reducing your attack by 11). These cards have either 7 or 12 health. Being able to keep the enemy's card numbers down to 1 or 2 is the secret to success, and having this mythic card at the start or even up to the 11th draw, would be game changing. You would be able to clear one card from the enemy, and be able to play more cards every turn than the enemy could, simply because of this one card.

Regardless, if you have the Gems from finishing quest lines, you still won't have enough to purchase any more than 1 at most. You get 20 gems from Daily Task completion quests. So after 7 days now, I have gotten 140 gems. I think you start with some amount, but I know it's not more than 50. So < 200 Gems in a week of play. You will most likely get bored long before you play the game for 3 weeks and be able to buy ONE card from the box, let alone all 12 cards per week.

In the Chainsaw Box there are 96 cards, which randomize every week (I assume) on which ones are available. The Freezer Burn Box also says 96, so all 'boxes' must work the same way.

Adventure Mode

Lets talk about the Adventure mode a little bit. The adventure mode is a series of areas with 3 encounters in them. Nothing fancy, just click a button and complete the deck fight 3 times, winning of course, to get a mark on that token. Each token has 3 ranks and when you get 3 ranks it upgrades to the next tier. There are 4 tiers and each tier rewards you with a certain number/rank of cards for completion.

Bronze Rank -> 4 Uncommon Cards (all the same)
Silver Rank -> 2 Rare Cards (Both the Same)
Gold Rank -> 1 Epic Card
(Last one Is probably Platinum) Rank -> Same Card as Gold Rank

So if you upgrade all the cards of Bronze Rank, you will have one Tier 2 card by fusing them together into a single card.
By doing Silver Rank, you will have one Tier 1 Card.
By finishing the Gold and whatever the last rank is, you will have one Epic quality card at Tier 1.

So yea, it's a decent way to get upgrades. However, the Gold Ranks are pretty hard when you start doing the higher level Adventures.

My suggestion, is to complete the first 5 Adventure Areas, then repeat the first 5 for every rank upgrade doing them each tier at a time. This way you will get those achievements out of the way.

By the time you finish these, you will probably be able to start on the next tier, which is complete 10 of each rank. So then you start with Adventure mode 6 and go to 10, and do those 5 over and over the same way you did the first ones.

After that, well there are 30 tiers, so you figure it out If there is a 15 or 20 rank, do your divisions of Adventure areas accordingly. There is a complete all on Bronze though, so if you get lucky with card drops and upgrades, you could probably brute force your way through to 30, but it'll take you a long time without buying Energy tokens to reset your energy. It just takes too long. Some of the higher ones require 3 energy (you only have 10) to complete once, so that's only 1 Rank Upgrade out of 3 to complete an area, at the most beyond Adventure 3 on Gold, or even Adventure 1 requires 3 points to complete the 4th tier.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, if you get joy out of destroying the game experience for other people, play this game for free. You will, in the end, hurt your team in the Rumbles without even trying, as even if they all pay for packs and upgraded items, you will be bringing them down in rank with every Rumble!. Otherwise, it's not that bad of a game, but it does get monotonous very quickly, and frustrating if you start your own guild because of the way it is managed.

To fix this, would probably be a reduced income for the developers, but it would make the Quality of Life for the players better. They would have to allow you to kick players in a guild during a rumble (but restrict you from joining a guild once per week so you can't just guild hop). It wouldn't really help the free players, as they would probably get booted from the first guild they join, and it might actually filter out all non-paying players in to free-only guilds, because they would probably end up making their own guild which would get filled by random people and eventually paying customers would leave to join a different group. Then get re-filled by players until it's all 'free playing' people. Those free playing players would eventually quit, and the game would be only for paying players. Yea.

[turnloy]

Thanks for this, No only if there was a Bot or something for it. lol

[Veritable]

I thought about it, and I don't know. The closest thing I could see is figuring out how to capture the multiple timers in the game, and the doing certain actions to auto-play. Apart from that, it's doing some sort of AI that is better than the one they use.

Reasoning behind this, is the AI it uses to play cards when you do the quick play / auto play function in the game, is deplorable. It has some sort of a weighting system that I don't quite understand. I use it on the mini-challenges for like the first 20-30 points, and then I have to turn it off because it just makes you lose.

Same thing happens in PvP. Once I got into the higher levels (I am still no where near the best), it just has NO idea what your best combo's are, and usually plays combos instead of playing a card to reduce your personal damage taken, and you lose.