I started playing last night and I just now finished playing for a couple hours and I must say that I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. I've not played Gwent so I can't make any comparisons to it, but I play Magic Duels regularly and I've played a fair bit of Faeria and Duelyst, and I already have A LOT of opinions about those games, so I'll try to keep this clear and concise.
Elder Scrolls: Legends, from what I've experienced, is indeed quite generous, at least in the beginning of the game, and perhaps even further down the line for players deciding to put more time into it. You earn gold quite easily from the story mode (the first story campaign is free, the next one involving the Dark Brotherhood you can buy with real money or for 1000 gold) and leveling up and from daily quests, and just like in Duelyst and Faeria, you can earn Soul Gems by breaking down extra cards you don't want and make new cards you do want. I did that earlier after earning a bunch of Soul Gems and made a lot of good cards. From what I can tell, I feel as though I don't have to do a whole lot of grinding, although you can buy card packs with real world money, so don't be surprised when some people start to call it 'pay-to-win'. Like any card game, if you don't want to spend money, it will take time, but matches can be quick and you earn rewards at a steady pace. Much more steady than in Magic Duels, in my opinion. There's a casual multiplayer and Ranked multiplayer, both of which earn you nice rewards, and even if you lose, you level up a bit.
The game is quite easy to learn. You literally start with the tutorial and it teaches pretty much all you need to know, minus one or two things, but there's a Glossary in the options menu that tells what certain things mean/do, which is a bit more than what Duelyst and Faeria do, although in terms of teaching players, Magic Duels wins in that regard as it teaches literally everything in a nice, easy to understand and interactive way.
There's no major resource management like in Magic: The Gathering or Faeria. Simply put, each card costs a certain amount of Magicka, and each player earns 1 extra magicka per turn. There are two lanes in which to play your creature cards. Sometimes a certain lane will provide status effects to both player's creatures, like providing cover and protecting a creature from being attacked for 1 turn. There's no 'Step' phase like in MtG, you can play cards/attack in any order. You can attack you opponent directly or attack their creatures. There's actually a fair bit of strategy involved as you go into mid and then late-game, when more/bigger cards come out, knowing when/when not to attack, using spell, item cards to you r advantage etc.
Deck building is very similar to Duelyst and Faeria, in fact the User Interface is very similar, although the UI in Elder Scrolls: Legends is much nicer and easier to navigate (the benefit of being published by Bethesda, I know, I know). Each deck must have a minimum of 50 cards, except in Arena Mode (aka. Draft Mode) in which you make a deck of 30 cards, which means matches aren't terribly long or short. There are 5 attributes that most of the cards are associated with, aka. styles of playing. Basically like the colour system in MtG. Red for Aggro, Blue for control stuff, Yellow for getting lots of smaller creatures and buffing them etc. You can make a deck using 1-2 colours. I made a very nice Red/Blue Orc Aggro deck just earlier.
So far, I'm liking the game a lot, and I think I can see myself playing it more, although I said the same thing about Duelyst and Faeria and haven't touched those in quite awhile. It would be nice if some of the cards had more clear, concise descriptions and rules like in MtG, rather than just short blurbs like in Duelyst and Faeria. But all in all, I think I actually prefer Elder Scrolls: Legends, at least for now. It's a fair, and fairly generous card game with sold production behind it and potential to be pretty dang cool with future expansions. I give it a hearty thumbs up and recommend it to those looking for a card game with solid design and development behind it and for those looking for a nice pick-up-and-play card game with the added benefit of some strategic depth to it as well.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer as best I can. As for the moment, I've yet to play through the entirety of the game modes, so some answers may be limited.
(Looking at this wall of text now, it went on longer than I'd have liked, sooooo, um..... sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Post edited June 01, 2017 by Krimzon14
