PoxNora, FREE Turn-Based/Card-type game

Came across this game the other day and finally tried it out today. Gotta say it's interesting... haven't formed a real opinion yet. It's definitely a freebie game in terms of graphics, could pass for a SNES game or something, the concept is great though. It's basically a turn-based strategy (think Final Fantasy Tactics) but with a Magic the Gathering card game twist. You choose your "deck" which is elemental based, and has a very particular style to it. The two I saw were the fire-based (Forgot names,) which were heavy on attacks and ranged, but weak with spells and no healing, had a sweet unit that could stealth and deal major damage on a assassinate attack. The Earth-based deck I played with was heavy on defense, had clerics, but were pretty weak on the offense aside from some overpowered Earthquake spells and Gryphons.

The game plays where every turn you turn over different cards, and are able to use them according to how much "Nora" you have. Your Nora is determined by how many strategic points your holding, and what you pick up after killing enemy players. With that you can lay down Hero characters, cast spells, or put down static objects that do things like build your Nora up over time, or put various shields over your heros, etc.

The match was sort of long and drawn out, but the other guy I played against said it was his longest match as well. A lot of strategy to it though, which is good fun.

From what I understand, It's free to play as much as you want with the (I think) 4-6 decks provided, it's 10 bucks to purchase a starter deck with a few cards being random, and then if you want to pay 4-10 bucks a month it unlocks everything and you can make your own decks, choose your runes, etc.

Worth checking out if your into turn-based strategy at all.

PoxNora Webpage

I'm actually having a good amount of fun with this game, it's a great concept. Has the strategy of Chess, the joy of gambling, and the fun of playing a video game all in one. I realize it might not be for everyone, but I've always loved Turn-Based Strategy games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Gladius (think that was the name.)

I even threw down a few bucks for cards, and the cost system is different than I first thought. Basically, you can play as much as you want in the Training Grounds at no cost with a 20-card set deck of each faction, it's all very well rounded and pretty balanced. This right there has plenty of entertainment, and I've had fun even getting my ass kicked.

When you want to plop some money down, really the monthly charge for premium membership doesn't get you much, it's mainly just a VIP thing, you get insider info, test out beta content, ability to see what every card is (I'm sure it's on Wiki already,) etc. Later there will be a special King-of-the-Hill type match that only premium members can play, it's open for everyone at the moment. That's about it though.

Casual people can throw down about 10 bucks to get a starter deck of the faction of your choice, 20 balanced cards, and then anywhere from 6-12 bucks to get 25-50 cards randomly selected. Now this is where the fun, random gambling comes in, and I could see someone getting carried away with this, but you just have to limit yourself. I paid 6 bucks to get a random 25 cards, and you get randomly selected, say 10 common cards, 10 uncommon cards, and 5 unique cards, each unique card has a 10% chance of being a epic card, or whatever. And with those cards you can customize your deck to your playing style, choose more ranged cards, or healing, mix decks for different bonuses, add more relics or equipment, choose multiple heros that cost less, or rely on a few really strong heros and equip them well, pretty much whatever you want to do. When you purchase cards, your heros actually gain experience and you can even level them in the stats/abilities of your choice. There's a pretty well setup auction system for trading cards on the website as well.

Fun stuff, hopefully someone else will get into it so I could play a few rounds with them sometime.

This is one last ditch attempt to get someone else hooked on this great game. Here are some reviews of the game, if your at all interested, or like strategy games at all, even a small interest in playing chest, check into it:

Gamespy Review - 4/5 Stars

GameZone Review - 7.8/10

I mostly just want a friend to do some matches with, aside from the mismatch of "i own u all day" kiddies that I get paired up with. There are guilds and stuff in the game, but I'm not sure how you're supposed to meet up with people. It would be fun to have someone to trade cards with, and practice strategies with.

I've been having a lot of fun crafting my deck, since I've been into this game more than anything else recently, I put some money into getting some cards, and have been trading them around, and forming different decks to try out. There are a lot of generous people in the game that have sunk a lot of money into it and like to "unload" the cards they don't need to new players. It's a lot of fun to do 10/10 mixes of different factions and get them to synergize well. And as your practicing with your cards, your leveling them at the same time.

The amount of balancing they've done is really astounding. Considering there are 6 different types of decks, I think over 400 different cards altogether, and you can set up any variation, or mix of decks that you want, you can even choose different abilities for each of your Hero cards, specialize them in anyway you desire. Right now all the factions are rated, and their all within a few percentiles of 50% chance to win a match.

I'd probably have given this a try by now if it werent for two things.

1: I'm hopelessly addicted to Hellgate: London.
2: Sometime after the Diablo era I stumbled upon a game much like this. It wasnt as in depth but the setup was similar, cards and tactical rpg format. It was fun and I spent maybe 30 bucks on cards before I realized it was just like all my previous card addictions except for that I would never get anything physical for my money ever. This isnt always a problem when your pay for MMO's and such. However if your gonna blow 20 bucks and get a bunch of cards you cant use, you start to realize much quicker that your pissing your money away.

It sounds like a fun game and I wouldnt mind giving the free part of it a try. I just dont wanna get too involved since I dont have much money to spend on such things. I'll have to get you into Sword of the New World if your looking for cheap thrills.

I love RPS Strategy games (and yes, Gladius owned. Gary and I still use the "Help Us!" and "Coming for youuuuuu." lines....Cyclops for the win). And I was hopelessly addicted to Culdcept for a while.

But as it stands im already Playing Hellgate, OJ Box and WoW with every intention of picking up Call of Duty Modern Warfare sometime soon.

Ooh yeah, and the occasional Warhammer session to see how things are coming along.

At least I got some responses, that's all I really wanted.

Those are all valid reasons, I know if you don't have the willpower, it's really easy to get wrapped up in buying cards after cards. I see people in this game dropping over a 100 dollars on one transaction, just to get a sought after card. There are ways around it though at least. I started off buying a 50 card deck for something like 12 bucks, which gave me a good spread of cards, I could make a few decent semblances of decks. Then one of the old timers just gave me 20-something pretty good cards. Then I realized that there are third-party websites that some of the people playing the game have setup, where they sell the individual cards for like 5 cents to a dollar. The decks are only 20 cards. By reading the forums, I just handpicked myself a really nice deck for under 5 bucks. Sure I'm missing a few of those exotic cards that people go crazy for, but I can certainly hold my own. (Guilds also usually have depositories where everyone just unloads their extra cards to junior members.)

You could pretty much just handpick a deck of your choice for under 10 bucks and play it competitively for a good while. Or you could just do like the hundreds of other people and just play the balanced sample decks in the training grounds. As long as you can fight the urge to keep throwing down cash for more and more cards.

I'm glad someone else knows about Gladius, it's definitely one of the best, unknown games. If I had someone else to play against I would still be playing the hell out of it.

Just to bump this game up a bit again, it's funny, but since I left WoW, this is the only game that has really kept my attention nonstop since. This hokey looking, pixel-based, little flash game.

I really do love it though, I love turn-based strategy games as mentioned, and this is the first one I've really found that you could play online, and the inclusion of the card based business model makes things even more interesting.

The game has been around for a little over 2 years now, and it's really come along. At one point there was talk of the game dying out eventually, but that doesn't even seem close to the case anymore. In fact, just recently the entire company was bought out by SOE, and is now known as SOE Tucson. I know SOE brings about warning bells, but there is supposed to be a lot of good coming from it, like implementing SOE's tournament system from Legends of Norath, and loads more funding. There is even talk of a PS3 online game being created that can be played along with people on their PC.

Message from SOE's John Smedly himself:

Also, to talk about exposure, an interview with the Poxnora creator was headlined on Massively.com today: http://www.massively.com/2009/02/05/massiv...an-kopycienski/

And really, I've gotta say that the game has come a long way in the last year and a half that I've been playing it. Expansions every 3 months, Single-player campaigns were added, factions are more balanced than ever before, and apparently there are supposed to be HUGE changes in the expansion coming out at the end of the month.

So just wanted to throw stuff out there, still hooked on this game, and it's weird to see such a little known game suddenly get so much exposure.

Jesus Christ, Konger. This thread was over a year old!

If you care that much about it, I guess I'll check it out, but... I mean, wow.

What's your point? I've been playing it for that long.

Just a lot of big news happening in the game, figured I'd pass it around because I like posting stuff, and now I can actually see old threads thanks to Rev.

Here is a press release on the next expansion for PoxNora: http://www.soepress.com/release.asp?i=237

Adding some really cool new features, like being able to turn your shrine into an Avatar that you can move (the Shrine is what needs to be destroyed to win the game), expanding the rune dock, which is pretty huge, and tons of new runes.

The main reason why I'm posting it here though is because they are expanding their free features. Previously if you were playing the game for free, you'd get access to their pre-configured decks that you could play with, but you couldn't level any runes that you didn't own, which is half of the game. But now you can level those free runes with up to 50cp to personalize them more, should make the free part of the game much more fun for anyone that was interested.

Next expansion is on Feb 24th.

Here is that bit:

Really you could pretty much buy the starter deck for 10 bucks, and easily get some more runes to play with in the Drums of War lobby if you got into the game, there are places all over the forum where people give away free runes, plus I could hook people up.