If you’ve ever dreamt of being a mage who has the ability to summon lands and creatures at his/her fingertips? “Luminous Ages”, a card game that’s seeking funding through the Kickstarter process starting October 12th, 2016, aims to do just that. While your ultimate goal is to bring your “dream god” into play and keep them there for three consecutive turns, you can also win by draining your opponent’s dream life to negative ten points. Before we begin, I’d like to thank Game Creator Anthony Christou for sending me a prototype for preview purposes. It’s important to stress that prototypes are not often reflective of the final product, making everything you see and read about here subject to change.
“Luminous Ages” includes quite a number of different ways to play at this point in time. The default/core mode is where the meat and potatoes of the game lie, though the other five turned out to be just as interesting. For example, there’s a shared deck mode to where both players draw cards from the same deck while the basic mode is suited for beginners as creature abilities are removed and so on. There’s also a cooperative mode that supports 1-6 players for those looking to team up against the game itself as opposed to each other.
In order to keep things moving I won’t be listing out all of the rules found in the manual (you can read it yourself via the link on the game’s Kickstarter page), but I do plan to hi-lite the things that made me enjoy playing it.
To put things in context, “Luminous Ages” plays a little like “Magic: The Gathering” what with the tapping of cards, summoning of creatures, and the use of creature abilities. There are also land cards like core lands, dream lands, and so on that provide you with the dream energy you’ll need to do these things. Unlike “MTG”, lands are not color specific, meaning you don’t need a red land to summon a red creature card and so on. I personally liked this approach as I found I was able to create decks with a bit more ease and without feeling restricted.
While you could, in theory, use all sorts of colors when creating your deck it’s generally a good idea to stick to a few as like colored cards have a synergy that will give you a leg up in some ways. Like “MTG”, each color/alliance has its own strengths and weaknesses. What does this mean for you? Well, for one, you have a bit more choice when creating a deck. You could opt to take the best cards regardless of color and seed your deck with a bunch of heavy hitters, or instead create a less powerful synergy deck that will ensure you get the most out of the cards you’ve picked. Like I said before, I found this approach to be refreshing mainly because “MTG” often forces you to stick to one or two colors. “Luminous Ages”, by the way, features eight colors (compared to “MTG’s” five + neutral cards). Three are Tranquil, two are Mare, and the other three are neutral.
Player turns and combat are pretty much what I expected as I’m relatively familiar with “MTG” and “Star Wars: The Card Game”. There are multiple phases that let you draw a card, un-tilt spent cards, use creature abilities, attack your opponent, and so on. Attacking is for the most part straight-forward, what with the attacker choosing the creatures to be used while the defender decided whether or not to defend with his. Destroyed creatures go to the discarded dream pile. Unblocked attacks result in the draining/capturing/destruction of land cards. Anyone who has played a living card game before will more than likely pick up the rules here with ease.
As mentioned above, players win by gaining dream life (30) and keeping a dream god in play for three consecutive turns. Players can earn dream life by bringing out certain land cards, taking control of an opponent’s land cards, summoning a dream, legendary, or quest creature, casting spells, destroying an opponent’s dream creature, and more. You lose dream life by losing control over your lands or by allowing your dream creatures to be defeated. As you can clearly see, “Luminous Ages” provides players with more ways to win (or lose) making gameplay a bit more strategic.
To give you a better idea of how the gameplay flows, I’ve opted to include three separate videos below provided by the developer. While lengthy, they should give you a good idea as to what you’re in for should you decide to support “Luminous Ages”. Once again, it’ll be featured on Kickstarter sometime around October 12th, 2016 so give it a look if you fancy card games like “Magic: The Gathering”. Oh, and those gaming mats…just wow! You can pledge for those too…something to think about. 😉
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Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/luminousages/luminous-ages-card-game
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