I've found myself losing many, many, many hours inadvertently to Prime World: Defenders. Tower defense with trading-card-collecting. Cards that you can fuse and level up. You can do missions or random scenarios to gain coins and experience, with which to purchase talents and booster packs. Booster packs which give you more cash, exp, spells, or towers. Which you can fuse with each other to improve all stats and the number of times the towers can be upgraded, or fused for levels, which improve stats overall, regardless of upgrade. Achievements yield even more coins and exp.

The bizarre thing about is that it looks like it's ready-made for microtransactions, but all the currency is earned in-game. I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting it right on PC first, then looking to port it to tablets with the model switched to microtransactions.

Either way, buying booster packs with the results of my in-game efforts is fun. So, pretty much MY perfect game, being such a tower defense nut.

But turn-based strategy RPG comes a close second, so I will definitely check that out.
 

Any concerns about this becoming another €100 a month MTG style habit?
 

No concerns. You don't buy cards in random boosters in this game. You get them from the gear you loot or buy in game. You can get more gear with a premium account subscription, but that is optional.
 

What level are your guys, Tobold? I've reached a sticking point where my L6 party can't beat level 6 dungeons, and I can't improve their gear because the better options require circle-marked gear slots I haven't unlocked yet. And the lower-level dungeons don't seem to give enough xp to grind up to those gear slots in any reasonable amount of time :/
 

I have two groups: One of level 10 characters, and one of level 6 characters.

If you get stuck, the solution is nearly always to change tactics. You don't need "better" gear, you need gear with different cards in it. For example if you lose because enemies stab you from 2 spaces away, you need to change to spears with range 2 stabbing attacks as well. If they have too good armor, you need to use penetrating attacks, etc.
 

Hey Tobold,

Have you seen the Hex tcg kickstarter? In many ways it reminds me of your old post wishing for a MtG Shandalar MMO. I'd love to know what you think about it.
 

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I've seen the Hex announcement. But all the screenshots and videos are of the trading card game part, and I haven't seen anything showing how the MMO part is going to look. So while I loved the "we'd do anything to get funded" video, I didn't back this project. I'm afraid they have no idea what effort it takes to make an MMO, being a board game company.