The Latest Mobile Card Games You Shouldn't Miss

If you turn to your iPad or phone for your digital-card-game fix, chances are you’re already dabbling in titles like Hearthstone. Next year should be bringing plenty of new contenders in the expanding mobile digital-card-game market, but recently two new options are already competing for your collection attention: Mabinogi Duel and World of Tanks: Generals.

Mabinogi Duel has all kinds of PVE and PVP activities for players of all skill levels and collection sizes, and thankfully the options trickle out over the course of a player’s first 10 level ups to make things more manageable. There’s a version of “draft” as well, so you can try out tons of strong cards and combos for free during daily missions against the A.I. or against other players, and once you think you’ve got a deck or two good enough for serious competition you can compete for large rewards in the main real-time PVP arena. A single-player campaign provides what amounts to numerous “puzzle” challenges, where the player must work with a certain set of cards to defeat special encounters.

You can even trade with other players on the go in Mabinogi Duel by linking up. While certainly there are some very strong cards available that may take plenty of packs to crack to nab, I’ve been competing completely free-to-play and I’m fairly happy with my progress – I can hold my own quite nicely in each tournament, putting me in enough prizes to keep my collection growing at a nice rate. Matches are (mostly) fast and fun, and the UI is polished and clean. Mabinogi Duel definitely has a lot more strategy to it than the neverending slew of “card brawlers” that plague the mobile marketplace, combining deckbuilding, resource management, placement, and timing as critical factors for success. If you are into the whole digital-card-game scene, I would highly recommend giving it a try.

World of Tanks: Generals is available on multiple platforms, including iOS (you can play in your web browser!). Players smash into each other’s headquarters with tanks, artillery shells, and other special cards as they accumulate resources and edge out the opponent for board control. It’s an interesting combination of tactical battling and card-game mechanics, especially as players dive down into each nation’s research trees – allowing for diverse strategies to come into play. 

While it’s fine to just create a variety of tanks and push forward into the enemy’s territory, other card mechanics are available to explore once your collection begins to grow and your loadout opportunities become more diverse. Things start out rather simple with stock tanks and cards, but more interesting strategies await those that choose to dive in, such as taking advantage of units on the field, discard, or casualties. Research systems are similar to World of Tanks and other Wargaming offerings, with premium accounts accumulating resources faster than true free-to-play users. World of Tanks: Generals is a nice lightweight addition to the digital-card-game scene, and is definitely worth a checkout if you’re a fan of the rest of Wargaming’s suite.