'Tis the season for festive PC game events, and card game Duelyst isn't one to miss out. On Thursday it dealt an update that launched the Frostfire Festival, which includes exclusive cards, holiday skins and a new game mode, itself called Frostfire.

The new game mode is essentially an excuse to get your hands on the new goodies in Frostfire crates: you play unranked matches in a snow-sprinkled arena to complete event quests and earn crates. Booting up the game before December 22 will net you a crate straight off the bat, and you'll get two more if you log in between Christmas Day and the end of the event on January 5. If you complete 15 Frostfire mode matches during the event you'll get another crate, too, whether you win or not. Crates galore.

As well as exclusive cards, the event introduces new skins, including Festive Faie, Zyx and Zirix. You can get these skins in the crates, which you'll also be able to buy from the in-game store.

It's not all just holiday fun, though: the update adds new starter bundles and makes a fair few balance changes, including to Maehv Skinsolder, one of the new generals that were added to the game in a big update last month. Read about all the balance changes, and the long list of bug fixes, in this blog post.

If you're into CCGs then Duelyst is well worth a look. It's free, and you can grab it here.

Duelyst is a damned good card game. In fact, there's an argument for it being better than Hearthstone, the behemoth that helped inspire it. Since its release last year developer Counterplay Games has dealt regular expansions to players, and next month's one is a biggie. It's adding 100+ cards, but perhaps more importantly there's a new crop of Generals, cards that are at the core of every deck.

The six Generals will be the first to arrive in the game since launch. You can take a sneak peek at them here: they have cool names like Shidai Stormblossom and Maehv Skinsolder and their bloodbound spells (basically unique abilities) range from stunning nearby enemy minions to summoning a Ripper Egg.

As for the 100+ new cards, Counterplay isn't giving much away yet. There's also the promise of "new game mechanics" but again, no detail. 

The Immortal Vanguard expansion, as its called, will arrive "mid-November". If you haven't checked out Duelyst yet, it's free-to-play on Steam. Here's Tom's glowing review.

Tactical CCG Duelyst's fourth expansion is only four days away—a 94 card set arriving on Tuesday, July 11—and I couldn't be more excited about it. After two smaller sets in a row, Counterplay Games—which recently partnered with Bandai Namco as a publisher—tells me it's switching to a pattern of swapping between big and small expansions. The newest set, Unearthed Prophecy, is also getting back to some of the ideas that made me fall in love with Duelyst in the first place.

Already announced is the addition of new types of tiles specific to the Lyonar, Magmar, and Vetruvian factions, as well as a smattering of cards that more heavily rely on board position. Effects that interact with unit movement and positioning were one of the most exciting parts of Duelyst's core set, so I'm pleased those concepts will be expanded on in Unearthed Prophecy. 

But what about the other three factions that aren't getting new tiles? Well Vanar, Abyssian, and Songhai will each get three units with a brand new keyword: Sentinel. Sentinel units all cost 3 mana and, when played, appear on the board as a generic looking 3/3. When one of three conditions is met—the opponent playing a unit, playing a spell, or attacking with their general—the Sentinel will transform into its true form.

The trick here is that only the player who played the Sentinel unit knows which one it is, so your opponent will have to tiptoe around each trigger while you can try to bluff which unit you actually played. It's something like a mix of Hearthstone's Secrets and Magic: The Gathering's Morph. 

There are only going to be nine Sentinel units total in Unearthed Prophecy—three per faction, each with one of the triggers. That means the possibilities are pretty simple to check and prepare for if you are familiar with the cards, especially if only one of the three turns out to see play in a given deck. But still, I love the idea of putting three of each into a deck and watching my opponent be utterly confused each time a faceless Sentinel hits the board, just for laughs.

You can flip through the nine new Sentinel cards we have to show off in the gallery below, along with the generic Watchful Sentinel unit for each faction. You can also find the full resolution PNGs and animated GIFs of each card here. 

Counterplay Games, the studio behind the free-to-play collectible card game Duelyst, has announced a new publishing deal with Bandai Namco, a change it said will allow the team to ignore the headaches of publishing and "focus solely on development" instead.

"Our developers can now focus their time and effort into creating more fun and engaging features for anyone, casual or hardcore players alike," Counterplay said. "Bandai Namco will take on publishing responsibilities including marketing and customer service. This means we’ll be able to introduce more and more people to the game we all love!" 

The studio also noted that, while it is now "working together" with Bandai Namco on the game, Counterplay will maintain responsibility for its design, and there will be "no drastic changes" as a result. There will be one change for players, however, as existing Duelyst accounts will have to be merged with BNEA—that's Bandai Namco Entertainment America—accounts. 

"Merging over accounts allows Bandai Namco to start managing the Duelyst servers to provide improved stability. Another added bonus is player access to their global support network: you’ll be able to receive professional and quality service in your time of need," the studio explained. 

We gave Duelyst a very impressive 84/100 score when we reviewed it last year, calling it "a gorgeous tactics card game [with] significant depth," and more recently we put at the top of our list of the best CCGs that aren't Hearthstone. And in case that's not enough to convince you to give it a shot, Counterplay is also offering a login bonus of three Core Set Orbs (card packs) and a Bandai Namco-themed skin for a unit between July 11 and August 1.    

Hearthstone can single-handedly be thanked for blowing open the digital card game market on PC. It's a great CCG, and without it most of the games listed below probably wouldn't even exist—despite the fact that none of them will likely ever see the same level of success. As someone who can't help but play every card game I can get my hands on, I noticed most of these competitors were often written off as dead or dying in the shadow of Hearthstone without even getting a chance to prove themselves. 

Whether you like it or not, we're in a golden age for CCGs on PC, and there's a lot of fantastic flavors to try. Even better, since Hearthstone is the top dog by a mile, most of these alternatives are extremely generous with their free-to-play aspects as a way to get new players invested quicker. All nine of the games listed below are a lot of fun, and do something different from Hearthstone that make them worth checking out.

Duelyst

Official siteRead our review hereWhat sets it apart: Tactics-style combat on a gridded board.

Duelyst is essentially a combination of Hearthstone and Final Fantasy Tactics. The combat and card mechanics are extremely similar to Hearthstone, but you summon your units onto a five-by-nine grid where they can move around each turn. It's a simple game to learn with a massive amount of choice and decision-making spurred by its board. It also has an interesting 'replace' mechanic that lets you mulligan one card from your hand every turn which, when coupled with its 39 card decks and allowing three of each card, makes drawing what you want a lot more consistent.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends

Official siteRead our review hereWhat sets it apart: Two separate 'lanes' and free card draws as you lose health.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends takes one big step toward Magic: The Gathering from Hearthstone. It allows you to mix cards from up to two of its factions, but still keeps Hearthstone's auto-increasing mana. It also uses similar damage and combat mechanics to Hearthstone, allowing you to choose your attack targets and having minions keep damage taken. But Legends separates its playing field into two lanes that rarely interact with each other, and one of which protects minions played there for a turn. It also has a rune system that lets you draw a free card for every five health you lose, making it important to plan carefully when you are deciding to deal damage to your opponent.

Eternal

Official siteWhat sets it apart: The reintroduction of 'instants' and mana cards while staying very streamlined.

From the same developer of The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Eternal is kind of the opposite—it takes one big step toward Hearthstone from Magic: The Gathering. It looks and feels a lot like Hearthstone in practice, but brings back things like 'instant' cards that can be played during your opponent's turn, mana cards with specific colors for each faction, decks with any number of factions mixed, and declaring which of your minions will attack and then letting your opponent choose their own blockers. The key here is Eternal has managed to make all these things quicker and more satisfying than most other digital CCGs that try them, not sacrificing depth for accessibility. It also has one of my favorite Draft modes of any game on this list, having you draft a deck from four card packs that you keep for your collection after the fact.

Hex: Shards of Fate

Official siteWhat sets it apart: A full-fledged campaign PvE mode and a massive marketplace to trade or sell cards.

Hex: Shards of Fate feels a lot like someone said "what would Magic: The Gathering look like if it was designed to be digital from the start?" With a few exceptions, it plays exactly like Magic, but has a much better client and play experience than any official digital Magic game—making it a better choice for Magic fans than any of them, thus their exclusion from this list. It also does some cool things that paper Magic can't with persistent buffs, copying cards, and transforming cards. It likely has the highest cost of any game on this list, mostly requiring you to trade on its marketplace to get PvP cards without spending real money, but its PvE campaign is shockingly deep and a huge amount of fun on its own.

Infinity Wars

Official siteWhat sets it apart: Simultaneous turns and a zone system for minions.

Infinity Wars was by far the most requested game when I wrote a much shorter version of this list two years ago. It's a game with familiar combat mechanics to Hearthstone but the added depth of being able to swap your units around in different zones—so you could change the order the units in your offensive zone attack in, or swap a stronger unit to your defensive zone if your opponent is about to pull out something big. It's also a faster paced CCG as players take their turns simultaneously, meaning you'll do less waiting around as the rope burns down. To be frank, the voice acting in this game is really bad, but the art style and theme itself is a cool blend of sci-fi and fantasy.

Faeria

Official siteRead our impressions hereWhat sets it apart: A living board that you and your opponent build over the course of the game.

Faeria is similar to Duelyst in that you place minions onto a board and then move them to fight, but Faeria's board is hex-based and starts entirely blank. Each turn players can place down tiles to build out usable land, meaning you are fighting to secure a foothold on the map that will help you better kill your opponent. Certain land tiles have special terrain, like lakes and forests, that are required to summon minions of specific factions, similar to colored mana in other games, but mana itself in Faeria is still colorless. It's a very unique game within this list, but still manages to feel like a deep CCG.

Shadowverse

Official siteWhat sets it apart: An 'Evolve' mechanic that lets you buff and transform any of your minions.

Shadowverse is probably the closest option to Hearthstone here, but it stands out in its own ways. Its theming and style is potentially the biggest indication that Shadowverse started in Japan, but it also has a number of mechanics Hearthstone doesn't. It uses an 'Evolve' system that lets you buff and transform a limited number of your own minions each game, making them stronger and changing their art to something a little more intense. Each faction in Shadowverse also has unique systems you can't really find anywhere else, and many Hearthstone pros recognize it as a deeper game strategically.

Chronicle: Runescape Legends

Official site Read our impressions here What sets it apart: No direct combat, a totally unique take on a card battler

Chronicle: Runescape Legends is an impressively and unexpectedly fresh take on a competitive CCG. Based around the Runescape MMO (similar to how Hearthstone is based around WoW), Chronicle manages to take some pretty standard CCG mechanics and make them feel more like an RPG quest than a card game. Every match is spread across five maps, each letting you play four cards. You place those cards in a set order in front of you while your opponent does the same. You can play monsters to fight or loot to purchase with the gold you get from killing them, essentially building out your characters' journey as you try to get stronger than your opponent before you have to fight them at the end. You can also use cards that will mess with their plans, so it's still head-to-head, just in a very unique way.

It should be noted that while I maintain Chronicle is still a good game, the developers have seemingly walked away from it, leaving it with a dwindling community and a general lack of support. I still think it's fun, but enter at your own risk.

Gwent

Official siteRead our impressions hereWhat sets it apart: No health or combat, more of a bluffing game with loads of strategy.

Flat out, Gwent is nothing like Hearthstone and doesn't take its roots from Magic: The Gathering. There's no health, mana, or combat, and you start the game with nearly all the cards you'll draw during a given match. Instead Gwent is a game built around bluffing and timing. Every match is played as a best of three rounds, and you try to play cards to end each round with a higher point total than your opponent. It's not as simple as "play all the big numbers" of course, as cards can interact with each other and you can mess with your opponent's side of the board. It's a very complex game, but also a relatively approachable one, and fills an interesting role in the CCG genre.

Gwent is currently in closed beta, but will be entering its public open beta on May 24.

Duelyst's third expansion has been in full tease-mode for a couple of weeks now, but the new set, titled Ancient Bonds, will finally be arriving in less than a week. On March 15, Ancient Bonds will add 39 new cards to the game, a new keyword called Bond, and a whole lot of tribal synergies. We've got the first details on what Bond does, how it will be distributed, and a sneak peek at six new cards from the set.

Ancient Bonds is going to be focused around fleshing out some of the tribal mechanics, specifically for minions that are part the Golem and Arcanyst tribes. The two tribes have been split between the factions, with Lyonar, Magmar, and Vetruvian getting new Golem synergies and Abyssian, Vanar, and Songhai getting Arcanyst synergies. Each faction will get three unique minions [Update: this originally said four, but Counterplay reached out to correct the initial number we were given to three.]  from their respective tribe, and developer Counterplay told me it hopes this set will both open up more deck archetypes for each faction and make players look back at their old (and often unplayed) neutral cards in a new light.

The new keyword, Bond, is also tied into this tribal theme. It's a minion ability that essentially works the same as Opening Gambit (or Hearthstone's Battlecry) but the effect will only trigger if there is a friendly minion from the same tribe already on the board when you play it. So if you play an Arcanyst minion with Bond (like Nightshroud, shown below) and you don't have any other Arcanysts in play, nothing will happen. But if you have at least one other Arcanyst in play, it triggers its Bond effect when summoned.

The real kicker is that Bond abilities will also activate when a minion with Bond is re-summoned, not just cast from hand. So casting Consuming Rebirth on Nightshroud or a Bond minion hatching from a Rebirth egg (like Ragebinder, also shown below) will activate the effect again, assuming you still have a friendly minion from the same tribe in play. Each Faction will get one Bond minion of its own, along with access to two more Neutral Bond minions for a total of eight in the set.

Ancient Bonds will follow an identical release model as that of Duelyst's last expansion, Rise of the Bloodborn. You can unlock the Ancient Bonds cards in packs that have three copies of three different cards each. Packs will cost either 300 gold or $3 and won't give duplicates, so once you've purchased 13 packs you are guaranteed to have the whole set, or you can buy three copies of all 39 cards outright for $20. 

As I mentioned (and probably what many of you really care about), we've got six new cards to show off, one from each of the factions and two of which have the new Bond keyword. I've included some description and a few of my thoughts with each card, and you can view theme all by flipping through the gallery below. You can also find the full resolution PNGs and animated gifs of each card here. 

Duelyst is free-to-play and available through Steam.

Duelyst found its roots in tactics games like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, so singleplayer content has always been one of my biggest hopes for the free-to-play card game. Now that dream is coming true, as developer Counterplay Games announced today that Duelyst will be getting singleplayer boss battles.

In its 1.79 patch notes, Counterplay said it would be "testing out" the first two bosses over the next few weeks. Each one will be a limited time event—a week long each to start—during which period an AI-controlled boss will be available to fight. Each will have "a unique deck and starting board state," and defeating them will earn you a Spirit Orb (card pack) and a new Boss Crate. The Boss Crates are part of Duelyst's optional crate and key system, and can be opened for $5 within 48 hours of earning them for the following goodies:

• A Common Chest Key (usually $2)
• A Gauntlet Ticket (usually 150 gold, or $1.50)
• Three Shim'zar Spirit Orbs (usually 300 gold, or $6 for four)
• A random Legendary card

While the first boss won't be available until next Monday, the 1.79 patch is expected to arrive tomorrow and will bring other changes as well. Most notably, the Daily Challenges—single-turn 'lethal puzzles' that would earn you 5 gold and refresh every day—are being put "on a break" as Counterplay looks to "regroup and explore a better vehicle to deliver challenges." Instead of the 5 gold, you'll be able to login each day and get a free random common card. 

Additionally, Counterplay announced it will no longer be adding four new cards each month. While the constant trickle of cards did a nice job of keeping the meta on its toes, the main reasons for this change were an over-inflating Core set and pool of neutral cards, as well as Counterplay's desire to make cards that "make sense as part of a cohesive expansion theme." You'll still earn cards at the end of each season depending on the rank you've achieved, but they won't be new to the game. 

Finally, Counterplay gave a sneak peak at an upcoming mode called Continuous Draft. In it, you start with a basic deck which you upgrade by 'leveling-up' and adding new cards. One of the biggest appeals of this new mode, however, is that you'll be able to add cards of any faction to your deck, the first time this has been possible in Duelyst. It should be an exciting alternative to the current modes in the game, and will surely be full of OP combos not yet discovered.

You can read the full 1.79 patch notes here, and download Duelyst here. 

Hearthstone blew the CCG genre wide open, creating space for dozens of competitors like Duelyst to fill. And while the idea of any new CCG topping the 50+ million player behemoth Hearthstone is hard to imagine, that doesn't mean it's still the best option out there. Duelyst may not have a lavish stage at BlizzCon, but it's become a better game than the CCG that helped inspire it.

The reason is simple: the board. Duelyst's blend of turn-based tactics and card game adds a level decision-making neither genre had on its own. For example, if you begin a game of Hearthstone with one playable minion in your hand, you have two options: play the minion or don't. Beginning a game of Duelyst with one playable minion gives you 66 different options; nine different areas to move to on turn one, each of which has either five or eight different spots to place the minion depending on where you went. That's not even considering whether or not you mulligan a card at the start of the turn, or the fact that going second could let you take a mana tile to open up more options. 

Both games have plays which will be clearly better or worse, and both require you to think forward about what your opponent could do or what else is in your deck, but a game of Duelyst can branch out in many more ways than a game of Hearthstone. Where you move and place minions dictates which direction the fights will move in. You can drive your opponent to a certain side by blocking off their other routes, press forward and make sure you stay on their side of the board, or hang back and make them come to you. The movement system leaves room for subtlety that regular card games often don't.

But what has really kept me playing Duelyst all year is that developer Counterplay Games fit this depth into matches that rarely go longer than ten minutes, making it quick enough to jump in and out of among other games. Counterplay has also been proactive with balance patches, and releases a steady stream of four new cards a month, keeping the meta on its toes. It also doesn't hurt that its pixel art animations are without a doubt the best of any game out today. 

But mainly it's when to move forward, where to place minions, whether or not to trade blows with the enemy general, and a million other choices that make Duelyst a game I imagine I’ll never actually master, but absolutely love to play.

Duelyst's second expansion, Rise of the Bloodborn, has snuck up on all of us. It was expected sometime this month, but it's actually just days away, going live this Thursday, December 15. A smaller set, Rise of the Bloodborn will add 39 new cards to the game, along with a new keyword: Blood Surge.

A minion with the Blood Surge ability will activate a unique effect any time you use your general's Bloodborn Spell—basically the same as Inspire keyword with Hearthstone's hero power, but Bloodborn Spells are cheaper and can't be used every turn.  As you might have guessed, the set generally revolves around using and empowering Bloodborn Spells, which Counterplay Games's Emil Anticevic told me is an attempt to make using those spells more strategic, rather than just activating them whenever they are available. 

While you'll still get Rise of the Bloodborn cards by purchasing orbs (card packs) unique to the set, these orbs function a little differently than the ones for the classic and Shim'zar sets. Instead of paying 100 gold for five random cards, a Bloodborn orb will cost 300 gold and contain three copies of three different cards, so nine cards total. None of the cards from this set are craftable or disenchantable, and once you've acquired a certain card, you won't ever see it in an orb again. 

That means, with 39 different cards and three per pack, you only need to open 13 packs to guarantee you'll have unlocked three copies of the whole set. Alternatively, you can buy the orbs for $3 each, or $20 for all 13. If you buy a few orbs individually before deciding to spend cold hard cash, the $20 option will also come with a refund on any gold you already spent on Bloodborn orbs. Anticevic told me they think this method of distributing a set is better for players when releasing a smaller set like this, but it won't necessarily become the way they always release new sets from now on. 

Now then, onto the card reveals. Counterplay has given us a sneak peak at six new cards to share with you from Rise of the Bloodborn, four of which have the new Blood Surge keyword. We'll be showing off one from each class, and you can flip through them all in the gallery below, along with my impressions. You can also find the full resolution PNGs and animated gifs of each card here. 

Duelyst is free-to-play and available through Steam.  

Duelyst just pushed live a surprise balance patch that makes a number of changes the community been calling for, and some that were less expected. Since the game's first major expansion, Denizens of Shimzar was released in August, the legendary minion Inquisitor Kron has been a hot topic among players. And unlike Blizzard's slow approach to balance changes in Hearthstone, developer Counterplay Games decided to swing the nerf hammer relatively fast.

Inquistor Kron was a 5 mana 4/6 minion that would summon a free 2/2 with a random ability every time you replaced a card a Duelyst mechanic that let's you mulligan one card from your hand per turn. According to Counterplay's patch notes, Kron provided so much value that he was simply too oppressive in comparison to other 5 mana cards: "We want players to feel like they have more options in the 5 cost slot." As a result, his health has been lowered from 6 to 4, making him significantly more fragile.

Kron wasn't the only card toned down; four others have been nerfed, along with one of the general's unique Bloodborn Spells. Kara, the Vanar general in question, has also been a much-discussed candidate for nerfs, so reworking her Bloodborn Spell has been a longer time coming than the relatively quick Kron change. Kara's +1/+1 effect for minions in her hand now only applies to minions played on the turn it's used, meaning you can no longer rely on the strategy of stacking it on Rush minions to deal burst damage from hand.

Two other nerfs targeted the game's Dispel effect, which is like Duelyst's version of Hearthstone's Silence. Ephemeral Shroud which I recommended should be in all your beginner decks way back in beta went from being a 2/2 to a 1/1, but will probably still see play thanks to being a cheap, neutral Dispel option. Meanwhile, the Vetruvian card Siphon Energy can no longer target any minion on the board, only those near your general, and many people are already saying that might be enough to severely limit its use.

When I interviewed Counterplay Games at PAX West this year, they told me the game had seen an influx of players since launching on Steam in August. Counterplay has always been more liberal with balance changes than many other CCGs, and Kron's demise is just a continuation of that trend. But the change to Kara's Bloodborn Spell means my Mei general mod could be more relevant than ever as wall decks go on the rise.

You can read the full patch notes here.