This week’s free games on the Epic Store will have you murdering unsuspecting Englishmen and playing cards against your friends on a magical hex board. That’s right, it’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Faeria! I’ll let you figure out which description goes with which game.

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It’s Thursday, and that means new free games on the Epic Store. Between now and February 20th there are two quite fight-y games up for grabs. The first is Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a rare medieval RPG that focuses more on historical stuff rather than the fantastical. Next up is Aztez, a side-scrolling brawler set in Aztec times when the only colours they had were red, white and black.

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Every digital card game has to have a party trick. Hearthstone’s party trick is being Hearthstone. Ta-da! Meanwhile, The Elder Scrolls: Legends cut its board in half, which some might say is a drastic approach, but fair enough, it got my attention. Shadowverse added the ability to evolve minions, and made many of these minions cute anime girls.

Faeria‘s party trick is a clever board system where you place tiles of land for your minions to walk on. It’s significant, then, that the release of the Fall Of Everlife DLC expands that board-building mechanic through new minions that apply it in creative ways. Oh, and it’s a buy-to-play card game now instead of a free-to-play one. (more…)

We’ve just added another game to the RPS Supporter Program. If you’re already a supporter (or if you sign up now), you’ll get access to a key for Faeria, the collectible card game that Brendan’s review says is “more interesting” than vanilla Hearthstone and “many times more thoughtful than Duelyst.” Read on for more details. (more…)

Strategic card-collector Faeria made the jump today from free-to-play to a far less chance-driven model. Gone are booster packs or chests bought with real money – now you just buy the game outright and progressively unlock cards as you gain levels. Our resident wizard Brendan quite liked Faeria when he reviewed it last year, listing pacing issues and its free-to-play progression as its main flaws. As of today, at least one of those is no longer a problem.

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Collectible card games have been around for decades, but they’ve really been running hot ever since Blizzard unleashed Hearthstone four years ago. Since then, we’ve seen Shadowverse, Gwent, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Duelyst, Faeria – there are a lot of these things, if you haven’t heard. They all put their own spin on rectangles with numbers on ’em, but they also universally take cues from Hearthstone and, just as often, each other, and as a result they regularly run into similar problems, the biggest two being how to balance a competitive system and how to price card packs fairly.

Artifact, Valve’s upcoming Dota-inspired card game, is definitely using some pages from the same books, but it’s also doing enough things differently that it has the potential to solve a lot of those problems. (more…)

Welcome to Spawn Point, where we take something wonderful from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it s worth your time and how to get involved. This time: collectible card games (or at least, the videogame kind).>

Hello, I would like to collect some cards please. Of course, friend. We have a wide variety of fantasy themed cards, ranging from hostile dragon to raving ghoul to

Hang on, what are these numbers? Oh, ignore those, they re nothing to worry about. Look at this wizard! (more…)

Pretty free-to-play card game Faeria official site] today gets a new cooperative mode with the launch of its first expansion. Well, I say “expansion”; developers Abrakam say “Adventure Pouch”. I refuse to believe that’s not slang for a wizard’s gnarled and rubedo-stained genitalia. The point is, Adventure Pouch: Oversky adds new cards and a cooperative campaign adventuring to a floating island paradise. (more…)

We re currently spoiled for choice when it comes to collectible card games. If you re not into the traditional nature of the efficient Hearthstone, you might dip your toes into the monster chess of Duelyst, and if you don t fancy that maybe you ll swan off with the Gods of Smite Tactics (although I wouldn t currently recommend it). Into this arena comes Faeria [official site] a board-game-card-game hybrid that moves slowly and methodically but soon reveals itself to be quietly clever. … [visit site to read more]

Snazzy CCG/board game hybrid Faeria [official site] left early access and properly launched only last week, and now here comes news of the first expansion. The ‘Adventure Pouch‘ will arrive this summer, bulging with a new cooperative campaign, co-op boss battles, and other odds and ends. While Faeria is free-to-play, the Adventure Pouch will be a paid expansion. Also, its name is Adventure Pouch. Adventure Pouch!

Can’t you imagine a filthy wizard propped up by a tavern counter, mead filtering through his nicotine-yellow beard, patting his knee and slurring “C’mere darling, I’ve got a quest reward for you in my Adventure Pouch”? Awful. … [visit site to read more]