Over the weekend I had the pleasure of trying out a new online CCG called Sword Girls. Developed by ChangYou, Sword girls acts like any other card game (Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon) in the fact that you have cards that you need to collect and you battle against NPCs and other players. However, that’s where the similarities end. This online CCG has a lot more going on with it. Let’s start with the basics. You have three card types: Character, Follower, and Spells. Each deck can contain one and one character only, these cards act as your life bar. When your character’s health reaches zero, you lose the match. However, characters are not entirely useless, each has unique abilities that help you or hinder your enemy.  Followers are your attacking cards, they each have their own attack, defense, and stamina. Attack is how much damage you inflict, defense is how many points are deducted from an incoming attack, and stamina is your follower’s health. Spells are your buffs and debuffs. These will aid you and of course hinder your enemies. Watch out though, these actions might come at a cost.

Similar to MMO’s you have dungeons that you can explore but not in the traditional sense. Dungeons have varying levels and each level has one character that you must defeat with your deck. Winning a battle rewards you with items that you can use to make more cards in the Labs section. Creating new cards is painless. You simply select the card you wish to synthesize and voila! The game shows you what items are required for the transaction and all that is left to do (assuming you have the items required) is to click OK and your card is then added to your collection.

Sword Girls will be headed to open beta testing starting the 28th so be sure to go and check them out here: Sword Girls Website

Check out pictures of some of the different characters and the trailer for Sword Girls below.