The latest expansion set for The Elder Scrolls: Legends, The Houses of Morrowind, arrived last week. This is the game's second full-sized expansion, not including standalone adventures or promotional sets, and includes 149 brand new cards to experiment with. One of the biggest deals about this set is the addition of three-attribute cards. This seems logical enough: whereas previously, with two-attribute decks, you could assume you had 25 slots per attribute, they simply upped the deck size proportionally to accommodate an additional one. This brings up some interesting strategic decisions. Traditionally in card games, you want to stick to the bare minimum when it comes to deckbuilding. If the minimum is 60 cards, you should build a 60 card deck. If the minimum is 30 cards, you should build a 30 card deck. The reason for this is that you want the best possible odds to draw your best possible cards every turn. Every card over the minimum decreases your chances to draw your best cards when you need them. Keep in mind you're more than welcome to play your traditional 50 card deck, just so long as you omit any three-attribute cards from it. The elder scrolls legends puzzles also able to play with up to 100 cards as well, as that's the new deck limit. Those mostly looking to have fun and do cool things, however, a camp which I often include myself in, will be more willing to make the sacrifice. Pros and cons aside, I love the design space that adding a third attribute to your deck opens up. If you've built around any of the tri-attribute legendaries, such as Archcanon Saryoni or Duke Vedam Dren, you may have noticed that the decks they're included in have a different feel to them—they just feel a little more epic somehow. The expansion also introduces with it more single player puzzles. While the novice puzzles aren't immensely difficult, the expert and adept versions will certainly challenge you, and all are an absolute joy. They're rewarding and the elder scrolls legends puzzles great way to pass the time when you're trying to avoid something like ladder anxiety. The ten included puzzles are also an efficient means of introducing players to the four new HoM keywords and the elder scrolls legends puzzles they function: Rally, Betray, Exalt, and Plot. While two of the three puzzle groups are behind a paywall, it's a very reasonable one for the 31 puzzles you'll unlock, especially considering the rewards you also receive along the way. Completing the first two groups alone took a few hours, already making the price point well worth it for me. If you're starting to wonder how many keywords is too many, you're not alone. In this most recent set, two of the keywords Rally and Exalt are similar or identical in name to keywords from Magic: The Gathering. While I always expect some overlap in card games sometimes there are only so many names that can fit a mechanichaving keywords with names so closely related to others could get confusing for someone with previous card game experience to pull from. When will older sets rotate, creating separate formats, similar to other games. And that doesn't include things like monthly rewards, the Madhouse Collection, or the Forgotten Hero Collection. That's a lot of playable cards: around 855 if my math is correct. There are currently around 1,100 legal cards in Hearthstone's premier format, Standard, which will drop down to around 900 after three sets rotate out with the release of The Witchwood expansion this week. As one of Bethesda's original content creators for the game, I've personally loved it from the beginning. It's taken what other digital card games have done well and added onto it. That doesn't, however, change the success of Hearthstone or the potential success of Artifact, Valve's own upcoming digital card game. I never got the feeling that Dire Wolf Digital was simply reskinning previously released cards, which is always a good sign when exploring a new expansion. The set has a feel all its own, unique from previous offerings such as Heroes of Skyrim, with enough new and innovative mechanics to keep things fresh.
