Shadow Era - Trading Card Game

Now your favorite online Collectible Card Game is under New Ownership!

Shadow Era is now more rewarding with a faster continuing development schedule than ever before!

Shadow Era is the full-scale, cross-platform collectible trading card game that you've been looking for, with the most generous free-to-play system out there!

Start your campaign by choosing your Human Hero, and get a free starter deck. Battle with AI opponents or other players in real-time PVP to earn more cards. Your progress and cards will be saved on the server and can be accessed from any device! You must decide which strategy to use as you build your deck, in one of the most balanced card games out there!

REVIEWS

"A fantastic representation of what freemium games should be." - Touch Arcade

"Shadow Era is a must-download for fans of CCGs." - TUAW

"Shadow Era is a deep CCG that's easy to pick up, but nearly impossible to put down." - Slide To Play (4/4)

"Shadow Era proves that digital TCG's can be just as fun as their real world counterparts." - Gamezebo

Version 4.501 is NOW LIVE!

26 New Cards finishing the Campaign Expansion Packs, paving the way for the next expansion - already in the works.

New Monthly Contests offering players an opportunity to become a card in the game!

Many balance changes making some cards previously in the game much more playable.

The first appearance of Dual Class cards.

Wild and Outlaw Tribes are now competitive with your other favorite tribes in the game.

More inter-class balance is achieved in this release, allowing all classes to be played at top-tier levels!

FEATURES

Free To Play

Shadow Era is widely considered one of the most generous free-to-play card games out there. You won't find any "pay to win" here! In fact, some of our top competitors haven't spent a dime.

More Than 800 Cards

Unlike other CCGs, we don't believe in ban lists or card rotations! We carefully balance all cards to make them viable and also fun to play.

Amazing Card Art

The dark fantasy art style is sure to wow you, with high-quality artwork that rivals even the top trading card games with huge budgets!

Game Spectating

Whether it's just cheering on your friends in battle, or watching World Championship matches, in Shadow Era we let players join games in progress. You can also search up past matches to view replays and learn new strategies from top players or try to pinpoint your mistakes.

Cross-platform PVP

With support for PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, players can battle each other no matter what platform they're playing on. What's more, you're free to change devices and all your cards and data will follow you.

Great Community

We have a great and welcoming community in Shadow Era, who are here to help with deck ideas or pointing you to suitable guilds. What's more, the community is highly involved in the development of the game at all stages. Finally, a game where your opinions matter! After all, Shadow Era is made for the players.

How to play

I'm not going to cover this too much, because the game has a decent tutorial that shows you the basic ideas. But here are some of the basic ideas.

Turn Structure

At the beginning of the game, both players draw 6 cards. The turn is split into 2 phases, the sacrifice phase and the action phase. In the sacrifice phase, you may take one of the cards in your hand, and put it on your resource pile. With a few exceptions, you will never see that card ever again.

The action phase is very flexible. You can play a card from your hand as long as you can pay the resource cost, a number written in the top left corner of each card. Resources can each be used once per turn, so if you had 2 resources you could play one card that costs 2 resources.

Allies

Allies are cards that have an attack value and a health value. Once the health of an ally reaches 0, it dies and is sent to the graveyard. Allies can each attack once per turn. When attacking, the attacker deals damage equal to their attack value, and then if the opposing ally still has health, it can counter-attack. Damage is permanent in Shadow Era unlike in some other games (though there is an exception, with decks that can heal allies). Once an ally has attacked, it is exhausted. Exhausted allies can't do anything, but your exhausted allies are "readied" at the end of each of your turns.

Items

There are many different types of items in Shadow Era. Many of them have a durability value, and each time you use that item it loses a durability. An item with 0 durability is sent to the graveyard.

Abilities

There are also many types of abilities. These can be one-time-use abilities, abilities that last for a certain duration, or attachments that attach to an ally or hero.

Heroes

Heroes all have a health value, and once it reaches 0 you lose the game. They can use a Shadow Ability once per turn, but must spend Shadow Energy in order to use this Shadow Ability. Heroes gain 1 Shadow Energy per turn.

Making Gold

One of the nice things about Shadow Era is that every card in the game can be purchased for gold. There is a premium currency, Shadow Crystals, that you can use to get packs or buy pre-made decks. There is also something called XP, or experience points. Each hero has a level, and as you level up that hero you get shadow crystals per level raised. So, the main way to get gold is to find ways to get XP, which gives you Shadow Crystals, which can be used to buy packs/decks, which can be sold for gold. There is a neat tip to make this process a lot easier: once your starter hero gets to a high level, buy a different hero from the merchant for 200 gold and assemble a deck with them (the cards in the deck don't matter at all, the deck itself can be really bad). This will make it easier to level up through the following methods:

1. Meltdown

Ever since Meltdown became free, it is in my opinion the best way to make money for beginners. That is because you don't need a good deck. In rated, you will probably lose a lot when you are first starting off because your beginner deck is not designed to be very competitive. However, in meltdown, you get dealt random cards and make your own deck with those cards. It is true that meltdown can be difficult at first, especially when you don't really know what you are doing. That being said, meltdown also doubles as a great way to learn about different cards and about the game in general. If you make the top 25 meltdown players per week, you will make at least 100 Shadow Crystals (top player makes 2000 SC). In my experience, making the top 25 means about 5 or 6 victories, which is not that many to be honest.

2. Rated

If you are a beginner, I highly recommend offering a draw as soon as you are matched with another player. Often times, they will see your 0 rating, and decide to accept the draw. That's because they will lose a lot of rating for losing to you, and stand to gain very little rating for beating you. Drawing with another player grants 200 XP and 40 gold, which is a lot especially for a beginner.

3. Watching ads

This is honestly a really good way to make Shadow Crystals, but it's kind of boring to watch ads and only available to mobile users. In order to watch an ad, you must play the campaign at least once, and then an optional ad will pop up on the campaign screen from time to time. You get 5 SC per ad.