I Had The Best Time Getting Thrashed In Wildhearts TCG’s Middling Showdown

After initially reporting on the first battering I received in Wildhearts TCG‘s Middlin Showdown with creators, I promised to fill you in on what happened next. Well, I’m happy to report that I had fun, so much fun, even though I was absolutely thrashed twice more before watching the really skilled players go head to head.

I think that a huge indicator of how good a game is comes from how much fun you can have while losing. The deck I built for the Middlin Showdown had some real power plays hidden inside, and I managed to use all of them across my three matches. While that wasn’t enough to help me win, it was enough to push back in the face of seriously powerful decks that are designed to control their opponents.

Wildhearts Is Fun Regardless Of Your Score

At the time of writing, Wildhearts TCG is close to hitting a very exciting stretch goal on Kickstarter that guarantees you a brand new shiny foil Familiar with every Starter Deck, so don’t miss out if you fancy one. Your Familiars are like commanders from Magic: The Gathering, so you use them all the time. Having a rare foil from this stage of the game’s creation will be extremely rare one day, and I personally can’t wait to have that in my collection.

But the collecting is just one small part of what makes this game so much fun. You don’t need to play at all to enjoy it that way, but the gameplay allows you to pull out every trick you’ve planned, provided you draw the right cards, because it keeps things fair.

In my second and third Middlin Showdown matches, Judges cards made certain Fields inactive so that I stood a good chance of scoring and having the advantage for a round or two. Despite most of my attempts to create big creatures being stunningly thwarted with abilities that reset or KO them, I still did the three things I desperately wanted to.

First was using Terrpion in a round where I was winning in a couple of Fields. This won me a couple of Victory Points that helped close the gap between me and my opponent.

Second was using Unity Tactics. This is a Tamer card, sort of like a spell, that gave all my friendly Ally cards two additional points of power and Block. This dramatically increased my score across all Fields and protected my cards from any shenanigans, winning me a lot of points for that particular round. The icing on the cake was two more Victory Points because I had more than six cards with Block, which is no easy feat to pull off.

Finally, I used the card I was warned could ruin my entire match if used incorrectly: Ballas Whistle. I had it in my hand and knew I needed to save it. The time came when I could see my opponent playing way more creatures than I had. My deck has a lot of high-cost cards, and since theirs didn’t, they had the upper hand.

Ballas Whistle allows you to check the top five cards of your deck and play up to two Ally cards with a combined power of six. This was pretty easy, and the cards I played actually got rid of one of my opponent’s and increased the power of a couple of my other cards.

These sound like great plays, and they are! The thing is, there are even better plays you can build up over time if you anticipate what someone else might be thinking. That’s what my opponents did. They’d built decks that counted on me wanting to use a few individual cards to build up power, and countered that.

This means they had cards that removed mine or reset their power, so I couldn’t get ahead. Meanwhile, they built up their power across multiple cards and spread it over every Field, making it tough for me to fight back. But fight back I did.

I’m thrilled to say that Wildhearts TCG is going to have an actively evolving world once it’s in your hands. It means that everyone who wants to can get in on seasonal events within the universe and play with others in real life or through the Tabletopia Mod for prizes and just to be a part of the community.

Going to your local game store is a fantastic way to get to know your local players, but the way Wildhearts TCG is going to move forward keeps things open for everyone. I’m a dad of three, so even I can get in on the organized play fun.

I would love it if you could help bring this TCG to life, but completely understand if you can’t. Future Kickstarter campaigns for subsequent Series will give you more opportunities to get in on it all, so keep an eye out. If you want to support something for free, please consider checking out our socials and following us, as well as our free Patreon membership.

About the Author

Jamie Moorcroft Sharp

Editor

Jamie adores the indie games that you don’t hear about until you’re on a video essay binge at 3AM and suddenly the sound of them changes your life. He’s played games all his life and loves looking at the intricate details that make them magical and different. If there’s a wierd list, embarrassing feature, or something else far too out there on Bonus Action, there’s a good chance he wrote it. But that’s not all! He’s also an absolute fiend who never knows when to stop when he puts on his dirty robes and takes on his D&D persona as a Mud Warlock who acts on that tiny voice in your head when it wonders what would happen if you did something really dumb right now. He’s easy to beat in a TGC, though, just keep an eye out for his crazy card combos.

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