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The Orions: Legend of Wizards Strategy Guide & Thorough Spell & Creature Chart
You may already have heard of Orions: Legend of Wizards, without doubt the best Windows Mobile game released so far this year - and, I'd say, the best turn-based strategy game for the Windows Mobile game ever released. It’s one of the very few games you MUST buy – believe me, if you don’t mind wasting some time on learning the rules and getting known the cards, you WILL love it.
There already are some Orions: Legend of Wizards reviews out there; I really recommend that of Ben Stanley here, that of Doug Goldring here, that of Allistair Lee here and that of nonstandardized here. I've also posted some remarks / comments on the first two reviews in their Comments section, which may also be worth checking out.
What I have always wanted to do is creating an objective, easy-to-use, chart-based unit / spell comparison as I did some 8.5-9 years ago for Blizzard's Starcraft (I’ve published quite a few articles on Starcraft, the different units etc., mostly in a similar, tabular format). Knowing what your creatures and spells are capable of and when they are best used is the best way to beat your opponent. Therefore, what I present here is not “another” generic review, but more of a supplement to all these already-existing reviews, containing a lot of never-before-published, “advanced” stuff.
Please note that the rest of this guide assumes you already know the game at least at a basic level. That is, I won't explain how the cards are placed in the empty slots / spaces, how spells should be used, what elements there are, how the cards are randomly selected in Duel and need to be purchased in Campaign etc. This guide is written for players that do know the basics of the game and only need some expert gaming help, recommendation, strategy advice & clarification. If you need a quick recap, please read, strategy-wise, Doug Goldring's review and the comments.
As with other, decent strategy games like Starcraft (let’s now forget that Starcraft is a real-time strategy game, not a turn-based one – a decent Starcraft player will still play Starcraft as a turn-based strategy game and will always beat a less experienced player doing less turn based-like micromanagement), every unit and spell has a counter-unit or spell of, in general, less (!) price. This means if you have all or most of the recommended cards, you will be able to, to a certain degree, successfully counter-attack the cards / spells of your enemy. Everything depends on how thoroughly you know what spells and creatures you and your enemy have, what they are particularly sensitive to and what are the sometimes very important side-effects of summiting a card (in most cases, adding HP to friendly and/or stealing HP from enemy cards).
Yes, this game, strategy-wise, is as advanced as, say, Starcraft, which also requires a lot of learning to become a decent player. This also means you’ll need at least a week to master this game – assuming you play at least 2-3 hours a day (which isn’t a hard thing to do because the title is so damn enticing and gripping – you’ll love pulling out your PDA to continue playing while, say, you’re waiting for something, particularly if you can also enable the in-game music).
Unfortunately, the in-game creature / spell explanations are, in general, far from verbose and, in some cases, are very hard to understand (see for example the in-game explanation “Steal Spell” of Death / Darklord). As, after playing the game a LOT, I know all these units and spells, this was also one of the reasons I’ve spent quite a lot of time compiling this chart (and writing this guide). I hope it is WAY more informative and cleaner than the in-game help, particularly when it comes to comparing and mentioning the alternatives to a given unit / spell (particularly enemy owner HP decreasing-wise).
The chart can be found here. Make sure you open it in a maximized browser window.
I don’t think much explanation is needed for the chart; therefore, I only elaborate on some of its columns. Let me know if the meaning of some of the columns can’t be understood; then, in a later version of this guide, I’ll elaborate on them too.
The most important column will be the “Recommended?” one. In there, I’ve explained whether the card is recommended and if it is, when, under what circumstances you must consider using it. This column is of extreme importance to achieve the goal I’ve outlined above: to find the cheapest and, therefore, most economical solution for a given task. For example, if your opponent summons a Death / Grim Reaper, which costs 12 Death points, you can easily counter-attack this creature by quickly summoning Life / Paladin and casting Exorcizm. In addition to having only spent 8+2 Life points (that is, 2 less than with the enemy’s Death spell) on the summoning and the casting, you will still have a moderately-strong (4 damage done to non-Death opponents) Paladin with (still) 10 HP on the board, also ready to quickly kill (via the above-mentioned Exorcizm spell) another Death creature. Now, think of how much it would have cost you to get rid of Grim Reaper WITHOUT relying on Life / Paladin (and, assuming, you don’t have (or, currently can’t afford) Air / Black Wind or Fire / Fireball, two of the other, excellent instant killer spells) – yes, you would have spent much more. (Incidentally, this is how a decent Starcraft player, putting special emphasis on casting advanced spells, plays. A simple Plague spell from the Zerg Defiler can cause, resource-, micromanagement- and time-wise, orders of magnitude more loss to the enemy than the original price of a single Defiler, even including climbing the tech tree to be able to produce it at all.)
Also, in order to make looking up information as quick as possible, I’ve also tried to separate information belonging to different categories. For example, this is why I’ve created a separate column about “Increasing / decreasing elemental”. For example, if you need to quickly look up which creature will help in increasing an elemental (mostly the one it’s belonging to, except for Life / Apostate, which increases Death instead of its Life home element), you just look at this column in the section of the given elemental (sections, in order to save horizontal screen estate, are separated in the first column; I’ve denoted a new elemental section with bold there) and search for any entry. For example, if you look at the Water section, you’ll see there are two creatures to increase Water: Nixie and Ice Wizard. (While the otherwise very strong Hydra will actually decrease it each turn by two – until it reaches zero. I’ve also included these cases in here.)
Another example: when you want to be absolutely sure you summon a creature to an empty slot, you choose the slot (the opposing creature) taking the “Particularly vulnerable to...” column into account. For example, if there is an empty slot with an opposing Fire (enemy) unit, you won’t want to put a Water / Ice Wizard or Ice Guard in there because they sustain 200% damage from any Fire creatures or spells. Taking this further, you will also want to consult the “Immune to...” column in there to see whether there are any creatures immune to Fire creatures (as can clearly be seen, Red Drake is, in addition to the well-known, low-cost example of Earth / Forest Spirit). Finally, you’ll also want to consult the “Delivers extra damage to..." column to see whether there are any creatures (or spells) that deliver some extra damage to Fire creatures. (As can clearly be seen, Water / Nixie is one of them; that is - if you don’t use any modifiers like Earth / Dryad in the next slot or Fire / Salamander anywhere else - it’ll deliver 2*3, that is, 6 damage.)
Similarly, if you need to counter-attack a very powerful Water creature spending as little money as possible with the best outcome, you (in addition to the joker-of-all-trades Earth / Forest Spirit, preferably backed up with an Earth / Dryad in the next slot in order to bump up its attack by not less than 2) may want to look up a unit immune to Water spells / creatures. Just a quick glance at “Immune to…”: yes, Water / Ice Wizard (only 1 damage only taken from any enemy Water unit) is one of your best choices in this case. (Let’s only hope that, seeing this, your enemy won’t use Fire spells like Fire Spikes or – for you, even worse – Fireball to quickly get rid of your Ice Wizard - don’t forget the two ice-based Water creatures are particularly sensitive to fire. Or, it won’t use a cheap, but, in this case, pretty powerful (2*2 base damage to Ice Wizard and Guard) Fire / Cerberus in the next slot of the opposing one in order to protect it from your direct attack.)
Also, if you quickly want to further decrease the health of the enemy’s owner but don’t have (currently – because of the lack of elemental points – access to) the traditional HP decreasing spells like Death / Steal Life, just summoning a middle-priced Death / Banshee will inflict 8 damage to the enemy owner right at summoning. In order to quickly find this information, you’ll need to scrutinize both the “Increasing / decreasing opponent health” and the “Effect on enemy owner” columns (these columns are pretty similar in meaning; I still wanted to keep them separate to better separate spell- and unit-based damage).
Note that the “Price when produced” column refers to the Campaign mode. In Dual mode, it has no meaning as, unfortunately, you can only have 4 randomly selected cards in each element in Dual games. This is one of the most annoying shortcomings of the game, in addition to, in Campaign mode, 1. the inability to destroy buildings and 2. to get rid of unwanted cards in order to be able to purchase other ones. Implementing a solution to the latter two would be really beneficial because you can easily reach the maximal number of the structures on a given Orion (see the PS section below) and you will always want to use other cards than is currently available. I will definitely ask the More Games Entertainment folks to add the possibility of more cards for example playing Dual games – it’ll greatly enhance for example multiplayer gaming.
PS: just a remark. None of the reviews I’ve read so far mentioned the fact that you can’t build an unlimited number of structures on a given Orion. This MUST be kept in mind when you, for example, in Hard games, only possess 2-3 Orions and allocate most of your experience points to, as is also discussed at the comment section here, “Power” in order to quickly get some of the better cards, even at the beginning of the game, as the only way to defeat much better opponents. Then, if you fill up your words with resource harvesters / converters like in this screenshot, after reaching the building number threshold, you won’t be able to build anything else (see this screenshot showing this), even when there would still be plenty of space to build your new structures on.
Incidentally, the screenshot above also shows the optimal number of each resource harvester / converter. As can clearly be seen, you’ll need the most Crysols harvesters to bump up Crysols production (otherwise, an Orion only produces 20 Crysols a day). The number of Sulmors converters should be slightly (about 50-70%) less than those of the Crysols harvesters. Then, the number of Goldius converters should be about 5-15% of that of the Crysols harvesters, while Eractus converters should be about 2-4%. If you fill up 2-3 Orions (almost) entirely with resource harvesters / converters, you won’t likely to ever run into resource shortage – actually, most of the time, your Crysols will still remain at 9999 (the maximal level).
PS 2: as you may have already noticed, in the chart, I’m referring to the six elementals using italic; also, when referring to a particular spell / creature card, I always name the elemental it belongs to so that you can more easily find it. Finally, when referring to a spell of a particular creature, I also mention the creature, along with its elemental to greatly speed up the lookup.
Review & Strategy Guide: the best game add-on this year (so far): Orions: Deckmasters
The new add-on, Orions: Deckmasters, for probably the best (native) Windows Mobile game of all times, Orions, has just been released. It not only adds 45 (!) brand new cards, but also implements most of the custom features I’ve asked for in my previous Orions articles.
I’ve been playing it for more than three weeks and, now, I feel I’m able to write a very thorough guide and tips. Please consult my two, related articles HERE and HERE for more info on what the game is all about, how it should be played; in this article, I only elaborate on the new cards and new modes.
In addition to the new cards, there’re brand new duel modes:
A "Custom Decks" feature, which allows to build your own deck and use it for fighting in duels. You can put any cards (at most, 24 and, at most, 5 for each element) on these decks. There are some 10 individual decks you can use.
By using these customized decks and utilizing my favorite cards (more on them later, in the Appendix), it was only in about 2% of cases that the CPU was able to defeat me in regular duel games played in Hard mode. Just a comparison: in the standard mode, the same figure is about an order of magnitude higher.
There’s also a new "Draft" mode, where players pick cards out of randomly generated "pool" before each game, and then use these cards as their fighting decks. This also makes the game less random (and you also know, before starting to playing, what cards the enemy has if you pay attention to watching him selecting the cards), while it still isn’t so restricted as with the before-explained custom deck mode.
Note that there’s an unofficial PDF manual downloadable HERE; the PMG folks don’t plan to publish a similar, updated one for the new game. Also note that the developers promise a touchscreen-less MS Smartphone (AT LAST!) and a BlackBerry(!) version of the game. Incidentally, BlackBerry means Java MIDlet. Java MIDlets mean out-of-the-box (or, at least, after some VERY simple conversion steps) compatibility with standard MIDlet environments; this may also mean other advanced MIDlet-capable platforms (for example, Symmbian S60) may also be able to run the game some day.
The game is, of course, a must to buy. I've too purchased it in order to support the developer (I've previously had it so I didn't really need a new license, but I've found it so excellent that I though to myself the developer definitely deserves this).
Now, let’s take a thorough look at the best new cards.
The best new cards
Creatures
Air / Lord Lighting (Level (price): 9/ Health (HP): 22/ Attack (strength): 5): Whenever attacks Air / Zeus, kills it. That is, if you want to kill Zeus because you have a lot of units on the deck with less than level 7, want to defend them from Zeus’ pretty effective and cheap lighting spell, the opposing slot to Zeus is free and and also have some way of making sure you can stop Zeus attacking in the next turn (by, for example, Earth / Spider’s Web), using this card is excellent.
Its spell is a bit less powerful than that of Zeus if you have little Air (the damage delivered equals to the current air) or some other direct, comparable spells like Life / Knight’s pretty powerful spell attacking all the other cards; but can be cast on any other enemy, even over level 7, unlike Zeus’ spell.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Lordlightn.jpg
Life / Monk (7/ 16 / 1): probably the best, new card; highly recommended. While its attack is pretty bad, its auto-healing effect and, even more importantly, its spell is probably the most handy of all spells. The spell decreases of the target creature’s hit by 2 until 1 until 1, it’s already at 1 and with, say, Fire / Salamander or Earth / Dryad increased or in the very few cases when the damage is pure magical and can’t be decreased – see the brand new Death / Evil Sorcerer. With it, you can quickly decrease the direct attack of even the most lethal opponents.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Monk.jpg
(Note that this was a lvl6 card during the closed betatest. I was one of the testers that pointed out it was far too powerful for being lvl6 only.)
Death / Shadow (5 / 10 / 3) is particularly useful in that it only takes half the damage from non-Life cards.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/DShadow.jpg
Death / Assassin is very important if your enemy has a Life / Etherial on the board and you quickly want to get rid of it – even if the opposing slot is taken. Of course, you still have the other, already-known ways of killing of Life / Etherial. It’s also excellent at instantly killing any other creature.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Assassin.jpg
Life / Kermit’s (6 / 8 / 2) spell (Gift of Life) is really-really useful to make sure your high-level cards like Life / Chimera or Water / Kraken are reborn after being killed. This way, by only spending 10 Life, you can even restore cards of level 13…15.
Beware: as it’s a good spell, it can be stolen via Death / Darklord.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Kermit.jpg
The biggest advantage of Water / Water Troll (6 / 16/ 4) is delivering 4 damage to three opposing creatures at the same time – for 1 Water only. Really useful if you don’t want to spend 13 Water on the similarly-working Hydra (which, in addition, would leave your Water at 0 all the time, unless you have additional ways of quickly increasing it – via, for example, Nixie)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WaterTroll.jpg
Air / Soul of Winds (6 / 200 (decreasing by 20 each turn) / 4 (default)) is THE card against strong card - and pretty much useless against weak cards like Earth / Dispercer or Life / Monk. The latter also means you’ll want to put very weak cards against it if your opponent brings this card to the deck.
The initial (but, in 10 turns, fully emptying) health means if it’s put against a very strong card, the damage caused by the opposing card will deliver little total damage. As the strength of the card equals to that of the opposing card, it’ll be pretty damaging to the opposing card. That is, if it’s put against, say, a Life / Chimera (13/30/10), it’ll only lose 10 + 20 HP every turn, while it, delivering 10 damage every turn, will kill Chimera in no more than three rounds (unless Chimera is protected / rehealed). And it’s really cheap!
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/SoulofWinds.jpg
Life / Valor is really useful if you can make sure (with, for example, Elven Archers or other spellcaster cards) there’re no opposing cards when it attacks the enemy owner; then, it’ll 14 damage (by default). Otherwise, its damage (to an enemy card) is 7 only.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Valor.jpg
Death / Evil Sorcerer is useful if you’re afraid of getting hit by Life / Kermit’s spells, decreasing your strength. Also useful against other spells and magical attacks.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/EvilSorcerer.jpg
Fire / Berserker (7 / 20 / 5) isn’t particularly good unless you need to quickly get rid of a very dangerous card causing huge damage (for example, an Air / Fairy or an Earth / Elven Archer) and it doesn’t have more HP than 12.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Berserker.jpg
Earth / Kobold (6 / 10/ 5), because of its blocking any damage under 5, can be very useful when you, for example, play against the CPU and it uses Water / Scylla. Then, by reducing Scylla’s hit to, say, 3 by using the new Life / Monk, you will have a constant source of water. (The AI is still "dumb" not to see Scylla is useless and keeps rehealing it when it reaches too low levels, giving you a lot of free Water). Of course, there are several other cards you can use the same trick with – for example, Air / Gargoyle with the Petrification spell or Air / Astral Cloud.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Kobold.jpg
Fire / Wall of fire (3/ 25/ 0) is one of the best cards. I consider it much better than the similar (3-level, dealing 3 damage) Fire Spikes if you want to quickly put a card on the deck, while quickly dealing 4 damage to all your enemies. Note that the card itself doesn’t attack; that is, if you need to take out the opposing card and don’t have other means like Earth / Elven Archer, forget it.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WallOfFire.jpg
Earth / Dispercer (5 / 13 / 1) isn’t particularly strong (deals 1 damage only) but, when it dies, you receive one element each. For example, against a non-speller / non-positive-side effects unit, it’s a good choice.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Dispercer.jpg
Blade Master (9 / 30/ 8) should also be your preferred card because of its dealing 1 damage to all the enemy cards upon getting hit and its free (!) Shuriken spell dealing 2 damage to the other owner.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/BladeMaster.jpg
Water / Giant Turtle (8 / 20 / 3) is useful against low-HP cards (typically, cards under or around 10 HP) because, once the card’s HP decreases under 10, it’ll be instantly killed.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/GiantTurtle.jpg
Water / Elementarist (7 / 18/ 3) is a very useful card to quickly kill very dangerous, powerful cards like Chimeron: the card you cast Magic Link on will receive the same damage Elementarist suffers from attacks hitting her. That is, if you want to get rid of a card really quickly, place it against a powerful, strong card and link immediately. Note that the Magic Link spell is very expensive; that is, use with caution.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Elementarist.jpg
Earth / Elven Archer (7 / 19 / 0) is also one of the cards I consider the most useful. It can not only attack any other card, even right after summoning, but also increases Earth by one each turn. I’ve found bringing 3 or, in cases, even 4 archer to the deck pretty much lethal, particularly if the opponent doesn’t have mass-killing spells like Fireball: any new enemy card brought to the deck by the opponent can be instantly killed (in most cases, right in the next round). As it has no direct attack, you’ll need another card to directly attack the enemy owner, though.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/ElvenArcher.jpg
Spells
Air / Wings of Wisdom: particularly useful spell to quickly bump up all the elements by 2. Note that the official description states this doesn’t apply to Air; this isn’t true as yet because of a bug, which will only later be fixed. Until then, you’ll want to use it if you don’t have other spells to cast or cards to place on the deck. Particularly useful when you have Life / Chimera on board, with its halving the cast cost.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WingsOfWisdom.jpg
Life / Armor of God is also very useful for quickly healing, blessing your card and removing negative spells (like poison or strength reduction) from them.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/ArmorOGod.jpg
Air / Moonlight is a very-very good spell if there are very few enemy cards on the board (it heals them too) and you quickly need to fully heal all your cards.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Moonlight.jpg
Fire / Blood Ritual: particularly useful for quickly bumping up your fire elemental; particularly if you have a Chimera on the deck, making this spell even cheaper.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/BloodRitual.jpg
Death / Enslave is also very useful to quickly steal the strongest enemy card. You can even have a gain of 8 by stealing a level 15 card (for example, Water / Kraken) with this level 7 spell. In this regard, it’s much more useful than the more expensive (lvl 8), comparable Air / Black Wind because the latter doesn’t steal the enemy card.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Enslave.jpg
Life / Pure Heart: another very useful (and comparatively cheap – lvl5 only) card. Especially useful against the CPU when it starts using Death / Black Mage’s Extract Soul to change all its cards into Death / Ghosts because of the extra 10 damage delivered to Death cards. (Incidentally, this seems to be a bug with the AI – sometimes, it changes far more expensive and powerful cards into Ghosts when it would be absolutely unnecessary. Using ghosts, BTW, should be avoided whenever possible because of the owner’s also taking damage from direct attacks. That is, I don’t see why the AI likes it so much, particularly when spending 2 Death elements on Extract Soul spells.)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/PureHeart.jpg
Appendix: my favorite (no-spell) cards
With these cards, I was able to beat the AI in the vast majority of cases – in Hard level. Note that this is just MY favorite deck when playing the AI; yours may be completely different. Also note that I don’t present a deck optimized for games with spells enabled; then, the restricted number of the in-game available cards would mean I would have needed to leave out some very cool cards. As a rule of thumb, I would have selected Fire / Fireball, Life / Pure Heart and/or Armor of God, Air / Chain Lightning and/or Moonlight and/or Wings of Wisdom and Death / Enslave - along with, of course, Life / Chimera (to halve the price of the spells) and Life / Unicorn (to protect my cards from destructive spells).
Water:
Nixie (to bump up water and to deal a lot of damage to Fire creatures)
Leviathan (to heal the owner; to deal 1 damage to all opponent cards)
Ice Wizard (to fight other Water creatures (1 damage from them); to bump up water; in need, to quickly heal owner (albeit, for this, Leviathan is preferred)
Tython (to quickly heal the cards)
Fire: Red Drake (because of the +3 damage upon summoning and not taking any damage from opposing fire creatures; that is, the most ideal card to fight Fire cards)
Diablo (mostly because of its spell, particularly when used in pair, mutually strengthening each other)
Efreet (because of the excessive damage sent back to the attacker; high HP and comparatively high strength)
Wall of fire (very cheap but, still, immensely useful). (You might want to go for Blade Master instead of this or, say, Efreet; it is also very useful and causes direct damage to the enemy owner without using any mana)
Air: Manticore (for the spell to quickly get rid of really dangerous spells like that of Monk, Elven Archer, Fairy etc.)
Zeus (to quickly get rid of cards below lvl7. If your opponent rarely uses low-level cards, you might want to go for Air / Lord Lighting instead)
Fairy (to cause immense damage to the other owner if he uses powerful, strong cards)
Nymph (to bump up air) (you might want to go for Soul of Winds instead, which is also very useful against strong opposing cards)
Earth: Satyr (the best Earth "bump-up" card - not counting in Elven Archers - particularly when deployed at the beginning of the game and particularly as the first card to deploy)
Elemental (very strong; bumps up Earth really fast; has a nice, free, protective spell)
Pyhon (suffocating is very useful, particularly if the opponent goes the Forest Spirit route)
Forest Spirit (to deploy against strong cards – if you don’t use Air / Soul of Winds against strong opponents; to heal owner)
Life: Monk (one of the best cards – both its spell and auto-healing are really worth using)
Chimera (strong; especially useful at healing owner; albeit in a no-spell game not as useful as in a game with spells)
Ethereal (to deploy against very though opponents or Scylla)
Paladin (in case you need to quickly take out a strong Death opponent like Dark Druid or Grim Reaper)
Death: Dark Druid (comparatively strong; great at healing owner)
Darklord (owner- and self-healing; stealing "good" spells, particularly that of Life / Kermit).
Nice review Menneisyys,
I've had Orions since it came out, and have both the addon's too. Its a top game, in the magic/pokemon esque mold. the deckmasters adds alot of features i had wanted to see for a long time.
The ability to duel with your own custom decks is great in its self. How ever i would like to see an improvement to the campaign game, something like HOMM would be great (i have palm heroes which is pretty much just that) with no standard cards and you have to buy all the cards you hold in your deck.
UPDATE (06/26/2008): Make sure you read JAMM's review HERE.
I play blackjack quite a bit, and I looked for an app that was just a strategy card. When I am walking from a table in a casino to another, and want to know if my play on that A4 vs dealer upcard 2 was correct.. I don't want to open a blackjack game, then goto options and view the card.. I want to quickly/easily view the strategy card, since I only have a few seconds while walking to another blackjack table.
First app in java or android sdk. The goal is really to just display the strategy card, I plan to add the ability to select a different strategy card as the 'default', but the basic design will remain the same.. to give quick/easy access to the card.
It's really not much more than a hello image app, but it is something I didn't see anything else accomplishing.. and a good way to get started with the android sdk.
I will be uploading a newer version to lock portrait mode, since landscape isn't very nice.
Check it out, 'BlackJack Strategy Card' author jmorgan under games.
I'm pretty sure that would be classified as a "device" and very illegal in casinos.
Even with the best intentions, you might have a hard time explaining that one.
The primary aim of the blackjack game is to beat the dealer. Regular players usually use a strategy card which will help them in winning at casino blackjack. Blackjack strategy card increases the chances of beating the blackjack dealer. Newbie’s may find it little confusing at starting but practice makes you perfect. But ensure that the blackjack strategy card will not make you win the game but it will only guide you.
You know, for a company who revolutionized search on the internet, Google put hardly any effort into making the Marketplace truly usable. Did they assign that project to some part-time clerical wonks or what?
Here's an example:
I am looking for a free Texas Hold 'Em Poker game and I expect I will be installing and uninstalling a fair number of programs, so I want my search to be fairly specific. So I drill down to the Android>Games>Cards and Casino section and search for "poker."
Results: 548 apps (the app searched in the entire Marketplace instead of just Cards and Casino games.) The first page (20 items) contains some candidates, but also contains 2 bingo games, 2 slot games and a roulette app. so 1/4 of the results are worthless and then 3 of what's left cost money. What's worse, the pages following are chock-full of Lady Gaga wallpapers, lots more non-poker card games and more that aren't even card games.
Changing the search string to "texas poker" cuts it down to under 100, but still way too many to mess with.
Now, every one of these apps is categorized in a number of ways - category, sub-category, price, rating, popularity and probably a good bit more. But almost none of that is usable in the Marketplace app on the tab.
The PC version is a little better in that you can filter the results by several of these things and that cuts the "poker" search results down to about 300 but the app we run on the tab should be as functional as this. On the PC, using every filter available, I can get it down to 50 apps or so and that is borderline acceptable to me - but it shouldn't be that hard and I cannot do this WITHIN the app at all.
Anybody else hate this necessary evil?
From google io they are going to attack the market interface and sections. Might make searching easier.
The web based version is much better imo.
Are you looking to play online with other people using monopoly money or are you looking to play with computer? If you want to play online for free then king poker is the best app for this. You get $10,000 bonus each day you log in.
goodintentions said:
Are you looking to play online with other people using monopoly money or are you looking to play with computer? If you want to play online for free then king poker is the best app for this. You get $10,000 bonus each day you log in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't find any reference to King Poker. Would it be Poker King?
If that is the one you are talking about, It is almost completely unplayable for me.
The cards are so tiny they are almost unreadable and for two hands my cards weren't even shown.
Uninstalled.
What it is: Kicktrade is a free virtual multiplayer stock market, where you take on the role of an investor who buys and sells shares of the football teams currently participating in the Euro Cup event. Imagine the teams being like the companies on a real market and you compete against other players trying to make the most virtual money out of their development during the competition. Think of it like betting, but in a different way... although be aware that you neither pay or win any real money!
What's the idea behind it: The game is targeted to be casual with simple user interaction (you should be able to start playing immediately even without registering anywhere) but developing a high addiction factor, which can lead to micro management and wanting to understand the mechanics behind the system - but this is not required to play. The development of the prices should in the end reflect the expectations of the players in their teams and their real performance during the matches.
How the market works: The "companies" that you can trade start into the market with a price reflecting their FIFA ranking. You can take their development on the market or the matches into account to make a decision to buy and sell their stock. There is a bank that constantly buys and sells shares from and to you. The prices to buy and sell start above their current value to buy and below their current value to sell. However, those bank offers are adjusted in periods, so you will have to make a decision to buy or sell before someone else does - but also not too quickly because you then might waste money. Once a transaction has been made, the price of the company is adjusted to the transaction price (taking the trade volume into account) and the new buy and sell prices are calculated (and the cycle begins again).
Installation: I attached the game to this post (as the forum does not allow me to post any links yet). Since you are all privacy aware: You will have to accept 3 permissions to be able to play the game:
INTERNET : obviously to connect to the game server to fetch game data and send your actions.
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE : to store cache data on your SD card. For example the icons of the teams in the market. All data can be wiped in the preference menu.
READ_PHONE_STATE : to read the IMEI of your phone for authentication with the game server. No other information will be taken from your phone. This is required to prevent players from creating multiple accounts.
The development: This project has been implemented by one person alone (me) during free time as a learning project and is still in a testing phase. It is to my knowledge now bug free so I decided to enter the phase where more testers create more dynamics. This will allow me to tweak the game mechanics under more realistic circumstances. It is my first Android project, so any suggestions or comments are very welcome! (For example, if the required permissions prevent you from considering installing it and why)
The future of Kicktrade: The idea is to make more versions of the game to run during the longer running competition of several leagues in different countries. The Euro Cup is a perfect testing ground before release on leagues as it is a lot shorter with matches nearly every day. Until the end of the event I would like to have perfected the game mechanics and only afterwards I would like improve the UI and the code.
Keep up to date: You can follow the news on twitter @kicktradegame as well as on Facebook, or you can google for 'kicktrade' to find my blog called NeoZenCortexis among the first results. When there is a new version of the client available, you will see an update button on the main menu of the game. It is not always required to update but highly recommended (if you see an access denied message it could mean you should consider updating). At some point in the future, the game will also be uploaded to Google Play and get its own website but my free time is limited at the moment, so I will take it step by step.
How can you help: Most importantly, try the game yourself and/or invite your friends to play. I especially require feedback on the game mechanics at this stage of development and this requires a more dynamic market - although any other suggestion or comment is very appreciated as well. I have tested the game so far on Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, Google Nexus and a couple of HTC devices but none of them has hardware keyboards, so I expect some trouble there. Feel free to comment if you encounter any strange behavior with those. Also other than hi-res displays have not been tested.
Thanks: I would like thank all the people at XDA Developers and StackOverflow for the many hints I researched while learning how to work with android phones and ultimately even make my own app! Keep it up!!
I would be very happy if you help me test my game! For any questions or suggestions, contact me on twitter @kicktradegame, facebook or my blog (search for 'kicktrade'). Thank you very much in advance!!
Nice. .Vl try it out. ..
<3 I love football <3
Cool! Let me know if you need any help or advice... I really appreciate all feedback and I hope you enjoy!!
I had to slow down price development during the night (CET) until we have some more players from outside of europe... otherwise some of the teams dropped too far.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA
Kicktrade v0.25 released
Let's experiment a little. There was one thing in the game mechanics I was not very happy with: If you buy a share that not many people hold and nobody else is going to buy, your profit should be very small. But if your trade starts a trend on the market - let's say you buy and several other investors follow your example, you should get the best prices in average. Same thing with selling: if a lot of people hold a stock and you are the first to sell, you should get better prices than those who decide to sell last. I hope to bring more fluctuation on the market and make your decision depending on the trend you expect to see in the future. Of course this will most likely work best with more players, but let's give it a try now anyway, shall we?
One side effect of this will also be that teams which already went out of the competition and not many people are likely to be interested in are a great risk to buy, because the sell price will only increase if players follow your example. Otherwise the price might even go down, as the buy price is considerably lower now.
Further modifications in this version:
Fixed a bug: when you sell your complete depot of a share, you were still counted as an investor. This will be adjusted with the next trade on each team (only then, because those numbers are only calculated when trading).
Number of investors are now displayed (this information is important to you so you can make a decision with the changes above)
Switched position of the tabs "Depot" and "History", which increased performance (the history loads slower than the depot because it contains more entries and will now only be pre-loaded once you switch one tab to the depot).
The history now shows the last 100 trade entries when entering the tab. You can load more (if available) by scrolling all the way down.
The history graph shows the same amount of items that are in the list. Which means it will show up to 100 past trades now (before it was 20). If you scroll down the list of items before and more items are loaded, the graph will display them as well.
Performance has been increased on all list views.
Please comment on the changes, no matter if you feel they make the game better, worse or not very different at all... Thanks and let's see how the market develops now with so many teams out of the competition.