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Solforge Rise of the Forgeborn (PC/iOS) |OT|

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
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What is Solforge

SolForge is a free-to-play digital collectible strategy game that combines all the depth of a traditional trading card game experience with the convenience of online and mobile gaming. In SolForge, you take on the role of a Forgeborn, one of the select few who can wield the magic of the SolForge itself. You collect cards that represent ferocious creatures and powerful spells, and use those cards to construct decks and battle AI opponents or test your skills against other players in the arena.

Goal of the Game

You and your opponent each start a game of Solforge with 100 health, and the goal of the game is to reduce your opponent’s health to 0 by dealing damage with your creatures and spells. How you do this—whether it’s by attacking with a swarm of creatures to win as quickly as possible or playing defense with powerful spells until you can take over the game with a single unstoppable monster—is completely up to you.

The Field

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Most of the action in SolForge takes place on a board known as the field. The field has five columns, known as lanes, and each lane is split into two spaces, one for each player. These spaces are where you deploy your creatures to battle against your opponent. Your creatures always battle the opponent’s creatures in the same lane, or deal their battle damage to your opponent directly when there is no creature opposing them. Each player can have no more than one creature in each lane.

Leveling up

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Cards in SolForge have three levels, and they transform as the game goes on. At the beginning of a game, your avatar and all of the cards in your deck start at level 1. When you play a card, it levels up, which means a higher level version of that card is into your discard pile. Every four turns, you level up, and you reshuffle your discard pile into your deck, allowing you to draw your higher level cards.

The higher levels of a card are usually more powerful versions of the low levels, but some cards transform in different ways. You can tell what level a card is by looking at the icon in the upper right hand corner. You can always look at the different levels of any card by selecting it in game.

Playing Cards


- Each turn, you will draw a hand of five cards from your deck and play up to two of them.
- The exception to this is the player who takes the first turn of the game only plays one card on that turn.
- There are no costs associated with playing a card. To play a card, simply select it in your hand and make any necessary choices.
- At the end of your turn, all of the cards remaining in your hand go to your discard pile and you draw a new hand of five cards for the following turn.

Turn Structure

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What's new in the Rise of the Forgeborn expansion?

- 100 new cards
- Card forging. You can now craft any card in the game for silver (the f2p currency) and breakdown excess cards you have for silver as well.
- New prize structure.

Free 2 Play Structure

- There are 2 currencies in the game: Silver and Gold. Silver you earn by just playing the game or breaking down excess cards. Gold is purchased with cash.
- Boosters are bought with silver or gold.
- Legendary Chests (which contain more cards of better quality then standard boosters) can only be purchased with Gold or won through the games tournaments.
- There are daily prizes to win for just logging in, winning 1 match, 3 matches (both of these can be against the AI) and for winning an online match. You also get some silver for every online match you win after the first.
- Tournaments are entered with event tickets. Tickets can be purchased with Gold or Silver and can be won in the daily prizes.

Where to play

Steam
iOS App Store
* There is an android client in beta testing.
 

bigkrev

Member
Man, they need the Mass Disenchant button Hearthstone has. I have over 30 copies of pretty much every non-heroic or Legendary card, and it is taking forever to go through all of them
 

Card Boy

Banned
Have they got proper resolution yet for the PC version or does it still look like ass when you make the window big?
 

Brakara

Member
Have they got proper resolution yet for the PC version or does it still look like ass when you make the window big?

My only disappointment with the patch is the lack of UI polish for the PC client, like this one. They've said that proper scaling would be implemented together with the Android version, so you'd think it would make it in by now since they've run a closed Android beta for a few months (which works very well by most accounts).
 

hat_hair

Member
After eventually trading in all my extras and then buying about a dozen boosters, I'm sat on about 600k silver. I'm not sure what to do with it, now.

My first temptation is to buy a playset of Grimgaunt Devourers, since I still haven't managed to get a single one, and they would be perfect for my Grimgaunt Predator deck, but that feels kind of dull with all the new cards.

I think I'll just wait until May and look into the cards for an A/N attack reduction deck. That looks fun.
 

Totakeke

Member
First game against another human and the first thing they do is play super slowly to run out the timer.


Yeahh, this game won't last long.
 

Brakara

Member
First game against another human and the first thing they do is play super slowly to run out the timer.


Yeahh, this game won't last long.

Draft? Then at least it's an easy win. And in the random queue you can queue up as many matches as you want (and you'll get a free reward when your opponent times out).

But, yeah, a turn timer would be nice, and was promised at a point, but I think they want to make sure the servers are up to snuff first (used to be severe timer problems before the draft patch back in December).
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
First game against another human and the first thing they do is play super slowly to run out the timer.


Yeahh, this game won't last long.

Hey a free win is a free win. Also as Brakara mentioned you can queue up another match while you wait.
 

Totakeke

Member
It wasn't a draft, just a normal game where each player has 20 mins to play the whole game. And it wasn't like I was winning either. I've just started playing the game and don't know much about the cards.

Do you guys mean you can play multiple games at once or you mean you'll just queue so you can pop into the next game once you're done with one game?
 

Brakara

Member
Do you guys mean you can play multiple games at once or you mean you'll just queue so you can pop into the next game once you're done with one game?

You can play multiple games at once (*). When it's your turn in another match, a "Next Game" button will appear in the game you're currently in.

(*) But you can only play 1 draft and 1 constructed tournament at once though (one each that is).
 

Totakeke

Member
Ah I see.

So when you just start playing, the way to get more stuffs is just to win 3 games every day to get all the daily bonuses?
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Ah I see.

So when you just start playing, the way to get more stuffs is just to win 3 games every day to get all the daily bonuses?

Yea you get rewards for:
1. logging in
2. Winning 1 match (can be against AI on any difficulty)
3. Winning 3 matches (can be against AI on any difficulty)
4. Winning your first online match of the day (reward is always an event ticket)
 

Totakeke

Member
Hmm, that's kinda weird. Usually F2P games will try to let you play a lot more at first and give you stuffs then wind down later so you'll pay to keep playing as much.

I guess I'll keep it on the side and collect those daily bonuses for now.
 

hat_hair

Member
Any online wins beyond your first will get you silver, but not a lot.
Also, if you enter a draft with your tickets, all the cards you draft will be added to your collection.

Honestly, I have great fun with Solforge, but I rarely play more games than I need to get the daily rewards. Despite that, I've managed to log over 100 hours on Steam at this point.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Well by incentivizing people to play a bit each day, it helps ensure the multiplayer community sticks around which is vital for a game like this to be successful.
 
Well by incentivizing people to play a bit each day, it helps ensure the multiplayer community sticks around which is vital for a game like this to be successful.

This is also the approach used by Warframe and Hearthstone (and to a certain extent, WoW and other MMOs following that model closely, like FF14). Incentivising daily play is pretty important in maintaining the life of a game, as it turns out.
 

Totakeke

Member
Nah, Hearthstone starts you off with a lot of rewards for doing stuffs then gradually it slows down. Solforge just gives you the starter decks and that's it.
 

Brakara

Member
New players also start with 1 booster pack and 10k silver (this after the patch), but I agree that Hearthstone gives you more up-front. Daily rewards, on the other hand, are much better in Solforge.
 
Am I the only one who can't seem to win a single match of this game? I can destroy the computer on hard, but can't beat a human if my fucking life depended on it. Very disappointing.
 

Brakara

Member
So with Yetis being tier 1 in constructed, it should be pretty much unbeatable in the unlegendary format, right?
 

Brakara

Member
Yeah, so now I just need to come up with the right tech to beat the mirror then. The unlegendary format was probably a good idea when The Metamart Invitational was setup (when the growbots ruled), but it looks more like a drag now.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
I feel like the best card against that deck is Cull, but you can't run that in the mirror so I run Botanimates.. I dunno, I've played a few mirror matches and it really comes down to who gets their Icemage online first.
 

Brakara

Member
I haven't tried botanimate in the yeti deck, but in general I think it's terrible, as in, if I have to play it then I'm probably losing anyway. It's also level gated so you often have those very awkward turns when you draw its level 2 instance without any good targets or you don't draw it again until rank 3.

I guess you can run uranti bolt since you have, what, 6 other cards that can destroy a creature with defender, but the bolt+crush combo is a really awful 2-for-1 play (though crush being free at later levels somewhat makes up for it).
 

Brakara

Member
There's a community run ladder at http://solforgeladder.com/ where you can sign up and find people to play against in the following formats: standard, unlegendary and unheroic. Recommended for people tired of the random queue, who want to play in restricted formats, or who don't want to spend tickets for constructive tournaments.
 

Brakara

Member
Patch with 20 new cards tomorrow:

New Cards

Twenty new cards have been added to the Rise of the Forgeborn set.
Five new cards have been added for each faction – two Commons, one Rare, one Heroic, and one Legendary.
These cards can be opened in any Rise of the Forgeborn pack, Booster pack, Legendary Chest, or prize pack, including those already in your inventory.
For a limited time, packs containing only cards from the new release are available in the store for 150 Gold.

New Alternate Art

Exciting new Alternate Art cards are coming to the store!
A new super hero has made his home in Solis. Who could it be?
In the icy depths of the frozen seas, a new danger lurks
Metaminds have made new advances in musical technology. WUB WUB.
Energy and persistence conquer all things. Lightning helps too.

Card Updates

Some cards have received gameplay updates.
Many cards have received non-gameplay functional text and creature type updates.
A full list of changes can be found below.

Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements

Fixed a bug where iOS clients could get stuck trying to verify purchases
Fixed a bug where sorting by quantity could crash iOS clients

Other

Bot Battle has been removed.

Details here: http://solforgegame.com/news/rise-of-the-forgeborn-2-1-patch-notes/

The one major nerf is that Phoenix level 3 will no longer deal damage when it is destroyed.
 

Brakara

Member
Yeah, though it means that a spitemage needs help to kill a level 3 Gargoyle (and Scrapforge TItan). So this and the new Aegis Knight means it could be a return of growbots...
 

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Also, come chat in the Steam chat if playing on pc - lots of nice people in it.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Yea that's pretty bonkers. Will go well with that girl that buffs creatures that move, and heck slap a fervent assault on it for extra value.
 

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Yea that's pretty bonkers. Will go well with that girl that buffs creatures that move, and heck slap a fervent assault on it for extra value.

Talin Stampeade \ Primordial Slam, even.
or Strategist!
Or WWP\Roar.
Or Borean Mystic tricks.
Or all of them (except strategist\wwp i guess) combined!
My evoker deck is going to like this.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Only real issue with it is that at base stats it's in both Cull and Xrath's Will range at all levels.
 

Brakara

Member
So, the first World Championship qualifier is on Saturday:

http://solforgegame.com/the-solforge-world-championship/

7 qualifiers, where the winner of each goes to the playoffs along with the one who has the most overall wins in all the qualifiers. Quarter and semi-finals are played online and the final will be played live at next year's GenCon.

Now I just have to decide what deck to play with... I've been tinkering with a Wyvern deck lately, and while it's good, it has some really bad matchups. Hmmm.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
The various Tarsus shells seem to be the strongest decks right now, it may not be original but it's probably the best thing to run. If there was a real strong Tarsus hoser, I'd run that, but there isn't.
 

Beepos

Member
I haven't played since the initial beta/launch of the game after I was involved in the kickstarter. It was fun, but felt the base set of cards rather limitiing in strategy and overall depth compared to say MTG. It looks like a lot more interesting cards are out now for constructed play?

Hex is moving along slowly and one of the best things I did love about Solforge is its design to allow 2 players to play verse each other, due to the nature of not having to hide your hand. (Perfect for Ipad trips with a mate somewhere)

Also their are lv4 cards now? Are they just some very rare ones?
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
I haven't played since the initial beta/launch of the game after I was involved in the kickstarter. It was fun, but felt the base set of cards rather limitiing in strategy and overall depth compared to say MTG. It looks like a lot more interesting cards are out now for constructed play?

Hex is moving along slowly and one of the best things I did love about Solforge is its design to allow 2 players to play verse each other, due to the nature of not having to hide your hand. (Perfect for Ipad trips with a mate somewhere)

Also their are lv4 cards now? Are they just some very rare ones?

You can do some crazy fun decks now, they've done a great job diversifying the game with new cards.

As for the lvl 4 cards, they are a special card type called the 'forgeborn', there is only 1 of them per faction currently.
 

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
I haven't played since the initial beta/launch of the game after I was involved in the kickstarter. It was fun, but felt the base set of cards rather limitiing in strategy and overall depth compared to say MTG. It looks like a lot more interesting cards are out now for constructed play?

Hex is moving along slowly and one of the best things I did love about Solforge is its design to allow 2 players to play verse each other, due to the nature of not having to hide your hand. (Perfect for Ipad trips with a mate somewhere)

Also their are lv4 cards now? Are they just some very rare ones?

Constructed variety is in a really, really good place imho.
 

Brakara

Member
Yeah, the meta is as diverse as you can ever hope it to be. There are lots of tier 1 decks and plenty of opportunities to make "fun" decks.

And here's the Forgeborn cards:


They may seem broken at first glance, especially their level 4 instances, but only Oros and Cercee see some tier 1 play in a few decks. And even then they can mostly be played around.
 
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