Crystal Clans Review

Crystal Clans Board Game
Crystal Clans Reviews
Crystal Clans Review

Crystal Clans Online Slot Review. Magic, fantasy and that need for adventure collide in Crystal Clans slots by iSoftBet. In this adventure-filled slots game, players are guided into a cave filled with crystals and exciting bonus features. Crystal Clans Fight Night 2 - Feather Clan vs. Flower Clan - Duration: 38:46. Clans of Caledonia Review - with Tom Vasel - Duration: 15:18. The Dice Tower 67,233 views.

In every game of Crystal Clans, you go to battle with unique armies, seeking to outmaneuver your opponent and lead your squad to victory. Six clans stand ready to battle for dominance, including the adaptable Water Clan, the peaceful Flower Clan, the relentless Skull Clan, the innumerable Blood Clan, the wise Meteor Clan, and the unyielding.
The clan options for Plaid Hat Games’ Crystal Clans will grow with four new clan expansion decks: Shadow Clan, Fang Clan, Leaf Clan, and Feather Clan. Release is planned for July. Released last year, Crystal Clans is a card game in which players send their clan warriors to gather magical crystals (see “‘Crystal Clans’ March to Battle.

Strategy	Luck
Interaction	Components & Design
Complexity	Score

Why would anyone fight for crystals? Maybe because they are shiny. Maybe because of their powerful magic. Or maybe you just can’t stand the thought of another clan getting them. One reason is as good as the other. Crystal Clans hints at a rich setting with its clans’ personalities expressed through special abilities and the units each clan fields, but the setting doesn’t go beyond those hints, not even to tell us why those crystals are so important.

Catching Crystals – How to play Crystal Clans

But important they are. The game starts with each player picking a clan deck – out of six, in the base game – and ends as soon as a player has collected four crystals.

“Each player chooses a clan” is a simple instruction in the rulebook’s Game Setup section, but your pick changes everything. The six clans have very different strengths and weaknesses, and they all have easier and harder match-ups. What that means is, don’t just go “I pick one, then you pick one”, because the second player can then pick a counter to the first player’s clan and first player is not going to be happy about that. Agree to some other system of picking clans. That really should have been official and in the rules.

Clan picks done, Crystal Clans eschews the traditional turn taking in favor of a simple yet effective initiative system. Every action you take has an initiative cost. After paying it on the initiative bar, if the marker is still on your side (or in the neutral zone up to your opponent’s 1 space) you take another turn. For better or for worse.

You don’t even have that many different actions to pick from each turn. One, you may summon fresh units from your hand, up to three at a time. Each unit has an initiative cost that has to be paid in full. Units that are summoned together, or that end up in a space together some other way, form a squad. You stack them up in such a way that the combat values of all units are visible but only the top unit’s battlefield ability is. Only that battlefield ability is active, but all units in the squad contribute their combat prowess.

Second option, you spend initiative to activate a squad. The cost of that is the highest activation cost of a unit in the squad. (Not the sum of all activation costs. We tried that, because reading rules is hard sometimes.) Then you may reorder the squad, changing its battlefield ability if the top card changes, and move the squad one space. That doesn’t sound very fast, but the board only has nine spaces, so it’s actually plenty fast. Finally, if there is an enemy squad in the same space, you may fight.

A fight starts with each player playing a Battle Card from their hand. They are the same cards as the units, but you ignore the unit part and only look at the bottom part with the battle effects. Used this way, each card has a battle style: Bold, Guarded, or Tricky. In Stone-Paper-Scissors style a Bold style has a greater effect against a Guarded style, a Guarded style has a greater effect against a Tricky style, and a Tricky style against a Bold style. After resolving the Battle Cards’ effects you sum up each squad’s total damage. While there is at least as much damage left as the enemy squad’s top card you remove that card to the discard pile, then see if there is enough damage left to destroy the next unit, and so on. Both squads deal damage at the same time, so you rarely come out of combat without losses.

The other three actions finally get you those coveted – for some reason – crystals. First, there is the regular way. If you control two of the three crystal zones on the board, meaning you have a squad there and your opponent doesn’t, you may spend a crystal card’s initiative cost and take the card. They are expensive enough that it will usually be your opponent’s turn afterwards.

The other way to gain crystals, which relates to the final two actions, is from your opponent’s misfortune. When your opponent has to re-shuffle their discard pile because their draw pile is empty, then you immediately gain a crystal without paying any initiative cost. Every player has to go through their own deck, of course, to draw fresh hand cards. This does not happen automatically in Crystal Clans, you have to take a Replenish action to refill your hand with five cards. This costs three initiative, no matter how many cards you draw. You may even discard hand cards first, but that should be well considered. After all, you’re milling through your own deck.

With the Invade action you can help your opponent go through their deck faster. A lot faster, even. If you have an unopposed squad in your opponents home zone you may pay three initiative to force your opponent to discard cards equal to your squad’s attack value. A strong squad can force them to re-shuffle with two or three attacks.

And that’s it, except for one detail. Those crystals you’re after have special effects, too. When you gain a crystal you pick from a selection of three. Their effects are generally powerful, but often situational. Some have a one time effect that makes you turn the card over after use, but it still counts for your victory.

Is Crystal Thievery for me? – Our Verdict

Crystal Clans has a number of things going for it. Even though the rules are simple you have a number of strategic options as well as some interesting constraints. Giving your opponent a crystal when you have to re-shuffle your deck is one such constraint. You may want to discard a full hand and draw five new cards in search for the one card you want, but is that the smartest choice when it uses up a full fifth of your deck? The limit of three units per squad, only one of which can use its Battlefield Ability, is a tight constraint as well.

As for options, let’s start with the obvious winning strategies. Try to gain crystals the honest way, or try to mill your opponent’s deck for it. Or maybe start with the one and then rush for an invasion when your opponent gives you an opening. The very small battlefield makes this interesting. The enemy home zone is very close, but you have very little space to avoid enemy squads. This leads to very tense moments on the initiative track. Making a big move is always tempting, but thanks to the initiative mechanism it’ll allow your opponent a big move, too.

There is a flip side to this tension. Careful players may keep dancing around the low part of the initiative track, neither wanting to give the other an opportunity. That’s strategy, you might say, but Crystal Clans really doesn’t have enough space for dancing around each other. The other big downside is the luck of the draw. Drawing the right card at the right time or not makes a huge difference sometimes, and the “or not” case can be rather frustrating.

Nevertheless, Crystal Clans is a fun game for two players. If it wasn’t obvious from the rules section, there is a lot of direct conflict involved. If that’s not your cup of tea consider yourself warned. If you do enjoy this style of game then Crystal Clans is quick to learn and play and is pretty well balanced – even if a deck is the scissors to your paper that doesn’t automatically mean you lose, just that you face an uphill battle. (But seriously, come up with your own way to pick decks beyond “choose one”!)

We still don’t know why we’re after those crystals. So what. The hunt is reason enough.

Categories:Provider - iSoftbet slotsPublished by: Casino Hipster

With Crystal Clans, iSoftbet may finally have wheeled in the blockbuster video slot they longed for

Crystal Clans is a modern iSoftbet video slot, with 50 paylines and a lucrative bonus feature which looks truly stunning.

You’d almost mistake it for a Quickspin slot, as the theme has been executed so beautifully.

How does the Crystal Clans slot work?

In this fantasy-themed cartoon video slot, princes, princesses, elves and mysterious warriors are in charge. Of course, we cannot do without an old, wise wizard.

There are 5 reels with 3 rows of symbols and 50 paylines. The number of paylines is absurdly high for a 5 x 3 setup, making it almost seem a win all ways slot.

Bets start at $€ 0.50 per spin and can reach a maximum bet of 500 $€ per spin.

The variance is medium to high, and the theoretical payout rate is 95.22%. The game could do with a little higher RTP if you asked us.

Symbols and payouts

The prince and the princess pay out the most: 40 x and 20 x the bet for 5-of-a-kind, respectively.

Five of the same medium-value symbols, consisting of the wizard, the warrior and the elf, are worth between 3 x and 6 x the bet.

Unsurprisingly, iSoftbet has opted for the card symbols 9, 10, J, Q, K and A as low-value symbols. These are worth between 1 x and 2 x the bet for five identical ones on an active payline.

Wilds with multipliers up to 10 x

The wild symbol plays an essential role in this game. It replaces all symbols except the scatters. The 5th reel holds special wilds: a multiplier of 2 x, 3 x, 5 x or 10 x can drop.

That can result in extremely lucrative payouts, especially if you manage to spin the 5 x or 10 x multiplier. Every spin, a special wild appears on the 5th reel.

Free spins bonus

You activate the free spins bonus with 2 or more consecutive scatters. This may seem like a piece of cake, but it turns out to be quite a challenge in reality.

The more scatters, the more free spins you win. Nothing uncommon about that, you might think, but to win a mystery number of free spins IS quite rare.

The distribution is as follows:

Two scatters: win 10 – 15 free spins.
Three scatters: win 16 – 25 free spins.
Four scatters: win 26 – 35 free spins.
Five scatters: win 36 – 50 free spins.

The multiplier, which was active on the 5th reel when you initiated the bonus, remains active for the rest of the free spins. In other words, if you win the free spins with a 10 x wild on the 5th reel, then all your free spins will get a 10 x multiplier.

During the free spins, retriggers are possible.

Our verdict on the Crystal Clans slot?

We are very impressed by Crystal Clans. Although it took us a long time (we had to put down $€ 300 in deposits) to activate the bonus feature, we did get 25 free spins with a 10 x multiplier.

One retrigger of 15 free spins, a lot of super big wins and 40 spins later, all of a sudden, $€ 1,530 was added to our account, with bets of only $€ 1 per spin.

Of course, our judgment of Crystal Clans is a bit clouded now, and the 10 x multiplier on the free spins is quite rare.

Still, winning so much during a free spins bonus is quite exceptional, and Crystal Clans looks top-notch when it comes to graphics.

Crystal Clans Board Game

The game is colourful, the symbols are beautiful, and the reels spin like a charm.

We deduct half a star due to the lowish payout rate.

3.7 out of 5 stars.

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