If you're looking at this game, odds are that you love the idea of playing with historic cards and using them to battle. In fact, I was too. But believe me, that feeling falls off after some time. The art, flavour, and cards represented are absolutely wonderful. And each nation has their own unique feel. The community for the game is also quite wonderful and supportive of new players too.

That's where the positives end. This game is riddled with terrible balancing, toxic metas, an unfriendly F2P economy, and clueless developers.


Firstly, the balancing. Aggro reigns supreme while there are a plethora of unplayable cards from the most recent expansion. It did nothing to fix this. Every so often there are slight nerfs to cards. But don't hold your breath. More often than not they are a few months late. The most recent one heavily crushed Japanese Control, a fresh take from the meta. Discard was also slightly nerfed with one card from the archetype no longer discarding. But when they buff cards, nothing ever happens from the buff. It's a placebo effect.


Next, the metas. They tried to fix this with the most recent expansion and the cards in the Reserve Pool. We'll get more into that later. Control was playable for a few months, but with the most recent nerfs made it so that it was much less viable and will get run down by aggro decks. Self Damage was dominant for months. And not to mention Jaggro, the staple of all aggro decks was alongside with it. Discard was also a pain to play against and it was viable for a long time as well.

Not only that, but fringe decks see very little play in the meta. It could even be seen as 'glue' where the meta is held together very tightly leaving very little room for creativity. As a result of this, people repost the same decks with minor changes and the possible meta-breaker decks are almost non-existent.


Oh, god. They really screwed this one up. You get 20 gold for your first win and then 50 gold for completing a mission. That's 70 gold per day. When you compare that to the price of packs it doesn't seem that bad! We'll start with Base packs. That's almost 5 packs a week! Or almost 22 packs a month! However, the contents of the packs are not the best. You get a guaranteed Limited or better[Second lowest rarity of a card] and the rest of the pack's contents will be random. Although, you're most likely to get four Standards[The lowest possible rarity of a card]. You may get lucky and get a Special[Second highest rarity] or an Elite[The rarest cards in the game], but don't count on it. Those are reserved for the Officer packs.

These are triple the price of Base packs at 300 gold, but they have a few improvements over Base packs. For one, there are 7 cards in the pack compared to 5 cards. And secondly, you're guaranteed to get at least one Special and you have increased chances of getting higher rarity cards. If you complete your daily mission and win at least one game you'll be able to get one of these packs every 4.29 days. Which on paper doesn't seem that bad. However, the decks you actually need to craft to compete with on Ladder require tons of these Specials and Elites, making it so that it takes forever to build a deck that will inevitably fall out of the meta.

There is a rewards track for every nation that is full of wildcards, random golds, and packs. This starts off strong at the beginning with you getting a new reward every couple of games, but it quickly slows down around the level 30-40 mark, making it so that you need to play for hours to progress a little bit.

Wildcards do come out of packs and are the most valuable resource in the game, so you have to use them wisely. You can't even refund them if you make a bad decision and haven't even used them yet.

Every season you get rewards for how far you make it in ladder. But it's very difficult to climb without sinking lots of time into the game. Every season you drop down 5 ranks. So if you don't play for a while you will be left at the base rank of 20.

The funny thing is, the economy used to be a lot better. There used to be a way for F2P players a way to grind besides the rewards track. For every 10 wins you received 10 coins. It wasn't much, but at least you got coins for playing the game more than most. Not only that, there was a mechanic called the crate! For every duplicate you got it progressed your crate and it gave you a boatload of rewards for duplicates too. It's supposed to be reworked, but there is no news on that.

The last thing I want to touch up on is Draft. It is possible to profit from this gamemode, although it is very difficult to do so. You have to be very good at the game or get extremely lucky for your draft. It is not a reliable way to profit and grow your collection.


There used to be very few game-modes in KARDS. You had Draft, Ranked, Unranked, Draft, Offline Play, and Theatres of War. Two of which were versus AI. However the developers have released Skirmish and Classic as of late which has made it so that there are a few complications.

For one, the Skirmish gamemode is inherently plagued. It happens every two weeks for two-three days and comes with a reward for your first win. It introduces a new set of rules. Sometimes you get a deck, sometimes you pick a nation, and other times you have to build a deck for the mode. It's almost a copy of Hearthstone's 'Tavern Brawl'. This all seems fine until you realise that the game-mode isn't... the best. A lot of times it makes it so that for new players it's very hard to win if you don't have the cards. Or the rules will make it so that the mode isn't fun at all. They also changed the rewards too. It used to come with a full set of new cards for a win, then it switched over to packs. Packs are all well and good but people need variety to support their interest in the game. If there isn't anything new in the game, people won't play.

Or you could screw up entirely with the Reserve Pool like the devs did. By putting 3 Elites, 4 Specials, 4 Limiteds, and 5 Standards from each Main nation, and a few Specials, Limiteds, and Standards from Ally nations, they effectively removed those cards from the game killing certain archetypes and limiting others. To counteract this, the developers gave a middling amount of Wildcards and Packs, resulting a net loss for most people's collection. They also introduced a new Classic gamemode, for every card- Akin to Hearthstone's Wild format. This was populated for a few weeks, but when I have personally tried to queue up for it, I never get into a game and it encourages me to play against bots. Furthermore, the Devs did not rotate problematic cards out like the infamous Monty.


Very few developers from 1939 Games actually bother to try to engage with the community. Even when they do hear people, more often then not they ignore the community and go on with whatever the hell they want to do. Sure, they're a company. It's they're game. But they never act in the best interest of the community.

They also never follow up on their promises and are late to everything. It took almost a full year after the projected release date for KARDS Mobile. The Crate still hasn't been revamped, and there are countless other things that they do wrong.


If you've read this whole review, thank you. If not, that's fine too. I still appreciate you reading this section. This game will be a huge waste of your time and/or money. With a constantly boring, stale, and frustrating meta you're bound not to enjoy the game once you progress a little bit. There is very little room to be creative, the economy is terrible[Encouraging you to spend money on the game], and the developers are greedy little liars. Please do not play this game.