Eternal Preview: The Hidden Gem Digital Card Game You Should Be Playing

Dire Wold Digital targets experienced strategy card game players with Eternal, featuring huge deck sizes, multiclass deck types, and tons of counterplay.

The digital card game market continues to be a competitive one, and Eternal throws yet another wrench into the flooded market. But Dire Wolf Digital is no novice when it comes to designing card games. This independent game studio has developed some high-profile games, such as the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online and Bethesda’s recently released The Elder Scrolls: Legends.

So why not develop and publish their own digital card game in-house? Well, say hello to Eternal, which is currently in Early Access on Steam and in regional testing on Android and iOS mobile devices. We first found out about Eternal this last PAX East when we met up with Director of Marketing Matt Hudson from Dire Wolf Digital. After learning about the game’s intricacies, we had to download it and try it for ourselves.

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At first glance, it’s hard to not draw parallels between Eternal’s user interface to that of Hearthstone. The game’s look is extremely similar from a graphics and layout standpoint, both featuring hero characters on colorful boards with explosive animations. However, despite these similarities, the games play very differently. Eternal is much more strategically complicated than Hearthstone, playing closer to Magic the Gathering than to Blizzard’s popular CCG.

One primary differentiator is your “mana” type resource. In Eternal, decks must contain Power cards (like Land cards in Magic). These Power cards can be of five different types of “Influence,” and you can only play one per turn. When played, these cards increases your total Power, and all cards have an associated Power cost as well as required Influences. For instance, the Pteriax Hatchling card shown below has a 3 Power cost, with one Primal and one Time Influence required.

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Eternal has no limit on the number of “colors” (Influence) that your deck utilizes. Decks are also much larger than most popular digital CCGs, ranging anywhere between 75-150 cards. You can include up to four copies of a single card in your deck, and Power cards can either be automatically or manually added to your deck. This makes deckbuilding in Eternal noticeably more complicated and strategic compared to its competitors. It’s all about balancing your deck size with the card synergies and combos required to execute your strategy.

Cards can have a number of different passive and active effects and keywords that pull from other card games. Hearthstone players will recognize Charge, Summon (similar to Battlecry), and Entomb (similar to Deathrattle). Magic the Gathering fans will recall that Flying units can only be blocked by other Flying units. Eternal also adds a few of its own keywords, such as Ultimate, which is a powerful special card ability that can be activated on the board at any time.

When it comes to gameplay, Eternal follows a pretty standard CCG formula but with a few “twists.” At the start of your turn, all player’s Power and unit health are refilled, and you draw a card. You can play a Power card once per turn, and you can play any unit, spell, or weapon cards assuming you have the required amount of Power and Influence. Where things really get interesting is during the attack phase.

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Instead of targeting your units’ attacks, you can only select which units you want to send out to attack. The opponent then has the chance to block these attacks with their own units. This adds a huge strategic element when it comes to attacking, as players need to take into consideration how your opponent might trade with their own units. And all units heal themselves between turns as well, so make sure your math is up to par! Attacking units also typically become “exhausted” until your next turn, meaning they cannot block during your opponent’s next attack phase. Players can only go through this attack phase once per turn, and unless minions have the Charge ability, they cannot attack the same turn they are played.

This sets up great counterplay, a gameplay facet that a lot of other digital card games seem to ignore. Additional counterplay cards include Fast Spells, which you can cast at any point during your turn or while blocking to effect the outcome of attacks. Examples include spells that buff friendly units or damage enemy units, making players think twice about how they set up their attacks and blocks. Cards with the Ambush keyword can also be played and block attacks directly from your hand. However, you still need to have enough leftover Power to play these cards, making saved Power a telltale sign to your opponent to watch out for these quick counterplay cards.

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Eternal also includes Relic Weapons you can equip to your own hero. If the weapon has an attack value, you can attack a target of your choice. Relic Weapons have a durability, which can be depleted when your hero takes damage. This makes you think twice about when you want to play these Relic Weapons to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.

Another way Eternal differentiates itself is in the number of included game modes. There is a full single player campaign, which acts as the game’s tutorial and unlocks basic decks of each Influence type. Eternal recently added a new expansion campaign called Jekk’s Bounty, which introduced 18 new cards to the game. I found the campaign relatively easy to complete, but this mode is a compelling way to introduce new cards and explain what little lore the game has.

In the pay-to-play Forge mode, you draft a deck to play against AI opponents of increasing difficulty, culminating in a challenging boss fight. You are rewarded with chests containing in-game currency and cards for each win. You also get to keep all of your drafted cards! Gauntlet mode is very similar, except that you use your own constructed deck against the AI. The more wins you get, the harder the opponents become: but, the better the rewards are. Your progress in these two modes is ranked against other players, with your rank and the modes’ difficulties resetting each monthly season.

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When it comes to PvP, the Early Access version of Eternal includes a Ranked constructed mode with ranking tiers and month-long seasons. There is also a pay-to-enter Swiss style tournament Draft multiplayer mode, where players take turns picking cards from four packs. This mode is completely asynchronous too, so you don’t have to complete your draft all in one sitting. You play until you either win seven games or lose three, with your rewards correlating to your final record. Similar to Forge, any cards you draft you also get to keep in your collection. Eternal has a placeholder for a Casual game mode, but it is currently unavailable at the time of this preview.

One of my favorite aspects of Eternal is the speed in which you gain new cards. For one, each pack includes a whopping twelve cards. The game frequently gives you a decent amount of free cards and currency for completing quests, achievements, and winning games in any of the currently available game modes. The game also features weekly themed deck quests, which reward you a complete themed deck after winning five games in any mode with that type of deck.

When talking with Dire Wolf Digital at PAX East, they made it clear that one primary goal of Eternal was to ensure that players can play competitively without spending insane amounts of real money and obtain new cards in a reasonable amount of time. Only playing a few hours a day, I was told that players should be able to put together a top-level meta deck within a week. This is a huge differentiation from other free-to-play games. Whether or not this continues to hold true as the total card count of Eternal continues to grow is unknown, but it’s nice knowing that Dire Wolf is keeping this mind from the get go.

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For an Early Access game, I am truly impressed with Eternal’s polish. The user interface is very smooth and well designed. The menus are easy to navigate and very responsive, especially between buying and opening packs. The card effects and gameplay board are colorful and exciting while not too over the top. When it comes to interface design, I only have two complaints. Firstly, I miss voice acting! Especially for player emotes: being able to BM your opponent with a hearty “Well Played” is crucial to multiplayer gameplay.