Force of Will Trading Card Game: 2015

My First Impression of Force of Will

Well, actually, my second impression. My first impression when it came out can be summarized as 'A TCG named after a famous Magic card? Forget it!.' But now that there are lots of cards in play, I am changing my mind. I think this TCG deserves a good scan. Here are my second impressions:

1. As it happens with Magic foils, some of the foils are considerably darker than non-foils.

2. A lot of the artwork is really amazing, and the full-art format is something I wish Magic adopted and Pokemon has recently adopted for some cards. Some of the artwork is in the Yugioh category, and by that I mean that it is not so great. But this is true for all TCGs.

3. The similarities with Magic help this game a lot. In many ways FOW is like if Magic was reissued from scratch, something I think appeals to many Magic players. The dual stones are going where the Alpha-Beta-Unlimited, or ABU dual lands have been in Magic. Magic's mistake in not reprinting these dual lands is FOW's gain for sure.

4. At this stage in the game the cards are selling well, but it is very hard for a TCG to issue good set after good set. I hope the FOW designers keep their focus. If not, they will run into the same problems Magic faced early on with Fallen Empires and Homelands, and the World of Warcraft TCG faced with sets like War of the Elements. I won't mind opening cheap packs, but I would rather pay a little more for playable packs.

5. The colors are not well balanced, something FOW can learn from current Magic. Just like Blue is the color of Magic Legacy Constructed, Green is the color of FOW.

6. By reprinting all of the dual stones in Vingolf, I hope FOW sets a precedent that is a great strength of Yugioh and a great weakness of Magic: liberal reprinting.

7. I hope FOW takes many pages from the Magic play book, and specifically, from the Mark Rosewater play book. If they do, FOW will communicate design and development to players in a way that only Magic does today. For a case in point of how to fail at this, look at Yugioh's anemic strategy blog (it isn't even a site, sigh!).

Various Pandora Dark Competitive Decks as of July 2015.

Here are the main decks.

Here are the stones.

Here are the most common cards in the side decks.

Various Scheharazad Decks as of July 2015

Here are the main decks.

Here are the stones.

Here are the side deck top card choices.

Various Bahamut Decks as of July 2015

Here are the main decks.

Here are the stone selections.

Here are the side decks.

Various Abdul Decks as of July 2015

Here are the main decks.

Here are the stone selections.

And here are the most popular cards in the side decks.

Various Grimm Decks as of July 2015.

Grimm is the most-represented ruler in competitive play as of the current and first format. I have grouped Grimm decks into three categories: burn only using Flame or Red Stones; decks using lots of Red but mixing in many colors; and decks splashing Red and using a wide range of strategies.

Here are the burn main decks.

Here are the main decks running lots of Red.

Here are the main decks splashing for Red. Notice that there is a really wide variety in card use for these decks. This to me is a sign of many viable deck building options.

The stone selections for the three types of Grimm decks vary as much as the main deck card selections. Here are the burn decks.

Here are the decks running some Red.

And here are the other decks.

The side decks are really varied. Here are the top selections.

Analysis of 70 Competitive Decks as of July 2015

I found these decks on the US official web site:

http://www.fowtcg.us/

Check it out! It is much better than the English version of the main site.

Here is the summary. I am linking all other posts for this analysis from this summary post.

The 70 decks comprise 4,581 cards. I caught many miss-spelling errors on the original lists. I am sure I missed a few. The meta is surprisingly varied for a TCG that only has the Grimm sets valid for competitive play in North America. There is a different way to look at these decks, and that is by looking at the card combos in each deck, instead of categorizing them by the ruler they use, as I have done here, but I am too new to be able to do a combo analysis.

By far the most popular ruler is Grimm, followed by Adbul, Scheharazade, Bahamut, and Pandora Dark. These five rulers account for 96 percent of the competitive meta.

The most popular cards are listed below. Thunder being the most popular card is similar to how in Magic Modern Constructed its equivalent card, Lightning Bolt, is also the most popular card. Green is the strongest color in this meta, followed it seems by Red.