The Elder Scrolls: Legends - New Players Guide to Decks, Attributes, and Classes
Bethesda’s Hearthstone competitor has hit open beta, which means a new wave of players are set to join the fray. Find out all the tips and tricks you need to know to help you understand the game, and get ahead of your enemies.
The Elder Scrolls: Legends is Bethesda’s answer to Hearthstone’s unchallenged reign as the champion of online collectible card games. Set within the Elder Scrolls universe, the game’s cards build off of the lore of Bethesda’s already established worlds, giving fans a new way to enjoy them. For players new to the game, some of the mechanics can be a bit off-putting, and might not make sense at first. This guide will help answer the most basic questions, as well as provide a few tips to help you stay ahead of the curve.
Decks and Attributes
The first thing you need to understand about The Elder Scrolls Legends is the way that the game’s different card decks work. Each deck is fitted with cards from two separate attribute types including: Agility, Endurance, Intelligent, Strength, and Willpower. These attributes all offer up different types of cards which vary in cost and damage, as well as different keywords which can be very useful during battle.
Agility cards, which are colored green, aren’t goliaths on the battlefield, and while they don’t offer up tons of health and attack damage, they succeed at being fast and agile, allowing you to make use of keywords like Pilfer and Lethal.
Endurance cards, which featured a purple marker, are designed to increase your magicka supply, thus allowing you to play more Actions and Creatures. You’ll also find plenty of cards featuring the Guard keyword, as well as plenty of Action cards built around healing both the player and your creatures on the field.
Blue cards, which fall under the Intelligence attribute, aren’t heavy hitters by any means, but more often than not these cards have some hidden tricks up their sleeves. You’ll find a lot of magic driven cards in this pile, as well as a concentration of Spells, Actions, and Creatures that help you get more creatures on the field.
Strength cards, which are colored red, are exactly what you might think they are. These cards are fitted with heavy hitting Creatures, Actions, and keywords which can help you turn the tide of war by simply overpowering your enemy. The creatures feature high damage outputs, but often sport lower health counts, resulting in the need to play them close to your chest.
Finally, the last attribute, Willpower, which is yellow, has the greatest ability to deal with your opponent’s threats. These cards often feature special abilities that allow you to quickly fill your lanes, barring the enemy from being able to control the board.
Understanding Classes
When you conjoin two attributes into a single deck, a Class is born. No matter what play style you like, there’s a class in the list below which will work out well for you in the Arena. Of course, the class you choose will depend solely on the types of cards that you’re looking to make use of, and some classes might not work as well for you as others do. Here’s a full list of all the class types:
Archer – Made up of Agility and Strength cards.
Assassin – A deck consisting of Agility and Intelligence cards.
Battlemage – A player deck created using cards from the Intelligence and Strength attributes.
Crusader – The chosen class of those looking to don cards from the Strength and Willpower attributes.
Mage – The conjoining of Intelligence and Willpower cards into one deck.
Monk – Agility and Willpower cards forged into an unstoppable powerhouse.
Scout – Agility and Endurance cards come together to form this magicka-based deck.
Sorcerer – The conjoining of Endurance and Intelligence cards to form a dangerous play style.
Spellsword – The fusing of Endurance and Willpower to form an aggressive deck of tough and formidable cards.
Warrior – The jughead of the classes. Melds Endurance and Strength to form an unstoppable wall of powerful Creatures and Actions.
How to Choose the Right Class
Your class is picked depending on the types of cards that you include in your deck. At this time you can only include two Attribute types in each deck, meaning that a class like the Battlemage class won’t allow you to make use of Agility cards. This means you’ll need to decide which type of class you want to run before you start building your deck, and it also means you won’t be able to blindly go through your cards and just add more to the pile like you would in games like Hearthstone, where the deck requirements are a lot less important.
Of course there are some cards that fall separate of the single Attribute requirement. Cards like the Falinesti Reaver, which is both a Strength and Agility card, would only be available to players using the Archer class, as it is the only class that meets those two attribute requirements.
You also have the option as a player to build a deck made up entirely of Neutral cards (which can be added to any deck), and only one attribute. This mean it is entirely possible to build a deck solely around the Strength attribute, or any other attribute, allowing you to really focus in on your card types. A one attribute deck can also be really helpful for users playing cards like Stalwart Ally, which receives additional stats and the Guard keyword if the top card of your deck is an Endurance card.
Experiment. See which type of deck and class works best for you, and go from there. We’d actually suggest creating a deck for every class just so you can try them out and see which one feels right.
