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[Cowboy Colt]

I'm far from a strategic mastermind but Lunarch Studios is developing a game called Prismata and it really caught my attention. I know it got a lot of attention on reddit a while ago. Is anybody in the alpha?

It's a strategy game that seems to strip away a lot of the overwhelming clutter of most games but still includes gameplay elements from the MOBA, CCG and RTS genres.

No real-time pressure. Prismata uses turn-based gameplay with a fast timer, but your dexterity will never hold you back.
No decks. The pool of units available for purchase is the same for both players and is chosen randomly at the beginning of the game. You'll never need to pay or grind in order to be competitive.
No randomness. No unlucky draws, no tournaments decided by coinflips.
No fog of war. You'll never lose to a rock-paper-scissors "build order victory" that you were unable to predict.
No fixed opening book. Prismata's random unit pools force you to plan a new build order every game. You can't memorize your way to victory.
No unit-on-unit combat. Combat math is greatly simplified but depth is preserved.
No map. We've found a way to emphasize the core economic and strategic ideas in RTS games without the cumbersome unit positioning found in other types of turn-based games.

http://play.prismata.net/?demo
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy

[Girlinhat]

I liked this, except
1: I'm broke so can't really back it
2: For being what it is and what it compares itself too (big names like Starcraft and DOTA, and from Lunarch) the card art looks pretty crude and cartoonish.  Which doesn't quite mesh with how much of their budget was set aside for artwork.  I know that this is card-based and graphics are the least of their concerns, and that I play DF in ASCII, but even for me, I just can't feel too excited or too invested when my units look like saturday morning cartoons...

[Cowboy Colt]

I liked this, except
1: I'm broke so can't really back it
2: For being what it is and what it compares itself too (big names like Starcraft and DOTA, and from Lunarch) the card art looks pretty crude and cartoonish.  Which doesn't quite mesh with how much of their budget was set aside for artwork.  I know that this is card-based and graphics are the least of their concerns, and that I play DF in ASCII, but even for me, I just can't feel too excited or too invested when my units look like saturday morning cartoons...

There's a free demo atm and that budget is what they're hoping to get from Kickstarter as I understand it.

There's a huge amount of stuff they want to do with presentation going forwards, they just need some help to do it.

[Levi]

No pay-to-win. Ever. You cannot pay for a competitive advantage in any Prismata game mode, ever. There are no packs to open.

I like it.  I'd probably buy play if it came out.

Edit:  I like it more the more I read.  I hope they pull it off.  This entertained me though:

- No randomness. No unlucky draws, no tournaments decided by coinflips.
- No fixed opening book. Prismata's random unit pools force you to plan a new build order every game. You can't memorize your way to victory.

Make up your mind!     I wonder if both players get the same pool?

I'm a bit sceptical that it'll stay cosmetic only for the microtransactions, but you never know.

[ThtblovesDF]

It's actually fun thou...

[a1s]

- No randomness. No unlucky draws, no tournaments decided by coinflips.
- No fixed opening book. Prismata's random unit pools force you to plan a new build order every game. You can't memorize your way to victory.

Make up your mind!     I wonder if both players get the same pool?

They do. So it's random, but symmetrical. Any pool that's bad for you is also bad for your opponent. I don't necessarily think this is an awesome idea (I like when decks built around different mechanics come together in battle), but the automatic balance is appealing in tourney play.

[ThtblovesDF]

You get 3 "elements" you can focus on, with some hybrids (think like magic) - first you spam your basic lands (Drones), then you spam the element of your choice (blue = safe/tanky/much life -> Red Aggro -> Green silly stuff) and units matching the color. It's alright and well executed, gameplay wise and I enjoyed it.

[ventuswings]

I was lucky to grab the key before all the kickstarter and demo happened, since the developers were handing them out like candies. I found it entertaining with finding ways to win surprisingly difficult.

[Cowboy Colt]

No pay-to-win. Ever. You cannot pay for a competitive advantage in any Prismata game mode, ever. There are no packs to open.

I like it.  I'd probably buy play if it came out.

Edit:  I like it more the more I read.  I hope they pull it off.  This entertained me though:

- No randomness. No unlucky draws, no tournaments decided by coinflips.
- No fixed opening book. Prismata's random unit pools force you to plan a new build order every game. You can't memorize your way to victory.

Make up your mind!     I wonder if both players get the same pool?

I'm a bit sceptical that it'll stay cosmetic only for the microtransactions, but you never know.

I hadn't noticed that clash before. Yeah, everybody gets the same pool and there's no deck building so you're not gaining random advantages through cards/loot.

[Cowboy Colt]

You get 3 "elements" you can focus on, with some hybrids (think like magic) - first you spam your basic lands (Drones), then you spam the element of your choice (blue = safe/tanky/much life -> Red Aggro -> Green silly stuff) and units matching the color. It's alright and well executed, gameplay wise and I enjoyed it.

That really boiled it down pretty accurately. It definitely looks like there's more later on but it eases players in well.

[Cowboy Colt]

4 DAYS TO GO AND THEY ARE SO CLOSE!

[Xgamer4]

Heh, they seemed to have gotten a massive amount of media attention. I would've expected them to have met their goal a while ago.

I was one of the people who slipped in with a key a few weeks ago. The game is... interesting. It definitely lives up to its statement, and my first thought was that it was exactly what I wanted... then after playing a few rounds I realized I didn't actually understand what I wanted.

To explain:
The game is hardcore. Like, incredibly hardcore. If you're not actively researching openings, and strategies, and keeping up with the new releases and the meta, you're SOL. Completely. As much as they'd like to claim there's no "fixed opening book", that's only true in a technical sense. It's just that instead of having specific rules that apply all the time you have more basic rules like "if you're player 2 planning a heavy red start, do this", or "if you're player 1 hedging towards green, do this". These openings are then modified based on the specific cards in the set, with each card having a purpose (whether designed, or meta-assigned). Most of the meta discussion turns into best openings given the cards in the set/specific color focus or how to stop a specific strategy - both of which absolutely boil down to exact steps to take.

Couple this with the fact that the game is explicitly designed against having a come-back mechanism, and you find yourself basically walking a razor-edge throughout the game with you and your opponent competing to see who slips up first. Because once someone slips up, the game is basically over - there just might be a few rounds to go before this is apparent to one of both of the players.

The biggest place I see them going wrong is with the Starcraft comparison. No, Prismata is nothing like Starcraft. It's themed like Starcraft, sure, in that there's a beast-like resource, a mech-like resource, and a soldier-like resource, but the way the game actually plays, and should be understood as how it plays, is far more like chess-with-resources.

This isn't meant to scare people away from the game - it's definitely a very interesting, and well-designed, game. Just don't go in expecting "competitive Hearthstone" or "streamlined Starcraft". That's not what you're getting.

That all said, if you're still interested in playing (and these codes still work), here's three extra codes I was handed weeks ago. Help yourself (though they only work once, so note which one you use):

DGLGS-UAJQV-3HL92-6XB54
LR7ZG-9S8HP-4MXKR-TKXWW
EEWPK-G8W8C-9JFUH-96YZM

To use a key go to:
http://play.prismata.net/

And press "Beta Key? Redeem it here"

EDIT/CAVEAT:
This is all based on games and forum discussions from about a month ago. That said, in that month it seems like their subreddit basically turned into "YAY/BOO Kickstarter!!" with no real in-depth discussion.

[Fikes]

I got in with LR7ZG-9S8HP-4MXKR-TKXWW

Thanks for the key.

[a1s]

I got in with DGLGS-UAJQV-3HL92-6XB54