Monique Does Reviews - Pox Nora

If you've read anything else I've posted on this forum, you'd noticed I've talked alot about Pox Nora (www.poxnora.com) I'd like to continue my fangirl ramblings in this blog. I've been playing this game for about a month, now. I've also be losing for about a month...lol.. I'm still trying to figure out everything, especially deck building - or battlegroup building as they say in PoxNorases.

I went through the tutorial and played a game in their "Training Grounds" and fell in love with the game. Decent graphics that even my crappy computer can handle and fast loading. It's build on Java, so I can play on any computer in my house or at school when no one's looking . Well, you play with cute little minis that have cute little animations that they perform when you command them to attack and such. The mage's sparkle, the swordmen slash around, and the rockhurlers, hurl rocks! Cute!

Well, basically, there's two ways to play:

First, the main type is a normal battle You and your opponent both have a shrine that you have to protect.  You build you battlegroup of Champions (your fighters), Equipment (buffs for your Champs), Spells (sparklies that annoy your opponent) and Relics (basically spells that stick around until destroyed). Then, you send your army to raze your enemy's shrine while, trying to keep your own intact. Nora fuels your army. You'll use that to summon your Champs and such. You generate a certain number of Nora every turn. There are two wild fonts, that you and your opponent can try to control. Once that is accomplished, it'll generate even more Nora for you. That means that you can do more things during your turn!

Second: There's Captured the Flag and King of the hill, or something similar. Sorry, I can't remember the names. Basically, round up about 20 Champs and play. Fun stuff.

The cool thing about this game is that your Champions can level up. Awesome, huh? After each game, whether you win or lose, your Champs earn experience based on their performance. Like best healer, best fighter, toughest (Champ that took the most damage), etc. You can then take that experience and upgrade your Champs with better skills or stats or teach them new and better tricks.

Speaking of Runes (which are the Champs, Spells, etc collectively), you can buy them in packs. Just think of those Magic: the Gathering booster packs you get from the store. If you have a Membership, then you can buy runs separately. Just like in Magic, the more exotic or powerful cards cost a bit more. From what I've seen, the prices range from 1.00 to 20.00. The price is determined by the demand of the rune. As for memberships, they start at about $5/month and go down as you purchase more time. Along with your membership, you get a few perks. Like a $3 credit every 30 days. You'll use that for anything in the pack store. You also get other perks, like a cute frame around your name when posting on the forums and on your profile page; the ability to buy single runes; and access to the rune crafter,

Rune Crafting is basically taking 2+ cards, combining them and getting better cards. I don't know anything about that, so I won't talk about it. Seems cool, though.

Lastly, there's a nice community of players. I've only been there a month and I haven't run across any sore losers (or some winners in my case). The former goers are nice and helpful and there are plenty of guilds to join. Octopi (the creators), are cool and run events often: story contests, tournaments, etc. Also, there's always a player run event going on as well.

Ok, I'm finished my fangirling. Now on the cons of the game:

Not enough players. There's a lot of players, but not enough, in my opinion.

Not enough play options: There's only a few rooms: Training grounds(Home of the Noobs) , Anything Goes (What goes on in this room, stays in this room), Drums of War (the ranking games) and King of the Hill type games (I still can't think of the name of that game). If you are a newbie and want to play a newbie deck against another newbie, you can't do that. Well, you can, but most likely you'll go up against someone who will wipe the floor with you with their super charged deck. In the Training grounds room, you can only play the free, pre-constructed decks. Also, there's really no way to make your own tournament. You basically have to go into Anything Goes and hope everyone follows the rules. And lastly, it'll be nice if they had rooms for the different skill levels. Which brings me to my next point:

The Opponent selector sucks! If you want a real ranking game, you have to go to the Drums of War room. There you are supposedly matched up with someone that is equal to your level. Simply put, the opponent picker sucks. Either you wait long time, or it'll pit you against a Super Old Newbie Smasher against A Poor Confused Newbie, such as myself, which sucks eggs.

That's about it. I guess. I'm pretty sure that you are tired of reading this stuff anyway.

(PS, I think I typed the word cute about 20 times :P)