Rating of
3/5
I’d Have Preferred a Tabletop Version…
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/29/15
“Ironclad Tactics” is the second game from Zachtronics, the Indie development studio founded by Zachary Barth (known primarily for his creation of “Minecraft”-style Sandbox games before “Minecraft” with “Infiniminer”). Zachtronics itself is better known for its first release, “SpaceChem,” as well as its production of a handful of educational games for the STEM fields of study.
“Ironclad Tactics” caught my eye due to being a self-described ‘fast-paced’ card game with ‘no microtransactions’ set in an alternate history version of the American Civil War… with mechs. All of these features sound fantastic in theory, but in practice leave the experience a bit wanting.
Presentation
“Ironclad Tactics” features art that is a blend of comic book stylings and Flash animation. All of the game’s cutscenes play out as pages in an ‘interactive’ comic, in which the player simply clicks the mouse button to make dialog bubbles and subsequent panels appear. This presentation style for the story segments is novel and fun, but suffers from its small number of pages, which leaves plenty of room for fleshing out the game world. The combat graphics are simple, clean, and straightforward, with Flash-style character sprites representing troops and the titular ironclads, as well as various stage-specific obstacles. These sprites are overlaid on a series of relatively simple backgrounds, getting the job done with a minimum of fanfare and spectacle, but still looking sharp and distinctive.
The audio is fairly understated as well. The soundtrack is pleasant, but not particularly amazing or catchy. “Ironclad Tactics” is also devoid of voiceacting, which no-doubt kept the game’s budget in check.
Story
In an alternate universe at the dawn of the American Civil War, two inventors – the kindly Frank Zebulon and the nefarious Dmitry – have discovered a way to harness the power of a super-dense coal called Belgian Anthracite to allow for unprecedented advances in steamworks technology. Zebulon’s invention, a humanoid automaton dubbed the ironclad, is poised to revolutionize industry when its plans are stolen by Dmitry – an evil-doer from somewhere in Europe – and Zebulon himself is abducted.
Zebulon’s star protégés, a duo of engineering students named Joe and Max, find themselves wrapped up in the beginnings of the Civil War – now fought with robots on both sides – as they frantically search for their mentor. The duo ends up joining forces with a mail inspector (because mail fraud is a capital offense in this alternate history, apparently) and one of the two ultimately ends up on a conflict-fraught journey across the entire coastline of the United States.
The core gimmicks of “Ironclad Tactics’” story are quite entertaining. The plot also resolves itself with a somewhat-predictable twist before leading into a happy ending. Unfortunately, there are almost too many characters for the small amount of narrative time sandwiched between each of the core game’s 19 stages. I can’t remember most of their names, and the motivations/connections for most of the secondary antagonists just leave me shrugging my shoulders. There are more story elements available in DLC missions, which Zachtronics was kind enough to just GIVE away to anyone who had purchased the game via a free upgrade to the Deluxe Edition, but I had lost interest in the gameplay long before reaching the point there the DLC would come into play, which is a shame.
Gameplay
“Ironclad Tactics” is a lane-based defense game disguised as a strategy card game. Every mission takes place on a battlefield with 4 lanes, each of which are 9 squares long. Each player begins with a hand of 3 cards and 3 Action Points (AP) that can be spent to play cards. Every card has an AP cost that works like the Mana cost in “Magic: The Gathering,” and should be familiar to anyone who has played a resource-based strategy card game before. Each player has a deck that must consist of exactly 20 cards, with no more than two Factions (suits) represented in a given deck. The player’s maximum hand size is 5 cards, and each turn begins with the player drawing a card and gaining 1 AP (or more, depending on circumstances).
All of this sounds like a fairly straight-forward strategy card game. However, “Ironclad Tactics” uses a few weird, annoying interpretations of classic card gameplay to make it feel less like a tabletop card game and more like a videogame. The first, worst, and most noticeable mechanic that is unique to “Ironclad Tactics” is that it is NOT A TURN-BASED GAME. The turn clock simply runs automatically, and players/AIs are free to throw-down cards whenever they want. Second, “Ironclad Tactics” does not allow the player to manage their hand. Cards are set in the order they’re drawn, and fall off the right end of the hand as new cards come in from the left end. This automated hand management completely eliminates a lot of the ‘hand advantage’ of traditional tabletop card games and allows LUCK to play a much greater role in the game than necessary, as not only to players need to draw the right cards, but now need to draw them IN THE RIGHT ORDER. Finally, “Ironclad Tactics” doesn’t have a discard pile or ‘graveyard’ as most other such games do. Indeed, it doesn’t even seem to have a normal deck, as the cards the player puts in their 20-card deck only serve to generate a probability that any given draw will result in any given card, granting a 5% probability to each card in the deck… every turn, regardless of the cards already in-hand or in-play.
Aside from its untraditional take on traditional card game mechanics, “Ironclad Tactics” also adopts the lane-based defense gameplay of modern videogames like “Plants vs. Zombies.” Each player’s goal is to score 8 Victory Points by slipping ironclad robots past their opponent’s defensive line or by using infantry (human) units to hold mortar squares on the field. Each ironclad starts off as a bare chassis, but most of them can be equipped with a weapon and head part to improve their combat functionality. Aside from Ironclad, Infantry, and Part cards, there are also Tactic cards that allow players to do a variety of things ranging from causing a unit to change lanes to aerial bombardment. These mechanics can lead to interesting, tactical battles between evenly-matched decks that grind on for a long, long time as each side struggles for position. Unfortunately, grinding on for a long, long time doesn’t really jibe with the ‘fast-paced’ label Zachtronics put on the game.
Of course, the key phrase in the preceding paragraph was ‘evenly-matched.’ In “Ironclad Tactics’” story mode, this rarely ever happens. The game begins with 4 insultingly easy tutorial missions before dropping the player head-first into Cheating AI Central. The computer player in the story missions clearly has faster AP generation than the player and frequently has access to cards the player can’t hope to match until they have unlocked better cards… a few missions later. The last half of the game features opponents with incredibly diverse cards that can only be acquired for the player’s deck by playing the DLC, leading to a lot of frustrating, unfair moments. On top of the general feeling that the AI has access to better cards and faster AP generation, there are 3 very noticeable difficulty spikes throughout the story that require pure luck to get through the first time (though they are much more manageable on subsequent attempts with better cards).
The fact that clearing missions is necessary to unlock the cards required to clear them without relying on luck is just flat-out poor design. I don’t know why Zachtronics thought putting cheating AIs into the story mode was a good idea. When creating a story mode in a videogame based on a card game, it is imperative that the story mode do its job of teaching the player how to play in order to build them up for PvP matches. Several of “Ironclad Tactics’” story missions have alternative ‘Puzzle Modes’ that present the player with a set hand and set amount of AP, along with a gimmicked win condition. These Puzzle Mode challenges are fantastic, as they do a good job of demonstrating to the player exactly what their newly-rewarded cards are capable of doing. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough Puzzle Mode missions, with the game heavily favoring standard matches against overwhelming opponents. It’s not fun… it’s like someone buying a Starter Deck and taking it to a tournament in any other card game.
Despite the overall weirdness of “Ironclad Tactics’” interpretation of certain card game mechanics and the unbalanced nature of the story mode missions, I am extremely impressed by the core design of the card game that lies at “Ironclad Tactics’” heart. It seems like the type of non-trading, non-collectable card game that would sell very well at comic book stores, alongside the likes of “Munchkin.” Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Zachtronics hasn’t made any moves to adapt “Ironclad Tactics” to the tabletop. It’s a damned tragedy.
Overall
While a solid and interesting strategy card game lies at the Belgian Anthracite heart of “Ironclad Tactics,” the adaption into a real-time videogame leaves a lot to be desired. The story mode missions are unbalanced instead of fun and often don’t teach the player anything about how to play the game, aside from relying on luck to win the day. If Zachtronics put out a Deluxe Edition Boxed Set of “Ironclad Tactics” to play on the tabletop with real cards and ironclad miniatures, I’d be all over it in a heartbeat.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
