Chain Guardians is an upcoming anime and cryptocurrency inspired turn based strategy game. The Android Alpha has been available to Chain Guardian NFT owners for a while and just went public to the rest of the world this month. Even though the game is inspired by cryptocurrency, and utilizes block chain assets, it plays like a normal game and will be possible to play freely on release.
As the game is still in development it is not feature complete. The majority of the buttons on the main screen are not yet unusable. Currently only Summon, Chronicle, Team, Inventory and Options are available. This is enough to get a feel for the game through.
Since I have been playing for months, both in the app and their web-based mining game, my account has collected a lot of units and CGC (game currency). A new player would start out with 10 soldiers and about 200* CGC.
*I created a new account to verify the starting CGC, and was credited 100 CGC twice and charged 5. I expect this was a glitch and that players will actually start with 100 CGC.
SUMMONING
As with most unit driven mobile games, you have a daily free summon as well as various levels of paid summons. The summons will generate a unit with random stats. The more expensive the summon, the higher power level they are likely to have. There also are generic drones with predefined stats that can be purchased for 2* CGC.
*Cost subject to change in the future depending on game balancing.
TEAM MANAGEMENT
The team screen is where you choose which units to take with you on a mission. You can view their individual stats, levels, and elements here.
Above you can see a sample starting team. It consists of two soldiers and three one star lieutenants such as those you could obtain from the free or 100 CGC summon. The soldiers have higher starting stats but don’t gain experience. The lieutenants have randomized lower stats but gain experience and get stronger in the future.
The picture below shows the stats for a soldier on the left, a level one free summon in the middle, and a summoned Lieutenant who has reached level 20 on the right. The soldier is about 2.5 times as strong as a level one lieutenant with a lot more HP. The level 20 unit is much stronger than the soldier.
For the most part, the stats will be familiar to anyone who has played an RPG before. The chart below is the in game tool tip screen which explains all the stats except for HP and Power Rating. HP, or Hit Points, is how much damage a character can take before being defeated. Power Rating is the character’s relative power between 0 and 100. Since the characters are randomly generated, it is a good way of comparing unit’s relative power.
CAMPAIGN MODE
The Chronicle button takes you to story mode. You will be presented with multiple campaign worlds to choose from, each with their own opponents and difficulty. Currently the Alpha has Planet Bitcoin and Planet Ethermon. Planet Bitcoin is the first campaign and starts out fairly easy. Over the course of the campaign, the difficulty steadily increases. Planet Ethermon is currently only three missions which are well suited for attempting midway through the Bitcoin campaign.
MISSION 1–1: The Arrival
The mission screen will show a blurb of flavor text, your team, as well as tabs for Trials, Loot, and Monsters. Since this is alpha, currently trials and loot are empty. It is safe to assume that trials will be similar to the star ranking system present in many other mobile RPGs.
The first mission you face is very easy. You fight two waves of level two enemy soldiers and heavily outnumber them. This is your chance to learn the rules and figure out what attacks work on each enemy.
In the current version all your units act in order based on their position. Once they have all acted, if the enemy is still alive, it gets a turn. I expect they will act based on speed in the future.
Each of your units draws three cards from their attack deck on their turn. Based on the enemies stance, or what they’ve shown themselves to be resistant to, you decide which card to play.
There are three types of cards, Slash, Strike, and Thrust. They each range in power from 1 to 6. Soldiers have access to all three types, but Lieutenants only have access to Slash and Thrust. Combat is basically a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine damage. You can learn more here.
The first wave has a single soldier which you should be able to kill before he acts. The second wave has two different soldiers. You can tap either soldier to select your target, or you can trust your units to attack whoever they want. In my tests I did not notice a particular targeting preference, so once you have multiple enemies its probably best to choose your target.
After defeating the enemies, you will be brought to a victory screen. Currently this will show you how much experience (EXP) you earned. In the future it will also show you your trial star rating and any rewards.
The missions will get harder, but you can freely replay the earlier ones to level up and (in future builds) collect resources. Eventually either a soldier or Lieutenant will die. When a soldier dies you can replace it for 2 CGC. When a Lieutenant dies, you can either wait 24 hours for them to revive, or pay 5 CGC to wake them up.
Using my sample squad I had my first Lieutenant knocked out after mission 1–2, and my second after 1–3. I decided to stop for the day at that point so I wouldn’t waste CGC. I also tried a squad of 4 soldiers and 1 freely rolled Lieutenant. That team made it through mission 1–3 without any casualties. You need to decide your own balance between risk and cost. Also keep in mind that the game is under development, so stats and difficulty are all subject to change.
I personally suggest trying the game for free, and if you like it purchasing some blockchain based units. These units are a lot stronger than those rolled in game, and like the Lieutenants will simply get knocked out for 24 hours instead of killed. These can be found on opensea or by participating in the crate sale starting April 14th.
That’s the basics of the game. Its fairly well done and shows a lot of promise. There are varied enemies and though simple, there is enough strategy to keep it interesting. The devs are also very active and helpful. I look forward to seeing how the game develops in the future.
You can learn more at the Chain Guardians website or in their discord channel. If you want to learn more about the setting and characters, I wrote a series of “Meet the Guardians” articles as well. You can find those links below.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Check out the alpha (for free!) and tell me what you think in the comments below.
Meet the Guardians Articles
