I took a look at my Steam Wishlist the other day, and noticed that one of the items was a F2P game called Infinity Wars. It was not a game I was expressly seeking out, but one of those games casually mentioned that I wanted to check up on later. “Hey, why don’t I just, you know, take care of that?”

So I did.

Infinity Wars bills itself as a digital TCG, but plays out as a hugely complex combination of Hearthstone, Magic, and one of those elaborate board games that weird friend of yours keeps trying to get you to play.

This Draft game isn’t going well already.

The basic premise is that each character has 100 HP, 100 Morale, and a fist full of cards to reduce one or the other down to zero. Oh, and you pick three creature cards to play in your “Commander” zone before the game, and those determine the “purity” of your deck, e.g. what type of cards you can put in. You gain 1 resource per turn, sort of like Mana Gems in Hearthstone, and the creatures you play have persistent HP levels also like Hearthstone. But rather than there being just one play area, there are three per side: attack zones, defense zones, and support zones. And the order in which you place creatures in a zone matters, as if they were lanes in SolForge (which can you rearrange at will). Also, there activated creature abilities and spells you can cast.

Oh, have I mentioned that all turns are simultaneous?

If this sounds like a complicated mish-mash of mechanics, that’s because it is. Rounds in Infinity Wars are incredibly, stupidly complex with about a million and a half different ways for things to go wrong (or right, depending on your ability to bluff and/or get lucky). For example, say you have a 7/7 and a 5/4 creature currently in the Attack Zone, while your opponent has an 7/4 in his Support Zone. The “ideal” play here would be to keep both your creatures in the Attack Zone, but rearrange them so the 5/4 is left-most, with the assumption that your opponent puts the 7/4 in the Defense Zone, they kill each other, and your 7/7 wins the day.

But maybe your opponent isn’t dumb, and knows you will do that. Perhaps they move the 7/4 to the Defense Zone but also plays a spell targeting your 5/4 that deals 4 damage, which would kill that creature and allow the 7/4 to trade with the 7/7. But maybe you figure that is what he would do, so you actually move the 5/4 out of the Attack Zone and into the Support Zone instead, thereby making it an invalid target for that spell. And maybe your opponent figures he will hedge his bets by also casting a separate spell to buff his 7/4 creature by +5/+5, so it can beat your 7/7. But you happen to suspect such shenanigans, so you move both of your creatures to the Support Zone.

End result? Nobody takes any damage, all creatures live, and your opponent has a 12/9 in the Defense Zone. Begin planning out next round.

The problem with Infinity Wars is exactly that: the complexity. Sometimes you can get your opponent to overthink themselves into just taking a ton of damage to the face. Other times you get tricksy and get wrecked. Or maybe you join the New Player – Constructed queue, and get matched with someone who plays the goddamn USS Enterprise.

Thought I was kidding?

I still don’t know what the fuck that even does – I blocked it once with a random creature and it got Phasered or something, and returned to my Support Zone and made Exhausted. Simply put, there is way too much shit going on to make an informed decision. All of my opponents cards were new, and I didn’t feel like 1.5 minutes was enough time in a given turn to make rational play. There doesn’t even appear to be a way to review what happened in the last turn, which if true, pretty much kills the game entirely.

Of course, once you get behind in this game, things quickly snowball all to hell considering your opponent can see what creatures you play before they ever get out of your Support Zone (unless they have Haste or Vigilance, creatures have to wait a turn to get moved to the Attack/Defense Zone). If you’re stuck casting one creature a turn, they can simply preemptively target your lone dude with the understanding you either try to block and it becomes a valid target, or you leave it in the Support Zone to make the spell fizzle but also eat another round of damage/bullshit effects.

What Infinity Wars was successful in doing though is making me appreciate Hearthstone all the more. Is Hearthstone a dumbed-down Magic: the Gathering? Maybe. But outside of Force of Nature/Savage Roar OTK combos and the like, you have time to react, read cards, and otherwise get a better grasp of what’s going on in a given game. Magic has deep complexity for veteran players, sure, but that same complexity really fucks over newer players when any given action they perform can be countered seemingly out of nowhere. “OK, I block your creature and it dies.” “No it doesn’t… Giant Growth!” “Oh, you’re tapped out? Fireball to the face!” “Nah, going to return three Islands to my hand to counter that spell.”

I dunno. Maybe if I stick with Infinity Wars, I will get a better grasp on the… Star Trek metagame, or whatever. Or perhaps I will simply realize that this is not a game you can enjoy without diving into the shit face-first.

If subterfuge and ruses and an infinite and a half different possible outcomes are your cup of card game tea though, have I got the game for you.