We have been keeping a close eye on The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Bethesda’s upcoming card game and rival to Blizzard’s Hearthstone. While many have tried to create a CCG that can one up Hearthstone, all failed. Yet, The Elder Scrolls: Legends has a lot of potential and may become a fierce competitor in the CCG genre. The game shares similarities with other card games in terms of card collection, battling opponents, and a free-to-play system.

How will it stand out from other games like it then? Unlike Hearthstone that lacks a lane system, The Elder Scrolls: Legends contains a two-lane system. Basically, a player starts off with three cards and one magicka used to deploy cards. When deploying your cards, you can choose one of two lanes to deploy them on. Lanes are important because they have special abilities that can change the result of a battle.

The left lane has no serious rules that can affect you but the right lane is called the Shadow Lane. The Shadow Lane can give any card deployed in its area immunity against any creature attack for one turn but this excludes spell attacks. This feature renders The Elder Scrolls: Legends as more complex than Hearthstone. It gives you a more in-depth take on strategy when you try to figure out which lane to pursue.

What spices the gameplay is the interesting Deckbuilding process. You can either go with a 50 card deck or 70 card deck. You will notice that cards will contain features such as strength, intelligence, agility, endurance, and willpower that can decide how you approach your battles. Each deck can be crafted using two of the five attributes. The game definitely becomes more fun and competitive with all these possibilities.

The game comes with five amazing game modes: Story Mode, Solo Arena, Versus Arena, Versus Battle, and Practice Mode. The single-player campaign is story-driven and plays true to the lore of the franchise. It takes place in the world of Tamriel where you will learn all about the game from its informative tutorial. There are gorgeous cinematics that you will enjoy watching too. Right from the start, the story will be captivating. A fallen Imperial City, an Emperor on the run, and cultists & conspiracy at every corner of Tamriel.

According to the Creative Director, Paul Dennen, you will play in an untold chapter of the Elder Scrolls history. Now that is absolutely something we look forward to experience. Tamriel is truly a magical and mysterious place and fans will attest to this. There will be 10 races to create decks from, including the reptilian Argonians, feline Khajits, human Nords, and many more.

In the Arena you can go against live players or AI for practice. It will be quite an adventure for you and you will run by some of the amazing characters found in The Elder Scrolls, such as Lucien Lachance of the Dark Brotherhood. And a word of caution, be prepared to face dragons and the Daedra because they will be in the game too.

This game was designed for both, casual and hardcore gamers. You can either play it for 10 minutes or 10 hours; it really comes down to you. While it is in beta for PC, it might take time for it to come to mobile but it should be coming out this year. This game is based on the epic and prominent The Elder Scrolls franchise so it will attract countless millions to play it. The question is, will it surpass Hearthstone? We believe it will put up a memorable fight. You can check a gameplay overview for this game below.