Many things are building in this bear market period but few of them feel as strong as the next Cardano-friendly trading card game : Wolves of Rome. You can see I’ve not talked about a Play to earn game or Cardano-based game. I found out this one is slightly different, we will look through that mechanism in this article.
Amazing artworks. Complete lore. Hot gameplay. Strong team and partnerships. Let’s see how this TCG will propel web2 gaming to new boundaries, freedom thanks to it’s web3 magic.
1. What is the Wolves of Rome Trading Card Game (TCG) ?
In their own words, the team behind WoR TCG has one goal : Create a unique and immersive game that can attract several players and thus increase the value of the Cardano ecosystem in including web2 players.
Along with this, the team stated that they are aiming for a play&earn type of game as they feel the usual “play to earn promises players they can earn a revenue comparable to that of a regular job in some countries” is devious and unethical. Indeed, a lot of casual gamers are afraid of NFTs or Tokens in their games.
Firstly because of misunderstanding of this ecosystem but mainly because they are scared of seeing all their games turned into pay to win games. Anyone can definitely understand that, any game that would let the most fortunate players win will bring a real fear of crypto among gamers and should not be encouraged. Instead, the game will reward its players with Glorium tokens. These tokens are not blockchain based and you can only use them to buy card packs.
What excites me the most about Wolves of Rome is that they already had the game alpha running before selling even one NFT. As usual, I prefer builders that focus on building rather than the ones that sell thousands of dollars of NFT first and have a game sitting a few years later in a Roadmap.
2. What are the Wolves of Rome collections ?
The WoR game contains actually different collections: The Empire (6 differents Empires), cards cosmetics, battlefields (playboards) and the cards (units, commanders and spells)
The Empire collection is the pre-game NFT collection and is composed of 6 different Empires in this order:
- The Wolves -minted
- The Liches -public mint on 29th July – Find the specific trailer here
- The Vampires
- The Barbarians
- The Yukatecs
- The Qin
The Empire collections cannot be used in game. Indeed, a trading card game needs its cards and meta to be perfectly balanced otherwise it will not be fun. Accordingly, the team chose to delay the cards mint (that would have later needed to be changed for balance reasons). Luckily that gives you and me the opportunity to get the first mover advantage.
The Empire collection assets are busts representing the lore and bearing assets as traits. Before switching to why you should own an Empire collection you need to know that this is not just a very sexy 3D NFT. It comes with different bonuses: a digitized book that explains the lore of this empire, an MP3 music composed for this specific empire and a STL file that is 3D-printer compatible so you can have your bust printed in real life !
Having an Empire Collection assets gives you 8 avantages:
- Whitelist for the next Empire mint
- 3 Empire Founder Cards : Extremely rare cards only available to Empire holders
- First Edition Cards Pack : 1 First Edition Card Pack containing 5 cards
- Glorium (in-game currency) : The currency used to buy cards in the game
- Empire Shards : Holders will be able to craft and modify playboards. Some assets will even give you more rewards if you win but absolutely no other in-game advantage
- Verified profile picture : Pridly show that you are the real OG
- Empire Game Assets : Personalise your card backs, profile picture frame and nameplate with one of your empire-based themed aestetichs
- Empire Tournaments : Free entry to all Empire tournaments (That you should normally pay with Glorium)
If you are able to get one piece of each Empire you will get the special “Ultimate Collector” role granting you again with additional advantages :
- Receive $WoR tokens and full participation in governance
- Ultimate collector Discord and in-game role
- Additional drop of card packs, Glorium and Empire Shard packs
- Access the Founders Store : You can buy there the most rare cards that you can normally only obtain by winning tournaments.
3. What is special about Wolves of Rome ?
The cards collection contains everything that you will engage in battle : Units, Commanders, Spells and Landmarks.
In order to attract casual players and not forcing them to use NFTs, Wolves of Rome chose to facilitate the approach to newcomers with the choose-to-mint feature. Free to play, the game will be playable by anyone and without accessing the blockchain. Instead, they let the players decide if they want to mint their cards in order to be able to transfer them to a marketplace. This means that this game is mainly turned to casual players, like you and me. This gives you the choice to switch to the web3 side. This is about freedom. Additionally, they will guide new players through easy steps if they want to mint via in-game advice and ultimately red-pill them with web3 magic.
As said in our What is Elrond article, massive adoption of the crypto ecosystem will come through simplification.
4. How to play Wolves of Rome ?
As said previously the game is currently in Alpha mode. However, you should register on their website and you will eventually become an early tester and be airdropped with NFT rewards !
Contrarily as other Web3 games, Wolves of Romes tend to push the Web2 side of their game and let the players decide whether or not they want to switch their cards into NFTs.
The game is inspired from well known trading card games like Magic: The Gathering or Legends of Runeterra. For each duel you are battling against a single opponent. As usual, both start with a certain amount of HP + a resource called Mana (that is growing at the end of each round) and your goal is to bring your opponent HP to zero. Inside each round, you are either the attacker or the defender and you use your Mana to play cards from your deck.
The cards you can collect are composed of 5 different elements :
5. What is the WoR token?
The $WoR token is the native game token based on Cardano. It will be the central point of the Wolves of Rome’s ecosystem. So, if you are holding $WoR, you will be eligible to several features like access to private events, in-game tier-representative cosmetics, but the most important one to me is governance.
Unfortunately, I did not manage to find much information about the exact circumstances of how and when the governance will take place but it seems to be one of the team’s priorities.
6. What is the Glorium token ?
Basically, Glorium is the non-tokenized in-game currency that will be given to you for your activity. By winning games, competing in tournaments or achieving missions, you will then be able to buy card packs against Glorium currency. Basically, I’m in love with the fact that there is no connection to the blockchain as this is a gesture toward web2 players that then will be eventually onboarded. Absolutely no promises of financial benefits for this currency. This is really a play and earn game that rewards you with game assets for playing, while you play.
You can earn Glorium in 4 different ways :
- Playing the game : winning games and completing missions
- Competing in battles against other players
- Stake you Empires NFTs
7. Testimonies
I’ve asked some people very close to their community and I must say their are confident !
From : EdwinTax
From : $Dice
8. Conclusion
Regardless of what other games are currently building, Wolves of Rome comes with a unique and fresh new proposition for gamers, being able to play a web2 game that can switch to web3 at any moment. Specifically helped by their beginner-friendly guide, I’m hoping this game will onboard tons of casual players into web3, opening pandora’s box and revealing our world a little more.
I must admit that I would be more than happy to sell today my old Hearthstone cards that I bought and don’t use anymore now (Hello Blizzard).
N.b: This is not financial advice ! Do Your Own Research before investing.
