A collectible-card game based on the fabled role-playing series that brought us Skyrim and Oblivion, Elder Scrolls: Legends (ESL) is a deep and absorbing game of chance and strategy. Now that it's on iPhone and Android (having previously been only on PC and iPad), it's also a compelling alternative to genre kingpin Hearthstone, with a set-up that could keep both casual and dedicated players coming back daily for a long time.
Rather than choosing a specific class to play as, like you might in a standard RPG ESL is about building decks of cards — each representing a creature in your army, an item, an action or an ability — that suits your style of play and the strategies you want to employ. Themed after the high fantasy characters and settings of Elder Scrolls, cards are assigned one of five attributes — strength, intelligence, willpower, agility and endurance — but you can only have two types in a deck.Â
![ESL has all the right hooks to keep you playing for a long time.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170810170736im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/m/r/u/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxmpyh.png/1502248427989.jpg)
A single-player story-mode eases newbies into the flow of the game, introducing some of the mechanics that makes ESL stand out from its contemporaries — like its two-lane set-up which adds strategic depth by having you manage two battlefields at once. While the meat of the game is in playing against others online to increase your rank, add-on content —  like a new Dark Brotherhood story, or cards themed on Skyrim — can keep things interesting, even if you're playing solo.
A good example of ESL's unique flavour is the rune system, which adds a new card to a player's hand when they take a certain amount of damage. If the card is a special 'prophecy' card, it can be played immediately in the middle of the opponent's turn, making for thrilling comebacks and turnarounds. It also means extra considerations when deciding what cards will go in your deck (filling it with prophecies will help in a pinch, but they're comparatively weak when used as part of your hand) and makes it riskier to attack opponents at certain points if you're not prepared for a potential prophecy.
Like many CCGs, ESL is free to play and there are two main ways you can go about expanding your collection and getting access to the best cards: you can either play every day — earning gold from the daily challenges and other content — or you can pay real money. The latter has the potential to get very expensive because you have to buy packs of six random cards and are only guaranteed legendary creatures if you buy in bulk.
Thankfully, gold is easy to accrue if you play often and can be used to buy packs or, if random drops are too nerve-wracking for you, themed decks that give you 50 specific cards. For experienced players, a more enjoyable path to a bigger collection is the Arena mode, which costs gold (or money) to play but rewards you in gold and new cards if you can consistently win. It can be played against AI or human opponents.
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