Hello and welcome to the first of our Clash of Fans write-ups. This week we’ll be getting together in pairs (virtually) and forcing each other to play a beloved game. Then we’ll chat about what we made of it all. First up is Spintires and Thronebreaker!
Chris: I have sort of fallen off of collectible card games over the last few years, and in the back of my mind I think they’ve all become variations on Hearthstone. This is wrong, obviously, but it’s taken Thronebreaker to remind me of that. For the first ten minutes I was filtering everything through the question of – how does Hearthstone handle this? But very quickly that ceases to be meaningful.
A few initial observations – there is so much here beyond the cards. The overworld map, the resources and all that jazz, the camps. And the writing. God, so much storytelling all over the place. I am a story-skipper by nature, and you can just about do that here, but it’s clear the care and pride that’s involved in bedding this card game into the Witcher world.