Card Wars – Adventure Time Walkthrough

Game Introduction: Card Wars – Adventure Time

Card Wars – Adventure Time is a single-player card battle game developed by Kung Fu Factory.  In this game, you’ll play creatures, spells and buildings to defeat various bosses and unlock them for play in the game.  Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

Quick Start Guide

Getting Started

• Card Wars – Adventure Time can be purchased and downloaded by clicking the “Available on” options at the top of this page.
• When you begin the game, you will be pulled into a tutorial. You’ll have to complete this tutorial before being allowed to play the full game. Periodically, tutorial messages will occur as new content and features are unlocked in the game.
• When you have full control choosing “Battle,” tapping the map, then selecting a level to play on the game board will launch you into a match.
• Tapping the treasure chest icon on the main menu will bring you to the treasure menu. Here you can select either the “Cool Chest” or “Algebraic Chest” to purchase a random card for a measure of gems. The former costs one, while the latter costs three and guarantees a rarer card.
• Tapping the deck box icon on the main menu will bring you to the deck menu. Here you can craft cards using gold and more common cards, view your collection, sell cards for gold and build your deck.
• At any time you can tap the “back arrow” on the bottom of the screen to return to the main menu.

How to Play

• Each game of Card Wars begins by placing landscape cards and spinning to see who goes first. The order of your landscape cards usually doesn’t matter, but some cards like Travelin’ Farmer might take this into account. Build your landscape according to your deck.
• The player that wins the opening spin gets to play their creatures, spells and buildings first, but does not get to attack. The second player can attack on their first turn. In fact, going second is often preferable because you can respond to enemy placement and clear out cards early.
• To play a card, drag it from you hand to the map. Creatures must be played on a landscape and the landscape must match their landscape color. Buildings are also played on landscapes but are not limited by color.
• Attacking is handled automatically. To end a turn, tap the “Battle” icon on the bottom of the screen. Creatures will attack whatever is in the lane in front of them, be it a creature or the enemy player’s health. Whichever player’s health reaches zero first loses.

• By default Card Wars uses a feature called the “Battle Wheel.” This appears whenever you attack or defend and is triggered by tapping anywhere on the screen. The idea is to get the spinning dial to land on the proper section of the wheel. This leads to more damage, defending against enemy attacks and counterattacking. It also makes it possible (though not likely) to miss attacks, so be careful. This feature can be turned off in settings.
• Every creature has a “floop” ability. These are special skills that can be activated for magic points, the same resource used to summon cards. You receive a default of five magic points at the start of each turn.
• You can play spell cards by dragging them to the board. Usually, the spell will take you to a separate angle and ask you for the spell’s target.

Tips and Tricks

• Bring out the Big Guns – Thanks to Card Wars’ flat magic system, there’s no reason not to put as many huge, overpowered cards as you want in a deck. Cards like Green Mermaid are ridiculously cost effective. Be sure to make room for as many of them as possible.
• Keep Your Shields Up – Keeping around beefy cards is important, but you want to make sure you have at least a few low-cost cards to defend your lanes. An undefended lane means free damage against your hero, so be sure to fill them in. Cards with high defense and useful abilities — like Heavenly Gazer — are well-suited to this role.
• Stay in Your Lane – As an addendum to the previous tip, try not to leave a lane undefended if you can help it. Doing so gives your opponent free access to attack you directly. If you must leave a lane open – because you don’t have enough cards or some other reason – leave choose lanes with low-damage creatures. It’s possible to override a lane’s creature with a new card, but the A.I. rarely does this. That leaves you free to defend lanes with high-damage cards and forces the opponent to keep weak cards on the board.
• Floop the Pig – Don’t let your magic points go to waste; be sure to “floop” all of your cards if your lanes are full. Cards like Cornball should always be flooped for their buff if you have no other cards to play. Meanwhile, sacrificial cards like Ethan Allfire can be removed to make room for more defensible cards while debuffing stronger enemies.
• Keep the Battle Wheel On – Let’s be clear — if you’re not having fun with the Battle Wheel you should absolutely toggle it off. However, you should at least give it a chance. As long as you’re not constantly missing out on attacks because of it, the Battle Wheel only serves to help you, the player, with extra damage, defense and counterattacks. Just be sure to tap it before time runs out, or it’s an automatic miss every time.

• Ration Your Landscapes – When you first start the game your deck will mostly consist of cornfield creatures. Even as you unlock more creatures with different landscape colors you’ll probably want to keep at least two cornfields in your deck for as long as most of your cards fit the color. This can shift eventually, but having a bunch of creatures in your hand without anywhere to set them is dangerous. It leaves you vulnerable to free hits — the worst possible position.
• Play for Removal – Cerebral Bloodstorm causes any enemy creature to attack itself. It’s tempting to use this to weaken creatures with high defense, but it’s not always the best move. This goes with any spell or creature — don’t worry so much about whittling down bigger monsters as removing as many as you possibly can. Each lane is a potential window to the enemy’s health bar. By removing weaker creatures it’s actually possible to win the game without killing the biggest, baddest monsters.
• Replay Missions – Card Wars is very linear. Besides the single-player campaign and quest challenges there’s nothing to play but the main campaign. That means if you’re not going back to complete those quests and replay missions your progression is set. By doing so, however, you can level up, open new deck slots, loot cards and earn gold. It should seem like a no-brainer, but if you’re having trouble on a particular fight, just go power up a bit.

• Find the Right Hero/Use the Right Cards – Each hero comes with a special ability that unlocks after a set number of turns. New heroes are unlocked by collecting their cards in the campaign. Whenever you unlock a new one you should always try them out to see if they fit your play-style. Just remember that certain heroes are best suited to certain cards. Jake, for instance, buffs cornfield creatures. That’s not very useful if you’re deck is composed entirely of swamp cards. Don’t forget which hero you’re using in the deck-building process.
• Keep Your Deck Full – Speaking of having the right cards, don’t forget to check the deck menu whenever you level up. Here you can add a new card to your deck pool every time you reach the experience threshold. Since landscapes are played only at the beginning and magic points are set there’s little need to worry about overloading your deck as in Magic: The Gathering and other card games.
• Card Draw is Important – Being able to keep a full hand isn’t as important in Card Wars as in, say, Hearthstone, but it can help. Creatures like Heavenly Gazer have floop abilities to help with this, so make sure you have at least a few of them or similar cards to keep you from ever being unable to fill a lane.

• Spend Your Gems Wisely – Opening the “Algebraic” chest might cost three times as much as its counterpart, but it’s worth it. The cards in the “Cool Chest” are usually above-average, but it’s still likely that you’ll pull them just by playing the game or cheaply enough through crafting. And don’t bother using your gems on extra hearts. They refill quickly enough over time and soon you’ll begin raising your heart maximum by beating bosses. Just take a break and let them refill instead and use the gems for things you get to keep.
• Craft Early, Craft Often – Once you start unlocking recipes for card crafting you should start crafting immediately. This ties into the earlier statement about always using your biggest cards. Most of the cards are a far sight better than what you have. Any common cards used up in the process can easily be obtained from random drops in the campaign, as well, so don’t be afraid to build an arsenal of beefy cards at their expense.

Congratulations!

You have completed Gamezebo’s quick start guide for Adventure Time: Card Wars. Be sure to check back for game updates, staff and user reviews, user tips, forum comments and much more here at Gamezebo!

Steven Strom

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Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.