After engaging in a Kingdom Hearts binge from December to early March, I stumbled onto various Youtube videos on a card game named Force of Will. It originated from Japan (no surprise) and entered into American shores early 2015. Admittedly, the only trading card game (TCG) I was seriously involved was Yu-Gi-Oh during the early to mid 2000s, as a kid. I never played against anyone and I constantly changed which cards to add to my deck to improve it. Cut to January 2018, I decided to dedicate my attention to Force of Will and get my own starter deck. I took time to study the rules, watch matches online, I even joined the FoW Reddit and Facebook communities. Since, F.O.W. has a sparse community, especially in my location, I might as well divulge why this card game is awesome and should spread across the U.S. of A. If you look into F.O.W.'s aspects as card game, it's spectacular in terms of art, gameplay, community and prices.
1. The Art
These cards shown above are a fraction of Force of Will's exquisite art. Every card from resonators(creatures that protect your life points), Rulers(Creatures that produce mana, help you in battle and transfrom into a J-Ruler), chants(short-term spells), regalia(weapons to equip to resonators) and additions(long-term spells) point that the art is always eye-catching, even down to the basic vanilla card. From my perspective, what attracted me to FoW, was the art style, obviously, as it ignited my weeb detector. Now now, not every card has sexualized anime waifus. Force of Will not only has it's own lore, and is based around various mythologies and stories worldwide, which are also subverted. Therefore, you can gain cards that feature horrifying Lovecraftian Cthulhu resonators, a buff Su Wukong, or a Cinderella that preys off of princes' souls. Nevertheless, this is brilliant move for a fledgling card company which offers diverse art and card races.
2. The Gameplay & Difficulty
As mentioned before, I only played Yu-Gi-Oh. So learning F.O.W's mechanics were pretty simple. There are some similarities between the two which are the use of life points, shifting cards to a 90 degree angle(In F.O.W's case, it's to attack and/or activate abilities, will or mana) and the use of spells(Chants & Additions in F.O.W). Typically, like all tcgs, the goal to reduce your opponents life points to zero. Both players utilize their rulers to generate mana, the players "rest"(turn 90 degrees to the right) mana to produce will to pay the cost for the color-coded card. There are five elements in Force of Will: Fire(red), Water(blue) Wind(green), Light(white, it appears yellow) and Dark(black, it's actually purple) For example, you rest 3 green mana to play a 3 green will card. However, FoW has their own unique mechanics such as: taking any unwanted cards in your hand, then exchanging them for the same number of cards from your deck before your first turn, attacking/using chants and addtions any number of times during your turn, and playing any cards during your end phase. If you want to learn the rules in-depth: check on FoW's website for the basics , the beginner's guide and if you want, download the PDF version of rules. All in all, Force of Will is spectacularly fun and very helpful for beginners.
3. It's Cost-Effective! :)
When it comes to FoW, you get your bang for your buck. Fortuitously, you can get even more than what you paid for. Booster packs tend to fall between $2-$5.99 each, depending on how old. There's ten cards inside along with the chance of getting a foil card, a ruler, a full art card or a rare card. As for booster boxes, they contain 36 packs, 360 cards in total. They range from $80-$100 and plus you get a chance to obtain an uber rare card, one that's in black and white as well as foil. Booster boxes may be a little pricey, but they're worth it if you're getting used to the game. Last but not least are starter decks, containing one ruler, one deck(of 40 cards) with two copies of foil cards and a second deck of non-foil cards, along with an instruction manual and paper playmat. I bought my starter deck from the Lapis cluster, (2nd to last picture) and it came with two red die with pentagrams replacing the snake eyes. It also included 3 booster packs. Therefore, any beginners are given more than enough to start playing. As for collectors, Force of Will, makes the effort to create full art/textured/regular foil for their cards. So, the more rarer they are, the more they cost. Luckily, FoW can also be monitored for their prices and is sold online in popular tcg websites such as TCGPlayer and Big n' Collectibles. Altogether, this is tcg that can satisfy both beginners' curiosity and experienced players' collection and placate everyone's satisfactions.
4. Force of Will's Card Rotation
Right before I discovered F.O.W, I considered re-entering into Yu-Gi-Oh. In order to do so, I had to know what Synchro, Xyz, Link and Pendulum summoning(which is considered broken) were;plus I had to keep up with ban-lists and update my deck whenever new cards were added. However, F.O.W. rotates their clusters. For example, my starter deck from the Lapis Cluster can be used along with the newest booster box: Time Spinning Witch, along with an updated Ruler. Therefore, even as the game gets updated every three months, new players won't have to feel financially inadequate or "deck impotent" without buying every new set.
5. The Community's pretty good.
Admittedly, me being the pseudo-shut in that I am and that F.O.W. is pretty sparse in my LGSs(Local game stores), I haven't met another person who likes the game in IRL. However, when I peer through the game's Reddit community or Facebook page, I don't see much negativity, or trolling for that matter. I'm not trying to throw shade at the Yu-Gi-Oh community, but if you were type those two bold words, you'd get these results on Youtube. Within every community there's bound to be a-holes, but so far I'm not seeing it in FoW. So, meeting new, non-toxic people is also a huge plus in Force of Will.
As a result, Force of Will is a enthralling TCG. The community appears mostly welcoming and kind, and informative. The art is beautiful, magnificent and dare I say belongs in a museum. The mechanics are adequate to learn, but strategy is what makes it challenging and fun. The prices are reasonable and the game caters to nascent players to experienced card collectors who'll surrender an arm and a leg for the rarest card. Finally, I as a player, am glad I found this game. Now I'm even more joyous to inform the audience. I'm pretty sure everyone in the FOW community and the company behind it wants the game to become more popular or even mainstream like Magic the Gathering. So readers, if you want to play the game, check out FoW's website, look up FOW's basics on YT and spread this article like the plague.
SPREAD FORCE OF WILL TO THE WORLD!!!