Summary

The Lightseekers trading card game is part of the larger Lightseekers line of toys, which also includes video games, action figures, and other media (such as comics). TCG cards can be scanned by the app for additional effects. The goal of the card game is to deplete your opponent's hero's health while protecting your own hero, and the game features a unique card rotation mechanic for its buffs. The game was available in 9-card booster packs and starter decks.

Card Types

• Hero - Cards representing leaders, each belonging to an order, and having health, an ability, and several element icons. Decks are built around a hero.
• Combo - Stronger abilities, which can be attacks, defends, or buffs. Each has an ability and required elements, and belongs to an order. A deck must have exactly 5 combo cards.
• Attack - Cards representing offensive abilities. Each has an ability and required elements, and may belong to an order.
• Defend - Cards representing defensive abilities. Each has an ability and required elements, and may belong to an order.
• Buff - Cards representing ongoing abilities, which rotate across turns. Each has an ability and a number of rotation corners, determining how long the effect lasts. They also have required elements, and may belong to an order.
• Item - Cards representing items used by heroes. Unique in that they do not require elements, and are equipped on heroes. Each has an ability, a value, and belongs to an order.

Sets and Decks

The game had four sets released: Awakening, Mythical, Kindred, and Uprising. Additional promotional sets (Rift Pack, Shadow League, and Origin) were also available.

Starter decks were only available for two of the sets: Awakening and Kindred. Both sets of starters had the same format, although the Awakening starter decks had more "extras" than the Kindred starter decks. The standard four sets were available in booster packs.

(Interestingly, the booster boxes do not indicate how many packs are included anywhere on them, which is unusual for card games.)

Deck Composition and Contents

Awakening Starter Decks

Starter decks were themed around a specific order and hero, and came with a hero, 5 combo cards, and 30 other ("action") cards, which is a full deck for the Constructed format.

Starter deck contents were fixed, and the boxes indicated which deck you would get. The decks themselves are a mix of common and uncommon cards, each with 5 starter-exclusive cards (marked as "rare" rarity).

All decks also included health marker token and a playmat. The Awakening starters additionally included a printed rulebook, a storage box, and a trading shield (covering the scannable portions of the card, to prevent them from being scanned by others when you shared photos of them). Every deck also contains a booster pack, and a "tribute card" that can be scanned into the video game (and has no card game effect).

The health marker token is themed to the deck, which is a nice touch. (The other components, such as the playmat, storage box, and trading shield, are the same across decks.)

Kindred Starter Decks

Starter decks were themed around a specific order and hero, and came with a hero, 5 combo cards, and 30 other ("action") cards, which is a full deck for the Constructed format.

Starter deck contents were fixed, and the boxes indicated which deck you would get. The decks themselves are a mix of common and uncommon cards, each with 5 starter-exclusive cards (marked as "rare" rarity).

All decks also included health counter tokens and a playmat. Every deck also contains a booster pack, and a "booster card" that can be scanned into the video game (and has no card game effect). Interestingly (and frustratingly), Kindred starter decks do not include rules, although the playmat includes a general summary of gameplay.

One particularly interesting thing about the Kindred decks is how strong the theming is within each deck. The additional components (playmat, health tokens) were colored to match the deck's order. (For example, the Astral decks included a yellow playmat and yellow health tokens.) This theming is extremely unusual within TCGs, with most games having a single playmat or health token that is common across all starters.

Deck Rarity Analysis

Lightseekers decks include rare cards, but does not duplicate them in the deck. Combined with the fact that all starters are clearly marked, this doesn't spoil rare pulls from boosters too much, and limits duplication of cards from starters unless you want to.

Alan's Thoughts On The Game

This game... confuses me. It's unclear to me what their target audience for the game is.

On the one hand, the game itself has very simple rules and interactions. You don't play cards during other players' turns (to counter their plays or whatever), and there are very few effects that "react" to other players' actions. Even two of the card types (attacks and defends) effectively are the same type, just with the sub-type (attack or defend) that other effects may react to. Other than combos, cards don't really have costs. There's very little game state to track or manage (and in a multiplayer game, you're really only looking at one other player since you automatically target the player to your left). It's one of the simplest base rulesets for any game, which felt appropriate for a game that ties in heavily to a mobile game and physical action figures, which I assume makes this more of a kid-focused TCG.

On the other hand, note that I said "base ruleset". The full rules PDF is 33 pages (!!), and even just playing the game in its most basic form requires you to remember (for example) that your hero specializes in an element, and plays of that element are unlimited while plays of other types of cards are limited. Cards refer to elements by name (rather than symbol) making it less straightforward to understand effects. There are rotating and non-rotating buffs, which should be different card types but aren't, and they rotate at different times depending on the symbol on the corners. There is a weird amount of "stuff" you have to learn and remember to really play (as evidenced by the 33 page rulebook). It's a lot more complexity than I expected.

Unfortunately, that kind of nuanced complexity on top of a basic ruleset just isn't satisfying. You can't usually "react" to opponent actions, so you're left playing very defensively (as you can only drop cards and abilities during your turn), like playing a buff that prevents your opponent from playing attacks or doesn't let them play defends. Buffs are also surprisingly easy to get rid of, making the ones with a "wait for it over many turns" effect feel too high a risk to be worth playing.

The very strong division of the game into 6 orders is also problematic from a deckbuilding standpoint. Most other games with such strong divisions only have two factions (typically good vs evil), otherwise letting you splash cards of various sub-factions or affiliations together (sometimes with a penalty, or against advice, but it's doable). The closest thing to Lightseekers' strong 6-order division is the World of Warcraft TCG with its 10 hero classes... but even then you can use any ally from your faction (Alliance or Horde) and use many different equipment pieces across classes, and use almost any quest. (Even Spycraft allows you to use other factions' agents at increased cost, and otherwise the other types of cards are unaligned.) The Lightseekers card search tells me there are exactly 37 unaligned cards in the entire game's 978 card set. 16 of the 175 heroes in the game belong to two orders (but using them carries other strict deckbuilding penalties, because each hero still only has three elements, greatly limiting which combo cards can be included in the deck). You're very likely to have 5/6 of the cards in your collection be illegal in any given deck, which is far higher than any other TCG out there.

I don't want to say the game is bad, because I can see glimmers of interesting gameplay. But, like many other TCGs, I just don't feel this one.

Also, the lack of a printed rulebook in starter decks really sucks. The official rulebook online is a black and white PDF that is frustrating to wade through as you're trying to play because it's comprehensive, and the quicker "how to play" webpages are broken into pages that you have to click back and forth between. I just want a physical book to page through as needed that includes just enough needed to play.

Side note: The card backs are horizontal. This doesn't affect gameplay, but I'm still annoyed by it, since none of the cards are horizontally-oriented.

Resources

• Official Website
• Starter Deck Card Lists (AlanvDotOrg Randomjunk)