Hey ya'll. I've never really been into card battling games at all, so it was with great surprise that I've found myself hopelessly addicted to Hearthstone. What are some other accessible, highly regarded card battling games on ios? (I also enjoyed Calculords, though that was more of a lane-based game.)
I dont really play most other card battle games (especially the indie ones since most are freemium with tons of unfavorable IAP), but i do enjoy the ones i did acquire: Magic 2013/14/ and now the upcoming 2015 Shadow Era Summoner Wars (also involves a tactics-type of strategy) BattleCON - This is more of a 1v1 fighting game in card form, and it's pretty awesome. Unforch not a lot were playing, so i ended up scrapping it. You can definitely give it a try though, and play the single player modes. It's free, and you can buy other characters through IAP. You can also try out Ascension, but it's more a deck building game than a card battle type of game.
Don't forget Yomi. It's similar in approach to BattleCON, but it is $9.99 for the base game. But the upside is that there are always people playing it. Plus it's more fun than BattleCON imo. Check out my review of it for slidetoplay.com here: http://www.slidetoplay.com/review/yomi-review/
Hearthstone plays very much like a not as good Magic the Gathering rip-off to me, so Magic 2013/2014 is probably your best bet. They're both free downloads with a full game unlock IAP so you can try them safely.
Might & Magic: Duel of Champions is another option. Being cross-platform as well (ios and PC) it had a large and active community around the time I stopped playing 2 months back.
