Really dig Puzzles and Dragons style of card collecting with real game play but don't want another match-3. So skipped Tower of Savior did some digging: Team Monster - Terrible art, but the game itself feels solid, reminds me of battle heart in a way. But I never liked battle heart art style so hard for me to really get into it. Controls also kind of clunky. Brave Frontier - Great art, but feels like too little control in the actual action, mash attack buttons all day long. No positioning possible. Lack of combo attacks beyond sparks which is really frustrating to use. Honor Bound - Pace feels really slow, too much like Blood Brother games. Again lack of positioning. Hello Heroes - Good art, again lack of positioning, skill use also kind of clunky? I can use skills even when it is not up. Overall I think Team Monster is the best of the bunch? I just wish someone made a better looking version of it.
Could you mean something like shadow era? The CCG genre on iPhone spans more than just those minimal user input games which I never understood the attraction of.
I really like puyopuyo quest, but i think its japan only. For me its way more fun than puzzle and dragons. It would be cool if enough TA people played it and we could make an english speaking guild! Though being firced to use japanese is good practice..
For something like magic etc... Shadow era. For something like board/card game Agricola/Ascension/ticket to ride. For something like yugioh/Pokemon - Card city Nights. For something unique try Bang! Other than that I'm not sure I know there are alot of those free to play card games maybe Kard Kombat? Not sure on those?
Spellcraft, hands down: Free to start. But you can buy ingame currency (which you earn more than enough of) to support the great dev team. So far it got at least 3 expansions, has a few hundred cards, and offers very varied gameplay and approaches, depending on how you craft your deck. And some of the challenges are really tough nuts to crack and require a lot of thinking outside the box. Been a good while since I played, so I don't know if the community (you can play vs. other humans via Gamecenter) is still as active.
I'm currently waiting for Blizzards HearthStone for the iPad ^_^ I played it at Blizzcon last year and it was very fun and engaging. The playablity was very smooth and easy. And the graphics were high quality with nice particle effects.
Solforge... Great community, generous with free cards, and genuinely new mechanics (unlike Hearthstone).