Command of Nature is NOT a deckbuilder
- Kenneth Tan
- Jan 11
- 9 min read
Updated: May 22
Welcome to Picking at Nits, a series of reviews where I get upset and nitpick tiny details of otherwise perfectly playable games. Today's game: Command of Nature!
I am biased towards TeeTurtle and hence, Unstable Games by extension. The obsession started out with a large order of graphic tees, to invertible plushies, to Unstable Unicorns, to vinyl figures, to Kickstarting Here to Slay, which now stays in my collection as a MUCH cuter and improved Munchkins.
Honestly, anything they come up with, my mouse cursor is over the "buy" button immediately.
If I were to think about why, the company rides on its absolutely adorable art style and accessible games. I don't think they're amazing card or board games by any means, but their minimalist approach, stellar art, and above-average production quality just put their products one cut above the rest.
Anyway, let's seriously take a look at Command of Nature to figure out what I disliked about it enough to write a post for it. But who am I kidding? This game is a keeper for me just for the art alone.
The Pros
Unique and Adorable Art
As always, they knock it out of the park with the artwork. I looked around for credits, and Ramy Badie's name pops up for all of them. I don't know how he can be CEO, Game Designer, and Artist, but he does it. Kudos to the feller.
Inspired Army Management
The 1-2-3, spear formation mechanic is inspired. Your frontliners go into battle and you shift your army when units get defeated. Unit abilities have specific rows where they can activate, making placement feel strategic and necessary. It feels like a small-scale battlefield and I love it.
Quick Play
What baffles me is that a number of reviews say it's a slog. I absolutely do not think so and believe this game plays fast, WITHOUT overstaying its welcome. Separately, I think a game not overstaying its welcome is extremely important, playtime aside. e.g. Rock-Scissors-Paper plays in 5 seconds, but a minute of it and you'd start stabbing your eyes out from boredom.
And honestly, I think the mechanics in Command of Nature blend very well together. It's a well-thought-out game. I thought the army management aspect of it was inspired. It plays faster than I expected, with gorgeous art and graphic design as always from Unstable, and an easy enough teach for new gamers. There's harmony, synergy, and a lot of strategy involved in making choices.
There is, to me, just one very obvious and terrible flaw...
The Cons
Command of Nature is NOT a Deckbuilder....
... yet it calls itself one and masquerades as one. Fundamentally, I think my disdain for this game came from the expectation and let-down of the genre. Many parts of its game work well together, but each added mechanic fights with the others for attention, diminishing and de-emphasizing what appears to be the core mechanic of the game: deckbuilding.
It's kinda like expecting to bite into a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream but instead getting room-temp sour cream.
To even begin talking about this, we need to start with definitions. To me, a deckbuilder has the following features:
Deck Growth and Cycling Starting with a basic hand with simple cards, you enhance and build your deck by acquiring stronger cards and building synergies. Discard piles being shuffled back into the deck to be redrawn creates a sense of improvement and growth.
Deck Management An added layer of strategy where you choose between keeping your deck thin to draw the cards you want often, or buying powerful cards but bloat your deck. Dominion's scoring system is fundamentally this. Buy VP cards that don't do anything and bloat your deck, or stock up on powerful cards but risk your opponents buying out the limited VP cards available to everyone.
Turns are only as strong as the deck Your turns, actions, and buying capability are predicated by the cards drawn on each turn. It may feel abstract, but think about how a hand is essentially a sample of the deck, and a litmus test of how well you're building your deck at the moment. The power of your turn lies in understanding what you've built and where you want to go. Therein lies the core of deckbuilding.
Now, where Command of Nature deviates.
Powerful Starting Hand and Level Cards
The starting deck for your Elemental army consists of 6 Commands (actions), a bunch of Champion Elementals, as well as these even stronger Elementals gained when you level up. On paper, this may look cool because the design space allows for unique factions.
HOWEVER, this makes the base decks mostly self-sufficient. Just for fun, I tested a game where I did not buy cards from the market, and I won. The starting champions and the level rewards BOTH undermine acquiring new cards from the market. The base deck is so strong there's little reason to thin the deck to get the Commands you want. Speaking of markets...
Cycling with Split Outputs
Bear with me. I think the title is a little vague, but it's as precise as I can make it. Hopefully, I'll get you through this with some diagrams.
This is what I imagine will be a typical cycle of a deckbuilder, in my mind. Cards cycle around a player's deck -> playing field -> discard -> shuffled back into their deck. New cards are also introduced into this cycle from some form of market, shared or otherwise. Think Dominion or Star Realms.
The input from the market fills the deck and perpetuates a cycle of growth. Sometimes cards allow you to cull your hand or discard, and that helps to thin the deck some.
Now, here's the cycle for Command of Nature.
There's an immediate difference from the field. When units are placed on the field, they stay there until they get killed/defeated, which will then send them out of the game. This is an in-built removal sink that 1. prevents cards from entering your discard, and 2. removes Elementals you purchase from your deck without cycling them. Deck's not going to build itself if cards don't get put back in. Next point!
Too Unique for Variety
This game is great with the diverse and varied types of cards with different abilities. However, the diversity is restrictive. Let me explain. Take a look at what a starting faction deck consists of.
There are 4 Elemental types in the game, but your starting deck is a bunch of Elementals of the same color that ALREADY SYNERGIZE with one another. It's great for theme, but that's rough for any sort of deckbuilder.
When looking to the common market to purchase cards, one would tend to look for cards that work well with the cards one has. In many cases, it would be the same element, giving very little personal incentive to purchase anything out of the type one has when building for general deck cohesion.
Normally, deckbuilders start you off with weak, neutral cards. This way, you are free to pick the different color types from the market, and maybe try to strike a balance between multiple colors and choosing strong cards over synergistic ones.
Drip-feeding champions
Command of Nature has a leveling system, which unlocks 3 more characters throughout the game with increasingly powerful abilities. By emphasizing these unlocks, while great, attention is pulled away from the common market. Why does that happen? The core of the board and actions of the game are your army and the market. It makes you want to buy stuff from the market so that it comes into your deck the following turns.
However, what it does now is start WITH a specific type, shoehorning you with 2 fielded champions and 4 level champions that are drip-fed through the game as you level up. With your specific Sage type and having your deck have such a head start in a specific type, the best play is to your type, unintentionally forcing you out of purchasing other types. I'm protecting my Sage, plus I unlock these powerful champions of this type in a couple of turns, I SHOULD have cards that synergize with it.
Underwhelming Market Incentive
Look at this. Here are some basic Elementals purchasable from the common market.
I get it. Basic Elementals are a gameplay mechanic tied to some abilities. But the base decks, as seen above, have many more powerful elementals. The base decks should be LOADED with these, and the powerful elementals with effects should be in the market.
Currently, there is no incentive mid-game for me to bloat my deck with ability-less Elementals when my army engine has been revving.
If the market cards are often equal or sometimes weaker than the cards in my deck, the marketplace loses the allure of purchase. Why do I even want to bother with interacting with this mechanic when my deck is powerful enough and I can rush my opponent by thinning to only get the commands I want?
Free Deck Thinning
Another egregious error with the core mechanics is that the last phase of your turn allows you to spend accumulated gold to purchase any cards from the market and SELL any card you want from your hand. This, I think, is this game's greatest misstep.
Removing cards from inefficient decks is a large part of deckbuilders. Most of the time, I need to purchase cards to remove other cards. It creates strategic tension and puts weight on every purchase decision. Build a bloated deck freely because I have removal cards, OR, build a streamlined and thin deck with no removals.
It also usually comes at a cost to thin your cards. "Selling" cards and getting gold back is an incentive. There is no limit to the number of cards you can sell. And because you gain gold by selling cards, it's immediately obvious to anyone who plays the genre to sell any and every useless card there is. Not only do you gain gold, you also get rid of a useless card, thinning your deck and letting you draw only the most powerful cards available to you.
And lastly, as a small point, the actions you can take during a turn are usually dictated by the cards you draw. However, Command of Nature gives you 4AP a turn, where even if I draw trash cards, I still have ways to fight or attack.
Final Diagram
Now, with all those points out of the way, I'm going to show you what I think the FULL cycle of Command of Nature looks like (font size = throughput):
Throughput /ˈθruːpʊt/ . noun the amount of material or items passing through a system or process. In this case, how many cards are constantly being moved around from phase to phase.
This is essentially what it is:
All Elementals purchased go onto the field to be removed from the game.
Only Commands go into the Discard.
The market is undesirable
Income is too low to buy cards to keep up with the discard.
At the end of your turn, you are free to sell any card you don't want to the market.
This model is the ANTITHESIS of a deckbuilder. The Elemental sink on the field, lack of purchasing power, and an underwhelming market only force decks to be thinner and thinner.
The most damaging, I feel, is the free-thinning action at the end of your turn. This goes against the core value of deckbuilding, and instead forces optimization for 4-card command decks, where I will ALWAYS have the commands that I WANT in my hand every turn, with 4 AP to carry them all out for highest firepower. Any additional Elementals can be refilled as and when.
See why this isn't a deckbuilder? This game would honestly be better if any semblance of deckbuilding mechanisms were removed all the way.
Ending Thoughts
I think there's a solid game under this, apart from the deckbuilding aspects. It would be better if it:
Focused on the deckbuilding aspects, trimming leveled Champions, more income, and better market incentives.
Focused on the army building aspects, removing the common Elemental markets, and having each faction have their own deck.
By no means is the current game unplayable. I would rate this higher than Casting Shadow, but with weak execution. With a little more brainstorming and designing, this could absolutely stand as a titan of its class.
Nits, picked.
Sidenote: I purchased sleeves from their website for my Kickstarter copy, but it wasn't enough. Upon investigation, I realized the site information was inaccurate, and I contacted their customer support. In no less than a week, they shipped 2 extra packs of sleeves for me F.O.C., showing fantastic initiative. I was prepared to pay for it, but more importantly, for their sake, I wanted to raise the site information inaccuracy to their attention. According to BGG, I'm also not the first person to experience this.
Update: As per the posting, they have not rectified this error on their product page. For anyone who happens to stumble upon this, it's 56 sleeves per pack. If you purchased the Kickstarter Edition, you will need 1 additional pack to sleeve all your KS-exclusive cards along with the expansion.