Spellsword Cards: Demontide guide - Tips and tricks for Campaign Mode

Spellsword Cards: Demontide is a wonderful little single-player card game, but it can also be quite unforgiving. Parts of it definitely look and feel like Hearthstone, but you can’t just play this game like its your favorite collectible card game (CCG) and expect to do well.

Specifically, Demontide’s Campaign Mode will punish you heartily unless you learn a few key lessons that the game unfortunately doesn’t do a great job of teaching you. Luckily, I’ve put in many hours into the game as of this writing and can step in to help any card battler that’s been banging their head against Demontide’s tough Campaign with some tips. See below:

Start with warrior

I don’t care how many CCGs you’ve played, the best way to get a handle on Demontide and its mechanics is to start simple and play Campaign Mode as a warrior. This is actually one of the few things recommended specifically by the game, but I just want to underscore how much of a good idea it is.

The reason playing as warrior is best for beginners at Demontide is simply because it’s a class that offers a lot of flexibility and a high margin of error. With the highest base hit points, access to all weapons, quality sustain options, and even some solid direct damage options, the warrior class can let you play with just about everything the game has to offer without you needing to know how to hone your deck into an efficient killing machine from the jump. You can make more mistakes and—more importantly—recover from them—if you start Demontide playing as a warrior.

Synergy is specialization

As you level up your hero in Demontide, you have the option to start mixing and matching classes. If you start as a warrior (as you should), you can potentially branch out to add ninja cards for even more combat options or put a couple levels into the priest class to build in some healing over time. This sounds great and all, but I wouldn’t recommend mixing classes until you’ve put five levels into your initial class.

The initial levels of any class in Demontide unlock a lot of class-specific cards that all work well together, ensuring that you can put together decks that have good card synergies. If you decide to throw in other class cards early, you'll definitely have other cards to work with, but not all of them will work together as well. Once you hit level five though, the class-specific card unlocks tail off, making it a good starting point for making your hybrid hero.

Prune your deck!

Above all the other advice in this guide, take this one to heart: Only put cards that you absolutely need to win into a deck. Where Hearthstone or other CCGs operate off of building decks to a standardized size, there is no such requirement in Demontide, and you must use this to your advantage to win battles in the Campaign Mode.

While it might be great to put a bunch of cards that work well together in a deck, it often might not be necessary, and it could even cause you to lose fights. If instead you can take 10 or fewer cards into a fight that can deal lethal damage, that's the most reliable way to ensure victory.

Never underestimate card draw

You can fill a deck with amazing cards in Demontide, but that doesn't really matter if you don't get the cards you need when you need them. Honing your deck into a lean set of cards certainly helps things, but having a way to get as many cards into your hand as possible is even better. This is especially true considering there is no penalty in the game for running out of cards to draw.

By default, your can only draw one card per turn, but there are cards in the game that let you pull more cards from your deck into your hand. Specifically, the Tome of Truth, a craftable card that lets you draw three cards, is a great addition to almost any deck. Make sure you find a way to make as many of these as possible to make your time with Demontide a bit easier.