Artifact is a card game too big to live on a single board. Valve spreads the playfield of its digital CCG between three separate lanes and gives you control of five heroes - some pulled directly from Dota, others invented for this spin-off. Buffs and modifiers stack without a cap, mana generates continuously, and your heroes respawn in a non-stop cycle of death and rebirth. Artifact takes full advantage of digital conveniences to help you digest an overwhelming amount of information, and all those details add up to an immensely satisfying game of strategy.
You don't have direct control over everything you see on the board. You can choose your deck's five heroes - powerful unit cards with unique abilities - and the colours of those heroes determine which cards you'll be able to play in which lanes. During deckbuilding, you can also choose three of those five heroes to be deployed first, but they're distributed between the lanes at random. You can equip your heroes with gear that boosts their capabilities but can only purchase items from a random selection that appears between rounds. Units pick their own targets, but you can spend mana on spells to redirect those attacks.
It's this push and pull between random elements and your limited resources to influence them that forms the heart of Artifact. Once you and your opponent commit your actions, the units in that lane smash against each other in a single wave of offensive energy. You can always see exactly what will happen when the clash goes down. Doomed heroes will display an ominous red X, and you can hover over their health values to find out exactly where that damage is coming from.
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