By now I'm sure hockey fans are well aware that there's a new mobile game to be played. Following in the footsteps of NBA MyTeam Mobile and WWE Supercard, comes NHL Supercard. A free to play card game where you can collect,train,combine,and play with cards in your deck to defeat other player’s decks. For those who are new to this type of game, this will hopefully help you get a better understanding on the game and some suggested tips about playing the game.

Quick Game Mode:
Quick game mode, the mode you'll likely be spending more time playing than anything else. When you select quick game, you'll notice your line-up at the top, you have a single line-up featuring a C,LW,RW,D,D,G, and 2 support cards. At the top left of that screen is the tier that your line-up is in. Below, there are 4 different opponents you can face off against. The opponent will depend on your respective tier(as indicated by the type of trophy on their icon). So let’s start off with the tiers first.

Tiers:
The higher tier you're in, the higher tier cards you can draft after a quick game. The tier starts at Rare, then moves up to Super Rare, Ultra Rare, Epic and finally Legendary(for now). Starting at Super Rare, each tier has a + and ++ level. For example, Super Rare has 3 tiers, 'Super Rare', 'Super Rare+', and 'Super Rare++'. To go from Super Rare to Ultra Rare, you need to first surpass Super Rare+ and Super Rare++. The only differences between Super Rare,+, and ++ is that it increases your likelihood of drawing a super rare card from the draft board after a game. When in super rare tier, you can only draft a common,uncommon,rare or super rare card. If you go into Ultra Rare, you can draft all those tiers plus ultra-rare, and that trend continues all the way to the top tier.

Line-ups:
As you see when entering quick game, you'll see your line-up featuring a C,LW,RW,D,D,and G. While it's recommended, it's not required that all players play their respective position. Other than a goalie, all other positions can be swapped to a different position, however, if a player plays out of position, he won't get a 5% boost in the quick game. So if you want, you can play your 5 best skater cards, if you think playing out of position will benefit you more than a 5% boost while playing in position will.

As for support cards, you can only play one support card per game, and unless it's a "+ to team" card, it'll only apply to a single period. The higher tier the support card is, the bigger boost it will give to your player when you play it. Like mentioned, you can only use it once a game, so be wise with when you play it, and remember to play the support card during the appropriate matchup. If the matchup falls for Focus on our side, and playmaking from their side, it does you no good playing a + playmaking card, since the only stat that matters for your guy in that period is focus.

Quick Game:
Once you have your line-up all sorted out, choose any opponent that's listed below. You won't be facing that actual person themselves, but rather an AI controlled version of their line-up. When the matchup starts, the game will show what stat(or stats) your side will have, and what stat the other side will have for that period. If you have a + support card for that stat(or stats),then you can use it, if you have a - support card, you can use it to take away statpoints from your opponent for that period. The recommended strategy would just be to play whatever card has the highest stat numbers for that respective matchup.

Once you select the card(s) you want to play, the animation begins in the game. You can just tap the screen to speed up the play if you don't want to sit through the animation and get through games faster. Doing during the game can make a single quick game last around 20-30 seconds.

Once you finish all 3 periods(and potentially overtime),the game ends. If you win by a shutout, you get 3 picks on the draft board. If you win and the other team beats you(or ties with you) in one of the periods, you get 2 picks. If you lose, you get 1 pick. So pick whichever 3 cards you want, but don't expect them to be a high tier card. Even if you're in a high tier, the chances of getting a card in your respective tier are low. On average, you might draw a card from your respective tier once every 100 or so games, depending on the tier you're in(the higher the tier, the harder it is to draw a card from your tier). If you're playing in a new tier for the first time, you’ll get a "freebie”, which is just a card from that tier you just entered, to get you going.

My Cards:
On Mycards, it'll show you every single card you have in your deck. The most cards you can have are 100,so don't stock up on cards if you don't need to. From the mycards menu, you can train, combine or enhance your card, as well as set him as your "mvp"(which just makes him the player that appears on the quick game screen in the main menu). You can also lock a card by tapping on the lock, which is just a safety precaution so that you don't accidently train away a card you didn't want to get rid of. You can lock and unlock a card at any given time, so if the day comes where you want to use that card to train up another card, just simply unlock it.

Train:
To train a card, all you have to do is click on the train button, either through the mycards menu, or from the main menu itself. If you go through the main menu, you have to first select the card you want to train. Once you do so, you’ll be taken to your entire deck, where you can choose however many cards in your deck you want to use to train up the card you chose. The meter on your card means level. So 0/20 means your card is at level 0 out of a possible 20 levels for that card. The higher tier card you use in training, the more XP points you gain when training a card.

A piece of advice for this is to not just train up every high tier card in your deck. Since you only need 5 skaters and 1 goalie for quick game, there's no need to have 20 different guys trained up, unless you have no other alternative due to all other guys already being at the max level.

Combine:
Either before or after you train a card, you can combine them to make a "pro" card, which allows your card to reach an even higher statline. In order to combine a card, you need to have two of the same card, in the same tier, in your deck. If you want the card to be the best it could possibly be, then each individual card you want to combine, should be at its max level, before you combine it. If you just want to combine a card to clear up space in your deck(or use it to train up another card),you can do so as well, but he won't be able to reach the stat level he would've if he was fully trained up. A gold crown means you properly trained up the combined card before combining it, while a silver crown means you didn't train it properly beforehand.

As for enhancements, don't use them on cards before you combine them, as you lose the enhancement once combining, and it doesn't lead to a better card when you combine.

A suggestion for combining and training cards is to combine cards in common, uncommon and rare tier, even if they're not fully trained. Those won't help you in quick game or season mode at all in the long run. If you have duplicates of a card and want to use them to train some other card, combine them first, since it gives you a few extra XP points, which eventually adds up if you combine enough cards over time and use them in training. When training, I’d suggest putting the priority on a card in super rare or higher tier. If you don't have any, then just feel free to train up any card you want, and just keep him in your deck until the time comes to train him away to a card you want to train up, which will help speed up the process since you already have all those XP points on the card you've been storing.

Season Mode:
Season mode, just like NHL in real life, is an 82 game + 4 round playoff mode. In this mode, you compete through simulations vs 29 other users. Each game happens about once an hour, so expect season mode to take at least 3.5 days to complete(which is how long season mode takes),and hopefully even longer if you make it in the playoffs. The maximum time is just under 5 days total(assuming each round has at least 1 game going 7 games in the series, and you make it all the way to the finals).

Season mode allows you to have one card per position, and 6 cards on your bench. In this mode, playing cards out of position will hurt you (as you lose stamina points each game, even more on cards played out of position). Stamina points can be acquired through winning quick games and sometimes even drafting them from the draft board. Or you can just swap out your starting line-up for your bench, if you don't feel like playing games to get stamina cards.

Once you begin season mode, all cards in your line-up can't be swapped for cards in your deck, meaning if you suddenly pull a good card from the draft board in quick game, you have to wait until the season mode is over before you can insert him into your season mode line-up. All season mode cards are also temporarily locked, so you can't combine or train away any season mode cards. However, you can still train up cards that are in your season mode deck.

Season mode provides you with rewards depending on how your season ends. If you get eliminated in the playoffs, you get 2 cards in a tier 2 tiers lower than your own. If you lose in the first round, you get 1 card in the tier below yours. If you lose in the quarter finals, you get 2 cards in the tier below yours. If you lose in the semi-finals, you get 1 card in your tier. If you make it to the finals and lose, you get a card in your tier and a support card in the tier below yours. And if you win it all, you get 2 cards in your own tier.


That sums up NHL Supercard for now. If enough people like this, then I'll go further into detail regarding other modes like Rival Clash, Road to the Cup, and possible future added tiers.