Kards: The WWII Card Game

Separate from the pay-to-win argument, 19% of longer reviews complain about how slowly cards arrive without paying, how much packs and campaigns cost, or rewards that shrank. Recurring points are crafting costs for elite cards, no way to break down unwanted cards for crafting material ("Please allow players to disenchant cards"), packs that cannot be bought for a single nation, and pricing that some international players could not afford. One 2019 review described it plainly: "The rate of card acquisition is notably slow, even compared to other slow-ish F2P CCGs, like Arena and Hearthstone." Reward changes drew their own waves of complaints, including the reduced first-win gold and the removal of the elite wildcard for national level 150: "Replacing the elite wildcard, which serves as a reward for upgrading national levels in the game, with a useless avatar reward is truly disgusting."

17% of longer reviews complain about balance, and they describe the same cycle: an expansion lands with overpowered cards, they dominate for weeks or months, and nerfs arrive late. One player called it "the trend of the devs releasing very unbalanced expansions with overpowered cards that later (sometimes months) gets nerfed". Reviewers have called different nations too strong over the years: Britain and the Soviets early on, then Japan, Germany and later additions such as Finland. Players who invested in a deck also object when nerfs come without any refund of crafting material.

10% of longer reviews complain about the meta itself: everyone running the same copied decks, games won by orders (spells) and removal with few units on the board, and combos that end a game in one turn. Meta complaints were most common in reviews written in 2023, 2025 and 2026 (13% to 18% of each year's longer reviews, against under 10% in the other years). In 2026 the weather and forecast cards became a theme of their own (9% of that year's longer reviews), with players saying they drag games out: "Weather made everything worse. Games take longer."

8% of longer reviews raise cheating, toxic behavior or the lack of a way to report it. Cheating complaints rose in 2025 (12% of that year's longer reviews) and 2026 (9%), against 4% or less in earlier years. Players describe opponents playing more than their kredits allow or blocking moves, and they object that "There is no report function (in a PvP game mind you)". Emote spam and players who let the turn timer run down make up the rest of this theme; one player complained that muting emotes does not stick: "You have to turn it off once you enter every single match."

7% of longer reviews report technical problems: cards stuck on screen, matches lost to disconnects with no way back in ("constant lose of connection"), gold lost when a tournament entry failed, and a game that runs hot on laptops for a 2D card game. Some players also say a cancelled queue or a crash still counted as a loss.

6% of longer reviews name matchmaking directly, and some pay-to-win complaints describe the same problem without using the word. New players report meeting veterans with full collections, ranked opponents several ranks above them, and the same opponent several times in a row. One player suggested that "matchmaking should factor in the depth of a player's card collection rather than relying solely on their current level".

When older cards rotated out of standard play into a reserve pool in 2023, players who had just finished or bought decks were angry: "I literally just made a decent deck and now more than half is being permanently moved to reserve." The complaint returns in later years whenever new rotations land, usually alongside the economy theme.

A few players argue the first player, who starts with four cards against the second player's five, is too far behind, and suggest equal opening hands.

Early reviews in particular mention a deck builder that shows few cards at a time, hard-to-read ability icons and a weak indicator for which units can still act.