Hybridization in PC games has rarely been as ambitious and as well executed as in BattleForge, which expertly merges real-time strategy play with a collectible card game, thereby spawning its own genre, the RTS card game. The result is an innovative RTS game that rewards thinking on your feet, and a card game that puts thousands of opponents at your fingertips and brings your fantastic minions to life. Despite a few imperfections, BattleForge has the potential to captivate fans of both of its component genres.

At its core, BattleForge is a real-time strategy game with a seamlessly integrated card game mechanic. You control an army of fantasy creatures, ranging in size from tiny to gargantuan, and undertake missions, which are resolved through real-time battles with standard point-and-click controls and an excellent drag-and-drop control group interface. Instead of building structures to produce units, you summon your forces directly onto the battlefield by playing cards from your onscreen deck. Likewise, you can summon defensive towers and cast healing, damage, and crowd-control spells in the same manner.

Playing RTS matches in BattleForge is a blast, but you can also derive hours of enjoyment outside the battlefield by planning, designing, and tweaking your virtual decks. There's no limit to the number of different decks you can make, so there's no limit to the number of classes or "specs" you can play with the same character. Each deck can have up to 20 cards, and each card belongs to one of four schools of magic--fire, frost, nature, or shadow--and is color-coded red, blue, green, or purple, respectively. Similarly, the crucial orbs you control on the battlefield are color-coded, and you need to decide what color orb to build when you capture a monument. To play a shadow card, for instance, you must have a purple orb, and so on. Figuring out how many orbs and what colors you need may sound complicated, but it's executed with a simple and intuitive dot system.