Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels is a CCG for Android and iOS that simplifies a Hearthstone-like experience and, as the name entails, provides quick matches both against AI and users across the internet. Although Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels is one of the simpler CCGs out there, there’s still some depth to it. If you’re new to the game, here are some things you need to know right off the bat.

Complete Quests and Events

Quests don’t stay around forever, so it’s best to check on them frequently and complete them as often as you can. Doing so will keep a rotating door of quests available to you. Quests reward you with coins, crafting materials, and card packs.

Training missions are also worth completing. These battles against AI opponents may be boring, but the rewards make it well worth it. If you’re able to complete these missions on your first attempt, you can earn a large sum of coins and a card pack.

Grind Card Packs

Like most CCGs, expanding your card collection is a slow grind. However, there are a lot of different ways you can do this in Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels.

The most natural way is by winning PvP matches and leveling up. You’re guaranteed a pack at every new level, and winning a PvP match can often result in obtaining a card pack as a reward. As you progress, you’ll eventually reach a new rank. Reaching a new rank guarantees that you’ll get a card pack with at least one rare card inside.

Alternatively, be sure to visit Ariann the Fortune Teller often and tap the crystal ball. Doing so may earn you a card pack, coins, or crafting materials.

The last way you can earn packs is by buying them from the shop. Winning PvP matches and completing missions will earn you coins. Once you’ve earned 2480 coins, you’ll have enough to buy a set of 10 card packs from the shop.

Match Card Colors

Although this is a part of the tutorial, it’s worth going over.  When you’re building your deck, you need to be sure that the items you’re including are a part of the same color of the monsters in your deck. For example, chaos cards are purple, and only Purple monsters can use Purple items.

The exception to this rule is Silver cards. These cards can be used by any color monster, but they have much higher mana costs. It’s up to you to determine if the flexibility of these cards is worth the increased cost.

Utilize Weapon Item Cards

As some of the strongest utility cards in Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels, it’s important that you’re familiar with how weapon item cards work. 

These cards are able to grant your monster additional attacks even if they don’t match the attack type of the weapon item card. For example, you can have a melee attacker throwing out magic attacks.

Using weapon item cards on a monster will still require that you follow the rules of how rows work. If you have a ranged attacker and you equip them with a melee weapon item card, they won’t be able to use the melee weapon item if they’re in the back row. This creates a problem because moving them to the front row will then disable the use of their ranged attack.

As such, the best way to utilize weapon item cards is by using ones that grant magic attacks. Magic can be used from any row and therefore won’t give you this problem.

Sacrifice Useless Cards

There will come times where you draw a card from your deck that offers you nothing in the current match. That’s where Sacrifice is a valuable option. Sacrificing a card will remove it from your hand and leave it ineligible for the rest of the match, but it will refund you the mana cost corresponding to that card.

You can Sacrifice only once per turn, and the optimal strategy is to do this on your item cards. New item cards won’t appear until you use them on your monster cards from the same color.

Crafting and Disenchanting

The crafting system in Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels has some depth to it and it may be hard to understand at first. Going into your collection, starting at level 5, you can upgrade your cards. Your cards have a level and upgrading them to raise that level make the cards more powerful. Different card rarities and types have different level limits:

Monsters (Common and Rare): Level 5 Monsters (Epic and Legendary): Level 4 Items (Common and Rare): Level 3 Items (Epic and Legendary): Level 2

When you reach Proficiency Level 3, you’re also able to craft cards that you want and don’t already have. You just select the Craft option under My Collection. Select the card you want to craft and you’ll see the materials required. Naturally, better cards require more materials.

Similarly, you can disenchant cards that you already have and don’t want in the same way. This also unlocks at Proficiency Level 3. Select the card from your collection and you’ll see the Disenchant option. This will give you materials towards crafting new cards.

Once you’ve got the basics down, improving at Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels is all about knowing the strength of cards and building an optimal deck. If you have any questions or comments, leave me a reply below and I’ll get back to you!

Be sure to check out our other Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels guides:

Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels - Deck Building Guide Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels - Match Strategy Guide