Necronator: Dead Wrong

Necronator: Dead Wrong sits at a genuinely interesting crossroads: it takes the card-drafting loop of a roguelite and stitches it onto real-time skirmish combat where you're deploying skeleton hordes, banshees, and worse onto small battlefields. Each run has you picking cards between fights, assembling a deck that controls which units you can summon, how fast they spawn, and what buffs ripple through your shambling ranks. If that sounds like it should be catnip for strategy fans, you are not wrong, but the execution is messier than the pitch. The core decision layer is the interesting part. Different commanders come with distinct starter decks and playstyle hooks, so one run might lean on high-volume low-cost chaff flooding lanes while another bets on a smaller number of elite undead backed by spell cards. Relics, the run-modifying items you collect along the way, can genuinely warp your strategy mid-campaign and produce some satisfying "wait, this actually works" moments when synergies click. From a pure decision-density standpoint, the drafting phase is solid and rewards players who think a few cards ahead rather than just picking the biggest number. Where the wheels wobble is in the RTS layer itself. The actual battlefield management is shallow enough that "tactics" mostly means clicking to deploy units and watching them path toward the enemy base. There is not much to do once a wave is rolling, and the AI on both sides behaves predictably enough that late-game fights start feeling like pass/fail checks on whether your deck is strong enough rather than actual tactical puzzles. For a strategy-and-sim audience that expects to be outplayed and to outplay in return, the combat lacks the friction that makes victories feel earned. The difficulty curve also swings awkwardly, with some runs feeling trivially easy until a sudden spike finishes them without warning. The roguelite structure keeps individual sessions short, which is both a strength and a limitation. You can knock out a full run in under an hour, making it a reasonable pick for players who want something chunky but not sprawling. The unlock progression adds commanders and cards over time, extending the lifespan beyond the initial handful of runs. However, the total content pool is not massive, and players used to the breadth of something like Slay the Spire will notice the ceiling arriving sooner than they would like. The 69% mixed Steam rating feels honest, not harsh, this is a game that lands its concept and stumbles on depth. For a pure newcomer to deck-builders, Necronator is actually not a bad starting point. The rules are explained reasonably well, runs are short enough that a failed attempt costs maybe forty minutes rather than an afternoon, and the undead theming keeps things visually readable. Veteran roguelite players, though, will likely feel the strategic ceiling bump against their forehead within a few hours and start wishing the RTS side had more variables to manipulate. Worth a look if the hybrid concept excites you, but go in knowing the sim half is the weaker leg of the stool.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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