I decided to try Battleforge, as the idea sounded intriguing.  I've only played the first two single-player missions, so I don't really know what to think of this game.  So far, I'm seeing some interesting ideas that might or might not work . . .

This is basically a combination of a trading card "Magic: The Gathering"-type game and an RTS.  Unlike other games of this sort that I've tried, this isn't a "straight duel".  Once you use a card to, say, summon a monster, the monster is controlled and used the same way as most other RTS's. 

On the map, you have two sets of resources.  You need units near a resource (and no enemy units nearby) in order to claim a resource point.  There are two kinds of resources.  One is general power, the other is orbs (which can be things like "fire", "frost", and so on).  Collect a power node to make power start to trickle in (up to a maximum amount for a node).  Collect an orb node and, after an initial time, you can get one orb of the sort you desire.  A node generates just one orb, but that orb can be freely used as often as you like.  A card will have a power cost and an orb cost ("two fire orbs plus one orb of any type"). 

You can cast a card if you have buildings (or claimed nodes) or units nearby.  Since this is real-time, you can cast pretty much as you please.  As I mentioned, orbs aren't consumed when used.  Suppose you have one fire orb, but you have enough power . . . you could happily go off and cast spells and summon units that all require one fire orb, as much as you want.  Actually, cards have a recharge limit: a card might be usable, say, 5 times before you must wait 30 seconds to recharge, for example. 

On the first two missions, I started feeling like I was just flooding units.  Power seemed to be generating quickly and orbs weren't consumed.  This meant that I would just keep generating units until the cards rechage units were used up.  Then, I would send them in to battle, and hammer the enemies with spells while my units were busy attacking.  I didn't feel like I needed to do a whole lot of thinking, deciding on "this unit" instead of "that unit" (I guess this aspect comes from arranging the deck: you can have only 20 cards in a deck). 

Let's see what happens when I work more on my deck, and try multiplayer.  I expect to quickly discover that there is some deep strategy here . . . because I expect to be crushed in humiliating ways.