[quote name='JSweeney']Culdcept would be a bad example, as it's more of a card/board game fusion.
This game would be more like a fusion of Magic the Gathering with Yu Gi oh...
Cartoonish art style with kid friendly characters, but instead of the Yu Gi oh system, you have a resource based system (mana)
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By "kid friendly characters" and "cartoonish art", you mean the story characters, not the card art. Duel Masters is actually two things -- the card battling, which is a good, solid, non-cutesy card game, and the story and interface, which is little more than fluffy wallpaper taken from the TV show that you can easily ignore (although pimp-tyranny -- this is the part your friends will tease mercilessly).
I do think it feels a little like Culdcept, but that's because Culdcept feels like Magic the Gathering, and Duel Masters is a streamlined, re-imagined Magic. You are right, though -- there's no board game aspect. There's a thin story and quest for the seven scattered pieces of a super card. But the game is all about the card battles.
It's a well-implemented card battling game. Like you said -- solid. For less than the price of a deck, you get the whole friggin' game.