I played Magic: The Gathering for a while about 6-7 years ago. It was fun, but I found myself getting smoked royally when I played at the games shops. I played at home with Mrs. HeyHomie, and we liked it, but some of the rules were open to interpretation and we fought quite a bit. Ultimately we threw our cards away (don’t worry, we didn’t throw away a Black Lotus :eek: ), figuring that the game wasn’t worth our marriage.
I’d like to get into CCG’s again, but I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to MtG. For one thing, it’s been years since I played, and by now there are hundreds, nay thousands (see questions below) of cards out, and I doubt I’d be able to compete without spending lots of money on booster packs.
ISTR there was a Star Wars CCG out, and also a Civil War-based one. Does anybody remember either of those? Are they still out now?
Some other questions:
Has the CCG trend peaked? Is the market saturated? I’ve been kicking around an idea for a CCG for quite a while now, and I don’t want to commit the effort to designing it if the CCG market is in decline.
Just how many unique MtG cards are there now? I’m guessing it’s in the thousands.
Can someone reccomend a CCG for a reasonably intelligent 33-year-old man? Please? I want to stay away from MtG for the reasons noted above. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Beanz all seem a little juvenile.
Anyone familiar with this Beanz game listed in Question 3? I saw it at CVS pharmacy today, and checked out their website, and it looked perfect for the second grade set. Obviously that’s not quite what I’m looking for.
According to Wizards of the Coast, there are 6,881 “functionally different” cards, as of the release of the Darksteel expansion (which was the set before the current one: Fifth Dawn). Including all languages, versions (many cards have been reprinted several times), and so on, there were about 112,500 cards as of the same point in time.
I am by no means an expert, having played exactly one CCG to any extent. And the one I’ve played is out of print. But if you can find a way to get ahold of a decent collection of Doomtown cards, I’d highly recommend it. It’s a great game - tons of different directions you can go in building a deck, a fun bit of flavor, and enjoyable gameplay.
A couple notes, on CCGs in general and Magic in specific. Firstly, very few CCGs are produced for the long haul. The history of the genre is littered with games that came out and died out. A few games have managed to re-invent themselves and come out ok, but in general it is the games which simply implement an already well-developed fantasy world which are the most widespread(good gameplay is a completely different question). Magic being, of course, the exception. A similar, albeit much smaller exception, is for Legend of the Five Rings(L5R). This was a game designed from a story which was written alongside the development of the game. A reasonably playable and newbie friendly game with emphasis on storytelling and intriguing characters.
Some more info on your personal tastes might help. Do you like to have a competitive play base of local shops and players you can interact with? That would narrow the field substantially. If you’re just interested in something to do for a diversion occasionally with your wife then some of the “dead” games can be found in overstock or eBay bins for a fraction of the cost of most currently in production games.
One that has been getting a lot of press recently is the Marvel VS game system featuring characters from the Marvel comic books. I’ve heard it is both challenging enough to satisfy those strategists looking for challenge and widespread enough to provide opportunities for trading/playing/tournaments.
While we’re on the topic I’d suggest you give M:tG another look. The rules have been really re-worked about five years ago and the game is much less likely to cause marital strife from a rules standpoint(no guarantees though). Also there are play formats which restrict the cardpool to only recently printed cards so you don’t have to worry about having to get Black Lotus, Time Walk, etc. You will only play with recent cards and only play against people who are also playing recent cards. Many of the games which have been around for a while do this to keep the players with access to larger card pools from gaining too much advantage over the others. A similar setup appears in L5R.
So, you could look into L5R for a deep fantasy game with reasonably deep strategy and fairly stable rules. You could go VS for fun characters and broad appeal. You could go Yu-Gi-Oh for an even broader player base, but fairly shallow strategy and many chase cards to deal with. You could look again at M:tG, or try something completely different like Wyvern, Battletech, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle Earth, or any of dozens of others with various relative merits. Virtually all of them can be fun.
If you want something fun to play with the missus with no pressure and lots of laughing, try Munchkin from Steve Jackson games. It’s a bit childish at times, but it makes fun of pretty much everyone you can fathom in the dork universe.
I OWN a whole lot of the Star Wars CCG cards (the FIRST one, not the one with episode one and all that jazz…) I haven’t played it in forever, mostly because I don’t know anyone else who does. It was fun though.
In my opinion, it’s peaked. Magic will keep going forever, tons of new games you’ll never hear about will be developed every year, there’ll probably be a moderately successful one every year or two. My guess is that Harry Potter will be the next big CCG thing. (is this even being developed by anyone at the moment? I’m quite surprised it hasn’t been…).
See previous answer.
M:tG is complicated. Weed through the rules/various websites enough, and there are usually definite answers.
If you’re REALLY averse to M:tG, the only other thing I have experience with is Star Wars, so it’s the only other thing I can recommend. I like Magic better.
Actually, I think he’s a big friend of the president of the same name. Garfield (the President), Garfield (the SDMB user), and myself all have something in common…
Thanks for all the responses! I’m getting pretty excited about the LotR game. Mrs. HeyHomie and I are both fans of the movies and the books (although her moreso than me on the books). I think I’ll stop by the games store today and check it out.
Does the LotR game have MtG-style common cards, rare cards, etc? Is there a LotR equivalent to the Black Lotus?
There are common, uncommon, and rare cards. I don’t know enough about it to tell you if there are super-rare or ultra-rare cards, but in general I’d recommend avoiding games which have those categories like the plague. Every cardgame I’ve ever seen with Super-Rare or Ultra-Rare cards just makes them stupidly powerful and anyone who happens to get them(or shell out the cash for them) has a large advantage.
In previous LotR-based games, I think the actual name was “Middle Earth”, there was a highly sought after card called “The One Ring”, but I’m not sure it was as powerful in game play as a Black Lotus. These days they all languish in relative obscurity.
If you’re looking for a long-term hobby then Magic is probably your only reasonably safe bet. Beyond that the longest-running games I am aware of are Star Trek(although they re-invented themselves not too long ago to the point where older stuff was no longer even compatible with the new stuff) and Legend of the Five Rings. These games probably have the most to offer in terms of maturity of the rules and card pool.
What exactly do they mean by “functionally different”? There are many cards which are completely identical, save for the name. For instance, Dwarven Warrior and Dwarven Nomad, or the various sorts of Kobold. Do these count as “functionally different”? And are they counting the special-distribution cards like Nalathni Dragon, Sewers of Estvark, and Wedding in Paradise?
And here, I always thought that was just to force players to keep buying cards. A “recent only” tournament format actually penalizes the guy who doesn’t want to spend too much on the cards, since he’s not going to be able to play in tournaments a few months or a year later.
No, it’s because that, as the first CCG, Magic had to design cards in the beginning without much idea about what would be overpowered; they had to blaze that trail on their own. Thus, most of the REALLY overly powerful, undercosted cards are older.
Thus, the further back in time tournament types allow, the more cards in the best decks that are from older sets. These, of course, tend to be a lot more expensive and a lot harder to find. Thus, the “recent only” tournament type.
If you want to get into Magic again & don’t care much for tourneys, take a look at http://www.magicworkstation.com/ . Though the legality of the M:TG databases is questionable, it’s a quick way to see all the new cards.
The *real * appeal of the software is the custom card creator - my friends and I have been using it to create our own custom sets based on an old AD&D campaign. (A *complete * surprise for the former DM when we all played a hand one night.) We print out the cards on label paper, paste them to common cards, and mix them in our existing physical Magic decks. Lots of fun, from both game-design and playing views. We’re already up to about 100 custom cards and are currently working on getting them balanced just right.
