I know people here play Magic: the Gathering and probably some of the scarce handful of collectable/trading card games that have survived the hobby’s early years or some of the newer games like Yu-gi-oh.
But what CCGs were you enthralled enough by to spend a lot of time and money on only to have the game be discontinued or the company go under?
In the latter half of the 90s, I played a lot of Magic and quite a few other card games, too. The one game that I really got into and probably enjoyed even more than M:TG (certainly had more fun games since everyone on the Magic scene in Nagoya was honing their decks for tournaments), was Iron Crown Enterprise’s Middle Earth:The Wizards. ICE had held the Tolkien license for role-playing games for years, but that clunky Arms Law system they used traumatized me in my youth, so I never picked their games up.
The ICE people knew their Tolkien well enough to demand fidelity and attention to detail in the art they commisioned. The art and design on the ME:TW cards was very high quality, especially considering the large size of the set. They even got John Howe to do some cards.
(cont’d)
Back when the Star Wars special editions came out, the Star Wars CCG was the big thing. After a year or so it winded down, but I kept my cards thinking they would only increase in value. It’s years later and they’re pretty much only good for nostalgia now.
ME:TW was not the first big licensed property to come out in card game form. Decipher had hit it big with ST:TNG and then Star Wars. However, both those games (like many licensed-property games) used ultra-rare cards (in addition to the regular rare, uncommon, rare sorting) for many of the most popular (and most effecitve in gameplay) characters. This was when out of print Magic card prices were starting to skyrocket. Pretty soon, you started seeing listings of $30+ for Vader, Luke, Han, Picard and other franchise characters.
ICE got my gratitude for avoiding this. First, none of that “ultra-rare” crap. Second, the unique characters, places, items, and peoples of Middle-Earth were just that: unique. You could only have one copy of a unique card in your deck, so no putting multiple copies of the One Ring or Frodo in your deck to increase you chances of drawing them. (This also made trading for cards you needed easy). Finally, and most importantly, there were five different starter decks, each of which came with a different set of characters and the sites and factions that went with them. In my very first deck, I got Gandalf, Arargorn, and Bilbo.
There was a mid 90’s game called Netrunner that I quite enjoyed. It was based on the concept of computer hacking and system defence. I thought it was cool but it never really seemed to take off.
There was also a Doom CCG which I played and was pretty cool.
I tended to play more out of availability of opponents than particular love for the system. Think it had the advantage of having ‘critical mass’ so to say.
Ah all those wasted hours when I should have been studying for my degree.
There was a mid 90’s game called Netrunner that I quite enjoyed. It was based on the concept of computer hacking and system defence. I thought it was cool but it never really seemed to take off.
There was also a Doom CCG which I played and was pretty cool.
I tended to play Magic more out of availability of opponents than particular love for the system. Think it had the advantage of having ‘critical mass’ so to say.
Ah all those wasted hours when I should have been studying for my degree.
Shadowfist… still… LIVES!
I used to own a couple hundred cards from Rage or whatever it was they named the CCG based on the White Wolf “Werewolf” game. A friend and I played it for a bit but, like Firebringer said, M:tG was the game to play if you actually wanted people to play with. I eventually sold the cards as a single lot on eBay for a hundred bucks or so which was more than I expected to get for them. Even if some were special neat-o rares, the game was nearly five years out of print before I tried selling them and I’m suprised anyone was seriously interested.
I played and loved the Battletech card game. Blood Wars from TSR never really made it big, and Dune sunk like a stone. A good friend was a Highlander CCG fan.
I was 15 when the first wave of the CCG craze it - '95 or so - and was an early adopter for a ton of them that never made it, like the Sim City CCG or White Wolf’s Rage.
But I really loved this game called On the Edge - here’s a few cards from it. It was based on an equally unsuccessful paper-and-pencil RPG called “Over the Edge,” and it was GREAT. It was an espionage-themed CCG that posited a sort of anarchistic mediterranean island with warring corporations, gangs, and other shady organizations, and each player was an “unseen manipulator” using field agents, weird events, items, resources, and so on to exert control. The game had great concepts - weird fringe science, gumshoe detective aesthetics, different barrios, each with their own culture, and so on. However, an average game took an hour and a half to play, and *nobody * else was playing it, so it failed. I still have a ton of the cards, though.
well i tired my hand at ani-mayhem! once… never could get the hang of it, the rules were so confusing an official panel at a convention i went to had trouble figuring it out…
Also tried my hand at “Illuminati: new world order” was pretty fin had almsot a complete set of cards but alas noone was playing.
Deep within the confines of my storage unit, buried beneath boxes of tsotchkes and memorabilia from time anon, my 2,500 X-Files CCG cards feel a twinge of fleeting joy that today, for but a moment, they are remembered.
My ST:TNG cards would join them, but Og himself couldn’t tell you where those ended up. Where the hell did I put those things, anyway?
I still have a bunch of those and genuinely thought it was a superior game to Magic. In addition, I have a metric crapload of Gridiron:Fantasy Football, which was a fantastic game and well done in its execution, especially compared to some of the licensed sport games.
I’ve got about 3 boxes worth of Netrunner cards. A few friends and I still play on occasion. I also used to play the Battletech CCG (I’m looking for cards of it on ebay). Doomtown was awesome. Cyberpunk was eh, but I’d play it again if I had cards.
I was going to mention Illuminati, although I didn’t play the CCG version, I played the “boxed” version.
For those who don’t know the difference, there was one way to play that was like other CCGs, you bought decks and booster packs that had random cards, some rarer than others that were usually better. The boxed version had different gameplay, and had every card in the box. They obviously couldn’t be used with the CCG version. It was more like a board game, jsut plaeyd with cards, not a board and tokens.
Still very fun, though. You could be the Servents of Cthulu, the Gnomes of Zurich, UFOs, etc… and fight for control of minor groups, like politcal parties, television, Hollywood, etc…
I also played M:tG like everyone else (although I got into it about a year before the HUGE boom in it and other CCGs), as well as a little bit of Star Wars and Star Trek. SOme other friends had some kind of Middle Earth CCG, and said the rules were super-confusing, and they hardly played.
I started with M:tG, of course, but some friends of my parents got me into INWO and and an obscure collectable-card RPG called Dragon Storm. People that turn into animals (including dragons) versus necromancers, basically, with cards to represent spells and items. You’d “play” your ability cards, then get them back by resting. Pretty nice game, but the execution was clunky, the world was only so-so, and I never once met anyone not directly involved in its creation who’d even heard of it.
I played Battletech with a friend’s cards over the summer once, and was very briefly into Jyhad, but I never bought any cards.
One year at GenCon, they were giving away -huge- boxes of these cards. I think I got something along the lines of 3000 cards. We played a lot that summer.
Then I realized I really didn’t like CCG’s that much. Even with Rain of Walruses, best CCG card EVAR.
Ahhh, Doomtown. The only CCG I ever got into. I was always dead set against the concept of CCGs, till one of my gaming friends got my to try Doomtown. I was hooked right away, never looked back. I got into it just after they announced the (final) death of the game, right before Do Unto Others, so it was almost a dead CCG by the time I got into it.
Great game, not sure which I enjoyed more, the deckbuilding or the gameplay. So many options for ways to go in building decks, and very few “broken” or uber-powerful cards.
I hate to think how many hundreds of dollars I spent building my collection. I think I managed to get all the cards, with the exception of a few of the absurdly rare promo faction cards.
I’m not sure if it is really dead, but it might as well be, since you can’t find anyone to play it, but I played a bit of Legend of the Five Rings for a bit. It had great flavor, and some nice aspects, but I didn’t like it as much as Magic.
I still play Magic at least weekly.
It’s still very much alive (a new basic set, Lotus Edition, just came out). It’s pretty much the only CCG I’ve played since finishing high school (gave up Magic around 1995). I had to get out of the game for a couple years (since they don’t sell the cards in Japan) but I’ve just in the last month decided to get back into it (though I am having some difficulty finding a new play group). Alas, it appears that virtually all of my 8,000 existing cards are worthless now.
