Hijack!
Ronincyberpunk I’ve still got a lot of BT CCG cards, would be willing to sell. interested?
email sent ‘who me?’
</hijack>
One of my favorites was Heresy: Kingdom Come. I didn’t actually play it, but the art on the cards was beautiful, and they were kind of cool because they were longer top to bottom than other cards (more like tarot size).
I also enjoyed the Shadowrun Trading Card Game, which had two editions before it died.
I was a diehard Highlander CCG player back in the day. Just got to play agian recently a GenCon. They’re actually trying to bring it back. A new set was just release for the first time in like 7 years.
Great game. Had a real swordfighting feel, and very different than any other CCG I’ve played. (no “mana” or equivalent, no “tapping” or equivalent.)
I liked Netrunner as well. Although we used pennies as counters and I remember having to deal with a lot of them.
I tried Jyhad for a little while but nobody liked it that much (if that was the one with the vampires).
I also have a whole box of Middle Earth cards but we never played it once. At that time I didn’t even know what LoTR was, having never read the books.
Naturally, it all started with M:TG as the first CCG we played.
The “one with the vampires” started out as Jyhad and then became Vampire the Masquerade about the time I became involved. I paid “$20 minus whatever my share of chinese food cost” for most of my cards (bought off a friend who was getting out of it) plus an amount of money equal to that my buddies who were involved were paying for the rest. 15 monthes later I sold all my cards for $15.10 to two of my buddies. (We were graduating from college and spreading out, the likelyhood that I would ever teach anyone to play was slim to non-exisitant).
I actually won a box of an On The Edge expansion set (Cut-Ups Project) as 2nd Prize in an M:TG tournament. I’d always thought the world of the RPG Over the Edge was interesting (though I never played the game).
The Cut-Ups Project was a tight (90 cards) well-designed expansion that reworked the concept the game into a battle between the agents of Chaos vs. Control, added some strong new conspiracies (Cut-Ups, Church of Sub-Randomness), had lots of synergistic cards, and dueling environments that changed the object of the game.
One of my favorite cards in any game ever was from this set. Scam Artist: Tap this card anytime to discard a card from your hand and draw a card from your deck. You must draw a mustache with an indelible marker on the discarded card.
I went out and bought a good amount of the basic set, but I was a little less enchanted. Game play was time-consuming, the basic set was very diffuse so it was hard to build decks around specific conspriacies, and with a limited pool of cards I found it almost impossible to beat strong defenses. Would have helped if there was someone else with cards in the area.
Netrunner is the game that Richard Garfield designed after he did Magic: the Gathering.
Yep on the “critical mass” factor. Although, some games had very high popularity in certain cities, regions.
Outside of MTG, here are the games I played in descending order roughly corresponding to the amount of time/money I spent adn enjoyment I received.
Middle Earth: the Wizards-Loved this game and followed it through all the expansions. Great sense of the world with characters, sites, items, etc without being bound to the plot of LOTR or to the places visited in the book like the Decipher movie-based CCG.
Doomtown (Deadlands): Based on the excellent role-playing game, which plays like Wild, Wild West meets Call of Cthulhu. Play one of 9 factions trying to take over the ghost-rock mining town of Gomorrah. After the initial release, there was a series of monthly mini-releases, each centered around a different faction, which was great, because you could focus on the factions you wanted to play (Union, Sweetrock, Sioux Confederacy for me!)
On the Edge: previously mentioned
Sim City: Interesting game, but there was no reason for it to be collectible (though the rare panoramic cards were a nice touch.) Would have worked as a stand alone.
Illuminati: NWO-Also didn’t really need to be collectible.
Battletech: Didn’t buy enough to do anything beyond straight-up knockdown robot brawls.
Yeah, I think I have one of those. I thought On the Edge was great, but I’m afraid it’s one of those things that people either think is cool, 'cos they’re the sort of person who thinks it’s cool, or THEY DON’T GET AT ALL. Then again, I don’t think it’s intrinsically weirder than Gygax-esque fantasy, just not part of that subculture’s pieties.