Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Drox
Aug 9, 2007

by Y Kant Ozma Post
You assholes, thanks for making me write about Anachronism: I'm moving but there was a good deal on ebay for a set of cards. I can't wait to add Herakles and Seigfried to my lineup.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

chrisf
Feb 29, 2008

bairfanx posted:

Okay, I get it, and that should work, but I don't know that I agree on the card draw/deck search front when you're relying on one unique card (I'm partially discounting deck search just because the only one I can think of without a huge cost is Walking the Way. Introspection doesn't seem that viable for a turn 4-5 kill). Either way, a really simple errata would be all that's necessary ("when this card enters play from your hand," which went on a lot of card draw attachments). Would you mind PM'ing me a decklist? I assume it's out of Phoenix...

Phoenix, cheap void shugenja + in clan void/air shugenja. My design team friend just posted "Sorry in advance, Chris. Announcement should go up soonish." on our local board so it sounds like its already been errataed.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
If you like the Nitro CCG, or think its interesting and want something with a different theme. The Harry Potter TCG uses a modified version of the rules.

Also an update on finding the Spellfire cards:
Those fuckers should be in one of the next few boxes I go through. Considering I've already gone through the boxes containing LoTR, Age of Empires, Game of Thrones, Mythos, Shadowrun and just now Magi Nation.


Speaking of that, Magi Nation is a loving great game. Its like a combination of magic and pokemon, with a more abstract resource element. The best way I can describe it is its sort of like a CCG based on Warmachine with some of the kind of deck management elements that would go into games like Dominion and Penny Arcade.

Arrgytehpirate
Oct 2, 2011

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!



This thread is making me want to buy a ton of Magi Nation, and Middle Earth cards on ebay. Oh god help me!

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch

Arrgytehpirate posted:

This thread is making me want to buy a ton of Magi Nation, and Middle Earth cards on ebay. Oh god help me!

There used to be a huge Magi Nation community on LackeyCCG, they even put out some new sets and stuff some time ago. I don't know if they're still active.

The later Magi Nation sets added some really cool playstyles and mechanics as well. Bograth, Kybars Teeth and The Weave are super awesome factions to play. Its a shame they never really made any other Universal Magi other than Tony "cheapest motherfucker ever" Jones, who is banned by any sane Magi Nation player or tournament organizer.

Middle Earth is the cheapest game to get ever. The other day I got a box of about a thousand at a Saint Vinnies for ten dollars.

soscannonballs
Dec 6, 2007

Still waiting for someone to do a DBZ TCG write up. I played the poo poo out of that in high school and still have all my cards and some decks sleeved up.

[chavez]
Dec 21, 2003

by Y Kant Ozma Boo
So I've played Call of Cthulhu, in both CCG and LCG formats. Some of the cards have carried over from the old CCG format. Black bordered cards are CCG, white borders are LCG. They currently release cards in 'asylum packs' to get away from the 'buy at all costs' format of most CCGs.

Personally I really enjoy this game; however I've never played magic or any other CCGs so I have nothing to compare it to. There are neutral cards, then cards from all the different factions:

Cthulhu
Yog-sothoth
Miskatonic U (archivists, researchers, historians)
Syndicate (30's era gangsters & hustlers)
Hastur (the King in Yellow, based on turning other players against themselves)
Agency (police, private investigators, etc)
Shub-Niggurath

Apparently there's a later faction called order of silver twilight, which I haven't played with.

Here's how play works, which Wikipedia explains better than I can:

Players attach resources (taken from the cards in their hand) onto domains (similar to the lands of Magic: The Gathering), later draining them by putting a "drain counter" on them to play various cards. Both players compete to complete "stories" by winning success tokens. Five success tokens wins a story; three stories wins the game. Players typically assign character cards to stories, to win struggles and gain these success tokens. Additionally, the first player to run out of cards to draw from loses the game, making "deck destruction" another potentially effective strategy.

Your cards consist of characters, actions, support cards, then there are story cards which are what players compete for. Later on 'conspiracy' cards were introduced which are basically stories which can be played from your hand.

I've played a fair bit of CoC, and thought it was pretty well done. Each faction has its own strong points and weak points; and with the right card mix you can set up some pretty nifty recursion. I wish I had a better writeup about it, but I'm happy to answer any questions. My biggest complaint is that asylum decks are typically 3 copies of 20 cards; it's okay if you want to build a bunch of different decks but there are cards that aren't particularly powerful, and paying for 3 copies of these doesn't seem great. There's a good layer of intricacy to the game, and I thought that depth was one of the best things about it. I'm also not a big fan of fantasy settings, so the 30s/horror genre theme of CoC is a lot more compelling for me. I typically played with a co-worker who'd use Hastur decks a lot, and seeing half your hand turned against you is pretty frustrating, but I appreciate the work that the designers put into making it work that way. The art on the cards is also pretty well done. There is a base set, an expansion set, and a ton of asylum packs for the game now, and apparently certain CCG cards can be used in tournament play, with sleeves since the border colors are different.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



El Estrago Bonito posted:

Age of Empires

How the hell was that, by the way? I'd always stare at it for a bit when I saw it in a magazine/shop, but never bothered to try it out.

InShaneee
Aug 11, 2006

Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of ... am I on speakerphone?
Fun Shoe

El Estrago Bonito posted:

There used to be a huge Magi Nation community on LackeyCCG, they even put out some new sets and stuff some time ago. I don't know if they're still active.

The later Magi Nation sets added some really cool playstyles and mechanics as well. Bograth, Kybars Teeth and The Weave are super awesome factions to play. Its a shame they never really made any other Universal Magi other than Tony "cheapest motherfucker ever" Jones, who is banned by any sane Magi Nation player or tournament organizer.

Middle Earth is the cheapest game to get ever. The other day I got a box of about a thousand at a Saint Vinnies for ten dollars.

Are you planning on doing a writeup on Magi Nation? If not, I'd love to. It really is a great game.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch

Xiahou Dun posted:

How the hell was that, by the way? I'd always stare at it for a bit when I saw it in a magazine/shop, but never bothered to try it out.

Lets put it this way: it takes about twice as long to play a game of the CCG than it does the PC game, and costs about twice as much.

Much like the Sim City game, its just better to play the PC game.

InShaneee posted:

Are you planning on doing a writeup on Magi Nation? If not, I'd love to. It really is a great game.

You probably know more about the game than I do. I played it very briefly when it was new and then picked it up again after it went under and loved it dearly. So while I love the game I'm not super familiar with it like some people who may have played it when it wasn't exclusively an online affair.

InShaneee
Aug 11, 2006

Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of ... am I on speakerphone?
Fun Shoe
Magi Nation



Magi Nation was a cool little CCG that came out in 2000 during the big CCG boom and lasted about 2 years before closing up shop. The original pitch for the game was that it would grab younger players who wanted more crunch than the Pokemon CCG provided, but were put off by the sperg-y entry barrier M:tG had/has around it.The company making it, 2i, was insanely ambitious with the series, putting together a CCG, Gameboy game, and Saturday morning cartoon to support the franchise. Unfortunately, some bad planning on their part meant that none of this was in sync (the game came out almost a year before the CCG, the cartoon a full 3 years after the CCG, and 2i, had folded). The company also took the unfortunate looks-great-on-paper stance that no card should ever be banned, which meant some badly thought out cards from the early sets lingered on forever. But enough about failings!

The cards were divided into 4 types:

Magi: These were your 'player characters'. You get exactly 3 of these, which were kept in a separate deck, arranged as you like. These get played one at a time, each with a set amount of starting energy, and an amount they got added to them each turn. If ever they were completely out of energy AND with no Creatures on the field, they were discarded. Each has its own special abilities, and when they hit the table, you get to search your deck for a few cards tailor made to work well with them. This was designed to help alleviate the problem of runaway leaders; when one Magi dies, you bring out the next one, at full health, and fill your hand with good cards to start the cycle over again. The game only ends when someone loses all 3 Magi.

Creatures: Pictured above. These typically made up the bulk of your deck, as without them your Magi is getting punched directly in the face. The big number at the top represents both the cost to play the creature, and its starting health. An interesting mechanic about this game is how energy works: you represent it as beads/coins on your Magi card first. When you need to summon a creature, you don't discard the energy, you place it on the creature, thus becoming a way to track its health. This means you're spending your Magi's HP to bring things into play, which is a nice bit of risk/reward. In the top-right is the Creature's region. Magi could play any creatures from their own region at face cost, or from another region for cost+1, making primarily mono-colored decks fairly attractive. When Creatures fight, they simultaneously do damage equal to their current health, making combat simple, quick, and dangerous.

Spells and Artifacts: Instants and Permanents, respectively. Super important or not depending on what region you were playing. Of note, Artifacts could only be played by a Magi of their own region.

The different regions of the game represented the different nations of the game world, each with its own specific biome/deck theme. The game launched with five regions, then released a few more with subsequent expansions a la Deadlands.

Arderial: The air region. Very spell heavy.
Cald: The volcanic region. Lots of direct damage, as all red-colored decks must have.
Naroom: The forest region. Big on healing/regeneration.
Orothe: The ocean region. Used lots of Artifacts, could be a real pain in the rear end if your deck didn't have a way of dealing with the drat things.
Underneath: The, uh, underground region. Played defensively using a mechanic called Burrow.

Core: From the first expansion. These guys kicked off the metaplot of the game, with their story gimmick being that they 'corrupted' characters from other regions (which tended to be the fate of Magi that lost to them in tournaments). Really weird in that they had their own ruleset. Firstly, no other region could use their cards, period. Secondly, they had two types of Magi: Core, which could only use Core cards, and Shadow (the corrupted Magi) who could use Core and a few select cards from their native region. Their strategy, appropriately, revolved around stealing cards from the opponent. Kinda neat, but never got a huge card base, and were a bit of a pain to build decks for.

Weave and Kybar's Teeth were from the second expansion. Weave was the grasslands region, and my favorite to play as. They used the Weave mechanic to move energy around on the field among creatures. Kybar's Teeth were the mountain region, and had gigantic creatures with great defense.

Bograth and Paradwyn were from the third expansion. Bograth was the swamp region, and used swarm tactics. They also had some pretty odd Magi, and I thought they were fun to play around with. Paradwyn was the jungle region, and used cards with adjustable play costs (and thus adjustable health).

d'Resh and Nar were from the fourth and final set. d'Resh was the desert region. They used powerful creatures with the Illusion trait, which meant they didn't count as being in play when figuring out whether your Magi was defended or not. Nar was the arctic region, and a fairly straight up lockdown deck.

From what I understand, these were all the regions that were planned, and after this, future expansions would have just built on this base.

The game plays fairly quickly, especially if you're playing online with LackeyCCG or something else. You keep throwing creatures out, there's a lot of back and forth, and bringing out new Magi means there's lots of come-from-behinds. The 3 Magi gimmick also made from some really fun and out-there deckbuilding. As El Estrago Bonito mentioned, there was a fangroup that made a few custom expansion after the game folded, but I personally found them to be pretty overpowered in the context of the game overall.

I should mention that I didn't actually play this any when it was around, but was introduced to it via LackeyCCG, which is a pretty good platform for the game.

SGRaaize
Jan 19, 2011
DONT YOU DARE TELL ME HOW THE FUCK TO HAVE FUN IN VIDEOGAMES!!! OR TO READ THE FUCKING OP!!!!

El Estrago Bonito posted:

If you like the Nitro CCG, or think its interesting and want something with a different theme. The Harry Potter TCG uses a modified version of the rules.

Oh man, I remember seeing two dudes playing that TCG ages ago (I mean over 6 years ago, it wasn't even based on the movies, but in the Books).

That was awesome.

Huitzil
May 25, 2010

by elpintogrande

soscannonballs posted:

Still waiting for someone to do a DBZ TCG write up. I played the poo poo out of that in high school and still have all my cards and some decks sleeved up.

Which one? There's been like five.

I actually thought the mechanics of the DBGT game put out by Score were pretty good, but in true Score fashion, they hosed it up by releasing ludicrously overpowered cards.

Star Man
Jun 1, 2008

There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

soscannonballs posted:

Still waiting for someone to do a DBZ TCG write up. I played the poo poo out of that in high school and still have all my cards and some decks sleeved up.

I'm working on it I'm working on it.

soscannonballs
Dec 6, 2007

Huitzil posted:

Which one? There's been like five.

I actually thought the mechanics of the DBGT game put out by Score were pretty good, but in true Score fashion, they hosed it up by releasing ludicrously overpowered cards.

The DBZ cardgame I played was done by Score and released different arcs of the show as expansions. When they got to the end the put out the GT cardgame but there was a format where you could use stuff from DBZ and GT. After GT ran its course I think they made an entirely new game from the beginning of DBZ, but I didn't play that so I have no idea.

Huitzil
May 25, 2010

by elpintogrande

soscannonballs posted:

The DBZ cardgame I played was done by Score and released different arcs of the show as expansions. When they got to the end the put out the GT cardgame but there was a format where you could use stuff from DBZ and GT. After GT ran its course I think they made an entirely new game from the beginning of DBZ, but I didn't play that so I have no idea.

Yeah, Score made the original DBZ, then DBGT which was cross-compatible but better on its own, and then a new DBZ game which, contrary to their promises, was totally incompatible with any of the cards released before. I don't think that one lasted too long. Then they lost the license either when or right before Donruss shut them down entirely, and Bandai made the "Dragon Ball CCG", which got five sets before stores stopped carrying it. And before all of that, there was the Ani-Mayhem CCG in 1996, which turned into a DBZ card game when they released the DBZ expansion and all of the cards were head and shoulders more powerful than anything from the previous sets.

So, yeah. It's been five separate card games. The first one put out by Score was the longest running and most popular, but continually marred by Score's horrible decisions. Why did they think power creep was something they should do intentionally in every set? Who ever thought it was a good idea to change the card templates in every single expansion?

Mornacale
Dec 19, 2007

n=y where
y=hope and n=folly,
prospects=lies, win=lose,

self=Pirates

Huitzil posted:

Why did they think power creep was something they should do intentionally in every set?

Well, DBZ is basically Power Creep: The Anime, so it's thematic at least.

Huitzil
May 25, 2010

by elpintogrande

Mornacale posted:

Well, DBZ is basically Power Creep: The Anime, so it's thematic at least.

True enough, but they did it with all their games, and DBZ wasn't even the worst. The last few sets of the Yu Yu Hakusho card game had a succession of cards there were just "the same card from the last set, only strictly better". Like, not even "opens up way more options" like power creep normally goes, but just like, in set 4 there was an item that cost 1 spirit energy and gave you 3000 defense, and in set 5 there was an item that gave 3k defense for 0 spirit energy, and in set 6 there was an item that gave 3.5k defense for 0 spirit energy. They thought this was exciting, groundbreaking design.

The biggest jump in power level in DBZ was the jump to DBGT, and DBGT cards did like twice as much damage as similar cards in DBZ, but that was actually necessary to make the new level-up mechanic work, and I thought it was pretty cool.

Huitzil fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Nov 17, 2011

soscannonballs
Dec 6, 2007

One of the things I liked about the DBZ TCG was the Tuff Enuff format they had for tournaments, would you could completely knock your opponent out of the tournament if you overkilled them by enough damage. The only major tournament I played in that had that format was a ton of fun, and I managed to place in the top 8, but it was so late that we didn't get to do quarter/semi/finals.

GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009
Man not a lot of love for Star Wars CCG. It's what attracted me to card stores and led to me descending into full on geekdom back in the late 90's. The game really jumped the shark when the Episode I cards came out, it went from main characters being pretty vulnerable to "oh, everyone's a Jedi that can't die unless you shoot them to death. And good luck shooting them."

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
Man, I want to play the Call of Cthulhu LCG, but I can't justify laying down the cash for three copies of the core set, and gently caress only having 1 of some of the cards.

bairfanx
Jan 20, 2006

I look like this IRL,
but, you know,
more Greg Land-y.
Magi Nation was one of the greatest new games that came out at the time. Because it stole from drat near every other great game. There were very very distinct parallels to L5R from the factions to the Magi representing pseudo-strongholds. Which shouldn't really surprise, as I believe Dan Tibbles was involved pretty heavily in it (famous among L5R players, or rather infamous now...).

A great game that I loved to play and playtest for that became so much about ramping up power levels via new factions that it stopped being fun to play the set after The Core (read: ninjas!) were introduced.

I wish it weren't so drat expensive to buy in bulk, or I'd drop some cash on it.

edit:

I also have a huge fondness for the Full Metal Alchemist TCG. The year it came out, I demoed it at GenCon. I wasn't doing anything that night, so I played in their sealed deck event. I proceeded to win an 80+ person sealed deck tournament for a game I learned that day (and get an obnoxious, letterman style jacket that I probably won't ever wear). The mechanics for it were actually pretty rad (its handling of locations and party dynamics felt similar to LotR:CCG from Decipher). And their chase cards were beautiful. Of course, like every anime TCG, it died a swift death. And is still overly expensive :-/

I also am the two-time second place finisher for the Kingdom Hearts TCG. Which really isn't a great game (complicated further by horrendous rulings that go against card text and logic used in every other ccg I've played), but it was a lot of fun working with a friend to break the poo poo out of it and force errata to their previous errata. Said friend also won their last world championship with a character that everyone deemed unwinnable (and my second place deck was a stall deck that lost to no one but him).

Kingdom Hearts is silly, but if you like the video games, the tcg can be a fun distraction.

bairfanx fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Nov 18, 2011

Flavor Text
Jan 3, 2010

Why would you lick books, ew

bairfanx posted:

I also have a huge fondness for the Full Metal Alchemist TCG. The year it came out, I demoed it at GenCon. I wasn't doing anything that night, so I played in their sealed deck event. I proceeded to win an 80+ person sealed deck tournament for a game I learned that day (and get an obnoxious, letterman style jacket that I probably won't ever wear). The mechanics for it were actually pretty rad (its handling of locations and party dynamics felt similar to LotR:CCG from Decipher). And their chase cards were beautiful. Of course, like every anime TCG, it died a swift death. And is still overly expensive :-/

Ah, FMATCG. I also got that jacket at that tournament, and ended up working for the company for a short time, so I got access to the movie set promo cards that were never released, some uncut transmuted sheets, and fun stuff like that. It lasted for a fair bit actually, 7 or 8 sets? Not as long as hoped but long enough to make a mark.

What I actually worked on for the company was the 24 TCG. Yeah, the TV show. Sound like a terrible idea for a license? That's what the gaming people said, but that's what happens when the people making the decision know only Nascar and college sports cards... I should make a full post about it.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
FMA was pretty popular. No one around me ever played it but I remember seeing a lot of tables at cons and hearing a lot of buzz in magazines.

whydirt
Apr 18, 2001


Gaz Posting Brigade :c00lbert:
How likely is it that another CCG could take MtG's place as the default game for the genre, even if it's 5-10 years from now?

Darksaber
Oct 18, 2001

Are you even trying?
I actually have some FMA sitting next to me, it's ridiculously old and never really looked at though. I picked up some cards, and I'm really someone who needs to play the game to get the rules, so I never got into it.

DBZ was a LOT of fun in its day, and I still kinda miss it. And Magi-Nation was an amazing game that I miss so much.

Decipher's SWCCG was a lot of fun, but I really think that the death of it was the fact that it referenced so many induvidual cards. When I played it, I was a poor High School student so I couldn't afford Vaders and poo poo like that, so I never got very much into it besides gimmicky TIE decks.

Another interesting one was the first 40k CCG. I actually won two tournaments with my Eldar deck before they either banned or restricted Avatars. Man that deck was the poo poo.

As for another CCG taking Magic's place... I dunno. I honestly think that WoW had a shot. The mechanics, in my opinion, are actually a lot better than Magic's, but the fact is that Upper Deck was so loving inept at promoting the game and business in general that it'll never rise up to the level it could. Of course, I feel the same way about the WoW minis game... great mechanics, some of the best looking figures I've seen (for prepaints), but UDE just hosed the pooch so hard on that. It died before the 3rd set could even come out because of licenses being lost and UDE being inept. Sad. :(

Mornacale
Dec 19, 2007

n=y where
y=hope and n=folly,
prospects=lies, win=lose,

self=Pirates
Did anyone ever play the Monty Python and the Holy Grail CCG? That looked...weird.

whydirt
Apr 18, 2001


Gaz Posting Brigade :c00lbert:
How did sports card companies get into CCGs to begin with? Did they hire outside talent or just conscript the dude who wore a Star Trek shirt at the annual company picnic?

Drox
Aug 9, 2007

by Y Kant Ozma Post

Flavor Text posted:

Ah, FMATCG. I also got that jacket at that tournament, and ended up working for the company for a short time, so I got access to the movie set promo cards that were never released, some uncut transmuted sheets, and fun stuff like that. It lasted for a fair bit actually, 7 or 8 sets? Not as long as hoped but long enough to make a mark.

What I actually worked on for the company was the 24 TCG. Yeah, the TV show. Sound like a terrible idea for a license? That's what the gaming people said, but that's what happens when the people making the decision know only Nascar and college sports cards... I should make a full post about it.

On the contrary, it sounds like an interesting idea that would be incredibly easy to gently caress up.

accordingtojosh
Jun 21, 2005

bairfanx posted:

Magi Nation was one of the greatest new games that came out at the time. Because it stole from drat near every other great game. There were very very distinct parallels to L5R from the factions to the Magi representing pseudo-strongholds. Which shouldn't really surprise, as I believe Dan Tibbles was involved pretty heavily in it (famous among L5R players, or rather infamous now...).

I use to make regular trips to Seattle to play in L5R tournaments that Tibbles would run at the WotC game center and then other locations. He use to run some really good tournaments and games at his locations and house.

Being that I've been completely out of the scene for years, what was the drama with him that made him infamous?

chrisf
Feb 29, 2008

accordingtojosh posted:

I use to make regular trips to Seattle to play in L5R tournaments that Tibbles would run at the WotC game center and then other locations. He use to run some really good tournaments and games at his locations and house.

Being that I've been completely out of the scene for years, what was the drama with him that made him infamous?

My knowledge of this is mostly vague and thirdhand, but it was something like cheating at tournaments and keeping tournament prize promos to sell on ebay instead of giving them out during tournaments he ran.

Lone Goat
Apr 16, 2003

When life gives you lemons, suplex those lemons.




whydirt posted:

How did sports card companies get into CCGs to begin with? Did they hire outside talent or just conscript the dude who wore a Star Trek shirt at the annual company picnic?

I think most of the WoWCCG development team was former (or current?) Magic professionals.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
WoWs big problem was frontloading all the basic card for a class in the base set. So if you wanted to get, say, normal Shaman abilities like lightning bolt or chain lightning you better not have started playing with a starter from not the base set.

As for dethroning MtG, no card game will do it. Its pretty much the only non-niche TCG around these days. Its like how no other RPG will likely dethrone D&D.

I think there is a chance for a good CCG to make headway in the current market. Its just gonna require a good business model. Addictive poo poo like CCGs are the last thing people want to get into in the economy. They could spend hundreds on Magic cards, or they could own all the expansions for Dominion which will let all their friends play on the same level instead of requiring them to also spend hundreds.

If someone made an actual CCG that sold for just over cost it would be hilarious. People would pick up a game with seventy five cent booster packs just out of curiosity.

[chavez]
Dec 21, 2003

by Y Kant Ozma Boo

Splicer posted:

Man, I want to play the Call of Cthulhu LCG, but I can't justify laying down the cash for three copies of the core set, and gently caress only having 1 of some of the cards.

I have a ton of cards from the ccg and lcg I'll sell you if you're interested. I love the game but don't have the time to play it anymore.

Arrgytehpirate
Oct 2, 2011

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!



One of the biggest problems with other CCGs is marketing. Neither of the 2 LGS stores I visit sell anything other then YGO/MTG and a very, very, very small stock of Pokemon.

Flavor Text
Jan 3, 2010

Why would you lick books, ew

whydirt posted:

How did sports card companies get into CCGs to begin with? Did they hire outside talent or just conscript the dude who wore a Star Trek shirt at the annual company picnic?

Yeah, our sports-card company hired the gaming staff from other gaming companies or avenues (former Decipher developer, former Magi-Nation designer, and myself, a convention volunteer), and we all left when the gaming side of things closed down.

Nonetheless, the sports cards guys could make the decisions, and when they could choose between Heroes circa season 1 and 24 circa season 7, well... I don't think they got the TCG demographic :v:

There was a chance for some other company to take over from Magic back in the day of 2003-2005ish. Not a large chance, but a chance. Magic was mis-stepping severely, plus in financial trouble, the small TCG industry was vibrant with many different companies all having multi-set products in hobby and retail stores... Today? Magic is over twice that size and the small-TCG market I would be surprised if is even a third of what it was then.

Flavor Text fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Nov 19, 2011

LifeLynx
Feb 27, 2001

Dang so this is like looking over his shoulder in real-time
Grimey Drawer
Most CCGs that come out these days are based on kid-oriented anime shows. Those will sell to the kids, and they don't require any effort to make the game skill-intensive or balanced, so you're not going to steal the Magic crowd away with a shallow game marketed on Saturday morning cartoons. If you decide to go after competitive Magic, well... look at The Spoils.

World of Warcraft was the property most likely to compete with Magic. A huge dedicated fanbase, reasons for MMO players to buy the cards even if they didn't play with them, and mechanics lifted heavily from Magic so players of that game could easily transition over. If WoW couldn't steal Magic's thunder, no one can.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
If you wanted to make something to compete with Magic, your best bet would be to wait until Wizards fucks it up somehow, because you're really not going to get any traction otherwise.

And I mean really fucks it up, not a "some grognards don't like this particular rule change" snafu.

Arrgytehpirate
Oct 2, 2011

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!



I'm pretty sure WoW didn't really TRY to steal the thunder from MTG. Seriously, marketing is so terrible.

Also, L5R players; what are good forums? And what should I buy to start out. gently caress it I'm gonna buy some and force someone in my playtest group to learn.

EDIT: Someone who can do a kickass writeup make a L5R thread!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Lead By Example
Jul 17, 2009

I buy and resell Pokemon cards for a living. If you're ever looking to sell your childhood, please reach out!
Fallen Rib
Yeah, nowadays the only CCG that goes toe to toe with Magic is Yugioh, which is actually the most popular CCG in the world according to Guinness World Records as of 2009. It's actually not that bad. It's only problem is that it is very, very fast. Like, probably as fast as Vintage Magic: The Gathering, which turns a lot of people off from it.

  • Locked thread