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Welcome to the Gilbert Duane Memorial Dead CCG Thread! What's that in the shoebox you found in your older brother's closet from where you grew up in the 1990's? Behind his weed stash and old issues of Dragon Magazine?  There's our hero, in all his majesty  Hell yeah What is all of this? This is a thread for dead and/or fringe CCGs. Basically, all of the CCGs that aren't Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh because those have their own threads. Some of these games still see organized tournament play, and all of them have someone, somewhere, still playing (inexplicably in some cases). What this thread is for: -Sharing information, tips, and stories about dead or fringe CCGs -Asking about a dead or fringe CCG you want to know more about -Organizing online play of any of these games -Wheelin' and dealin'  What this thread is not for: -MTG, Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh chat. Those have their own thread(s), so while I expect them to come up in conversation naturally, let's keep the derails about those games short, and take extended discussions of them to their respective threads (see above). Comparing well-known CCGs to these old, weird, dead ones is often helpful, so that kind of thing is fine. But if your post is only about these CCGs, take it to those threads. -LCGs (Living Card Games). Some dead CCGs have been reprinted as LCGs recently, such as Netrunner, but LCGs also already have their own thread. Feel free to check that out if you're interested in the modern reincarnation of some of these games. I expect some discussion of the LCG versions to bleed into the conversation here, but if it pertains exclusively to the LCG take it over there. -Generally toxic or combative posting, per the normal SA rules for TG.  Be kind but understanding about discussion of any of these games. Some of them are pretty fucken janky, so expect folks to take shots at them from time to time. Then again, all of these games have players out there who care about them, so if you're one of those players try to take the critiques of old games with a bit of grace and humor, and meanwhile we'll all keep the shots at them to appropriately playful levels.(For example: my favorite CCG, VTES, is an aesthetic dumpster fire. So there's me setting the tone for that whole deal.) Here's a good list of dead and/or fringe CCGs that still have active communities. The list is by no means comprehensive, but is a good starting point. These are the ones I've played and I'm ready to talk about. I can give each one its own effortpost as the thread goes on, but people can feel free to do so themselves: .Hack//ENEMY 7th Sea -- Railing Kill's effortpost here Anarchnonism -- Railing Kill's effortpost here Dragon Ball Z Highlander - Railing Kill's effortpost here Magi Nation -- Railing Kill's effortpost here Sim City Vampire: the Eternal Struggle AKA VTES AKA Jyhad (  ) --- Railing Kill's effortposts one, two, three, fourHere are more of the better known ones that I haven't tried but folks should chat about them and write up effortposts if they are so inclined: Ani-Mayhem -- hyphz's effortpost here Arcadia: the Wyld Hunt -- hyphz's effortpost here Battletech -- Gynovore's effortpost here Boy Crazy -- MeinPanzer's effortpost here  Button Men -- hyphz's effort post here Doomtown -- Judgy Fucker's effortpost here Duel Masters -- Seperoth's effortpost here Final Fantasy TCG -- Kyrosiris' effortpost here Force of Will -- Randalor's effortpost here Guardians -- hyphz's effortpost here Illuminati -- Toph Bei Fong's effortpost here Legend of the Five Rings -- Sega 32X's effortposts here (1), and here (2) Lord of the Rings (Decipher) -- nomadotto's effortpost here Middle Earth -- nomadotto's effortpost here MLB Showdown Mythos -- hyphz's effortpost here Netrunner --- https://www.jinteki.net/ is a way to play the Android reboot of Netrunner online Nightmare Before Christmas TCG -- snickles' effortpost here On the Edge -- hyphz's effortpost here Prismata -- hyphz's effortpost here Rage -- Toph Bei Fong's effortpost here Raw Deal -- Toph Bei Fong's effortpost here Shadowfist -- Magnetic North's effortpost here Star Trek -- nomadotto's effortpost here Star Trek (Decipher 2e) -- Polly Toodle's effortpost here Star Trek: That Other One Star Wars -- Major Operation's effortpost here Star Wars: Also That Other One Star Wars: Young Jedi Star Wars: Jedi Knights  Star Wars:  -- LifeLynx's effortpost hereTowers in Time -- Toph Bei Fong's effortpost here VS Warlord: Saga of the Storm -- Serperoth's effortpost here Online Play I'll populate this space with relevant Discord servers and information about playing these games online once I receive that kind of information. I'm working on putting that together myself, but if anyone has that kind of info, feel free to post it and I'll add it here. News and Notes Magnetic North posted:I think it could be noted that the OP is talking about original Netrunner (aka ONR) while Android: Netrunner (ANR) the reboot actually has a thread. It's a pro follow and a great choice for card game players because the game owns. It's still alive thanks to the support of the non-profit player-run collective NISEI. It's the most impressive fan project I've ever seen, with the Black Chantry V:TES printings being a very close second, if it's fair enough to call that a fan project; they're obviously fans, but they are also actually licensing V:TES from Paradox, I believe. Danger Diabolik posted:Team Covenant did a playthrough of Raw Deal and a lot of the other CCGs mentioned in the thread in their Throwback Thursday series if anyone wants to watch these wacky games in action. Randalor posted:
Aniodia posted:Interesting news regarding what was a dead TCG (but might not be anymore?). Aniodia posted:So hey, quick update on the Magi-Nation goings-on. There is now an official 2i LLC email list that you can sign up for if you're interested in being in the loop regarding the Kickstarter for the previously unreleased Traitor's Reach expansion (and maybe more, depending upon how well the KS does). Aniodia posted:The Magi-Nation Kickstarter for the previously unreleased Traitor's Reach expansion is not only live, but also fully funded already. There's a number of buy-in tiers, with what looks to be the entire set of Traitor's Reach (along with a bunch of decks made with older cards) for $300.  Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Your Friends All Suck, and So Do you: A VTES Primer Effortpost two: card roles Effortpost three: clans and disciplines Effortpost four: deckbuilding What is Vampire: the Eternal Struggle (VTES)? VTES is a game about elder vampires vying for power and influence. The players play the roles of these elders and control other, weaker vampires to do their bidding. It's a game about politicking, dealing, and skullduggery. That's all well and good, but what is a game like? First and foremost, VTES is a game designed to be played with four or five players. Three works alright, but you lose some of the multiplayer dynamics at that number. Unlike most CCGs that people have come to play as multiplayer games, VTES was designed for this. The way it works is like this: the players to your left is your "prey," and therefore the player to your right is your "predator." You get a reward, 1 Victory Point toward winning the game plus 6 Pool (life), whenever your prey is eliminated... by anyone. This means you can do it yourself, cut a deal to have someone else do it for you, or trick/misdirect someone into doing it for you by cards or guile. When your prey is eliminated, the table collapses around them and their prey becomes your new prey. Prior to player elimination(s), you have one or two other players across the table who aren't your prey or predator. They are your "cross-table buddies," and they are absolutely not your buddies. They are, at best, temporary allies, because everyone knows that everyone else is just one elimination away from being someone's new predator or prey.  At the risk of going overboard about table politics, I'll just say a couple things here. The rules specifically say that there is no mechanic which holds a player to fulfill a deal once it is struck. Instead, it is up to the table politics to create repercussions, organically. For example: you can make a deal to ask one "cross-table buddy" to kill a Minion that's giving you poo poo, and in exchange you go and blow up their prey's Pool engine. If they hold up their end of the bargain and you don't hold up yours, you are quite likely to not be able to make another deal in that game, with anyone, and your cross-table buddy will likely comes for your poo poo if they are able. In all of the play groups I've played with outside of really high-level tournaments, the common agreement is just satisfy deals when they are struck. It is both in the interest of avoiding saltiness and in the pragmatic interest of everyone to be able to make deals. That said, you can and absolutely should cut deals with dubious wording to maximize your gains and minimize helping others. "If you kill that minion, I'll help you with your prey" is a good example. There is a common understanding that this is cool and good and anyone who falls for this genie-rear end poo poo deserves some playful jibe. Most of the time, though, players strike deals with solid, specific terms and no one gets hosed directly by the deal. I don't want the game to sound acrimonious, though. It genuinely isn't, and I've found much less salt in table politics in this game than in Commander. The game and the people who play it are both better prepared for this kind of thing, so generally there is more acceptance of all of this.  Gameplay is fairly complex and, to be honest, long. The game's tournament scene runs a strict two hour time limit, and I recommend you use this even in casual play. A time limit will make players play with less pointless loving around and wasting time with too much table politics. Table talk is good and necessary, but without something holding players to task, it can get dumb in the wrong group. Mechanically, the game is probably no more complex than MTG, although it has a "game within a game" every time one minion catches another. More on that below. Basically, you have a number of vampires ("Minions" in the game's terminology), and each of them can tap to take one action per turn. Actions can be attacking your prey's Pool, hunting to get the minion more blood, taking an action from a card out of one's hand, or acting on an action offered on a card in play (like a property which can be stolen, for example). Actions can be countered by blocking them, which often gets into this stealth vs intercept contest. Basically, the acting minion can play cards to sneak, and the blocker can play cards to track them down. As I said before, there is another sequence of steps that occurs if a block occurs, namely, combat. Combat initiates a separate game-within-a-game wherein the players can only use combat cards and prepare, maneuver, strike, and defend in combat. There are ways out of combat, and a lot of the game's meta revolves around how much people are just loving right off out of combat, and how much others are making efforts to catch them and hold them and beat them senseless. Honestly, combat looks like the most daunting part of the rulebook to a new player because it looks like a whole other turn order, but it's fairly straightforward. It does add some learning curve, but it shouldn't chase people away from trying the game.  Aside from that, turns are pretty simple: each Minion either takes an action, or stays untapped to block and/or react during other players' turns. Often, actions require just one card, or none, and only get complicated when someone attempts to block. Like me. I'm that rear end in a top hat blocking all of your poo poo.  There's a couple more things that happen in a turn, but I won't get into that much detail here. Those are also simple and require either one card, or nothing from the hand. One of the biggest tactical differences between VTES and almost every other CCG I've ever played is how card advantage plays out: You draw a card to replace every card you play, as you play it. With rare exception, everyone always has seven card sin hand at all times. This is meant to give you a wide range of stuff in your hand, because you might need actions, combat, reactions, and a smattering of other stuff in there, all at once. (This depends on deck composition, of course, as some decks run very few reactions, while some will run a ton, for example.) This all means that you get good poo poo in your hand only by playing cards. If you get stiff and stagnant and dusty, you get eaten. *~themes~*  Deckbuilding is different than most CCGs in a few ways. Your deck is up to 90 cards, you can use as many copies of any card as you like, and the presence of rares in a typical deck is much different than in MTG and other CCGs. Rares are good cards and are often essential, but they aren't the kind of thing you want a million copies of in your deck. You often want one, but multiple copies are unusable. Commons and uncommons tend to be the real driving force of a good deck, with rares making a good deck great and competitive. My experience with the game I have been playing VTES, on and off, for twenty years. I picked it up right after I quit MTG in 2001. (I have since picked up MTG again exclusively in Commander, but that's my problem so you let me worry about that.) The ability to play this CCG without the rat race that was MTG standard and extended at the time (as now) brought me in, and the multiplayer dynamics got me hooked. I cannot say enough about how good the game is as a social, multiplayer activity. There is no substitute for a game like this which is written with multiplayer dynamics in mind. (Well, I suppose there literally are substitutes, like Commander, but my point is they're not as good at this part of the game.) I got to a point where I was playing in some high-level tournaments: regional qualifiers, nationals, etc. There isn't a Pro Tour for VTES, but there is a robust, sanctioned tournament scene, and I was deep into that for about ten years. Unlike my experience with tournament MTG, the tournament scene in VTES was generally positive and not full of toxic idiots. I don't know if the social nature of the game fosters a better community, or the other way around, but it's a much more welcoming, kind, and mature scene. If you're in or near a major city in the US, Canada, or Europe, chances are there's an organized group in your area. I'm in the EDge of the loving World over here in northern Maine, so there isn't poo poo near me unless I drive either three hours north, or three hours south. I have some of my old playgroup locally, though, so we make do. When the game went out of print briefly in the early 2010's(?), I sold off most of my collection to new players, and dealers. I made a point to keep a bunch of decks for future use. I made a point to keep a range of them that gives me different strategies, but also different complexities in case I bump into someone who wants to learn. I have everything from a six-discipline Rube Goldberg machine monstrosity fronted by 11-capacity Saulot, to a Animalism weenies deck that runs one discipline and no minions above 4-capacity. I also built a cube for VTES (i.e. a preselected set of hundreds of cards to draft from). VTES can be played in draft, but it isn't as easy as in MTG, given the range of disciplines, sects, and some other complications. But I pared down the cube to a reasonable set and wrote rules for drafting them in order to make coherent decks. I'll share that as a separate post down the line. Feel free to PM me or post here if you have any questions about VTES or if you want to organize an online game. Upsides  Excellent multiplayer rules Wide, healthy meta including stealth, defensive, combat-driven, and other options (the game has not shaken down into a couple of "solved" strategies like a lot of old CCGs) Robust community compared to other dead/undead CCGs Unique draw mechanic Cheap cost of entry A long game, if you deliberately seek out long games with ebbs and flowsDownsides Slightly obtuse 1990's-rear end rules, at least at first glance Two hour time frame is more often a downside than an upside (games rarely clock out shorter than 90 minutes) A staggering number of clans and disciplines if one jumps in on the wrong setsCommunity resources VEKN --- "Vampire Elder Kindred Network," the central hub of the VTES community, including info about local groups, tournaments, rules, and upcoming sets from Black Chantry. VDB --- A comprehensive, searchable database for VTES. Essential for deckbuilding. Amaranth --- An online deckbuilding tool Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Oct 1, 2022 |
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Jul 3, 2022 15:04
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I remember game stores during the peak of 2002, the shelves behind the register groaning under the weight of a thousand unsold Austin Powers and Nightmare before Crhistmas CCG starter decks. I think the weirdest CCG I've ever seen was the American Idol one, although that one never made it over to Europe.
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Jul 3, 2022 16:17
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Some of my faves from back in the day were .hack//ENEMY, the City of Heroes card game, and the Neopets card game. I still have a trophy from the latter sitting on a shelf in my old bedroom at my dad's place, ill try to grab a picture of it next time I swing by because it's a very silly trophy.
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Jul 3, 2022 16:41
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I still have a bunch of the old Decipher Star Wars CCG cards lying around. I remember having a few cool characters, like Yoda; Son of Skywalker; Jabba; IG-88 etc. Wonder if I could still build a deck.
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Jul 3, 2022 16:53
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I feel like it should be Dead/Undead ccg thread.
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Jul 3, 2022 17:59
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the tomb raider card game was sick. so was Austin powers. wcw was very good too
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Jul 3, 2022 18:07
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I was real into a bunch of old dead CCGs (L5R mostly, where I was real competitive to the point where I eventually worked on the game, but also downtown/legend of the burning sands/early Magi nation/shadowfist). My friends and I also used to scour the dead CCG booths at Gencon/Origins for weird old stuff like Ultimate Combat (magic but for guys who learn martial arts at the strip mall), Redemption (magic but without most of the functional rules but with bible quotes), and Boy Crazy (tiger beat: plus maybe some rules?) to try to play while the other people at the industry hotel parties tried to be all serious poker business. The early days of CCGs were the wild west. Even releases with some cultural cache like D&D Spellfire basically no development or playtesting going into them, so games by good designers (like AEG's Dave Williams) were rare and I'm sure some good designs fell through the cracks Some later-era stuff like Spycraft ended up pretty good, if way too complex. (That said, with Magic and the various online CCGs have become almost as complex in play).
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Jul 3, 2022 19:51
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Skios posted:I remember game stores during the peak of 2002, the shelves behind the register groaning under the weight of a thousand unsold Austin Powers and Nightmare before Crhistmas CCG starter decks. I think the weirdest CCG I've ever seen was the American Idol one, although that one never made it over to Europe. I have played the American Idol card game. It is somehow worse than you can imagine. Imagine this: a multiplayer game where the players compete for points, at the end of which the top two are selected for the final competition, which is entirely decided by the eliminated players. It leans into kingmaking like it's a good thing! And, no, there is no incentive besides spite or personal preference given to the eliminated players. It's a wonderful way for teenagers in the early 2000's to lose friends, I suppose. For context, I played this game as part of a podcast I was on for five years. It's defunct now, but feel free to check out the episode. Sega 32X posted:I was real into a bunch of old dead CCGs (L5R mostly, where I was real competitive to the point where I eventually worked on the game, but also downtown/legend of the burning sands/early Magi nation/shadowfist). My friends and I also used to scour the dead CCG booths at Gencon/Origins for weird old stuff like Ultimate Combat (magic but for guys who learn martial arts at the strip mall), Redemption (magic but without most of the functional rules but with bible quotes), and Boy Crazy (tiger beat: plus maybe some rules?) to try to play while the other people at the industry hotel parties tried to be all serious poker business. That's cool as hell! I had a few friends a long time ago who were super into L5R, but I never got a chance to try it. Now Magi Nation, that was absolutely my poo poo for about a year. I just gave away my modest collection a few years ago to a friend who was really into the show but didn't know a CCG existed. I, on the other hand, didn't know a show existed and assumed the card art was in anime style referentially, not actually taken from an actual anime. I liked the game, but I was downsizing and paring down some of the old nerd poo poo I had lying around at the time so it seemed as good a person as any to give my collection.
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Jul 3, 2022 23:20
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We're missing at least 3 other Star Wars card games from the OP, although I don't know if they deserve to be mentioned. Decipher made three Star Wars card games in total. After SW:CCG there was also: Youth-focused Young Jedi Almost immediately doomed Jedi Knights Fantasy Flight also had an LCG Star Wars: THE Card Game before Destiny. I was into SW:CCG for a few years. I dumped all my common chaff at some point but still have a few hundred rares in a pair of 3-inch binders somewhere.
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Jul 4, 2022 04:51
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I found an expansion for Romance of the Nine Kingdoms, the fake CCG made up for the The Gamers 3: Hand of Fate movie.
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Jul 4, 2022 05:02
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My brother and I did Decipher's Star Trek through its first expansion Alternate Universe and Star Wars through the Empire Strikes Back expansions. I went to college at that point and that ended it. The X-Files CCG was another one from that vintage that played like Clue. Each player had a conspiracy identity with a handful of traits and an investigation team. Your investigators were trying to identify the opponent's identity while your conspiracy identity could do things to hinder the opponent's investigation. You could guess at the traits of your opponent's identity and kept track of your guesses on a play sheet. The game had some severe economy problems and the cards were kind of ugly too. It got through one expansion before cancellation.
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Jul 4, 2022 06:44
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MonsieurChoc posted:I found an expansion for Romance of the Nine Kingdoms, the fake CCG made up for the The Gamers 3: Hand of Fate movie. Fun fact: it's a stealth expansion for Legend of the Burning Sands using most of the same rules. I missed out on picking up the Kickstarter or whatever that made it. Whoever made that movie definitely knew some of the L5R cliques though.
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Jul 4, 2022 06:53
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Two games I do remember dabbling in like twenty years ago: Hecatomb, a cosmic horror-themed game that used five-sided cards, which was exactly as dumb as it sounded. Another weird one was the Pirates CSG - the Constructible Strategy Game. It straddled the line between card game and table top game weirdly, as the cards were thick plastic with parts you punched out to build ships, which you then battled with in a very simplified tabletop strategy game.
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Jul 4, 2022 09:27
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Skios posted:Another weird one was the Pirates CSG - the Constructible Strategy Game. It straddled the line between card game and table top game weirdly, as the cards were thick plastic with parts you punched out to build ships, which you then battled with in a very simplified tabletop strategy game. I loved Pirates of the Spanish Main. I got a bunch of it on clearance long after the game was already dead and had a great time doing little naval battles around my dining room table. Sadly they all got lost (read: likely binned) during a move. I'd love to see a modern take on it with tighter balance and game design.
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Jul 4, 2022 10:21
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Man, seeing that squirt gun takes me back to Govern-Condition at 3 stealth and getting Telepathic Misdirection-ed into my grand prey like a dumbass It's a good OP, the only  I would say is: I think it could be noted that the OP is talking about original Netrunner (aka ONR) while Android: Netrunner (ANR) the reboot actually has a thread. It's a pro follow and a great choice for card game players because the game owns. It's still alive thanks to the support of the non-profit player-run collective NISEI. It's the most impressive fan project I've ever seen, with the Black Chantry V:TES printings being a very close second, if it's fair enough to call that a fan project; they're obviously fans, but they are also actually licensing V:TES from Paradox, I believe.I hope someone can do effortposts about Raw Deal (the WWE CCG) and Battletech (the Battletech CCG).
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Jul 4, 2022 11:08
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Major Operation posted:We're missing at least 3 other Star Wars card games from the OP, although I don't know if they deserve to be mentioned. Hahaha holy poo poo. I'll add those to the OP list for comic effect alone. Skios posted:Two games I do remember dabbling in like twenty years ago: I have a friend who went around fifteen years ago trying to get anyone who would listen to him to play Hecatomb with him. I'm as Oh, and while I didn't play Pirates, I did play the Buck Rodgers-esque game Rocketmen. It used the same polystyrene, punch-out ships and a similar rule set (it was made by the same company), but was space ships instead of ships of the line. The biggest difference, tactically, is that you had three classes of ships: capital ships, cruisers, and fighters. The fighters were deployed in squadrons of three. In any case, I think I'll leave games like these out of the OP because they're more like minis games. They are collected like CCGs (i.e. in packs, with rarity distriution), but are otherwise a different animal. Magnetic North posted:Man, seeing that squirt gun takes me back to Govern-Condition at 3 stealth and getting Telepathic Misdirection-ed into my grand prey like a dumbass I'll add a note and link to the Android Netrunner thread in the OP. Thanks for the tip. I'll also put Raw Deal and Battletech on the list, as I have two buddies who love Raw Deal and the game has as much or more of a following to this day than at least half of the games on that list. That was an oversight, and the OP is always a work in progress for sure. I know Ben Peal, the guy running the VTES development organization now, and he's a good dude with fostering the game's community at heart. It's good to know a similar organization exists for Netrunner (and probably many more of these games). Keep your Malkavian bleeds sleazy. It's all that they know. Joking aside, I have a banger of a stealth-politics deck fronted by Maris Streck that absolutely beats rear end Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jul 4, 2022 |
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Jul 4, 2022 11:51
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Who remembers the Star Wars TCG that Wizards of the Coast made once they got the license? It was absolutely terrible. Maybe I'm a freak for liking how complex the Decipher version but it was such a drastic change.
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Jul 4, 2022 13:22
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Is V:TES the kind of game you could introduce to people unfamiliar with the World of Darkness? Or does it have any weird or creepy cards? I love the idea of having a good multiplayer card game.
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Jul 4, 2022 14:43
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Apocron posted:Is V:TES the kind of game you could introduce to people unfamiliar with the World of Darkness? Or does it have any weird or creepy cards? I love the idea of having a good multiplayer card game. Yes, and yes. You don't need to know anything about WoD to get the rules, although having some knowledge might help connect mechanics by way of concepts a little bit. But I'd say at least half of the people I've ever played with never played Masquerade. As for creepy cards? The game is decidedly "adult," both in the stupid buzzword sense of the term, and in a literal sense. Some of the cards reference things that require an adult understanding of context, if not outright graphic sex or violence. 99% of it isn't as tasteless as that makes it seem, but you get your Fetish Club Hunting Grounds and your Vascular Explosions from time to time. There's a couple dozen cards I'd have to put behind a NWS link in this thread. But I also wouldn't say any of it is problematic as long as it is contextualized correctly and the player goes into the game knowing that this isn't wall to wall cute cartoon monsters. I play Pokemon and MTG with my 8 year old daughter and I would 1000% never play this with her until she is a teenager.
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Jul 4, 2022 16:22
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Huh, I remember a bunch of these that haven't been mentioned yet. Heresy! Probably most notably for the weird vertically extended cards; this was a positional CCG about angels imprisoned on Earth escaping into heaven through the Matrix. Position based rules and a lot of different resources to track, but it was locally quite popular for a while. DUNE CCG! Basically felt like work with the number of military numbered rules and categories. You couldn't "attack", you had to announce "the CHOAM rite of battle" and so on. Arcadia! Yea, there was a CCG based on Changeling. It was only sold in two kinds of booster packs with no starter decks and as far as I could tell was some kind of adventure-style game but I'm not aware that anyone ever even played it. Mythos! This one I know, though. It's an official Cthulhu game where you play an investigator and move through areas collecting and playing items and playing monsters on your opponents. It works quite well but with one very strange exception: the victory condition, which is to play "stories" based on what's happened. The issue is that to complete a story you don't have to actually go through the story, you just have to have collected all the objects or locations mentioned in it, so if a story ends with "you corner a cultist with a weapon and capture his terrible tome" it's perfectly OK to have bought the book yourself, have the weapon but never have used it, and just have seen a cultist at some point. Xxxenophile! was the original form of Girl Genius: The Works except with Foglio's adult illustrations and randomised packs. Infamously had cards telling you to undress, tear cards in half, throw them around the room, etc. Almost a parody of CCGs, but still followed the business model. Legends of the Burning Sands! The sequel to L5R which nobody knows or cares about even though it was actually quite good at the time. This is because, apparently, some twit at AEG copy/pasted a bunch of card designs from L5R into LBS, completely ignoring the fact that LBS had a very different combat system and those cards became impossibly broken under the new system. Animayhem! Based on 80s anime in general, which as far as I can tell was supposed to be a rip-off of the Star Trek CCG but the rulebook was so badly written it was useless. Also infamous for having a card which caused the opponent to skip three turns. Kult! Rather weird CCG based on the RPG which required your cards to be laid out in a Tarot pattern on the table and had specific bonuses based on where they were (eg, only the card in the bottom right corner can carry a flamethrower. Why? Dunno.) Not aware that it was ever played. Guardians! I don't remember anything about this other than that it had good art, had a bunch of cards taking the mick out of other CCGs, and was based on sorting your cards into units which moved around on a grid and if they bumped into each other, both players picked up the unit stack as their hand to play out the combat. Dark Age! They fight, and fight, and roll dice, and fight, and fight some more, and they left a rule out of the original rulebook that means the second player always loses one of their 3 lives on turn 1. Codex! The most recent I know if as a customizable but non-collectable card game. Basically DoA. Summed up by a commentator as: "it was designed to be a lifestyle game, the only game you ever need to play. But no-one is doing that, so no-one can."
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Jul 4, 2022 17:26
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dbz ccg ftw the panini remake of it was great too, they did a solid (though not perfect) job of making it resemble a modern, quasi-deliberately designed game while keeping a huge amount of jank. i'm not sure if it's still getting attention but for a long while after it got killed off (due to Bandai seizing the DBZ license to print the dragon ball super ccg) there was a strong fan scene making new unofficial mini-sets and running both online and in-person events
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Jul 4, 2022 17:47
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We should try to organize some play using online clients or something. I know Doomtown has apparently been revived by fans. VTES has been revived again by Black Chantry.
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Jul 4, 2022 17:55
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I liked the DBZ game quite a bit when it first came out. The only thing that soured me on it was how they developed subsequent sets. The second set rendered every single character from the first set obsolete, so me and my HS friends got out between the second and third sets. I did love the three ways you had to win: deck out your opponent by damage, gather all the Dragon Ballz, or getting like so pissed you guys. (Characters in the game evolved to their next level by raising their "Anger Level," which was measured on a tiny plastic sword that you drew out of its sheath as Anger Level rose. If you got to a third evolution and got pissed off enough again, you straight up won the game.)
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Jul 4, 2022 17:59
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MonsieurChoc posted:We should try to organize some play using online clients or something. Definitely. I'm researching online VTES right now and I'll add it to the VTES post later.
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Jul 4, 2022 17:59
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Mode 7 posted:I loved Pirates of the Spanish Main. I got a bunch of it on clearance long after the game was already dead and had a great time doing little naval battles around my dining room table. Sadly they all got lost (read: likely binned) during a move. Echoing how cool Pirates was conceptually. A lightweight wargame that comes in booster packs is such a neat idea, but man it was broken. I still very clearly remember the meta of the first set being Blackbeard on the Revenant with full crew; In a game where you had a single action per turn, either move or shoot, a loaded Revenant did both for free on top of moving at light speed and having a surplus of crew for sacrifices to get a few turns where you could do it multiple times. All the strategy and idea of the treasure hunting component kind of goes out the window when you have a single giant boat that's burning across the board annihilating everything in its path. Wizkids just didn't have the design chops, which is a line you can apply to almost all of their games over the past couple decades. I've maintained that that type of game design with tight balance and a bigger emphasis on limited formats would be phenomenal.
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Jul 4, 2022 18:29
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I had/have so many VTES decks, not sure which were my favourites. I had an Akunanse toolbox deck, a Nagaraja deflect deck, a Casino Reeds/Cock Robin animalism deck, a Tzimisce Wall Deck, an Assamite Contract deck, a Giovanni Khazar's Diary deck, a Samedi Anarch toolbox deck, a weird True Brujah sacrifice deck, and more. I'd brought all my vtes cards to college and let friends make their own decks with them. It was fun.
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Jul 4, 2022 18:32
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A couple I remember playing; Wheel of Time- only thing I mainly remember is that the starter was so cheap they gave you blank cubes and made you place decals on them. Rage- we got into this one way late because EB had booster boxes for $10, we cracked a bunch and reverse engineered how to play. Arcade- hero based ccg using the setup from Changeling where you went on quests to rack up victory points. Blood War- DnD ccg with tons of DiTerlizzi art. Macdeo Lurjtux fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jul 4, 2022 |
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Jul 4, 2022 19:01
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I was looking into the Star Wars Decipher TCG community, because it and the Raw Deal community amaze me, and they list the venues for the tournaments, which are often someone's street address. One of them was in my hometown, which was surprising since it wasn't the local FLGS, and after I put it into google it was some guy's home address.Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Wheel of Time- only thing I mainly remember is that the starter was so cheap they gave you blank cubes and made you place decals on them. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/770241/3-out-10-not-recommended-all VTES is a great game and its modern "successor" Vampire the Masquerade Rivals is pretty good. It's a little more casual and more accessible than Black Chantry's releases at the moment, which are mainly print on demand or buying off people on ebay last time I checked. The Black Chantry VTES update is also based on V5, so less disciplines, but they do have a bunch of print on demand cards for the original card game. Most VTES classic cards are compatible but crypt cards have a number on them and you can't mix and match outside a certain range of cards. This sort of balances things since they did do a big classic rerelease right before VTES jumped the shark with Imbued and Laibon, and then the game kind of went under. This is obviously an exaggeration of events but locally it fell off fast for me when Requiem came out and White Wolf was still kind of supporting things.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:09
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Railing Kill posted:Yes, and yes. You don't need to know anything about WoD to get the rules, although having some knowledge might help connect mechanics by way of concepts a little bit. But I'd say at least half of the people I've ever played with never played Masquerade. Thanks for the heads up. NSFW is sadly a deal breaker for me. Does Vampire the Masquerade Rivals better in that respect?
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Jul 5, 2022 01:30
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Apocron posted:Thanks for the heads up. NSFW is sadly a deal breaker for me. Understandable. I can't speak to the content of Rivals as I haven't played it, but my guess is that there's probably a bunch of cards with adult stuff pictured. (Most likely blood or violence.) But I'll let folks who have played it speak up about the art.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:37
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Railing Kill posted:Understandable. I can't speak to the content of Rivals as I haven't played it, but my guess is that there's probably a bunch of cards with adult stuff pictured. (Most likely blood or violence.) But I'll let folks who have played it speak up about the art. Yeah, maybe the setting is just too edgy for my normal group. Just multiplayer card game and nostalgia from the Bloodlines game caused my interest to be piqued.
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Jul 5, 2022 08:11
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Considering this thread, it reminds me of Future Card Buddyfight, made by Bushiroad. It was pretty neat card game that focused on various worlds and a Buddy which you can summon (if you've got another copy of your buddy in your hand) to heal but only once, so it's really not that useful outside of informing people what kind of deck you use. The game died during 2020, no need to guess why. Anyway, Buddyfight has like a ton of ridiculous stuff like dragons, superheroes, giant robots, giant dragons that constantly evolve and are sometimes fishermen/banchos, demon lords that will let you play via Rock Paper Scissors, demons from the Ars Goetia, aliens, Shadow Paladins but in dragon form, people riding on top of dragons, future people riding on top of future dragons, a shapeshifting gem monster who's a really nice boy wanting to make his dad proud, dragons made out of jewelry, magical girls that are pretty underhanded, fairy tales that involve characters like Snow White turning into a dragon, dungeon monsters wielding a ton of dangerous weaponry, dragons that'll punch you, trans dragons, fruits and veg that want to kill you with curry, all of the above but in evil cyborg flavor, edgelord dragons with cringy-rear end names, just alot of swords, the greek mythology as delinquents and dragons but smaller and more marketable. That's not even all of them, the amount of cards you can use to make a deck is pretty insane. Shame that it's dead...
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Jul 5, 2022 11:38
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Gumdrop Larry posted:Echoing how cool Pirates was conceptually. A lightweight wargame that comes in booster packs is such a neat idea, but man it was broken. I still very clearly remember the meta of the first set being Blackbeard on the Revenant with full crew; In a game where you had a single action per turn, either move or shoot, a loaded Revenant did both for free on top of moving at light speed and having a surplus of crew for sacrifices to get a few turns where you could do it multiple times. All the strategy and idea of the treasure hunting component kind of goes out the window when you have a single giant boat that's burning across the board annihilating everything in its path. wizkids had the trademark to the polystyrine thing and they were just desperate to get it going. they had pirates, rocketmen, a nascar game and a star wars one that i think did pretty well for a while
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Jul 5, 2022 12:43
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man they used to just buy tcg concepts from college students and jam whatever license they could into it i remember the sailor moon game, it was fun as poo poo but the typos were crazy. nobody would play it with me because they said it was gay
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Jul 5, 2022 12:45
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I have fond memories of Chaotic who remembers that?
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Jul 5, 2022 21:40
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My local Ollie's has a couple starter boxes from the Doomtown relaunch I've been tempted to pick up.
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Jul 5, 2022 21:46
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Railing Kill posted:I liked the DBZ game quite a bit when it first came out. The only thing that soured me on it was how they developed subsequent sets. The second set rendered every single character from the first set obsolete, so me and my HS friends got out between the second and third sets. I did love the three ways you had to win: deck out your opponent by damage, gather all the Dragon Ballz, or getting like so pissed you guys. (Characters in the game evolved to their next level by raising their "Anger Level," which was measured on a tiny plastic sword that you drew out of its sheath as Anger Level rose. If you got to a third evolution and got pissed off enough again, you straight up won the game.) The power creep in the DBZ CCG was pretty bad, but what really killed it was how many of the staple cards you could only get through ranking major tournaments. I didn't actually get competitive with it until it morphed into DBGT, but the most ridiculous thing was getting top 32 at worlds in Indianapolis in like....2003, I think? and being able to flip the prize card for $1200 on eBay immediately after. The funniest part was when they power creeped new hard rules into the game. Like, when Android 18 came out in the Android Saga expansion, her passive let you scry 6 before entering combat which was insane card quality advantage since you drew 3 cards before combat and a lot of the best cards cantrip'd or were usable for multiple attacks. You basically HAD to play her to win which effectively killed anger decks and forced everyone to just run a set of dragonballs because why not? So, eventually, they just made her scry ability part of the rules.  The other dead game I played a shitload of was VS. Looking briefly into VS 2PCG (the remake) when it first came out, but I wasn't interested in it being changed into an avatar set-up. (And apparently, they only got Marvel on board with it, which is some poo poo because despite the MCU being all anybody knows now-a-days, DC comics are still historically the best. Fight me, nerds!) VS also suffered from power creep, but it definitely had the MTG problem where there were just a few cards printed in the first couple sets that had so much raw power, nothing really ever topped them, and they quickly became the most expensive cards in the game. (Savage Beatdown, Detective Work, and Teen Titans Go! are the ones I remember.) I also remember the first card they actually had to ban, Dr. Light, Master of Holograms, because it was just absurdly broken in weenie/GLOCK decks. I stopped playing right before they redesigned the cards. But I still have my own weenie willpower deck somewhere around here.
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Jul 6, 2022 00:59
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:My local Ollie's has a couple starter boxes from the Doomtown relaunch I've been tempted to pick up. the ones out here have a bunch of key forge
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Jul 6, 2022 01:44
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Shoutouts to TCGs that I wish didn't die: Yu Yu Hakusho Neopets the first and 2nd digimon iterations.
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Jul 6, 2022 06:19
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L