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Radioactive Toy posted:Did anyone ever put together a good web-based option for playing the Star Wars LCG, like Jinteki or The Crucible? I did some googling but couldn't find anything. I get why players hate them on an emotional level (my deck would be soooo good if I could include this one card but not this other card), but I think they're just brilliant tech.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:29
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Wasn't Keyforge doing really well before COVID? That'll kill a game's momentum. from what I've seen, the vampire LCG has been doing pretty well competitively
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Aug 8, 2022 22:00
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John Romero posted:from what I've seen, the vampire LCG has been doing pretty well competitively Wait, Rivals?
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Aug 8, 2022 22:22
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John Romero posted:Wasn't Keyforge doing really well before COVID? That'll kill a game's momentum. My friend was briefly obsessed with Keyforge and lives in the Chicago suburbs and the scene died there very soon after release. He made it to one event and got some bling, couldn't make the second, and the third was cancelled. He didn't see any going after that. He still enjoyed buying decks and meeting another friend of ours to play at lunch but covid killed that. The group coop print and play scenarios revived our interest briefly once we could get back together, then the game was put on hiatus. After all that we've decided we aren't going to get into the upcoming revival. That said the Keyforge thread said the game was still going strong some places when I thought it was toast. I wanted to like Rivals and I've been interested to see all the new sets they've added with more clans and cards. My group bounced off it hard though. Despite having a competitive MTG player, they hate learning new card games and didn't give it an honest try. Didn't help that I'm a poor teacher. In the end I didn't like the art as much as that of V:TES, and we ended up getting into the marvel and arkham lcgs instead since we can run those with 1-3 people and take turns buying releases for our card pools.
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Aug 8, 2022 22:39
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Is Rivals an LCG? I wasn't sure if the decks were actually constructible or if they were all just pre-set? How does it play? I LOVED VtES and still have a big collection of it. edit: by LCG I don't mean an FFG LCG™ specifically.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:00
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EdsTeioh posted:Is Rivals an LCG? I wasn't sure if the decks were actually constructible or if they were all just pre-set? How does it play? I LOVED VtES and still have a big collection of it. No, they're constructible. They give you a pre-set deck but also extra cards and you can make your own deck when you feel comfortable.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:51
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bagrada posted:My friend was briefly obsessed with Keyforge and lives in the Chicago suburbs and the scene died there very soon after release. He made it to one event and got some bling, couldn't make the second, and the third was cancelled. He didn't see any going after that. He still enjoyed buying decks and meeting another friend of ours to play at lunch but covid killed that. The group coop print and play scenarios revived our interest briefly once we could get back together, then the game was put on hiatus. After all that we've decided we aren't going to get into the upcoming revival. That said the Keyforge thread said the game was still going strong some places when I thought it was toast. I'm also in the Chicago suburbs. This weekend my local game store had a few starter packs on clearance for $5 so I picked up 6 decks for $15. When I was checking out the owner was talking about how the game was good but just totally died here, and they never stocked anything after the second set. It clearly was at least somewhat successful globally as the Keyforge website shows that 2,764,590 unique decks have been added to people's accounts, and I assume many more were never added.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:54
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Keyforge was a big hit commercially but the timing of Asmodee gutting FFG made the organized play DOA. The algorithm being ransomwared was the icing on the cake for the shitshow it should have never been, much like the manufacturing issues killing the money machine that was the Star Wars dice/card ccg. Speaking of FFG and organized play, anyone know the health of the Xwing scene these days? It was huge pre pandemic and 2.0, no clue how it's doing now.
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Aug 9, 2022 00:25
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Failboattootoot posted:Lord of the rings really suffered, in my opinion, from being a pile of bullshit. The monster decks in that are so god drat gnarly once you get outside of the core ones. I had multiple experiences in lotr that lined up with how people described their experience with Ronan the Accuser in Marvel. Which is to say, game lost on turn 2. Marvel on the other hang generally feels pretty even handed outside of the guardians box. The LotR LCG took several years to nail down the encounter design and I don't think they really consistently got it right until the LotR Sagas and the Angmar cycle. This is evident in the reprints too, with none of those early sets being slated to reappear in the new format.
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Aug 9, 2022 00:31
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I just wish Arkham Horror was like any other theme than what it is because my SO hates horror.
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Aug 9, 2022 01:59
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Apocron posted:I just wish Arkham Horror was like any other theme than what it is because my SO hates horror. I had this exact same problem. We play Marvel Champions instead but Arkham is just a deeper, more interesting game.
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Aug 9, 2022 02:09
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Apocron posted:I just wish Arkham Horror was like any other theme than what it is because my SO hates horror. If you don’t look too closely at the cards, it can be a pulp game where a boxer teams up with a novelist.
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Aug 9, 2022 02:25
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Bottom Liner posted:Speaking of FFG and organized play, anyone know the health of the Xwing scene these days? It was huge pre pandemic and 2.0, no clue how it's doing now. The pandemic put it in a weird spot where enthusiasts moved over to Tabletop Simulator, which FFG obviously refused to endorse. This meant that while a lot of the competitive scene endured the hit quite well, the number of new or casual players went down like a rock. It doesn't help that Asmodee also decided to hand the game over to Atomic Mass Games and fire most of the team in the process. AMG then proceeded to turn it into an utter dog's breakfast by taking a year to introduce a number of almost universally reviled rules changes. For more information, see the X-Wing thread.
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Aug 9, 2022 09:12
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Dawgstar posted:No, they're constructible. They give you a pre-set deck but also extra cards and you can make your own deck when you feel comfortable. How is it compared to VtES? Like a streamlined sort of thing or is it completely different? I think the former my be the exact sort of game I'm looking for. Doctor Spaceman posted:The LotR LCG took several years to nail down the encounter design and I don't think they really consistently got it right until the LotR Sagas and the Angmar cycle. This is evident in the reprints too, with none of those early sets being slated to reappear in the new format. I dunno man, that one bit in the first Hobbit cycle where trolls put your dudes in sacks is pretty brutally hard.
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Aug 9, 2022 13:49
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EdsTeioh posted:I dunno man, that one bit in the first Hobbit cycle where trolls put your dudes in sacks is pretty brutally hard. The Hobbit sagas came out before the LotR sagas. They are indeed brutal! The LotR sagas are also very hard but felt more fair, in a way that's hard to describe. In many of the quests' cases, you can take a thematic deck against them and have a good shot at winning; I had a ton of trouble playing the Hobbit quests without hardcore min-maxing my decks and using non-thematic heroes.
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Aug 9, 2022 14:38
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Warm Woolen Pants posted:The Hobbit sagas came out before the LotR sagas. They are indeed brutal! The LotR sagas are also very hard but felt more fair, in a way that's hard to describe. In many of the quests' cases, you can take a thematic deck against them and have a good shot at winning; I had a ton of trouble playing the Hobbit quests without hardcore min-maxing my decks and using non-thematic heroes. Man, I think we were using slightly modified starters from the core set and one from the Hobbit Saga box and we just kept getting murdered in that one. I love the drat game to death, but the longer I have it, AH, and Marvel, the harder it gets to justify the shelf space as I haven't touched it in years at this point. :-(
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Aug 9, 2022 14:43
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Does Blue Moon: Legends kind of count as an LCG? Albeit a completed one? Any opinions on it?
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Aug 9, 2022 14:51
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Apocron posted:Does Blue Moon: Legends kind of count as an LCG? Albeit a completed one? Any opinions on it? Definitely falls more in the board game realm. Not a bad game, kind of like a more diverse Battle Line. I have it but it never sees play and honestly I'd probably play Battle Line over it because Battle Line is simple, and the added complexity of BM:L doesn't really lead to more fun when there are other more complex things I could be playing. Probably a good game to start introducing people into more complex games as you can transition from Battle Line to it, then to other more complex stuff.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:10
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Apocron posted:I just wish Arkham Horror was like any other theme than what it is because my SO hates horror. I hate the Lovecraftian mythos. A lot. And I am loving Arkham. I came to it through Marvel Champions, and I still adore Marvel Champions, but the location dimension of AH is just right.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:20
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CitizenKeen posted:I hate the Lovecraftian mythos. A lot. And I am loving Arkham. I came to it through Marvel Champions, and I still adore Marvel Champions, but the location dimension of AH is just right. I usually describe Marvel as the "arcade mode" co-op LCG but really it scales a lot more than that. I can make a slight rules tweak and play it with my 8 year old son and have a blast, or my normal board game group can throw down with it and have an equally fulfilling time. My relationship with HPL is pretty complicated. I started reading him in the late 80's/early 90's and really liked it but was really too dumb to see the inherent racism in it at the time. Over time, I've come to see that and how ignorant it is (and I was) but I still have an appreciation for the general ideas and concepts. HOWEVER, man, modern dork fandom with "AWW PLUSHY CTHULHU HOW KAWAIIIII" or "ERMAGERD THE TENTACLES SO LOVECRAFT" really ruins the poo poo for me. AHLCG is great though in that it really eliminates the need for Arkham Horror the boardgame.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:34
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EdsTeioh posted:I usually describe Marvel as the "arcade mode" co-op LCG but really it scales a lot more than that. I can make a slight rules tweak and play it with my 8 year old son and have a blast, or my normal board game group can throw down with it and have an equally fulfilling time. Marvel's fantastic, but I think they lean pretty heavily on the modular encounters. Mindful that I've only seen one AH campaign (RCore + Dunwich), AH has a few encounters that are variations on a theme of "wander around looking for clues before you get murdered", but each one is slightly different so it's okay. Marvel would struggle with an encounter that was only "slightly" different from another - each one needs to be a "thing". As for mythos, even when moved beyond HPL into made up Cthonian-esque old gods, the whole 1930s/40s time period + "things people weren't mean to know" + cultists is just an aesthetic I don't care for at all.
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Aug 9, 2022 15:54
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CitizenKeen posted:Marvel's fantastic, but I think they lean pretty heavily on the modular encounters. Mindful that I've only seen one AH campaign (RCore + Dunwich), AH has a few encounters that are variations on a theme of "wander around looking for clues before you get murdered", but each one is slightly different so it's okay. Marvel would struggle with an encounter that was only "slightly" different from another - each one needs to be a "thing". Yeah, I mean, with Marvel, they're trying to emulate like a big brawl between superheros and a central villain as opposed to an investigation. I think both of them succeed pretty well at what they're trying to do (usually). Yeah, I guess that's just personal preference on HPL, which is fair enough. I like weird old occultism and bizarre conspiracy poo poo, so when I run Call of Cthulhu, I generally tend to use the framework from Delta Green and do a sort of X-Files thing or else just run what's basically Indiana Jones finding mythos related poo poo as opposed to finding Judeo-Christian artifacts.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:04
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Apocron posted:Does Blue Moon: Legends kind of count as an LCG? Albeit a completed one? Any opinions on it? Top 10 game for me. Insane value in that box and one of the best card games ever designed. Be wary though, it's not a battler game like MtG or similar. It's more of a two player auction system under the guise of fantasy card dueler.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:34
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CitizenKeen posted:Marvel's fantastic, but I think they lean pretty heavily on the modular encounters. Mindful that I've only seen one AH campaign (RCore + Dunwich), AH has a few encounters that are variations on a theme of "wander around looking for clues before you get murdered", but each one is slightly different so it's okay. Marvel would struggle with an encounter that was only "slightly" different from another - each one needs to be a "thing". AH does brilliantly to avoid just doing minor variations, honestly. Things like the train scenario where parts of the board disappear on you, scenarios where you're interrogating parties of people, various clever new mechanics that marry theme and gameplay... It's the real reason that game is such a stand out.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:31
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I think Arkham Horror could easily be altered to have a different aesthetic. The Dream Eaters campaign with its references to Lovecraft's Dunsanian phase (in imitation of Lord Dunsany) was a pretty good example of this, I think. Looking at encounter sets/scenarios charts like this, as well as the stuff on arkhamdb.com really helped me understand what's going on under the hood more clearly, and realize that the varnish of Lovecraftian horror might be relatively easy to varnish over. What I'd love to see in AH or an AH-like is more "modularity" like one other poster on this page mentioned in reference to Marvel. Imagine if, similar to Marvel, you could just chat with a friend (or play solo) and say something like: "Hey, let's play a 3-scenario campaign: (1) confronting Hastur (or an analogous genre-appropriate "mysterious entity", whatever), (2) in a cold climate, (3) in a late antiquity setting." And then you generate scenario objectives, locations, and semi-recurring encounter sets based on your "settings". Are there any genres/scenarios that would work particularly well for Arkham Horror? Even something heavily sci-fi like investigating derelict ships and ghost colonies seems totally viable to me.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:53
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Someone made that online and it was wonderful, and it’s even tied to a canon adventure. There is Alice in wonderland, Jumanji, and other custom stuff, look earlier in the thread or search the TTS workshop.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:54
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Thirsty Dog posted:AH does brilliantly to avoid just doing minor variations, honestly. Things like the train scenario where parts of the board disappear on you, scenarios where you're interrogating parties of people, various clever new mechanics that marry theme and gameplay... It's the real reason that game is such a stand out. Oh, absolutely. Having only played core and Dunwich, there are some really clever ideas. But there are also some repeated themes: The Miskatonic Museum and Where Doom Awaits are both "wander around looking for the right location to unlock the next thing". I'm not saying they're exactly the same, but I don't feel like either of those encounters felt different. But The Essex County Express and the core' Midnight Masks (which was still a wander around scenario, but the way all the masks have alternative defeat conditions) all felt really clever.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:56
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the awesome thing about arkham horror is that I have played the starter storyline with three characters and it has been completely different every time
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Aug 10, 2022 17:19
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Golden Bee posted:Someone made that online and it was wonderful, and it’s even tied to a canon adventure. There is Alice in wonderland, Jumanji, and other custom stuff, look earlier in the thread or search the TTS workshop. Everyone needs to play the Dark Matter fanmade scenario, agreed.
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Aug 10, 2022 21:17
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Mojo expansion got announced on FFG website. Looks pretty good. 3 whole scenarios so it’s a ton of villain content and the encounters themselves look to be pretty unique as well with the final one taking a small cue from the Hood pack. They also introduce the idea of having an ally as an encounter card to slot in to encounters to make them a bit easier. Which I think is a great idea to give you a small boost against Loki/Ronan/Venom Gob if you don’t want to swap default Modular’s but don’t mind adding something in. Pretty surprised it’s the first thing after the expansion but I think that’s good. Gives you plenty of time because you have 4 new heroes and you’ll get a lot of encounter time in, and then start with new heroes close to the new year.
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Aug 13, 2022 14:42
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Which heroes would people recommend for teaching Marvel Champions, outside of those found in the core set? We are going to have a four player game next week with new players and I was thinking of putting together four decks, one of each aspect, that aren't too complex for novice gamers.
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Aug 13, 2022 23:30
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KPC_Mammon posted:Which heroes would people recommend for teaching Marvel Champions, outside of those found in the core set? We are going to have a four player game next week with new players and I was thinking of putting together four decks, one of each aspect, that aren't too complex for novice gamers. Core mostly the way to go in my opinion, minus black panther and she-hulk. Outside of core, I think Captain America and Quicksilver are reasonably easy to get. Thor and war machine probably also ok. Of those, definitely protection cap and aggression Thor, the other 2 a bit weirder but probably justice quicksilver and leadership war machine. If the new players have experience with other games like mtg or ah you can honestly probably just give them whatever. My cousin picked dr. strange for his first game and he had zero issues since he had a decent amount of casual mtg experience under his belt.
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Aug 14, 2022 00:29
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KPC_Mammon posted:Which heroes would people recommend for teaching Marvel Champions, outside of those found in the core set? We are going to have a four player game next week with new players and I was thinking of putting together four decks, one of each aspect, that aren't too complex for novice gamers. Nova is dirt easy and best if you can build him protection. Captain America is also pretty simple and good for Leadership. Spider-Ham Aggression is pretty simple as toon counters aren't too hard to keep track of.
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Aug 14, 2022 07:02
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EdsTeioh posted:Man, I think we were using slightly modified starters from the core set and one from the Hobbit Saga box and we just kept getting murdered in that one. I love the drat game to death, but the longer I have it, AH, and Marvel, the harder it gets to justify the shelf space as I haven't touched it in years at this point. :-( I feel the same way. Back in 2016 I had a real itch to get into some kind of card game but I lived in an area that didn't really have a TTG scene, and playing LotR solo scratched that perfectly. I ended up working my way through a good chunk of the expansions and have a big box of cards in the closet, but the finicky nature of many of the encounters and all the setup involved keeps me from getting back into it now. I am curious to see FFG re-releasing the game now, though; is there a good guide somewhere that explains their approach? I would love to see a LotR LCG 2.0 some day that combines all the best features of the Arkham and Marvel LCGs with the great atmosphere and campaign elements of LotR. In terms of profitability, has anyone ever tried a hybrid LCG-CCG model, where you can buy LCG-style player and encounter expansions, but then with CCG-style player card boosters also available? So, for instance, I can buy the Hobbit player expansion, which always gives me Bilbo and Thorin, but other characters would only be available in boosters. I much prefer the LCG model, but I wouldn't mind that compromise if it meant LCGs got a bit more support and more robust and long-lasting player bases.
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Aug 14, 2022 10:59
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There's really no benefit for the play in deviating away from the LCG model in a co-op game as that would be extremely hard to balance for players. If you buy a pack and don't get what you need to beat a scenario then the only recourse is to buy more packs? There doesn't seem to be a lot of upside in that unless you're always heavily devoted to the game. It does suck that there's no heavy randomization and that we miss out on the "joy" of what could be in a pack, but I'd also argue that if you spend a Friday evening at a MTG event the "joy" is opening money cards, not interesting ones. I'm actually for this kind of randomization in terms of solo play. I still play the old Shandalar MTG PC game a couple times a year with that modded card pool that goes up to Zendikar or whatever and it's a lot of fun just wandering around having to put together a deck using jank, but I would never want to actually have to PAY a company every time I wanted to access new cards. As such I think this is something that's simply not really going to be feasible for a paper game to create, but definitely will be for future video games should they be able to resist the temptation to heavily monetize things.
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Aug 14, 2022 16:39
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I imagine Keyforge is the best cross over point between an LCG and a CCG. You buy a pack that is complete in itself but also random. You just lose out on the deck building.
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Aug 15, 2022 01:27
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Watching where Magic has been going in the last decade, with the rise of alt-art cosmetics, part of me thinks a game could build around that popularity. Let whales pay for the game. I've always wondered if you could design an economic model for a card game where the cards are released in LCG-style packs, but they're the plainest version of the cards possible. Full-art versions, foils, variants by popular artists, etc., are all released in CCG packs. You want to just play the game, buy your monthly ~$18 pack (that's what we're at, right?). You want to have the full set of full art Scorched Earth or the foil Daisy Walker or the Claremont-era Jim Lee variant of Wolverine? Prepare to chase those mythic rares, baby - it's going to cost. Or if that's too complicated from a production standpoint, just make them all CCG packs (which isn't ideal), but all the plain cards are commons. Building a deck of plain cards costs pennies. But fancy decks can support the company.
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Aug 15, 2022 03:22
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The thing is that randomized packs and the whole TCG model only works at scale. The manufacturing and distribution process is way too much for a niche of a niche to handle, which is also why FFG smartly moved all of their LCGs to the big box model and reduced the accompanying SKUs by like 80%.
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Aug 15, 2022 03:27
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Flesh and Blood is an interesting example of using cosmetics and very rare cards to subsidise other cards. They’ve shifted their original model a little and the very rare legendaries are becoming less rare as the sets go on. I think however you game has to reach and sustain a base level of popularity before you can pull this off. Magic has devoted a lot of time and effort to convincing people only Magic lives for any length of time and thus is the only one worth investing in.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:43
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L5R for example had a good long run until 2015 as a CCG and was never a very expensive game to play, most rares were cheap. However it never really got the whale market.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:44
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