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This is a thread about CCGs that are not Magical Cards. Some are dead, some are not. I will start with my personal all-time favorite. Doomtown was originally released by AEG, the same company that brought us Legend of the Five Rings (L5R), 7th Sea, and Warlord. It was based off the "Deadlands" franchise of role-playing games, a genre mash-up of Westerns and Horror. Specifically it was set in the small California boomtown of Gomorra. Doomtown, like most AEG games, was highly story-driven. The outcomes of events affected the cards printed and the storyline. In fact, one of the factions was outright eliminated from the game as a result of a tournament series. The goal of Doomtown was to have more control points than your opponent(s) had Influence. Essentially you wanted your gang to control more of the town than your opponent's. The cards: Outfits: Each player started the game with one of these. It told you how much Ghost Rock (the game's resource) you started with, how much you produced each turn, and your faction's special ability. These are outfits from The Flock, and the faction that replaced them, the Lost Angels. Each of the game's factions started with a basic outfit with their faction's name. As the game went on, more strongholds were released, usually with a subtitle and a different ability from the original (as with Children of Armageddon below.) This card also serves as your "Home" location.  Dudes: These are characters. These form the backbone of every deck. Each one has a bullet rating (indicated by the bullet. Brass is a "Draw", Silver is a "Stud" More on that later.)influence (red poker chip) a cost (lower left corner) and an upkeep (lower right corner.) Each character (and in fact every non-outfit card) has a "value" in the upper left corner. This is used to play poker with your deck to resolve shootouts and initiative, as well as resolve spells. Also, higher value dudes tend to have more protection as many effects target value.  This is The Ghost. He is literally undead Abraham Lincoln. In the Deadlands setting, Lincoln was assassinated but came back as a Harrowed (a form of undead that get physical benefits along with unlife, but battle constantly for control of their body with a demon called a Maitou.) He heads up The Agency faction. He is Experienced which means there was an earlier version of him printed, which you can interchange with this one freely. He is also Harrowed, which means if he is killed, you can make a pull (show the top card of your deck.) If the pull is under his value of King, he goes home booted. If it is equal, he is discarded (which means shuffled back into your deck when your deck cycles.) Only an Ace result on a pull will permanently kill a Harrowed. Dudes are always suited as "Spades." Goods: These are items that you can buy for your Dudes. Each one has a cost in the lower left hand corner, a value, and an effect. Pictured are two common goods, a Shotgun which gives a bullet bonus and a shootout action to ace low value dudes, and a spiffy New Hat which gives a +1 Influence bonus.  Spells: They work much like goods, but can only attach to an appropriate caster. (Shaman cast Favors, Blessed cast Miracles, Huxsters cast Hexes.)  Events: At the beginning of each turn, all players "ante" one Ghost Rock, draw the top 5 cards of their decks and play lowball poker. The worst hand gets all the antes and the first action that turn. If an Event is revealed in a Lowball hand only, the printed effects happen.  As you can see above, Gomorra citizens are often to subject to "Mountain Lion" attacks. (Nice demonstration of this game's sense of humor also.) If you notice, "Clock Strikes Thirteen" aces itself when it resolves. Since aced cards do not go to your discard pile, that means it will only resolve once. "It Was Only a Mountain Lion" will resolve as many times as it gets shuffled into your deck. Goods, Spells, and Events generally all have "Hearts" for a suit (with a one card exception) Deeds: These are locations. There are two specific zones for deeds: In-town and out-of- town. All deeds are in-town unless they are a Strike or say "out-of-town" specifically.  Pictured are the Lucky Horseshoe lode, a strike full of Ghost Rock (and zombies judging by the flavor text) and the New Moon Saloon, which offers the delightful combination of Beer and Robots. Each has a cost in the lower left, and a production in the lower right (sometimes this is negative, indicating an upkeep cost) and the New Moon is worth 1 Control point (blue poker chip.) Deeds literally form the playing field. When you play in-town deeds from your hand, you place them on either side of your Outfit card, or the side of another of your deeds. This forms your street. Out-of-town deeds are placed off to the side. A playing field will look like this as the game goes on (this picture has the dudes removed.)  Dudes boot to move unless: 1. Moving from Home to an adjacent location. 2. Moving from the Town Square to an adjacent location, except home. (Town square is the empty area in the center of the table. It is adjacent to all in-town locations. Deeds are controlled via influence present. Whomever has the most influence at a deed controls it. If there is a tie, the owner controls it. Deeds are suited as Diamonds. Actions: Actions are cards you play for effects during different phases of the turn. They are the easiest cards to understand. They tell you which phase to play them in, and what they do. Notice the text box is the "action" of a gun which is the worst in-joke ever perpetrated by a design team! Here's a couple noon actions. "War Paint" makes your dude shoot better, and "Rumors" can potentially force your opponent's dude to stop hiding at home.  Here's a Shootout action and a Reaction:  Actions were suited as Clubs. A deck consisted of exactly 52 cards (and optionally you could include 2 Jokers, cards which only had value as a pull or in a hand.) These decks did not have to follow a traditional poker deck's values; in fact, my Flock deck stocked 16 cards with a value of "10" so I could draw 4 and 5 of a kind fairly consistently in shootouts. However, "Cheating" actions exist which can ruin your day if you are caught with a technically illegal poker hand (say... 4 Ks, two of which are Hearts.) Gameplay: Each player begins with their Outfit card and a "Starting Posse" of dudes that cost no more than that player's starting Ghost Rock. A hand of 5 cards is drawn as a play hand. Then the first turn begins. A turn represents one day in Gomorra. At the beginning, each player antes 1 ghost rock from their stockpile and they play lowball as described above. The winner (IE the person with the worst hand) takes the first action. As an action, a player can: Move a Dude Have his unbooted dude call out an opposing dude at the same location (except home) Play a card, paying all costs. Once both players pass, we go to Nightfall, which is when victory conditions are checked. If one player does not have more Control than the highest opponent's influence, players may discard one card, draw back up to 5, then begin the next turn. Whenever a deck is exhausted, the discard pile is shuffled to form a new draw deck. Shootouts: These happen due to call outs or certain actions. During a shootout, each side (starting with the defender) alternates shootout actions. Once both players pass, each side picks a shooter. A stud shooter lets you draw his bullet rating in extra cards above the "free" 5 to make your shootout poker hand. A draw shooter lets you draw your "free" 5 and then discard and redraw up to that many cards at once. Each additional stud Dude in your posse adds one to your initial draw. Each Draw dude lets you discard and draw 1 more card. Whichever side has the best hand wins the shootout. How many opposing dudes are aced depends on how many hand ranks above the opponent the winning side scored. Then, each side can choose to run home booted. If they stay, another round of the shootout begins until 1 side isn't present anymore. There are a lot more subtle rules and nuances but I already sperged enough I think. The Factions The Agency: In the Deadlands universe, the Civil War raged for 20 years longer than in our world. The Agency is the Union's supernatural division. Their job is to eliminate and cover up paranormal activity. Think of "Men in Black" but for ghosts and monsters instead of aliens. Blackjacks: The local criminal gang. Led by "Black Jack Jackson", a man who discovered a rich Ghost Rock strike and was swindled out of it by Sweetrock. His crimes tend to focus on Sweetrock targets. The Collegium: An organization of mad scientists that flocked to Gomorra for the rich Ghost Rock reserves (it's a miracle fuel.) They are the stereotypical absent-minded professors but they build robots and ray guns and cool crap. The Flock/Lost Angels: In the first story arc, a wanderer from the desert named Elijah came to town with his Flock, a collection of grotesque caricatures of the seven deadly sins. Kind of a hosed up morality play. They were used as unwitting pawns of the demon Knicknevin to release him onto the mortal plane. All but Elijah were killed at the end of the arc and the faction was eliminated from the game. Later, Elijah returned with a delegation from the City of Lost Angels which made no sense and was fairly stupid. Law Dogs: The law of the land. Sheriff Coleman (and later, Sheriff Hunter) and their deputies. Maze Rats: Motherfucking Chinese pirates. They sail the Maze (large portions of California broke into the ocean and the gaps were filled with water) and steal everyone's ghost rock. They get into a fairly major tiff with the Collegium later in the story and eventually get a Kung-Fu outfit complete with Kung-Fu powers and action cards. The Sioux: A collection of Native Americans that have set up a settlement outside town. They have come because they know the demon Knicknevin's ascension is near and they intend to fight it. Sweetrock Mining Company: A giant corporation that values money over all else. They stole Black Jack's strike, and killed Sheriff Coleman when he stopped giving them special treatment. Texas Rangers: The Confederacy's equivalent of the Agency. They are a bit louder and a bit tougher. The Whateleys: An inbred family that has worked for generations to bring the demon Knicknevin to the mortal realm. In exchange for working towards this goal, he has granted them power, as well as hosed up mutations (or maybe that was the incest.) The main villains of the first arc, they use the Flock to accomplish their goal finally. The downfall: WotC initially released Doomtown in the FRPG "Rolling Thunder" format, which was a terrible release schedule where a new set of about 90 cards would release every month or two. The main problem was that in a faction based game, it took them over a year to get all the factions released. After 9 episodes, they started a more traditional release schedule with an expansion every few months. Sales were good all through the first major arc. The arc wrapped up with the "Revelations" set, where Knicknevin was released into Gomorra, and all the factions besides the Whateleys teamed up to destroy him forever. In the process, an insane number of characters were killed. After Revelations, AEG bought the right to make and distribute it. However, with so many characters dead, the new "Boot Hill" reprint base set was an uneven clusterfuck. Furthermore, the story meandered through the next two sets and made no sense even to a huge Deadlands mark like me. Finally, they released a final direct to player set and called it a day. The Aftermath Every once in a while, AEG's president says he'd like to bring Doomtown back. The cards sell for crazy amounts on Ebay. It definitely still has a cult following. So post your favorite CCGs here. You don't need to sperg as hard as I just did, but please try to effortpost.
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Nov 5, 2011 20:30
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Hi, my name is Drox and I have a problem: I love buying dead card games from ebay. Right now, I've got three games in my dead game collection. Hecatomb, MegaMan NT Warrior, and Anachronism. I'll talk about them in brief because I don't have time to do an in-depth post on any of them right now. Hecatomb was put out by Wizards, and you might remember it as "that weird magic spin-off with gimmicky cards." Hecatomb had pentagonal cards made of plastic. One edge of the card had some game mechanics, and the other four were transparent. The idea was that you'd stack (stitch) your monster cards together in stacks (abominations) so that they'd have all the powers showing through. Instead of trying to kill or defeat the other player, you're trying to end the world before they do. Until recently, you could actually view full visual spoilers and other resources at the game's official site http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ht but the images seem to all be missing now. Sad. I ended up with a box of starters and a box of each of the two expansions. MegaMan NT Warrior was a Decipher game based on the MegaMan NT anime. The theme was terrible, as you might guess since it was a card game based on an anime based on a game that was part of a spin-off franchise. When I make a bigger post about just it, I'll have to find some of the more choice (awful) flavor text. It's a pretty fun game to play, though! Each player has a 60-card deck, which is 59 cards plus a navi (megaman character) that determines some combat stats. Your deck is your life total, as taking damage forces you to discard. Resources are very dynamic, consisting of a "charge bar" that fills up automatically, and resource cards you play from your hand. Resources and power both do things for you passively, but there are plenty of reasons to spend power, and every resource has an ability that requires you to discard it. It tends to be fast and dynamic. This game was probably killed by its pants-on-head rarity scheme. They have the usual common, uncommon, and rare, but they are then followed by super and ultra rare cards. Then, there's cards that ONLY appear in the starters. How this plays out is that you end up with a shitton of the few same common cards. Let's put it this way. I have one booster box of each of the three sets released and one copy of each of the starter decks. Navi determine in part which cards you want in your deck. Every single one that isn't starter deck only is common. I have something like 9 shadow men and only 3 shadow man cards. Anachronism was a tactical card game, owned by The History Channel and published by Triking. This game is super simple. Your "deck" is five cards. One of these cards is a historical or mythological figure, like Joan of Arc, Theseus, or Ghengis Khan. For bonus points, the names of these characters are all in their native language or transliterated as accurately as possible: Joan of Arc's card is actually Sainte Jeanne D'Arc, and Willam Wallace is rendered Uilleam Uallas. The other four cards are equipment or inspirations that help out your character in some way. Anyway, you get your two (or four for team games!) historical people on a grid and they try to beat the poo poo out of each other. The game is played in four rounds and in each round you reveal one of your supporting cards before players maneuver on the field and attack. I have no idea why this wasn't wildly popular since it's a game where Spartacus can use his Arcabuz to take potshots at Ramses II. It freakin' owns. I have a bunch of the starter decks, and just now realized that I meant to get the rest. There you go, a big wall of text that will hopefully whet your appetites for later.
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Nov 5, 2011 21:18
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Thanks for putting this together, A Fancy Bloke!
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Nov 5, 2011 21:29
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When I was young I bought a booster box and two starters of the SimCity CCG. I've never managed to convince anyone to play it with me but it has an interesting solitaire mode that's actually rather fun. Has anyone else played it?
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Nov 5, 2011 21:37
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Epsilon Plus posted:When I was young I bought a booster box and two starters of the SimCity CCG. I've never managed to convince anyone to play it with me but it has an interesting solitaire mode that's actually rather fun. Has anyone else played it? I have, and it did not work well at all. If you have a bunch of players who enjoy the computer game it might go better.
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Nov 5, 2011 21:47
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Beerdeer posted:I have, and it did not work well at all. If you have a bunch of players who enjoy the computer game it might go better. I'd second that. I quite like the whole concept of building a city and seeing it take shape, but there was no real competition to the whole thing; you just plonked down cards and earned an arbitrary amount of $, with no real strategy to the whole thing. Shame, I really wanted to like it.
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Nov 5, 2011 22:18
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MikeCrotch posted:I'd second that. I quite like the whole concept of building a city and seeing it take shape, but there was no real competition to the whole thing; you just plonked down cards and earned an arbitrary amount of $, with no real strategy to the whole thing. Shame, I really wanted to like it. Reminds me of Star Trek CCG. I'm not going to do an effortpost on it (though I could) but one of the dumbest things about it was that cards had no cost. So there was no reason at all to play Ensign Redshirt over Captain Picard if you had both in your hand.
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Nov 5, 2011 22:24
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Wasnt Star Trek CCG a real solitaire-like game? Barely any interaction? I had a bunch of Doomtown cards but I ended up getting rid of them. It always looked like a fun game and had the best rules text (Boot a Dude).
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Nov 5, 2011 22:36
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Snacksmaniac posted:Wasnt Star Trek CCG a real solitaire-like game? Barely any interaction? It depends on what faction you played. The Federation basically played solitaire. They had the best personnel, the best ships until Borg came out, and had a huge crossover of skills that made them almost immune to anything once rolling. And again, if you spent the money for the entire TNG bridge crew and the Enterprise, you had a distinct advantage over the opponent playing non-unique personnel and ships. As the game matured and there were 10 total factions it got a little better, but all the non-Federation, non-Borg races played exactly the same. Star Trek CCG was actually my first CCG, it got me into Magic. Around the time Star Trek: Nemesis came out, Decipher released a "Second Edition" Trek CCG that was actually quite good. It addressed most of the major problems with the original game, such as adding costs to cards, splitting the Federation faction into "shows", and giving each specific faction its own mechanical theme to play around with. It's actually quite fun to play and I know you can get combo boxes with starters and boosters for around 20 dollars from the wholesale card dealers like Potomac and Hill's Wholesale. We still bust out the 2E decks at the game store on occasion, but I couldn't tell you the last time we played 1E. Edit: Oh, I forgot the worst part about 1E Trek. There was a pre-game phase called the "Seed" phase where you laid dilemma cards under missions face down for your opponent to find when they tried that mission. The seed phase often took 10-15 minutes and was super boring. Hail Mr. Satan! fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 22:52
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You guys remember the Netrunner game? It was probably based on something. One side played THE CORPORATION trying to stave off people getting their info, and the other side were RUNNERS who were hackers trying to steal information from the corp. The starter set came with a deck for each side. It was a super fun game, and if it were still around I would play it!
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Nov 5, 2011 23:35
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 a bunch of pictures lifted from dystemporalia, a neat fan site. Anachronism, the game so awesome it doesn't need any subtitles. The mists of time part to deposit mighty warriors with artifacts from throughout history onto a battlefield. Only one will emerge victorious. The game is played on a 4x4 grid. Each player has some six-sided dice and five cards. One of their five cards are their Warrior card, representing some person from history or myth.  Pictured here is one of my favorites to play, Saint Joan of Arc. There are six important things on her card besides the text box. On the top, we have a grid and an element. The grid uses the triangle to show which squares she can hit given her facing. Each square with a number in it is something she can hit, and the number is a bonus or penalty to a die roll. Weapon cards have their own grids and bonuses. The elements are mostly a pokemon type of thing. Some cards will only work with a specific element of warrior, some cards gain bonuses against an element or warrior. By themselves, though, they don't mean anything. The symbols down the side are, from the top: health, speed, experience, and damage. Health is what you beat out of your opponent to make them die. Speed is how many actions you get in a turn. Experience breaks ties, with more experienced characters winning ties. Damage is the amount of health someone loses if you hit them with your normal attack (the grid on this card). I chose to start with Jeanne here because her ability gives me a nice segue into the four other cards you play during a round, your support cards. Normally you may only have one of each type of support card: weapon, armor, inspiration, special, and a few others. Her ability says that you can just pile on the armor and hit harder for it. I'll show off the cards that I like to use with Jeanne.     Her sword and three pieces of armor stolen from Vlad Tepes, Uilliam Uallace, and Beyazid I. Each support card has a new thing, a golden number in the left. You see, none of these cards start in play. You arrange them face down before the game starts and then reveal them in order at the beginning of each round. That number is your initiative. Higher initiative goes first, and some warriors care when they go. So, for the first round, you have one support, two in the second, and so on. Anyway, all support cards have three attributes: culture - type - slot. You can't duplicate types or slots or have more than two hands of weapons or shields. For instance, you can't normally have two weapons or wear two things on your head OR have a two-handed weapon and a shield. If you break these rules, you must remove one of the cards from the game. You'll have one fewer card than your opponent, but you have a bit more flexibility. The game is played in five rounds- one to reveal each support card, and then a final round with all supports showing. Whoever wins initiative gets to go first. On your turn, you get actions equal to your speed. You can use an action to move, attack, or change your facing. Sometimes, you'll have cards that you can spend actions on to do something. When you attack, you roll two dice and add the modifier from the attack grid. The defender rolls two dice and adds any modifiers they might have (usually bonuses from armor). If the attacker gets a higher number, the defender takes damage. If the attacker hit and rolled doubles, that's a crit and the defender takes double damage. A weapon can only be used once in a turn, so if you have actions for extra attacks, they will usually be the basic one on your warrior's card. Whoever has the least health remaining at the end of the fifth round loses. Games are short, usually taking 15 minutes at most, and it's easy to let people make their own "decks" since they just need to pick a dude and four cards that will work well with him or her. In addition to being quick and simple, rounds can be tense sometimes. It's not actually often that someone is killed outright, and the last round might have a desperate gambit or two in it. I don't feel like getting back to work yet, so I'm going to show off two of my other combos: Ramses II and Vlad Tepes.  Ramses is a pretty stone-cold kind of dude. He's only going to attack you once, but he's probably going to get +6 (on 2d6, remember) to hit you. You will take damage.     My Ramses kit here loves to re-roll. Since his natural ability doesn't let him get other bonuses, why not just re-roll instead? Sporan helps everything, Kaliva is great for getting Zhad to trigger, Asterionas saves your butt if re-rolls fail, and the Zhad is great since that special action isn't an attack. You can use that and Ramses' ability on the same turn.  Vlad hurts you before the game starts. Dude is gonna impale the poo poo out of you, and he's letting you know it.     Vlad's cards here are all about the vengeance. Always play Cassandra first! They either get to miss you or take one damage. Sweet deal. Cluaran can seal the fate of someone attacking you without armor- most characters have 5-8 health and +2 damage is a LOT. Ra makes sure that you can play catch-up if you need to. The claymore helps your inevitability by reducing their ability to defend themselves. For now, I should probably get back to reading about tax law and boring things like that, but I will be back sometime in the future with a write-up on Hecatomb and Megaman. Please let me know if you have any questions about Anachronism in the meantime. Last I checked, there are still quite a few packs available on ebay. If you want to give it a shot, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
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Nov 5, 2011 23:48
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The SW CCG by Decipher was the best, and my first CCG. I loving loved it. I still have all of my old cards somewhere. Also I'll second that Netrunner was an awesome fun game.
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Nov 6, 2011 01:01
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Quidnose posted:You guys remember the Netrunner game? It was probably based on something. One side played THE CORPORATION trying to stave off people getting their info, and the other side were RUNNERS who were hackers trying to steal information from the corp. Netrunner was killed by the competitive scene because they figured out there was basically three good decks. I'm of the personal opinion that 7th Sea is one of the best CCGs ever made. Its rare that there is a game that gets better with the addition of more players, but 7th Sean is that game. I only wish it had held on a little longer, because I feel the resurgence of pirate themed things in the wake of Pirates of the Caribbean would have re-popularized the game. AEG probably regrets burying it as well, since the game they got rid of it (and Deadlands) to make was Spycraft a game that was boring, cliche and sold very poorly. It also avoided the big pitfall of a lot of AEG games by not basically being a slightly tweaked version of L5R (Dune, Legend of the Burning Sands).
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Nov 6, 2011 01:16
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Oh wonderful, a thread where I can dork out over the Dragon Ball Z and GT CCGs made by Score. I'll have to get a write-up done on the game's mechanics ASAP.
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Nov 6, 2011 01:48
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Dead CCGs are the best CCGs. Each player was an ancient super vampire, controlling minions of lesser vampires. The goal was to "bleed" the other players out of the game. Bleeding represented weakening their influence rather than physical damage. You started with a pool of 30 blood, and then spent these hitpoints as a resource. This would hire your minions, which were vampires. Your minions would bleed your prey (the player to your left), his minions would block (or not) and then combat would ensue. The winner was the last player standing. It was a multiplayer TCG set in White Wolf's original World of Darkness. It had it all! Vampires, political intrigue, interesting combat, boobies! What could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot of things. Jihad isn't the most obvious name for a game about vampires. It's actually a better name for a game about holy wars. So they changed the name. And the backs of all the cards. Every card. And then Wizards dumped it. WW picked up the game, and applied White Wolf magic, which meant bringing it in-line with the ever-expanding old WoD. Suddenly there were more clans and disciplines. Disciplines were classes of cards, much like how MtG colors work. And then there was errata. Pages of errata. Cards were reworked to be played entirely different than the words printed on them. Paragraphs were added. Mechanics changed. All of this was off-card and behind the scenes in blurry dot-matrix printouts stapled together and shoved in your backpack with your deck boxes. It's still out there, and horrifying. Its biggest obstacle was game size. You could generally only attack the player seated to your left. In games with more than two players, this led to fantastic interaction. Cross-table dealings, political action, lies, and bluffs. But the game was a lame shadow of itself with only two players. At the height of the CCG glut, you were lucky if you knew even one person who liked your game besides Magic. And you needed four other players with decks if you wanted to get the most out of the game.
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Nov 6, 2011 02:30
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I think you mean...undead CCGS?
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Nov 6, 2011 02:53
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Vampire/Jyhad is an amazing game with the right group, with lots of intrigue, strategy and action. My playgroup contained the wrong people. :/
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Nov 6, 2011 03:02
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Arrgytehpirate posted:The SW CCG by Decipher was the best, and my first CCG. I loving loved it. I still have all of my old cards somewhere. Also I'll second that Netrunner was an awesome fun game. That game went off the rails though. Each set seemed to add a new  mechanic. I quit around Jabba's Palace and would check in every so often and just shake my head. They did the same thing with LOTR!
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Nov 6, 2011 03:14
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Once upon a time (in the year 2000 to be exact) Wizards of the Coast decided to make a CCG based on professional wrestling. Namely, World Championship Wrestling. It was called WCW Nitro, named after the flagship TV show. Of course, WCW ceased to exist in March of 2001 so the game wasn't exactly long lived. It was a fairly simple game actually, you can learn to play it in about ten minutes. The way it works is that you have a 60 card deck and then your wrestler of choice who is outside the deck and starts in play. This is what the wrestler cards looks like:  The colours at the top tells you which kinds of moves your wrestler can do. Blue cards are high-risk, high-flyer moves. Green cards are mat wrestling moves or maneuvers. Magenta cards are lifting or power moves. Orange cards are hardcore or illegal moves. Yellow cards are submission moves. White cards are special actions that any Wrestler can use. No more than four of any of these cards can be included in your deck. The little +1 means that any move of that colour does an additional damage if it hits. The number in the star is the wrestlers reputation which is used for two things. To decide who goes first and it dictates the starting hand size. Each wrestler also has a special ability that you can use once per turn. Lets look at some moves:  Immediately we can see three numbers on these cards. The top number (in the red N) is the required amount of Nitro you need to have in play to actually do your move. Nitro cards represent the cost or preparation necessary to play another card. You must have Nitro cards in play in sufficient numbers to be able to play other desired cards. Once played, Nitro cards are never "used up" or "tapped". They remain in play and allow you to play your other cards unless another game event requires one or more Nitro to be discarded. Your deck may have any number of Nitro cards in it. The final thing that Nitro does is that you have more Nitro cards in play than your opponent you gain a "Nitro bonus" which grants you +1 damage to your attacks. The silver triangle tells you how many "action points" it costs to perform your move. You get 3 action points every turn to use and you have three things to do with them. You can obviously perform your moves but you can also play Nitro cards at 1 AP per card or you can choose to draw 1 card for 1 AP. The last number in the D is naturally the amount of damage done to the opponent. The colour inside the D also tells you which type of move it is. Now you might be wondering exactly how you win, since there's no health indicator on the wrestler cards. The way it works is that when you land a succesful attack on your opponent the damage he takes is in the form of cards from his deck being put into his discard pile. When your opponent has no cards left in his deck, then you win. The flavour idea being that you have exhausted your opponent and he is now incapable of defending himself. The other important card type is the Thunder cards. These are various defensive cards.  The Thunder cards all have two modes as you can see in the picture. The hand icon tells you what happens if you play this card from your hand during an opponents attack. The deck icon is what happens if this card is revealed due to an opponent dealing damage to you. Say you get whacked for 10 damage and Block came up as card number five then the rest of the damage would be ignored. There are even Thunder cards that will completely negate the attack and end your opponents turn. Each wrestler of course also has 3 signature moves that only they can do, they are typically very powerful effects so they are limited to 1 each per deck. This is just a very short write up, but I can go into more detail if anyone cares. The game died for a number of reasons. It wasn't actually a very balanced game which I guess is because it was so shortlived. If you built it right though you could have a deck that can win on the first turn. There was actually an expansion made but I dont think very many boxes were shipped out before the game got killed. I've never actually been able to find any packs or cards from it. Also, this game is hilariously cheap these days, a box of 36 11-card booster packs costs $12 from Troll&Toad. Finally, Comic Images basically stole the gameplay for the WWF licensed Raw Deal ccg but I can't remember if WOTC ever did anything about it. Matches are short and usually great fun, don't expect a match to last more than ten minutes at most. We've played this occasionally between other games at the local gaming store and for some reason people always have to stop and look at the various glittering musclebound men. 
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Nov 6, 2011 03:39
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Doing a little research, I see that there was a game called XXXenophile which was based on Phil Foglio comics? I think that may have been the game I remember advertised in InQuest years and years ago. The mechanics sounded really interesting but my parents wouldn't let me investigate any further because it was about space boinking or whatever.
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Nov 6, 2011 03:40
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Star Man posted:Oh wonderful, a thread where I can dork out over the Dragon Ball Z and GT CCGs made by Score. I'll have to get a write-up done on the game's mechanics ASAP. For 6 months I lived in Terre Haute, IN (don't live there) and some of the guys I befriended at the LGS were REALLY good at the DBZ game. They would break the poo poo out of cards and then call the Organized Play guys at Score who would put out errata or ban cards. edit: I loved Doomtown and never got to play cause I was the only guy who bought cards.
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Nov 6, 2011 04:11
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Mastiff posted:Doing a little research, I see that there was a game called XXXenophile which was based on Phil Foglio comics? I think that may have been the game I remember advertised in InQuest years and years ago. The mechanics sounded really interesting but my parents wouldn't let me investigate any further because it was about space boinking or whatever. Nine Inch Neil is my bookmark.
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Nov 6, 2011 04:44
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A Fancy Bloke posted:Around the time Star Trek: Nemesis came out, Decipher released a "Second Edition" Trek CCG that was actually quite good. It addressed most of the major problems with the original game, such as adding costs to cards, splitting the Federation faction into "shows", and giving each specific faction its own mechanical theme to play around with. It's actually quite fun to play and I know you can get combo boxes with starters and boosters for around 20 dollars from the wholesale card dealers like Potomac and Hill's Wholesale. We still bust out the 2E decks at the game store on occasion, but I couldn't tell you the last time we played 1E. I liked 2E quite a bit, but I still couldn't help but feel like there just wasn't enough interaction between players. Still, WAY better than the mess that was 1E. Another thing I never understood about 2E was the one expansion that, as far as I could tell, had the most powerful cards but also had an incredibly small print run. Maybe I just got into it at the wrong time, but this was very frustrating. I recently found a very old Scrye magazine that covers a multitude of bizarre, old CCGs. It's incredible how many there were for a while there. If there's interest I'd be happy to scan and post some of the more interesting stuff.
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Nov 6, 2011 05:25
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InvadErGII posted:I liked 2E quite a bit, but I still couldn't help but feel like there just wasn't enough interaction between players. Still, WAY better than the mess that was 1E. Another thing I never understood about 2E was the one expansion that, as far as I could tell, had the most powerful cards but also had an incredibly small print run. Maybe I just got into it at the wrong time, but this was very frustrating. Please do! That sounds cool. Like what we're doing here, but contemporary. With the past.
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Nov 6, 2011 05:39
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Stormageddon posted:Nine Inch Neil is my bookmark. Did you play the game? I seem to remember a grid of cards being involved.
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Nov 6, 2011 05:42
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Never found anyone to play with, I just saw the card at a shop and found it funny. Guess the new edition coming out its as good a time as any to try to get more people into l5r, I'll probably write something up today.
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Nov 6, 2011 06:07
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moths posted:I played this game for a number of years. I still have all my decks, about 14, and I've tried getting some people to play it. The political aspect, with the voting, was great and the title system worked out pretty well. When they added Anarchs, poo poo didn't really change but you could tell they were running out of ideas. I stopped playing a little after that, the Red List set was the last one I bought. Eventually they added in stuff like Hunters and the African vampires and it just seemed like they were running it into the ground. The fact that it was based on OWoD and they never came out with NWoD equivalent didn't help matters either. Tournaments followed story arcs and it was interesting because most the vampire characters were characters from the books. So NPCs in the books would eventually get cards and updated cards to reflect changes in new books and from tournament play. Quidnose posted:Netrunner I love Netrunner, I bought a starter at Gencon last year. It's a pretty fun game but it's a shame it only got a couple sets. I kind of wish someone would reboot it but WotC just wants to sit on the property and not sell it off. Apparently, back in the 90's/early 00's WotC would buy up licenses for good properties, like Battletech, and release mediocre or lovely games so that they would never have a competitor for MtG. It was a pretty genius scheme but it makes a lot of sense considering the large number of short lived or lovely games in 90's/early 00's. I remember games like Animayhem and Sailor Moon and vomit a little in my mouth. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Nov 6, 2011 |
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Nov 6, 2011 06:13
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I was talking with a co-worker one day when we had to be in to work on Saturday and I had GGSLive on in the background, and he used to play the Star Wars CCG back in the day. Apparently the game isn't dead, there's a player-led group that updates/modifies the cards and releases new "sets". The only drawback is that you have to have the original card they are modifying and either glue/tape the new text over the old card and/or place it in a sleeve. I checked out a PDF and there are updated card frames that are like a giant "C" so the original portrait could show through. Since I never really played the game when it first came out, I never looked it up online but you can see what they did here.
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Nov 6, 2011 07:21
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This looks like as good a thread as any to talk about the Game of Thrones CCG/LCG that Fantasy Flight has. I'll probably do a much more in detail write-up later. For anyone unfamiliar with the game, it is a 8 year old game based of the Song of Ice and Fire series. I've never played a CCG that ends up more skill intensive then Thrones. The game has a lot of similarities to magic, as many CCG's tend to. You use gold to play cards out of hand (Characters, the equivalent to Creatures; Locations that are similar to non-basic lands, producing more gold to play more cards or have other constant abilities; Events, your one use instants; and Attachments, much akin to enchantment auras.). The real meat of the game is made of two things. First is that turns are nearly simultaneous, and the combat mechanics, which are a bit more in depth than just attacking and blocking. Outside of magic, A Game of Thrones is my favorite TCG of choice. It's a very small game, with few players, but an extremely fun game that's quite easy to pick up.
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Nov 6, 2011 07:52
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I still play the second oldest CCG, Legend of the Five Rings. We're getting a new base set come January, with Emperor Edition, complete with 9 separate factions with 4 different strongholds/deck archetypes each. If you liked Doomtown or 7th Sea or Legend of the Burning Sands, these are all dead games made by the creators of L5R, Alderac Entertainment Group. Do we have any other rings players in the house? I know there was a thread a couple years back, but I wonder if any of them are still here. Magic players just glaze over when I tell them that matches are 45 minutes long and frequently go to time. For one game.
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Nov 6, 2011 09:41
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Anyone ever played X-Files CCG? I loved X-Files on TV, but nobody in my group wanted to play anything but Magic. So I was stuck with reading about it in InQuest magazine  .
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Nov 6, 2011 09:55
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Doomtrooper LOL, I have a sealed box of boosters sitting in my closet for trade for any respectable bologna sandwich. Fried if possible.
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Nov 6, 2011 10:22
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I remember this one game called MagiNation. I can't remember too much about it other then it was fun. Also, where can I find good info about L5R? I'm thinking about trying to start it up. Sounds fun.
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Nov 6, 2011 10:40
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Do you like CCGs? Of course you do! That's what this thread is about, after all! But do you also like tabletop wargames? Especially if they're set in the NotWorld of Darkness? Boy, do I have the game for you.  Released in 2003 in Germany with its first and final official expansion in 2004. There are a third and a fourth edition made in 2006 and 2007 by the fans after the game flopped hilariously. There are still tourneys being held despite the status of the game. Behind is both an unorthodox CCG as well as a tabletop wargame on the individual character scale. You chose one of five factions and build both a team of characters as well as a deck for play. Win conditions are determined by the scenario you agree to play instead of last player standing. You play either on a fold-out map or simply place obstacles on your table and you're good to go. Some pictures of cards and cardboard chips: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/45476/behind The factions: Characters are split into two groups for each facion: regular characters and magic users. Without at least one magic user in the field you can't play your cards marked as magic. The Templars One of the two human factions, they are warriors of faith who oppose the sinister supernaturals whose goal is either the domination or destruction of the world. They rely mainly on mundane equipment, faith and the support their world-wide organisation provides to each cell. Unlile their regular templars their chaplains can call on miracles to aid them further. Most Templar characters have a faith score that gives them a bonus in melee when they're outnumbered. They are allied, which means they have card overlap, with the Sisterhood and the Werewolves. Werewolves The Werewolves are raging, murdering earth-loving defenders of nature and humankind. Well, sometimes some humans get in the way and get squished in their rage but it's the thought that counts. The werewolves are firmly on the good side simply because the evil factions are total assholes. Their shamen primarily call upon Powers of the Earth to support their guardians. The Werewolves schtick is that they can transform into the huge furry murdering man-beasts we all love to gain bonus stats. Since they are nominally defenders of mankind they share some items and even some magic with the Templars. Their nature also means that they're also close to the animalistic side of the Vampires, so the two factions share some cards despite being enemies. Vampires Think oWoD Vampires and you're very close to what these bloodsuckers are supposed to be. They're the movers and shakers behind mortal society, using their experience and powers to manipulate society to their advantage, when they aren't going on a blood fuelled rage that is. Their masters can call upon unholy Bloodrites while their pupils look upon in awe or plotting to take their rightful place as masters. The Vampires share cards with the Werewolves as well as the other undead faction, the Ghosts. Ghosts Condemned to an existence between life and death they seek to destroy everything that binds them in their current form. They are vengeful and nihilistic spirits holding a grudge or simply the spirits of psychopaths who want to see the world burn, forever. They are focused on interdiction and control, basically the blue deck of behind. Their spectres have access to unspeakable Powers of the Dead while their poltergeists are simply out to cause destruction and suffering. The Ghosts share some cards with the Vampires as well as the Sisterhood. Sisterhood Consisting of a cabal of sorcresses and warriors the Sisterhood is another global human faction that is out to achieve their own goals. They sometimes align with the Templars or Werewolves but most of the time they're at best on neutral terms with the good guys. There are rumors that their seers are practicing forbitten sorcery. their warriors are adept at fighting as a team. They have access to similar equipment as the the Templars as well as access to some of the Ghosts powers. Play Decks must be of a preset size, no larger or smaller. Usually 40 or 50 cards per deck, not including character cards. Characters have a cost associated with them and you build your team according to the budget the players agreed upon. The total amount of character points also determines how many actions you get per turn and how many cards each player holds in his or her hand. Playing cards costs an action and when you run out your turn is over. Some cards can be played during enemy turns but doing so reduces the amount of actions you'll have on your next turn. Every Player draws enough cards to replenish their hand fully after every player turn. You'll always have a full hand at the beginning of each player's turn. This big turnover rate isn't that bad, because when your deck is depleted you simply shuffle your graveyard and continue playing. Cards have a number from 0 to 9 in the top left corner which is used for conflict resolution and various checks some cards and abilities call for (e.g. if your werewolf can maintain their transformation for another turn.) They also all have a movement allowance which comes in the form of x times 1-3 inches. If you play a card for movement you ignore all other text on it unless it states that it activates when the card is played for movement. You can move one or more characters x times for up to how many inches the card has on it. 3 times 2 inches means that you can move one character 3 times for two inches or up to 3 characters for 2 inches each. There are several types of cards: Permanent: Equipment can be played on characters and enhances them. (Revolvers, swords, talismans etc.) Persons are non-combatants that provide bonuses or can be put in your graveyard for an effect. (Conspiracy nut comes to mind) Places are facilities that boost all your characters' stats or provide abilites. (training camps and churches for Templars or even non-places like Very Close-by or Middle-of-Nowhere for the Ghosts) There is also ritual magic that remains in play until it gets overwritten or dispelled. Just like magic cards: Events are like sorcery, you can only play then when it's your turn. Moments can be played in an opponent's turn like interrupts. Combat Every character has a Strength, Dexterity and a Toughness score. Melee is resolved by adding the Strength of the attacker and the numbers of one card from your hand as well as the number on the top card of your deck together plus any modifiers from cards that are made to be played in combat or special abilities. You compare the score of the attacker with the score of the defender, who also gets the two cards, and if one beats the other by the Toughness of the loser the defeated character receives an injury. You can sustain several injuries in one attack and injuries reduce their stats as well. Reaching a total of 3 means the character is taken out. Ranged combat requires either the character to be equipped with a ranged weapon or to receive a power that allows them to make a ranged attack. They are resolved by adding the number on the card that allows the ranged attack as well as the top most card from the deck to the dex score of the attacker. Since most weapons have a a rather low number, 4 for a rife and 0 for a sniper rifle, ranged attacks are rather unlikely to result in an injury. Defenders dodge by adding a card from the hand as well as one from the deck to the dex of the target. if the attacker beats the target by the its toughness yada yada. you get the picture. Ranged attacks rely on the weapon's movement allowance to determine range. It's somewhere around 2 or 3 times the total movement is the range of the attack. Victory Is dependant on the scenario you're playing. Occupy a certain spot of the map for x turns or whatever you want. Don't do a free-for-all Last man standing because the combat heavy teams, like Werewolves or Vampires, with a combat optimised deck will beat the others hands down. Or worse you'll face a cheezy Ghost deck that is really unfun to play against.
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Nov 6, 2011 12:09
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OperaMouse posted:Anyone ever played X-Files CCG? I played it briefly when I was going through a big CCG phase. I don't remember much about it honestly. I don't remember it being terrible but it couldn't have been very good as I couldn't describe to you a single play mechanic. I remember ones that my group got into that were pretty fun were both the original Lord of the Rings CCG that was based on the actual books and not any of the movies. Also, the Shadowrun CCG which was a ton of fun.
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Nov 6, 2011 12:27
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Stormageddon posted:Never found anyone to play with, I just saw the card at a shop and found it funny. Yogo Junzo's Army/Shadowlands/The Lost/Spider Clan forever
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Nov 6, 2011 12:43
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bairfanx posted:I still play the second oldest CCG, Legend of the Five Rings. We're getting a new base set come January, with Emperor Edition, complete with 9 separate factions with 4 different strongholds/deck archetypes each. If you liked Doomtown or 7th Sea or Legend of the Burning Sands, these are all dead games made by the creators of L5R, Alderac Entertainment Group. I've only been playing since March or so, but I do play L5R.
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Nov 6, 2011 12:50
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I really want to like L5R, but they've been on a pretty steep decline since Gold Edition that doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon. Since Gold went on its merry way they've managed to kill off one of the most iconic parts of L5R (Ratlings), universally decide to radically change how Shadowlands plays every other goddamn set, make previously unique factions really bland (Mantis) and introduce strange deck styles that are out of step with the fluff (Magistrates). Not to mention they moved the plot from "complex but understandable" to "spergtastically complex and confusing" territory. Pretty much all the "major" plot stuff in diamond and lotus was atrocious (Iuchiban, Otosan not being the drat capital anymore, the Shogun, setting up Naseru as interesting and then basically killing him off instantly, Sezaru's magical flying nun dues ex machina escapades). The core game is still good, but its in the hands of AEG who are a company with hilariously bad business sense and questionable adherence to the game design doctrines of the 90's.
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Nov 6, 2011 13:20
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I think L5R's actual gameplay is better than it's ever been. But I agree with all your other points except Ratlings. They were pretty goofy and existed in a time where they desperately needed to eliminate factions.
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Nov 6, 2011 13:55
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I think I prefer the multiple play styles for each clan they have now over the down right broken way it used to be(scorpion always beats lion, but can never beat shadowlands). I know people are affectionate to the ratling deck, but from the accounts of people who played against it, it was a busted deck that was downright unpleasant to play against. As far as story, nobody can read A Moment's Hesitation and think the story is suffering at all. http://www.l5r.com/story/a-moments-hesitation/ Stormageddon fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Nov 6, 2011 |
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Nov 6, 2011 14:18
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