What are the best CCGs?

[ProphetSword]

If you think playing Magic is straight forward and doesn’t offer you a lot of choices, you’ve been playing with the wrong people and with the wrong decks.

 

[Vagiel]

If you think playing Magic is straight forward and doesn’t offer you a lot of choices, you’ve been playing with the wrong people and with the wrong decks.

Compared to more complex games like netrunner, conquest and l5r mtg is the oblivion of card games....

 

[anvi]

I would bet that MTG is the most complex game on the planet, but I haven't played that 5 rings yet. Playing these modern games like HS and Eternal made me realize just how much of MTG was aspie silliness and not actually necessary. But mostly because it has been around so long, if someone could think of a cool card idea, it has already been done in MTG. You can do anything.... Kill lands, turn lands into creatures, turn creatures into lands, have no creatures at all, have only creatures, have more than 4 of a single creature, kill everything on the entire board, etc. Everything has been done, which means you have to learn a massive amount to get good at the game.

I just uninstalled Eternal for a similar reason. I like the basic gameplay of playing creatures and some basic spells to help them along. I played a lot, tried a few decks, beat a lot of noobs, etc. Fun game. But there are some really OP cards that piss me off because they become essential, and there are some really OP combos too. The one that made me finally uninstall was some massive 10 cost card that plays about 5 flying creatures, and he did something to discard the 10 cost card into his graveyard, and then pays some little card that summons that from the graveyard. So on like turn 4 or something I end up having to fight against about five 4/4 ish flying creatures which is just impossible, especially seeing as he already had another one or two in play and used spells to kill my only flyers. It's not that stuff like this can't be beat, the problem is that to beat it you have to play a different type of game. You have to say ok flying creatures are OP so lets focus on flying. So that makes half the cards in the game obsolete. And spells that do damage are pointless when you can have a spell that just kills a creature. So that makes another huge obsolete. And then big fun creatures like the one that starts 1/1 but gets bigger for each creature that dies, might be fun to try to build up, but is ultimately weak shit when someone can just play a single card that summons an entire board of 4/4 flyers!

In other words, they fucked their own game all in the name of money. Although MTG have been doing this for a decade. Cards like Emrakuul popping out on turn 2 or 3 made just think fuck it, why bother. The problem with MTG (and others like it), is that they only make money when people buy new cards. But to ensure that people buy them... they have to make some that are better than anything else that exists. So each new set is a bit stronger than the last one, and it grows out of control. It is like an arms race.

 

[Vagiel]

I agree that mtg is very very complex due to the huge cardpool and deck options but when you actually have a deck and are playing the game things are much more simple and it is hard to differentiate the good player that spent time and analyzed the meta and the environment from the rich guy who copied the top deck online and forkes the cash to buy the cards.

The advantage of lcg over ccg is that everyone has access to the same card pool so the complexity is shifted towards actually playing the game and piloting your deck correctly which is much more interesting and engaging.

 

[thesheeep]

I hear a lot of people here saying mtg is a complex game. Really? Has it changed so much in the laat 10 years?

A quick Ctrl+F tells me only thesheeep said exactly that. Not sure he qualifies as "a lot of people".

It is just quite a logical statement, really.
There are many things that MtG has, which significantly increase its complexity, that other games simply don't have (or only some of it).
Just off the top of my head, I think the most important ones are:
- Assigning blockers instead of enabling targeted attacks, this adds so much more depth and indirectness to combat than straightforward "attack this creature" does. When you attack, you simply don't know what the result will be as you don't know what the opponent will do in reaction.
- Interrupts/instants. The ability to react to anything going on in the game with abilities and some spells. Some games don't even have the concept of "counters", let alone letting you act during the opponent's turn.
- More formats than can be counted.
- More cards than you'd ever need.
- The need to manage/plan/build for your mana base. At least in the digital sphere, almost every game just gives you something like +1 mana each round.
- Cards that can arbitrarily change rules around. For some reason, I found that only MtG does this very regularly, while most other card games stay very conservative with what rules text is printed on a card.

Now, I'm not saying that no other CCG reaches MtG's complexity, maybe there are some. But I sure as hell have never played one of them, and I've played quite a few.

If there's one thing that many other card games have over MtG in potential complexity, it's this: Utilizing the fact that they are digital (well, at least those that are, obviously).
For example, I recently saw an interesting card in Elder Scrolls Legends that turns every creature you draw into a random creature of another type. Stuff like that simply isn't possible with cards that are restricted to what is physically possible with paper cards.

There's also some games (like Faeria, and Mojang's Scrolls was like that as well) which combine the CCG with an actual board, on which positioning and movement matters.

Again, comparing to Netrunner, it is a game which relies heavily on bluffing and taking calculated risk, and it a totally different experience and (dare I say, there's a totally different level of complexity in that particular aspect)
than MtG. I guess it all depends on what you're looking for. I know people who simply aren't interested in the type of gameplay offered by MtG.

Netrunner is dead, though.
Which is a shame, I always wanted to try it. No need to get into a CCG that has seen its end...

So yeah after having a quick look at the current environment what you say seems about right but my problem with mtg is that it is mostly deck building and deckbuilding means money even just to test a strategy ( magic players tend to be a bit edgy and don't react well to proxys) and actually playing the game is very standard and mechanical with rare option for choices and consequences.

If you think playing MtG is mechanical with rare options for choices & very dire consequences, then I would assume you played with complete idiots or with/against extremely bad decks.
Even playing MtG Arena every now and then I am constantly faced with decisions to make based on my analysis of the situation, which is (almost) always incomplete. As spectre said, there is a lot of bluffing in MtG.

 

[anvi]

I agree that mtg is very very complex due to the huge cardpool and deck options but when you actually have a deck and are playing the game things are much more simple and it is hard to differentiate the good player that spent time and analyzed the meta and the environment from the rich guy who copied the top deck online and forkes the cash to buy the cards.

The advantage of lcg over ccg is that everyone has access to the same card pool so the complexity is shifted towards actually playing the game and piloting your deck correctly which is much more interesting and engaging.

Yea the rich guy with a copy of last week's tournament winning deck is absolute cancer. I hate it for many reasons! It encourages copying and kills one big part of the game which is learning how to make your own good decks, it is such a low self esteem move, it is not in the spirit of fun, it ruins the game by making everyone suffer endless losses unless they start playing super brutal decks instead of fun ones, and many other things that piss me off. I hate it so much. And sadly in MTG it is completely unavoidable unless you have some people you can play with and all stick to some sort of made up rules. It never used to be like that in the good ole days, but now playing against these 'netdecks' is all you see, even in the 'casual' room of MTG:Online it was almost every match.

Basically I love the game but I hate the players. And even the game I loved before it lost its soul and gave up on the concept of inflation.

I am gonna try that 5 rings game next. Learning a whole new set world of cards is pretty daunting but I don't mind it if it isn't constantly busting my balls to pay.

 

[Vagiel]

If you have want to try l5r i would be glad to get you started pm for any details

 

[ProphetSword]

- Assigning blockers instead of enabling targeted attacks, this adds so much more depth and indirectness to combat than straightforward "attack this creature" does. When you attack, you simply don't know what the result will be as you don't know what the opponent will do in reaction.

This multiplied by 1,000. Most of these digital games have gameplay that allows you to directly attack creatures, which just sucks the fun right out of the game; because it takes all tactical options out of the hands of the player who played the card in the first place. This is why Eternal is the only game besides MtG that has an edge for me, as they retained this sort of gameplay.

If you think playing MtG is mechanical with rare options for choices & very dire consequences, then I would assume you played with complete idiots or with/against extremely bad decks.

This is basically the same thing I said up above. I find people who don't know the game well enough tend to build decks that are one-trick ponies or rely on a certain combo of cards, which is a sure-fire way to get your ass beat. Once I started playing on a tournament level (back in the mid 90s), I learned really quick that you can beat the most expensive decks with just commons if you know how to do it. So, I also don't buy the bullshit excuse that you need money to be competitive.

 

[Vagiel]

Guys you talk about attacking a player or a plans Walker like it's rocket science. You have 7 cards in your hand 2-3 are lands 1-2 creatures and a couple of spells most of the time you but what you can afford maybe keeping some mana for an instant and attack or not...

In l5r which i am more familiar you have 2 decks of 40 each 5 provinces where you chose to attack, choosing a ring that represents the effect you gain after you win the battle, choosing if it is a political or military fight, choosing one of the 4 different win conditions, choosing to spend all your money or save some since money saved stays with you for the rest of the game etc...etc...

The level of complexity compared to mtg is huge that's why it is such a skill intensive game and whatever deck you have if you play bad you lose 90% of the time.

 

[anvi]

You can do all that in MTG too. A player could technically have infinite planeswalkers, so you would have infinite options of where to attack. I think you gotta play more MTG to see how complex it gets. Also you can have a lot more than just 7 in your hand. In fact I have a deck that lets me draw every card in my entire deck, which could be 60 or even thousands. Then I can play anything I want from it with infinite mana and I can take infinite turns if I need to. There are so many ways to separate a good player from a noob who just buys expensive cards. The noob might still win, but that is mostly down to RNG. But in general a good player will run rings around a bad player. I can't even begin to think about how many ways you can use experience and skill to win, there are just too many. For example I have won a match by keeping a land in my hand. My opponent didn't attack because he thought I had a card that exiles an attacking creature and he wanted to make me waste it on something else so his big attacker could finish me off later. So he didn't attack and I ended up winning by bluffing him with a land.

 

[Vagiel]

Honestly I know magic it's a fun game with some interaction but it has nothing on the most complex games out now.

In l5r (yes i am a bit obsessed with this) you also have other resources like honour which you start at number different between clans that also plays a hige effect since it's another win condition. From the very start of the game you secretly bid how many cards you want to draw and the difference between what you and your opponent bid is lost as honour and passed to your opponent.

When you play a character you choose to add more fate (mana) on him making him stay in for more rounds. Most of the time you make mistakes without even realising it.

I know I sound like a fanboy (i am) but the level of complexity between mtg, netrunner, conquest and l5r in that order is not even comparable.

So know that obnoxiously made everyone hate me you probably won't even have a look at them .....

 

[anvi]

Sounds great but I still think it is too early to judge against MTG. Most of that stuff is already in MTG too. There are so many win conditions, you can win by lowering their life, emptying their library, increasing your health to 40, a card which makes the enemy have infinite life but lose if he cant sacrifice a permanent, and then you make him sacrifice all his permanents, or by destroying yourself and your opponent at the same time but then playing a spell at the last minute which says "you can't lose this turn", a card that says you win the game if you have no cards left in your hand and nothing in play at the start of your next turn. Or "you win the game if you have a creature and land of each color in play." Or "you win if you have >200 cards in your library". Or "you win if you start next turn with exactly 1 life."

One of my favorite decks exiles some of the enemys cards while you let him kick your ass. And on the very last turn before he wins, you play something which restarts the whole game but you start with the cards you exiled earlier. There are spells that are so complex to even read, some people rage quit because they can't understand the text or how the card works. There is one in particular that is mind boggling but I can't remember the name.

There is similar stuff to Fate in MTG too, for example there are cards that require loyalty to a color, and some that give a huge boost for each white mana symbol of the cards you have in play. Mana is complex too, you can have 5 mana colors in a deck and colorless too, and some cards that let you generate all 5 colors of mana at once.

There is just so much weird stuff you can do. One deck I have uses a card called Oblivion Ring which takes a creature out of the game and locks it in the oblivion ring (which is an enchantment). I defend against the enemy, and then I use the Oblivion Ring on my own creatures. Then I use a spell that destroys everything in the entire game, including all the lands. It kills everything including the Oblivion Rings, so the creatures they were holding pop back up into the game. Only now the opponent has nothing and no land.

 

[ProphetSword]

You can do all that in MTG too. A player could technically have infinite planeswalkers, so you would have infinite options of where to attack. I think you gotta play more MTG to see how complex it gets. Also you can have a lot more than just 7 in your hand. In fact I have a deck that lets me draw every card in my entire deck, which could be 60 or even thousands. Then I can play anything I want from it with infinite mana and I can take infinite turns if I need to. There are so many ways to separate a good player from a noob who just buys expensive cards. The noob might still win, but that is mostly down to RNG. But in general a good player will run rings around a bad player. I can't even begin to think about how many ways you can use experience and skill to win, there are just too many. For example I have won a match by keeping a land in my hand. My opponent didn't attack because he thought I had a card that exiles an attacking creature and he wanted to make me waste it on something else so his big attacker could finish me off later. So he didn't attack and I ended up winning by bluffing him with a land.

This guy gets it.

It doesn't matter if Magic is the most complex game in existence, rules-wise. The complexity and nuances of the game come from more than just the rules. It's like Chess. Or Poker. There's more to it than meets the eye. As I mentioned previously, this gets ramped up once you hit a tournament level.

I play one deck that has spells that counter other spells (Counterspell, Arcane Denial, Rewind, etc). After I've countered a couple of my opponent's spells this way, I will hold land (just like Anvi) or other cards I don't need at that moment so that the other player thinks I'm holding on to some counters. I will even bluff and appear to think about whether I want to respond when the other player does something...asking them what the card they're casting does, reaching for my land...whatever. I've watched players hold on to really powerful cards, fearing I was going to counter them, and at the end of the game after I beat them, they realize they've been duped.

So, yeah...beyond the cards, the way a player plays is important too. Holding on to a card can be as important as playing it. I've got a Lightning Bolt in my hand. Do I use it now or wait for a better opportunity? Decisions like these, as simple as they seem, can be the difference between winning and losing 90% of the matches. Good players weigh these options constantly, while casuals just tend to play it because they have the mana available without consideration of how else that card might have better served them.

 

[Vagiel]

Well i will say it again after you try something more complex you will see how simple is mtg in comparison. I emphasize in comparison, mtg needs some skill to play but compared to the ganes i mentioned it's much lower.

Small example in mtg you draw 1 card per turn, which includes your lands which is just mana, without playing cards for extra card draw. In l5r you draw 9.

First turn in mtg you have usually 1 mana from 1 land. In l5r you start with 7 which means that you can play your biggest guy first turn but should you? Or do you save money for second turn or .. or.. choices are too many and really it's very hard to define what is optimal play even on the first turn that is the most simple.

 

[Jason Liang]

One often finds opportunities to outplay opponents in a Magic match, but this is secondary to

a) the paper-rock-scissors balance between aggro, midrange and control and
b) the huge luck element in Magic due to mana screw

So playing Arena for the past few months, typically I win 30%-40% of my matches due to my opponent getting mana screwed (not getting the right colors or missing land drops), and I get about 25-40% of my losses due to mana screw (mana screw or extreme mana flooded, with the same deck).

about 60% of my wins and losses are due to match ups (playing an aggro deck, it's an uphill battle against black control for example, or against rdw if my opponent draws a fistful of burn).

So I suppose that leaves between 10% and 20% where I'm winning because I make the correct plays against the opponent or trick my opponent to play poorly.

However, I will say that usually if you outplay your opponent just once, it's a blowout. It's almost never that an opponent can come back from being outplayed.

 

[ProphetSword]

Well i will say it again after you try something more complex you will see how simple is mtg in comparison. I emphasize in comparison, mtg needs some skill to play but compared to the ganes i mentioned it's much lower.

Small example in mtg you draw 1 card per turn, which includes your lands which is just mana, without playing cards for extra card draw. In l5r you draw 9.

First turn in mtg you have usually 1 mana from 1 land. In l5r you start with 7 which means that you can play your biggest guy first turn but should you? Or do you save money for second turn or .. or.. choices are too many and really it's very hard to define what is optimal play even on the first turn that is the most simple.

You keep talking about rules. We're talking about nuances. It's like saying that because Axis & Allies can be a complicated game that Chess is simple. It doesn't work that way. One games complexity doesn't erase the complexity of another.

 

[ProphetSword]

One often finds opportunities to outplay opponents in a Magic match, but this is secondary to

a) the paper-rock-scissors balance between aggro, midrange and control and
b) the huge luck element in Magic due to mana screw

So playing Arena for the past few months, typically I win 30%-40% of my matches due to my opponent getting mana screwed (not getting the right colors or missing land drops), and I get about 25-40% of my losses due to mana screw (mana screw or extreme mana flooded, with the same deck).

about 60% of my wins and losses are due to match ups (playing an aggro deck, it's an uphill battle against black control for example, or against rdw if my opponent draws a fistful of burn).

So I suppose that leaves between 10% and 20% where I'm winning because I make the correct plays against the opponent or trick my opponent to play poorly.

However, I will say that usually if you outplay your opponent just once, it's a blowout. It's almost never that an opponent can come back from being outplayed.

Build better decks.

All I'm hearing in this thread from posters is "I suck at Magic, therefore the game sucks."

 

[Jason Liang]

Also I know you guys are talking about nu-L5R but I played the old L5R for many, many years (from Crimson and Jade up until the middle of Diamond Edition) and old L5R was much more rich and tactical than Magic ever was.

 

[Vagiel]

You keep talking about rules. We're talking about nuances. It's like saying that because Axis & Allies can be a complicated game that Chess is simple. It doesn't work that way. One games complexity doesn't erase the complexity of another.

I talk about rules since you don't know the game thus you can't understand it's nuances. It's very simple.


Give it a chance play a couple of games and then i will be glad to give you a lot of examples bluffs, planning for many turns ahead etc

 

[Jason Liang]

Build better decks.

All I'm hearing in this thread from posters is "I suck at Magic, therefore the game sucks."

Sorry but when the game lets you look at your opponent's hand and rip their best card and put them in top deck mode for 1 mana, it sort of takes the strategy and play skill out of it.

 

[Vagiel]

Also I know you guys are talking about nu-L5R but I played the old L5R for many, many years (from Crimson and Jade up until the middle of Diamond Edition) and old L5R was much more rich and tactical than Magic ever was.

I was a playing old5r from gold to emperor and although I loved that game and still do i really enjoy the new one just as much if not more.

 

[spectre]

Let me just say that when it comes to bluffing, if y'all consider holding back a land as pretend-counterspell to be the pinnacle, I invite you to play some Netrunner. Boy, you're in for a treat.
Here, each corporate turn can be a shell game - a deadly one. They can play up to three cards to the table, all of them come down face down until activated.
The hacker then has the opportunity to check them out by making a run on the server containing that card, and the server can be protected by ICE - programs which can simply block access to the server, or do bad stuff to the hacker.
How bad? That depends on the corporation. Some will trash your stuff, others will make you suffer permanent brain damage, others will make you lose the remaining actions for your turn...
you never know because while each faction has a very distinct personality (and a good number of playstyles), it's possible to borrow cards from other factions to a limited extent when deckbuilding.

So, were the cards played as a distraction, to waste your actions and resources as you check them out, maybe trashing some of them when they're potentially valuable assets? Some of them could be traps.
Will the trap kill you outright, or will you need to take a turn off to recover from it?
Or maybe the cheeky bastards is trying to sneak in an agenda and score points on the next turn?
Should you make the run now or spend a few more actions to prepare?
Say, you make a run on a protected server, you approach the first layer of ICE. The corp chooses not to activate any countermeasures. Is it because they're short on money, or are they luring you in. You can end the run now if you want. Do you still proceed?
You decide to go through with it. Approaching second layer of ice. Will the corp activate it this time?

The gameplay is nothing like MtG, and that's great.
Even for a dead game (supposedly, like I said, I've seen decent traffic at jinteki net), the cardpool is quite fleshed out. I think the majority of the game's themes were explored to the fullest.

But is it more complex than MtG? How do you even quantify that? Sure, a basic board setup gives both players much more options than MtG, where the only option is really just dropping a land.
How does it compare to the decision making process when you are drafting? It's still an aspect of this game, so it does count towards complexity, right?

I won't disagree, MtG can be a very simple game at times. You have your plan for the next two turns, perhaps a plan B is you absolutely need to respond to something.
Like when you're playing mono white aggro and your decision making process comes down - dump all the shit to the table or hold back cause boardwipe;
but that's just an extreme example. I am sure all other games have nooby, linear strategies too.
On the other hand, Playing a 4 colored control mirror in Type 1 (or eternal, or whatever the fuck the format is called right now) will be a totally different animal, with decisions materially affecting the outcome happening as early as the mulligan phase.

I expect the prestigious codex to have more monocled choices when it comes to little pieces of cardboard...

Eh? You want monocled? A few years back I spent a good deal of time getting a full playset of Kult CCG cards. Then the expansion. Took a bit of work, buying a few singles at shady looking websites, I made a wooden box for all this shit, custom markers for color suites,
printed a booklet with all the instructions, erratas and FAQs I found online, all nicely formatted...

And now I'm stuck with this shit with nobody to play with. I mentioned the subject casually at the local game store a few times and the local neckbeards were all, yeah, Kult, cool game, heard about it, never played it.
Nah, don't really want to try. Yeah, fuck you too.

It's a pretty cool game with a lot of flavor, unique mechanics, the situation can change dramatically from one turn to the next. Problem is (apart from it being out of print), you really need three guys for it.
There is a lot of broken stuff to do in the game (some of this being due to mistakes in design of individual cards), and it really shines in a three-way, where all the meta plays become awesomely self-correcting.

I have a similar story to tell for Call of Cthulhu LCG/CCG.

And for Vampire, the Eternal Struggle, thankfully, I slapped myself on the wrist on this one one just in time.

Well, the true moral of the story is: when flinging cardboard, unless you want to masturbate over your collection (which is fun to do for a while, not gonna lie), you need to go with what's popular, either locally or online.

Also I know you guys are talking about nu-L5R but I played the old L5R for many, many years (from Crimson and Jade up until the middle of Diamond Edition) and old L5R was much more rich and tactical than Magic ever was.

Well, there's one thing about L5R - it really celebrates its combat. Compared to tapping creatures to go for face indeed comes out as insultingly simplistic. For this reason alone, I'd recommend MtG fans to try it out, just to see what they're missing.
While I can't say I have much experience with the old L5R, what put me off was that a lot of it was complexity for complexity's sake. For example, duels were awesome and quite flavorful,
but it was easy to miss that entire aspect of the game if neither of your decks supported it. Or how they would change the working of (supposedly) evergreen abilities between editions.
The changes would go so deep it would dramatically alter the power level of some older cards, were they to be reprinted (although old L5R was never designed for backward compatibility, for what I recall)
The nu-edition did a good job in culling the chaff while keeping the depth and flavor, in my opinion.

 

[Vagiel]

snip

Other than completely agreeing with you i have to say I feel bad not being able to help you get on a game of Kult (which I know nothing about)

 

[anvi]

I think it is time I get this L5R. Gonna look at some vids and see if I can play for free or just buy the stuff.

 

[spectre]

snip

Other than completely agreeing with you i have to say I feel bad not being able to help you get on a game of Kult (which I know nothing about)

That's fine, my man. I'm completely resolved to selling my collection to some collector fuck 30 years from now. As for now, it's good to have around for nostalgic reasons.
Had a few good gaming sessions with good friends back in the day.

If you want to get the general feel of the game, I wrote a blurb about it a few years back. I think the images are still intact.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/kult-ccg.75286/