Magic: The Gathering / Yu-Gi-Oh!

[angelfromanotherpin]

I vaguely remember the SW CCG having lots of silver bullets (cards that pretty much say "kill popular card x") and I think that turned me off from ever actually trying the game.

Replace popular with 'cheesy' and you'll be closer to the mark. It's what they did instead of banning cards, they just printed a card you'd rather have that was mutually exclusive with the cheesy ones. Its another relic of its age, back when they didn't know what they wanted the game to do, they printed a lot of mechanics that wound up being both stupendously annoying and out of flavor.

[Murtak]

Popular, cheesy, overpowered, broken, call them what you want, that is one of the things I hated about Magic (the insane release schedule being the other one) - having worthless cards on one hand and cards so good they need to be banned / receive direct countermeasures on the other hand.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

So don't play Card Games because that's pretty much what happens in every single one, whether because of evolving meta or rotation or whatever.

I used to buy cards. Never again will I spend money on a game system only to continually have to buy more stuff. When I play a game it's with someone else's deck or in a format where I can use any card without buying them.

And my point is there is consistent logic behind it. I think I screwed myself once with Dengar in Ship when I was a new player. Never again.

And that's fine and Dengar was only one example. There are others. A game needs to be designed so that it's intuitive.

Now you begin to take stuff out of context. And I know you're not making a mistake just by throwing a quick glance at forums because now I remember, you used to frequent them. You should know that that "list" is made by one guy, who is quite obviously prolonging it (he started in Feb damn it), it features a bunch of people just making fun of the whole stuff, it has a bunch of dissenting voices for just about any card on it, and honestly, most of the card picks are either very weird or are a usual BH move of getting support to further his own agenda. THE LIST HAS MONNOK AS CARD #3 FFS!!!

So yeah, let's not use it as an argument for anything except that PC forums are damn fun.

Mace Windu (V), Padme (V), Don't forget the Droids (V), Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight (V),

I agree with Monnok, a card that punishes you simply for having 2 of the same card. For the whole game and designing a deck, you are forced to be worried an concerned by having 2 of the same card. Not fun.

Same with Limited Resources but worse. Now, I'm in danger of losing 4 force just for having 2 cards in my hand? Terrible, there's no reason for me to be afraid to go down to 2 cards just because my opponent might have a card that punishes me for having 2 cards.

99% of the threads on the competitive balance forum are just whining, pure and simple. You can just feel "I got blown out by this card, and I'm not much of a player, but I don't want to improve, doing that will mean admitting I'm not a good player, so I'll just whine and ask for the card that blew me to be banned BECAUSE I HATE IT SO MUCH NOW AND ITS THE WORST CARD EVER!!!!" vibe from those posts. Among them, you will find such gems as Panic, No Escape, Dark Maneuvers & Tallon Roll, BATTLE ORDER!!!!, Hidden Weapons, Fallen Jedi, and who knows what other treasure have I missed.

Besides, most of the discussions there is about how those cards should be played against.

Sure there's some whining. However, I think the discussions on Plead my case to the Senate, Krayt Dragon Howl, Obi Jedi Knight (V), Goo Nee Tay, Mace Windu (V) are all very valid

And if you ask those same people, 99% of them will say that's the reason why they love SWCCG. Why its still played, and why it has survived although the game has been out of print for more than 50% of its run. You know that. SWCCG is a game that appeals to people who like to think a lot, solve problems and figure things out.

And besides, you'll never see one of the top players ask a question there unless they want a confirmation on something obscure that might get an argument from people they play against.

Yes indeed, people can have a lot of fun playing a flawed system, that doesn't excuse the flaws though. The fact that the rules and card interactions are so obtuse, and we have very critical differences between 'present', 'with', 'presence' etc. is not a good thing. The fact that 2 imperial pilots (non-unique) only add 2 total power to a ship (rather than 4 intuitively) is a bad thing.

If you ever do that, give me a call to set up a game.

You know, my two favorite decks are TDIGWATT (mains, not speed variation) and WYS with Kessel Run. These decks are tier 2 at best right now, and have been so for quite some time. These two decks are what I think the game should be all about. Even though I don't get my way, I'm honest, and say game is good, playable, and way better than... Its certainly better game than it was since 2001, way better than in 2005, and you could make up a pretty convincing argument that it in some ways it is better than it was in Y2K.

I may just do that.

[ludomastro]

All CCG have some balance issues inherent in them. Doesn't necessarily mean bad design.

The entire PnP RP industry is full of problems that developed over time: they are known a "splat books".

The only way any game can be balanced is if the rules are completely thought through and then left alone. However, this doesn't work as an economic model very well. (Unless you are Hasbro - who hasn't had to think very hard in about 75 years, but then again, that is board games for ya.)

Back on topic ...

I still have all of my Decipher CW:CCG cards - up through Jabba's Palace when I stopped playing. I left the country for a few years and when I got back the game had changed to the point that I didn't recognize it. That prevented me from starting any more card games in a serious fashion.

I still occasionally play with my wife who likes the game but when I tried to get into the Player's Committee stuff, I realized it was the same problem when I got back stateside - it is a different game altogether.

Now as to deck design/useless cards/etc.:
I had a buddy who went to the world championship (pre-Dagobah is all I remember) that got beat by a German player who was using a deck that would have been laughed out of the FLGS where we lived. Our area had evolved past that deck design and so the counter cards were weeded from the decks as well. In competition you never know what the other guy is bringing to the table so the bullet cards may or may not hurt him all that much. I have used a single bullet card to win many times and have had a deck full of them because they other guy wasn't playing what I expected.

Sometimes, it's just the luck of the draw ... no pun intended.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Popular, cheesy, overpowered, broken, call them what you want, that is one of the things I hated about Magic (the insane release schedule being the other one) - having worthless cards on one hand and cards so good they need to be banned / receive direct countermeasures on the other hand.

To not have either of those things you'd need a design and playtest team that never made misjudgements. That's not going to happen.

[Frantic]

Yu-Gi-Oh! is trash. The EV's are terrible, literally 0 in fact, and there's very little skill involved with it compared to Magic: The Gathering or Poker. Those two will get you somewhere EV-wise.

If you want to get into Magic, I would suggest T2 or Extended. You need to keep yourself updated on T2 constantly, but there's less of a cardpool to deal with. Extended is my personal favorite for a wide variety of cards. The rulebooks that come with starter decks will help, but you might find watching some games and playing with people who're willing to teach you a better option.

Also there's the MTG website (http://www.wizards.com/magic). While I hate the layout, it'll help you out a bit too.

Hope you enjoy it.

[Akula]

If you don't have a lot of money to spend, draft is your best format. It can be picked up with a few weeks of reading online articles from my experience.

Standard sucks, the meta shifts like a California fault and the cards are almost always the most expensive. Extended had more stability and was a smaller (in terms of people and tournaments) format so, excluding manabase, the decks were cheaper. Legacy has a huge entry barrier and seems to be about the same decks time and again. I followed the game around the Flash errata and I had a real hard time caring about the new meta, which was defined by being composed of one deck with some variations, and the hate decks for it.

[Murtak]

Popular, cheesy, overpowered, broken, call them what you want, that is one of the things I hated about Magic (the insane release schedule being the other one) - having worthless cards on one hand and cards so good they need to be banned / receive direct countermeasures on the other hand.

To not have either of those things you'd need a design and playtest team that never made misjudgements. That's not going to happen.

Which is why I stopped playing L5R with the end of the Diamond arc. Maybe AEG just got lucky with their player-dev team but Diamond has at least one tournament-worthy deck type per Clan (most have two or more), at least four deck types per clan, way less than one percent useless cards and a select few cards which needed errataing (usually one-word changes).

Strictly speaking you are right of course - there are some few worthless cards and a couple which are very very good. But the worthless ones are one or two cards per expansion, the maybe-this-one-is-too-good cards still don't appear in every deck they fit into and clan balance, while still not perfect, is damn good. Overall it seems like most issues like "I don't have enough good cards to work with" but rather like "I need another Ninja/Samurai or another cheap Samurai/Courtier to make this deck work". I have played L5R since damn near the beginning and it just seemed like Diamond got it right.

Maybe they just got lucky. They certainly made their share of horrible mistakes, though thankfully not often on the side of brokenness (Finding the Harmony is the only one I remember). But even then the game seemed much more varied than Magic, which often had one or two "decks to beat" per season, with another half-dozen or less decks which were, strictly speaking, worse decks, but did well against the top decks. Heck I still remember the black summer which had one deck, plus some feeble attempts at anti-decks which still got stomped by Necropotence post-sideboarding. I have no clue how bad this was in the SW CCG - as I said, I got turned off initially and never really played the game beyond a cursory introduction. It just seemed, from the amount of complaints and silver bullets, that it was just as bad as Magic in that regard.

[Ravengm]

Magic doesn't really print silver bullets. In fact, card names are very rarely mentioned on the cards themselves (except for self-reference). The biggest silver bullets you have are color-hosing cards, and those go for every color anyway. There are enough viable decks in the meta (at least right now) that it stays fairly fresh every few months, and usually shifts because one or two guys made a pretty good deck and won a tournament with it. Paying attention to the meta is very important, because there's usually one deck type that's the majority, and that's when color-hosers etc. come into play.

[Murtak]

Magic doesn't really print silver bullets. In fact, card names are very rarely mentioned on the cards themselves (except for self-reference). The biggest silver bullets you have are color-hosing cards, and those go for every color anyway.

Yeah, I meant the issues were similar, not the solutions. SW used silver bullets, Magic just banned cards.

There are enough viable decks in the meta (at least right now) that it stays fairly fresh every few months, and usually shifts because one or two guys made a pretty good deck and won a tournament with it. Paying attention to the meta is very important, because there's usually one deck type that's the majority, and that's when color-hosers etc. come into play.

Ugh. Let me quote that again.

there's usually one deck type that's the majority

This right there is my main issue with Magic ever since I played it competitively. I remember that happening once in L5R's history (Corrupt Toturi Speed decks) and even then it was more like 30%. But I hated it. Mind you, all those copied decks won that tourney for me, but still ... yuk.

[Ravengm]

By "majority", I mean 30-40%. And even then, once a format's been around for a while and there hasn't been a rotation, the previous decks are still seen. Most of the reason a deck is a majority is because it's popular, not because it's better than anything else.

Faeries dominated Standard for a long time, but you really don't see many of those decks anymore. That doesn't mean the deck is bad, it means that people are playing something else now. Also as a fairly recent example, black-white tokens kind of died as the majority, was replaced by boat brew, and that was taken over by cascade swans. This happened in about 3 months (give or take), which means that the meta changes a lot, even with relatively the same cardpool. Which is a sign of what's popular, not what wins everything.

EDIT: I should also mention that you should look at the banned list for the different formats.

Here.

Note that there are zero banned cards in Standard, extremely few banned cards in Extended (4)*, and a good number of the banned cards in Legacy/Vintage are ones that deal with ante.

*One of these doesn't really count, since Sensei's Divining Top was mostly banned to shorten game length by about 30 minutes.

[Ravengm]

On another note, take a look at the deck archetypes from the two most recent Pro Tours:

Honolulu

and

Kyoto

The most dominant decktype is still much less than 50% in both cases.

[Manxome]

So I was thinking about getting the M:tG game for the X360.

A quick scan of the thread didn't reveal anyone talking about this specifically, so if you're talking about the game that just showed up on XBLA, I thought I should suggest that, whether you intend to get into M:tG or not, avoid that title.

Here's their idea of deck customization in that game: there are 8 pre-created decks you can choose between (6 of which need to be unlocked). You can unlock a few additional (read: more powerful) cards for each deck, and choose to include or exclude each unlockable card from the deck when you play with it, but you can't remove any of the original cards, you can't mix cards from different decks, you can't include duplicates of cards you already have (unless you unlock another copy), and you can't even see how many lands are included in the deck when you're customizing it, let alone change them. You won't even have the option of using any deck with multiple colors until you're 2/3 of the way through the campaign.

The UI is also pretty crappy, featuring mandatory 4-second pauses at every phase of every turn and any time any card is played or any ability is activated, just in case someone might want to do something in response, even if it's obvious that no player could possibly be capable of doing anything. That might even be forgivable if you were playing against a human opponent, but against a computer? And if you are actually capable of playing a card, you need to press an explicit "I'm done" button in each major phase of your turn, and then sit through the 4-second wait. Conversely, if you have no cards you can play from your hand, but several special abilities on already-played cards that you could activate, the timer will start automatically, and if you don't pause it or activate the abililty within 4 seconds, you lose your chance.

Oh, and the game has frozen on me three times. And I've already discovered one counter-intuitive sleeper rule that's come up in play multiple times but which (I maintain) couldn't possibly be guessed from the rules they present to you (specifically: an attacking creature remains blocked even if every creature that's blocking it is destroyed before the damage phase).

I've never owned any M:tG cards and it's been a decade or so since I've played, so I can't say much on the actual card game or how close this is to it. Wikipedia says this is an intentionally simplified version. For my part, I've noticed that several decks seem to lack basic counters (their white deck has absolutely no way to target an enemy creature, for example), and while I'm not sure if this is part of the normal rules, the basic draw rule is 1-per-turn, which results in an endgame where both players have no cards in hand, and each turn they draw and instantly play a random card out of their deck, which is rather unsatisfying. Especially when you didn't even get to customize the deck you're drawing from.

[Murtak]

For comparison:

Players: 138
Dragon: 20%
Crane: 19%
Lion: 18%
Crab: 16%
Phoenix: 16%
Mantis: 14%
Shadowlands: 12%
Unicorns: 14%
Scorpion: 6%
Ratling: 3%

[quote="Pro Tour Honolulu]Players: 143
Naya Jund Control: 25%
Jund Control: 20%
Five-Color Cruel Control: 10%
Green-White Aggro: 10%
Jund Aggro: 8%
Sphinx Control: 6%
Sedraxis Aggro: 5%
Bant Aggro: 4%
Naya Aggro: 2%
Esper Aggro: 2%
Rest: 8%[/quote]

Note that the Ratling faction was freshly playable starting with Diamond. So L5R has scorpions as an outlier. The rest of the field is very close to each other. Also the L5R results are clans, not deck types. I'm not quite sure about what cards were available, but I think Dragon had Faceless Kitsuki, Water Monk, Dueling Honor and Charge as viable builds; Crane had CHD, Robot Honor, Kyieko Bomb, Oni Summoner, Harrier Switch, Dueling Control/Dishonor and Lion had swarm, suicide military and a tactician switch deck available. Best guess is, at most 10% of the field is playing "one" deck, and most of these will differ from the "same" deck by at least one quarter of their cards.

Still, the Magic results look sort of varied - if "Naya Jund Control" and "Jund Control" play notably different from each other. If not, half the field is a single deck.

[Ravengm]

And I've already discovered one counter-intuitive sleeper rule that's come up in play multiple times but which (I maintain) couldn't possibly be guessed from the rules they present to you (specifically: an attacking creature remains blocked even if every creature that's blocking it is destroyed before the damage phase).

This is actually within the rules. Once a creature is blocked, it's blocked. Damage doesn't go through unless the blocked creature has trample.

And your other criticisms are pretty much spot-on. It's completely unreasonable the way decks are constructed and how little customization you get. It's basically an intro game to Magic, since most of the decks are pretty God-awful anyway.

[Ravengm]

To be honest, I don't play that much block constructed, so I'm not sure how Naya Jund and just Jund differ. I'd imagine they have similar names because they both use Bloodbraid Elf.

I will say that L5R is more varied than Magic, but I don't know how the game works very well, and can't comment on how differences are present in the two games. Though if Dragon, Crane, etc. are similar to Magic colors, that's kind of like saying someone's playing a blue or white deck.

[Manxome]

This is actually within the rules. Once a creature is blocked, it's blocked. Damage doesn't go through unless the blocked creature has trample.

It would not surprise me if this was clear in the official rules to the actual card game. However, I maintain that the rules reference within the video game is insufficiently detailed to figure this out. The entire attack/block/damage rules are like one or two paragraphs. I'll get you a quote if you really care.

[Ravengm]

No, I believe you. I didn't bother reading the rules for the game since I play the paper version, so I can't say if it's clear or not.

[Murtak]

I will say that L5R is more varied than Magic, but I don't know how the game works very well, and can't comment on how differences are present in the two games. Though if Dragon, Crane, etc. are similar to Magic colors, that's kind of like saying someone's playing a blue or white deck.

L5R has two decks, one visible to everyone which (in Magic terms) holds your creatures and lands and one which supplies your hand cards (enchantment, instants and sorceries). Your stronghold gives you starting gold, some special powers and largely determines which creatures you will play. In practice this means you see a lot more cards, more quickly than you do in Magic. Other mechanics also mean you can largely rely on having specific creatures and lands show up

All Crane decks will be similar in that they have a high starting honor, low province strength and crane personalities will have high honor and chi but low force. But one crane deck may go for high chi duelist and try to cut your people down before you attack while slowly gaining enough honor to win, likely using the stronghold to search their fate deck for duel. Another crane deck may skimp on defenses, relying on getting to 40 honor in as few turns as possible. Yet another deck may try to kill you by getting your honor to -20, or at least cripple you enough to get to 40 themselves without worries. A crane harrier deck may be entirely defensive or may be counterattacking at very opportunity.

So yeah, clans are in some regards like Magic's colors. In others they are entirely different.

[shau]

I use to waste my time and money on Magic. Oh, to be young again, and not so much of a moron.

I can't help but notice that a full 53 percent of the magic decks played are Jund something. It seems like your competitive deck has to revolve around that, whatever it is.

[PhoneLobster]

If people are going to wander off topic and recommend junk like SWCCG...

Then I'm going to recommend my favorite collectible card game.

Call Of Cthulhu, the collectible card game.

It's published by Fantasy Flight, so you know it's got quality production values.

It's like the only mission based CCG I've ever seen that works.

It's fun, it's very Cthulhu and a vast variety of deck types from investigators going crazy and dieing left right and center to unstoppable ancient one monstrosities all work excellently.

Personally my favourite moments are some of the er, less thematic combinations, like putting Cthulhu on a Motor Cycle and giving him a Derringer (not that it's a great combo, but these days you can give him a hidden boot knife and he'll be pretty cool).

And best of all it's just got a funky new reformed edition that is available in a non randomized format.

That's right you can buy a monthly booster and know exactly what you are getting for your money.

And you get cool little plastic Cthulhus in the new boxed starter.

-This has been an unpaid ad for Fantasy Flight brought to you by some guy on the interwebs.

[zeruslord]

That tournament is Block Constructed, and the current set was designed around five groups of three colors and five color decks. Jund is one of the three color groups, which means a decent chunk of the decks out there are going to be playing it no matter what. Also, the easiest deck to build is aggro, and Jund is the best of the groups for aggro.

[Judging__Eagle]

Oh, and the game has frozen on me three times. And I've already discovered one counter-intuitive sleeper rule that's come up in play multiple times but which (I maintain) couldn't possibly be guessed from the rules they present to you (specifically: an attacking creature remains blocked even if every creature that's blocking it is destroyed before the damage phase).

Yeah, "blocked" is "blocked", unless there is something else going on. Like trample or flying. That's the main reason for shitty 1/1 monsters, or 1/1 token creatures. They're good for blocking stuff that you don't want to lose a "real" creature to.

And then there's the Sunken City Sea Serpents for Homirids horde of monsters type decks. Those were fun, blue had merfolk/homirids (with merfolk coming in slightly smaller numbers, but were able to be much more powerful b/c of multiple sources of buffs); red had goblins (and dwarves, a bit); green had Thallids. I'm sure that black and white had something similar.

That's why people who don't play peenie-weenie decks love cards that deal 1-3 damage to everything on the field.

Because it allows all of their X/4 or tougher creatures to survive, and then bulldoze the other player's health to 0.

I actually built a whole deck based around the idea that my opponent will murder my peenie-weenie cards.

It was a Torment deck that used the white "rebels" and the black "mercenary" creatures; specifically utilizing the mechanic where the "recruiter" cards could be tapped (with 1-3 colourless mana) to just put into play a new rebel or mercenary card.

Of course.... this was because I bought a whole box of Torment, and had every card that came in the series. Including the card that would make me win with this deck, Mortal Combat. Once I had 20 creatures in my graveyard, I auto-won.

Mind you, I had several cards designed specifically to search my deck and put cards into my hand, and several cards meant to search my graveyard and do the same. The deck was pretty much built around me blocking an enemies creatures, letting my creatures get killed; and making the fuck sure that Mortal Combat remained in play. I think that the deck was something like... 30-ish creatures; mortal combat; 10-20-ish land; and about 5-10 cards related to getting, or keeping MC in play.

Really, it was meant to be a "surprise motherfucker!" deck, since the casual manner with which my creatures got pasted was supposedly unnerving, since they knew I was up to something, but they never thought I had an MC in such a low-powered deck.

Once it got used though, I'd have to worry about a deck with multiple enchantment-fucking-up spells.

[Kobajagrande]

I used to buy cards. Never again will I spend money on a game system only to continually have to buy more stuff. When I play a game it's with someone else's deck or in a format where I can use any card without buying them.

Ok, you don't play card games at all. Whatever.

And that's fine and Dengar was only one example. There are others.

Hell, man, be fair. You used Dengar as an example of unintuitive mechanics that are so bad and cannot be learned, I used Dengar as an example that game has its own logic which is consistent. Don't try to artificially prolong the argument by pulling out "but there's more" when we all agreed to represent that "more" with good ol' Dengar because frankly that leads nowhere.

Mace Windu (V), Padme (V), Don't forget the Droids (V), Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight (V),

You know... I'm honestly not a World Class Caliber player, and cards like those occasionally do give me problems; however, when every single one of the world best players say that these cards are not a problem, can be dealt with, provide ways of being dealt with, and show that they are not even being used that much by professional players... I can't help but think maybe they know more about it than I.

I agree with Monnok, a card that punishes you simply for having 2 of the same card. For the whole game and designing a deck, you are forced to be worried an concerned by having 2 of the same card. Not fun.

Heh.

Same with Limited Resources but worse. Now, I'm in danger of losing 4 force just for having 2 cards in my hand? Terrible, there's no reason for me to be afraid to go down to 2 cards just because my opponent might have a card that punishes me for having 2 cards.

Heh.

Sure there's some whining. However, I think the discussions on Plead my case to the Senate, Krayt Dragon Howl, Obi Jedi Knight (V), Goo Nee Tay, Mace Windu (V) are all very valid[/quote]

Besides, most of the discussions there is about how those cards should be played against.

Yes indeed, people can have a lot of fun playing a flawed system, that doesn't excuse the flaws though.

You missed the point. I said that they enjoy the game BECAUSE of its complexity, not despite it.

[IB90]

Here is the link to the top 8 decks from Pro-Tour Kyoto.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... /top8decks

Two BW Tokens, one RW Kithkin, two RW Reveillark, one Dark Bant, one 5-Color Control, and one UB Faeries.