Wars TCG

Well, it’s time for a new blog entry. This time I noticed that I still have two starters for Decipher’s “Wars TCG” in a shelf. I bought them a few years ago at the games exhibition in Essen. They were cheap because the game was already dead.

Okay, there are a lot of dead CCGs/TCGs. But this one has an interesting story: Decipher was about to lose the license for their highly succesful Star Wars CCG. In order to keep a large part of the SWCCG fan base, they decided to produce a new Science Fiction game, which uses the rule mechanics from SWCCG. The setting war created by Decipher, so they did not have to buy a license for the game.

And they put some effort to make the setting interesting: Professional author Michael Stackpole worked on the setting and wrote several short stories, illustrator John Howe worked on one of the alien races. And there was even a soundtrack which you could download on Decipher’s homepage (I wonder if I still have the MP3 somewhere on my harddrive).

So the game was released in October 2004 with the set “Incursion”and met a lot of interest at first. My starters are a german version, so there were even translations for the international market. In January 2005 the expansion “Nowhere To Hide” was released and that was it. The second planned expansion “Edge of a Sword” was cancelled despite being far into development.

So let’s summarize: We had a succesful CCG with a very popular license and unique mechanisms. Decipher hoped that the mechanism was a huge factor for the success and produced a game with almost identical rules. It didn’t work. So does that mean that the “Star Wars” license was the only reason for the success of the SWCCG? Well, not exactly. Decipher tried to establish more games based on the license, since the SWCCG was rather complex. Two more Star Wars card games were released by Decipher and couldn’t match the success of the first one. And the new official Star Wars TCG by Wizards of the Coast was stopped at the end of 2005.

On the other hand Decipher could have done a better job with the background story of “Wars”. The only elements of the story are found on the back of the starter packs. In the year 2391 aliens invade the solar system through a rift in space-time. Oh great. The rulebook tells us that there are five playable factions. That’s it. Most of the story was on Decipher’s homepage. And of couse in the little lore text boxes on the cards, but that didn’t really help me to get into the story or even find memorable characters on the level of Darth Vader or Han Solo.

Well, today the Decipher’s SWCCG is alive as a fan project on http://www.starwarsccg.org and WotC’s version is continued as a fan project on http://www.skywlkr.net/idc/index.asp. So the license was probably the main reason for the success of the first game, but being released before the market was flooded with CCGs and the right mixture also helped.

Two sites about CCGs

One reason to blog about CCGs was, that I had trouble to find news sites about CCGs. The official web page of the Scrye magazine was disappointing in that regard (and won’t become helpful, since the magazine is no longer produced).

Well, I have found a news site. It’s not the complete news site with overviews over living and dead games, but for the living ones it comes close. At least it gives an overview over all articles and some facts for each game, which has been covered by the site. So probably the best CCG news site on the web: TCGPlayer.

If you are looking for a site with a database of cards of all possible games, then check out CCG Gamez. I only found this webpage today, when it was mentioned in a forum. So I haven’t checked yet how complete the card lists and card pictures are, but it looks very promising. Even better: You can contribute missing scans with an upload function.

Star Trek 1E Revised Format

A little news today: The people at the Trek Continuing Committee are beta testing a revised format for the First Edition of the Star Trek CCG. Since many players said that they would not accept a format which bans any card, this format tries to fix the problems of the game with a set of new rules. You can find those rules under this address.

Of course the rules are the topic of some hot debates in the forums. The reasoning behind those rules is explained in a series of podcasts on http://www.1elives.com

I can actually imagine with those rules to dust off my old Star Trek cards. Still the unelegant solution to counter broken strategies with referee cards is in full effect (since people reject card bans). Now those referee cards are collected in an easily accessible side pile. The hottest debate is about the rule that one can’t play an Interrupt which is already in one’s discard pile. This together with the rule that cannot have more than four copies of a card in one’s deck kills some legitimate theme decks. But I guess those can be repaired with new cards in a future virtual expansion.

Highlander: The Card Game

Oh boy, what was supposed to be writing a quick overview over a CCG turned out to be more and more complicateded task. The CCG that wouldn’t die. It’s so tempting to make some silly jokes about this immortal game. At first I had an overview over the original run and knew that the game was revived two years ago. But when writing this article I stumbled upon fan-made virtual expansions and small sets by yet another company. Fans of the game who have followed its history over the years should feel free to leave comments and correct me if I confuse some facts.

“Highlander” is a game that was introduced to the market in 1995 by Thunder Castle Games during the first wave of Magic follow-up games. It had a quite succesful run with a number of expansions, before TCG released its last expansion in 1999. As you can imagine you play an immortal who tries to defeat his opponent in a series of encounters via sword fight. The game offers a broad selection of immortals from the movies and the tv show, each of them has a lot of weapons, events and moves only usable by him. Of course there are also more generic cards for everyone, including attacks and blocks, which are used to play out the actual sword duels. One player wins by reducing his opponent’s ability (also his maximum hand size) from 15 to 0. Alternatively you can try to pull off a head shot, which is of course more difficult, but ends the game immediately.

As far as my good old “Scrye CCG Checklist & Price Guide” tells me, this game had some unique ideas. Some cards were “rips”, that means you had to destroy the actual card to use the effect (at leats in official tournaments). Well, okay, I hope those were all common cards, otherwise the rich kids will win the tournaments. Also in tournaments, if you were defeated by headshot, you had to give all “quickening” cards you used in your deck to your opponent, because he absorbed your powers. That combined with powerful promo cards that were hard to get (one was only given away by the president of the game company personally) reflects perhaps the mentality of the early CCG games, where the manufacturers didn’t necessarily expect that the players would try to collect complete sets and try to keep the collection complete. At least publishing complete card lists wasn’t mandatory in the beginning of the CCG era.

So after the last set by Thunder Castle Games in March 1999 players waited and waited for the Ramirez Edition to finally play Sean Connery. Since the game wasn’t continued, fan-made expansions were made. The Missing Link expansions can be found here:

http://www.mleccg.com

But don’t expect easy access. The makers tried to limit access, so that the cards still have rarities.

The company SAEC Games produced small sets to continue the game. Not much traces of those guys on the web, so the best source is this card database for Highlander:

http://www.boneboxes.com/Highlander/CardSearch.aspx

It seems they published the Black raven 1-4 and some preview cards for a Millenium set, altogether 140 cards.

Then news came up that the company LeMontagnard Games wanted to produce a Second Edition. Head of the company was Mike Sager, the former president of Thunder Castle Games and creator of the original game. I am not sure if the current HighlanderTCG company was founded by LeMontagnard or if the game changed hands again before the launch of the 2nd Edition. I find no mention of LeMontagnard on the current official page. Anyway, the game was re-launched in 2007 and seems to be alive and well with a loyal fanbase.

For “Highlander” it’s not so easy to find a list of all expansions, so I try to assemble one here. The first edition consists – according to the “Scrye CCG Checklist And Priceguide 2nd Edition” – of:

• Highlander – Series Edition, August 1995, 165 cards in starter decks and booster packs
• Movie Edition, August 1996, 302 cards in starter decks and booster packs
• Watcher’s Chronicle, February 1998, 113 cards in starter decks and booster packs
• The Gathering, June 1998, 110 cards in starter decks and booster packs
• The Duncan Collection, ???, 20 fixed cards
• Arms & Tactics, November 1998, 219 cards in starter decks and booster packs
• Four Horsemen, March 1999, 105 cards in booster packs
• The Methos Collection, ???, 50 fixed cards

Then you had the virtual Missing Link expansions here, which I just want to mention briefly, because this was all the fans had for several years. Actual printed cards came from SAEC games. Take the numbers with a grain of salt, I am only using the mentioned database as a source. Obviously the short-lived spin-off series “Raven” was the main source for this series of small sets:

• Black Raven 1, 33 cards
• Black Raven 2, 31 cards
• Black Raven 3, 29 cards
• Black Raven 4, 34 cards
• Millenium Preview, 13 cards listed as ultra-rare

Now we get to the Second Edition stuff. Oddly enough a beta set was published:

• 2E Beta Set, 196 cards

And now I am returning gladly to more secure sources. The following sets can be ordered in the online shop of the official homepage on http://www.highlandertcg.com:

• Core Set (Season 1), appr.293 cards in starter sets and booster packs
• Gathering Set (2E), appr.239 cards in  starter sets and booster packs
• Season 2
• Season 3, just shipped according to the news section

So, there you have it. This game seemed to be dead, but obviously it didn’t lose its head. Is it fun to play? Well, I guess each immortal can have an unique fighting style thanks to persona specific cards. I still have second thoughts about commenting on the Conan CCG gameplay, so I won’t dare to do that on such an old game with thousands of different cards, even if I had the opportunity to play it. With such a loyal fan base the game must do a lot of things right. What I would recommend to the current makers is to update the homepage with easy to find card lists of the now available expansions. A history section with info on all expansions since 1995 would rule even more.  It looks a bit to me as if the game was highly anticipated by a loyal fanbase, but also that it is only produced for that existing fan base.

Conan CCG

Well, to get this blog back to more adult topics, let’s look at a little game that came out in 2006. Comic Images published the Conan CCG. It seems it wasn’t succesful enough to justify any expansions. So this one has only 196 cards.

Conan is based on stories by Robert E. Howard, which were published in the Weird Tales magazine starting in 1932. Of course the barbarian is best known for his two movies with Arnold Schwarenegger in the lead role. A third movie is planned for 2010, while a TV series from the 90s was quickly forgotten. Also a the MMO “Age of Conan” is still alive. The card game is based on the stories with drawn pictures.

In the CCG each player plays his own Conan, who has to collect enough Renown points to win the game. One player is the active player who fights foes which are played by the other players against him. Each defeated foe is worth renown points, while they threaten to kill Conan and thus eliminate that player or at least force him to retreat at the cost of renown. The foes come from an extra deck.

So tha basic principle is similar to the Lord of the Rings game and is simple enough. Survive with the help of items and allies and press on, if you think you can defeat another waves of attackers. The problem in my view is the complicated combat system. attackers come can attack from four different directions. They are enhanced by hidden moves cards. The active player then plays his Conan’s moves to fight the foes or he retreats.

I found the rules rather complicated, containing a number of exceptions to a lot of  rules. I think this is the weakness of this game: All you can do is play one of eight different versions of Conan, who slashes his way through waves of attacking enemies. Sounds like it could be fun for a fast and simple game. But here you would have to invest in learning rules which are equally complex than the rules of other games, which offer much more different strategies and things for you to do in the game. It gets worse with the tournament rules: Your foe deck must contain at least 25 cards with a total renown between 95 and 105. Have fun counting…

Of course the limited card pool also doesn’t help. The rules say, you can play the way of the barbarian or the way of the tief. But the latter will be made available in an expansion. Then region cards add a bit of flavor and modify the rules fore the fight. But the core set only contains two region cards. There are only five different ally cards, one of them is the “Helpless Victim”.

Perhaps I’m ignorant to the qualities of the game, but I’m not surprised that this one failed on the market. Perhaps it is fun when one masters the combat system with different tactics, but then again without expansions one can safely say that the possibilities for different strategies are limited.

Homepage:  http://www.ccgfan.com/index.htm

Pokémon TCG

I will admit it: I roll my eyes when I catch some manga on TV. I don’t like it as a drawing style. And obviously I’m too old to like it.

But still I am curious, what makes the Pokémon TCG so succesful? Would I have loved it as a kid? How complex is the TCG? And will I have to play it with my nephew in a few years from now?

The basic facts are easily available on wikipedia. Released 1996 in Japan based on the video games, 1998 in the USA by Wizards of the Coast. Since 2003 Nintendo’s own Pokémon USA company took over in the USA. I remember it as being the first game to beat Magic as the best-selling CCG/TCG for quite some time (according to the list in the Scrye magazine).

Despite losing that place back to Magic, Pokémon is still on ofe the most succesful TCGs. The 40th set, the new Platinum base set, has been published in February. The last 12 sets are legal in tournament play in the so called Modified format.

How does the game work? It’s a battle game, where the active Pokémon of each player does the fighting. Additional Pokémon are played on the bench. If a Pokémon is defeated, it is knocked out and the succesful player draws one of his six random prize cards. One wins, when the opponent loses his active Pokémon and he doesn’t have a reserve Pokémon on the bench, or when he succesfully claims all of his prize cards, or when the opponent runs out of cards.

The resource for attacks are energy cards, which are attached to a Pokémon and discarded to use them. So a good chunk of the deck has to consist out of energy cards in order to use the more powerful special attacks. A Pokémon has a given numer of hitpoints, complexity is added by different energy types and Pokémon which are especially vulnerable or resistant to certain energy types.

Fun is added by higher generation Pokémon, which are more powerful than basic Pokémon, but can only be played on the matching basic Pokémon. So there is a mechanism to upgrade characters. I can imagine that this is fun. I’m not sure that there are several different paths for basic Pokémon to evolve, but I would guess so. One has to focus on few different basic Pokémon to pull off evolutions into second generation Pokémon. I liked character development in the form of replacing cards in Babylon 5, where the starting characters could be replaced by more powerful versions from later in the show.

What I don’t like from a strategist’s point of view, that a lot of actions an attacks involve coin tosses to evaluate the exact number of damage. I believe that CCGs in general are random enough by random card draws. Though it is more kid friendly, because the worse deck can win with some luck in the coin tosses. I personally like random elements as an excuse for losing. But still a bit frustrating if the perfect deck just doesn’t do much damage because of bad luck.

I can imagine playing this with a nephew despite the graphics, which are clearly targeting children. Then again I wonder if TCGs aren’t too expensive for kids. If you are interested in a good mix out of energy cards, basic Pokémon, higher generation Pokémon and support cards for a beginner’s deck, I guess you can ask some experienced ten-year-old and have more success than with calculating probabilities.

Well, one can wonder why they didn’t publish this with graphics which appeal to all age groups.  The strategic depth should suffice for older gamers, but the theme and the graphics will not. Tournament play is divided into age groups, where the oldest players are 16 and older. I can very well  understand that this isn’t a hobby which one gives up easily. For people who start with TCGs in that age, Magic is probably much more attractive.

For the TCG fan, who wants to know it all. The game play explained in a neat multimedia presentation: http://www.go-pokemon.com/tcg/howtoplay/demo/

Star Trek CCG 1st Edition

Welcome to my little blog about customizable card games or trading card games – whatever term you prefer. I plan to give overviews over existing games and give hints, where one can find interesting stuff about them in the internet. For an easy start I pick the only game I collected completely – sort of. The first Star Trek CCG had its run from late 1994 until 2002. Then Decipher decided to re-launch the game in the form of the 2nd edition with a new look and new rules. Many 2nd Edition cards were marked as being backward-compatible to the 1st Edition with the help of conversion rules. As if the game wasn’t complicated enough already…

Fans of the 1st Edition got the small “All Good Things” set in 2003 to fix the broken links on other 1st Edition cards. And in 2006 Decipher surprised the fans with the small “Enterprise Collection”, which brought Captain Archer’s ship and crew in 1st Edition style to the game.

I personally was a almost reliefed, when the 1st Edition ended. I had collected every single card and decided after a short look into the 2nd Edition, that buying the Star Trek universe on cards once was enough for a lifetime.

Only last year I found out that Decipher had dropped all their products together with the licenses (Lord of the Rings) due to financial problems. The good news was that the Star Trek CCG had gone into the hands of dedicated fans who had founded the non-commercial Continuing Committee to continue the game with virtual expansions, which can be downloaded as PDF files and printed by the players for play at home and even at official tournaments. While the CC is focussing on the 2nd Edition they now have a subgroup for 1st Edition, which is responsible for official tournament rulings, errata and new expansions.

While the 2nd Edition fans already got two full expansions, 1st Edition fans got new current rulings and two small sets: The first one named “Referee Reprints” contains reprints of the so-called referee cards, which were introduced over the years to counter unbalanced strategies. While the CC discusses  how to fix the game to make these special counter cards unnecessary, this set gives every player a fair chance to compete in tournaments. The second set “Identity Crisis” is a collection of alternate versions of dual-affiliation cards: Cards that are legal for two or even three affiliations in the game like the Federation or the Klingon Empire, but only existed in the look and color of one of those affiliations. This is more or less a cosmetical update, but it demonstrates the ability of the CC to produce good-looking cards.

Released: November 1994 by Decipher until 2002 with two small fixed sets after that

Current Status: Continued by fans since 2008

Gameplay: Both players build the spaceline out of six mission cards each. Then they add dilemma cards, outposts and special events to complete the playing field. After that seed phase the players use ship and personnel cards to fly along the spaceline and attempt missions. For that purpose they have to overcome the dilemma cards under the missions and bring skills like “Science”, “Medicine”, etc. on the personnel cards to solve the mission. Each solved mission is worth points, the first player to score 100 points wins.

What I liked about it: Star Trek 1st Edition felt like a simulation. One could send his spaceships around, attack the other player’s ships and personnel, breed Jem’Hadar warriors, process ore on Cardassian mining stations, travel through time to stop first contact as the Borg, etc. There were relatively few abstract event cards without a logical connection to the cards on the table.

What I didn’t like about it: Well, I was more a collector than a player. When I played the games often lacked interaction. If one player simply had the more fficient deck there wasn’t much one could do to stop him. And whenever I read about the tournament play there was stuff like first round wins after quite some time of building the playing field. I felt I had to include a dozen referee cards in any serious deck just in case I wanted to play in a tournament.

Links: www.trekcc.org, www.caretakersarray.com

P.S.: Use www.trekcc.org/1e to find the new sets.