Let's Talk: Dead CCGs

fightcitymayor wrote: When they lost the Star Wars license they tried rebooting the same mechanic with Wars, which is actually still cheaply available.

Wars is really good. I played it quite a lot with my daughter. Haven't played it in a few years though. We play Epic and Keyforge now.

Gawd, Wars…I got really into it for a minute, it came out right when I opened my store so it was heavily promoted (still have the mousepad). And then the Star Wars CCG bros showed up for the tournaments and events I ran. They were the biggest bunch of asshole gamers I’ve ever seen in my life. Worse than 40k bros.

MECCG is truly great but yeah, it is an incredible chore to learn and you have to have both a magnifying glass and an impossible collection of cards to play. It is the Magic Realm of CCGs.

I liked Doom Trooper, it was pretty fun.

Shadowfist was OK…and it is the reason we have a Z-Man Games. There was a time when you could get a booster box for like $10.

I’ve really been interesting inchecking out Battletech lately…might try to pick some up.

Battletech must still have some kind of active community because I looked on eBay to maybe pick up a couple more starters and the prices there are pretty steep, including sales of individual cards.

Legomancer wrote: Battletech must still have some kind of active community because I looked on eBay to maybe pick up a couple more starters and the prices there are pretty steep, including sales of individual cards.

I've bought/sold a thousand games in my day, but selling my giant chunky binder full of Battletech stuff (Rares and all) back in 2001 still haunts me. I still remember the feedback I got from the guy who bought them, gushing about how much his son loved the cards because of the goldmine of great cards in there, and all I could think of was, "I know... I know."

Deckbuilding and an adequate supply of opponents are crucial to a ccg. Once a ccg goes out of print, the avid deckbuilders soon lose interest in the game and the rest of the players gradually lose interest. Especially when the now-stable card pool is eventually analyzed enough to lay bare the strengths and weaknesses of various deck types. Some of my favorite ccgs readily came back to life once new card sets became available. Jyhad/Vampire has come back from the dead twice and is currently in print. Shadowfist has also come back twice and got new ownership again in 2018, though no new cards have been published since 2014.

I feel like I can treat each of my dead ccgs like a boardgame in my collection by keeping a set of ready decks of comparable power on hand. Some of my dead ccgs even have starter sets/decks that are ideal for that purpose. But the ugly truth is that most of the people who like ccgs are obsessed with the deckbuilding aspect and don't want to play decks made by anybody else. So my decks continue to gather dust, waiting for another revival of their respective games.

Michael Barnes wrote: Gawd, Wars…I got really into it for a minute, it came out right when I opened my store so it was heavily promoted (still have the mousepad). And then the Star Wars CCG bros showed up for the tournaments and events I ran. They were the biggest bunch of asshole gamers I’ve ever seen in my life. Worse than 40k bros.

MECCG is truly great but yeah, it is an incredible chore to learn and you have to have both a magnifying glass and an impossible collection of cards to play. It is the Magic Realm of CCGs.

I liked Doom Trooper, it was pretty fun.

Shadowfist was OK…and it is the reason we have a Z-Man Games. There was a time when you could get a booster box for like $10.

I’ve really been interesting inchecking out Battletech lately…might try to pick some up.

Jesus, I COMPLETELY forgot about Doomtrooper. Such fun, but horribly broken.

fightcitymayor wrote:

Legomancer wrote: Battletech must still have some kind of active community because I looked on eBay to maybe pick up a couple more starters and the prices there are pretty steep, including sales of individual cards.

I've bought/sold a thousand games in my day, but selling my giant chunky binder full of Battletech stuff (Rares and all) back in 2001 still haunts me. I still remember the feedback I got from the guy who bought them, gushing about how much his son loved the cards because of the goldmine of great cards in there, and all I could think of was, "I know... I know."

Been there, too. Though not with the haunting. I traded my entire MtG (with a lot of banned/oop rares. Demonic attorney, anyone?) for a master set of Heroscape. Never looked back and glad someone's kid got enjoyment from them. I stopped playing back in 98, and they were just gathering dust. I had no intention of going back into it and my own son had no interest.

Hell, I Secret Satan'ed my Rage and Jyhad sets to unsuspecting schlobs here. Hee Hee Hee. Again, no emotional attachment. I don't care how much the cards are worth. I just wanted them out the house and, hopefully, played by someone else.

OMG - I will maybe wade into this later because i have a lot to do today, but I played so many of those early ccg's - My buddy owned a comic store and he would buy cases of the hamster cage liner blowout crap, and then have me crack a starter or 6 and a few boosters and if it was decent, I would run drafts/sealed decks play days for a month or two and alpha gamer the crap off the shelves- We had a dedicated play base for 7 seas years after it went out of print, because John got a pallet of the crap, and the game was a good value to a bunch of townies .75c a pack and 3 a starter.


Sooo many games. Some soooo bad. Some decent but killed by the format. Some gems too. I just tossed a sealed box of Wyvern when we were cleaning out for our last move - I dumped all of my old CCG stuff - Called a friend from Washington and he picked up all of the LOTRtcg and Vs System (5 totes) and then I dumpstered all of the Wars, Shadowrun, Shadowfist, WCW Nitro, Battlelords, etc.

OK, as soon as I hit submit, I thought of Marvel Recharge - I'd like to start the nominations for worst dead "CCG" - OMG what a horrbile money grab this was - They slapped stock marvel images on a bunch of numbered suited cards and you are playing a point piling game that has nothing to do with the characters depicted on the cards. Other than the fact that the green 40 has a picture of Storm on it. CCG Uno with Marvel characters. OH AND SOME CARDS HAD FOIL ON THEM AND WERE SHINY. I think it was the lowest of the lows.

I remember many people talking about Spellfire in similar terms: simplistic game, stock images from TSR's IP, often showing cuts from the same painting for different items or characters or whatever. Magic came out and TSR they had to jump in ASAP without a moment's consideration for why Magic was such a success in the first place. It was status quo for early 90s TSR. IIRC, the biggest thing to hurt their cash flow that led to the subsequent sale to Wizards was getting a huge amount of returned stock from bookstores that couldn't move it... like Spellfire.

TSR later did another CCG called Blood Wars. It seemed to be a convoluted Jyhad ripoff using the Planescape setting

Showing my age a bit here (35), I was old enough to understand Magic but too young to have disposable income for it. I had a handful of Mirage-block cards (Banding, woo!), but I lived in a really small town, we weren't allowed to play in school, and my younger brother was just too little to care. I played a lot more of it in the form of draft and duel decks as an adult.

The only other CCG I had much experience with I haven't seen mentioned here yet: Magi-Nation. I remember playing with a friend's collection of cards at the time and falling in love with how different it was from Magic. I never actually owned cards, but I definitely had a very basic, digital, no-rules-enforced implementation of the playspace that would allow you to duel others over the Internet. It was bascially a grey window that tracked your deck, discard, and hand, and you physically moved the cards around and manipulated the counters manually according to the rules. I played the shit out of it with some of my cousins one summer; I remember the PC client seeming very ahead of its time for 2000. It doesn't seem easy or cheap to try it again for fun to see how it holds up, unfortunately.

Dead CMG's is more my wheelhouse but it's been a lot of fun reading about others' experiences here. Now that our wallets and psyches aren't caught up in the collectibility aspect and a deluge of product, it's neat to see which games and ideas stand out even today.

EDIT: I've been sourcing old Monsterpocalypse stuff from Hill's Wholesale Gaming for years: wholesalegaming.biz/

They sell sealed product for literally dozens of dead games and I have always wondered whether it was worth shelling out to try any of the CCGs. Love this thread.

boothwah wrote: and then I dumpstered all of the Wars, Shadowrun, Shadowfist, WCW Nitro, Battlelords, etc.

HERESY!!!

*lol*

Rliyen wrote:

boothwah wrote: and then I dumpstered all of the Wars, Shadowrun, Shadowfist, WCW Nitro, Battlelords, etc.

HERESY!!!

*lol*

No, that's a different dead CCG.

HECATOMB should have been great. WotC game, cool idea, transparent cards (for overlay effects), rotating through fivefold symmetry. Alas, it sucked. They didn’t take advantage of the design space very well, and it was probably really expensive to make and support.

My love for MYTHOS is unabated. I still there there is a truly great game in there if you manage certain cards and actually develop the game to a point where it can be played instead of just turning into a stupid monster fest. The Story mechanic is all-time design. Love that shit.