What are the best CCGs ever made?

Babylon 5 CCG - Easily my favorite multi-player card game, regardless of being a CCG. Every faction plays differently and there are many paths to victory, including standard wins and major wins. Also has a great meta-game with lots of room for negotiation, alliances, backstabbing, etc. The game has a bit more narrative than the usual CCG as well. 4-5 player tournament games end by 90 minutes while casual games with those numbers probably average at 2 hours. Although I've been in some 10 player games that took all afternoon. Its also my space empires game of choice, beating even TI3 although they're very different from each other.

vialiy wrote:

There is no "C" in "Dominion"

I heard the first booster contained a lot of useless commons.

Vs. is a lot of fun IF you like super heroes. They did a pretty good job of abstracting hero powers into simple card abilities, plays pretty quickly once you are familiar with the cards, and is dirt cheap on eBay (or at least it was at one point).

I'll second Doomtown, Jyhad, and 7th Sea as great games. Shadowfist is also fun.

Others I'd recommend:

Warlord - still alive in a 4th edition. You can pick up large lots of cards from the earlier editions for dirt cheap (and they are fully compatible with the new stuff, it's just a reset to a new base set). Totally a quick D&D fix. You have your warlord and a bunch of other dudes in his little warband arranged in a pyramid formation, weaker guys in front. Guys are brought in to play in the row equal to their level, and you always have to have at least as many guys in the row in front. Tap your guys to change ranks attack or use abilities. Your deck consists of more guys for your warband, weapons, abilities, spells, etc. Your guys have attack values, AC, level, special abilities, HP, etc. and you roll a d20 to attack. Does a nice job of creating (mages hang back and cast spells from the back ranks, fighters gear up and hit the front, rogues sneak into enemy formations, etc.) It's probably my favorite CCG.

Warhammer Warcry (Fantasy)

Another game that does a nice job of scratching the fantasy minis itch. Fight three battles, set amount of gold to spend on cards at the beginning of each battle. Arrange your troops into two ranks: archers and artillery can attack over a rank (usually your back to their front), flyers can attack over two ranks. Cavalry and Flyers can block slower attacking troops. Alternate picking an attacker and defender, play cards as special abilities and flip the top card (cards have dice rolls on them) to add to your attack value, loser dies, winner taps. Winner can press on if loser fails moral check. Victory determined by VP total on surviving cards. Lots of fun and great art on the cards. This game is why I will be able to resist the new FFG Warhammer LCG. Not sure how often it turns up on eBay, but should be fairly inexpensive.

I'd take Ken's list, by and large. I never played SW:CCG or DOOMTOWN, but they looked pretty awesome.

1. MAGIC: THE GATHERING. This game is just dynamite. Unlike, say, MYTHOS where one strategy can prevail almost without exception, in MTG you realy can design -your- deck to mess with the -opponents- play. There's no "solitaire" aspect to the game--you need to win and you do that by touching their stuff--their life points, their library. Hmm, I guess there are some solitaire decks (Stasis, Battle of Wits?) but even these require interaction, because the "engines" there tend to be fragile, and thus mucked up by the opponent. Oh, and a note: PLAY FOR ANTE. Try it, it will blow your fucking mind.
2. MYTHOS. Mentioned elsewhere--if you houserule it enough to really encourage story competitions--this game rocks cocks.
3. UFS. Unsung so far! I have the Penny Arcade set and got some of the Street Fighter 2 and Soul Calibur starters--this game is pretty fun. Kind of like volleyball, but with Yoga Fire and Sofatitia.

The problem I have with the SWCCG game is that unless you have a bunch of the rare name characters, you are just playing with a bunch of scrubs no one has heard of.

my favs are netrunner, magic, 7th Sea, On the Edge, and Doomtrooper in that order. I have decks from a slew of others but CCGS never get playing around here so I stopped buying them.

Steve"CCGdabbler"Avery

Almalik wrote:

The problem I have with the SWCCG game is that unless you have a bunch of the rare name characters, you are just playing with a bunch of scrubs no one has heard of.

That's true. The game's big flaw was the rarity scheme; you needed to really get into the game to get the most out of it. If you did get into it, though, it was so good.

Aarontu wrote:

Almalik wrote:

The problem I have with the SWCCG game is that unless you have a bunch of the rare name characters, you are just playing with a bunch of scrubs no one has heard of.

That's true. The game's big flaw was the rarity scheme; you needed to really get into the game to get the most out of it. If you did get into it, though, it was so good.

The rarity (which they later fixed) and the massive amount of rules were the game's two main drawbacks. Well, that and apparently the Empire would crumble if Han, Chewie, Leia, Luke, and Obi-Wan all ganged up and beat the shit out of one lonely Stormtrooper.

However, despite this...that game was fukcin GOOD. Never got into another tourney scene with quite the fervor that I did SWCCG for several years.

Ken B. wrote:

Aarontu wrote:

Almalik wrote:

The problem I have with the SWCCG game is that unless you have a bunch of the rare name characters, you are just playing with a bunch of scrubs no one has heard of.

That's true. The game's big flaw was the rarity scheme; you needed to really get into the game to get the most out of it. If you did get into it, though, it was so good.

The rarity (which they later fixed) and the massive amount of rules were the game's two main drawbacks. Well, that and apparently the Empire would crumble if Han, Chewie, Leia, Luke, and Obi-Wan all ganged up and beat the shit out of one lonely Stormtrooper.

However, despite this...that game was fukcin GOOD. Never got into another tourney scene with quite the fervor that I did SWCCG for several years.

Yeah, they did fix it later with the Premium packs with a main in each one, and then later with the Endor/DS2 preconstructed decks with mains in them. The fix came a bit late, though.

SWCCG was terrible for all of those above mentioned reasons. I won one game with my light side deck. ONE. Because I only had Han and Leia. So lame.

#1 Pokemon
#2 Magic
#3 Shadowrun
#4 Middle-Earth
#5 Star Wars

I think that's all the CCGs I've extensively played.

I think Pokemon was my favorite CCG. The rules were light, the games quick, and I was into the Pokemon Gameboy games at the time.

I still think the best CCG is what your friends are playing. You need to have a couple of friends building decks and playing as well as yourself or the experience quickly goes flat.

It is incredible that Magic: the Gathering, Netrunner and Jyhad were all designed by Richard Garfield. They are three of the most different CCGs out there and three of the best.

On the Edge (I'm biased as I had a hand in this one) and Jyhad are just brilliant games IMO.

Looks like plenty of people here recommended Magic already, but it's worth saying again: Magic. I've tried a bunch of CCGs, and really there's only one that I ended up really loving, which I'll mention down below.

What I particularly want to stress is that Magic has sooooooooooooo many ways to play.
- Preconstructed decks, which you can pick up for like $3 a pop (old ones, not the latest set), let you play with your friends without everybody spending money.

- Similarly, if you pick up a playset (4 each) of commons from Shards of Alara, Shadowmoor, or Lorwyn, which will set you a max of $15 on eBay including shipping, will give you a DOZEN or more preconstructed decks:
www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ftl/10 (and do a search for "House of Commons Shadowmoor/Lorwyn" for the other two)

- THE CUBE. People who've quit Magic: look this up, it might get you back in. The idea of the cube is that it is the absolute most powerful Magic cards of all time, no filler. And then: you make random 15 packs out of it and draft them. So you get the fun of a draft (which all Magic players love, I think), as well as the fun of playing with insane power.

The other game I love is DREAMBLADE; I'd write more but I'm at an internet cafe halfway across the world and should really do something other than check out F:AT.

1. Star Wars: A great game in all respects. The problem of complexity was only exacerbated as the game grew (although even then the special rules, like the shield on Hoth or the different rules for blowing up each death star, were always for thematic purposes), but from Special Edition on the problem of getting major characters and playing thematic decks was completely changed. From Special Edition on through the introduction of Episode I content (when the power creep got insane) this was a special, special game with lots of theme and some really cool mechanics, the best of which, that your deck served as both your life and resources, was also the most elemental.

2. Doomtown: Similar to Star Wars in a lot of ways (spatial set-up, dual usage of cards for play and chance) but different in so many others. Lots of goofy stuff and a great game for deck building.

3. Middle-Earth: A beautiful game and a lot different from other CCGs in that there is little direct conflict. I've never gotten into this game as much as I would like to, but I've got the whole set of preconstructed decks, which are probably the easiest and best way to play the game. Most of this game's flaws arise out of a desire to be true to Tolkien's setting without merely recreating the stories in the books (although you can do that too!).