My current CCg/LCG obsessions

Every once in a while I get fixated on a certain game or game type. I've been through periods where I've read everything I could on adventure games, RPGs, different Dudes on a Map games, etc.

Right now I'm obsessing over these CCG/LCG. Chances are I won't actually buy any of these games, but pretend I will. So tell me what's awesome/not so awesome about them.

WARS TCG: I don't know how this blipped onto my radar, but I used to play Decipher's Star Wars CCG back when it came out. It was my first CCG other than Magic and I love Star Wars. I didn't have the money to focus on a Light Side deck and Dark Side deck so I just stuck with Light Side. I hated the exclusivitiy of the "mains" and it was nigh impossible to build a good deck without them. Meanwhile my friend trounced me every single game with his Vader and assorted goons. Well I know WARS is built on the same system but has an original IP and 5 different factions to play.

A Game of Thrones LCG: OK, FFG's ads on BGG are to blame for this one. My brother and I played a learning game of this once or twice with some cheap starter decks he picked up one year at GenCon. Seemed fun, the mechanics are different enough from what I've played before and I enjoyed the books enough.

Warhammer Invasion: I like Warhammer OK, but what interests me most is that this is the first LCG designed from the ground up to be a LCG rather than a CCG.

Legend of the Five Rings: I checked out a couple episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender the other night and it has me hankering for a good fantasy martial arts game and it reminded me of L5R. L5R intimidates me a little though because it has been out so long and seems like it has some serious tournament play and with it's free-form storyline could be hard for newbs to get into.

So fans, tell me why these games rock or don't. Or feel free to tell me what game I'm missing out on, but bear in mind I've played Magic and the XBLA game does just fine for me. I also have Netrunner and I've played Shadowrun, a bit of Middle-Earth, Pokemon, a game of Call of Cthulhu and even Chaotic.

Yeah, the whole CCG thing really scratches some sort of itch I have quite often. I used to play Magic, then SW:CCG then LOTR. Then I stopped in 2005 for good.

Now I'm loving M:tG on XBLArcade. I'm going to start the multiplayer soon which should be fun.

In terms of CCG, Eye of Judgment on PSP is insanely fun and very very addictive. I play that all the time too

Aside from playing my bro, I haven't jumped into playing Magic XBLA against peeps. Or are you talking about playing 3-player/4-player games?

And I have no PSP.

yeah, playing multiplayer or 1v1 is more fun too (I prefer 1v1 in general) but am going to try 3-player for a while.

Also the co-op mode with someone beside you is fun


for XBLArcade, you could try Panzer Assault for free and see what you think. That has a big CCG feel to it too

We need to play Magic on Xbox sometime, I was going to send you an invite last weekend but I think you were already in a match.

How does the co-op work? And how are the new decks, btw?

new decks are good at countering the popular decks right now (elves, mind of void, etc)

They're pretty fun. The landfall one is a fun challenging one to play. Lacking depth tho.

The Heat one is really cool and is great at nerfing creature decks like Green or whatever.

I'm currently working on the Black/Red/Blue one which is really fun to play. I got some cool vampire called a Vein Drinker who basically does 'Arena'-type of combat vs creatures and if she wins, she gets the Sengir Vampire +1/+1 counter. So I just pick off the creatures one by one and end up with a massive creature.

I also have a couple of massive trample flyers who need sacrifices or they get very mad at me. One of them will start eating ME and the other starts eating himself. They're cool


EDIT: I just noticed I didn't answer all your questions. Yeah, the co-op is 2v2. You can play 2v2 CPU too which is fun but you have to have a human counterpart. I was manning two controllers at home often which is fun. But if your brother plays, then it'll be fun having him there beside you and you both taking on the co-op campaign together. I did that with my wife and it was cool.

Not big on playing, well buying, CCGs, but my neighbor and I play Warhammer: Invasion quite a bit.

That's a fun game right there.

Jack Hooligan wrote:

Not big on playing, well buying, CCGs, but my neighbor and I play Warhammer: Invasion quite a bit.

That's a fun game right there.

What is the gaming scene like down in Austin?

Big League.

There are several outstanding game stores. Being the town with the largest University probably helps.

Texas is the heart of the Warhammer Indy tournament scene and Austin is right in the middle. There are 40k/Fantasy events almost weekly. And there's constantly been a Blood Bowl league going on since about '01.

More to your liking, there are national/world CCG events held here from time to time, on top of the weekly tourneys.

There are at least four yahoo/meet-up groups I'm aware of that organize regular boardgame events.

All this, and I play games in my garage with friends. I actually went to a Boards and Brews meet-up and it was really cool. But they usually meet during the week, and living about 20 mins south of Austin and having a 3yr old (with another in Aug), I play with other guys in a like situation down in Kyle on the Friday nights I'm not at a show or something.

Invasion is a really good game. You have to balance between having units to attack with, gaining ressources to play stuff and drawing cards. It's very clever, and the different factions have a very distinct style of play. Dwarves want to develop and wear out their opponents, orcs can deal a massive amount of damage out of the blue, Empire are flexible with nice combos and so on. And another thing to like about it is that gameplay is fast. For instance you don't have to sort out individual combats, but just add every attacking unit's strenght up and the same for defence. And in the core set and first few battle packs there's not a lot of cards that cancel other cards which is extremely nice. I think maybe the high elves do this more, but I hope it's not too bad. I like that I get to play my cool cards.

I haven't bought into it a lot, but it seems to my untrained eye as if the boosters add interesting possibilities without (so far) skewing the balance too much. But in itself the base set holds plenty of variation and even a few deck building options.

I tried A Game of Thrones with some starter decks when it was a CCG, and while it looked promising (especially as a multiplayer), the starter decks didn't work very well. I can imagine this has been changed with the core set.

I should note that I'm something of a lousy/lazy deckbuilder, so I prefer something I can play with core sets/starters/precons.

metalface13 wrote:

I should note that I'm something of a lousy/lazy deckbuilder, so I prefer something I can play with core sets/starters/precons.

The LCGs are perfect for you then. You may also enjoy Dominion which has a pretty sizable following here.

Jack, did you read what he said? People that are lousy/lazy deckbuilders (read: me) will HATE Dominion because it's a game about deckbuilding. It's who can build the best deck wins.

That's why i love this incarnation of Magic so much for XBLArcade cuz all the decks are pre-build. You have almost no say in what goes in or out

True, but you only have what, 10-15 card choices? Not hard to build a deck with such limited options. Plus, it's the same deck everyone else is building so more of a race than anything else.

Yeah, I played Dominion and didn't care for it. In fact, in the last game we played, with four players, I managed to not score a single point at all!