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[Jorbles]

Are there any video games based on CCG principles, like Magic that don't cost an arm and a leg in micropayments?

I mean games with a large card base that you can build a deck from, but that don't restrict you in what type of deck you can create either by making you play for weeks to unlock everything or spend a bunch of money beyond what you paid upfront to buy "booster packs"?

[Insomniac]

Are there any video games based on CCG principles, like Magic that don't cost an arm and a leg in micropayments?

I mean games with a large card base that you can build a deck from, but that don't restrict you in what type of deck you can create either by making you play for weeks to unlock everything or spend a bunch of money beyond what you paid upfront to buy "booster packs"?

Assassin's Creed Recollection
Shadow Era

They both have micropayments but you can earn stuff to get them anyways, I've played a LOT of shadow era, havent put any money into it and have had most of the tier 1 decks for a long time.

[Ozle]

Play the old Magic the Gathering game! Play against the AI!

http://shandalar.net/introduction.html

Sid Meier+ Micropose + Magic

[Rabid]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1965800643/solforge-digital-trading-card-game

Not out yet, but I played a demo at Essen.
Looks really good.

[jsh357]

Seasons (which you can play for free on BGA) has a few similar elements like mana pools and drafting and such.  I like it a lot, personally.  Not hardcore in to Magic so I am probably making sweeping generalizations.

[Jorbles]

@Insomniac
Awesome I will check some those out! Shadow Era looks particularly neat.

@Ozle:
The old MTG looks neat, but I have no idea how I'd get it to run. Does it work in Windows 7? I guess I could run it in Wine on my Linux box actually. Okay, maybe there's a way.

@Rabid
That looks pretty cool. I will keep an eye on that. Hopefully they don't make you buy a zillion booster packs to enjoy it.

@jsh357
Not really what I'm looking for, though I do want to try it. Thanks!

[Kirian]

http://www.kongregate.com/ccg-games

That might have what you're looking for.

[Captain_Frisk]

Theory strongly endorses Kongai

[Jorbles]

@Kirian:
Thanks, I've already looked there. They are mostly pretty grind heavy. You need to put a lot of time into those games just to get to the part where you actually get to design a deck. I just want a game where you get access to everything right at the start, and it's about exploring different strategies in deck building.

Theory strongly endorses Kongai

I actually quite like Kongai. It's got neat Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanics and some fun WIFOM moments. It's not what I want right now, but I like it.

[theory]

The heck is Kongai?

EDIT: screw you Frisk.  I would rather endorse War before anything touched by Sirlin.

[dondon151]

Cannot resist the urge to recommend the classic Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Game Boy Color.

[jsh357]

Cannot resist the urge to recommend the classic Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Game Boy Color.

The sequel has a translation patch.  It's better.  Sadly it's still the Pokemon Trading Card Game

[Dsell]

Cannot resist the urge to recommend the classic Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Game Boy Color.

I was thinking the same thing! A friend of mine just rediscovered that and played through the whole thing last week.

I actually didn't know there was a sequel.

[Jorbles]

The heck is Kongai?

EDIT: screw you Frisk.  I would rather endorse War before anything touched by Sirlin.

Why the hate? I wouldn't say Kongai is amazing, but it's well designed, and Super Puzzle Fighter is awesome.

[Ozle]

The heck is Kongai?

EDIT: screw you Frisk.  I would rather endorse War before anything touched by Sirlin.

Why the hate? I wouldn't say Kongai is amazing, but it's well designed, and Super Puzzle Fighter is awesome.

Ooohh....dont open that door......


But with regards to Shandalar, should work on every windows i would think! There is a doanload in that link i sent

[papaHav]

Dominion:
Isotropic

[Qvist]

I searched wareonce for an alternative too.
The only one I liked was http://elementsthegame.com
It's very easy to learn but still offers high flexibility and depth.
The biggest differences are that there are 12 instead of 5 different factions and that mana is accumulated over turns.
I suggest you to try it out.

Has it to be a video game? I ask because there is now a new board game called Mage Wars out.
The critics often compared it to MtG and all of them loved it.
It combines elements of MtG with Tabletop, but it is without shuffling, so there's no luck what spells you draw.
http://magewars.com

[Titandrake]

Funnily enough, I just tried Elements recently.

The cards are well designed, and there's actually a lot of viable decks. The problem I had with it was that it felt like I had to grind out too much to get new cards. If I remember it right, there's a trainer version that lets you test decks against the AI, so you can build whatever deck you want.

[Captain_Frisk]

I searched wareonce for an alternative too.
The only one I liked was http://elementsthegame.com
It's very easy to learn but still offers high flexibility and depth.
The biggest differences are that there are 12 instead of 5 different factions and that mana is accumulated over turns.
I suggest you to try it out.

Has it to be a video game? I ask because there is now a new board game called Mage Wars out.
The critics often compared it to MtG and all of them loved it.
It combines elements of MtG with Tabletop, but it is without shuffling, so there's no luck what spells you draw.
http://magewars.com

I own magewars, and I want to like it very much.

[Davio]

But you don't? Why?

[Captain_Frisk]

I just haven't played it enough yet.

I don't want to pre judge a game that obviously has a bunch of depth from the meta game based on a few plays with the pre constructed decks, but basically the mage wand is OP, and creates a side mini game that IMHO is not particularly fun.

[Davio]

On the other hand, if it's a good game, you'll know that immediately after the first tries.
I know I felt this way about Dominion, I was like "whaaat? this is great! let's play it again and again!"

If you feel you should play a game 100 times before you can even determine whether it's good, it's probably not.

But it can also have a bit to do with expectations.
When our group first played Cosmic Encounter we thought it was highly strategical.
So we were all shocked when after playing for just half an hour someone "suddenly" won through a crazy mixture of zaps, flares and alien effects. Nowadays we know it's a party game, so we accept it for what it is and have more fun with it.

[Captain_Frisk]

How can you not like a game that has an honest to goodness spellbook?

You turn the pages in it and pick out your spells!

I think this is going to be a "better in V2" game once some of the kinks are worked out.

Common complaints seem to be:

Wands with certain spells are OP
Turtling is too easy and makes games too long.

[popsofctown]

Elements is a good game.  While playing Elements, though, I saw an ad for a Korean MtG style CCG called Carte, and I prefer to play it instead because it's deeper and playing games isn't as autopilot (Elements has plenty of strategy but so very much of it happens in deckbuilding rather than gameplay).

It works on the micropayment model.  I have been able to enjoy the game as a pure F2P player though.  What's really helpful is that they have lots of "basic" class cards that only cost 1/3rd of a twenty minute game's earnings to buy, basically free.  There's a broad selection of them, and they are Lightning Bolt and Hypnotic Specter quality cards, not Hill Giants and Grey Ogres.  So from the getgo you have a lot to work with to make a quality deck.

I've played several different TCGs and iTCGS and imo Carte is real quality stuff.  Sometimes I wonder whether I like it better than Magic outright.

If you are interested I can teach you and you can join my crew

[Kirian]

I also quite enjoyed Elements, but it still has the grindy aspect to it, alas.

Man.  Now I want to design a game of this sort, remove the grindiness, and publish it.  Alas I have no time and zero Flash programming skill.

Also, can we have something that doesn't involve summoning monsters to kill each other?  Every. Single. CCG.

[popsofctown]

Are you opposed to the flavor of summoning monsters and battling, or the mechanics of it?  I've always thought a steampunk themed game would be a nice change of pace, but I think using permanent objects with numerical stats to battle is a discovery of an optimal game design rather than an arbitrary selection of structure.

[Ozle]

You can test out my politic themed card game if you like?

You are fighting over influence and votes rather than monsters.

Its not a collectable card game though, more of a build your deck out ofoptions game.

If i had kniwn of things such as deckbuilding, drafting, shufflebuilding and themlike when i was 13 it would be a lot better! (damn you game designers, you should have got published quicker!)

[Kirian]

Are you opposed to the flavor of summoning monsters and battling, or the mechanics of it?  I've always thought a steampunk themed game would be a nice change of pace, but I think using permanent objects with numerical stats to battle is a discovery of an optimal game design rather than an arbitrary selection of structure.

For me at least, it's a matter of oversaturation of mechanic rather than oversaturation of theme.  Online I've seen ones that summon various army units, or various spaceships and space stations; sometimes only ones directly across from one another can attack, etc., but it's all the same basic mechanic.  I think that "optimal mechanic" may be correct, but I really think it's a local maximum, and no one has really tried to find a different local maximum.

Well, except Donald, who was then copied near the same local maximum by Ascension, Thunderstone, etc.  But I'm positive there are other local maxima for deckbuilding games out there.

[popsofctown]

So would you consider Eredan it's own local maximum?  In Eredan you start with 3 "creatures" that deal damage with eachother, you can't summon new ones.  You just buff them as they fight to make yours stronger.  You don't use mana either, you just cast 2 cards you think are most helpful in each situation.

[Kirian]

So would you consider Eredan it's own local maximum?  In Eredan you start with 3 "creatures" that deal damage with eachother, you can't summon new ones.  You just buff them as they fight to make yours stronger.  You don't use mana either, you just cast 2 cards you think are most helpful in each situation.

That is definitely different, yes.  The gameplay no longer has to do with summoning.  I'd have to try it out to get a feel for it though.

[popsofctown]

So would you consider Eredan it's own local maximum?  In Eredan you start with 3 "creatures" that deal damage with eachother, you can't summon new ones.  You just buff them as they fight to make yours stronger.  You don't use mana either, you just cast 2 cards you think are most helpful in each situation.

That is definitely different, yes.  The gameplay no longer has to do with summoning.  I'd have to try it out to get a feel for it though.

Oh it's a terrible game.  That was just for the sake of discussion

[ddubois]

Ooo man, I had long forgotten all about elementsthegame.com.  I had a ton of upgraded cards there.  I sort of hit a plateau and got bored with the game though.  The card pool was just too small to have the kind of depth I wanted; there were really only about 3 viable deck archetypes that could handle the god quests (or whatever they were called) and some of those automatically conceded half the matchups on turn 1.  The PvP scene was a little more diverse but not enthralling.  Much of the game experience came flowed out of the inherently superficial feedback loop that grinding for new cards provides.

Looks the most recent deck I had been using was a Cremation/Supernova rush deck?

One thing I really appreciated about that game system was the ease with which one could transfer around deck lists.  You could just import/export the codes, ala "6u1 6u2 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 71a 74a 74a 77g 7ah 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7ds 7ds 7jv 809 809 80h 80h 8pj", and the forum software was such that when you dumped in that code with the appropriate forum tag, the relevant card images would be presented.  Very small, simple detail, but it made my life so much easier than the incessant typing of "4x Fireblast 4x Incincerate 4x Ball Lightning..." ad nauseam as I would be forced to do when I was discussing M:tG decklists on various forums.

Have they added much in the last couple years?  From looking at http://elementsthegame.wikia.com/wiki/Mark_of_Fire it looks like they haven't added anything?  I guess I'll check it out again and see.

[Qvist]

I haven't played since a while ddubois. Since the last time I played, they seemed to change some card images, added Shards for each mark and I didn't know Golem, Singularity, Seraph and Psion.

[popsofctown]

Anyone heard of/played tactics arena online?
Does it still live?

[ddubois]

Well, I played Elements the Game some more, and man, it is just terrible.  It's sadly very enjoyable early, because grinding for cards and building decks is just plain fun, no matter what, but it's been done elsewhere and universally better.

1) The user interface is fatally flawed in that it allows a user no means to read the effect of spells your opponent has cast / no grave yard to inspect / no log file to peruse.  You're just expected to know every card by picture...
2) ... which isn't as hard as it sounds, since there are so few of them.  Two years have gone by, and he's added only a couple colored spells to each mana category.  It's nigh impossible to make a card game with the depth of a Go or a Chess; card games need expansions, even one as well designed as Dominion did.  He did add a bunch of colorless cards, which I'll get to later.
3) The templating on the card really makes it clear that guy has no clue about game design.  It's like he's learned nothing from the 100's of TCGs/LCGs/DBGs that have come before him.  H'es got things keyworded when only one card does that effect, the keywords are defined nowhere, and the words chosen are often ones only a thesaurus would love: Accretion, Mitosis, etc.
4) The designer has added a bunch of un-purchasable grossly-overpowered colorless cards.  You can't truly make competitive decks if you do not own these cards, but the only way to acquire them to to grind the AI-controlled "defense" decks of players who have them.  You have to hope you get lucky to beat them despite your inferior deck, then get lucky on the "slot machine"-esque spin afterward you earned that you will be awarded one.  That's it -- there's no trading with other players, and surprisingly, no micro-payment system to acquire them either.  They are banned in the unofficial PVP events, because they are inconceivably stupid cards.  Many of them even act contrary to a user's expectations.  They're templated after earlier "artifact" cards, but act like spells or creatures in the games rules.  "Why can't I Shatter that?  Oh, it's a creature!?  Wtf?"

I've since remembered why I quit the game originally, and the programmer has made the game much worse after I left.

[Drab Emordnilap]

I would venture that Mitosis is not a word beloved by thesauri either.

[ddubois]

Now, for a game I can't recommend enough: Spectromancer.  This game is awesome.  It's card-like, in that your starting tableau of available spells to cast are a drawn from a larger pool of spells that exist in the game and your opponent's starting spells are drawn from the remainder of the deck you were not dealt (the latter being very important to take into account for strategic reasons).  But you don't draw or discard after that.  The play of the game is similar to MtG, with summoning creatures, casting spells to the face, etc., except that the battlefield is slotted, i.e. broken up into 5 battlefields that do not interact unless a cardspell says otherwise.

It supports all of AI, hotseat, and online play, on both iOS and PC.  The AI routinely kicks my ass on the Archmage difficulty.  I can reach near 50% with some mage types, but seem to be batting under 25% with others.  This is despite my hundreds of plays and my years of competitive high-caliber card game experience.

[Kuildeous]

the keywords are defined nowhere, and the words chosen are often ones only a thesaurus would love: Accretion, Mitosis, etc.

Although, I wish more games would use thesaurus words. I like vocabulary accretion. *grin*

I can thank World of Darkness for letting me know of wonderful words like alacrity, puissance, and verisimilitude. For the flaws that game had, they at least acknowledge that you grew up with a library nearby and had every opportunity to go visit it.

Though, that doesn't soften the other complaints you had. In fact, I have a hard time justifying "mitosis" as a keyword in a game, though I admit I haven't played it.

[Captain_Frisk]

Well, I played Elements the Game some more, and man, it is just terrible.  It's sadly very enjoyable early, because grinding for cards and building decks is just plain fun, no matter what, but it's been done elsewhere and universally better.

1) The user interface is fatally flawed in that it allows a user no means to read the effect of spells your opponent has cast / no grave yard to inspect / no log file to peruse.  You're just expected to know every card by picture...
2) ... which isn't as hard as it sounds, since there are so few of them.  Two years have gone by, and he's added only a couple colored spells to each mana category.  It's nigh impossible to make a card game with the depth of a Go or a Chess; card games need expansions, even one as well designed as Dominion did.  He did add a bunch of colorless cards, which I'll get to later.
3) The templating on the card really makes it clear that guy has no clue about game design.  It's like he's learned nothing from the 100's of TCGs/LCGs/DBGs that have come before him.  H'es got things keyworded when only one card does that effect, the keywords are defined nowhere, and the words chosen are often ones only a thesaurus would love: Accretion, Mitosis, etc.
4) The designer has added a bunch of un-purchasable grossly-overpowered colorless cards.  You can't truly make competitive decks if you do not own these cards, but the only way to acquire them to to grind the AI-controlled "defense" decks of players who have them.  You have to hope you get lucky to beat them despite your inferior deck, then get lucky on the "slot machine"-esque spin afterward you earned that you will be awarded one.  That's it -- there's no trading with other players, and surprisingly, no micro-payment system to acquire them either.  They are banned in the unofficial PVP events, because they are inconceivably stupid cards.  Many of them even act contrary to a user's expectations.  They're templated after earlier "artifact" cards, but act like spells or creatures in the games rules.  "Why can't I Shatter that?  Oh, it's a creature!?  Wtf?"

I've since remembered why I quit the game originally, and the programmer has made the game much worse after I left.

+1 - I remember having good time until I saw the grind necessary to really get the good stuff.