Deck Building Games

[The Shutting Downs]

I'm putting this up, as it relates to Joose's Board Games thread.

So, at my local Gaming club, I have seen more than a few of these pop up. First with the imaginatively named 'DC Deck Building Game' where Batman seems to rule all the cards, and 'Marvel Legendary', the other sides version that seemed more rounded.

Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Trek and even Penny Arcade are in there, and it looked like they seemed to be the thing to have for a Nerd franchise (GW have a few), and quite well contained games in themselves.

But then I have seen almost all of them do 'expansion Decks', and add ons, so are they really as 'stand alone' as we may have originally been led to believe? the full Legendary set I saw when I played must have totalled over 100 quid.

But it also seems there are communities springing up to support players and apps being made to help randomise the gameplay for some of them.

What do you lot think, I have only played a limited few and looked up others, they seem like a good idea to me, with enough replay value, what do you lot think? Have you had much experience with the genre at all?

[Dog Pants]

I've not really played much in the way of card games (I do remember playing a Mechwarrior one years ago) but am I right in thinking these are different to CCGs?

[The Shutting Downs]

These are the ones where you buy a box with 200-500 cards in to start, so you get to play the game straight off.

You get a stating hand of basic cards, and have to use the point values on those to get better cards that allow you to cause more damage to the 'enemy' pile.

You keep the enemy cards you destroy, gaining victory points, and have to beat the other players, but you also have to work with the others to get through the game as well, so teamwork and competition in one.

[Joose]

The big difference between CCGs and deckbuilding games is *when* you build the decks. With a CCG, like Magic the Gathering or Mechwarrior, you build a deck before you start playing out of all the cards you own, then match it off against someone else with a deck they have built. Playing the game itself doesn't involve building decks. Indeed, in a CCG you could just grab a premade starter deck and play with that, or use deck lists other people have made and never actually do any deck building yourself. Its a lot like building an army for a game of Warhammer.

In a deckbuilding game building your deck is actually part of the game itself. You sit down to play with all your cards and put together a deck as the game progresses. I've never actually played a deckbuilding game myself, so I'm not that familiar with the mechanics.

There's also the new thing: LCG, or Living Card Game. As far as I know this is just Netrunner at moment, but I could be wrong. From a deck building point of view an LCG is basically the same as a CCG. The difference is in how you buy the cards, which I suspect may be similar to deckbuilding games, based on what TSD is saying.

So, in a CCG you buy cards in two ways (not counting buying individual cards off eBay or something, I'm talking here only about buying things new): Prebuilt decks and booster packs. A prebuilt deck is exactly what it sounds like: a deck that has been put together to be ready to play straight out of the pack. They will usually be legal and playable but fairly weak, intentionally to tempt you into buying booster packs. A booster pack is normally around 10 random cards in a sealed pack that you can buy for a couple of quid. Often they have something like 7 common cards, a couple of uncommon cards and one rare card. The problems with this are obvious: you don't know what you are getting until you open the pack and in order to get the rare cards you want you will probably end up with millions of spare copies of the common cards. But hey, that's why these are often called "trading card games". Its also why they are sometimes called "horrifying money pits", as new sets will be released regularly and will quite often have cards that are just strictly better than older sets, meaning you have to keep pouring money in to stay competitive. Its my one and only real complaint against Magic the Gathering, but hoo boy it is a biggie.

Netrunner gets around this problem with its LCG (and I suspect deckbuilding games work in the same way) by offering new cards as expansions, rather than random boosters. You buy the main game and it has everything you need to build decks and start playing. You could quite happily then never buy any more cards ever again. If you do want to freshen things up you can buy an expansion, but the clever thing is that you know *exactly* what you are buying before you buy it (so no more pouring money down a hole fruitlessly trying to get that one card you want) and it includes all the cards you need to expand the game for both you and your opponents equally (so no more one side having better cards because he spent more money). Its the perfect solution to the problem as far as I can see, and as I understand deckbuilding games they would be mad not to be following the same model. Yes, there are expansions, so if you want to buy everything ever you will be dropping a hell of a lot of money, but there is absolutely no requirement to do so. Its more like buying board game expansions than buying card game boosters.

[FatherJack]

These sound a little bit scary to me, so perhaps you guys could clarify a few points on the differences or clarify on stuffs.

I last played collecting/trading card games at junior school with perhaps draconian rules which basically meant that all my decent cards got stolen by other players, leaving me left with a handful of shit ones. In truth I only ever bought one or two packets of what might be called booster packs coupled with some hand-me-down throw-away cards that mates had given me, so my investment was hardly massive. I think the game of choice was with World Cup 1978 Panini stickers and I somehow ended up with enough Dino Zoff's to wallpaper the complete interior of my wardrobe.

Is it possible to lose cards you've actually paid for? How, at the end of a game do you know whose cards are whose?

I'm glad the sales-mechanic of buying a random lot of 10-or-so cards hoping you'll get a good one finally seems to be dying out, because fuck that in 1978, never mind 2014.

[Joose]

Is it possible to lose cards you've actually paid for? How, at the end of a game do you know whose cards are whose?

No. Hell no. I think it used to be something that happened in really, really old Magic sets, but that hasnt been a thing for many years. Largely because it is a fucking shitty thing to impose on people and partially because in some places it counts as gambling, which makes hosting games a lot more complicated.

Again, I can only really speak for Magic and Netrunner as although ive played the shit out of those I have never really touched anything else. In Magic your deck is your deck, and for the most part you will start and finish the game with all your cards on your side of the table, so its usually pretty easy to keep track of what belongs to who. A lot of people play with protective sleeves for their cards, which can make this even easier: if all my card sleeves have a dragon on the back and all yours have an elf, all we have to do is sort dragons and elves and everything is fine. I can never be arsed to sleeve up my cards though.

Netrunner is even easier: Every game has one player as a hacker and one as a corporation, and all the hacker cards have red backs whilst the corp cards have blue backs. Simple.

[TheJockGit]

Just been looking at the Netrunner site, have to say the game looks very interesting, unfortunately I doubt I would ever have anyone to play with so it would be resigned to the bottom drawer and only dusted off in the event of a Jockbash.

[The Shutting Downs]

They have started netrunner tournaments, you take 2 decks, one corp one hacker, and play 2 games per opponent.

Sounds like a good way to work it.