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Trading card games are there and back again! I speak for both of us that we’re not the biggest fans of TCGs and have a preference for the Living Card Game format. If you’re not familiar, the difference is that TCGs (like Pokémon or Magic) sell packs with random cards called boosters while the LCGs (like Netrunner or Arkham Horror: the Card Game) sell specific sets of cards, there is no random element. That being said, who are we kidding and let’s address our real problem: we just don’t have time to invest in a card game, trading or living, right now – we still have plenty Arkham Horror the Card game and Netrunner packs lying around that we never touched. :’)
As you can also see in our Weekly Recap we did play some games and even some surprising ones!
Heinze finished and won an online game of 18ChesaPeake, as far as I heard it was a really tense and close game until the very end! We played a game of It’s a Wonderful World and Triqueta (with the Wolves expansion) with a friend. I don’t think I ever had a score as high as this one, I ended up scoring the triquetas of all the animals except for the lowest-scoring bunnies. I believe it was around 50 points, huzzah!
Later that week, we had another game night and a friend introduced us to the game Attika which looked rather vintage, haha! But despite it being an older design, the game is simple and fun enough for a light game night. The many many tokens on the tiles make the game a little unclear and we were surprised that there were no tokens in the box to mark on your player board which buildings are already built (you need to know this for unlocking bonuses) – but luckily our friend brought a big bag of cubes that solved that problem.
A few days earlier we also received an exciting package from Iello Games, containing Unmatched: Tales to Amaze game and two other Unmatched sets. This is one of those games that have always looked interesting but we never really looked into. So when Iello asked us if we wanted to try the game, it was a big yes! It’s a shame we didn’t have the time to play them yet, hopefully, we can make that happen this week after a big work deadline of mine on Thursday. :’)
Since I work from home, it was time to really get out of the house this weekend and we took a long hike of 17 kilometers from train station to train station. Despite it raining the first half, we had a great time and the route even featured a foot ferry with a hand crank which you don’t see that often anymore.
I have no clue how many games we’ll play this week but… one thing’s certain, we’ve got a six-player game of Stationfall planned this weekend and that’s going to be exciting!
Chris
“The Chase” is a term a learned from Geek and Sundry to refer to the part of a TCG where you have to buy booster packs and hope that you get the cards you’re looking for through blind luck.
I mention this so that you’ll understand what I mean when I say the chase sucks.
John
LCG all the way. I never want to deal with TCGs again.
Ace
I’d rather play Millennium Blades. All the fun of a CCG, but as a board game.
Ricardo
Used to play a lot of MtG. While I get the criticism of TCGs, the limited formats are a lot of fun and the main draw for me. These formats are only possible because of the random aspect. At best, you could replace the experience by building a Cube.
That said, I sold my collection and rarely play anymore. I really dislike the financial side of TCGs. I’ve felt the high of opening up a booster pack and getting a good or valuable card. I imagine that some people will spend way more because of that feeling.
John
That feeling has a name. It’s gambling.
JML
I got sucked back into MtG when the D&D set hit, but I’ve actually been having a lot of fun because of the Commander format. the 100 card, singleton format has done a lot to ease the “I need 4 of this card that immediately shot up in price to stupid amounts!” pain that drove me out the first time. (that, plus land destruction decks are no longer a thing)
LCG format is smart, but doesn’t give you the crack-a-pack thrill.
Queek
For me, the answer is “Yes.”
Both options have strengths and weaknesses. For LCGs, the strengths are that everyone has access to the same card pool as long as they keep up with the expansions and the meta is very stable, but the downsides are that everyone has access to the same card pool, so after a while, you end up seeing a lot of the same decks, rather than seeing a lot of weird jank at your FLGS as people try to make the card pools that they *do* have work and as a result, have people discovering weird corner case interactions that chasing the known meta didn’t result in, not to mention the fact that the cost of entry goes up for an LCG after it has been out for a while as players have to spend more money in a lump sum to get into the game or catch up if they have been out of the game for a while.
CCG/TCGs have the fun of cracking packs and the ability to create easily limited formats such as draft and sealed which LCGs can’t easily do, as well as allowing for a healthy secondary market that a FLGS can actively participate in and profit from. The downside is that the secondary market and the fact that you aren’t 100% promised to have access to the same card pool as other players leads to issues with players not being able to access cards that might end up being staples from earlier sets without the company actively engaging in reprinting and pricing people out of certain formats.
Ulrich
Definitely Team LCG. And at that still in love with the deckbuilding in the Star Wars LCG. Just 10 decision points for a deck. Brilliant. But I guess this deckbuilding mechanism will never return or will it?