What are the best CCGs?

[Jason Liang]

(VTES)

Tried building a !Salubri deck, and dee-stroyed everyone at the table the other day: https://vdb.im/decks?id=5fa08d36a4934c108d8c5abd7a6204f6

Remains to be seen whether it was just my good draws, but this feels like what Potence decks should have been. You can get the full-health torpor on someone without having to draw six cards first. Armor of Caine's Fury + Trap is a meat grinder. I also like that it's equally good at intercept and rush, unlike my Show of Force deck. Very versatile and uses all the moving parts of combat. Sense Death'ing The Dracon was pretty funny.

Also touching up my Neonate Breach deck for a tournament. I noticed I could play some of the new Baron cards with a slight crypt adjustment, though I'm not sure of the balance yet. Arishat herself can become anarch with Anarch Secession, but the clutter+action+infernal cost might not be worth it. She is looking for things to do that don't tap her, though. Reactions are balanced for now, but I'm waiting to see if I want to go all-in with 10 Party Out of Bounds, depending on how often I have one anarch defending against an entire board.

https://vdb.im/decks?id=a46055cf3f924ba292cfcc5da42cdb97

Yes, although I'm surprised you are not running at least a few Telepathic Trackings to keep your Traps good, although I guess !Salubri have combat cancels for that. I played a lot of Trap combat back in the day, with both Ravnos (Trap/ Apparition) and Giovanni (Trap/ Shambling Hordes).

 

[NoSoup4you]

Death Seeker is pretty much better than any particular combat tech card... Yeah, 10 Majesty will still be annoying, but at least you have infinite Langa rushes, and/or taxing them down to nothing with Hide the Heart.

The deck didn't do too well the other day, just screwy draws and being predator of weenie potence. But I made someone throw their cards, so there's that.

 

[Jason Liang]

Death Seeker is pretty much better than any particular combat tech card... Yeah, 10 Majesty will still be annoying, but at least you have infinite Langa rushes, and/or taxing them down to nothing with Hide the Heart.

The deck didn't do too well the other day, just screwy draws and being predator of weenie potence. But I made someone throw their cards, so there's that.

Nice!

At least you're playing a combat deck with weapons. That's my rule #1 for combat - always have some permanent weapons.

I do have an idea for your !Salubri deck, not sure if you've already thought of it, but you might try it out.
When I see a weenie-ish Sabbat deck (well, half Sabbat anyway), I think of playing Marcus Vitel with them. So since your crypt is already in G3/4 that could be worth trying. It's a little weird since you aren't running any FOR cards, not even Freak Drives. Marcus can also give a little stealth with Cloak the Gathering, and a little bloat with Governs. And !Salubri also have their personal Embrace card, albeit it costs pool and has a built-in limit, so The Embrace might be better.

 

[NoSoup4you]

^I'm not sure what the limit is on amount of different ideas a VTES deck will tolerate before becoming a mess. I've had bad luck with my jank in the past, and try to keep a tight lid on things now, so am afraid of diluting combat or having crappy access to these cards for Markus. Perhaps if you have specific edits in mind I'll give it a try sometime.

I came to post that I'm playing in the VTES Atlantic Cup, and am in first place after day 1:

64 players overall IIRC. The deck I'm running is something I designed months ago, but only played at locals a couple times because it ruins everyone's day: https://vdb.im/decks?id=12a8932511c549e5954f94c0f4cd3fb1

(Assamite and Banu Haqim are the same thing mechanically, just flavor updated for v5.)

My friend convinced me to run this instead of Arishat, which, sure, I would like to win one of these things. It is really one-dimensional, but ridiculous, and I at least made a few good decisions where I could. I finessed my first prey into blocking lethal for me with Anneke, saying the Tupdogs to my right were going to be worse and I would be a buffer. Not hard to convince someone of that, right? He says "I will block if you won't bleed me next turn," and I just said "you'll bounce whatever I do anyway." So he let me live and then I bled him for 6 and canceled his bounce. Ended up getting another last-minute oust and tying my predator, as it was a 4-player table. Tupdogs+Nephandi rode my ass the whole game, and I forgot they had Brick By Brick, so my 44 maneuvers didn't save me.

Game 2, I was down to nothing, had gotten archoned, had 9 cards in my deck, but with Kalinda special + Khabar Glory + 8 Haqim discards, I got a bleed of 11 in the end duel and secured the win. Also funny that game, my grandprey played G5-6 Assamites, and he kept giving me pool with Haqim's Law: Leadership, because we both controlled a 7-cap Assamite. What are the odds?

Anyway, if I do even slightly well tomorrow I have a good shot of being in the finals. That oughta bring some attention to how fucking busted HL:R is.

 

[Humanophage]

I was recently trying Runeterra, and I was reminded why it is a bad idea to play those CCGs.
- Almost everyone is playing a handful of decks mentioned on websites as being meta. Very little creativity.
- The fact that most champions are locked out exacerbates the meta monotony because everyone gets the reliable meta champions instead of experimenting.
- The endless animations make everything about 3-4 times more time-consuming than it should be. The videos are especially infuriating, and you can't turn it off.
- At the same time, it is difficult to understand what is going on because of all the flashing, so you can't read the log. This is more of a specific Runeterra issue.
- They end up being extremely time-consuming, in part because of the animations, without giving much satisfaction. You can easily burn through 6 hours in a row, but it feels like you just wasted time and you have sore eyes.

So after playing it for a few days, I uninstalled. I think you'll be a much more erudite person if you spend this industrial amount of time even just arguing over the internet.

 

[NoSoup4you]

^I tried Runeterra for a day, and opted to just reinstall Eternal instead. Mind you, I think Eternal is a pretty shit game, but there's no really innovative digital options right now, and I have a lot of idle time at work some days. At least I have my old collection and the IP is only slightly cringey.

 

[Jason Liang]

VtES European Championships

(Unfortunately the table ends up timing out)

 

[Dadd]

Yugioh Duel Links beginner mode is one of the best relatively modern CCGs with surprising counterplays and no degenerate one turn wins.

 

[Dadd]

I read the original Netrunner is "broken" and "unbalanced" but those are not necessarily bad. Is the original Netrunner "broken" like old school Magic is - swingy but with meaningful decisions - or uninterestingly bad, or something else entirely?

 

[Jason Liang]

I read the original Netrunner is "broken" and "unbalanced" but those are not necessarily bad. Is the original Netrunner "broken" like old school Magic is - swingy but with meaningful decisions - or uninterestingly bad, or something else entirely?

Without banlists, there are a couple of degenerate deck strategies identified that are too powerful for fair decks. Netrunner is a game of play skill, not deck construction. Restricting or banning the problematic cards, either a community list or simply using common sense in casual kitchentop play, should avoid any real issues. A number of the problematic cards would be extremely difficult and expensive to amass in large enough quantities to be degenerate in the first place, so if you are playing with paper product there aren't any issues unless you are opening hundreds of boxes.

In isolation, there really aren't any cards that "break the game." There are some that are probably too strong (City Surveillance, Strategic Planning Group and Project Consultants) and some pushed slightly above curve (Bodyweight Synthetic Blood, Organ Donor) but the average power of staple Netrunner cards is already pretty high (like Lucidrine Booster Drug i.e. Stimhack). The majority of cards are fairly costed and balanced.

Neal's Draconian List is a list of every problematic card printed http://www.arasaka.de/content/articles/trq/trq17/article4.html. I wouldn't use it as an actual ban list (it's absurdly draconian) but if you come across a card that feels imbalanced, you can use the list to confirm that you could justify restricting or banning it.

The cards I would ban or restrict are:

AGENDAS
Corporate War - R
Tycho Extension - R

NODES
Chicago Branch - R
City Surveillance - B
Strategic Planning Group - R/B

OPERATIONS
Project Consultants - B

PROGRAMS
Bartmoss Memorial Icebreaker - R
Enterprise, Inc., Shields - R/B

RESOURCES
Loan from Chiba - R
Precision Bribery - B

PREPS
Bodyweight Synthetic Blood - R
MIT West Tier - R
Organ Donor - R

With these restrictions, you shouldn't have any serious issues.

 

[Dadd]

Thank you Jason.

 

[Jason Liang]

Hey I found a VtES stream!

 

[NoSoup4you]

Went to Toronto for the first Shadowfist tournament in a long time the other week. Destroyed in swiss with my 10-faction Orange Master deck, but ultimately a Monkey token grinder won the four-player finals. It was surreal to be around my own kind again.

Fall league is starting up now online: https://www.facebook.com/groups/264545654562591/posts/826307628386388/

The game's in a weird spot because the people who bought it from IKG four years ago are just some small playgroup in Spain who started playing during Modern, and don't know what the fuck they're doing. It took them years to even make any public statements, and they haven't posted a single spoiler that didn't have some typo or wtf element on it. They clearly don't know what any of the top decks are (nerfing things no one but them is concerned about,) and certain wordings/designs have suggested they might not even know the rules very well. Most likely their supposed kickstarter in October will fail, or if it succeeds, it will probably ruin the game lol. Nevertheless, in its current form I'm willing to say Shadowfist is easily the most fun CCG out there, and we're doing our own thing with or without official support.

 

[flyingjohn]

Anybody know of any video game card games that have a coop,preferably in the pve department?The only game i know is the LOTR card game.

 

[pakoito]

Anybody know of any video game card games that have a coop,preferably in the pve department?The only game i know is the LOTR card game.

Check the boardgames section, the difference is very minimal for some of them. Some examples are the Legendary games, Aeon's End or Sentinels of the Multiverse. Gloomhaven is card-driven but mostly a great dungeon crawler.

 

[Jason Liang]

Anybody know of any video game card games that have a coop,preferably in the pve department?The only game i know is the LOTR card game.

Try Cardhunter? Iirc there are some coop pve missions.

Tyrant Unleashed has co-op Guild content.

Estiah had pve content but the server is a ghost town.

Age of Rivals is draft, which is kind of co-op but not really.

Could wait for Marvel Midnight Sons to drop.

 

[spectre]

Arkham Horror is coop with deckbuilding, you can play this on tabletop simulator.
Wasn't bad from what I remember, but a lot depends on finding the right people to play it with.
You want the right kind of banter, almost like with a pnp rpg.

IIRC one of the old MTG Magic Duels games allowed to play two headed giant vs. AI, it used to be f2p and on steam,
though I think it might have been discontinued once MTG Arena dropped.

 

[NoSoup4you]

Arkham Horror is basically LOTR 2.0... Haven't played it myself but have played LOTR a lot, should be similarly good.

There's Across the Obelisk if you don't mind a Slay the Spire clone rather than constructed decks.

 

[spectre]

If we're talking Slay the Spire, it's got a multiplayer mod.
In a similar vein, thought Roguebook might have coop, but it actually doesn't.
However, I found this in related. You can get beta access on discord. No first hand experience from me, sadly:

and there's also this:

 

[Jason Liang]

I downloaded Marvel Snap.

 

[Jason Liang]

 

[Jason Liang]

Just got back into Tyrant Unleashed a few days ago. Game is better than ever~

 

[PapaPetro]

I'll tell you what wasn't the best: Star Wars CCG.
The Attrition mechanic (forced card burns) was the fucked pits. Otherwise would've been an excellent card game.

 

[Jason Liang]

This is why Yugioh is awesome~

 

[Axioms]

As someone who was not a Potterhad but just a casual reader, the Harry Pottercard game was great. Good mechanics, very flavorful/thematic, nice art.

Codex is probably the most interesting non-kitchen sink(MTG for example) card game. Good time magic cards.

Also I loved the old free flash Elements card game. Had tons of "aspects" like time and gravity on top of more normal "elements" and pretty strong thematic identities. Don't really care for the modern card games like Runeterra and that Norse free to play one.