So, Magic: the Gathering

[Einar's puppy]

I was such a huge fan of Yu-Gi-Oh (and I bust out the cards every now and then) but now I feel that CCGs in general are kind of weird, you know? I mean, they pump out new stuff really often, but they have so many new cards that in order to keep up you need hundreds of dollars. Even then, you can count on certain cards being banned after they are released because they are "too good." Really, if you are going to make a card make sure it's balanced and not too strong. Duh.

Now that I've discussed why I dumped YGO and CCGs in general, let me say that I loved the trap cards in YGO. They are just so great, and they're the best part of the game for me. If your opponent does that really cheap move where he purposefully discards his 7 star monster, and then uses monster reborn to get it onto the field without needing a ton of tributes, you can just flip over your trap and kill him. It makes things much more balanced. Wizards must be in the habit of taking stuff from other games and distributing it (D&D scape anyone?) to their other stuff, which is really not good, but traps are a great thing to take if you ask me. So long as they didn't steal them completely, I think it is a great idea to get traps in the game.

To the part bolded: If you haven't had this happen to you in YGO, you don't know frustration. The tribute mechanics are in the game to attempt to balance out those heavy hitters, but people always find a way around them. Really, it sucks, and it is horrible when it happens.

[NecroBlade]

Sadly, I still have and sometimes play the YGO card game on Game Boy. I'm pretty good at it (I beat a bunch of friends in high school who had spent a bunch of money on it and I just tweaked a few starters). Yeah, I went through an addictive phase where I had to try EVERY game I thought looked good...

(YGO is probably the worst when it comes to needing the rares cards to be competitive, which is why I didn't play for long and didn't actually buy much.)

[Warlord Alpha]

I think most of us have gone through the trading card game phase. I don't know about you guys, but I have a ton of Pokemon and YGH cards.

[John Smith]

I quit MTG when Mirage came out. I started buying the game during "unlimited" but first played it when Beta was out. I really enjoyed that game and especially liked the artwork from the first few sets. I would be totally lost now.

[GreenLanturn]

Originally Posted by Einar's puppy

If your opponent does that really cheap move where he purposefully discards his 7 star monster, and then uses monster reborn to get it onto the field without needing a ton of tributes.

To the part bolded: If you haven't had this happen to you in YGO, you don't know frustration. The tribute mechanics are in the game to attempt to balance out those heavy hitters, but people always find a way around them. Really, it sucks, and it is horrible when it happens.

Sounds alot like the Tooth and Nail card from when I played MTG. Basically you paid a low fee to put 2 massive creatures into play, there were other cards like Elvish piper that did almost the same thing. So ya I under stand getting hit with 2 Dark Steel Colossi within 4-5 turns.

Anyone ever heard of Winter Orb? Artifact for 2 mana, each player may only untap one land per turn. I build a whole deck around that, cheap little guys, and buffer/disable enchantments, but those were very long ago during some of the first sets. Most fun deck I ever played/had/wanted. Then? BAM, power creep, I rarely won a game, I lost interest and moved on.

The funniest deck I think I ever built was around Enduring Renewal (All creatures any player draws go to the graveyard, and creature that dies in play goes to your hand). That, ornithopter, fallen angel, minion of lechrec, and hell's caretaker ended up giving me some funny games. It was a sadly fragile deck, I often used it as the King in protect the king games.

[NecroBlade]

Originally Posted by GreenLanturn

Sounds alot like the Tooth and Nail card from when I played MTG. Basically you paid a low fee to put 2 massive creatures into play

Actually, the combo nowadays is a creature with "Tap: Put a copy of target creature into play" and a creature that has "When this comes into play, untap target creature" for an infinite army. But T&N does cost 9 (I think) mana, so hardly a "low fee."

But yes, power creep does make old things unfun.

[Mombo101]

I recently read the rules changes to M10 awhile ago out of curiosity, and i was not impressed/happy. This is not to say I still play the game, on the contrary, but I really think Wizards has jumped the shark completely and utterly.

I played Magic up until Ravnica, but the sole reason I left was not for the blind purchase aspect, which in retrospect Heroscape has an advantage with that aspect. I actually left Magic because of the players. At my local shop when I first started playing competitively it was fun, you had a dichotomy of different players and player ages. Then came the "pros". We have a number of pro level players in my area, and I'm talking literal pro players. Every week, at every tournament, it was the same four players who made it to the top four, and there was rarely any way to break into it if you weren't a "pro". Now, I am far from a sore loser/bitter about this, but these people were absolute jerks. If you made a rules error, they were more inclined to call the judge over and somehow get a win, rather than tell you what you did wrong and help you learn. That, and they also had the habit of ripping you off in trades, and if you weren't up to date with Scrye prices, you usually got ripped off.

But, in terms of Wizards, I've never been a big fan of them. I really don't like many of their corporate policies, especially one being where they filed a lawsuit against WizKids Games. The lawsuit was over copyright infringement for a game that WizKids had in production for at least 3-4 years prior to Wizards' "Transformers CCG". Wizards said they owned the copyright for the game, and if my memory servers me, I believe they wanted a cease and deist order for the production of WizKids Pirates game. Sadly, WizKids no longer churns out games, but I really hope it wasn't because of what Wizards did.

To me, it seems that Magic should do what Decipher's Star Trek did. Decipher knew when to throw in the towel, and stopped production when the game lasted longer than expected, and the power creep became too great. Magic has been around close to 15 years or so, and compared to what it was like in the past there is an insane power creep which doesn't make me want to play anymore. Logically, when something's been around for 15 years, and has around 100,000 different cards you need to say, "Well, there's only so many different ways we can have players draw cards/gain life/do damage/etc." Then again, it is a cash cow for Wizards, so I doubt they'll even consider doing it, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a two costed card with "You win" become printed soon.

Then again, I won't be buying any more Magic, so it really doesn't matter to me. If I had faith in Wizards of the Coast maybe I would. But, then again, they are lucky that I even purchase DnD and Heroscape products.

[NecroBlade]

The rules changes, honestly, don't make that much of a difference, except for the combat step. As much as I don't like the fact that they changed part of the game that much, I have to admit I'm a fan of combat working more logically (no more creatures disappearing before damage is dealt and then somehow still dealing damage).

Ravnica was one of, if not #1, my favorite blocks.

I don't think I ever met a pro level player or a pro level jerk playing Magic, but that's not to say there weren't lower level ones. Wizards has pulled a few less-than-savory lawsuit power plays over the years. I don't like it either.

You're right, though, that Magic is too big a cash cow for them. I made a comment on the boards about a 20/20 for 1 mana being printed soon and got all kinds of negative responses. Sure, it was exaggerated, but the power creep is so obvious lately that this is the direction Magic is headed in, however long it takes to get there.

I just hope the players wake up soon and smell the bull**** Wizards has been feeding them recently before WotC ruins the game even more.

[Mr Migraine]

Power creep is why I left the Pokemon TCG. It is a pretty fun game with simple mechanics, but new cards are getting ridiculous. Most common basics can now use attacks of 20 that cost zero energy. In the old sets, an attack of 30 for two specific energies (not colorless) was a bargain. Attacks of zero energy was an unthinkable idea three years ago.

[NecroBlade]

Yeah I picked up Pokemon when it first came out and now I'm disgusted every time I see one of those attacks printed on a card in Wal*Mart.

[Mombo101]

This may seem like a stretch, but I honestly feel a CCG can go around 5-10 sets before it gets WAY too overpowered. You have the basics, have the definitive types of cards, and it remains fun, after that and the probability of it getting way too out of hand is too high. This is the case with the World of Warcraft TCG which I used to play extensively, there's a power creep which is slowly starting to show and it's getting into the 10th to 12th set or so.

[NecroBlade]

Yeah I heard WoW was pretty bad, mostly because they didn't do enough testing. Never played it though, so I can't say myself.

I think ANY expandable game has the same problem. More games these days, though, have moved to fixed purchases, which definitely helps. Heroscape's broadness is also good.