Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - Star Wars CCG

 Finally we know what a Womp Rat looks like!

 Decipher's Star Wars CCG expanded to the point where every character, ship, creature, location, object, or spoken word in the original trilogy was on a card somewhere. The Phantom Menace expansion came out and had everyone enjoying Darth Maul and Qui-Gon, but then apparantly Decipher could or would not continue their liscencing agreement and this great game abruptly died.

THE GAME: One person plays a light side deck, the other plays a dark side deck and you switch after each game. Decks are exactly 60 cards, because the goal is to totally deplete the other guys deck (drain all their Force in Star Wars talk). The most enjoyable way to do this is of course to slaughter the other guy in a battle, but you can also slowly drain a deck just by having characters on sites where your opponent doesn't. Also adding to the challenge is whenever you draw cards or use disposable interrupts, you are actually also depleting your deck and getting closer to losing if you're not careful.

CONS: It's the most complex CCG I've reviewed by far. Cards tend to contain paragraphs worth of effects instead of simple stuff like "add +1 to some skill". It takes a while to figure out the fighting system, where you are firing weapons, comparing power, "drawing destiny" if you're allowed to, and then deciding which characters have to die and if any additional Force needs to be lost. The game is loaded with complicated rare interrupts and effects which are only useful under very specific conditions, such as "if Han and Chewie are in a battle together". There's even the game-within-the-game of Sabbacc; I don't even recall when or if it's mentioned in the movies, but if someone plays a Sabbacc card you'd better break out the rulebook and figure out what the hell is going on.

Interrupts with 2 or 3 very different uses, characters with lots of conditional powers, and most of all Sabbacc make it a little complicated to play 

EPIC EVENTS: Depending on your point of view, Epic Events could fall under either "why it's fun" or "cons". It's cool that you can blow up the Death Star, blow up a planet with the Death Star, blow up the Endor shield generator, or train Luke on Dagobah like in the movies. However it takes a lot of cards and a hell of a lot of planning and luck to actually accomplish them. Doing so normally gives you some good bonuses, but it's much easier to just play huge characters and ships and beat the crap out of the other guy.

WHY IT'S FUN: Star Wars + CCG = nerd heaven. It's fun when you finally figure out how to string together combos of all the crazy effects rather than just deploying all the main characters you can get your hands on. It's challenging to make a balanced deck that can attack and defend both the land and outer space locations. It's fun to pull out some alien that was on-screen in the movie for 1/8 of a second who winds up being as good as a Jedi in the CCG. It's even fun to try Epic Events and fail horribly.

MEMORABLE GAMEPLAY: Luke's Aunt and Uncle successfully kill Vader for invading their moisture farm. Vader misses a generic Rebel Soldier with his lightsaber twice. Sending Leia to the Rancor. All this and more, in the (sadly defunct) Star Wars CCG!!!

WHAT THE HELL? While it's intended to have Yoda train the Dagobah expansion Luke, you could technically have Luke's uncle train a Jawa in the Jedi arts.

Monday Artday - Invisible

The word challenge was "invisible" - glass is sometimes invisible to some unfortunate birds. One time one slammed the huge window door in our basement and stood out there totally stunned while my dogs went nuts trying to claw their way outside to get it. So far I've experienced 3 bird on window collisions in my day.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - DOOMTOWN

THE GAME: Doomtown is the CCG based on the “Deadlands” world, which is full of cowboys and grotesque abominations in about equal numbers. You have a bunch of cowboys/freaks. The other guy has a bunch of cowboys/freaks. While you can win in the obvious way of wiping out the other guy’s entire crew, you can actually win without ever starting a fight as long as you earn more control points than the other guy has influence. All the characters are moving around Doomtown which you create with location cards, so you have to outmaneuver your opponent.

THE CARDS: They contain some of the most unique game lingo of any CCG, for example: Pay 2 Ghost Rock and boot a dude at a strike to call out a posse.

MEMORABLE GAMEPLAY: The Grim Reaper gets suited up with a New Hat and Blue Jeans, and rides off to a shootout on his Penny Farthing.

WHY IT’S FUN: The card art is great! Most items, characters, and events have funny effects and flavor text. Battles between characters are resolved by drawing poker hands, with other cards letting you draw more than 5 or discard more to make monster hands like 5 aces or the ultimate “Dead Man’s Hand”. But if it’s not a legal poker hand, your opponent might get the last laugh by playing a Cheatin’ card and turning the tables on you! 

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - Marvel/DC Overpower

I had plenty of friends who played collectible card games, and most of them also liked the X-men and Spiderman and superheroes in general, but for some reason I was the only one that liked both of them enough to get some Overpower cards. The Marvel version of Overpower came out first, and I was a little dissappointed that when I opened a starter, about 2/3 of the cards were similar to this:

I mean, it's got Spiderman punching the crap out of some VCR thief (this was the 90's), but other than that it doesn't have any more info on it than a 2 of clubs. This is a "Power Card", the most basic way to do damage in the game. Fortunetly there are some cooler cards as well. I have never used the few mechanics that were introduced after the first DC Overpower expansion, such as location cards, or Image Overpower (with Spawn, WitchBlade, etc.), so they aren't in here.

THE GAME: You've got 4 hero/villain characters, the other guy has 4 hero/villain characters. Beat them all into submission.
EASE OF PLAY: It is remarkably simple compared to other CCGs I've played - if you have a character with a certain energy/fighting/strength/intellect stat, they can play a power card with a value up to that level and try to damage the opponent's characters. To defend, you do the same thing, play a card equal or higher in number to your opponent's to block it. If any character takes 20 damage or at least one hit from 3 different categories (En/F/Str/Int) they are knocked out and your one reserve character takes their place.
A LITTLE MORE COMPLEXITY: Well, if you had all characters with an "8" stat in some category and the other player didn't, you could just play "8" attacks all the time and win, right? The only catch is when you draw your hand, you must discard any duplicate power cards (regardless of type), so you can only have one "8" in your hand on any given turn. There's also "Training" and "Teamwork" cards, which add value to your power cards if certain conditions are met. Universe cards, which represent chucking a tree or hot dog cart or using a death ray, also add to card's power. Finally there are character specific Special Cards that are the best part of the game and usually influence it the most.
The most unique part of the game is you have a seperate stack of 7 cards called the missions; they have cool art but they might as well be tokens since there is nothing different about any of them. Each turn, you bet a number of cards depending on how strong your hand is, and if you do more damage than your opponent, you "complete missions" and they lose missions. You can also win the game by completing all 7 missions, but if you bet over two missions, your opponent gets to draw extra cards to help balance it out.
CONS: The Special Cards are cool because they represent specific characters powers, like Superman's heat vision, Wolverine's regeneration, or The Penguins penguins. The problem of course is if you open a booster pack and you find that half the cards are totally worthless at the time because you don't have the characters to go with them. From a booster box of DC Overpower I got after the game was dead, I got 13 characters with at least 4 Specials to go with them, 3 characters with only 2-3 Specials which wouldn't be worth using, and 40-50 Specials with no character to use them.
WHAT THE HELL? Superman isn't Strength level 8, and his energy level of 7 is the same as the Metropolis special crimes unit.

WHY IT'S FUN: Betting on hands usually makes games more interesting. Every card is full of our beloved comic superheroes, and it is really easy to play. Deck making is pretty simple, but you can't rely too much on one character's Specials because once he's knocked out, they're worthless; also too many copies of anything will lead to lots of duplicate discarding. If you don't mind (or cover up) the different card backs, DC and Marvel Overpower are completely compatible.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - 7th Sea

When I can get a starter deck of a zany CCG for $1, it's hard to resist. I haven't dug out 7th Sea in a loooong time, but I have two decks just in case someone comes over, wants to play, and forgot their discontinued-10-years-ago cards.

THE GAME: You've got a Captain, the other guy has a Captain. Go kill their Captain. All this takes place on 5 Sea cards (always the same seas and layout), and your whole crew is on your ship which is unique to your Captain and his faction. To power up your crew, you can add attachments like Mr. Briggs the parrot (sacrifice him to save your crew) or the cheap cutlass (breaks after one use). You can also place adventures, then move to and complete them for additional bonuses.  If you're in the same sea as an enemy, you can attack with cannon fire or attempt to board and duel.

EASE OF PLAY: Pretty straightforward after seeing a turn or two played out. Every character card seems complicated, with at least 6 numbers and 3 big letters, but the use is quite simple: if you need to do some feat of sailing like moving the ship, it costs sailing points, so look at the number by the sail icon on your characters cards and "tack" (tap in Magic lingo) enough to pay the cost. The boarding battles involve playing any card out of your hand, and the letters on the side determine what type of attack you're trying, like a slash or punch. The opponent gets a chance to counter if they have the right card, making it so a puny rower can beat a Captain with luck, although it probably won't kill him.

WHAT THE HELL?: "Laerdom" and "Glamour" are important traits crewmen can have.

WHY IT'S FUN: Characters and effects are a good mix of badass and funny (see "Blows up in Your Face" in the picture).  The gameplay is fun and simple,  it's fairly quick to build up a good size crew and then you can go for the kill. Wish I had a few more Captains and ships: right now all I have is two sets of Sea Dogs.

A Mystic for Monday Artday

Here's my Mystic for Monday Artday this week, colored in Photoshop over a very loose and cartoony pencil drawing.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - Lord of the Rings TCG

I've been getting reinvolved in the beloved nerd pass-time of collectible card games lately. For Christmas I signed up for Magic Online, since I hadn't used my stack of real life cards in forever. It's pretty fun to be able to play whenever you want, even if you have to start over. And if you're willing to pay 30 cents for a picture of a dragon with some typing on it printed on a piece of cardboard, it's not that much of a stretch to pay 30 cents for a digital picture of a dragon that you can use to play online. Then today at Dollar Tree, where we normally get the kids some balloons or something cheap as we pass by, I saw a pile of Lord of the Rings boosters and had to get some. I only had a few starter decks and maybe 5 boosters from a few years ago, but I was willing to give it another try and write this DEFUNCT CCG REVIEW.

It's a "defunct CCG" because expansions have stopped, and Decipher, the company that made the game, are done with it, are shutting down servers for the online version this summer, and the website has tons of broken links to stuff like card lists and the rulebook.

THE GAME: Your deck consists of half "good guy" (Frodo and his many Hobbit, Dwarf, and Elf friends) and "bad guy" (anyone uglier than a dwarf) halves. The goal is just like the movie - get the Ring from the Shire to Mt. Doom, only this path is represented by 9 lands that you move your characters across. On your turn, you play cards to protect your Ring-bearer and try to move him further along the path. Your opponent responds with evil minions and events to try and kill the Ring-bearer. If you survive your turn, you switch places and you get to send minions to kill the other guy's Ring-bearer as they move. There are of course plenty of weapons, armor, and special effects to help both sides, but it's possible that you'll get stuck with a hand full of Hobbits or other good guy stuff when you need orcs. It seems you're more likely to win by killing your opponent rather than actually guiding your fellowship to the end.

EASE OF PLAY: From the cards I have, I can say it's fairly easy to learn how to play a starter deck, but my few boosters haven't added much to their effectiveness; if your rare card from a booster pack is an event or possession based around a character you don't have, you're S.O.L. on that one. The complete rule book was only around 20 pages vs the 169 of the Magic rulebook.

CONS: The card art is still frames from the movie, so some of the art looks blurry if it was from a scene with fast moving CG characters. A lot of the common cards just don't look that impressive.I haven't played it a lot so I don't know how tough it is build a really competitive deck.

 WHY IT'S FUN: I'll give almost anything related to Lord of the Rings a chance since it is one of my favorite book series ever. There are multiple versions of each main character, like Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, etc., of differing rarity, so it's easy to get several of your favorite characters to use in a deck. It's like you're totally switching games every time your turn ends and you switch from Ring-protecting to Hobbit slaughtering.Worth trying out if you can find some starter decks for cheap.

Summing up 2009

Here's my experience with the long gone year 2009:

Game I wasted the most time playing: Plants vs. Zombies, it is so simple to set up a few plants that spit vegetables to kill the army of zany zombies, but the mini-games and endless survival kept me playing this for months. Also, I finally completely potty-trained my son using Plants vs. Zombies as a reward for dropping a deuce!
Best book I read: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen was surprisingly good, a novel following a kid who is invited to give a talk at the Smithsonian based on a series of famous illustrations he did. Of course it's one of those "they never realized he was just a kid" type stories, but this one is full of margin illustrations that supplement the story, more novels should have pictures!
Best song I downloaded: Mississippi Queen by Mountain, an old old song that still really gets stuck in my head.
Best beer I drank in '09: Bell's Special Double Cream Stout is as special, as creamy, as double, and as stout as it claims.
Most common activity at 8:30 pm: Vacuuming up Cheerios. Yup, it was exciting.

Christmas at Grandma's House

Back from two weeks of hanging out at both sets of grandparent's houses. The comic above, titled "Christmas at Grandma's House" sums up the results of our trip, only we had two kids in the car swimming in the sea of presents. We brought clothes for a week, snacks, and about 10 presents for 10 people, most of which were the size of a DVD, and got about 4 garbage bags full of toys. The panels were originally side by side but that doesn't look good in a blog.