Uncommon Card Games - Beat you to it, Shades!

[Res Ipsa]

PG, that’s an excellent list of card games. Hanabi is one of my favorites. So is Race for the Galaxy, although I think Puerto is the first game I recall with Phase selection.

I swore off CCGs a while ago. Too much investment required. But I have played a couple of Living Card Games (LCGs). The difference is there’s no randomness in buying the cards - you know exactly what you are buying.

I’ve played through several cycles of Lord of the Rings, but my favorite is Arkham Horror. Every cycle tells a story that is affected by choices you make. The characters are very well balanced (and familiar to anyone who has played any of Fantasy Flight’s Lovecraft-Themed games. Each episode is tense and interesting.

[Some Schmo]

Some Schmo:

I've played both Skip-Bo and Phase 10. They're pretty simple, in my opinion.

Oh yeah. Mindless, really. Something to do over conversation.

At the time I tried it, I was heavily into Hearthstone, and I just didn't feel like learning a new deck builder. Since then, I think they've sort of ruined Hearthstone with all the new mechanics introduced with the expansions they release every four months, so the game no longer appeals to me (way too much reliance on RNG).

"RNG" = "Random Number Generation?"

Either way, please tell us about Hearthstone. You said that it doesn't appeal to you anymore, but you never told us anything about the game itself.

Hearthstone is a deck builder by Blizzard similar to Magic, but based on what I've seen, it's a much simpler version. All of the hero classes and cards are based on World of Warcraft characters and spells. You build a deck of 30 cards from your collection. You pick a hero to fight with, and each hero has cards specific to their class, along with a hero power which is useful if you have extra mana for some small boost. Every card you play requires mana. You start with one mana and get an additional one each turn until you hit the max of 10 per turn. Along with each hero's class cards, there is also a large pool of neutral cards that any class can use. There are four basic card types (that all have a mana cost): minions, spells, weapons, and hero cards. You put minions out on the board to fight, cast spells to either damage or control enemies, use weapons for damage or other special effects, or play a hero card to change your hero (usually this a better hero power and other particular effects depending on the class). Like in Magic, each card has a rarity: common, rare, epic and legendary. Minion all have a stat line, meaning a certain amount of health and the damage they do on attack. When one minion attacks another, both minions lose the amount of health of the other minion's attack value. Minions lose no health when they attack the hero.

There is no card trading in Hearthstone. You either buy decks to acquire new cards, or you can disenchant extra cards in your collection for magic dust, which can be used to craft cards you don't have.

Each hero has 30 health, and the object of the game is to get your opponent to zero health before they do it to you. If you run out of cards before losing all your health, you enter "fatigue mode" and take increasing damage every time you draw from your empty deck. One might wonder why bother attacking other minions, but a big part of the game is controlling the playing field. You want your set of minions to be bigger, more numerous and have better effects than your opponents.

There are several minion and spell mechanics that you'll see in each card description (if it has one - some minions have no description, which means their stat line will be better for that mana cost):

- Taunt: minion must be destroyed before any melee attacks to all other enemies (you can cast spells at almost anyone)
- Battlecry: does something when you play that minion
- Deathrattle: does something when the minion dies
- Charge: minion can attack any enemy as soon as it's played (most minions can't attack on the round they're played)
- Rush: minion can attack any enemy minion (but not the hero) as soon as it's played
- Stealth: minions can't be attacked while in stealth. A stealth minion breaks stealth as soon as they attack
- Inspire: minion does something whenever you use your hero power
- Lifesteal: hero gains health equal to the amount of damage done
- Spell Damage: increases all spell damage by the amount shown
- Discover: presents player with three cards; player chooses one to add to hand/deck
- Freeze: immobilizes an enemy for one turn (mostly mage and shaman cards)
- Spellburst: does something the first time you cast a spell
- Dormant: minion is inactive until a condition is met (usually it activates after two rounds)
- Tradeable: player can shuffle that card back into their deck and draw a new one for 1 mana
- Corrupt: card is upgraded if you play another card that costs more mana while the corrupt card is in your hand
- Frenzy: does something after surviving damage
- Divine Shield: puts up a shield around the minion that must be broken before minion takes damage (requires at least one damage - mostly paladin cards)
- Enrage: minion gains increased attack power once damaged (mostly warrior cards)
- Combo: does something if you've already played a card this turn (rogue cards)
- Choose One: does one of two things - player much choose which one it will do each time it's played (druid cards)
- Overload: borrows mana from your next turn to do something more powerful this turn (shaman cards)
- Outcast: does something if it's the left or rightmost card in your hand (demon hunter cards)

Spell key words:
- Secret: readies a spell effect that is unknown to your opponent - can usually only be triggered on opponent's turn (only mages, paladins, hunters and rogues have secrets)
- Quest: one mana card that is always drawn on your first turn. Meet the requirements of the quest for a legendary card reward
- Side quest: regular spell card that gives an easier quest for a smaller reward
- Silence: Removes any special effects listed above (although you can't silence a battlecry, combo, choose one or overload because those have already happened when the minion was played)

And you are correct, Shades: RNG = random number generator. This is a PC game, and a ton of the effects I listed above (mostly battlecries, deathrattles, and a ton of spell effects) use RNG to determine the outcome. It's annoying and relies way too much on luck.

It is a pretty fun game, though, if you play casually and don't take it too seriously.

[Dr. Shades]

Yeah, that does sound pretty close to Magic: the Gathering. You just said it's a PC game, though. So I can't walk into a game store and buy it off the shelf?

[Some Schmo]

Yeah, that does sound pretty close to Magic: the Gathering. You just said it's a PC game, though. So I can't walk into a game store and buy it off the shelf?

You know, I want to say it started out as a table top card game, but I haven't really researched its origins. With all the expansions that have come out for this (of which I think there are 18) and the crazy card effects they've been inventing, it would be impossible to play it with real cards.

So, all I've played is the PC version. It's "free" to play... but not free. I mean, technically, you never have to spend a dime. I stopped collecting cards as soon as I stopped playing other players. The primary play mode is against other players online, but you can play through little solo campaigns too. I enjoyed "dungeon runs" because the decks are semi-random generated each run, so you regularly get to play cards that aren't in your collection.

If you're interested in having a chance to win against other players, however, it will cost you. Where they get you is with buying card packs. They give a lot of cards away, though, and they usually have deals for new players.

You just need a battlenet account, which actually is free. It's basically an account portal into all your Blizzard games, if you play any.

[Bret Ripley]

Speaking of card games on PC: I didn't think I liked deck building games until I played 'Slay the Spire.' I grabbed it on sale from GOG (it's also available on Steam) and more than got my money's worth out of it.

It's a single-player rogue-like (so, permadeath) dungeon crawl with four playable character classes. The game features unlockable content, a different 'map' for each playthrough, and enough variety to the cards to allow a number of different 'builds' for each character class. There is no additional content to purchase, so no pay-to-play suckage.

https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/ ... Spire_Wiki

[Some Schmo]

Speaking of card games on PC: I didn't think I liked deck building games until I played 'Slay the Spire.' I grabbed it on sale from GOG (it's also available on Steam) and more than got my money's worth out of it.

It's a single-player rogue-like (so, permadeath) dungeon crawl with four playable character classes. The game features unlockable content, a different 'map' for each playthrough, and enough variety to the cards to allow a number of different 'builds' for each character class. There is no additional content to purchase, so no pay-to-play suckage.

https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/ ... Spire_Wiki

Yeah, I put an embarrassing amount of time into that game. Recently I've been getting into Tainted Grail (also on Steam) which is very similar to Slay the Spire but with much better graphics, more classes, a greater number of combinations and more complexity.

[Bret Ripley]

Yeah, I put an embarrassing amount of time into that game. Recently I've been getting into Tainted Grail (also on Steam) which is very similar to Slay the Spire but with much better graphics, more classes, a greater number of combinations and more complexity.

Thanks -- I'll have to check that out!