I really enjoyed playing Magi Nation on CCG workshop. It's a shame it got taken down; I don't think I've even seen a physical Magi Nation card product anywhere.
Really? I saw Magi-Nation packs and starter decks for sale at most game stores I've been to, back when it was still in print. I haven't really paid attention in the past few years, being more or less broke, but it sure seemed popular for awhile.
There were what, 2 or 3 GameBoy video games made based on it? I got the original one for GameBoy Color, and I'm still stuck in the fifth or so Shadow Tower; still can't figure out how to finish that dungeon. ^_^; But the Tony Jones universal magi card that came with that game is handy.
I still own a few hundred Magi-Nation cards and have about 5 or 6 decks made for it, but wasn't able to follow the game any more when the set that followed The Core was released (got a lot of the Awakening set and The Core, but then I just didn't have any more money for CCGs). Magi-Nation is pretty fun, and I liked a lot of the mechanics; The Core added a few more little tricks and twists to the rules.
Also, it's one of the few games I had any luck with, and I got a copy of Agram (ruler of the Core, and a pretty strong card) in one booster, along with several Core Magi and Shadow Magi in other packs. My Arderial deck is the only one that's really a match for my Core deck, because of Arderial's sheer lightning-blasting power from so many Xyxs and similar Dream Creatures, not to mention the Arderial spells that complement that strategy. My Orothe deck is pretty strong too.
My friends back in high school quickly warmed up to the game when I introduced them to it, years ago, despite the goofy/chibi-style artwork, because the gameplay was just so fun and strategic, yet not so complex. I like the three-magi rule, it's like having three life totals, but it's neat that your magi's energy is also what they use to play cards and activate abilities.
Besides Magi-Nation, I've got a ton of Marval Overpower cards, from just about every set released for it (even DC Overpower, though I'm not a fan of many DC characters). It was kinda complicated and wierd though, so my friends and I played it kind of differently from how it was supposed to be played, because of problems trying to understand its rulebook. It was fun, but with the way we played it, it took quite a while to finish a game, because we didn't use Mission cards and had misinterpreted some of the rules on rounds or whatever.
I think the rules wierdness and serious disparity between most Hero/Villain cards and their Special cards, plus the cramped rules text and thus poor wording for rules, kept Overpower from becoming really significant. Just the Marvel name and its characters made it popular, I think. Still, I'd like to play it again sometime, since I still have hundreds of cards for it. ^_^
BattleTech. Awesome. Made by Wizards of the Coast, but very different from M:TG. Still very cool, moreso with the classic BattleMechs and OmniMechs. ^_^ I got TONS of BattleTech cards, and I just love the mechanics. Lots of tactics and strategies, and it did a good or decent job of showing the grittiness of BattleTech (bonus points for using your deck as an extremely limited supply of life points, and losing cards to the Scrapheap just because your opponent hit you with too many Units to block, or with Long Range units and stuff). Too bad there was no rule for critical hits, which are major in BattleTech; the closest thing to it is the way a Unit's Structure works (like Toughness in M:TG, but it doesn't regenerate and is tough or impossible to repair).
I got some of every BT set up through Commander's Edition, which was the last set I think, and very cool. I got most of the Clan and Inner Sphere starter decks for it, which were cool and each pretty different in strategy and tactics, fitting the different factions' strengths (though I was a little disappointed that the Draconis Combine deck relied so much on C3 (command/control/communications, a special ability that made groups of C3 Units fight better together) Units.
BT was very cool and fun to play, though my friends didn't like it quite as much as I did. It did a reasonable job of translating Classic BattleTech stats and such into a much simpler card game, that was still more complex than M:TG but not in any bad way (you used counters and the occasional six-sided die to keep track of damage and random results from some cards). Just enough so that I think it held BattleTech back from becoming really big, like M:TG, but made it more tactically and strategically interesting I think.
Most cards were played face-down at first, in your Construction Zone, and you built them up over time until their cost was paid, and Subterfuge cards would do more damage, draw more cards for you, or whatever based on how many extra construction counters you put on them. If an opponent damaged your cards under construction, you had to turn them face-up, and damage would remove construction counters, sending the card to the Scrapheap if too much damage was done.
The Resource/Asset mechanic was simpler and more flexible than mana/lands in M:TG, though it could still be crippling to not get enough Resources or the right Asset to play your cards at their cheapest cost. The game could go pretty fast or kind of slowly depending on how well you defended yourself and how many attacks an opponent got past you, since you could quickly run out of cards in your deck if you weren't careful, and then you'd lose.
C-23 was another card game I liked and still wish I could find folks to play with. It was also made by WotC and premiered the Arc System, which was then used for the Hercules and Xena CCGs that followed. It was fairly simple and made for easy learning, but wasn't quite
too simplistic. It used the deck as the life points, just like BattleTech, except the rest of it was much simpler. You had three resources, red, blue, and green, which represented different types of stuff; green resources represented the hives and stockpiles of the Angelan insect-men, red resources represented the bases and production facilities of the civilized land's military, and blue resources represented technological and information-gathering resources of the city.
Each card had one of those three colors, and mostly represented a particular faction, like the Angelans, the military, and the special forces/covert ops stuff under Cronus' and the Council's command. There was a decent amount of strategy and tactics involved, but not a whole lot, and it was fairly easy to pick up.
Each color had a simple theme and advantages of its own, and you could use multiple colors in your deck, you just had to pay at least one resource of the appropriate color when playing a card (the rest of its cost could be paid with other colors if desired). Red was good at damage-dealing, with lots of direct damage and Gung-Ho characters (ones that could only attack, not block). Blue was good at card-drawing, discard, countering other cards, and general sneakiness. Green had some characters with an efficient cost and high stats, but not much else, relying on brute force and the occasional minor tactic.
One of the other games I had a bit of luck with, and got a few good rares out of, like two versions of Corbin and one copy of Hemlocke; that dude's just NASTY, especially in the card game. Read the comic books that C-23 was based on, and they were interesting too. C-23 was at least moderately better than Young Jedi (see below), and had potential for some expansions and new mechanics probably, but never got any that I know of. Would be fun to play again.
Besides that....lessee.... Star Wars. It had even more complicated rules than Overpower, and required tracking a lot of things IIRC, but it was still fun sometimes. Too bad I sold my Obi-Wan Kenobi card for like 5 or 10 bucks when trying to work on a better deck than the cruddy one I had managed to build with my collection. The Revised Edition or whatever was neat, too.
And Star Wars: Young Jedi, which came out years later and was much more disappointing. Extremely simplistic gameplay and a lot of cruddy cards, plus the starter decks were all identical junk, rather than randomized or interesting or something. I only bought like 2 or 3 starter decks, but learned that they were all the same. :-( Bought a few booster packs, but quickly gave up on the game as being pretty hopeless and pathetic. Don't think it ever got any expansions, but I don't remember. Still have my hundred or so cards for it, not that I expect to play it much, if ever, again.
Dragonball Z!!! The first card game, not the later one. Made by Upper Deck I think, or am I misremembering? Yeah, I loved DBZ in my early teenage years, despite some of the aggravatingly-drawn-out battles (Namek shoulda blown up a hundred times by the point that one fight ended....grrr....). The card game wasn't bad, at least. A little bit annoying, but not bad. There was strategy and tactics, and different variations of the character cards, with a neat sort of level-up mechanic. Kinda complicated, but probably not too much so. Only got to play it a few times, and that was a looooong time ago. Bought a few starter decks and booster packs up through Cell Games, then stopped shortly after buying a bit of that set.
But the shinies! So shiny! Some of the special character cards, I mean, the foils. Ooooooohhhh..... ^_^
Pokemon. Yeah, yeah, don't laugh. The card game was made by Wizards of the Coast, and had surprisingly fun game mechanics, with good strategy and tactics to it. See, one of my wierd friends in high school introduced me to the GameBoy game, Pokemon Blue, and I found it to be kinda fun and addictive, though annoying and silly at times. Later he got a starter set for the Pokemon card game, and pestered me into trying it out with him, since nobody else would try it. Well, I pestered my friends a lot to play M:TG, BT, C-23, and M-N with me, so it was only fair.
It turned out to be a decent game, and after a while, for whatever reason (I think I was just getting frustrated with M:TG or something at the time), I picked up a starter set and a few packs, trying the game out some more. Later I bought a bunch more packs, and a few starter decks from the first two or three expansions. Now I have about as many Pokemon cards as I do Magi-Nation cards, give or take a bit, though I've only played it once in a while, mostly at the FLGS against kids and teenagers.
It's been like 8 or 10 years since I last played the game, but I'd still have fun playing it again sometime if I found anyone to play against.
There might be one other card game I've got buried in my collection that I can't remember right now, but I don't know.
And there's Three-Dragon Ante, a non-collectible card game from WotC, based on D&D's set of chromatic and metallic dragons and some mortals, like the dragonslayer card, the priest card, the princess card, the thief card, and the archmage card. Plus a Bahamut card, a Tiamat card, and a dracolich card. Really fun, but as I said, non-collectible, and only really good when you have 3 or more people to play (in total; 2-person play just isn't very fun and nowhere near as interesting).
And, of course, I got freakin' TONS of Magic: The Gathering cards.
A pitiful collection compared to those who really try to collect, but I just try to get cool cards and make fun decks, which means I mostly just buy packs every now and then, hardly ever single cards, and I only bought a
few boxes of booster packs when I had a decent job, and enough disposable income to waste a little that way.
Only loosely follow the game since the Invasion cycle finished (Invasion/Plane Shift/Apocalypse), buying a few packs and a starter deck once in a while (skipped Mirrodin and Kamigawa altogether, and once again stopped buying cards after the Time Spiral cycle finished). Started with Revised Edition, which came just before 4th Edition I think.
