What are the current best TCG/CCGs around that are not called MtG, PKMN, Yugioh or made by Bushiroad?

Android: Netrunner is a good one to play casually. The competitive meta is currently kind of fucked, but it should unfuck itself sometime in the next year, assuming they institute the banlist they desperately need.

Legend of the Five Rings is about to be reborn as an LCG rather than a TCG. If you want to play it, getting in on the ground floor is advisable.

Game of Thrones is good if you're a fan of the books or the show, not so much if you're not. It follows its theme very closely and quite well, so if you don't like the theme, you won't like the game.

Doomtown: Reloaded is cheap to buy into nowadays, and is about to be picked back up by the rights owners and get new releases. If you want a Weird West game with poker mechanics shoehorned in, Doomtown fits the bill.

My personal darling is Star Wars: The Card Game. Finding players is a challenge because it's been standing in Netrunner's shadow since day 1 (both sci-fi games, both asymmetrical, released in the same year, etc, but Netrunner won the fight with a much stronger launch), but it's a great game, and the devs found an excellent balance point around half a year ago that they've been able to maintain while still doing interesting stuff. The deckbuilding system is really interesting -- you don't build your deck card-by-card, but in 5-card sets that can't be split up. Put 10 sets together, and you have a deck. You can use up to two copies of the same set, and yes, 2 x 5 sets builds are not only viable, but actually quite popular.

There are even co-op card games. Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is the old classic for people who like Tolkien's books, while Arkham Horror: The Card Game is the new hotness for people who like Lovecraft, horror, and innovative game design.

I feel like Eternal is a good card game but poorly suited for the digital medium. I mean, it does make use of it, but what Hearthstone did manage to get right was being really pick up and play. My local card games can be intense and drawn out but I really want my digital card games to be fast and fun so I can play during a quiet hour.

You would think that with all the Star Wars resurgence they would inject new life to the card game, but alas...

They're certainly trying: fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/2/3/allies-of-necessity/

Whether they succeed or not is another question, and the release of Star Wars: Destiny suggests it probably won't, since they'd be literally competing with themselves if the LCG became successful, but they do appear to be trying to make it work.

Speaking of Destiny, they recently released an article regarding Destiny that pretty well confirms they have no idea how to maintain enough supply to meet TCG consumer demand: fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/2/28/there-has-been-an-awakening-1/

>"There will be only one printing of these booster packs, and when these booster packs are gone, they will not be reprinted."
Just who do they think they are? WotC?

Not only that, there will be two expansions per year, and each expansion will only get one print run.

They're going to have a "base set" every year that's going to be reprinted until the next base set releases, so at least in that respect they seem to understand that any TCG requires that players be able to actually buy product, but still, what the fuck.

My theory is this: the last time Fantasy Flight made a proper TCG was 2005, when they did Call of Cthulhu TCG, it was a huge hit in its first year and got tons of awards, but was nearly dead by the second year. They turned it into the first ever LCG in an attempt to put it on life support for one more year before killing it, and instead accidentally revived it for another 8 years.

They underprinted Destiny, but they expected it to be dead inside of a year, so they legitimately thought demand just wouldn't be there. It's the kind of game that CANNOT be LCG-ized profitably, so they had to minimize investment rather than risk it failing.

It sold out approximately instantly and they have no idea what to do, and I think they're probably worried it's going to be Call of Cthulhu all over again, so they're continuing to hedge their bets. Ironically, this will kill the game, because most of the people who want to play won't be able to buy in due to the short supply, and then they'll move on to other things.

Epic is fast, fun and remains fresh longer since it's core mechanic is drafting.

if we're limited to games in English I can't really think of anything, if we include foreign language games then I'd suggest Duel Masters(heck even if you limit yourself to the dead English release there's still a decently large card base)

Netrunner

the spoils is great, i can't recommend it enough.

Android: Netrunner

No one knows how large a print run will be, though. They know now that Awakenings wasn't enough, assuming Spirit of Rebellion will be the same insufficient size is just silly.

Munchkin® Card Games

Technically Epic Card Game is a collectible card game. It has the "LCG" model in which you know exactly what you're getting, except not shitty and exploitative. It's insanely cheap. It's $10 per copy on CSI and 3 copies gets you a playset of core. The expansions are more expensive but still insanely good. The game itself is much more strategic and doesn't have all the nonsense buildup of magic that ultimately made low-cost cards strictly better. No lands.

Epic's cheaper than most LCGs, but not by as much as it's pretending to be.

To have a full playset of Epic's core set cards, you need three cores. $10 each on CSI, that's $30. Each pack costs $5 but only gives you one copy of each card, so you need 3 of each pack for a playset -- that's $15 per pack to get a playset. You CAN buy the bundles on CSI to save money there, at $14 for each 4-pack cycle ($3.50 per pack), but you're still looking at three copies of each bundle (so $10.50 to get a playset from each pack).

Once the card pool gets big, the game's going to become more expensive to get into. Not as expensive as LCGs that have been around for a while -- catching up on the packs alone for Netrunner right now would run you more than $460 -- but I think part of what makes Epic so cheap right now is that it's had so few releases, so you're still getting in on basically the ground floor. The current price to have the whole set is about what you'd pay to get into an LCG if you only got one core set and a full pack cycle.

>Epic's cheaper than most LCGs, but not by as much as it's pretending to be.
I mean, yeah. That's why I said "expansions are more expensive but still insanely good". Compare to Netrunner as you said.

I don't think it's really necessary to downplay how cheap it is or chalk it up to few releases though. It's the fact that every card is very usable. For that $450, you MIGHT get the same number of usable Netrunner cards as the $126 of Epic (my collection's cost was $12 per 4pack).

After 3 sets and hundreds of hours played in the last 2 years, I can count on one hand how many cards I haven't used. And that's mostly just due to my strict requirements for card roles that I want filled.

What I think IS a fair criticism is how they needlessly split their expansions into packs. No one likes this. They've been criticized both times for this and the second time it even caused people to drop the game and sell their collection. The increased manufacturing cost and premium markup you pay for a split product isn't worth the stupid pack opening feel (which immediately evaporates after the first copy). Even their own site sells them as 4packs for draft and 3x4packs for constructed. They acknowledge tacitly that this is how people always buy the game.

Tiny rant aside, the game is probably the best you're going to get in a CCG both cost-wise and gameplay-wise. At least that's my opinion after 16 years of competitive CCG play.

>Someone recommended me Legend of the Five Rings or that new Game of Thrones game where you don't need to buy booster packs

That's an LCG, or Living Card Games. Instead of buying packs at 6 bucks a pop, you spend 40-80 dollars and get a full of each card from that printing. It's an interesting way to go about it; you don't have to piddle away hundreds looking for one rare, but trading is not as likely. Im personally really looking forward to FFG's L5R reboot. I played both their game of thrones LCG and LOTR co-op games and I enjoyed them both

well you've ruled out the only good ones, so I got nothin.

It may be better to just call them CCG since they're still collection-based or at least ECG for Expandable Card Game. The whole "LCG-copyright-registered-trademark-donotsteal" bullshit gets old from FFG. Not to mention the "living" part just being marketing jargon.

ECG is probably what we should settle on, since it's what Doomtown: Reloaded used, and it's not trademarked.

LCG will probably end up the dominant term in the same way Kleenex and Scotch tape are dominant terms, though. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

My friends and I have joked that discontinued LCGs like Warhammer: Invasion, 40k Conquest, and Call of Cthulhu LCG are now DCGs: Dead Card Games.

I'm curious why there are so few card games that are as scalable and malleable as MtG. You can very easily convert MtG to multiplayer, for example, but it's a giant pain in the ass with most other games.

UFS. I've had a great time with the megaman tins and playing on TTS, but I wish there was at least a single store that stocked it on my continent.

Does anyone know a place where I could get custom cards printed, I figure the people who play with them might have some insight. I don't want to make fake cards, just my own.

Drive-Thru cards. Super cheap and they print high-quality black core card stock.

You didn't need to add the "or made by bushiroad" clause since you specified popular early in the sentence

Well, doing free-for-all multiplayer requires symmetrical game design, so that already knocks out Netrunner and Star Wars. Star Wars does have 2HG and 1-vs-many challenge decks, but the key is that asymmetrical games are designed so there will only be two sides to any game.

Sometimes, even in symmetrical games, victory conditions create an obstacle. Pokemon, for instance, gives you the win if your opponent has no Pokemon in play OR if you take 6 of your prize cards, earned by knocking out opponent's Pokemon. Since the prize cards are chosen randomly from your own deck, increasing your prize count locks even more of your deck away where you can't get at it, but leaving them at six would make multiplayer too short and uninteractive (since you could just beat up on one other player), and removing them isn't an option since "last man standing" multiplayer would become awkwardly long and unfun, especially since you could easily just turn it into a war of attrition by spamming basics onto the table.

Games that scale well for multiplayer, like Magic or Doomtown or Game of Thrones or Call of Cthulhu, have symmetrical design and victory conditions that don't hinge on your opponent's deck construction. Everybody's looking for the same victory condition: in Magic, you want to reduce your opponents' life to 0. In Game of Thrones, you want to get to 15 power. In Call of Cthulhu you want to win 3 of the story cards -- taken from a common story deck. In Doomtown, you want to take over the majority of the town.

I just wanted to pass by and say that Doomtown Reloaded is a blast for me each time I play it.

oh also Mage Wars (could be either Academy or Arena)

this is a good tip. TheGameCrafter is also decent, as you can bundle your cards with accessories and even sell your finished product through their shop.

>Conveniently leaving out LCG

Netrunner OP. I am blessed enough to have weekly nights for it at my nearby store. It is legitimately well designed and fun, and much cheaper than the three that you listed.

I'm on the same boat, so far what makes me like Epic and lets me bring it to the table more often than any LCG is that no card is genuinely useless like it seems every other game designs some cards to be. Everything had a place and drafting keeps it fresh.

Really wish they'd drop the boosters shit tho, and really hope the online client is actually good, if drafting is as fun online as it is in person it's pushing Heartstone into the recycle bin.

Magic was designed from the ground up to be optimal at 2-4 players.

Epic isn't that good desu. It's a fun little diversion, I suppose - it might serve as a decent palette cleaner between serious games, but it doesn't have the strategic nuance to hold the interest of any serious ccg player.

When I went down to the LGS recently and purchased one of the new boosters to owner gave me a wry look and said: "I didn't know anyone still played this." which about sums it up. We all bought-in when it came out, because it was so cheap, but everyone has long put it by the wayside.

Hope any game you find can get people interested or already have something.

Too often a new TCG/LCG starts here and then dies in months because MtG released a new set.

Magic itself dies from time to time, right now they're at record low tournament attendance for the first time since 1999.

deadrunner

I'll let you know once alpha starts. Planning to post a review in /bgg/ of the client. I really wish Rob and Darwin could see these kinds of comments. The people who think they should immediately cease boostershits are the same people who love the game.

>it doesn't have the strategic nuance to hold the interest of any serious ccg player.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Epic is insanely deep and you're posting from "mount stupid" right now. Check your Dunning-Kruger. As someone who's been competitive in CCGs for 16 years and playing epic for almost 2 years now, with a lot of analysis under her belt, I can tell you this game is as deep as any card game and deeper than most.

Phew. For a moment there I was worried I wouldn't get anyone.