What is the best collectible card game to get into these days? Nothing too expensive please

Define expensive

As in I can build a meta deck without having to spend over $100.

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is: "What games are played locally?"
Sure there are a lot of CCGs out there, but what's the point if you can't find anyone to play with?

I live in a shitty bedroom community so the only thing anyone plays around here is MTG, specifically the Modern format. Shit sucks.

Play magic the gathering drafts.

Sorta, mainly there is no singles market, because every pack has an entirely known set of cards

>TCG being cheap

So would I not be able to just buy the cards I want individually and not get the ones I don't want? I suppose that it doesn't matter either way if the packs are reasonably prices.

In Yugioh, you can build most Tier 2 decks for around $40- $50, and there's usually at least one Tier 1 deck that has $100ish builds. In Vanguard, the G Legend sealed decks are all solid enough that they can top regionals out of box, and can gradually be upgraded to be even better.

I would rather not have to buy something every single time I want to play the game.

Wow, that actually sounds pretty good. I guess I can understand the frustration that surrounds the game as being a collector must suck due to reprints, but that doesn't sound like a bad deal otherwise.

Depends on how you want to play. Kitchen Table Magic is the best, but it's really hard to control the power creep and money. I found multiplayer formats work the best because players with the best decks always get targeted first. In our EDH group, the guy with the most expensive deck lost a bunch because he started each game with aggro against him.

I don't think that I could find a Kitchen Table Magic scene, but that is a nice way of putting it into perspective.

They are all free when you print proxies.

In theory you can, but it'll probably be a ballache because most people just sell whole packs as-is.

The flexibility of most cards helps too, though as always there are some things that are great almost universally, and some things that are almost never good

Usually, harder to obtain printings don't drop much after a reprint. And value will sometimes spike back up after years without reprint. If you want to get started with a great deck in Yugioh, just grab three of the recent Dinosaur structure deck.

That sounds good, I will see what I can make with those. I remember briefly playing the game with a Dinosaur structure deck once, so I will see how that goes.

What are MtG's flaws in your opinion? Trying to get into game design.

The bad thing with yu-gi-oh is that they keep baning stuff to maie top tier deck worthless in order to sell more of the new cards they keep releasing.
So most of the time your deck will be good for about a year before it gets wrecked by the ban hammer

Lands being in the main deck is the biggest one. Even with a statistically optimal ratio of lands/non-lands, you'll almost certainly have many games that go shitty due to drawing too many/not enough lands. It doesn't add to strategy or gameplay, only a layer of RNG that gives a chance of not being able to play the game. Keyword bloat is another one - if you're not going to keep a mechanic for longer than a set or two, don't give it a keyword, and if you do, unless you want to lock mechanics to certain factions (Vanguard does this well), make sure you make the keywords as agnostic to its owner as possible. Remember that, while aggressive and battlecruiser playstyles are popular, people enjoy drawgo/control and combos, so make sure not to shaft one playstyle to support another. Remember that what does well in playtesting isn't reflective of the final product; you won't catch everything, so exploits are inevitable. In terms of selling new sets, Magic focuses on a rotating format with low-power sets. I'd say keep a look at the strongest and weakest decks, and if you release more cards, use the top deck as a standard and give other teams buffs up to that point. True balance is impossible, and power creep is inevitable, so to minimize its effects, focus on strengthening the weak points instead of replacing the strong.

>What is BA
>What are Yang Zings
>What are dinos

BA was meta until recently and will probably be meta gain once they get their new Link mosnter.

Actually been talking to younger family members about this. They told me they had zero interest in the game because I told them it costs money to start. I was shocked, because they really wanted to try it, but that was a huge turn off for them.

pokemon changes tomorrow

There is already another thread for this but here:
Pros-
-Rules are very clear to understand, wizards even uploads some tips on interactions on release day for every single card in the set
-Resource based which is a big one
-No field size or designated zones, if it's a card you put it on the table
-Legend/unique rule, this one is good because it allows you to print stronger cards with a trade off
Cons -
-The blocking mechanic for combat is very unintuitive if you've played any other TCG, also makes games feel very slow especially if it's something like tokens vs tokens
-Rarity is almost exclusively tied to power, so much so that two cards can read exactly the same but the mythic will cost 2 mana less.
-Very bland art, older magic doesn't have this issue but newer magic is all the same realistic looking photo style while games like pokemon do fun and colorful things with their art.
-Magic is also pretty afraid of reprint where games like yugioh will reprint a $100 in a tin everyone can get, this causes the price of entry to be high and turn off many potential players from leaving the kitchen table.

There are more but most everything else could fall into personal preference either for or against.

All collectible things are inherently expensive as fuck.

If you want to find a cheap one, try one that already failed, something like Mechwarrior or Jyhad or Blood War or some shit like that from the 90's that never really went anywhere. You may be able to buy somebody's entire collection for a hundred or something, and that will be better ratio of content for money than any active CCG will give you.