CCG/LCG Mechanics — Best Models?

[naum]

Collectible/Living Card Game mechanics — which are your favorites? Least favorites?

For me, MtG is the pinnacle of eloquence and simplicity, but yet filled with deep pockets of strategy. Even with all the add-on nonsense of later years - tokens, special graveyard mechanics, and whatever else is new in MtG these days…

…land cards, creature cards, instances and enchantment/artifacts…

To date, I've found all other CCG implementations to fall short of MtG schematic:

* …the original Star Wars CCG, I loved the planet cards, but lots of cards were real esoteric and seemed to be tediously twisted into the ruleset.

* …I liked Chron X but I never played beyond beginner stages to get a good gauge…

All of the others I've tried were meh — LotR (which for awhile had a cross platform Java implementation, really tied to movie IP though, and game structure again was painstakingly bent), newer Star Wars (is there another implementation now?) CCG, Star Trek, etc.… were awful…

Never tinkered with Yugi-oh or Pokemon — so I must confess my ignorance on those games.

Was thinking of all this as I perused this guy's collection of homebrewed game rules. Yes, most of these are of LCG/established deck variety, but I was struck by how similar all of his card games were constructed, and how they were boardgame to card migrations, with a whole bunch of "phases" for each turn…

[Lantyssa]

I remember the World of Darkness game being pretty fun the few times I tried it.

[Trippy]

Legend of the Burning Sands was a better version of Legend of the Five Rings. LBS was probably my favorite game mechanics-wise. Unfortunately Ninjas >>>>>> Arabian Nights.

In L5R "card advantage" was very difficult to overcome. I.e. if you have fewer provinces than your opponent that make things very very difficult cause (roughly) half of your playable cards are tied to your provinces and the number of cards from that deck that you can put into play is tied to the number of provinces you have. In LBS you play from a single deck and losing your equivalent of provinces wasn't as crippling as it was in L5R. I saw many more comebacks in LBS than I did in L5R.

Doomtown had a great mechanic with its poker hands but for some reason I never really got into that one.

Jyhad (later named to Vampire: The Eternal Struggle) and Babylon 5 were both quite fun if you had enough people to play it with (both weren't very good when played with just 2 people).

Never really did like the Star Wars CCG. The Star Trek CCG was pretty crappy. I heard good things about Netrunner but nobody around me played so I never got to try it.

I enjoyed the WH40K CCG too. That's the last CCG I played a lot of. Never tried the WH-version.

[Yegolev]

Of the CCG I played, I only really remember MtG mechanics.  I recall that my wife and I enjoyed playing the Pokemon CCG but we got bored with it and gave our cards to a very appreciative kid.  I still have my MtG and LotR cards somewhere, and I actually have an unopened LotR starter, for some reason.  Don't recall liking LotR too much, but that was during my MtG tournament days and I think I didn't give it a fair shake.

[Xilren's Twin]

While MtG is definately my #1 choice, i also really enjoyed a short lived other Wotc game: Netrunner.  One side played a hacker trying to break into a Corporation's network to steal valuable information, the other side played the Corp Network Admin.   Hackers used equipment, ice breaking programs, stealth programs, etc to get in, Corp used data forts, ice programs, tracers programs, hit teams, etc to try and keep him out.  The unbalanced play mechanic was very interesting in that both players had completelty different card sets and abilities.  Then you were supposed to switch sides.  Problem being of course, you basically had to double the purchase of cards to make two workable decks.

My kids played Yugioh for a bit so i got to see that; mtg dummed down for kids in most respects, but some card combinations/power were so complicated the type on the cards was almost too small to see.

[naum]

While MtG is definately my #1 choice, i also really enjoyed a short lived other Wotc game: Netrunner.  One side played a hacker trying to break into a Corporation's network to steal valuable information, the other side played the Corp Network Admin.   Hackers used equipment, ice breaking programs, stealth programs, etc to get in, Corp used data forts, ice programs, tracers programs, hit teams, etc to try and keep him out.  The unbalanced play mechanic was very interesting in that both players had completelty different card sets and abilities.  Then you were supposed to switch sides.  Problem being of course, you basically had to double the purchase of cards to make two workable decks.

My kids played Yugioh for a bit so i got to see that; mtg dummed down for kids in most respects, but some card combinations/power were so complicated the type on the cards was almost too small to see.

I must confess games with a storyline of hacking/hackers never interest me and are about as exciting as the blandest abstract strategy game. But that is noteworthy — the different sides swapping, a twist on the different "factions" (in MtG, not hardwired, but governed by deck composition (color)), or in LotR where you each played offense and defense to your parties in quest. The old Star Wars CCG (how many of these have there been now?) had players had Empire and Rebels as "black" and "white".

What brief experience I had of Chron X, I liked, and wonder why it hasn't been resurrected (actually, it's still around, but looks withering to me…, and there's a plug for Chron X 2 but no indication that it's anything other than vaporware).