Author Topic: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread  (Read 147698 times)

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #30 on: January 18, 2016, 04:42:11 PM »
The entire crux of Magic is that each color has its own distinct identity. Those identities are extremely complex, but on a basic level this is what they boil down to in my estimation:

-White represents order. In-game that means they tend to use armies of small creatures and are good at keeping their opponents' cards locked down.

-Blue represents knowledge. That means a lot of tricks and different ways to disrupt your opponent.

-Black represents ambition. They play by sacrificing their own resources to hurt their opponents even more, and tend to use things as a resource that other colors don't like dead cards and life points.

-Red represents passion. Their playstyle is reckless and tries to best down the opponent as fast as possible without regard to defense.

-Green represents nature. They excel at using creatures and get cheaper and better creatures than anyone else.

They all have a complex network of strengths and weaknesses, and a system of inter-color relationships that let you combine two or more colors to get even more sorts of strategies and sets of strengths and weaknesses.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #31 on: January 18, 2016, 06:10:24 PM »
Hmm. Blue, black, and white seem up my alley. Might look mostly into those.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #32 on: January 18, 2016, 06:33:43 PM »
If you have a Magic card on hand, flip it over and connect the five colored dots in the middle of the card. The lines will form a pentagram that explains the relationships between the colors. Adjacent colors on the pentagram are allies and tend to work well together and cover each-other's weaknesses. The colors that aren't adjacent which form the star of the pentagram are enemies and tend to have stranger (although still viable) results when combined.

So by that system the three colors you picked are an allied trio centered around blue. White and black are enemies of each other, but they're both allies to blue, which means that together they should cover all of blue's weaknesses and form a very stable base.

This probably means that you tend toward a slow and controlling style of play that's better at and more interested in killing, neutralizing, or stealing your opponent's big threats than making power plays of your own. Does that sound like it might be right?
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #33 on: January 18, 2016, 06:48:42 PM »
Kind of. I'd take deep amusement in playing a deck centered around winning by draining the opponent's resources and kind of built a deck revolving around that using the white and blue starter decks they gave me. I filled it with high defense cards and deck manipulating cards, along with sorcery and instant cards that force the opponent to keep cards tapped so they can't attack or defend. I'm sure it's no good in practice but it was fun to put together.

Since I collected 2 white mini-decks and 2 blue ones, I constructed a second deck that revolves around healing and cards who get boosted stats every time I heal. (it came with an Aegis Angel too, so I tossed it in there). I addition, I put dawnglare invoker and sleep in there just so I could quickly trample the opponent after building myself up.

Do I have the right idea, at least?

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #34 on: January 18, 2016, 07:10:58 PM »
Yeah, probably. Colors on Magic are so deep that there are multiple archetypes with every combination and even each single color, but it sounds like you got a real control thing going. If that's what you want you're in the right case. Any color or combinatikn of colors COULD play a control strategy, but white and blue are certainly the most direct and orthodox.

Now your next step is to go play a bunch of games, preferably against decks of roughly the same power level (any other starter decks and theme decks should make fine opponents, just watch out for meticulously tuned constructed decks at this point). Whether you win or lose, pay close attention to why. If you win it will probably be because your control strategy successfully fended off your opponent, but if you find yourself winning in other ways occasionally that should teach you something too. If you lose make sure you try to figure out why. Maybe your deck won't match up well against certain strategies or will have trouble dealing with certain cards. Figuring that out will be vwry useful in helping you learn how to tweak your deck and what things you should be playing.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2016, 07:19:17 PM by commandercool »
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #35 on: January 18, 2016, 07:21:00 PM »
Yeah. I might buy a few packs and see what I can make from them too. I was told that most of the starter decks I was given are obsolete and have some banned cards, so I may try to make a modern-friendly deck I can actually play with.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #36 on: January 18, 2016, 07:36:02 PM »
Depending on who you're playing with and where I wouldn't worry too much about using current cards just yet.  As long as you're still doing a lot of experimenting usually I would recommend being willing to use older cards since you can often get them cheaper.

There's no helping that if you want to jump right into tournaments of course, but if you're just playing with friends outside of any kind of organized play you don't have to stay current. But then again limiting yourself to only new cards means a lot fewer different cards to worry about which might makes things easier to process.

It's worth noting that last weekend was a prerelease for a new set, which means that set comes out this weekend. Whenever a new set comes out there are always people with a lot of commons and uncommons they want to get rid of from opening boxes and playing sealed. I can't speak for the stores in your area, but I bet if you hung around my store this weekend and introduced yourself as a new player you would leave with more castoff extras than you could carry. I'm looking for someone to dump 80% of the cards I won yesterday on since I only care about a small fraction of the cards in each set at this point and don't have room to store the rest. I bet there are people near you in the same situation.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #37 on: January 18, 2016, 08:25:06 PM »
Yeah. That's basically my situation. I went to a local store, said "I'm new, teach me", and I was hooked up with those starter decks after being asked to pick a couple colors.

That was a day before the prerelease though, so I'll stop by this week(end) and see if I can mooch some dupes.  :V
« Last Edit: January 18, 2016, 08:36:32 PM by Enoshimatsuri Junko »

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #38 on: January 18, 2016, 09:22:39 PM »
mtg

MtG is nice in that if you play/follow Standard rules, only three(?) blocks worth of cards are legal to play at any given point, so the niche and toolset of each color tends to change as blocks shift. This does have the disadvantage of contstantly needing to obtain new cards to stay relevant, but it stops a good amount of the unnecessary powercreep and keeps things fresh.

Prereleases are the bomb, though. Especially if you go with friends. You get such an incredible deal on the prerelease packs after paying to get into the event that you may as well consider it like a godfest equivalent.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2016, 09:25:20 PM by OverlordChirei »

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #39 on: January 18, 2016, 09:43:04 PM »
Yeah, as far as what colors can do it's worth noting that some of them have kind of been in flux lately, especially red. Wizards tinkers with the game a lot, and we're in a minor period of color upheaval.

As for prerelease deals, my store charged $5 less than anyone else locally. I'm glad I won big though, because the most expensive thing I pulled in my sealed packet was $4. I would have been pretty disappointed if I had walked away with just that stuff.

I agree that events are more fun when you go with a group of friends. I don't usually play in any event, regardless of game, unless I have a posse with me. And if you're a shady motherfucker apparently colluding in Magic is considered acceptable. Going into the last round I was repeatedly told by the guy running the event that the "normal" thing to do in my situation would be to intentionally draw with my opponent to guarantee first and second and split the packs. That sounded sketchy to me so I didn't, won, and got three extra packs for my trouble, but the judge swore that it would have been legal and normal to agree to a draw. So there's that, I guess..? :V
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #40 on: January 18, 2016, 09:57:46 PM »
I agree that events are more fun when you go with a group of friends. I don't usually play in any event, regardless of game, unless I have a posse with me. And if you're a shady motherfucker apparently colluding in Magic is considered acceptable. Going into the last round I was repeatedly told by the guy running the event that the "normal" thing to do in my situation would be to intentionally draw with my opponent to guarantee first and second and split the packs. That sounded sketchy to me so I didn't, won, and got three extra packs for my trouble, but the judge swore that it would have been legal and normal to agree to a draw. So there's that, I guess..? :V

The few times I was at a prerelease, the finalists are always given the option to just not play the last rounds and split the packs. I guess I don't see it as shady because some people might get butthurt over fighting people they know and whatnot at the end.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #41 on: January 18, 2016, 10:05:16 PM »
Seems unfair to the other people with good standing, since second is usually a tossup between anyone in the top four. In games I play competitively more than Magic a concession is usually an automatic event drop explicitly to prevent stuff like this (and I'm sure a lot of it has to do with sharking, but the way I see it intentionally drawing the last round might as well be a minor form of sharking). It's an interesting cultural difference between games I guess.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #42 on: January 19, 2016, 02:40:48 AM »
I went to a different shop today and played with some actual constructed/finely tuned decks. I won once using one, and the second time I lost severely.

Basically the guy who was teaching me was playing a deck with absolutely no creature cards whatsoever, just a red deck full of instants/enchantments/sorceries, with cards that doubled/tripled the effects of spells and he basically played an infinite stack and ended it with a Grapeshot that did like 20 damage rofl

Still dunno if it's really something to get into, but I did buy a booster pack and a few copies of the card whose art got me interested in the game to begin with, so there's that at least.

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #43 on: January 19, 2016, 04:59:58 AM »
Basically the guy who was teaching me was playing a deck with absolutely no creature cards whatsoever, just a red deck full of instants/enchantments/sorceries, with cards that doubled/tripled the effects of spells and he basically played an infinite stack and ended it with a Grapeshot that did like 20 damage rofl

You basically just played a guy who was playing without the standard format... which means he could use any of the cards released throughout the course of the game's life, and you witnessed the result of what happens without the safety of the limitation. There are supposedly tons of these instakill combos, and it's pretty disgusting to a degree.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #44 on: January 19, 2016, 12:14:17 PM »
The deck he was letting me use has an instakill combo too, and it was frighteningly simple: Devoted Druid + Quillspike. Tap the Druid to gain mana and a - 1/-1 counter, then untap. Tap Quillspike, remove the negative counter and gain +3/+3. Repeat until you can oneshot. It's ridiculous how simple it is to break the game, and yet it's completely legal to do so.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #45 on: January 19, 2016, 03:10:31 PM »
This is probably too early to bring this up, but it seems relevant now that you've seen the most competitive play Magic has to offer. In my opinion there's only one right way to play Magic, and that's the least competitive format: Commader.

Commander is a casual format designed more for goofing around with friends and less for tournament play, but it's extremely popular so you can find people to play it with just about anywhere. Commander has significantly different rules for deckbuilding and gameplay than any other format.

-You have to pick a legendary creature to be your commander. They determine what colors can be in your deck (you can only play cards that match your commander's colors). You set aside your commander at the start of the game and can play them as though they're in your hand. Even if they die you can just replay them again, so you'll always have them around.
-Commander decks have to have 100 cards including your commander, including only one copy of everything but basic land.
-Starting life total is 40.
-Games are played with more than two people. I prefer four, but anywhere between three and six works well.
-You can use almost any cards ever printed with the exception of a small ban list unique to this format.

Commander is, counterintuitively, by far the cheapest format to play. Because it's the slowest format in Magic different cards are good in Commander than anywhere else, so you can usually put together a very solid deck with just old worthless trash cards. And Commander has the best premade deck support of any format too. You can buy a very reasonably powered,fully built Commander deck at any grocery store for $30.

There are plenty of downsides too of course. Commander can be extremely complex, both in deckbuilding and gameplay. The huge pool of playable cards to pick from can be too much for even experienced players to process (although the premade decks help a lot) and board states can get absolutely mind-bending when you have four players each with ten relevant cards in play. And as a casual format it's expected to be self-policing, so the ban list is intentionally kept lax. If some tryhard goofball really wants to break the format it can be easy to do. But despite all of those problems I highly recommend giving Commander a try once you get the core Magic rules figured out.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #46 on: January 19, 2016, 03:49:50 PM »
Don't get me wrong, Commander's a fun format, but I don't think it's a good starting point to get into the game from, especially if you're just building a collection.

I'd say once you have a solid grasp of the core rules the best jumping-on point is Sealed: each player gets six boosters and puts together a 40-card deck from whatever they pull (basic lands provided by the venue to assist deckbuilding). It's great because it puts the players on a more equal ground, and limiting it to 1-2 sets prevents the majority of runaway combos.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #47 on: January 19, 2016, 04:20:49 PM »
Yeah don't get me wrong either, I also don't really think Commander is a good starting point (although I do know a lot of people at this point who learned on Commander), but once you've been exposed to super-fast Legacy combo decks a counterpoint is probably helpful.

I'm not sure I agree that sealed is a good place tp start, but I don't know if I disagree either. Some of my buddies (the same ones who got into Magic through Commander) had terrible experiences trying to play Sealed too early. Limited formats are deceptively high-skill. There are a lot of beginner's traps that can get you absolutely crushed, making it not such even ground after all. Usually you won't have someone available to help you figure it out so you're kind of on your own. But might be a good learning experience, I don't know. Seems a bit "off the deep end to me", but hey, that's a quick way to learn to swim.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #48 on: January 19, 2016, 04:51:00 PM »
I don't think the style really matters. I learned more just diving into the deep end yesterday rather than getting it all in little pieces. I just need someone experienced and patient enough to explain what's going on for me to get it.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #49 on: January 22, 2016, 04:27:38 PM »
New expansion is released today. I think I'm gonna take the plunge and get the Twisted Reality deck after work.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #50 on: January 29, 2016, 01:31:05 AM »
So I spent a while at a card store today playing with the deck I bought combined with cards from a couple packs. I won a few rounds, and a multiplayer game as well, so that was cool, especially since I was playing some really seasoned players. Though to be fair, my main deck is Standard, the other guy was playing Modern, and the other was playing Casual/Legacy... Still!

The other deck I run is composed out of the starter cards I got. One of the guys looked at the deck and said I have a "soul sisters" deck setup. So I ran with it and bought cards to bolster it. Amazing how $5 can make a deck absolutely ridiculous but it's all about constant life boost and effects driven around that, while attaching them to flying/lifelink creatures (and if they're not flying or lifelink, Gift of Orzhova makes that happen.)

I'm having more fun with this than I expected I would.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #51 on: January 29, 2016, 03:32:27 AM »
I'm happy to hear that. Magic can be a pretty goddamn rewarding hobby for all its downsides. It can be expensive and frustrating if you let it be, or it can not be if you don't. Personally I don't really care for tournament play outside of sealed because I've found that most people tend to lean on the same few optimized deck skeletons that they copied off of the internet and I get tired of playing against the same three decks over and over. I can't argue that it's still a very high-skill, interesting format despite being kind of repetitive though, so I totally understand why some people like it.

The big advantage that Magic has over any other card game is that you'll never, ever be short on opponents. Just about everybody ever plays Magic or at least knows how to play, so nearly every place you can go has a robust community. I've played a lot of smaller card games in my time and most of them don't have more than four or five players in a given area if you're lucky, so they can get old quick. Not so with Magic, which is why it's such a solid investment. And for all of the low points Magic has had it's clearly made by smart people who have the best interest of the game at heart, so I think it'll be around and still interesting for a long time.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #52 on: January 29, 2016, 09:56:06 AM »
That's exactly what I like about it-- it's a very intuitive game when you're playing it right. It's got everything I like about the concepts I like about other games like Etrian Odyssey and Puzzle and Dragons, and that is that there's nearly limitless team (in this case deck) building potential and just as much potential for creative, unique, personalized play styles.

And while it can be a huge investment, I don't see why it has to be either. I was playing just a slightly modified version of the stock Twisted Reality deck (I removed most of the milling/exile cards and replaced them with unblockable/trampling Eldrazi/devoid creatures and instants/enchantments/sorceries that give unblockable or make it so targets cannot block, and I was still winning against people who have been playing for decades (one guy said he was playing since Mirage, which came out in 1996, and I beat him twice). Yes, his deck was super finely tuned, but without the right luck, I won merely by whittling him down with Mist Intruder. So there's still the notion of luck in play as well, and that evens the battlefield somewhat in that you can have the perfect deck and still be screwed. I've only spent around $40 altogether among the three decks I have made and $10 of that was just on card sleeves and a deck box (which I need a bit more of and will probably buy tonight at Friday Night Magic along with some Soul Wardens/Attendants if I can find them, just to be the finishing touch of the Soul Sisters-inspired deck I'm running as well). Meanwhile, the guy I played said his deck cost roughly $800 to build (he had two Tarmogoyf cards and it was filled to the brim with fetch lands and proxies thereof since he said it wasn't finished).

But that is just what is drawing me in. I was worried that getting into Magic would be ridiculously hard because there's just so so much to learn, but it's really not so bad once you get the flow of play down, because most people seem willing enough to explain what their cards and their deck does. With excitement and excruciating detail. So I've just chosen to learn that way, via watching other people's strategies. And I was worried I'd need a deck for every type as well and that's not even a reasonable thought just because there's so much, and it's just not necessary. I'll likely look into building red, green, and black decks at some point, but I'm honestly pretty happy with my white and blue decks at this moment since I honestly am not interested in playing hyper-competitively, because I already know that I'm at a huge disadvantage there due to inexperience and lack of hyper-invested decks. It's kind of scary how much the most sought-after cards are.

I'd kind of like to play in a sealed tournament sometime, though.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 09:57:51 AM by Matsuri »

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #53 on: January 29, 2016, 01:02:32 PM »
That's exactly what I like about it-- it's a very intuitive game when you're playing it right. It's got everything I like about the concepts I like about other games like Etrian Odyssey and Puzzle and Dragons, and that is that there's nearly limitless team (in this case deck) building potential and just as much potential for creative, unique, personalized play styles.

I have heard stories of people going into actual unsealed tournaments using nothing but a deck of commons and a few uncommons and walking away with first. Mind over matter is a very real thing in this game, and just generally being knowledgeable is an extremely powerful weapon in itself. I could take out my old friend using his ~$500 standard decks with stuff we cobbled together simply because I outmaneuvered him and he was unfamiliar with playing a not-top-tier deck. In sealed/draft play, this becomes even more prevalent (with a good bit of RNG* since you don't know who's going to get what...), and you'll need everything you can know if you pull some pretty ugly stuff.

*Edit: When ccool said the game was made by smart people who have the game's interest at heart, he wasn't kidding. Even the RNG can be mostly staved off depending on what kind of Sealed it is. In a Prerelease, you're deliberately given a choice of a box of some kind of faction, and the box more than likely has a LOT of cards in that faction's color, along with regular packs from standard sets, so you may get a little extra.

In a regular ol' draft, everyone gets a certain number of packs, opens one, takes a single card, and passes the remainder to the next person, and you get someone else's remaining cards, pick one, pass it, and this repeats until all the packs are passed around and gone. Knowing which ones to pick out of those bunches being passed around can almost entirely mitigate the packs being shitty and give you the edge you need. Both types of Sealed also have 40-card deck limits due to the limited amount of cards available, but this also reduces deck RNG somewhat as well.

Personally I don't really care for tournament play outside of sealed because I've found that most people tend to lean on the same few optimized deck skeletons that they copied off of the internet and I get tired of playing against the same three decks over and over.

RA DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 01:10:20 PM by OverlordChirei »

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #54 on: January 29, 2016, 02:59:24 PM »
*Edit: When ccool said the game was made by smart people who have the game's interest at heart, he wasn't kidding. Even the RNG can be mostly staved off depending on what kind of Sealed it is. In a Prerelease, you're deliberately given a choice of a box of some kind of faction, and the box more than likely has a LOT of cards in that faction's color, along with regular packs from standard sets, so you may get a little extra.
They changed that so you no longer get the "set color" pack; since this fall all the prerelease kits are now "six packs and a random promo", which a lot of people like more since you're no longer forced to commit to a specific color even if what you pull doesn't necessarily support it.

And I was worried I'd need a deck for every type as well and that's not even a reasonable thought just because there's so much, and it's just not necessary. I'll likely look into building red, green, and black decks at some point, but I'm honestly pretty happy with my white and blue decks at this moment since I honestly am not interested in playing hyper-competitively, because I already know that I'm at a huge disadvantage there due to inexperience and lack of hyper-invested decks. It's kind of scary how much the most sought-after cards are.
Honestly if you're already going into Modern or another format where cards aren't constantly rotating in and out it's fine to just put your focus into developing and learning the decks you already have, and what matchups they're good and bad in.

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #55 on: January 29, 2016, 03:14:29 PM »
They changed that so you no longer get the "set color" pack; since this fall all the prerelease kits are now "six packs and a random promo", which a lot of people like more since you're no longer forced to commit to a specific color even if what you pull doesn't necessarily support it.

Darn. I kind of liked the idea, myself. I've seen people get boxes and go off-color to mindgame people (not necessarily because they got bad cards for their color, either) to great effect. It's also mostly how I staved off or at least put up some sort of a fight against my old friend's expensive decks - I'd go and do silly things like keep one land in my hand to make him think I have something, and half the time I actually DO, he thinks I'm tricking him with lands again and I take him down. Been a while since I played a good game where mindgames were a factor...

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #56 on: January 31, 2016, 04:17:23 PM »
I have discovered that people really don't like facing Soul Sisters decks.

I am officially renaming the deck "Salt Sisters".


Meanwhile, next week's Friday Night Magic tournament is Standard (the place I go to has a tourney at 3pm and 7pm, and I'm working during the 3pm slot and they rotate the types weekly), so I'll have to bolster my Standard deck....

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #57 on: February 01, 2016, 04:26:14 AM »
I kind of accidentally created a small Pokemon TCG group at my store. One of my buddies' son asked me if I could teach him the game because he knows I like Pokemon, so I bought a starter deck to play with him. A few other adults who also like Pokemon saw us playing, built crappy decks out of old, cheap versions of Pokemon they like, and I did the same and helped the kid build a half-decent deck. Now there are 4-5 of us who play Pokemon between other games.

The Pokemon TCG seems... pretty bad. The core game is fine, but the best cards are so freakishly overpowered that there's no reason to not prioritize them over everything else all the time. Fortunately none of us are really interested in the metagame so our low-powered version of it is decent. I had to depower my deck a little because I accidentally put too many ridiculously powerful Trainer cards in it, but that works for me. More room for cool monsters.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

MatsuriSakuragi

Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #58 on: February 01, 2016, 04:38:32 AM »
The original game was fun back in the day back when it was still decently balanced. I am guessing the point where any semblance of that went out the window was when Nintendo took over the game from Wizards. I stopped playing around that time, at least, and I had already thought the game was getting pretty ridiculous as it was, but looking at some current cards, it seems pretty ridiculously overpowered compared to how the game used to be.

commandercool

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Re: Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread
« Reply #59 on: February 01, 2016, 05:00:10 AM »
Are the Game Boy games representative of how the game used to be at all? I never really played the paper version when it was new (just collected it), but since then I've played both video games extensively and they were pretty horrifically imbalanced too. I just didn't mind because I was beating up computers.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.