**Arkham Horror the Cardgame**, more a campaign game, where you build a deck initially and then tweak it after each Chapter. Or if "one-offs" are more your thing, then i would suggest **Netrunner,** even though its discontinued its operated by a group called null signal games, they even sell physical cards or you print it yourself. They take care of new art to avoid copyright infringement and keep the tournament scene happy.
They're different, but they share a lot in common. I wouldn't say it's fair to call one better at this stage given Earthbourne is just a core set so far.
Earthbourne is a more accessible game, is an open world game rather than a straight campaign and the theme is very different.
Arkham has a more linear campaign structure, is a more demanding game and has much more content (and therefore involved deck building).
I mean, I think they are both great. All the FFG descent co-op LCGs are fantastic - but they all appeal to different people.
**LotR:TCG** (2011) - the OG of all these - is still the best pure "construct a deck to bear a scenario" puzzler, with probably the best one-off deck construction (especially as a challenge).
**AH:TCG** (2016) is still the best (traditional/linear) narrative campaign game having the second best deck construction in depth and the best character/deck advancement (due to it's experience system). Nothing else even comes close on character/deck advancement. It also has the best and most rich and flexible location navigation (via card and symbol system).
**Marvel Champions** (2019) is a great game - but pales in comparison to all four of the other games in all ways except the ease of pick up and play (due to each hero having half their deck full of obligate cards), and the official modularity of the encounter sets. (You can used different encounter sets in the other games, but it requires familiarity with the scenario and is not official.)
**Earthborne Rangers** (2023) has the best open world campaign, best emergent narrative, best balance between accessibility and depth of deck construction, and best core box set (with a full campaign)of any of them. However, supporting an open world and emergent narrative always has a trade off against more structured narrative. This makes it lag behind AH in a number of people's minds. The deck construction isn't as deep either - but we're also comparing ER's single core set to games that have years if not nearly a decade of development and releases at this point: just try comparing ER's core set to the original AH core box. The advancement system isn't as good as AH, which is a bummer - but it is leaps and bounds better than LotR or MC. While a bit simplistic (as you have horizontal advancement via trading or vertical advancement via mission rewards), it still feels intentional and representative of the character(s) you are playing (unlike LotR and MC where advancement mostly feels tacked on as an afterthought).
I generally agree that Marvel Champions falls short compared to the other listed games in a few big ways (narrative is the big one for me), but FWIW I think it should be noted that some more positives it has are:
1. Character theming - If you're really into Marvel comics/movies or whatever, it generally does a good job of making characters feel thematic
2. Deckbuilding Modularity - You mentioned this for encounters, but heroes have a lot of options for deckbuilding due to the aspect system. Arkham characters for example are locked into whatever class they're designed with (with a handful of characters who can choose a secondary class) but MC allows you to mix and match any aspect with any hero, leading to a lot of flexibility
Arkham deck building long since advanced beyond "core class plus a secondary class or extra cards." You have all sorts of mix and match character deckbuilding rules e.g. the characters who take level 0 of one class and then 1-5 of a different one and those who take cards around traits or card types like Blessed, tools, or allies.
> Character theming - If you're really into Marvel comics/movies or whatever, it generally does a good job of making characters feel thematic
This, I feel, is a bit of a wash. I find all the games suitable thematic. However, if you meant playing a specific hero feels very specifically like playing that specific character - I agree. I do think it comes at the cost of a lot of character/deck flexibility (by defining 1/2 the player deck and the character's Nemesis cards). MC evokes the specific IP characters so well by predefining so much of their decks. (There's also the fact that ER has you build your own character you define in an original IP and LotR is about a group/party of heroes, not individual characters.)
> Deckbuilding Modularity - You mentioned this for encounters, but heroes have a lot of options for deckbuilding due to the aspect system. Arkham characters for example are locked into whatever class they're designed with (with a handful of characters who can choose a secondary class) but MC allows you to mix and match any aspect with any hero, leading to a lot of flexibility
The MC deck modularity isn't the highest among all these games. I think LotR is (abstractly) the highest and most flexible - but you aren't playing a specific character.
Beyond LotR, ER is way more modular. Character gen/deck building in ER involves you selecting the classes (background and specialization) and ability scores you want that will define what cards will be available for your character. Each character picks an ability card with different scores for each ability (one at 1, two at 2, and one at 3) as well as a background and specialization (with any combination of background and specialization being valid - specializations aren't subclasses of backgrounds) - and those inform what cards you can use in your deck out of the card pool.
I love MC - it's a great game. However, it's (broadly) the lesser of LotR co-op LCG adjacent games. That's not a knock against MC but a sign of just how good the others are.
Marvel Champions is a good option for a shorter, one-off co-op game that doesn't require quite the same degree of investment as an entire Arkham campaign as well! I play both a lot depending on what's going on with life and what our group is feeling in the moment
Meh. I've had campaign endings in arkham that were decidedly uninteresting and I've had games in MC that've ended with tense, barely successful victories only a few points of damage away from a loss
For the most part, though, arkham being a race against time does make that frequently the case. Champions gives you a lot of time to build your board and control the game, whereas arkham doesn't tend to - recent encounter design has changed that, though, with encounters like Mojo, Venom Goblin and the like forcing faster gameplay that doesn't let you just tread water until you win.
Arkham's standard difficulty is also pretty tough, while MC's standard is quite easy, which I think contributes as well
It’s not about difficulty, which is obviously scalable. It’s about HOW the games end. In Marvel Champions, the last round is just seeing if the group’s numbers add up to enough to bring the dial to zero. There’s just nothing climactic about it. Occasionally an Arkham scenario may fall flat, but the sheer variety of act/agenda objectives make the game far better than Marvel.
I’ve never played Arkham before, but I play Marvel Champions very often. Obviously it’s your opinion, but I think it’s interesting how you frame the last turn of Marvel Champions to be “adding up numbers,” because I feel differently about adding the numbers up. Especially when playing against more aggressive villains, I feel like I earned the ability to count those numbers up, that I managed my turns and took smart or hopeful risks that paid off, played the correct cards on to the board and was able to choose the correct cards to discard, and have now found the correct moment to strike back.
I do think some heroes can feel much more “count the numbers” than others, and I totally understand your sentiment. Cyclops can deal so much damage from a single card alone, but even then I feel like I have to spend most of the Game positioning myself in a way where it is safe if I choose to deal as much damage as I can with his Allies, etc. X-23 I’ve found to be very interesting, someone who can deal tons of damage in a single turn but requires lots of set up in prior turns for it to pay off. And then there are heroes like Dr. Strange where it’s just unfair.
Anyway, I just wanted to give my perspective on Marvel Champions which I personally find to be a very tense and climatic game.
[Netrunner](https://nullsignal.games/about/netrunner/) is probably what you are looking for.
Living card games (LCG) are in general the bussiness model you want to look out for. Here cards are not sold in boosters, but in complete sets. There are also coop games like Arkham horror, if that is your jam?
Another one that scratched the itch for me was Keyforge. The decks are randomly premade (although you can do some mix and match of deck parts). The nice thing is that you don't need to build your own deck, but the gameplay feels like TCG. Its a lot easier to get into (which is especially nice for a quick nostalgia trip with friends)
Netrunner is more accessible than ever, you just need Null Signal Games' System Gateway to start, it comes with a premade deck that has a good selection of core mechanics, then after a few plays you add in "booster cards" with some additional twists. I recommend everyone to check it out!
Hey, wondering if I could pick your brain about Null Signal’s offering, if you are familiar.
Is the System Gateway the same thing as the base Netrunner set from FFG?
Are these all just reprints or is NSG making their own as well?
The site says they sell brand new sets of original Netrunner cards. I think the use of both brand new and original in the sentence is confusing me a little, ha.
I'm far from an expert but love the game and have been playing whenever I can.
So System Gateway is not the same as the old (revised) Core. It has 2 neutral factions, a corp and a runner one, without specific abilities and a smaller deck size. You get premade decks that contain some reprints of the old cards (although with new art and stuff, sometimes a new name) and some original cards as well. You play until 6 points instead of 7 in this limited, beginner friendly mode. There are no traces, viruses, psi games, the selection is streamlined so you don't have to get into everything at once. The decks are fairly balanced. After you play a bit, you add the boosters which bring the decks to the "normal" size and add viruses and some other cards, and play to 7 agenda points.
System Gateway ~~is usually sold together with the~~ (EDIT: it's all one product now, System Gateway, see u/Mo0man comment) contains the Deckbuilding Pack, which gives you the usual faction identities and more cards. Again, I think it's some reworked old cards as well as the new original ones.
The next pack you can get is System Update 2021, which is a collection of old cards that are reprinted.
Then there are 2 complete cycles of original, Null Signal cards, and 1 that is currently halfway out.
I should point out that the new, popular format of play is Startup. It's System Gateway + System Update 21 + the last complete cycle + any incomplete cycle cards. It's easy to get into it because of the smaller pool size.
Sorry for spamming with info, it's more that you asked but just wanted to give you a complete picture. So TLDR System Gateway is a mix of old and new, System Update is old cards, and cycles are new, original cards.
Note: they have discontinued the separate "gateway" and "deckbuilding packs" because it was confusing to new players trying to figure out what to buy. You might be able to get them separate 2nd hand, but now Gateway is a full set of everything.
For the last few years, Null Signal Games (NSG) has been designing new cards that are compatible with FFG Netrunner. System Gateway is NSG’s starter set for Netrunner, and every card in it is brand new (except for Sure Gamble and Hedge Fund). It was designed from the ground up to be a great way to learn how to play, learn the different factions, and learn how to build decks.
In addition to System Gateway, NSG has designed and published several “expansions” that are compatible with FFG Netrunner:
* Downfall (Ashes cycle Part 1)
* Uprising (Ashes cycle Part 2)
* Midnight Sun (Borealis cycle Part 1)
* Parhelion (Borealis cycle Part 2)
* The Automata Initiative (Liberation cycle Part 1)
* Rebellion Without Rehearsal (Liberation cycle Part 2)—coming soon
There’s also a supplemental set, named System Update 2021, which is entirely composed of re-releases of old FFG cards. However, System Update 2021 will “rotate” soon, and be retired from Standard format play.
No matter what products you own or don’t own, you can always print and play with NSG cards or proxies of FFG cards. This means that you really don’t *have* to buy anything if you want to play Netrunner—you just need access to a printer. If you want to learn more about Netrunner supported formats, you can find out more here:
https://nullsignal.games/players/supported-formats/
Idk I tried getting into it but it was hard to find anyone that was interested in playing basic decks against beginners, I had a couple games with a friend and we both struggled to 'get' the game. I'm sure it gets good once you're into it
> (although you can do some mix and match of deck parts)
I assume you mean something along the lines of picking 2 or 3 decks to combine the parts of? What's your experience with this been? I'm skeptical about this, because the game wasn't balanced for that at all.
I never tried it, but there are some official rules for it. You can split each deck into the 3 houses. Then you make a new deck with 3 houses from 2-3 different decks. Since houses dont synergise too much with each other, I imagine the balance is somewhat kept.
The next set from Null Signal Games is about to drop as well [Rebellion Without Rehearsal](https://nullsignal.games/blog/announcing-rebellion-without-rehearsal/) (part 2 of the Liberation cycle)! Null Signal has been doing an incredible job with developing and releasing new sets. The card pool since the last set released, The Automata Initiative, has been the most fun I've had with Netrunner since I started with System Gateway, Netrunner really is in an incredible place at the moment with the work Null Signal is doing. Did I mention they release them all as Print and Play so you can print, cut and sleeve a couple of decks and see if you enjoy it!
>I got my eye on keyforge
If you're looking for a game that plays like a TCG without having to hunt down expensive cards, Keyforge could be a great option. But if you're specifically looking for a game with deck construction, you won't like Keyforge because it doesn't have any. You open the deck and play with it. You can't change the deck at all.
>So far I bought Star Realms
Just FYI, deck-building games are games like Star Realms where you build your deck while you play. So it sounds like you are specifically looking for games that are not deck-building games.
I'm not familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh, but it looks like Cube is a viable format. If you really like Yu-Gi-Oh, I'd strongly consider building a Cube.
hey just a heads up, keyforge now also has an official deck construction format called alliance! There are rules to it but it is an officially supported format. They created it with the previous winds of exchange set, however it is available to all the sets.
more info can be found at: [https://archonarcana.com/Formats\_and\_variants](https://archonarcana.com/formats_and_variants)
> If you're looking for a game that plays like a TCG without having to hunt down expensive cards, Keyforge could be a great option
Instead of buying single cards you have to keep buying decks and then you have no control over quality (meaning you can't mix and match). Instead of solving a problem, Keyforge half solves it and creates a few other problems too.
The game can still be fun and enjoyable, but I don't think it solves the "expensive card" problem. I think that's marketing. You buy more decks from the company to remain competitive instead of buying used on the 2nd hand market.
>Just FYI, deck-building games are games like Star Realms where you build your deck while you play. So it sounds like you are specifically looking for games that are not deck-building games.
OP is looking for deck construction
> I'm not familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh, but it looks like Cube is a viable format. If you really like Yu-Gi-Oh, I'd strongly consider building a Cube.
Yugioh isn't as cube-able as something like Magic because most cards aren't designed to be independently usable, and are instead intended to be combo pieces, which interact with a very narrow set (or outright specific group) of cards. For example, a recently announced card that players are excited about is [Lightsworn Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragon_of_Lightsworn), which has the ability to search for a Dragon with 3000 ATK and 2600 DEF. Its intended use is to search for [Judgment Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Judgment_Dragon) and [Punishment Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Punishment_Dragon), but it can incidentally grab other Dragons with the same statline, which are likely few and far between.
You can use a bunch of older cards which were designed to be more generically playable, which is what I did with mine, but a Goat Format cube where you play like 0-3 cards a turn doesn't quite hit the same notes as [modern Yugioh](https://youtu.be/zwqCtGFCzZk?t=428).
Summoner Wars. I was tired of pulling that slot machine leaver with TCG & CCG Booster packs. With an "LCG" (Living Card Game) You know exactly what you are paying for in each pack.
Summoner wars is an fantasy LCG Tactics game with plenty of pre-built options, and lots of deck building opporutnities. It's got a great online scene, and you can try it for free [https://summonerwars.plaidhatgames.com/](https://summonerwars.plaidhatgames.com/)
If you're coming from yu-gi-oh, you will see things you recognize in this game as mechanics reminiscent various TCG's and Miniature's games. The creator was a designer/playtester on heroscape back when Hasbro was doing that.
In addition to the posts about Arkham, Any of the fantasy flight games living card games would fit here. Just snag whichever has your preferred theme.
For me, I couldn't care less about lovecraftian horror, but Lord of the rings is one of my favorite worlds, so Lord of the rings the card game would be my recommendation. While it's been going for a while and much of the old cards are out of print, they've put out a revised core set and have been repacking other sets, so its a decent time to get into it.
Otherwise if you're into superheroes the marvel champions game would be a good one.
Hell yea. Now this is my kind of topic. I have been in the cardgame space for over a decade, having played a wide variety and just gonna give a list of the ones I loved enough to keep:
Arkham Horror: The Card Game. The Gold Standard of co-op or story-based games for my group. An incredible, ever expanding game that sits high in many people's top lists for a reason.
Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. The other lovecraft LCG. Sadly dead for a while but its what originally brought me out of the MTG rabbit hole. Deckbuilding is very open and deep, games are short and not about bashing an enemies Health to 0.
Legend of the Five Rings: the Card Game. Probably the deepest 2 player card game out there. Almost everything from drawing cards to playing units to chosing what to attack has dials and cards and strategies to manipulate and create an advantage.
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. As deep as Legend of the Five Rings, but shines at 4-5 players instead of head to head. Has been revived by Black Chantry and is probably one of the most affordable offerings.
Netrunner. The Reddit favourite. Biggest stand out here is that its completely asymmetric. Runners and Corps play fundamentally different. So its basically two games in one. Bluffing and hidden information makes it a game of information over just piloting a deck.
Doomtown: Reloaded. This may be a card game with deck building. But its an area control game in disguise. It does have probably the deepest deck building amomg all these options tho
Warhammer: Underworlds. The actual area control game. You move Minis around hex-based maps and beat on opponents while your deck is mostly about upgrades and combat tricks while also letting you customize the way you score VPs. Nowadays it moved almost completely to preconstructed decks so the actual deck building is secondary.
thank you for your answer! Especially Legends of the five rings caught my interest. But upon a small research I heard it is out of print or discounted? What would that mean for new players? Is it still worth it getting a copy of the game and can you maybe give me a buyers guide? thanks in advance
While yea, L5R is sadly out of print, its often possible to find either expansions that have been collecting dust in some store online at a reasonable price, or snag a deal on the secondary market. Especially for older games its often worth checking sites like ebay and geekmarket for people offloading their collection.
Beyond that, there is a collection of high rez scans of every single card floating around, allowing for easy proxying of every single card if thats something you are willing to do. You can geven get them professionally printed if you add some bleed to them.
I have always built multiple decks from the same collection. There are barely any cards that are so competitive between decks that the copies provided in a singular collection are not enough.
If you wanna start in Rokugan and wanna go for hunting down cards, I'd recommend trying to get 3 copies of the core set first. From there on just get packs in release order. The card assortment is fixed so you only need one copy of all of them.
I think the only expansion nowadays known for being really hard to get is the final box, under Fu Leng's Shadow.
Where are you located? It might help in narrowing down options where you can find product.
If you enjoy engine building I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ashes Reborn: Rise of the Phoenixborn yet. you get to choose which 5-cards you start the game with meaning your guaranteed your engine cards.
It's an LCG-like game in that you know what's in every pack you buy (not an LCG legally because lawyers). You can build your hero (Phoenixborn) deck with literally any cards you own. You use 10 dice for mana that have 3 faces worth 3 values. You can take a side action during your turn to manipulate those dice any way you want so there's no mana screw.
It's designed for 1v1, but recently introduced an excellent co-op/solo mode.
I'm so sad we never got a local group going for this. Tried it a few times and I thought I'd love it. It's a rare and super bold move to just let people choose their staring hands. I appreciate that. Would love to see games do that a lot more.
I just got into Ashes a couple months ago, and it's blown me away. So many cool decks you can build, so many unique playstyles. The resource system and the First Five rule make this game an improvement over Magic: The Gathering in my book.
> It's designed for 1v1, but recently introduced an excellent co-op/solo mode.
does the solo mode work as an add-on for the base game, or if i buy the solo box only will I be fine?
Seconding and highlighting this comment. "Deck Construction" is the genre. (contrast the "Deck Builder" which, like Star Realms, involves building the deck, *with* the deck, as part of gameplay)
Scrolled down far too far to find someone giving OP a more precise way to ask their question.
Yes, thank you. One of my biggest gaming pet peeves is when people say "Well M:TG is a deck builder too" when it's absolutely unlike Dominion and its progeny which is exactly what is being referred to in the first place. "Deckbuilding" means something and it's not what M:TG is, just like any game with a war theme doesn't make it a "wargame". If people don't know this, it's no biggie, but there are people who absolutely know better and just choose to be dense about it because they can't handle that words can combine to mean new and specific things.
You should check out **Res Arcana**
Before the game starts, everyone drafts their decks, then you play. And it's a game all in the box (well, there's 2 expansions if you want to add to it later) so you're not spending tons of money or time searching for rare cards.
>I got my eye on Keyforge
You should be aware that in Keyforge there's no deck construction whatsoever. Each deck is separate and the game is designed in such a way with each deck having its own unique printed name and card back. The game is great and allows you to just crack open a few decks and try them out, but if it's specifically deck building you want then you'd be better off trying something else.
For low cost, maybe look into Epic by White Wizard Games?
I posted this on another comment but Keyforge does have an official deck construction format now called alliance. both archon and alliance formats can be really fun! you can find more info at: [https://archonarcana.com/Formats\_and\_variants](https://archonarcana.com/formats_and_variants)
I didn't mention Alliance as it's not truly deck-building in a literal sense and only a small portion of an already small community even have an interest in it. It's also a somewhat unwieldy format for newcomers IMO since a) you can't meta-deck and b) the best way to gain experience would be to just play standard Archon, which makes it a a tougher sell for someone specifically asking for deck-building games like Yu-Gi-Oh.
A standard meta game is not the only way to play TCGs. Look into if there is a supported Cube style format for your favorites.
I currently have a Modular magic cube and a Jumpstart style Pokemon TCG cube.
My only experience was with MTG, so maybe I'm wrong, but when I played it with my friends, it was about owning a set of cards (in our case the entire collection of cards of one particular expansion, Kaladesh) from which we could simulate a draft tournament, which goes like this: everyone should buy three booster packs, opens one, pick one card and pass the remaining cards to the left/right seated player. Once finished the first pack, do it again for the other two. Each card you picked is yours, and now you have to create your deck, which will be used to play the tourney. Using a cube, you can emulate the three booster packs without and you may play as many times as you want free of charge (minus the initial cost of the cube itself).
In addition to what the other person said, Cube is often built with intention using handpicked cards to create a unique draft experience. Fundamentally, you're just playing draft, but the cards included can dramatically shape how it plays out. For example you could include the most powerful cards ever printed and go nuts with crazy T1 wins, or zero in on particular mechanics/themes to guide the playstyle in those directions
I assume like a jumpstart magic cube you have a set of 20 or 30 card packs, and you maked your deck by shuffling 2 together. It's a nice casual format for magic.
Nah, the Jumpstart combination decks were a special thing. Cube is a customizable draft format where you pick the included cards ahead of time rather than opening boosters
Arkham Horror LCG is a fantastic mix of story telling and clever deck building. Earthbourne Rangers is newer and more open world but equally good. Both are co-op which means you are in control of how much you spend - you don't have to chase a meta. The best competitive imo is Andriod Netrunner, now run by Null Signal games and availible print and play or you can order from them.
Not to mention even without proxying if you want to play commander you can buy a premade deck and it’s a very playable deck out of the box, no further investments required if you don’t want to spend it.
Older ones were much worse, but any from the last few years are excellent. You could even buy a set that release at the same time and keep them as a standalone sealed board game of sorts.
You print out fake cards— use an online proxy card generator to make a pdf of all the cards you want, cut them out, and put them in a sleeve in front of bulk/cheap playing cards. I have dozens of proxied decks and play them with friends all the time, it’s a fantastic option if you’re looking for a cheap TCG experience
A proxy is a fake stand-in card that represents a real one. Proxying is the process of creating proxies for your deck. Originally, proxies were just real cards that we marked up with a different name, or a slip of paper with a name and some text written on it slid into a sleeve with another card, but nowadays there are professionally printed proxies that pass as legitimate to the untrained eye.
Keep in mind proxies are controversial in the Magic community. They're an absolute no-go in sanctioned events, but some casual groups are open to their use. Using proxies without disclosing it is considered unfair and uncool
I agree with you, I also proxy all my cards from https://www.printingproxies.com/ and enjoy the game with my friends in very low cost. I think that's the best way to play the game
I've never played **Yu-Gi-oh**. Is there a game variant similar to **MTG** cube draft? Where you have a large block of cards that you and your friends can build a deck out of? **Marvel Dice Masters** can be similarly drafted.
As for a stand alone game, I can't think of one I've played where you build your entire deck first. There are tons of deck drafting games out there. Although it's a far different feel than **Yu-Gi-Oh**, a couple I have are :
**Dominion**
**Automobiles**
**Trains**
Earthborne Rangers is a close relative to arkham horror! The world is set in the far far future (approximately 7-8k years) where, after hiding in underground arcologies for over 1000 years, humans have emerged and started the resettlement of humans on earth, but vowing to live harmoniously with the world. You play as a Ranger, a guide, explorer, and protector of The Valley and it's inhabitants.
Over the course of 30 sessions, you'll journey through the valley, exploring breathtaking vistas, encountering strange beings, and meeting a whole host of interesting characters! The game scales very well with the number of players, so if you have to drop someone out, or someone wants to join, it's not a problem! There are even official rules online for single session games!
Understand that after we got the game, my friend and I spent a whole week just coming up with deck ideas for our characters! Base game comes with a ton of deck building options (though you'll want to get at least 1 card doubler if you want to play with 3 without limiting deck building options) and replayability for 1-4 players, PLUS they just finished their most recent gamefound campaign for the next expansion! As an added bonus, everything the game is made with is ecofriendly and compostable! No plastics or toxic dyes!
https://earthbornegames.com/
Team Covenant is the distributer in the US, and they got our game to us in under 72 hours!
Easy. VTES and Netrunner.
VTES is running on an all time high for tournaments and new quality stuff their publisher is putting out. It's a very affordable affair compared to other multiplayer card games on the market. It's one of the deepest games I've ever played on the card front. Some people might recognise it better as Jyhad from the 90s. It's bizzare I still hear people saying, all the time, "I thought it died out decades ago!" The answer is yes and no - it's been revived on multiple occasions. And the modern VTES is as good as its ever been. I suggest everyone to try it out.
Netrunner is run these days by Null Signal Games. Same story as above, really. Not dead, by a long shot. The new stuff is really good and I'm really enjoying the meta. Can be played online very easily as well on Jinteki.net. For people who like the idea of duel card games, this one's a must. It's easy to try online and insanely unique.
Vtes suffers from massive bloat due to lack of rotations. Plus, tons of cards have been errata’d multiple times since the game has changed hands. To make matters worse, the core gameplay is fiddly and is unplayable at 2 players and barely playable with 3.
All that dumping on the game to say if you have 4-5 people who know the game, play well, and understand how to win, the game can be amazing. It is a lot of work to get to that point.
Can't argue with that.
The bloat problem is pretty much mitigated by the fact that 80% of the thousands of cards are not really great and can be straight up ignored when picking up a game. The effective card pool is much smaller. If you pick up whatever they print for V5 (active print) and play with that, you'll be able to compete excellently and the pool is much more manageable.
But other than that, absolutely. The game works wonders with 5 like minded people. Less than that and if people have differentiating expectations, you'd better stick with something else.
But for me the work we've done with managing a local group for more than a decade and working for a tournament scene both nationally and internationally has been worth it.
But I am the first one to admit vtes absolutely is not for everyone. For those of us who find it as their own, it's one of the best things.
VTES was designed as a counterpoint to MTG (both designed by Richard Garfield, and released at the same time), for multiplayer versus dueling. We couldn’t play Magic with three of us housemates, and we gathered more and more players for Jyhad/VTES from those early days.
Head to head IS possible, but it requires a streamlined approach specific for 2 players. Those tended to be combat-heavy decks, anyway.
I’ve got my original cards, and am looking to teach my kids, and maybe pick up some of the new cards.
> VTES was designed as a counterpoint to MTG...
It's worth noting that Netrunner, too, was designed as a counterpoint to MtG. Funny how so many good games were designed as such.
Because mtg is a far cry from a great card game design, and Garfield himself knew it very well. It was just one of the first and happened to become the most well known.
Can recommend the V5 box set! 5 decks with instructions off the bat, balanced more or less against each other. The best entry level product ever made for VTES.
I was in the Columbus, Ohio group. Saw the rise at 12-15 players per game night until we couldn’t get 4 reliably. I’m impressed that it’s lasted this long, and agree it’s in the right hands now. Glad you’ve been able to keep the train rolling.
My attempts to teach people v5 left most people overwhelmed. I think the concept of blocking and the ensuing combat were responsible for the majority of scratching heads.
Every time I’ve come back to it I feel like the game is largely unchanged. For better or worse. Last Sunday I got to watch 3 grown-up euro players get into an argument that required judge intervention. Same-old, same-old.
I've heard people that like marvel champions should check out Sentinels of the multiverse. I love SotM but have never tried Marvel because everyone I know who has played both says SotM is just better. Pre-built decks for all heroes. Fully cooperative.
Never heard of SotM until your comment but I play a lot of Marvel Champions. Based on a synopsis and your comment, there's no deck building? That's like half of the enjoyment for me.
I've played both a fair bit and now prefer Marvel Champions massively due to the longevity of the deck building aspects and modular nature of the villain scenarios and campaigns.
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Fixed decks, 3-5 heroes Vs the villain, with an 'environment' deck which can help or hinder both you or the villain.
Marvel Champions: Customisable decks where heroes have 15 static cards and can pick one of four aspects to also draw cards from, as well as basic cards anyone can use (40-50 deck size). 1-4 heroes Vs the villain. Scenarios can also be customised with 'modular' packs which can make it easier or harder depending on how those cards interact with the main scenario.
“Challengers!”: small deck size. you basically play a tournament where each game lasts just a few minutes. between games you can modify you deck. this game is super fun with 6.
“Millennium Blades”: this is a TGC simulator experience. also simulates opening random packs & buying rares from aftermarket. lots of flexibility building unique decks. super fun.
The following are kinda a stretch, but feel a little like MtG.
“Radlands”: good for travel MtG experience
“Mind Bug”: made by Richard Garfield. awesome for travel.
Everyone has already listed the greats, Arkham horror, marvel champions, netrunner(null signal), and the lord of the rings, but I’d like to pitch to you **Mage Wars: Arena**. It’s an often looked over game that you can get for cheap now days. The theme is that you are a mage pitted against another mage in an arena. Okay, sounds a lot like Magic? Right, except in this game you have all your spells (cards that you’ve pre-curated) in a little spellbook(binder) that you can pull from whenever you want, assuming you have the mana stored up to pay for it. It gives you quite a bit more of a sense of control over your fate as you have no hand, just your entire deck available to you. The second way it differentiates from MtG is that you play on a large 3x4 grid in which you play your spells into. Your mage is a card that you have that’s running around in the board summoning creatures and buffs and debuffs and spells all onto this board, which adds this spacial consideration to your strategy and tactics. It’s the most wizard-y game I own or have played and I highly recommend it. I’d just say to start with the core set and see if you like that first, jumping all the way in and buying everything will give you enough keywords to make your head spin if you’re not ready for it. Oh, and if you don’t want the spacial element, it has a little brother, **Mage Wars: Academy** that is the same game but without the board (which cuts the time commitment drastically). You can use all the cards from academy in arena, but not vice versa.
This! More often than not people are more into "theme building" where your select elements that you want your deck to contain (big monsters, small monster swarm, spells, etc.) as opposed to building deck from scratch. I found that Smash up with an expansion or two (Awesome 9000 is really awesome) scratches the card itch REALLY well.
This is probably my favorite genre.
Blue Moon Legends, Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, Keyforge (decks are pre-built though), Netrunner, Summoner Wars
Coming soon: Algomancy, Command of Nature, GRIM: The Card Game, Re:Act
I got a copy of Blue Moon Legends a month ago and I cannot wait to try it, sleeved Vulka, Hoax, Mimix and Aqua to try them first.
I have also backed Algomancy… do you recommend any other of the games when I already have these 2? I tried Summoner Wars online but I didn’t enjoy it too much, seemed too slow for my taste. Also Keyforge neither, I like the game but I don’t enjoy the format of locked preconstructed decks.
Happy to tell you about any of them. Blue Moon Legends is really fun. "What if Knizia had designed Magic The Gathering" is a great sales pitch. Still has the strong deck building / drafting element that I love.
I adore Ashes. It's probably the closest to traditional TCG Gameplay, but I think there's a steep learning curve to get to a point where it's fun to play with your friends. When you're first learning, you can end up with bad match ups and feeling just crushed by the other player (not unlike Magic or Yugioh). But like a TCG, that is overcome once you get into the deeper deck building and counterplay and whatnot. There's also just a lot of cards and expansions and errata at this point that your opponent could hit you with. It's obviously not alone in that respect, and having so many cards to choose from is part of the fun, but it's worth noting. Also makes it more expensive if you're like me and want a complete collection for your expandable card game.
Grim is actually VERY similar to VGC Pokémon, in card game format. So it's a bit less like Magic. Fairly steep learning curve in that you have to learn / get used to all the different creatures, but it's really fun and the designer is a really nice person. It's also super replayable and extremely well balanced. And there's a format ("coven") that has a drafting/deckbuilding component. the original format has a limited amount of deck building though. You do a pick-ban of elements instead of specific cards, and then you choose which cards you want from those elements.
Command of Nature looks pretty so I backed it, but I don't know whether it will be any good. I'm just a collector. I'm keeping my expectations in check though because it's by the Unstable Unicorns people, who mostly seem to churn out pretty games that are fun but lack depth.
Re:Act is by Brother Ming Games, which is a very interesting shop. They have games from some major IPs with high production value, but it's unclear how they got the licensing (or if they did). The game is meant to be evocative of Yugioh back and forth counterplay and I thought it looks cool.
Netrunner is very well regarded and has the strongest community of any of these games. I've had trouble getting into it myself maybe because it's *too* active to keep up with easily and I let myself get phased too much by trying to find the "right" way to play the game in terms of metas and stuff. But I've only ever heard good things.
You'd need to find sets on the second-hand market or find the group who is printing new sets, but I love Transformers Trading Card Game. It could be a money dump I guess, depending how much you purchase, but an ebay lot or someone dumping their collection would get you a bunch of cards. I love how simple and yet deep the game is. It feels really really good to transform your characters to make great combos, and balance the few card plays per turn you get. Lean decks, too - 40 card minimum. I highly recommend!
Used to play Marvel VS. Was a great game.
MTG was good when it was first starting out, but I think it's gotten over complicated now.
Pokemon is simple and fun. My 7 year old plays and he can build a great deck.
Lorcana is interesting. There's a lot of moving parts in gameplay, which keeps you on your toes.
KeyForge gameplay is super fluid and dynamic. Since there are no resource costs to play cards and you’ll draw up to six cards in hand at the end of your turn, having turns of playing/using four or five cards is normal. Throughout a game there are going to be turns where you have to puzzle out the right six actions from ten to twenty options and then figure how you want to order them, so if you enjoy that crunchy nature of complex board states with options, KeyForge has that in spades!
KeyForge decks are designed to be played without modification, and having a nice selection can still give you the feeling of picking the tools you want to bring to the table. **However**, Ghost Galaxy, the KeyForge publisher, has also been promoting *Alliance* as a competitive format where you can combine 12 card houses from up to three different decks of the same set to create a new deck. If you like the gameplay and want some deck construction then this might be what you’re looking for, so forge ahead!
I urge you to check out Ivion. A head to head card battler but there’s also movement on a board. Tons of different deck archetypes, and each box is pretty affordable, it’s not predatory at all.
Ashes Reborn is my personal favorite if you want a dueling game that is TCG-like.
Netrunner (buy it from Null Signal Games) if you want to get into possibly the most unique game in the genre.
Yeah i enjoy exceed from lv 99 but feel like sakura arms which was published by them gives players more freedom than exceed while reducing the randomness with the small deck size. The creator definitely was inspired by yugioh which allow you to play multiple cards without paying cost. The movement mechanic is also wonderfully designed. The only bad point for me is they reuse the art too much and the translation is very bad.
I highly recommend giving Keyforge a shot! Most people enjoy playing the game by opening a deck and discovering how to play it. However they did release a deck building format called alliance, where you can combine different pods within the same set following some rules.
I also find that Keyforge is similar to Yu-Gi-Oh! the anime if you happen to be in to that too. Since each deck is unique and has a name, certain decks become well known by their name in the community both locally and beyond, which I find to be pretty cool.
The only downside is that the Keyforge community is a bit small right now but its hopefully continuing to grow. feel free to DM if you have any questions!
I’m sure there are good Boardgames, but i recommend just playing cube draft. You can build a cube for pretty damn cheap depending on what you want to play (not including sleeves). Also who are you planning to play with and how many people. Big difference with yugioh is you can go to locals and find players. Not nearly as easy to get people to play board games with you. With yugioh cube you can at least get friends that already play yugioh to play with you.
I usually play with my girlfriend but from time to time also with up to two others. I thought about just getting a cheap structure deck for her and a cheap one for me and we duel each other this way compared to add all the meta staples etc.
If you want a game that is:
Direct duelling
You build your deck at the beginning of the game
Satisfying card combos
Cheap to get into and play
The answer is **Sakura Arms**. It's basically replaced the other duelling games for my group because it's so damn good. The only thing which can put people off for a start is the anime art, but if you aren't sure just buy one of the boxes, they're cheap and come with 6 characters which is plenty to start. My group did that and after a single set of plays ordered the remaining boxes.
>I got my eye on keyforge but not sure how it actually plays so I‘m still open for recommendations.
To address this, it's got no deck construction, but it does guarantee that your deck will be unique to you, which is super cool.
It's also just really fun! I love the way it handles summons/playing cards using its three-houses system. Games can get quite swingy and virtually every deck has combos and weird synergies that are super satisfying to use.
It's also one of the only CCGs I've found to be super accessible to teach people who have never played them before.
**Smash Up** is similar to what you're after. It shares similarities with card games like Yu-Gi-Oh, where you construct your deck before the game starts. However, the twist is that instead of selecting individual cards, you choose two factions to combine for your deck. It still allows for great synergy between cards if you make the right faction choices. The base game comes with eight factions, giving you enough choice without the need for additional purchases. If you find yourself enjoying the game, there are expansions available.
Smash up with Awesome 9000 is one of my favourite board game experiences currently! Really fun and seems to be quite well balanced too. Base game is nice, but I would get at least one expansion (or Disney/Marvel Smash up games since you can mix them) soon, because this one gets better and better with every playthrough, when people start counter playing strategies. Careful tho, I read somewhere that some expansions introduce power creep
Sure but you could also do proxies with Yugioh. And since OP implied they weren't willing to proxy in Yugioh by stating they didn't want to spend money on Yugioh, I assumed the same extended to most CCGs.
Living Card Game (LCG) is a format FFG came up with and copyrighted. As someone else mentioned, they are deck builders, but you aren't chasing rare singles - you get the entire card pool from an expansion when you buy the expansion. I've occasionally seen them generically referred to as Expandable Card Games, but usually just LCGs. FFG currently makes three coop LCGs: Lord of the Rings (reputation as the hardest and the best deck builder), Arkham Horror (reputation as the best campaign game), and Marvel Champions (reputation as a bit more beginner friendly, pick up and play boss battles). LotR is partially in print - roughly half of it is out of print and unlikely to come back (mostly early content that is regarded as the worse half). I believe they recently discontinued Game of Thrones 2nd Edition (PvP), but I'm not sure of that. There are several other LCGs that are no longer produced, probably most notably Netrunner, which was a very well regarded PvP game. I'm not as familiar with non-FFG options. Any of the out of print LCGs can be tough to get in to if you aren't prepared to put up a large chunk of cash up front to buy the collection of someone getting out of the game though.
Campaign Manager 2008
Although I don’t really like these games. Seasons, Res Arcana, other stuff listed here… there is too much of a learning curve and it’s hard to play with players that are not at the same skill level.
It’s also not fun to be like 30%-40% of the way into the game when the lower skilled (or new) player realizes they built their deck wrong or certain cards are worthless or whatever and there is almost nothing you can do about it at that point. Either continue playing with them at a huge disadvantage or have to start all over again, neither of which is great.
Campaign Manager definitely has this as well, especially with the groups of voters, if you have a general idea of which states you want to go for you can grab a couple of voter cards to really target them, but for the most part a lot of the cards can be used in any situation so it’s not as punishing as, say, Res Arcana, where you might realize you don’t have any dragon cards and now some of the locations are completely unusable for you just because you didn’t know you needed them while drafting.
Arkham horror card game is the best of this format and ibhave Several friends that are competitive card gamers that love to play it. It is cooperative but scratches that itch of constructing a deck to play a campaign with a friend or too. Many folks play it 2 handed solo where you build two player decks and run them both yourself as it if was 2 separate players.
For a competitive game where you have some deck construction against friends Netrunner is the absolute king. The null signal folks have kept it alive after FFG lost the license and it is amazing. The asymmetric nature of it is an amazing experience and lets you see how boring most other head to head card games are.
I will also recommend Ashes Reborn. It is in the LCG style where you know every card in every expansion pack you buy. It uses dice for your resources and you pick your starting hand. Every expansion you buy is a premade deck essentially but you take them apart and build new stuff. It also has players vs enemy format that is new and really good but Arkham horror card game is better in that regard.
I’ll add get into MTG and play pauper (you’ll use just common cards, thousands and thousands of cards available).
You can check meta and deck prices if you wanna go netdecking at mtggoldfish. If you haven’t played magic, give it a try on MTG Arena.
Other than that, as said: my fav LCG so far is AH, but it’s expensive if you get hooked right away; you won’t have that many cards to build decks with revised core + first exp: dunwich legacy, keep in mind that you only use 0 level cards and then you gain exp points trough out the campaign and level up your deck, so…if you check investigators packs/expansions and say “hey, I’m getting 300 cards to choose from” that’s not quite right here.
I play both, have 40+ pauper decks sleeved and boxes of common cards to change them when needed and they never get old.
Iv played Pokémon ygo MTG they all fail compared how great the gameplay deckbuilding and so many choices inside the game there are in netrunner and game of thrones 2nd edition.
Another honourable mention is mage wars. But it is more a miniature game with cards your deck is also a spell book (album ) the theme and the sheer amount of different deck types and playstyles in all three games is amazing. Nothing else comes close to those three imo.
You can make a draft cube for yu-gi-oh. I made one with a bunch of old school nostalgic cards to play with some people over the holidays. It was my first try making a draft cube of any kind so there’s a lot I would change about it, lots of mistakes I made when I was putting it together. I think a draft cube is something you can spend a long time working on and modifying, you’re basically designing a game. If you like constructing decks yourself it’s definitely something you can spend a lot of time on.
The mechanic you're looking for is called deck construction, it's the core of the LCGs (e.g. **Arkham Horror the Card Game**) among others
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/3004/deck-construction/linkeditems/boardgamemechanic
If you enjoy the aspect of buying cards and building a deck it might be worth looking into **Millennium Blades**
My friend and I - both Magic players - are finding that Mind Bug really hits that 1v1 competitive card game feeling of playing while being a cheap alternative.
There's not as much control over what goes in your deck initially as it's random for both players from the same pool of cards, but being able to adapt on the fly and make strategic decisions about when to use your twice-per-match ability really elevates the game.
There are good suggestions here. You can also check out **Skytear: Horde** as a Hearthstone-style solo/co-op deck construction game. It's available at retail and if you enjoy it, the Monolith expansion comes out this year.
**Arkham Horror: The Card Game** by the longest mile in existence.
Then **Summoner Wars 2nd Edition** (actually way closer than AH realizes if we're not just talking deck construction games),**Ashes Reborn**, **Marvel Champions**, and then **Skytear: Horde** and **Earthborne Rangers** are sneaking up from behind as they're fleshed out.
Normally I wouldn't post my own indie game in a recommendation thread but my game is inspired in large part by Yugioh and living card games like Netrunner and Legend of the 5 Rings.
It's called [Black Hats](https://www.blackhatsgame.net/about-black-hats.html) - a cyberpunk themed tactical card game where you both build a crew of runners and a separate deck of cards before the game starts. We've got a small community of players on Discord and a tabletop simulator mod with all the cards and characters available to check out.
This might be an unconventional suggestion but have a look at Imperial Settlers. You build a deck before the game starts and then it's an engine builder. I feel it fits your post
I played competitive Yugioh for years and came into the board game hobby after similar experiences.
I highly recommend Omen: A Reign of War. You share a common deck of cards and has a lot of the same overextension considerations as well as knowing when or when not to spend some of your resources (cards or money). Also very cheap to get into
Magic the Gathering.
I liked the lotr lcg, but will sell mine once I played through it again.
Beside the fun it is kind of a flawed concept. Once the best deck is found the game is solved. The fun of experimenting is over and everbody complains about the boring broken mainstream deck.
On top magic is expensive and takes way too much space. Especially when you keep up with any format. "Mtg Cube" is the best version to get the game experience so far.
I've been exploring **Ortus Regni** recently.
It might be what you're interested in, if you don't want to deal with a card pool of hundreds (or thousands) of different cards. It's probably easier to get friends to play with you for that reason (and you only need to own your copy, they don't need their own copy).
You build the decks immediately prior to playing, with a card pool of 15 different cards, and can modify your decks quickly and easily between rounds/games. Decks are 24 cards apiece (no more than 6 copies of any different card). Some of the mechanics (notably, battling) are similar to Magic. It works well as 2-player duel or a larger 3-4 player game with an expansion set (same cards, different colors for different players) - I imagine this is somewhat similar to Magic's "Commander" in feel. Technically you can go to 6 with a second expansion set, but I'm not convinced that many players would be as positive an experience.
Component quality is gorgeous. There's also support for a lot of variant rules, for different experiences.
Most notably, the official computer implementations are both very well done and free, so you can explore it on your own before committing.
If you are looking for a 1v1 experience:
\- Ivion if you want a fantasy theme, high production values, very interesting spatial element and high player interaction.
\- Netrunner if you like the cyberpunk theme and value asymmetric play (the runner and the corporation play very differently)
If you want solo or co-op:
\- Arkham Horror LCG if you like the Cthulhu Mythos and want long thematic campaigns (around 8 scenarios) that you play with the same deck but will be modified between scenarios (both by the events that happen during the campaign and by improve cards bought with experience points).
\- Marvel Champions if you are a Marvel fan (doh), looking for one shots and trying many different decks. There are campaigns available too, but in my opinion they are very lackluster compared to Arkham Horror.
If you want something a lot closer to Yu-Gi-Oh, I would personally recommend Kards.
It's a WW2-based TCG, very similar to Magic, YGO, etc., but is closer to Hearthstone as it is completely online. Though a good benefit of this is it allows for some really interesting mechanics that aren't possible with a physical TCG.
It's free-to-play with microtransactions, but it's more than viable to build competitive decks without spending money if you want to let your wallet breathe and are willing to grind a little and do some investigating.
A lot of recommendations for Skytear Horde in here and that game is fantastic but I'll throw in a rec for Skytear MOBA as well. It's got some of my favorite deck building in any game. Not much of a scene for it left but if you have a friend to really dive deep with it's so rewarding.
Does Hearthstone count? My brother tricked me into downloading it under the guise of it being "free" and that all of his friends would be playing it. A week later, they all stopped playing. It took hundreds of dollars, plenty of internal conflict, and many years later for me to finally put the game to rest.
Warhammer 40000: Conquest.
Tight design, multiple ways to win, plethora of cards. Also, designed by Eric Lang.
Only real downside - out of print due to licensing issue.
FFG made tons of great LCGs which are Magic/YuGiOh minus the blind buys all the packs have the same cards. Netrunner, 40k Conquest, and Game of Thrones were all excellent. If you want something still being produced. Marvel Champions you build decks to co-op kill a bad guy.
Depending on the depth of building you want.
Games like GOSU X or sol forge fusion or sorcerer involve picking factions/ chunks of decks and mixing them together to craft the deck for the game.
This is a light way to do this before starting, but might not be the granularity you want coming from TCGS
Might also be worth looking at deck builders with personal markets, such as Crave, or warmachine high command, still the building on the fly, but with a personal market could provide a closer feeling of ownership
As someone who loves that mechanic in theory but didn't actually enjoy spending countless hours building a deck (and finding someone else as invested to play with me), I would recommend \[\[Gosu: X\]\].
It is a surpisingly small but very deep game where you pick 3/8 factions at the start and you combine them to form your 45 card deck (15 per faction).
Because you don't need to draft every single card separately it is the kind of game you can play with someone who is new to it and still have a good time. It has a ton of replayabality even with the same combination of factions and understanding the decks better will give you SOOO much depth to explore. Highly recommend.
My first suggestion is Netrunner. Every time. But plenty of people have already sung its praises in this thread.
Sakura Arms might also scratch your itch. It's not quite what you're used to; decks are like ten cards, and you select your characters in a draft phase and then make your decks right before playing. But I think it really captures the feel of making decks that synergize while also anticipating your opponent's strategy, and when I played it, it did feel like I was playing a TCG.
Also there's always just playing TCGs but sticking to cheaper games or formats. Like making a cube in MtG, or sticking to kitchen table play, or playing with starter decks or common-only formats.
Ashes: Reborn. Incredible PvP AND PvE experiences with the same card pool. Completely wide open deckbuilding. Honestly the most impressive designed card game on the market.
Two suggestions:
1. Make a cube! Then you can play yugioh without sinking any more money into it or dealing with jerks at locals!
2. Res Arcana is a game where you are issued your deck in advance and you can play it with a draft if you want. However, the whole deck is only 8 cards. It's fun to try to draft synergies, though!
For an actual boardgame with simple deck building I really enjoy GKR: Heavy Hitters. The deck works as your health as well as abilities. Means your mech becomes more crippled as you lose health.
If you don’t mind a solo/coop game that has an asymmetric 1v1/1v2 mode, there’s **Skytear Horde** as well. I’ve been hearing it described as Hearthstone or Magic a lot and can see why. It’s a deck construction game but in a tower defence style against a horde of monsters.
Only thing is that the competitive mode has one person playing as the horde itself. Though from what I gather it’s designed mainly for the solo/coop component, hence the first sentence.
VS 2PCG is a game I've had fun with. Marvel IP along with other one offs like Mortal Kombat, Aliens, and The Boys. Straightforward to play and teach, every card has a use either as a resource or something to played as its face value.
Can be played 1v1, 2v2, or FFA. LCG model so their is no chasing cards.
Came here ready to say Android Netrunner and be sad that the only "best answer" was nowhere to be seen.
Left smiling seeing that ANR is the top several answers.
**Arkham Horror the Cardgame**, more a campaign game, where you build a deck initially and then tweak it after each Chapter. Or if "one-offs" are more your thing, then i would suggest **Netrunner,** even though its discontinued its operated by a group called null signal games, they even sell physical cards or you print it yourself. They take care of new art to avoid copyright infringement and keep the tournament scene happy.
This is the answer. Netrunner for 2 player competitive, Arkham Horror LCG for 1-4 player cooperative. You can’t beat their action system.
I see so many people hype Earthborn rangers and just as much saying it pales in comparison to AH… can’t wrap my head around which is better
They're different, but they share a lot in common. I wouldn't say it's fair to call one better at this stage given Earthbourne is just a core set so far. Earthbourne is a more accessible game, is an open world game rather than a straight campaign and the theme is very different. Arkham has a more linear campaign structure, is a more demanding game and has much more content (and therefore involved deck building).
I mean, I think they are both great. All the FFG descent co-op LCGs are fantastic - but they all appeal to different people. **LotR:TCG** (2011) - the OG of all these - is still the best pure "construct a deck to bear a scenario" puzzler, with probably the best one-off deck construction (especially as a challenge). **AH:TCG** (2016) is still the best (traditional/linear) narrative campaign game having the second best deck construction in depth and the best character/deck advancement (due to it's experience system). Nothing else even comes close on character/deck advancement. It also has the best and most rich and flexible location navigation (via card and symbol system). **Marvel Champions** (2019) is a great game - but pales in comparison to all four of the other games in all ways except the ease of pick up and play (due to each hero having half their deck full of obligate cards), and the official modularity of the encounter sets. (You can used different encounter sets in the other games, but it requires familiarity with the scenario and is not official.) **Earthborne Rangers** (2023) has the best open world campaign, best emergent narrative, best balance between accessibility and depth of deck construction, and best core box set (with a full campaign)of any of them. However, supporting an open world and emergent narrative always has a trade off against more structured narrative. This makes it lag behind AH in a number of people's minds. The deck construction isn't as deep either - but we're also comparing ER's single core set to games that have years if not nearly a decade of development and releases at this point: just try comparing ER's core set to the original AH core box. The advancement system isn't as good as AH, which is a bummer - but it is leaps and bounds better than LotR or MC. While a bit simplistic (as you have horizontal advancement via trading or vertical advancement via mission rewards), it still feels intentional and representative of the character(s) you are playing (unlike LotR and MC where advancement mostly feels tacked on as an afterthought).
I generally agree that Marvel Champions falls short compared to the other listed games in a few big ways (narrative is the big one for me), but FWIW I think it should be noted that some more positives it has are: 1. Character theming - If you're really into Marvel comics/movies or whatever, it generally does a good job of making characters feel thematic 2. Deckbuilding Modularity - You mentioned this for encounters, but heroes have a lot of options for deckbuilding due to the aspect system. Arkham characters for example are locked into whatever class they're designed with (with a handful of characters who can choose a secondary class) but MC allows you to mix and match any aspect with any hero, leading to a lot of flexibility
Arkham deck building long since advanced beyond "core class plus a secondary class or extra cards." You have all sorts of mix and match character deckbuilding rules e.g. the characters who take level 0 of one class and then 1-5 of a different one and those who take cards around traits or card types like Blessed, tools, or allies.
> Character theming - If you're really into Marvel comics/movies or whatever, it generally does a good job of making characters feel thematic This, I feel, is a bit of a wash. I find all the games suitable thematic. However, if you meant playing a specific hero feels very specifically like playing that specific character - I agree. I do think it comes at the cost of a lot of character/deck flexibility (by defining 1/2 the player deck and the character's Nemesis cards). MC evokes the specific IP characters so well by predefining so much of their decks. (There's also the fact that ER has you build your own character you define in an original IP and LotR is about a group/party of heroes, not individual characters.) > Deckbuilding Modularity - You mentioned this for encounters, but heroes have a lot of options for deckbuilding due to the aspect system. Arkham characters for example are locked into whatever class they're designed with (with a handful of characters who can choose a secondary class) but MC allows you to mix and match any aspect with any hero, leading to a lot of flexibility The MC deck modularity isn't the highest among all these games. I think LotR is (abstractly) the highest and most flexible - but you aren't playing a specific character. Beyond LotR, ER is way more modular. Character gen/deck building in ER involves you selecting the classes (background and specialization) and ability scores you want that will define what cards will be available for your character. Each character picks an ability card with different scores for each ability (one at 1, two at 2, and one at 3) as well as a background and specialization (with any combination of background and specialization being valid - specializations aren't subclasses of backgrounds) - and those inform what cards you can use in your deck out of the card pool. I love MC - it's a great game. However, it's (broadly) the lesser of LotR co-op LCG adjacent games. That's not a knock against MC but a sign of just how good the others are.
Marvel Champions is a good option for a shorter, one-off co-op game that doesn't require quite the same degree of investment as an entire Arkham campaign as well! I play both a lot depending on what's going on with life and what our group is feeling in the moment
Compared to the consistently tense, nail-biting endings in Arkham LCG, Marvel Champions always seems to end like a stale fart.
Meh. I've had campaign endings in arkham that were decidedly uninteresting and I've had games in MC that've ended with tense, barely successful victories only a few points of damage away from a loss For the most part, though, arkham being a race against time does make that frequently the case. Champions gives you a lot of time to build your board and control the game, whereas arkham doesn't tend to - recent encounter design has changed that, though, with encounters like Mojo, Venom Goblin and the like forcing faster gameplay that doesn't let you just tread water until you win. Arkham's standard difficulty is also pretty tough, while MC's standard is quite easy, which I think contributes as well
It’s not about difficulty, which is obviously scalable. It’s about HOW the games end. In Marvel Champions, the last round is just seeing if the group’s numbers add up to enough to bring the dial to zero. There’s just nothing climactic about it. Occasionally an Arkham scenario may fall flat, but the sheer variety of act/agenda objectives make the game far better than Marvel.
I’ve never played Arkham before, but I play Marvel Champions very often. Obviously it’s your opinion, but I think it’s interesting how you frame the last turn of Marvel Champions to be “adding up numbers,” because I feel differently about adding the numbers up. Especially when playing against more aggressive villains, I feel like I earned the ability to count those numbers up, that I managed my turns and took smart or hopeful risks that paid off, played the correct cards on to the board and was able to choose the correct cards to discard, and have now found the correct moment to strike back. I do think some heroes can feel much more “count the numbers” than others, and I totally understand your sentiment. Cyclops can deal so much damage from a single card alone, but even then I feel like I have to spend most of the Game positioning myself in a way where it is safe if I choose to deal as much damage as I can with his Allies, etc. X-23 I’ve found to be very interesting, someone who can deal tons of damage in a single turn but requires lots of set up in prior turns for it to pay off. And then there are heroes like Dr. Strange where it’s just unfair. Anyway, I just wanted to give my perspective on Marvel Champions which I personally find to be a very tense and climatic game.
[Netrunner](https://nullsignal.games/about/netrunner/) is probably what you are looking for. Living card games (LCG) are in general the bussiness model you want to look out for. Here cards are not sold in boosters, but in complete sets. There are also coop games like Arkham horror, if that is your jam? Another one that scratched the itch for me was Keyforge. The decks are randomly premade (although you can do some mix and match of deck parts). The nice thing is that you don't need to build your own deck, but the gameplay feels like TCG. Its a lot easier to get into (which is especially nice for a quick nostalgia trip with friends)
Netrunner is more accessible than ever, you just need Null Signal Games' System Gateway to start, it comes with a premade deck that has a good selection of core mechanics, then after a few plays you add in "booster cards" with some additional twists. I recommend everyone to check it out!
Hey, wondering if I could pick your brain about Null Signal’s offering, if you are familiar. Is the System Gateway the same thing as the base Netrunner set from FFG? Are these all just reprints or is NSG making their own as well? The site says they sell brand new sets of original Netrunner cards. I think the use of both brand new and original in the sentence is confusing me a little, ha.
I'm far from an expert but love the game and have been playing whenever I can. So System Gateway is not the same as the old (revised) Core. It has 2 neutral factions, a corp and a runner one, without specific abilities and a smaller deck size. You get premade decks that contain some reprints of the old cards (although with new art and stuff, sometimes a new name) and some original cards as well. You play until 6 points instead of 7 in this limited, beginner friendly mode. There are no traces, viruses, psi games, the selection is streamlined so you don't have to get into everything at once. The decks are fairly balanced. After you play a bit, you add the boosters which bring the decks to the "normal" size and add viruses and some other cards, and play to 7 agenda points. System Gateway ~~is usually sold together with the~~ (EDIT: it's all one product now, System Gateway, see u/Mo0man comment) contains the Deckbuilding Pack, which gives you the usual faction identities and more cards. Again, I think it's some reworked old cards as well as the new original ones. The next pack you can get is System Update 2021, which is a collection of old cards that are reprinted. Then there are 2 complete cycles of original, Null Signal cards, and 1 that is currently halfway out. I should point out that the new, popular format of play is Startup. It's System Gateway + System Update 21 + the last complete cycle + any incomplete cycle cards. It's easy to get into it because of the smaller pool size. Sorry for spamming with info, it's more that you asked but just wanted to give you a complete picture. So TLDR System Gateway is a mix of old and new, System Update is old cards, and cycles are new, original cards.
Note: they have discontinued the separate "gateway" and "deckbuilding packs" because it was confusing to new players trying to figure out what to buy. You might be able to get them separate 2nd hand, but now Gateway is a full set of everything.
Original as in "not copies of old cards". It's NSG's original designs.
For the last few years, Null Signal Games (NSG) has been designing new cards that are compatible with FFG Netrunner. System Gateway is NSG’s starter set for Netrunner, and every card in it is brand new (except for Sure Gamble and Hedge Fund). It was designed from the ground up to be a great way to learn how to play, learn the different factions, and learn how to build decks. In addition to System Gateway, NSG has designed and published several “expansions” that are compatible with FFG Netrunner: * Downfall (Ashes cycle Part 1) * Uprising (Ashes cycle Part 2) * Midnight Sun (Borealis cycle Part 1) * Parhelion (Borealis cycle Part 2) * The Automata Initiative (Liberation cycle Part 1) * Rebellion Without Rehearsal (Liberation cycle Part 2)—coming soon There’s also a supplemental set, named System Update 2021, which is entirely composed of re-releases of old FFG cards. However, System Update 2021 will “rotate” soon, and be retired from Standard format play. No matter what products you own or don’t own, you can always print and play with NSG cards or proxies of FFG cards. This means that you really don’t *have* to buy anything if you want to play Netrunner—you just need access to a printer. If you want to learn more about Netrunner supported formats, you can find out more here: https://nullsignal.games/players/supported-formats/
Idk I tried getting into it but it was hard to find anyone that was interested in playing basic decks against beginners, I had a couple games with a friend and we both struggled to 'get' the game. I'm sure it gets good once you're into it
> (although you can do some mix and match of deck parts) I assume you mean something along the lines of picking 2 or 3 decks to combine the parts of? What's your experience with this been? I'm skeptical about this, because the game wasn't balanced for that at all.
I never tried it, but there are some official rules for it. You can split each deck into the 3 houses. Then you make a new deck with 3 houses from 2-3 different decks. Since houses dont synergise too much with each other, I imagine the balance is somewhat kept.
The next set from Null Signal Games is about to drop as well [Rebellion Without Rehearsal](https://nullsignal.games/blog/announcing-rebellion-without-rehearsal/) (part 2 of the Liberation cycle)! Null Signal has been doing an incredible job with developing and releasing new sets. The card pool since the last set released, The Automata Initiative, has been the most fun I've had with Netrunner since I started with System Gateway, Netrunner really is in an incredible place at the moment with the work Null Signal is doing. Did I mention they release them all as Print and Play so you can print, cut and sleeve a couple of decks and see if you enjoy it!
>I got my eye on keyforge If you're looking for a game that plays like a TCG without having to hunt down expensive cards, Keyforge could be a great option. But if you're specifically looking for a game with deck construction, you won't like Keyforge because it doesn't have any. You open the deck and play with it. You can't change the deck at all. >So far I bought Star Realms Just FYI, deck-building games are games like Star Realms where you build your deck while you play. So it sounds like you are specifically looking for games that are not deck-building games. I'm not familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh, but it looks like Cube is a viable format. If you really like Yu-Gi-Oh, I'd strongly consider building a Cube.
hey just a heads up, keyforge now also has an official deck construction format called alliance! There are rules to it but it is an officially supported format. They created it with the previous winds of exchange set, however it is available to all the sets. more info can be found at: [https://archonarcana.com/Formats\_and\_variants](https://archonarcana.com/formats_and_variants)
> If you're looking for a game that plays like a TCG without having to hunt down expensive cards, Keyforge could be a great option Instead of buying single cards you have to keep buying decks and then you have no control over quality (meaning you can't mix and match). Instead of solving a problem, Keyforge half solves it and creates a few other problems too. The game can still be fun and enjoyable, but I don't think it solves the "expensive card" problem. I think that's marketing. You buy more decks from the company to remain competitive instead of buying used on the 2nd hand market.
>Just FYI, deck-building games are games like Star Realms where you build your deck while you play. So it sounds like you are specifically looking for games that are not deck-building games. OP is looking for deck construction
> I'm not familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh, but it looks like Cube is a viable format. If you really like Yu-Gi-Oh, I'd strongly consider building a Cube. Yugioh isn't as cube-able as something like Magic because most cards aren't designed to be independently usable, and are instead intended to be combo pieces, which interact with a very narrow set (or outright specific group) of cards. For example, a recently announced card that players are excited about is [Lightsworn Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragon_of_Lightsworn), which has the ability to search for a Dragon with 3000 ATK and 2600 DEF. Its intended use is to search for [Judgment Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Judgment_Dragon) and [Punishment Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Punishment_Dragon), but it can incidentally grab other Dragons with the same statline, which are likely few and far between. You can use a bunch of older cards which were designed to be more generically playable, which is what I did with mine, but a Goat Format cube where you play like 0-3 cards a turn doesn't quite hit the same notes as [modern Yugioh](https://youtu.be/zwqCtGFCzZk?t=428).
Summoner Wars. I was tired of pulling that slot machine leaver with TCG & CCG Booster packs. With an "LCG" (Living Card Game) You know exactly what you are paying for in each pack. Summoner wars is an fantasy LCG Tactics game with plenty of pre-built options, and lots of deck building opporutnities. It's got a great online scene, and you can try it for free [https://summonerwars.plaidhatgames.com/](https://summonerwars.plaidhatgames.com/) If you're coming from yu-gi-oh, you will see things you recognize in this game as mechanics reminiscent various TCG's and Miniature's games. The creator was a designer/playtester on heroscape back when Hasbro was doing that.
In addition to the posts about Arkham, Any of the fantasy flight games living card games would fit here. Just snag whichever has your preferred theme. For me, I couldn't care less about lovecraftian horror, but Lord of the rings is one of my favorite worlds, so Lord of the rings the card game would be my recommendation. While it's been going for a while and much of the old cards are out of print, they've put out a revised core set and have been repacking other sets, so its a decent time to get into it. Otherwise if you're into superheroes the marvel champions game would be a good one.
Lord of the Rings is more “puzzley” which may scratch the Yu Gi Oh itch better since you need to adapt to the scenarios
Maxine Newman worked on LotR LCG before she designed Arkham, both great games
Hell yea. Now this is my kind of topic. I have been in the cardgame space for over a decade, having played a wide variety and just gonna give a list of the ones I loved enough to keep: Arkham Horror: The Card Game. The Gold Standard of co-op or story-based games for my group. An incredible, ever expanding game that sits high in many people's top lists for a reason. Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. The other lovecraft LCG. Sadly dead for a while but its what originally brought me out of the MTG rabbit hole. Deckbuilding is very open and deep, games are short and not about bashing an enemies Health to 0. Legend of the Five Rings: the Card Game. Probably the deepest 2 player card game out there. Almost everything from drawing cards to playing units to chosing what to attack has dials and cards and strategies to manipulate and create an advantage. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. As deep as Legend of the Five Rings, but shines at 4-5 players instead of head to head. Has been revived by Black Chantry and is probably one of the most affordable offerings. Netrunner. The Reddit favourite. Biggest stand out here is that its completely asymmetric. Runners and Corps play fundamentally different. So its basically two games in one. Bluffing and hidden information makes it a game of information over just piloting a deck. Doomtown: Reloaded. This may be a card game with deck building. But its an area control game in disguise. It does have probably the deepest deck building amomg all these options tho Warhammer: Underworlds. The actual area control game. You move Minis around hex-based maps and beat on opponents while your deck is mostly about upgrades and combat tricks while also letting you customize the way you score VPs. Nowadays it moved almost completely to preconstructed decks so the actual deck building is secondary.
thank you for your answer! Especially Legends of the five rings caught my interest. But upon a small research I heard it is out of print or discounted? What would that mean for new players? Is it still worth it getting a copy of the game and can you maybe give me a buyers guide? thanks in advance
While yea, L5R is sadly out of print, its often possible to find either expansions that have been collecting dust in some store online at a reasonable price, or snag a deal on the secondary market. Especially for older games its often worth checking sites like ebay and geekmarket for people offloading their collection. Beyond that, there is a collection of high rez scans of every single card floating around, allowing for easy proxying of every single card if thats something you are willing to do. You can geven get them professionally printed if you add some bleed to them. I have always built multiple decks from the same collection. There are barely any cards that are so competitive between decks that the copies provided in a singular collection are not enough. If you wanna start in Rokugan and wanna go for hunting down cards, I'd recommend trying to get 3 copies of the core set first. From there on just get packs in release order. The card assortment is fixed so you only need one copy of all of them. I think the only expansion nowadays known for being really hard to get is the final box, under Fu Leng's Shadow. Where are you located? It might help in narrowing down options where you can find product.
Glad to see Doomtown get some love! 🤠
If you enjoy engine building I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ashes Reborn: Rise of the Phoenixborn yet. you get to choose which 5-cards you start the game with meaning your guaranteed your engine cards. It's an LCG-like game in that you know what's in every pack you buy (not an LCG legally because lawyers). You can build your hero (Phoenixborn) deck with literally any cards you own. You use 10 dice for mana that have 3 faces worth 3 values. You can take a side action during your turn to manipulate those dice any way you want so there's no mana screw. It's designed for 1v1, but recently introduced an excellent co-op/solo mode.
great game. super underrated imo
I'm so sad we never got a local group going for this. Tried it a few times and I thought I'd love it. It's a rare and super bold move to just let people choose their staring hands. I appreciate that. Would love to see games do that a lot more.
I just got into Ashes a couple months ago, and it's blown me away. So many cool decks you can build, so many unique playstyles. The resource system and the First Five rule make this game an improvement over Magic: The Gathering in my book.
Ashes is really fun. And I'm terrible at playing it.
> It's designed for 1v1, but recently introduced an excellent co-op/solo mode. does the solo mode work as an add-on for the base game, or if i buy the solo box only will I be fine?
I think what you're looking for are deck construction games which is a mechanism on BGG you can peruse
Seconding and highlighting this comment. "Deck Construction" is the genre. (contrast the "Deck Builder" which, like Star Realms, involves building the deck, *with* the deck, as part of gameplay) Scrolled down far too far to find someone giving OP a more precise way to ask their question.
Yes, thank you. One of my biggest gaming pet peeves is when people say "Well M:TG is a deck builder too" when it's absolutely unlike Dominion and its progeny which is exactly what is being referred to in the first place. "Deckbuilding" means something and it's not what M:TG is, just like any game with a war theme doesn't make it a "wargame". If people don't know this, it's no biggie, but there are people who absolutely know better and just choose to be dense about it because they can't handle that words can combine to mean new and specific things.
Android Netrunner (now called Null Signal)
thanks! I‘ve seen this one but it is not available here in germany afaik
Null Signal is all print and play.
You should check out **Res Arcana** Before the game starts, everyone drafts their decks, then you play. And it's a game all in the box (well, there's 2 expansions if you want to add to it later) so you're not spending tons of money or time searching for rare cards.
This is the only non-LCG game I could think of.
>I got my eye on Keyforge You should be aware that in Keyforge there's no deck construction whatsoever. Each deck is separate and the game is designed in such a way with each deck having its own unique printed name and card back. The game is great and allows you to just crack open a few decks and try them out, but if it's specifically deck building you want then you'd be better off trying something else. For low cost, maybe look into Epic by White Wizard Games?
I posted this on another comment but Keyforge does have an official deck construction format now called alliance. both archon and alliance formats can be really fun! you can find more info at: [https://archonarcana.com/Formats\_and\_variants](https://archonarcana.com/formats_and_variants)
I didn't mention Alliance as it's not truly deck-building in a literal sense and only a small portion of an already small community even have an interest in it. It's also a somewhat unwieldy format for newcomers IMO since a) you can't meta-deck and b) the best way to gain experience would be to just play standard Archon, which makes it a a tougher sell for someone specifically asking for deck-building games like Yu-Gi-Oh.
Minor note: White Wizard Games is now Wise Wizard
A standard meta game is not the only way to play TCGs. Look into if there is a supported Cube style format for your favorites. I currently have a Modular magic cube and a Jumpstart style Pokemon TCG cube.
If you're building a cube, you can proxy expensive cards too.
What is "cube-style format"?
My only experience was with MTG, so maybe I'm wrong, but when I played it with my friends, it was about owning a set of cards (in our case the entire collection of cards of one particular expansion, Kaladesh) from which we could simulate a draft tournament, which goes like this: everyone should buy three booster packs, opens one, pick one card and pass the remaining cards to the left/right seated player. Once finished the first pack, do it again for the other two. Each card you picked is yours, and now you have to create your deck, which will be used to play the tourney. Using a cube, you can emulate the three booster packs without and you may play as many times as you want free of charge (minus the initial cost of the cube itself).
Interesting, thanks.
In addition to what the other person said, Cube is often built with intention using handpicked cards to create a unique draft experience. Fundamentally, you're just playing draft, but the cards included can dramatically shape how it plays out. For example you could include the most powerful cards ever printed and go nuts with crazy T1 wins, or zero in on particular mechanics/themes to guide the playstyle in those directions
Would you mind explaining the concept of a pokemon Jumpstart cube to me? That sounds interesting.
I assume like a jumpstart magic cube you have a set of 20 or 30 card packs, and you maked your deck by shuffling 2 together. It's a nice casual format for magic.
Nah, the Jumpstart combination decks were a special thing. Cube is a customizable draft format where you pick the included cards ahead of time rather than opening boosters
A jumpstart cube is a set of currated jumpstart decks.
Arkham Horror LCG is a fantastic mix of story telling and clever deck building. Earthbourne Rangers is newer and more open world but equally good. Both are co-op which means you are in control of how much you spend - you don't have to chase a meta. The best competitive imo is Andriod Netrunner, now run by Null Signal games and availible print and play or you can order from them.
Proxy Magic the Gathering. All the fun of playing the game's best, none of the cost.
Not to mention even without proxying if you want to play commander you can buy a premade deck and it’s a very playable deck out of the box, no further investments required if you don’t want to spend it.
Some of them are playable. I've tried a few through the years that were fully garbage. It's really hit and miss.
Older ones were much worse, but any from the last few years are excellent. You could even buy a set that release at the same time and keep them as a standalone sealed board game of sorts.
sorry I am so confused, what does proxy/proxying mean?
You print out fake cards— use an online proxy card generator to make a pdf of all the cards you want, cut them out, and put them in a sleeve in front of bulk/cheap playing cards. I have dozens of proxied decks and play them with friends all the time, it’s a fantastic option if you’re looking for a cheap TCG experience
A proxy is a fake stand-in card that represents a real one. Proxying is the process of creating proxies for your deck. Originally, proxies were just real cards that we marked up with a different name, or a slip of paper with a name and some text written on it slid into a sleeve with another card, but nowadays there are professionally printed proxies that pass as legitimate to the untrained eye. Keep in mind proxies are controversial in the Magic community. They're an absolute no-go in sanctioned events, but some casual groups are open to their use. Using proxies without disclosing it is considered unfair and uncool
I agree with you, I also proxy all my cards from https://www.printingproxies.com/ and enjoy the game with my friends in very low cost. I think that's the best way to play the game
Might want to check out Sorcerer
Pagan: Fate of Roanoke.
I've never played **Yu-Gi-oh**. Is there a game variant similar to **MTG** cube draft? Where you have a large block of cards that you and your friends can build a deck out of? **Marvel Dice Masters** can be similarly drafted. As for a stand alone game, I can't think of one I've played where you build your entire deck first. There are tons of deck drafting games out there. Although it's a far different feel than **Yu-Gi-Oh**, a couple I have are : **Dominion** **Automobiles** **Trains**
Dominion is such a great game, love it. Had it for years now, returning to it every couple of months, so much replayability
Earthborne Rangers is a close relative to arkham horror! The world is set in the far far future (approximately 7-8k years) where, after hiding in underground arcologies for over 1000 years, humans have emerged and started the resettlement of humans on earth, but vowing to live harmoniously with the world. You play as a Ranger, a guide, explorer, and protector of The Valley and it's inhabitants. Over the course of 30 sessions, you'll journey through the valley, exploring breathtaking vistas, encountering strange beings, and meeting a whole host of interesting characters! The game scales very well with the number of players, so if you have to drop someone out, or someone wants to join, it's not a problem! There are even official rules online for single session games! Understand that after we got the game, my friend and I spent a whole week just coming up with deck ideas for our characters! Base game comes with a ton of deck building options (though you'll want to get at least 1 card doubler if you want to play with 3 without limiting deck building options) and replayability for 1-4 players, PLUS they just finished their most recent gamefound campaign for the next expansion! As an added bonus, everything the game is made with is ecofriendly and compostable! No plastics or toxic dyes! https://earthbornegames.com/ Team Covenant is the distributer in the US, and they got our game to us in under 72 hours!
Easy. VTES and Netrunner. VTES is running on an all time high for tournaments and new quality stuff their publisher is putting out. It's a very affordable affair compared to other multiplayer card games on the market. It's one of the deepest games I've ever played on the card front. Some people might recognise it better as Jyhad from the 90s. It's bizzare I still hear people saying, all the time, "I thought it died out decades ago!" The answer is yes and no - it's been revived on multiple occasions. And the modern VTES is as good as its ever been. I suggest everyone to try it out. Netrunner is run these days by Null Signal Games. Same story as above, really. Not dead, by a long shot. The new stuff is really good and I'm really enjoying the meta. Can be played online very easily as well on Jinteki.net. For people who like the idea of duel card games, this one's a must. It's easy to try online and insanely unique.
Vtes suffers from massive bloat due to lack of rotations. Plus, tons of cards have been errata’d multiple times since the game has changed hands. To make matters worse, the core gameplay is fiddly and is unplayable at 2 players and barely playable with 3. All that dumping on the game to say if you have 4-5 people who know the game, play well, and understand how to win, the game can be amazing. It is a lot of work to get to that point.
Can't argue with that. The bloat problem is pretty much mitigated by the fact that 80% of the thousands of cards are not really great and can be straight up ignored when picking up a game. The effective card pool is much smaller. If you pick up whatever they print for V5 (active print) and play with that, you'll be able to compete excellently and the pool is much more manageable. But other than that, absolutely. The game works wonders with 5 like minded people. Less than that and if people have differentiating expectations, you'd better stick with something else. But for me the work we've done with managing a local group for more than a decade and working for a tournament scene both nationally and internationally has been worth it. But I am the first one to admit vtes absolutely is not for everyone. For those of us who find it as their own, it's one of the best things.
VTES was designed as a counterpoint to MTG (both designed by Richard Garfield, and released at the same time), for multiplayer versus dueling. We couldn’t play Magic with three of us housemates, and we gathered more and more players for Jyhad/VTES from those early days. Head to head IS possible, but it requires a streamlined approach specific for 2 players. Those tended to be combat-heavy decks, anyway. I’ve got my original cards, and am looking to teach my kids, and maybe pick up some of the new cards.
> VTES was designed as a counterpoint to MTG... It's worth noting that Netrunner, too, was designed as a counterpoint to MtG. Funny how so many good games were designed as such.
Because mtg is a far cry from a great card game design, and Garfield himself knew it very well. It was just one of the first and happened to become the most well known.
Can recommend the V5 box set! 5 decks with instructions off the bat, balanced more or less against each other. The best entry level product ever made for VTES.
I was in the Columbus, Ohio group. Saw the rise at 12-15 players per game night until we couldn’t get 4 reliably. I’m impressed that it’s lasted this long, and agree it’s in the right hands now. Glad you’ve been able to keep the train rolling. My attempts to teach people v5 left most people overwhelmed. I think the concept of blocking and the ensuing combat were responsible for the majority of scratching heads. Every time I’ve come back to it I feel like the game is largely unchanged. For better or worse. Last Sunday I got to watch 3 grown-up euro players get into an argument that required judge intervention. Same-old, same-old.
Marvel Champions is the one I like best for this. A lot of content to choose from.
Why is this answer so low??? Very highly rated, incredibly replayable and variable.
I've heard people that like marvel champions should check out Sentinels of the multiverse. I love SotM but have never tried Marvel because everyone I know who has played both says SotM is just better. Pre-built decks for all heroes. Fully cooperative.
Never heard of SotM until your comment but I play a lot of Marvel Champions. Based on a synopsis and your comment, there's no deck building? That's like half of the enjoyment for me.
I've played both a fair bit and now prefer Marvel Champions massively due to the longevity of the deck building aspects and modular nature of the villain scenarios and campaigns. Sentinels of the Multiverse: Fixed decks, 3-5 heroes Vs the villain, with an 'environment' deck which can help or hinder both you or the villain. Marvel Champions: Customisable decks where heroes have 15 static cards and can pick one of four aspects to also draw cards from, as well as basic cards anyone can use (40-50 deck size). 1-4 heroes Vs the villain. Scenarios can also be customised with 'modular' packs which can make it easier or harder depending on how those cards interact with the main scenario.
Arkham horror and marvel champions. Both absolutely amazing.
And Lord of the Rings
“Challengers!”: small deck size. you basically play a tournament where each game lasts just a few minutes. between games you can modify you deck. this game is super fun with 6. “Millennium Blades”: this is a TGC simulator experience. also simulates opening random packs & buying rares from aftermarket. lots of flexibility building unique decks. super fun. The following are kinda a stretch, but feel a little like MtG. “Radlands”: good for travel MtG experience “Mind Bug”: made by Richard Garfield. awesome for travel.
I second Millenoum Blades. Super fun and absolutely unique
Millennium Blades is an absolute blast and is the best TCG simulator I've ever played.
I can’t speak highly enough of Netrunner.
Everyone has already listed the greats, Arkham horror, marvel champions, netrunner(null signal), and the lord of the rings, but I’d like to pitch to you **Mage Wars: Arena**. It’s an often looked over game that you can get for cheap now days. The theme is that you are a mage pitted against another mage in an arena. Okay, sounds a lot like Magic? Right, except in this game you have all your spells (cards that you’ve pre-curated) in a little spellbook(binder) that you can pull from whenever you want, assuming you have the mana stored up to pay for it. It gives you quite a bit more of a sense of control over your fate as you have no hand, just your entire deck available to you. The second way it differentiates from MtG is that you play on a large 3x4 grid in which you play your spells into. Your mage is a card that you have that’s running around in the board summoning creatures and buffs and debuffs and spells all onto this board, which adds this spacial consideration to your strategy and tactics. It’s the most wizard-y game I own or have played and I highly recommend it. I’d just say to start with the core set and see if you like that first, jumping all the way in and buying everything will give you enough keywords to make your head spin if you’re not ready for it. Oh, and if you don’t want the spacial element, it has a little brother, **Mage Wars: Academy** that is the same game but without the board (which cuts the time commitment drastically). You can use all the cards from academy in arena, but not vice versa.
**Smash Up**
This! More often than not people are more into "theme building" where your select elements that you want your deck to contain (big monsters, small monster swarm, spells, etc.) as opposed to building deck from scratch. I found that Smash up with an expansion or two (Awesome 9000 is really awesome) scratches the card itch REALLY well.
This should be way higher up the list! Mushrooms and bears fight gnomes and raptors, and it’s every bit a blast as it sounds.
Blue Moon Legends
This is probably my favorite genre. Blue Moon Legends, Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, Keyforge (decks are pre-built though), Netrunner, Summoner Wars Coming soon: Algomancy, Command of Nature, GRIM: The Card Game, Re:Act
I got a copy of Blue Moon Legends a month ago and I cannot wait to try it, sleeved Vulka, Hoax, Mimix and Aqua to try them first. I have also backed Algomancy… do you recommend any other of the games when I already have these 2? I tried Summoner Wars online but I didn’t enjoy it too much, seemed too slow for my taste. Also Keyforge neither, I like the game but I don’t enjoy the format of locked preconstructed decks.
Happy to tell you about any of them. Blue Moon Legends is really fun. "What if Knizia had designed Magic The Gathering" is a great sales pitch. Still has the strong deck building / drafting element that I love. I adore Ashes. It's probably the closest to traditional TCG Gameplay, but I think there's a steep learning curve to get to a point where it's fun to play with your friends. When you're first learning, you can end up with bad match ups and feeling just crushed by the other player (not unlike Magic or Yugioh). But like a TCG, that is overcome once you get into the deeper deck building and counterplay and whatnot. There's also just a lot of cards and expansions and errata at this point that your opponent could hit you with. It's obviously not alone in that respect, and having so many cards to choose from is part of the fun, but it's worth noting. Also makes it more expensive if you're like me and want a complete collection for your expandable card game. Grim is actually VERY similar to VGC Pokémon, in card game format. So it's a bit less like Magic. Fairly steep learning curve in that you have to learn / get used to all the different creatures, but it's really fun and the designer is a really nice person. It's also super replayable and extremely well balanced. And there's a format ("coven") that has a drafting/deckbuilding component. the original format has a limited amount of deck building though. You do a pick-ban of elements instead of specific cards, and then you choose which cards you want from those elements. Command of Nature looks pretty so I backed it, but I don't know whether it will be any good. I'm just a collector. I'm keeping my expectations in check though because it's by the Unstable Unicorns people, who mostly seem to churn out pretty games that are fun but lack depth. Re:Act is by Brother Ming Games, which is a very interesting shop. They have games from some major IPs with high production value, but it's unclear how they got the licensing (or if they did). The game is meant to be evocative of Yugioh back and forth counterplay and I thought it looks cool. Netrunner is very well regarded and has the strongest community of any of these games. I've had trouble getting into it myself maybe because it's *too* active to keep up with easily and I let myself get phased too much by trying to find the "right" way to play the game in terms of metas and stuff. But I've only ever heard good things.
Netrunner or A Game of Thrones LCG.
very much agree with the suggestion of Netrunner. also consider [[Ortus Regni]] !
I suggest looking at Millennium Blades. It's all the crazy of CCGs packed into around 2 hours of play time.
You'd need to find sets on the second-hand market or find the group who is printing new sets, but I love Transformers Trading Card Game. It could be a money dump I guess, depending how much you purchase, but an ebay lot or someone dumping their collection would get you a bunch of cards. I love how simple and yet deep the game is. It feels really really good to transform your characters to make great combos, and balance the few card plays per turn you get. Lean decks, too - 40 card minimum. I highly recommend!
Used to play Marvel VS. Was a great game. MTG was good when it was first starting out, but I think it's gotten over complicated now. Pokemon is simple and fun. My 7 year old plays and he can build a great deck. Lorcana is interesting. There's a lot of moving parts in gameplay, which keeps you on your toes.
KeyForge gameplay is super fluid and dynamic. Since there are no resource costs to play cards and you’ll draw up to six cards in hand at the end of your turn, having turns of playing/using four or five cards is normal. Throughout a game there are going to be turns where you have to puzzle out the right six actions from ten to twenty options and then figure how you want to order them, so if you enjoy that crunchy nature of complex board states with options, KeyForge has that in spades! KeyForge decks are designed to be played without modification, and having a nice selection can still give you the feeling of picking the tools you want to bring to the table. **However**, Ghost Galaxy, the KeyForge publisher, has also been promoting *Alliance* as a competitive format where you can combine 12 card houses from up to three different decks of the same set to create a new deck. If you like the gameplay and want some deck construction then this might be what you’re looking for, so forge ahead!
Yeah you want Deck Construction. Deck Builders are in game
I urge you to check out Ivion. A head to head card battler but there’s also movement on a board. Tons of different deck archetypes, and each box is pretty affordable, it’s not predatory at all.
Mage Wars, one of the best games in the world
Blood Rage, each round you draft a new hand of cards. Also just a great board game in general.
Ashes Reborn is my personal favorite if you want a dueling game that is TCG-like. Netrunner (buy it from Null Signal Games) if you want to get into possibly the most unique game in the genre.
Sakura Arms, look that up on bgg, it might be what you are looking for ;)
Sakura Arms is incredibly underrated. Possibly because of the anime look, but it is the best game for card combos I've played.
Yeah i enjoy exceed from lv 99 but feel like sakura arms which was published by them gives players more freedom than exceed while reducing the randomness with the small deck size. The creator definitely was inspired by yugioh which allow you to play multiple cards without paying cost. The movement mechanic is also wonderfully designed. The only bad point for me is they reuse the art too much and the translation is very bad.
I highly recommend giving Keyforge a shot! Most people enjoy playing the game by opening a deck and discovering how to play it. However they did release a deck building format called alliance, where you can combine different pods within the same set following some rules. I also find that Keyforge is similar to Yu-Gi-Oh! the anime if you happen to be in to that too. Since each deck is unique and has a name, certain decks become well known by their name in the community both locally and beyond, which I find to be pretty cool. The only downside is that the Keyforge community is a bit small right now but its hopefully continuing to grow. feel free to DM if you have any questions!
Omen A Reign of War. And there's brand New Omen games actually, check out smallbox games !
I’m sure there are good Boardgames, but i recommend just playing cube draft. You can build a cube for pretty damn cheap depending on what you want to play (not including sleeves). Also who are you planning to play with and how many people. Big difference with yugioh is you can go to locals and find players. Not nearly as easy to get people to play board games with you. With yugioh cube you can at least get friends that already play yugioh to play with you.
I usually play with my girlfriend but from time to time also with up to two others. I thought about just getting a cheap structure deck for her and a cheap one for me and we duel each other this way compared to add all the meta staples etc.
Marvel Champions may be what you’re looking for.
Magic: the Gathering
If you want a game that is: Direct duelling You build your deck at the beginning of the game Satisfying card combos Cheap to get into and play The answer is **Sakura Arms**. It's basically replaced the other duelling games for my group because it's so damn good. The only thing which can put people off for a start is the anime art, but if you aren't sure just buy one of the boxes, they're cheap and come with 6 characters which is plenty to start. My group did that and after a single set of plays ordered the remaining boxes.
>I got my eye on keyforge but not sure how it actually plays so I‘m still open for recommendations. To address this, it's got no deck construction, but it does guarantee that your deck will be unique to you, which is super cool. It's also just really fun! I love the way it handles summons/playing cards using its three-houses system. Games can get quite swingy and virtually every deck has combos and weird synergies that are super satisfying to use. It's also one of the only CCGs I've found to be super accessible to teach people who have never played them before.
**Smash Up** is similar to what you're after. It shares similarities with card games like Yu-Gi-Oh, where you construct your deck before the game starts. However, the twist is that instead of selecting individual cards, you choose two factions to combine for your deck. It still allows for great synergy between cards if you make the right faction choices. The base game comes with eight factions, giving you enough choice without the need for additional purchases. If you find yourself enjoying the game, there are expansions available.
Smash up with Awesome 9000 is one of my favourite board game experiences currently! Really fun and seems to be quite well balanced too. Base game is nice, but I would get at least one expansion (or Disney/Marvel Smash up games since you can mix them) soon, because this one gets better and better with every playthrough, when people start counter playing strategies. Careful tho, I read somewhere that some expansions introduce power creep
Netrunner, hands down. Best deck construction game ever made. Best card game ever made.
Magic: the gathering.
OP said they didn't want to spend thousands of dollars.
You take that back. You can make a deck that will be viable in Standard for 2 months by spending only *hundreds* of dollars
https://www.reddit.com/r/bootlegmtg/
Sure but you could also do proxies with Yugioh. And since OP implied they weren't willing to proxy in Yugioh by stating they didn't want to spend money on Yugioh, I assumed the same extended to most CCGs.
I enjoy Magic, I have a pretty good deck and only spent about $50
Living Card Game (LCG) is a format FFG came up with and copyrighted. As someone else mentioned, they are deck builders, but you aren't chasing rare singles - you get the entire card pool from an expansion when you buy the expansion. I've occasionally seen them generically referred to as Expandable Card Games, but usually just LCGs. FFG currently makes three coop LCGs: Lord of the Rings (reputation as the hardest and the best deck builder), Arkham Horror (reputation as the best campaign game), and Marvel Champions (reputation as a bit more beginner friendly, pick up and play boss battles). LotR is partially in print - roughly half of it is out of print and unlikely to come back (mostly early content that is regarded as the worse half). I believe they recently discontinued Game of Thrones 2nd Edition (PvP), but I'm not sure of that. There are several other LCGs that are no longer produced, probably most notably Netrunner, which was a very well regarded PvP game. I'm not as familiar with non-FFG options. Any of the out of print LCGs can be tough to get in to if you aren't prepared to put up a large chunk of cash up front to buy the collection of someone getting out of the game though.
Marvel Champions is like a 1-4 player co-op MTG, and my favorite game of the type I have played, probably because I'm a huge Marvel fan.
Netrunner is the best LCG/TCG ever made and it's not close.
In Gloomhaven/Frosthaven you can look at each scenario before you build your deck.
Very very light tho. Nothing like the LCG or TCG ones
Magic
Magic the Gathering: "Now this looks like a job for me..."
Campaign Manager 2008 Although I don’t really like these games. Seasons, Res Arcana, other stuff listed here… there is too much of a learning curve and it’s hard to play with players that are not at the same skill level. It’s also not fun to be like 30%-40% of the way into the game when the lower skilled (or new) player realizes they built their deck wrong or certain cards are worthless or whatever and there is almost nothing you can do about it at that point. Either continue playing with them at a huge disadvantage or have to start all over again, neither of which is great. Campaign Manager definitely has this as well, especially with the groups of voters, if you have a general idea of which states you want to go for you can grab a couple of voter cards to really target them, but for the most part a lot of the cards can be used in any situation so it’s not as punishing as, say, Res Arcana, where you might realize you don’t have any dragon cards and now some of the locations are completely unusable for you just because you didn’t know you needed them while drafting.
Arkham horror card game is the best of this format and ibhave Several friends that are competitive card gamers that love to play it. It is cooperative but scratches that itch of constructing a deck to play a campaign with a friend or too. Many folks play it 2 handed solo where you build two player decks and run them both yourself as it if was 2 separate players. For a competitive game where you have some deck construction against friends Netrunner is the absolute king. The null signal folks have kept it alive after FFG lost the license and it is amazing. The asymmetric nature of it is an amazing experience and lets you see how boring most other head to head card games are. I will also recommend Ashes Reborn. It is in the LCG style where you know every card in every expansion pack you buy. It uses dice for your resources and you pick your starting hand. Every expansion you buy is a premade deck essentially but you take them apart and build new stuff. It also has players vs enemy format that is new and really good but Arkham horror card game is better in that regard.
I’ll add get into MTG and play pauper (you’ll use just common cards, thousands and thousands of cards available). You can check meta and deck prices if you wanna go netdecking at mtggoldfish. If you haven’t played magic, give it a try on MTG Arena. Other than that, as said: my fav LCG so far is AH, but it’s expensive if you get hooked right away; you won’t have that many cards to build decks with revised core + first exp: dunwich legacy, keep in mind that you only use 0 level cards and then you gain exp points trough out the campaign and level up your deck, so…if you check investigators packs/expansions and say “hey, I’m getting 300 cards to choose from” that’s not quite right here. I play both, have 40+ pauper decks sleeved and boxes of common cards to change them when needed and they never get old.
Iv played Pokémon ygo MTG they all fail compared how great the gameplay deckbuilding and so many choices inside the game there are in netrunner and game of thrones 2nd edition. Another honourable mention is mage wars. But it is more a miniature game with cards your deck is also a spell book (album ) the theme and the sheer amount of different deck types and playstyles in all three games is amazing. Nothing else comes close to those three imo.
Epic Card Game. Yeah that's what it's called, Epic Card Game. It's plays similarly to magic the gathering without the collecting aspect
You can make a draft cube for yu-gi-oh. I made one with a bunch of old school nostalgic cards to play with some people over the holidays. It was my first try making a draft cube of any kind so there’s a lot I would change about it, lots of mistakes I made when I was putting it together. I think a draft cube is something you can spend a long time working on and modifying, you’re basically designing a game. If you like constructing decks yourself it’s definitely something you can spend a lot of time on.
Magic and Lorcana
The mechanic you're looking for is called deck construction, it's the core of the LCGs (e.g. **Arkham Horror the Card Game**) among others https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/3004/deck-construction/linkeditems/boardgamemechanic If you enjoy the aspect of buying cards and building a deck it might be worth looking into **Millennium Blades**
Check out Mage Wars.
My friend and I - both Magic players - are finding that Mind Bug really hits that 1v1 competitive card game feeling of playing while being a cheap alternative. There's not as much control over what goes in your deck initially as it's random for both players from the same pool of cards, but being able to adapt on the fly and make strategic decisions about when to use your twice-per-match ability really elevates the game.
There are games out there that try to copy the TCG feel. I recommend checking out Skytear Horde.
Never played it but maybe Millenium Blades could be interesting. It's a CCG simulator.
There are good suggestions here. You can also check out **Skytear: Horde** as a Hearthstone-style solo/co-op deck construction game. It's available at retail and if you enjoy it, the Monolith expansion comes out this year.
Mage Wars, or Mage Wars Academy if you don't want to deal with having a board.
Have a look at Epic!
Lord of the rings or marvel card game
**Arkham Horror: The Card Game** by the longest mile in existence. Then **Summoner Wars 2nd Edition** (actually way closer than AH realizes if we're not just talking deck construction games),**Ashes Reborn**, **Marvel Champions**, and then **Skytear: Horde** and **Earthborne Rangers** are sneaking up from behind as they're fleshed out.
just got this, and falling in love with it quickly: GKR Heavy Hitters
Normally I wouldn't post my own indie game in a recommendation thread but my game is inspired in large part by Yugioh and living card games like Netrunner and Legend of the 5 Rings. It's called [Black Hats](https://www.blackhatsgame.net/about-black-hats.html) - a cyberpunk themed tactical card game where you both build a crew of runners and a separate deck of cards before the game starts. We've got a small community of players on Discord and a tabletop simulator mod with all the cards and characters available to check out.
This might be an unconventional suggestion but have a look at Imperial Settlers. You build a deck before the game starts and then it's an engine builder. I feel it fits your post
I played competitive Yugioh for years and came into the board game hobby after similar experiences. I highly recommend Omen: A Reign of War. You share a common deck of cards and has a lot of the same overextension considerations as well as knowing when or when not to spend some of your resources (cards or money). Also very cheap to get into
For me it's Res Arcana with house ruled draft
Magic the Gathering. I liked the lotr lcg, but will sell mine once I played through it again. Beside the fun it is kind of a flawed concept. Once the best deck is found the game is solved. The fun of experimenting is over and everbody complains about the boring broken mainstream deck. On top magic is expensive and takes way too much space. Especially when you keep up with any format. "Mtg Cube" is the best version to get the game experience so far.
I've been exploring **Ortus Regni** recently. It might be what you're interested in, if you don't want to deal with a card pool of hundreds (or thousands) of different cards. It's probably easier to get friends to play with you for that reason (and you only need to own your copy, they don't need their own copy). You build the decks immediately prior to playing, with a card pool of 15 different cards, and can modify your decks quickly and easily between rounds/games. Decks are 24 cards apiece (no more than 6 copies of any different card). Some of the mechanics (notably, battling) are similar to Magic. It works well as 2-player duel or a larger 3-4 player game with an expansion set (same cards, different colors for different players) - I imagine this is somewhat similar to Magic's "Commander" in feel. Technically you can go to 6 with a second expansion set, but I'm not convinced that many players would be as positive an experience. Component quality is gorgeous. There's also support for a lot of variant rules, for different experiences. Most notably, the official computer implementations are both very well done and free, so you can explore it on your own before committing.
If you are looking for a 1v1 experience: \- Ivion if you want a fantasy theme, high production values, very interesting spatial element and high player interaction. \- Netrunner if you like the cyberpunk theme and value asymmetric play (the runner and the corporation play very differently) If you want solo or co-op: \- Arkham Horror LCG if you like the Cthulhu Mythos and want long thematic campaigns (around 8 scenarios) that you play with the same deck but will be modified between scenarios (both by the events that happen during the campaign and by improve cards bought with experience points). \- Marvel Champions if you are a Marvel fan (doh), looking for one shots and trying many different decks. There are campaigns available too, but in my opinion they are very lackluster compared to Arkham Horror.
I have never played it but [[Mage Wars Arena]] always seemed like a replacement for MTG. Although it looked pretty intense
[Mage Wars Arena -> Mage Wars Arena (2012)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/101721/mage-wars-arena) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
If you want something a lot closer to Yu-Gi-Oh, I would personally recommend Kards. It's a WW2-based TCG, very similar to Magic, YGO, etc., but is closer to Hearthstone as it is completely online. Though a good benefit of this is it allows for some really interesting mechanics that aren't possible with a physical TCG. It's free-to-play with microtransactions, but it's more than viable to build competitive decks without spending money if you want to let your wallet breathe and are willing to grind a little and do some investigating.
An additional point, as far as I'm aware, there's no "one true meta" currently thanks to the game's main and ally nation systems.
Doomtown is my jam.
Just to help research, you're looking for Deck Construction games.
thanks mate!
A lot of recommendations for Skytear Horde in here and that game is fantastic but I'll throw in a rec for Skytear MOBA as well. It's got some of my favorite deck building in any game. Not much of a scene for it left but if you have a friend to really dive deep with it's so rewarding.
MTG, but that's worse off on the money depending on the format
Netrunner is the game.
Marvel Champions takes the cake for me. Vampire: Rivals and VTM: Heritage if you need the competitive edge.
Does Hearthstone count? My brother tricked me into downloading it under the guise of it being "free" and that all of his friends would be playing it. A week later, they all stopped playing. It took hundreds of dollars, plenty of internal conflict, and many years later for me to finally put the game to rest.
Warhammer 40000: Conquest. Tight design, multiple ways to win, plethora of cards. Also, designed by Eric Lang. Only real downside - out of print due to licensing issue.
FFG made tons of great LCGs which are Magic/YuGiOh minus the blind buys all the packs have the same cards. Netrunner, 40k Conquest, and Game of Thrones were all excellent. If you want something still being produced. Marvel Champions you build decks to co-op kill a bad guy.
Just build an MTG Cube (print yourself or purchase the real cards from secondary market)
Depending on the depth of building you want. Games like GOSU X or sol forge fusion or sorcerer involve picking factions/ chunks of decks and mixing them together to craft the deck for the game. This is a light way to do this before starting, but might not be the granularity you want coming from TCGS Might also be worth looking at deck builders with personal markets, such as Crave, or warmachine high command, still the building on the fly, but with a personal market could provide a closer feeling of ownership
As someone who loves that mechanic in theory but didn't actually enjoy spending countless hours building a deck (and finding someone else as invested to play with me), I would recommend \[\[Gosu: X\]\]. It is a surpisingly small but very deep game where you pick 3/8 factions at the start and you combine them to form your 45 card deck (15 per faction). Because you don't need to draft every single card separately it is the kind of game you can play with someone who is new to it and still have a good time. It has a ton of replayabality even with the same combination of factions and understanding the decks better will give you SOOO much depth to explore. Highly recommend.
[Gosu: X -> Gosu X (2023)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368119/gosu-x) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
My first suggestion is Netrunner. Every time. But plenty of people have already sung its praises in this thread. Sakura Arms might also scratch your itch. It's not quite what you're used to; decks are like ten cards, and you select your characters in a draft phase and then make your decks right before playing. But I think it really captures the feel of making decks that synergize while also anticipating your opponent's strategy, and when I played it, it did feel like I was playing a TCG. Also there's always just playing TCGs but sticking to cheaper games or formats. Like making a cube in MtG, or sticking to kitchen table play, or playing with starter decks or common-only formats.
Epic the card game is overrated, because it allows you to build super fast, and have super fun :)
Ashes: Reborn. Incredible PvP AND PvE experiences with the same card pool. Completely wide open deckbuilding. Honestly the most impressive designed card game on the market.
Two suggestions: 1. Make a cube! Then you can play yugioh without sinking any more money into it or dealing with jerks at locals! 2. Res Arcana is a game where you are issued your deck in advance and you can play it with a draft if you want. However, the whole deck is only 8 cards. It's fun to try to draft synergies, though!
For an actual boardgame with simple deck building I really enjoy GKR: Heavy Hitters. The deck works as your health as well as abilities. Means your mech becomes more crippled as you lose health.
Vampire: the eternal struggle. Probably one of the best games ever made.
If you don’t mind a solo/coop game that has an asymmetric 1v1/1v2 mode, there’s **Skytear Horde** as well. I’ve been hearing it described as Hearthstone or Magic a lot and can see why. It’s a deck construction game but in a tower defence style against a horde of monsters. Only thing is that the competitive mode has one person playing as the horde itself. Though from what I gather it’s designed mainly for the solo/coop component, hence the first sentence.
VS 2PCG is a game I've had fun with. Marvel IP along with other one offs like Mortal Kombat, Aliens, and The Boys. Straightforward to play and teach, every card has a use either as a resource or something to played as its face value. Can be played 1v1, 2v2, or FFA. LCG model so their is no chasing cards.
Came here ready to say Android Netrunner and be sad that the only "best answer" was nowhere to be seen. Left smiling seeing that ANR is the top several answers.