Card City Nights: Hope you like Mana screw

I've played a lot of CCGs in my life span. I actually played them back before Magic dropped the tapping patent bomb and cleaned out the market, so there were lots and lots of odd little games to try out. I always miss the original LOTR, which had sweet art and a completely overcomplicated rules set. And I also always wish someone would pick up the design for the original battletech, which had the best compromise when it came to mana/lands.

There's always a lot of, hmm, let's say friction between ideals when discussing CCGs, as I often see people complain about game elements that the designers have kept intentionally, because it offers more and deeper game play, in lieu of simplifications that often ruin the late game or strategic depth. I'm always going to go back to Magic, because Magic is just the best after twenty years, but it's funny seeing someone who has played a twenty year old game for less than a month complain about elements that they barely understand. This game, thankfully, doesn't really delve into much of that and you won't really find that sort of friction - mostly.

I haven't played any of the other Ludosity titles, though I do own one or two of them, and maybe some of the other indie games that in some manner come under the heading of this game. The art style is from the same guy or gal who did Ittle Dew, with cartoony characters and backdrops, and then the card art comes from other games which somehow connect to this title.

owns

 

I would actually sort of argue that in a lot of ways Card City Nights, hereby shortened to CCN, is more of a board game than a card game, and a lot of the elements feel a great deal away from the usual TCG, CCG, DCG or whatever acronym we're supposed to use experience. It is sort of interesting reviewing it, as well, because when you start peeling away the layers of cute art and cute sounds the game does not feel like the designers played or researched nearly enough about card games to actually build a convincing experience.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Magic the Gathering Online: Please no v4

I love Magic. It is one of my longest lasting hobbies. Now, sure, right now I'm not playing in real life. I take breaks here and there, sometimes card games feel great. Other times card games don't feel so great, some years I don't play it at all and instead write 300k words or whatever. Other times the draft set is core set, which I would rather gargle than play, especially when it is as actively worthless as m15 looks to be.

I think the things that make Magic itself so endearing lies in the various oddities, silliness and so forth. The game is essentially an abstraction as all RPGs are of wizard hat battles, and therein lies the rub - The abstractions themselves make for a really neat game, one built on math and theories. Magic gets pretty stupid sometimes, of course, R&D is perpetually stuck between doing a terrible job and an good job due to the fact they need to codify their theories and stick to them or instead get weird thoughts like 'X isn't very intuitive!! We should change it' or 'this doesn't feel very green'. It's an abstraction, guys, it doesn't matter.

here we have os/2

But still for all the shit talk I've ever mustered up, Magic has gotten a ton better and is a really interesting and deep game. I don't know if it is for everyone, I feel like not, but it definitely is a game that supports all its game modes and allows for a huge amount of players.

Magic Online, on the other hand, is a blight. And thanks to Wizards letting everyone do some prereleases for free, we can talk about an authentic v4 experience.