Greetings to you all! As I prepare to take the Daily helm, I have just returned from the multi-day gaming binge known as Gencon. For those not lucky enough to attend, gigantic conventions of this nature are an experience all their own, and I recommend trying it at least once. Even if you stick just to playing Magic, there are still tournaments round the clock for four straight days: the Vintage World Championships, a Kamigawa/Legends Sealed tournament, and a Two-Headed Giant Standard bout headlined the smorgasbord of available games.
But not for me. No, I barely touched a Magic card all weekend. Instead, I spent my time in the dealer room, where companies large and small exhibited their new wares. Sure, being bombarded by thousands of products desperate for your precious time and hard-earned dollars can be intimidating, but some of us relish the chance to try out more new games in four days than we normally would in four months.
Surprised? Don’t be. While there are those that play Magic and only Magic, I believe that they are in the minority. (Incidentally, if you are in that minority, you might not get a lot out of this series.) The rest of us supplement the Magical cards with various other card, board and online games, and that’s what I’m bringing to you this week: a combination of highlight reels, reviews and recommendations for the discerning Magic player in the market for another time-waster.
(It goes without saying that you should, of course, spend most of your money at the Star City online store. This is just for the leftovers.) (That’s good enough for the bonus, right Ted?)
But where to begin? Well, seeing as Magic (and now Vs.) are Star City’s main online focus, I suppose the best place to start is with a few of the other collectible card games that are getting ready to hit the market. Of course, to talk about every card game that was on display at Gencon would be impossible, even if I spent the entire week on just that, so I’ve cherry-picked a couple: Wizards of the Coast’s Hecatomb and AEG’s City of Heroes.
Now, I’ve dabbled in a number of other card games over the years, so I have a lot of experience with what works and what doesn’t. I saw a few dozen card games at Gencon, most of which sucked on a number of levels. That’s hardly surprising – it’s hard to make a good, orginal CCG these days, largely because the best mechanics have been taken for a long time. Sometimes you don’t realize how truly elegant Magic’s mana system is until you see the contortions other designers put their games through when they can’t use it, and the depth the games lose because of it.
Most of the games I saw leaned heavily on their subject matter for any popularity they might have (for instance, any game based on an anime show), often because the depth of their gameplay certainly wasn’t winning any prizes. Others focused on a certain gimmick that made the game stand out, and we’ve got examples from both camps today.
Hecatomb – Wizards of the Coast
Hecatomb has a lot going for it, just by being produced by Wizards. That means it has proven designers working on it, immediate publicity, and access to some excellent intellectual property. Like in Duelmasters, mana and tap have migrated over to the Hecatomb vocabulary, so any Magic player will pick the game up in a flash.
Hecatomb also inherits Duelmasters’ mana system of playing any card as a “land” and every card only requiring one mana of the appropriate color (plus however many more of any type), which is unfortunate – a colored mana requirement is what separates Durkwood Boars from Kodama of the North Tree, Mercenaries from Dawn Elemental. On the plus side, the game already has a handful of cards that move other cards to or from the mana zone, so a player has chances to have cards serve serious double duty.
Hecatomb’s main gimmick, though, is the building of “abominations.” See, the cards for this game aren’t your standard rectangles – they’re pentagons. Not only that, but the outside border is transparent except on one side, where you’ll find certain game text (usually creature abilities). You build an abomination by summoning multiple creatures on top of each other, each time placing the new card at a different orientation so all the abilities of cards beneath it can still be read – and used – through the transparent border. This also combines the combat strengths of the component creatures, allowing you to create some serious monstrosities.
The catch to all of this is that each time you summon a new part onto an abomination, it regains “summoning sickness.” This means a lot more lag time between doing things and things actually getting done, and since Hecatomb is meant to be played multiplayer, games can last for a while. The game compensates by including an automatic cap on game length (each player always gains a “soul” each turn, with twenty souls equaling victory – attacking another player steals their souls instead of damaging them), but that doesn’t let you get to the all-important smashing any faster.
Finally, the fact that the cards are pentagonal has downsides as well – they’re awkward to hold, and it’s difficult to tell what’s tapped from across the table. These may seem like small concerns, but they make the overall experience less enjoyable. The abomination-building mechanic is certainly very cool, but the rest of the game gets in its way.
City of Heroes – AEG
I’m sure those of you who play the City of Heroes online game are already perked up, and as someone who roamed the streets of Paragon City for all of last summer, let me assure you that this game captures the essence of the original quite well. Knowing the online game will also help you pick up some of the concepts more quickly, but it’s not difficult even for those that aren’t familiar with it. The rules complexity certainly doesn’t measure up to Magic, although the gameplay certainly has plenty of strategy in it.
The basics: Each player starts with one hero in play. That hero has two powers that he/she starts the game with, so the player puts those cards into play as well. You draw opening hands and begin. Each turn, you can perform one of a handful of actions: playing a card from your hand, using the ability of a card in play, drawing two new cards from your deck, resetting cards in play so you can use their abilities again, and so on. Although there are several options, they are all very intuitive, and you’ll have very little trouble remembering what you can and can’t do. Play alternates back and forth until one hero’s health points are reduced to zero. (Note that this means you can never really get “tempo advantage” on your opponent – you both always get the same number of actions – so the combo lovers out there may not find this game up their alley. The chess players will be plenty happy, though.)
The power cards a hero can use is determined by their powersets. Each power belongs to a specific set, and each hero has access to two of these. Some powers require you to have multiple powers from the set already in play before you can play them, so there’s a form of “ramping up” to the more powerful effects. Some powers also take more actions to recharge, so they can be used less often than simpler powers.
This is all well and good, and the game plays very smoothly. There’s good tension between the types of actions you can perform, so identifying what’s immediately necessary and what can wait for a while is very important, especially since you can’t do two things at once. However, there are a couple of issues that could imbalance things to a game-breaking degree, and these should be noted.
First off, each hero has his/her own personal Accuracy and Defense rating. (Most of the demo heroes had 3 for each.) Every time a hero attacks, the game compares the attacker’s Accuracy to the defender’s Defense, and if they are equal or the Accuracy is greater, the attack hits. This means that your hero’s attacks will either always hit or always miss unless a player uses a card to change things (all cards have an alternate, “inspiration” use – they can be discarded for a temporary boost to a stat according to a symbol in the corner of the card, like Accuracy or Defense). In particular, if your opponent can get his Defense higher than your Accuracy, you will always have to spend at least one card in order to hit with an attack.
Second, a player can spend his action to move his hero from melee combat to ranged combat. This is fine for heroes with mostly ranged attacks, but a hero with only melee powers now has to discard a card in order to even attack his/her opponent. Since some powersets don’t include any ranged attacks at all, some heroes will always be forced to discard in this circumstance.
Either of these scenarios alone can be very difficult to keep up with. Combine these two effects and you can have situations in which a player has to discard two cards to get a hit off, and woe be to him/her if the other player has a block of some kind. This makes the game decidedly unfun, and not very fair at all.
Now, the game doesn’t come out officially until November, and all that was available at Gencon was a set of four promotional pre-constructed decks, so perhaps the full base set will have ways to get around these problems. I’m willing to look for some, because the game is very fun when it can be played on relatively equal footing.
One other thing: Since the game requires you to start with a hero and his/her specific two starting powers, Limited – especially draft – is basically impossible. That’s a shame for AEG, since drafts and Sealed Deck play really drive sales, and it means that players can’t go for the change of pace that Limited offers.
It’s a tough sell for someone raised on Magic to really get into another card game, although Vs. shows that it’s not impossible. Still, if you’re in the market for another collectible card game, I recommend trying City of Heroes; it’s a definite change-up from Magic (which is remarkable considering how many games sample bits of our fine pastime), and if the issues I mentioned are addressed it will be a lot of fun. However, unless you’re really into the idea of stitching together Frankensteinian mutants (and I can’t say I would blame you!), I would steer clear of Hecatomb, though, despite its good pedigree.
That wraps up today’s hits and misses, but don’t worry, I’m here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitresses.
Signing off,
Andy Clautice
andy dot clautice at gmail dot com