The Definitive Cardgame Encyclopedia

Miscellaneous Mentions

In case it doesn't become apparent, this section is all about games with a unique aspect that draws in players, and in this section, I simply want to talk about that unique aspect. These are not in-depth chapters designed to teach a game, but shallow portions designed to educate you about possibilities and options. If a game intrigues you, feel free to look into it more, that is half the goal. Enjoy!

Digimon:

Digimon by Bandai Namco and Toei, is set in the same Digimon world as the anime of the same name. Digimons TCG is similar to MTG in rule structure but, extremely different in rules. What I mean by this is that Digimon has a state-based action (SBA) reminiscent system. Digimon taking place in a digital universe has the flavor of a late 90's cyber adventure (think Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase, Hellraiser: Hellworld (but for kids) or Cyberchase, the series) but is also similar to the concept of Pokemon, in that it has a world built around kids collecting monsters. Digimon, also aimed at kids, uses rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese "Janken") to determine who goes first and has a 5-card starting hand, 50-card deck.

The main reason I wanted to include Digimon is for this mechanic: resources. In Digimon there is a tracker card that is shared between players, with each player having a maximum resource limit of 10, however, this tracker starts at 0 and as the first player plays cards the tracker moves into the opponent's territory. The opponent now has that many resources to work with, but may venture into their opponent's territory giving them that amount of resources. Most simply put, the first player has 10 resources to work with, if that player uses 5 then their opponent has 15 (the starting 10 and 5 from their opponent), then that player uses all 15 then their opponent has 20 (the original 15 bringing them to the 10 marker- and they may invade their opponent for up to 10). If it helps, look up the 'memory' card or draw a number line from 10 to 0 to 10 and follow along with the above example.

Furthermore, Digimon uses terms related to computers for their version of tapping (suspend & unsuspend) and other such terms to keep flavor. Whenever you deal damage to your opponent successfully they flip over the top card of their security stack and if that card has a security ability it resolves. Once you have dealt damage to a player while they don't have any security cards that player loses. I won't be covering the combat mechanics in this section as they have a full-page flow chart for that. A player also loses in Digimon due to inability to draw and the combined comprehensive rulebook would be 30 pages.

World of Warcraft (vs Hearthstone):

Blizzard, being a large company, has not one but two TCGs in their more popular, online-only, Hearthstone, and their less popular, way older, paper-only, WoW TCG. The World of Warcraft TCG is more similar (in my opinion) to FaB than Hearthstone despite having the popularity of neither, nor WoW. Firstly you have a hero (which starts on the board) and determines your classes (and by extension which cards you can add to your deck). You have a 7-card starting hand, then your turn is divided into 3 phases: Start (ready (similar to untap) and draw), action, and end (discard to 7). During the action phase, you have 3 general actions: Playing a card, playing a resource (one per turn), and attacking. Damage in WoW TCG is similar to Pokemon in that damage is permanent instead of until the end of the turn. You may not use an Ally (creature/ monster/ Pokemon) to attack its first turn as it is 'preparing'. There are also only 3 card types (with many subtypes). As always, if a rule doesn't line up with what a card says then the card is right. Before we get into what makes WoW TCG different, let's talk about what it gets away with (thinking back to a controversy where WotC sued a TCG for using the terms 'tap' and 'untap'). WoW uses a stack (which is also a computer science term with a similar meaning, so I'm not sure that WotC has rights to this one) system called a 'chain', the same term used in Yu-Gi-Oh. WoW also uses the term 'destroy', like in MTG.