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Best TCGs

Talking about what I like & dislike about popular card games

Writing down all the card games I've played and what I enjoyed about them.

My goal here is to try and pinpoint what I loved (and disliked) about all the card games so that when I finally throw my hat in the ring, I can do it right.

Magic The Gathering

Classic—the gold standard for card games. To be honest, it's the most fun card game I've played, but there are a few flaws. Even though I may be harsh on it, it's still my favorite on the list; think of it as tough love.

Pros

Fun

The game is just fun and offers so much room to create the exact playstyle you want. The whole stack and instant-speed spells make this game great. I love the "in response to" mechanic—it feels like you're really wizarding.

Modular

Magic is like a game engine with so many variations: Two-Headed Giant, Commander, Archenemy, etc. It’s not restricted to 1v1 play; hypothetically, you could have 100-player Magic. Granted, it wouldn't be fun, but the system wouldn't break.

Colors

The game allows you to mix colors instead of limiting yourself to just one. Want to play all five colors? Go ahead. Prefer mono red? That works too.

Abilities

Being around the longest means it has far more abilities than other card games. Kicker, morph, buyback—they are all great modifications.

Cons

Expensive

It's literally cardboard. Why are Commander staples or must-have cards over $5? I could understand variant card arts—there's gotta be some scarcity, and you can always opt for the cheaper (not as pretty) alternative. But really? Even some must-have cards set you back anywhere from $5 to $20. Imagine building a deck of 100 cards from scratch. Even the Commander decks aren’t cheap, especially here in Brasil: 300 to 500 BRL for one pre-built deck is insane.

Design

I like the iconic Magic design, but it's not practical. Grab a hand of Magic cards and fan them out—you have no idea what the cost or stats of your cards are. It’s understandable why; as one of the first TCGs, the optimal layout wasn’t planned out yet. And when Magic did try a layout change in one set, it didn’t stick. I don't think this is a problem that can ever be fixed.

Lands

This isn’t a problem exclusive to Magic, but lands have some caveats that I’m not a huge fan of. In a 60-card deck, you basically have to dedicate about 20 or so cards to lands. This gets worse with more colors. This issue isn’t unique to Magic; other games that use tapping for lands experience similar challenges. You need lands in the early game, but as the game progresses, they become less useful. Yes, I have 15 lands and then I draw another basic land.

TL;DR: ~30% of your deck is dedicated to a card that rapidly decreases in usefulness as the game goes on.

Complex

Magic is like riding a bike—once you learn it, you can always jump back in with a few pointers. The main problem is that not a lot of people are willing to overcome that initial difficulty, and Magic hasn’t been getting easier. With card effects that aren’t written on the card, external effects (like Start Your Engines, Dungeons, Day/Night, ~~Monarch~~ scratch that—I like Monarch), it’s not easy to get a complete beginner into it. But once you do, oh boy, that's where the fun begins.

Buddy Fight

Man, I miss Buddy Fight. It was a card game from 2014 to 2020. It was peak—complete with a killer anime, not as expensive, and much easier to understand the rules. It's also the only tournament I ever played in. I remember there was a camera filming when I was getting my ass beat, lmao. It was a good time. But it did have some faults; let’s start with the good news first!

Pros

Atmosphere

In the anime, before every battle, they would shout, "RAISE THE FLAG, DRAGON WORLD!" or "MY BUDDY IS DRUM BUNKER DRAGON!"—genuinely the coolest. The anime hyped it up, and you also had items like swords you could equip, which then fought for you. Dude, it was mad cool.

Gauge

The gauge mechanic is near perfect—it solves the problem of lands, energy, or their equivalent. The solution? Any card can serve as land/energy.
How does it work? You draw six cards, then put the next two cards face down in a pile. That’s your gauge. Some monsters and spells cost gauge. If a monster says, "pay 1 gauge," you just take a card from the gauge and move it to your dropzone, graveyard, or discard pile.

How do you get gauge?
Every turn you draw, and optionally, you can charge and draw—putting a card from your hand into the pile while drawing a new card. It's that simple. There are cards that help you get gauge, but for the most part, everyone has gauge. With a house rule variation (draw 8 cards, then pick 2 to put into the gauge), it adds another layer of gameplay. I love it—it's like gambling every turn. You get a lot of card advantage, and it means all 50 cards are useful in some capacity.

Throwing a card into the gauge is essentially discarding it, so you have to pick wisely. The big monster might not be useful now, but it could be in a few turns—do I keep it or throw it away? Do I spend all of my 4 gauge on this one play, risking starting over from 0 gauge if it fails?

Now you might think, "What’s stopping me from filling my board with expensive gauge creatures?" Eventually, I would just get an edge since gauge comes back at a more or less fixed rate.
Buddy Fight "fixed" this (details below) by introducing monster sizes: 0, 1, 2, & 3. You have three monster slots, and the max size allowed is 3. Obviously, the bigger the monster, the stronger it is, so balance was maintained. Placing a monster in the center meant you couldn't attack, but you couldn't get hit either. It feels constrictive, but honestly, it works to its advantage—you have to be creative within the constraints. It also ensured that one player couldn't run away with the game. Enough about the pros; I'll discuss some of the faults next.

Tokens

Buddy Fight also solved the issues of tracking damage and counters. In Magic, you heal at the start of your turn, but depending on your board, it gets complex fast. In Pokémon, you need dice with counters to keep track of health, which gets out of control, especially if you have multiple injured Pokémon. Here, it's a simple number: if the number is too high, the monster dies. All the monsters are basically glass cannons. The game didn’t need tokens for extra monsters or for tracking damage. It even had a special card to track health, which was really nice.

Cons

Buddies

For a game called Buddy Fight, I'm listing buddies as a con? Yes. The game and anime hyped up the idea—it was you and your buddy against the world. So, what benefit does granting a monster the "buddy" title give?
The first time you play it, you gain 1 life.
That’s it. For a game called Buddy Fight, there was no real advantage to choosing your favorite card as a buddy. It boiled down to picking the cheapest, smallest size card you have four copies of to get the 1 life bonus as soon as possible, and then the buddy goes back to being nothing.
Granted, some house rules fix this (similar to calling out Commander with a limit of 4 times), but still.

Impacts

For all the good mechanics Buddy Fight had, it also had impacts. This was cool in the anime—a cool, over-the-top finishing move. BUT in practice, or even after thinking about it for more than three seconds, it was such bs. Imagine losing 50–60% of your health, and then I just announce "final phase, eat trash," and you instantly lose.
It ended games quickly. They tried to fix it by adding shields, but that kind of ruined the whole point of an impact. They also added impact monsters so that it wasn’t just a finishing move, but an extra call and attack phase. Overall, though, it still felt like a problematic mechanic.

Power Creep

This game's power creep was insane. Between every new season of the anime, they introduced cards that made previous sets completely worthless. You have 10 health, but in a new set, there’s a flag that lets you have 20 health, and in the newest one, you can use monsters up to size 99!
Power creep in any card game is normal—I don’t even think you can avoid it, and it helps keep the game interesting and dynamic. Otherwise, you’d just stick with one deck for the rest of your life. BUT it has to be a small, not a HUGE LEAP. Buddy Fight had crazy power creep. It lasted six years, and essentially, all the cards from Season 1 and Season 2 won’t have a chance to win against the latest cards.
If you search up the "reborn" cards (aka remade old cards balanced against the new ones), the power difference is insane—it’s not even funny.

Overdrive

I dislike one-time overpowered abilities per turn, and Buddy Fight, man, they kicked it up a notch. Unlike Pokémon, where you have the Astra and it's a per-player effect, here if my opponent uses an Overdrive effect, no one else can use it for the rest of the game. That’s wild, bro. Whoever pops it first gains an insane advantage. They made like three different versions to try to combat this, but it just made the problem worse. Let me pop three one-time effects that greatly increase my chance of winning while my opponent’s Overdrive cards become useless.

Flags

Flags limited you instead of allowing creativity. Granted, they understood this and fixed it with future flags and omni lords, but you know—it was just an add-on solution.

Pokémon TCG

All of us had Pokémon cards at one point in our lives—even if we hated card games, they were everywhere.

Pros

Collecting

While Pokémon can be played, many people, myself included, collect the cards. I switched to playing later, but there are two markets: the people who enjoy the game and the people who just want the shiny Pikachu. It reaches both the competitive players and the collectors. I didn’t even know it was a playable game at first!

Accuracy

It’s really impressive how they managed to incorporate all aspects of the Pokémon world into a card game. Pokéballs help you find Pokémon in your deck. The type advantage is well represented, and the evolution mechanic is nicely implemented too. Unlike Vanguard, which stagnates when you evolve, Pokémon offers more plays since you have six different Pokémon types.

Winning

I love the prize cards mechanic as a substitute for health. I also love card draw—it rewards attacking.

Cons

Power Creep

It’s way worse than in any of the other games here. You basically cannot play with any of the cards from before 2020 without getting whooped.

Downtime

Similar to the Pokémon video game, it’s turn-based. There is no reactive play—you play your cards, attack, and then wait for your opponent’s turn. In evenly matched games, these turns can take forever, and during that time, you’re just sitting and waiting for your opponent to attack. Aside from a handful of cards, there isn’t much you can do.

VAstra

Like Overdrive, VAstra is another one-time-use ability.

MindBug

Played this very recently and man, it's pretty solid, fast fun. It was also partly made by one of Magic's creators. If you're new to cards, I highly recommend picking this up, feels like a very nice introduction.

Pros

Plays like chess

Each move feels intentional, like in chess—one move and then it's your opponent's turn. Every time I make a move, I have to pick, attack, or play a new creature.

The Mind Bug

This is where it gets crazy fun. Both players have two tokens they can use anytime the enemy plays a card to steal it. This makes the game really interesting because, all of a sudden, my game-winning play could be used against me. You have to be smart about it, like creating a board state where you can steal my creature but it won't be as effective for you as it would be for me, or forcing a mind bug, using the wasp that deals 1 damage so you don't die. It's very dynamic.

No bad cards

Yup, I couldn't believe it. There are some mid cards, but every card has a use—it’s not like, "Dang, I got a bad hand," more like, "Okay, decent hand.". Each card has it's use, not a single objectively bad card. With the mind bug, it doesn't matter since you steal your opponent's card anyway.

Cons

No Deck Building

I like building a deck; here, I'm at the mercy of the cards. Granted, none of them are bad, but it kind of takes away a big part of what makes card games fun for me—the personalization to my playstyle.

Too easy

It feels a bit too easy, especially if you have a bit of a chess background. There were times when I was playing, got an upper hand and "Oh, it's done. I win," like finding the 10-move checkmate pattern. I also feel like there are some strong strategies: just wait for your opponent to play a sneaky card and steal it, then you have all the sneaky cards. (Sneaky cards can only be blocked by sneaky cards, so if you steal all of them and the enemy only has 3 health, you get the idea.)

The Point

So, what was the point of all this? It was to do a deep dive into the aspects I love the most about card games and to create the best card game possible:

  • Affordable Alternatives: Every card has an affordable counterpart to prevent "paywalls" from deck building.
  • Additionally, there will be collectible variants of the cards that are far more aesthetically pleasing. That way, collectors can enjoy collecting (or playing) all the pretty, shiny, foil variations. This is where the scarcity will be—you can buy all the cards, but collecting every variant will be expensive.
  • Minimize Extras: Minimize tokens, dice, and lands. I want it to be a deck builder and battler—you bring your deck, and that’s it. No need to dedicate 20% of your deck to lands or bring 10 different dice to keep track of life.
  • Simple to Play, Hard to Master: I want there to be the big synergies and engine plays that Magic has, but not so complex that the average person feels intimidated. At the same time, it shouldn’t be so simple or based purely on chance that it lacks strategic depth.
  • Modular System: A base rule/engine for 1v1 that can easily be modified or adjusted for variations, such as 2v2, free-for-all, capture the point, etc.
  • Flexible Colors: No closed-off colors—players should be able to mix and match cards freely to find a playstyle just for them.

Is this gonna be made any time soon? No lmao.