Gone But Not Forgotten: World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

Once upon a time in the land of Azaroth...

Many years ago, I starting playing a game on my computer called 'WarCraft'. Little did I know then that it was the beginning of one of the biggest phenomena of my generation. After the original WarCraft, there was WarCraft 2, then WarCraft 2: Tide of Darkness, and finally WarCraft 3. As EverQuest started to fade, the guys over at Blizzard put the final nail in that coffin with their own MMORPG: World of WarCraft. It took our world by storm. They had ads with William Shatner and Mr. T. It was everywhere. I'm sure you've heard of it.

Since nerd hobbies have expanded and crossed medias, Blizzard first partnered with Upper Deck to create a Trading Card Game. After a few years, Blizzard partnered with Cyptozoic and the game improved drastically.

The basics:

Like many card games these days, the WoW TCG relied on resources, spells, and 'monsters' cards in play. Unlike Magic, there were no 'colors' of mana or cards. Instead, resources were 'Quests', 'Locations', and here's the best part, any card played face-down in the resource row. Quests were used like Land in magic, except you could pay a cost listed on them and gain something, usually health or a card draw, making them more useful than face-down cards. Locations were similar to Quests, except you didn't turn them face-down when you used their abilities. Another change between most other CCGs and WoW was the use of the Hero card. Your Hero would determine your Faction (Alliance, Horde, and later, Monster), your class, race, and health. Each Hero had Health that varied by class, race, and etc. In addition, your Hero had a power that would require 'flipping' the card. Some powers were one-time-only while others were continuous once you flipped your Hero; in the last few Blocks they released Heroes that had powers on both the front and back of the Hero card.

The other major differences between Magic and WoW is that in combat, you picked who fought who, and they didn't heal between fights. If your Ally took damage one turn, it would carry over in to the next one.

In general, if you've played Magic, you know how to play this game. However, for me, the differences made the game.

Card types:

Hero -

While we've covered the basics of this card, there's a bit more to it. As mentioned, your Hero picks Faction and Class. But, there's several different Heroes of each class and faction. Let's save you want to make a Horde Hunter deck. There's several different Heroes you can use, including Sylvanas. Either as a High Elf or as an Undead. Hero cards are double sided, making them easy to find if they get mixed in to your play deck. Some Heroes have a 'one time flip' power, where you pay the cost(s), flip your Hero, and do whatever you got. Other Heroes have a 'constant' power. Pay the cost, flip the Hero and you get an 'always on' ability, something like “All Allies you control have Stealth”. In the later expansions, they released some very powerful Heroes that have both front AND back side abilities.

Equipment -

Unlike Artifacts in Magic, only your Hero uses equipment, and equipment is limited by your Hero's class, and there's slots for items, too. Armor could stop some damage and weapons would let your Hero deal some damage in combat... If you pay the weapon's strike cost (which can be as low as 0). Your Hero can carry both melee and long range weapons, shields, armor, helmets, and all sorts of Trinkets.

Abilities -

These are your 'spells' if you will. Most abilities are based off of your class but some can be used by several or all classes. Abilities can be the game-changers for many decks. Abilities are usually based on class abilities in the MMORPG but not always.

Allies -

By far, most of the damage dealt in the game comes from Allies. When you bring an Ally in to play, they join your 'party'. Some Allies have special abilities that activate when you bring them in to play, others have abilities that activate when they leave play and others provide synergy between all of our allies of same type. In the last few blocks, they made great synergy for Murlocks, Demons, Night Elves, Tauren, Orcs, and Humans.

Quests and Locations -

Quests are by far the most common resource included in decks. Since you can only include four copies of each Quest in your deck, you'll see two, three, or even four Quests with different names but all have the same ability. Locations are rare, and as I said before, they don't flip when you activate their powers, but they usually require you 'exhaust' (read: tap) them, so you'll only be able to use them once per turn. Some require building up a bunch of counters before they're worth anything beyond a normal resource.

Master Hero -

One of the rarest types of cards, but one of the most power, Master Heroes are real game changers. First of all, they have a high cost, usually around 10 or so. They replace your Hero card, so you lose whatever abilities they had, but you gain some supremely powerful ones in exchange. They also have absurdly high health, so they'll keep you in the game longer. If you include a Master Hero in your deck, you want to make sure you can get it out right when you need it, so keep that in mind when building your deck.

Raids:

Like the MMORPG, the game came out with Raid Decks. Inspired by the Raids in the game, you could battle some of the biggest villains in the game. Unlike normal games, Raid decks required (at least) three players, all playing their decks cooperatively again the Raid deck. That right there is one of the things I love about Raids, being able to play with my friends, not always against them.

Let me make one thing clear right now: Raid Decks are HARD. Even on the 'easy' setting, I've seen some of the most vicious decks get gutted by Raid Decks. Unless all of the decks are balanced for a Raid, they'll start dropping like flies. To help you out, the older Raid Decks included Hero cards you could use to make a special deck just for the Raid. These Heroes are usually very powerful, so they're banned from normal play. Some of the Raids included full decks to be played against the Raid.

Most Raids work like this: The players sit down and take their turns in order, just like normal. When the Raid Deck's 'turn' comes around, someone flips the top card of the deck over and does the actions listed there, plus whatever actions are listed on the Raid Deck's Hero card. This is usually targeting and attacking one of the players, placing token Allies, and placing counters on things. Notice that Raid Decks don't use resources or a graveyard. They're an 'auto-pilot' deck designed to run themselves. There is at least one Raid Deck that runs like a normal deck, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

When I play a Raid, I usually like to have five people involved. One person manages the Raid Deck, while the others play their normal decks. I find four decks also balances better for playing, as you can have two casters (one healer, one combat) and two melee types (usually one long-range and one close range) working together. It also fits the classic adventuring party troupe.

Lastly, the person running the Raid was suppose to go out and by 'Treasure Packs' which were extra-special-amazing booster packs that included foil cards. But, since they were more expensive than regular booster packs, I've almost never seen it done. Now that the game is out of production, you might be able to find boxes of them for cheap.

So there you have it. The WoWTCG was fun and it's a shame to see it go the way of so many other great games. 

Gone But Not Forgotten: Star Trek: Customizable Card Game

Welcome to another (randomly) regular series here on Bearers of the Word. In 'Gone But Not Forgotten' I'll be talking about 'collectable' games like CCGs and CMGs that I've played in the past. Usually, these are games that have been discontinued and you can't find anymore. So, let's get started!

To boldly go...

No School Like Old School

In 1993, Magic: The Gathering exploded on to the hobby scene. Kids and adults alike were spending hundreds of dollars on a card game that had an original background. Soon, companies that owned 'nerd' licenses took note and started selling the rights to others to get a slice of this new expanding market. One of the first was Star Trek.

The first edition of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game was released in 1994. Now, 20 years later, the game has aged... Poorly. But, I love it all the same.

Gotta love cosplay...

Affiliations:

When the game was first released, there were three Affiliations: Federation, Romulan, and Klingon. There were also Non-Aligned, who could work with any Affiliation. Most people built decks around one Affiliation but there were treaty cards, so you could mix and match if you wanted. The first Affiliation to be added was the Borg, in the First Contact expansion. The Borg played completely differently that any other affiliation before or since, assimilating planets, ships, and people to win. The next major expansion was Deep Space Nine, which added the Cardasian and Bajoran affiliations. Of course, they followed this up with the Dominion in a self-named expansion. The Dominion were the first affiliation to be set up in a completely different quadrant. If you didn't get the Bajoran Wormhole, you were stuck in the Gamma Quadrant. Later expansions added the Ferengi, as well as cards from the Original Series and the Mirror Universe. When they released the Voyager expansions, they had to add the Hirogen, Viidian, and Kazon factions. They even did a minor Enterprise expansion and an expansion for the Original films. By the time the game died, there were 13 affiliations and two Mirror Universe 'groups', spread across four quadrants (Alpha, Gamma, Delta, and Mirror) and across all of the TV series and films. Needless to say, the game had grown too big to be any sort of manageable endeavor. And, many of the affiliations and groups couldn't really function or score enough points to win out of the box.

Who cares about Kirk or Picard? It's all about Sulu!

How the game works:

The set up for this game was unique and interesting. Instead of summoning up monsters and artifacts, the creators of the game looked at the source material. You included six 'mission' cards in your deck. These missions (really planetary systems) had a list of requirements you needed to complete them and a number of points you would score if you did so. They also had a number at the bottom which showed how much range your ships would need to use to get past the card. Because nothing goes as planned, you and your opponent would slide (or 'seed' as the game called it) Dilemma cards under the missions. When you attempted the mission, you would run in to the Dilemma and have to deal with it. You could include up to 30 Dilemmas in your seed deck, so you could put down Dilemmas that helped you score bonus points and put some down to screw the other guy. Of course, he'd be doing the same to you... In addition to Dilemmas, you could also place Artifacts under a mission, but this was risky as your opponent could use them if they completed the mission.

Once you got done seeding missions, you would place your 'outpost' which was your starting point. Any ships, personnel, and equipment you played would come in to play at your outpost, so you wanted to place it somewhere useful. The ships had 'staffing requirements' that you had to meet with personnel, which was kind of a pain in the ass if you drew people that didn't have the right stuff to staff the ship. Once you got a ship staffed up, which could take awhile, what with your massive play decks and being able to play ONE card a turn, you flew the ship around and completed enough mission to score 100 points. In the most basic terms, that's the game. Of course, it gets way more complicated when you use later expansions.

Because it was one of the first post-Magic games, it doesn't have the balance or slickness of later games. You know, things like cost and resource management. You drew one card and played one card each turn. That's it. So, the game developed draw engines and play engines. Some of the most powerful cards in the first release have been banned because they provided too many draws or too many plays per turn. In order to balance the game in later editions, they created cards to specifically counter another, so you'd want to include those counter-cards in your deck. This in turn lead to 'deck bloat' as I call it. It wasn't uncommon to see play decks over a hundred cards. Decks between a hundred and fifty cards and two hundred cards seem to be the norm.

One of the best episodes, Yesterday's Enterprise

For all of its flaws, the game is fun to play. You can have the oddest crews in the history of Star Trek running around (Captains Kirk and Picard commanding the USS Defiant in the Delta Quadrant battling the Ferengi? It's possible) as well as some humorous combinations of factors (facing a Borg raid on your outpost in the Gamma Quadrant while infected with alien parasites). Completing missions was the goal of the game, not combat. Of course, combat became a way of denying your opponent points, by destroying his ship, it took time to build up a fleet capable of attacking, much less destroying, a single enemy ship. The game tried to keep the flavor of the setting, using your wits and skill to overcome obstacles rather than using your fists and phasers. Even with all those Affiliations, each one had a different way of playing. The Federation, for example, couldn't start a fight, but they had the largest number of personnel and powerful ships. Federation players developed a tactic known as 'redshirting' where they would beam down one personnel that had no real use to attempt the mission. Maybe they overcome some Dilemmas, maybe they don't. You just keep beaming down some more disposable crew down until all the Dilemmas are finished, then beam down your people who can complete the mission and score your points. Of course, the creators of the game came up with counters to this tactic, but it still exists today.

In contrast, there's the Ferengi. They use the only resource in the game: gold-pressed latinum. They use this to get equipment out, score points, and complete missions. They have an interesting mix of ships and a surprisingly good selection of personnel, so they don't need to fight to win or prevent someone from winning.

Even though the game is long unsupported, a group got together in 2007 and have tried to keep the game alive. This group, the Continuing Committee, has done a lot to modernize the game and even added their own expansions. If you're interested in starting up this game, or just want to see what was, head over to the 'Links' page and click on their name.

Yes, there is a Tribbles game as well