Just the ones no one plays.

most TCG's have also died because they don't get enough people to play them. Because of their complexity.

I would say the same, as most Magic players are so rabid about the game that they will lap up whatever R&D tells them to. So yeah. No point.

I went back and read all your really convincing posts and I have decided that the people whose job it is to make magic a fun and popular card game for the last 20 years are actually stupid and you should be in charge

Who here has played dungeons & dragons, 3rd or 4th edition?

Ever been a dungeon master and one of the players says "I'm playing this class"? Never heard of it. "It's from this splat book. Also I'm taking feats from another splat book." Not having read either of those splat books, I don't even know what his character can do.

Ever tried to use a computer program to create your character and it offers you a list of options from every book that has been printed and your brain goes fuzzy?

Ever seen a rules discussion on the d&d forums about how this thing interacts with that other thing? It's not like Magic where a rules question can be answered in one post.

This is a good example of complexity creep. Features keep getting added and none are ever taken away. D&D survives partly because a lot of players are interested in role playing more than charOp, and DMs are allowed to house rule. If it was strictly a competitive game that must be played to the rules, it'd be dead already because no one wants to read a new book every month.


Ever worked as a computer programmer? Every time you add one new thing to the code you have to go back and re-test everything that it interacts with so you don't break anything. It takes quadratically more time for every new thing you add. People have developed structures to make it easier but still two thirds of software projects are not finished on time. People only put up with it because it's their job.


Magic is a game. It's not a niche game either - it's got over 6 million players worldwide. It has to be fun, rather than feeling like a job.

A draw back of the open end license, anyone can make a 3.x anything because of the open license.

Try ThaCo as a better example.

Plus did people actually play 4.0. I was under the impression it was basically WoW, the rpg, and everyone I know hates it. I'm sure it has a bit of a following, but I thought they were making 5.0 simply because 4.0 sold so poorly.

Not true, Star Wars still has a huge following despite it being an encyclopedia of rules, seconded for YuGiOh, which is retarded on rulings, too the point that you can show up too an event to find out the card in your deck suddenly works different than how it did when you signed up.

Also in the same conversation The Spoils.

the spoils is ded

Except they still release expansions every year and are a major event at Gen Con?

How is that dead?

Even ignoring the publicly made stuff, the things published straight from the company isn't well balanced.

I play 4.0 generally when I can. Less of the sheer brokenness and BS, and its incredibly easy to teach to people, unlike any D&D expansion ever. All the classes in 4.0 are perfectly balanced together, and even when you start going into the expansion books, it is really tough to break a character, and most of the "broken" stuff doesn't happen until you reach the highest levels, where you're supposed to be killing gods anyway.

However, I hate HATE d&d essentails, and have yet to try 5.0, or "next" as I've seen it called. 4.0 sold relatively well. It didn't do as well as 3.5, but I think a large reason for that is simply because of the evolution of technology. I'll admit that I only ever bought the core book, and downloaded all the expansions in PDF form (as well as getting the core book) because carrying around all those books is not only a pain, but also a social pariah. I'd rather just have a thumb drive.



Which Star Wars are we talking about? Because there's only one Star Wars TCG I know of, and I haven't seen anybody play it in literally years, and I know multiple people that quit it because nobody plays it.

YuGiOh isn't complicated on a base level. Its just the designers don't actually know how to balance a game, and don't care about the Legacy style format of the game. It's similar to Magic, where you have a lot of what's going on based on the words on the individual cards. Except, like I said, the YuGiOh designers don't really know what they're doing. And for what its worth, the game is pretty wretched. And I'm not saying that just because I'm biased towards Magic, or biased against the average YuGiOh player stereotype.

I was talking about the Decipher game, not Garfields WotC game (which had its merits as well, but sold sadly as well).

Also on 4.0, its poor sales weren't totally because it was an expy of WoW, and everyone who table topped avoided it like the plague (the "Hardcores").

Largely, I agree that graveyard order is uneeded complexity, but I would like to see the occasional card dig its way to the top of the graveyard and burst out on the battlefield.

Graveyard order is... well, I find it somewhat debatable, frankly. I'm not broken up that it's not used anymore, because it makes playing decks that care about a subset of graveyard (usually creatures) easier to play: you move the relevant cards to the top for easy counting/access. On the other hand, closing it off closed off some really interesting and flavorful design space.

I think, overall, I'd like to see graveyard order back under a couple conditions:
1) Things only care about their owner's graveyard order. That way, if you have nothing graveyard order related in your deck, you can reorder for convenience in casual without having to worry about your opponent's deck.
2) The cares about graveyard order clause needs to be simplistic. "The top card of your graveyard" or "With a creature (directly) above it". I should be able to determine if GY order ability is active or not by glancing at a fanned 'yard

I'd be in favor of an oddball Zombify variant that says "put the top creature card in your graveyard onto the battlefield". I think Death Spark is pretty cool. So, interesting for a one-off deal, perhaps in a special product like Commander or Archenemy, but not going to come back in a major way nor should it (I say this right after walls matter became a thing again.)

but I like my trolling w/ the opponent's yard.

Also Shallow Grave.

You cannot change your graveyard order in Legacy formats - pretty much any format with a card dependent on graveyard order, you cannot move around your graveyard.

The major problem with these types of cards is that it isn't hard for a player to cheat with them. They're better off printing cards that say "if you have X of Y in your graveyard, do this" instead of caring about graveyard order.

But WotC learned from Odyssey that making the graveyard matter too much makes Limited a pain in the backside, along with slowing down constructed play a TON.

I never got that complaint. I played Odyssey (granted I didn't play limited), and I never saw the problem. It wasn't hard too fill your graveyard in Odyssey. I always felt the flavor was a bit off with that expansion, but never had any problems with the mechanics, and I actually enjoy Threshold.

I didn't say that the mechanics were bad. But requiring players to keep track of the GY just adds more complexity to the game. Having to check every turn to see the # of cards, which cards had flashback or other things which checked only in the GY.
The in play area is already usually full of lots of things, and it is just mentally taxing to have to add that much more.

Do gamers not like to be mentally taxed anymore?

this may surprise you

but not many people like having to remember the exact order of their graveyard for cards that were printed like 15 years ago that see basically no use

we don't mind being mentally taxed, but no one wants to waste their own time for some **** cards

I was taught the opposite, a good Magic player has an idea of what every card does, and a way to play around it.

Plus Ashen Ghoul is hardly a **** card...

Neither is Nether Spirit....