Munchkin might come in litle foil packs, but they don't function like TCG packs at all. A single pool of Munchkin cards is used by everybody playing the game. You don't use Munchkin cards to build your own individual deck, or I guess you do, but you do it over the course of the game. Also, I'm pretty sure they're not randomized.

I have. I do too but I'm not sure how much lasting power it has. Maybe because I've just played with the same people using at least one of the same decks. Maybe if we totally randomized the deck selection. Also, fairies just seems decidedly worse than the other options.

Im not sure the expansion packs could be put in the same realm of boosters. They're stand alone play sets, and have the exact same contents in every box.

Admittedly, I'm not too experienced on the topic, since I think Munchkin is terrible. However, my card shop has 15-card munchkin boosters. I don't know if they are randomized or not, but I'd imagine that they are.

Not really a deckbuilder.
It's fine. I play it with my brother, but most other people I introduce it to don't like it. Plants are pretty scary.

Faeries as in Tricksters?
I seem to recall that they are pretty good against Steampunk. I can't remember their deck very well though.

Faeries are really good against some of the decks, terrible against others. More so than the other decks. They have some of the most powerful action cards.

Huh! 15 card packs definitely fit the bill. Didnt even know they exist. Wonder if they include cards you cant get in the standard box sets like magic, or are simple small packs to build on to your decks.

The munchkin website lists them under very different names, so I would assume the boosters have different things in at least some of them.

That being said, from what a google search told me they are basically just 15 card xpacs and not randomized.

Munchkin sucks after 10 games/no drinking and swearing at 2 AM.

Munchkin sucks after 10 games/no drinking and swearing at 2 AM.

Double posts suck always.

Touche

Munchkins is fun once or twice, but after that, it really loses its fun.

~SE++

I own but don't enjoy Munchkin

I own and enjoy Dominion but I am aware of the issues that have nothing to do with the art / theme.

First issue is that some of the most powerful cards are 'always available' like Gold. A strategic kingdom card deck using whatever cards are in the mix can lose to a boring deck that can be built in any game.

Second issue is that some mixtures of kingdom cards lead to terrible games. There is no influx of new choices during the game so you're stuck with that mix unless players agree to quit.

I have Ascension on my phone and I've played it much more but part of the fun is smashing the AI and not having to worry about the mechanics. Slow games with real cards aren't as fun

It can lose, but it's very, very unlikely. The dominant strategy for a board will almost invariably include kingdom cards, although it may just be double Jack.
I'm not sure what you mean with terrible games, but that sounds heavily subjective. People have different preferences in strategies.

Of course any deck will include a few kingdom cards, but I mean they won't be the focus of the deck. Even in the starter game set up you might use a couple of mines and a couple of cellars and the rest money.

A terrible game is something you know when you see it. Same as some magic decks aren't fun to play / to play against, even if a fraction of players do enjoy them.

Pretty sure BMU is better without a cellar. If you pick up a cellar, there's most assuredly something interesting going on.
Not entirely sure about mine, but it's pretty bad as well.
Core games have a tendency to be bland though. But having watched decent players, they're usually able to find something worthwhile that isn't entirely economic.

Some dominion games can be oppressive, but it's very hard to pseudo-lock someone out. If there is, you can probably discover it during setup. For other strategies, I don't think there will be a clear consensus. I like both garden slogs and combos, but others are less entertained by my capability of running through my deck each turn.

I won one game with 13 points. There was a witch and no way of trashing curses. There was also a thief, so it wasn't safe to offset your curse-flood with big money. There weren't any powerful combos to get money without treasure cards like festival + smithy.

Some of the cards get obsoleted by presence or absence of other cards. Who wants to bureaucrat if other players have thieves? What good is a Feast without a Throne room or a really important 5-drop card? Who wants chancellor or woodcutter when Silver is usually better?

I've played both Ascension and the Penny Arcade deckbuilding game quite a few times. I was really into them for a while, but they've sort of fallen out of interest for me at this point. I guess I just didn't feel like I was making many complex decisions during the game.

I recently fell in love with the game Trains, though. That game does an amazing job of using deckbuilding as a component to create interesting gameplay.

Is the Penny Arcade game any good?

~SE++

If you've only played an Ascension-style random-availability deckbuilding game, then Penny Arcade is nice to have around for variety. In Penny Arcade, there's no face-down center deck. Instead you have sixteen face-up piles, which each contain one type of card, like the Mystic and Heavy Infantry piles in Ascension. The unpredictability of Ascension can be fun sometimes, but Penny Arcade allows you to plan ahead a bit more. You also get twice as many different cards as you actually use in a single game, so you can get some decent variety by switching up which piles you play with.

The cons are that the card effects are generally pretty simple, and the game doesn't push card synergy as much as Ascension does.

Overall, if you enjoy Ascension, I'd recommend trying Penny Arcade, as long as you're okay with a bit of lewd humor.