This thread wasn’t getting enough unique replies so lets talk about why many of the CCGs of the past failed.

I’ve played many games over the years so I’ll only comment on really well known games or ones I have played.

Superdeck

The reviews of this all agreed. Lame art, Lame Superheroes, And the gameplay was like War.

I never touched it and it was a spectacular failure.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

My first CCG. I saw the cards in Science Fiction Book Club and once I realized there were more cards then what I recieved I checked out a comic book store that sold CCGs. They had a play area set aside where 2 guys were playing.

I watched them for a bit then bought some more cards. One of them gave me some staple commons which is a great way to get someone hooked into the game.

I came back on the weekend and more people were playing Magic the Gathering then STtNG. I got into it and I was hooked. For awhile I tried playing both but as more people played Magic and opponents for STtNG were harder to find I stopped playing it.

STnNG didn’t fail but it did poorly early on for 2 very common reasons.

1. Game Balance. To start the game you and your opponent take turns setting down locations then you each put down mission obstacles at each location. Your opponents are unknown to you. Then you would hopefully play a ship, Staff it with a crew that can hopefully overcome both your known obstacles and your opponents unknown ones. The problem was that the stars of the show such as Picard, Data, Laforge etc… were so much better at beating obstacles then 90+% of the other characters that if you didn’t have them you couldn’t compete. That leads to…

2. Overpowered Rares. The theory was simple. Make overpowered rares so that whoever buys the most packs has the best chance of winning. It sounds good but it leads to a major problem. The guy who blew all that cash on a killer deck is viewed as a douchebag and no one will play with him. If people don’t want to play your game it will often fail.

STtNG actually did well because they put out an expansion that included many cards that trumped the overpowered ones from the core set thus giving players a chance to compete with the douchebags.

Spellfire

This one suffered from lousy art and some cards were vastly more powerful then others. However the game sucked so hard you could buy an entire collection by saving up your lunch money. This suffered mostly from bad press.

Middle-earth

This suffered from 2 new problems.

1. Using the cards to produce random numbers. This was stupid for 2 reasons. First of all some cards had such high numbers on them that flipping them for a result nearly bumured victory and secondly having to flip cards constantly to get results wore out the already flimsy card stock even faster. Card sleeves hadn’t really caught on yet.

2. No one gave a **** about Middle-earth. This was many years before the movies came out and not enough people were interested to buy it.

Highlander

The combat system killed this before it even started. Your opponent played a card that attacked 1 or more squares on a 3x3 grid and you played a move that blocked 1 or more squares. If you guessed wrong you took damage. If you guessed really wrong you lost your head. Promo cards that were way better then regular ones and that were hard to acquire made things worse.

Gridiron Fantasy Football

This was actually a fun game. But it suffered from 2 major problems.

1. Overpowered Promos and Chase Rares that made it nearly impossible to beat the guy who had them. (Sensing a theme yet?)

2. Damaging your opponents team members prevented them from playing them. So if your Quarterback took a hit you might not be able to play him for x amount of downs. The game was actually very violent and you could kill opposing team members. A killed player could never be used again by that player, They had to trade it off.

And of course people made decks that didn’t try to win it just tried to kill opposing team members. Telling players they can’t play with their cards was just stupid.

XXXenophile

Yes the adult themed CCG. This failed for several reasons.

1. Gamers are guys and the game was basically an advanced version of foreplay. No thank you.

2. Phil and Kaja Foglio are great artists but the art was really hit and miss. Plus much of it was male nudity.

3. The game play sucked and sometimes had you ripping up cards.

An amusing gimmick but a lousy game.

The X-Files

This was an advanced version of clue. I knew a lot of people who collected the cards but almost no one played it. One of the early examples of how an awesome license can be enough to carry a bad game.

Eventually the CCG market go so flooded that games couldn’t survive major screw ups. I stuck to MtG and stopped wasting my money on games that sucked even if I liked the source material.

Yes it had nudity. The art was hit an