2 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

For full options, you'd need to get 3 cores, which is $40 apiece, which is $120 total. (This being a complete playset of core cards) each dynasty pack will give you 20 new cards, three copies each, so only one copy of the dynasty is needed, at $15. six dynasty packs means roughly $210 over the course of a cycle to guarantee a playset.

You can compare this to a CCG where an entire booster box is around $100, with a set distribution model of rare and ultra rare cards. With the rarity distribution it is impossible to get all of the highest rarity level in one box, which will only contain 5/6 of that kind of rarity, while the game usually has at least 10.

You can buy a second booster box, but that doesn't guarantee you the remaining Ultra rares you don't have, or even a playable set of what you already have, so assuming you don't just buy another booster box, you have to go onto the secondary market to get the full playset of these rare cards (which are very good cards needed to be competetive) and they aren't cheap, prices can range anywhere from 5 to 20 dollars per card. With 10 ultra rares that cost you $10 each, to just get one copy of each is a $100, to get a full playset is $300.

So while a complete set of an LCG isn't a cheap thing, it is, as a whole, cheaper than a CCG.

And you can't put a price on the piece of mind you gain from knowing you will get every single card when you buy a product. You can spend your money knowing you will get what you want.

Yeah the big thing with an LCG is you don't need to hunt for rares. You can easily budget for this game and know you'll have the freedom to deck build with the entire released card pool. No one player will have an advantage because they got lucky with their packs or were prepared to pay way more than you for rares. For this reason LCGs are perfect for competitive card players who enjoyed constructed play. There is no way for you to have a similar experience in a CCG constructed environment without paying ridiculous amounts of money to collect each season's card set, That said for some people that is the hobby and it's what they enjoy doing.

Where CCGs still have the edge I think is in the casual "I'll just pick up a few cheap starter decks and a couple boosters and play a bit with my friends" crowd. Also the crowd that loves draft play. Both of those modes of play will be infinitely more economical in the CCG model games because they can afford to sell product for cheap since they make it up in bulk also those players can supplement their gamer income by selling cards for profit on the secondary market which is not really a thing for LCGs.

Correct. The best part in my personal opinion is that puts people on the same effective base level. So traditionally building and knowing your deck is more important than playing the 'best' deck. Not that there won't be power dispararities just that they will be smaller and shorn up by player skill and players inventive ways to deal with problematic scenarios in deck building. The secondary market thrives off of promotional items only but there is a sustainable stable sales generation... So long as they keep things marginally balanced.

1 hour ago, caseycheesecake said:

Thanks for all that info, but what about this part?

To get full options, wouldn't it cost $40 for the core + $15 x7 for each clan? That's about $150 right there.

And what experience are you referring to here? You bought the game last week and started playing already?

The game has had enough cards spoiled for some time to print up copies and play. The full list of cards wasn't spoiled, so the games were not a 100% representation of what the game would become, but we have been able to experience probably 90% of the game for some weeks.

As others have said

1 hour ago, RandomJC said:

For full options, you'd need to get 3 cores, which is $40 apiece, which is $120 total. (This being a complete playset of core cards) each dynasty pack will give you 20 new cards, three copies each, so only one copy of the dynasty is needed, at $15. six dynasty packs means roughly $210 over the course of a cycle to guarantee a playset.

You can compare this to a CCG where an entire booster box is around $100, with a set distribution model of rare and ultra rare cards. With the rarity distribution it is impossible to get all of the highest rarity level in one box, which will only contain 5/6 of that kind of rarity, while the game usually has at least 10.

You can buy a second booster box, but that doesn't guarantee you the remaining Ultra rares you don't have, or even a playable set of what you already have, so assuming you don't just buy another booster box, you have to go onto the secondary market to get the full playset of these rare cards (which are very good cards needed to be competetive) and they aren't cheap, prices can range anywhere from 5 to 20 dollars per card. With 10 ultra rares that cost you $10 each, to just get one copy of each is a $100, to get a full playset is $300.

So while a complete set of an LCG isn't a cheap thing, it is, as a whole, cheaper than a CCG.

I just want to add my experience. I played the MLP CCG when it was first released. I was able to buy just a starter theme deck to start playing, but as we played each other the natural arms race of the CCG kicked in. I ended up spending about $600 for each release of the game to buy a dozen booster boxes, and 3 of every theme deck to acquire a playeset of all cards. The booster boxes still didn't give me play sets, so I had to trade and buy / sell further to actually complete the play set. I could have forgone all of the purchases to buy ONLY the cards I needed, but what happens when the cards you need change? Or you want to experiment with something? Gotta dump that money. This is the reason I will never play a CCG again. The arms race to acquire top power cards in full play sets to fully compete demands a heavy price. I spent well over $3000 in the course of 4 sets on MLP CCG. The only saving grace was that I was able to sell off my card supply for about $1500 when I finally called it quits.

More than anything what I love about the LCG model is the fairness of equal resources. It is not difficult to have a full set of the cards you need. Even if you start late, you can buy the specific boxes that have the cards you would want for your deck / play style very easily without having to buy it all, or pay premium prices for older cards (LCG are never completely out of print.) When I played MLP CCG it was very tough to give advice to players who couldn't dump money like I did to get play sets of everything. Guiding them through sub-optimal cards so they can win some games was tough because they could never compete against an optimized deck built with a full collection. That is not a problem in LCG, which means it is mostly about your ability to build decks, and play the game that determines winners - not how much money you dumped on it.

1 minute ago, shosuko said:

I just want to add my experience. I played the MLP CCG when it was first released. I was able to buy just a starter theme deck to start playing, but as we played each other the natural arms race of the CCG kicked in. I ended up spending about $600 for each release of the game to buy a dozen booster boxes, and 3 of every theme deck to acquire a playeset of all cards. The booster boxes still didn't give me play sets, so I had to trade and buy / sell further to actually complete the play set. I could have forgone all of the purchases to buy ONLY the cards I needed, but what happens when the cards you need change? Or you want to experiment with something? Gotta dump that money. This is the reason I will never play a CCG again. The arms race to acquire top power cards in full play sets to fully compete demands a heavy price. I spent well over $3000 in the course of 4 sets on MLP CCG. The only saving grace was that I was able to sell off my card supply for about $1500 when I finally called it quits.

I've always been curious about the MLP CCG, if it was any good or not. But wow, yeah, lots of money down that hole.

I would never play a CCG in a constructed format again.

ADD: As evidence I love FFG as a company and I've got no interest in collecting Destiny. Looks like a fun game and the art on the card and dice look great, but the issues with the distribution model just casts a cloud over all that for me.

16 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

I've always been curious about the MLP CCG, if it was any good or not. But wow, yeah, lots of money down that hole.

The game is a mixed bag. There are some very fun things about it, and there are some very awkward things about it. The #1 most awkward thing to me (as a bronie) is that it was a competitive game... I actually never liked how cut throat and unfair the game was against your opponent for a game made out of "friendship is magic." Sadly there were some friendships made, and lost over that game

The company that made it was entirely new to card games. Before they made collectible trading cards but not games. They did have some unique ideas for the game that made it fresh, and it was pretty tactical in play. They had a VERY well designed comprehensive rules document that was a living document for easy revisions, and the game elements and concepts were broken down and explained in a way that was better than any I had seen before. Their main problem was missing the mark on game balance, and lacking a bit of foresight into card combinations that would break the game creating MASSIVE NPE. The game was naturally non-interactive for the first 2 sets. When it wasn't your turn you had very little to do. Couple this with a 100% deck draw / recursion combo and you can imagine how bad it is losing to a deck that takes 20 minutes to win in 1 turn by drawing through the entire deck several times getting the pieces into play to eventually score 1 point per deck cycle (game wins at 15 points) and the rage that built over it.

At Gencon I went to play and there was a real WTF moment at the table when the judges had to watch someone playing this type of combo deck. Many players had tried to get the company to ban some cards, or change some rules to prevent this deck from making it to the Gencon Nationals for the card game, but they were too slow to move. The game designers and promoters saw the frustration first hand as there was almost a literal-table-flip moment when a player was exposed to this combo deck for the first time, on the receiving end of the monotony. They put up a ban list after this.

2 minutes ago, shosuko said:

The game is a mixed bag. There are some very fun things about it, and there are some very awkward things about it. The #1 most awkward thing to me (as a bronie) is that it was a competitive game... I actually never liked how cut throat and unfair the game was against your opponent for a game made out of "friendship is magic." Sadly there were some friendships made, and lost over that game

The company that made it was entirely new to card games. Before they made collectible trading cards but not games. They did have some unique ideas for the game that made it fresh, and it was pretty tactical in play. They had a VERY well designed comprehensive rules document that was a living document for easy revisions, and the game elements and concepts were broken down and explained in a way that was better than any I had seen before. Their main problem was missing the mark on game balance, and lacking a bit of foresight into card combinations that would break the game creating MASSIVE NPE. The game was naturally non-interactive for the first 3 sets. When it wasn't your turn you had very little to do. Couple this with a 100% deck draw / recursion combo and you can imagine how bad it is losing to a deck that takes 20 minutes to win in 1 turn by drawing through the entire deck several times getting the pieces into play to eventually score 1 point per deck cycle (game wins at 15 points) and you can imagine the rage that built over it.

At Gencon I went to play and there was a real WTF moment at the table when the judges had to watch someone playing this type of combo deck. Many players had tried to get the company to ban some cards, or change some rules to prevent this deck from making it to the Gencon Nationals for the card game, but they were too slow to move. The game designers and promoters saw the frustration first hand as there was almost a table-flip moment when a player was exposed to this combo deck for the first time, on the receiving end of the monotony. They put up a ban list after this.

That's kind of sad to see in a game, and that they were so slow to see the mistakes. Suppose it could have been worse from a first time designing a competitive card game. (I can't speak to the skill of the actual designers, obviously)

But yeah, god, I'd shoot myself if I wasn't able to do anything and lose turn 1. Stop playing the game right there.

1 hour ago, RandomJC said:

That's kind of sad to see in a game, and that they were so slow to see the mistakes. Suppose it could have been worse from a first time designing a competitive card game. (I can't speak to the skill of the actual designers, obviously)

But yeah, god, I'd shoot myself if I wasn't able to do anything and lose turn 1. Stop playing the game right there.

To clarify - it wouldn't go off on the first turn, it typically required 3 or 4 turns of doing absolutely nothing - but the fastest decks would only win in 5-6 turns... so doing nothing for 3 turns and then winning turn 4 was still horrible for your opponent who may have been racing as fast as the game allowed to win legitimately.

39 minutes ago, shosuko said:

To clarify - it wouldn't go off on the first turn, it typically required 3 or 4 turns of doing absolutely nothing - but the fastest decks would only win in 5-6 turns... so doing nothing for 3 turns and then winning turn 4 was still horrible for your opponent who may have been racing as fast as the game allowed to win legitimately.

Well, yes...that's only slightly better, I suppose.

L5R had a Infinite Honour Spider Combo one year. That was fun.

There has also been an Enlightenment Loop where you win in one turn too I think.

Just now, Cambeul no Oni said:

L5R had a Infinite Honour Spider Combo one year. That was fun.

There has also been an Enlightenment Loop where you win in one turn too I think.

It wasn't Jade legal, but when they first printed Finding the Harmony it did not restrict you from enlightenment victory. You could get Candle of the Void out, bow a character for 3 turns, then play the Ring of Void multiple times as a limited action, using Finding the Harmony to swap out the rings. Ring of Void swapped with Ring of Earth, Water, Fire, then playing Ring of Void a 4th time, and because you played 3 Kiho (Finding the Harmony) you could then play Ring of Air. I was able to put together a deck using Kyuden Hitomi to do this relatively fast with the 5 cards you get to put aside with the Stronghold.