Many here know my somewhat rabid (LOL) stance against pre-existing CCG vernacular. I'm not terribly fond of it as I firmly believe that this great game (W:I) deserves to develop its own terminology. And to some extent it has, which is great. But while I'm not fond of using terms from other games (games I don't regard as highly, perhaps), I wouldn't mind at least knowing their definitions so that some of you actually make sense to me in here (mostly referring to our crossover Magic fans or players). LOL

So while I have some inkling what most of these are, feel free to post your definitions for some of these terms:

Aggro: ?? Weird term that somewhat baffles me as I see nothing about it to hint at what it may or may not mean.

Control or Control Deck: What type of deck is this referring to? At least this term implies or hints towards a meaning but I want to be sure.

Bounce: ?? Another term that doesn't seem to hint at its meaning very well. Who came up with some of these dorky terms? LOL

Feel free to add other non-W:I definitions that you think may prove informative so we can all communicate on the same page. An easier solution, honestly, would be to just not use pedantic terms from other CCGs that really aren't necessarily specific to W:I but people are lazy and will probably just use what's easiest and/or most familiar to them and I'm resigned to that fact. Sigh. LOL

The community around CCGs and other complex topics invariably form their own glossary of terms. That's not pedantic, it's practical because otherwise you have no succinct way to communicate. A whole lot of the strategy written about Magic and other CCGs are applicable to WH:I. That said, here are some definitions of the terms you wanted:

Aggro: a strategy that relies on winning quickly.

Control: a strategy that relies on controlling the game (e.g. via destroying everything your opponent plays) and winning the long game.

Bounce: returning something to hand.

Aggro simply refers to aggressive, sort of keep the pressure on even at the expense of some. I don't know where this started but it is most often used with rush decks in W:I. In other games, it means any deck (card games specific) that has its primary plan to be creature/unit/character beatdown. It is part of the rock/paper/scissors that is aggro-combo-control. Aggro also has some roots in video games, specifically FPS (first person shooters) and RTS (real-time strategy) games.

Control simply means that you have a deck that is meant to plod along slowly controling the tempo of the game only to some bomb late game and ride it to the win. A video game term synonymous with this would be "turtling". Sort of hiding under your shell until the opponent is sufficiently worn out so you can come out and get an easy win.

Bounce probably is a term that originated with M:tG. It simply means to return something to your hand.

*'Aggro' from 'aggressive'. We can use 'speedo' to refer to an 'expedient' or 'speedy' deck, but the term would be equally descriptive & arbitrary at the same time.

'Mill', 'milling' from the M:TG card Milstone, traditionally a big ass stone wheel that grinds down grain. I've also heard the term 'grind' refer to this strategy. Similarly, 'to deck [your opponent]' is also used. Since our Infiltrate does the same thing, makes sense to me to have a new term if people deem it necessary. Infiltration can refer to entry into an organization (espionage) and taking information or entry into a border of an area; i've heard both 'spy' and 'ilegal immigration' decks be used.

'Cheese' referring to red M:TG decks that mainly dealt damage directly to the capital (or whatever its called) quickly & repeatedly. Luckily we don't really have that here too much and I think the designers are trying to avoid that (hopefully!). Still would be cheesy lol

all i can remember for now

Bounce is also used in different way in other games I know at least two different meanings :

- Important and "surprising" increase of potential damage for exemple a card such as Waaagh can be a bounce card.

- Send a "bad effect" that target ourself or one of our unit to another player or unit, for exemple Blessing of Valaya

I think I'll stick with milling or decking, seeing as W:I has both Infiltrate! and Infiltrate, and they are pulling in opposite directions.

I think it's funny that "indirect damage" in W:I is the closest thing to the "direct damage" of other card games (i.e. damage that goes directly to life totals or whatever, rather that indirectly through the attacking process).

Cheesy is an interesting one. If you google it with "strategy," you get a whole bunch of stuff about Starcarft, where it is in even wider circulation than it is in card games. See: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Cheese. The key elements are unidimensionality and unconventionality. I can see how it might have evolved from cheesy as an aesthetic evaluation, which has been around for over a hundred years: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cheesy. That entry also notes that cheesed, meaning "disgruntled" or "exasperated," which also seems close in meaning to the cheesy as applied to a strategy. I'm unsure if the baseball usage (e.g. "the high cheese") is related to either of these senses, but it seems possible.

cyberfunk said:

lol that's where it came from then...the group i played m:tg with in school all played Starcraft

Artemus Maximus said:

I doubt that using the term to describe a strategy originated with Starcraft, it's just employed frequently in groups of Starcraft players. Not really that surprising, given the number of Starcraft players. I certainly remember hearing cheesy and cheese during the early days of Star Wars CCG back in the mid-90s.

My intro to cheeze (with a Z ) is from Middle-Earth CCG. Main culprits: FW-Radagast and Balrog decks in general.

cyberfunk said:

of course. i meant that's how it meant its way into the lexicon of our group; through its association with starcraft, which is where it was most frequently used at the time.

Clamatius said:

I agree to some extent, Clamatius, but when people drag those terms over to an entirely new game and have the (somewhat strange) expectation that the players of that new game should auto-magically be familiar with those terms, that's when they end up being somewhat pedantic in their usage (and frankly, a wee bit annoying to boot).

Thanks for sharing your definitions and I appreciate your viewpoint on this matter.

To everyone who has posted so far: I've really enjoyed the videogame similarities - they've helped as much as anything for me to understand the etymology of these previously used CCG-slang terms better than I did before.

Hi,

A somewhat longer list of definitions :

Aggro - A deck, which's winning stategy primary based on the hitting power of creatures

Rush - A fast deck, based on sheer speed rather than late game play... it's often also an aggro deck (for example a winnie rush)

Control - a deck winning by controlling all possible aspects of the game, including your enemy actions in some extent by countering, bouncing, removal etc.

Bounce - An effect that sends back a card into hand

Counter/Counterspell - An effect which cancels another effect or card directly. There are two types : soft counters (they have some built-in way to play around, like paying extra resources or sacrificing something) and hard counters (which works except if the counter effect somehow also countered)

Fatty - a big, strong creature

Tutoring - an effect which enables you to search your deck or a part of it for a card

Card denial - Anything what tampers with the quality or quantity of cards your opponent could use (discard effects, card draw denial, removing cards from opponent deck etc.)

Currently no more definitions comes into my mind, but it's half past midnight here, and I'm a little bit tired.

Thanks, Cain Hu - I'd wondered when you might chime in as you seemed pretty up-to-date on these definitions.

I dislike the Tutoring term and probably won't ever use it as it's too distinctly tied to a specific card from a different game (Magic). I'll probably use a more accurate (and for me) appropriate term: Fishing.

A term I dislike from M:tG vernacular is "milling" as it is so very specific to Magic and its cards.

Along with "tutoring" for the same reason.

Generic terms I can abide by, but I think Invasion deserves a new term for each of these above instances that reference specific M:tG cards.

Yeah, I remember puzzling over "tutor" back when I first got into card games (I didn't start with Magic). The meaning was clear, but the etymology was not obvious. Though I never played the game, I always liked Star Trek's term for this mechanic: downloading. Thematic and self-explanatory. Not sure if there is one that works for a fantasy setting; "fishing" sounds more like a search top X cards type of effect.

WHAAAT!?!?! Noooooobody has uttered the most obligatory of ALL Magic terms? Ay caramba. I am sore ashamed of all you longtimers in here who began their cardgaming with Magic: the oldGeezer back in '92 like I did. That term being:

Tap: to turn a card horizontally, or at a 90 degree angle from its conventional orientation. See: boot, tack, rotate, exhaust, activate, crank, turn, sleep, lock, fatigue, put in the penalty box, scratch, drain, bow, and corrupt. Related terms: charge, poison, make wanted, attempt Jedi Test #5 to turn a card upside down, or 180 degrees from its conventional orientation.

Oh, and on the topic of card game lingo, Wytefang, by naming the thread "Vernacular from OTHER CCGs......" you're accidentally lumping this august, stately LCG in with those collectible things, using an acronym first employed by Decipher, Inc. in reference to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Austin Powers, Star Trek, and its other customizable card games, which the first 'C' actually stood for. After they trademarked the term, everyone started using collectible. As many of us know, WotC doesn't even use those letters; their games are Trading Card Games. *riiiinnnngg*

Hold on, now, class. The bell doesn't dismiss you, I do. Read the chapters on fast effects and rainbow decks. And if you haven't turned in your essays on sideboards, you have until Monday! Have a nice weekend.

I realllly hate how the post editor takes out underscores and dashes on posts when they're published. The word 'tap' was supposed to be underscored, and they're was suppossed to be a dash after 'Jedi Test #5'. No biggie, just mildly confusing without them.

Tell me about it. I use the dash like it's going out of style (which, I guess, it kind of is) and I always forget that the FFG forums don't like it. I wonder if it will still do it if you use the special character button - we'll find out!

...and there was much rejoicing.

The thing about "Tap" is though, that there actually IS a word for it in W:I. Other than when I am trying to specifically teach a M:tG player how to play W:I, I don't really hear or see too many people refer to corrupting as tapping.

I agree that Tutor and Mill are very specific to M:tG and there should be terms made specifically for W:I for these things. I prefer generic terms like Search for tutor. I do say Mill though and I am not really sure what you could call it in W:I that would be just as short.

Counter is a little more grey. It is refering to a specific card in M:tG, but it is also used in so many other card games in text that says "counter the effect" or something similar. Although I have heard some people go as far as just calling it "No".

cyberfunk said:

Overseer Lazarus said:

I enjoyed this post. And you are correct, good sir, I did lump this in with the other games now, didn't I? D'oh! I shall serve my term humbly in detention. Sigh.

Wytefang said:

Well, I'm not that up to date as it seems like

I had my share of "definition mayhem" when I changed from the venerable OOP hungarian Mythos (Mítosz) CCG to Magic years ago. Sometimes I still call my active creatures as "line of leaders". It's interesting that those old experiences with that game still effects my playing style, both in W:I and in MtG.

Back on topic :

You are right about Fishing.

I feel Decking a good word for "milling", as it is pretty easily understandable. I feel most definitions should at least hint on their meaning.

Mass Removal - An effect which could possibly remove multiple units from the game without targeting a concrete unit or a well defined group of units. (in W:I its Troll Vomit, Pestilence, Jugement, Phoenix fire, Brutal Offering)

(Off : my nickname is simply Cain, the HU tag is only for the country in english language forums)

Certainly I think any new card game is going to have, at this point in the life-cycle of mass produced CCG's, a lot of word-baggage which is taken from game to game. I also play MMO's and certainly when I've played Warhammer, Conan, Star Trek Online and even City of Heroes/Villians I found a lot of the World of Warcraft terms were used in common parlance. I just think it's basic human nature to relate to things you already know and understand when faced with similar concepts, and while WH:I is a different game there are game mechanics which are both similar and in some cases identical. You might see a card which returns a target unit to someones hand, a MTG player see's boomer-rang, you might see Troll Vomit, a MTG player see's Wrath of God.

While I can see why this might be slightly dis-concerting to people who don't understand that words usage or the reference, I think to declare that the way other people view the world is something you dislike isn't particularly going to get you anywhere, particularly on a medium such as the internet where persuading someone about your point of view is like trying to catch air with your bare hands. I've played Magic, Shadowrun and the Raw Deal CCG over the years and certainly I relate to cards and see cards, though the lens of both this experience and the terminology used by these games. When I see Defend Tor Aendris, I see a potential soft-lock strategy. even though the words Soft-lock probably has little meaning to those people who haven't played Raw Deal.

One of the comments that I just let pass a few days back on these boards was someones stated "hatred" of the word Metagame. Which I thought was both un-informed and slightly narrow as the person clearly didn't understand the root of the word. The Meta-prefix (which roughly translates from Latin as: for beyond the) on the word game has a long background and was applied to a number of different environments before CCG's came along. The game beyond the game has applications to chess (where is you can predict an opponents strategy you can play accordingly from the start), poker, politics and military strategy. Indeed, the root of the entire field of mathematical Game Theory is trying to understand what happens when actors with different levels of knowledge about the "playing environment" interact.

As for words I commonly use from other CCG's (I won't go over ones people have already mentioned)

Soft-Lock: A strategy where a combination of cards means that while the opponent can act, there actions are pointless and futile. Think the already mentioned Defend Tor Aendris, with a Dragonmage on it, who has toughness and cannot be corrupted. If you have the cards to prevent unit removal as well, you effectively have a soft lock on the opponent. He can attack, flail against you, but ultimately it's pointless. The same with the Wake the Dragon+Gifts of Aenarion infinate combo.

Hard-Lock: This is were you literally counter every single action an opponent does. Everything. They try and play a card, you counter it, if they get it on the table, you kill it, or boomerrang it back to their hands. This strategy requires a lot of reversals in the game, which WH:I doesn't have at the moment, though Raw Deal Players will recognise this as Kane/Dude Love and MTG players will recognise this as a standard white/blue deck.

Switch: A deck which has a change point in it, at which point it will usually unleash it's kill mechanism. Lots of combinations here Step Up Switch is usually a stall deck which gets to a certain key number/resource point etc and then unleashes death. In WH:I the High Elf Stall/Repeater Bolter deck is an example of this. Step Down Switch is when you, at some point, turn on the gas of a more grinding strategy like inflitrate (millstone/dingus egg etc for those MTG players).

Goldfishing: Testing your deck against an imaginary non-responsive opponent to calculate kill times etc. You might practice the opening few turns on your Orc Speed deck for example and work on optimising that deck so that it can kill a goldfish in the first 3 turns of any game. Usually it's the first layer of testing you do before even thinking of showing the deck to your friends or going to a tournament. Unfortunately also a useless test for control/denial decks though you can modify the goldfish to be more responsive.

I could write more, but I'll just finish by re-iterating my point that "hating" the use of Magic terms is a pointless excerise in futility, especially on an internet messageboard. That said, that hasn't stopped many a message board trying in the past!

Also trying to get somone to stop viewing the world in a particular way due to their experirence isn't a great way to encourage new players, who may play other card games currently, to start playing WH:I. A FFG marketing slogan of "hey come play WH:I, it's great, but don't you dare utter your heathen MTG words dumbass!" isn't exactly what I can imagine a successful marketing campaign is built upon. To grow the game I would suggest acceptance and inclusive-ness or a variety of approaches rather than trying to define the language rigidly is a better goal.

Soft-Lock and Hard-Lock are actually a little different in M:tG.

Soft-Lock is a lock on the game, but the opponent can still do things and potentially get out of the lock. An example of this in W:I would be the Infinite Gifts of Aenarion combo because the opponent can still get around it with uncancellable damage and killing the unit on the quest.

Hard-Lock is a lock on the game that cannot be gotten around. There are currently no hard-lock strategies in W:I to my knowledge. For M:tG players, this is like Painter's Servant + Iona. Basically makes it so your opponent can't play any cards for the rest of the game.