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Card games were enjoyed throughout the history of mankind for over a millennium (depending on location), each had their own rules and could have really impressive patterns and illustrations adorning them.
What about trading card games? What makes them stand out? Let's find out!
Trading card games (TCGs) or collectible card games (CCGs) are a type of turn-based, deck building strategy games. But you can also simply collect the cards without playing the actual game!
One of the most well known TCGs is Magic: The Gathering, known for a very dedicated fan base and quite an impressive amount of existing cards (around 27 thousand unique cards!).
The cards themselves can be purchased or traded (hence the name!) between individual players, with each card having its own unique value and rarity.
Depending on what TCGs you’re playing, you’ll have different requirements and rules. And unless you’re playing in a tournament, there’s nothing stopping you from simply getting your decks and playing a friendly match.
If you have a deck that is! Which is quite an important part of participating in TCGs…
So to start off, as a player you need to own an actual deck of TCG cards.
You can either buy a starting deck or have a friend share one of his. Each deck is meant to be relatively balanced in terms of resources cards, combat and utility spells and monsters/summons.
As you’ll probably quickly find out, a lot of strategy relies on your game knowledge and personally tailoring your deck.
Best to start off slow though and try not to play against veterans, it might be quite a crushing experience.
Each individual TCG will have different rules and how they’re played, some games rely heavily on players' knowledge and understanding of the rules and comprehension of what each individual card actually does (Yugioh). And then there’s building a powerful deck with high synergy and countermeasures against other decks (Magic: The Gathering).
All in all, the main objective is reducing your opponent's life points by the use of summons/monsters/magic and other effects.
How you achieve that is up to you and how well you play your cards.
These vary in complexity depending on each individual deck of the players. The basic decks shouldn’t require checking the rulebook too often.
But once you’ve got some rare cards, the game can become quite puzzling for newer players.
It’s virtually impossible to go into specifics of every TCG, so we’ll skim over the general idea of a typical game.
Think of this as a preparation bit of the game. This is where you build up your deck, prepare the overall strategies you might be employing and potentially find out some information about who you’re facing if you’re planning on countering your opponent's deck.
Preparation is as important as playing the actual game, so if you’re planning on winning, this is where you should focus your effort.
Each player starts the game by drawing the initial hand and (depending on the rules) can decide to redraw them in case they’re not satisfied with it.
After the coin toss decides who goes first, the first player draws an additional card from the deck.
After that, the player can summon monsters, artefacts, cast magic, summon resource cards etc.
As new summons/magic/effects take place, the turns become more complex.
If the player has summoned cards capable of attacking and there’s no rule/ability stopping them from attacking, they can perform offensive action to directly attack the opponent.
After a player concludes their turn and doesn't use any cards that grant him extra turn, the next player can begin his own phase.
Again, this is extremely simplified as each individual TCG has its own complex systems to spice things up.
As mentioned above, when a player has a monster/summon ready to attack deployed on the field, he can perform offensive action against his opponent. If your adversary possesses his own creatures on the battlefield, he can use them to block the attack.
Their individual stats are then pitted against each other, allowing them to either defeat one another or block each other without being destroyed in the process. If the aggressor defeats the defender, any damage that exceeds the defensive power of the card is then applied directly to the life points of the defending player.
Unless the card specifically allows you to attack multiple times or a special ability is played, each can only attack once per turn.
The game is over once the opponent's life points reaches 0 and there aren’t any other effects that could reverse that or turn it around.
Either that or you possess a card that allows you to perform some hard to achieve feat at the start of your turn or summon a set of cards that immediately grant you victory.
It’s quite possible to turn around a losing game into a win, so don’t let the overconfidence be your downfall.
Whether you’ve won or not, don’t let that discourage you from challenging new opponents. Each new game lets you grow your knowledge and potentially find new interesting cards you might wish to add to your own deck.
There are certain themes in TCGs that allow players to synergise them together. Magic: The Gathering for example has mana that corresponds to either white, blue, red, green, black or colourless.
If you have a deck with white cards, you’ll benefit from white mana and you’ll have cards that supply it, there are also cards that require any kind of mana and can be mixed basically into any deck.
Other than specific themes, you can also break down cards into summons/abilities/trap cards/spells etc.
Each TCG can have different implementations to make their games exciting and unique enough to be interesting.
Having a popular franchise, like pokemon for example, definitely helps as well!
So what should a newcomer expect from joining an already existing community of TCGs players?
Surprisingly, latecomers can actually benefit greatly from the knowledge of their seniors. Thanks to the invention and popularisation of the internet, players can learn about the game before even buying the first deck.
Moreover, actually watch people play matches online before starting a journey themselves.
While not recommended for starters as it’ll simply cause frustration with the game, competitive games could be seen as a culmination of the TCG experience.
You start the game, build up your deck and skills, challenge stronger opponents till you become a high ranking player and eventually become best/most recognised champion.
It’s definitely a lengthy process but the joy of challenging yourself and creating new ways of playing can be really fun.
So long as you actually enjoy the game and not just winning…
Before the internet was at its peak, trading cards was based more on individual preference, meaning that each card's value and rarity was decided by the players themselves on a small scale.
Today you could simply search online for the card you’re interested in and compare the prices or trade-in value.
While the “magic” of such a transaction is lost, it can still be enjoyable and you may still find some players who prefer the less “rigid” trading style.
Funnily enough, TCGs usually start as the outcome rather than the source of the cultural impact.
Magic: The Gathering was created due to the creator’s interest in D&D and his take on it, which was at the time when D&D greatly enjoyed its popularity.
The Yugioh franchise became popular after the mangaka noticed that the manga had received a very high amount of attention at the introduction of the TCG aspect and decided to focus on that.
Before Yugioh had the protagonist’s alter-ego play “games” against other characters as “punishment games” and had a lot more… darker themes.
Today the successful TCGs are often referenced in other media, either as a tribute or an easter egg for the fans of each franchise.
Collecting items is a generally enjoyable hobby.
Once combined with a competitive game that requires a certain knowledge and effort to succeed adds to its allure.
Best way is to start playing with immediate friends/family and then potentially visit tournaments to expand your skills against more professional players and participate in the most current meta.
A card that has a unique image/picture of a person or character with a description and being part of some sort of larger whole that you can exchange with other interested parties or people.
Its value can vary depending on rarity and functionality (if part of a game).
Pokemon does have its own trading card game within its wide franchise. If you’re a fan of the franchise you’re bound to enjoy catching(collecting) them all.
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