Collectible Card Games: Helping the Community with Basic Strategy

The Beginning
For those of you who couldn't tell, I've been playing collectible card games for a long time (sometimes referring to them as "children's card games" thanks to Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged). Back when I was 8 years old in the year 1993; Magic the Gathering came out and it immediately became a popular hit. I had heard all about it but I had no idea how to play. All my friends had cards and I felt left out for a while. It wasn't until later that year or early the next year (around winter~ish time), would I get to go to a mall where they held a card show (not a large one- but it would be the one that changed my life). I bought my first starter deck of Magic cards (well before the advent of "Theme Deck" packaging) at this particular show. It was $9 I think for 60 Ice Age MTG cards. Later that week, I proceeded to teach myself how to play by reading the fine print in the small rule booklet. Most young 8-year-olds wouldn't do any reading, much less learn how to play, what was then, a very difficult game. Since then, I was fascinated by card games.

The Present
Once a week, usually on a Thursday, I go play children's card games at my local anime store (called HammerGirl Anime). There's a larger, more dedicated hobby shop nearby (seriously less than a mile away) called Millennium Games and Hobbies. Millennium is everything you could ever want in a hobby shop. It's big, plenty of play space, plenty of product offerings, cool people and weekly events (daily if you play all the games they hold events for!). However, the one large reason why I don't like playing there- it's because of the player base. The people who go to Millennium are hardcore gamers that fall into the typical demographic of male between the ages of 15 and 30. You'll see some deviation to that, but not much. I don't really play much at Millennium.

Millennium's Environment and Community
Most of the guys who play there, they've been playing strategy games since they were young. So to say that they're hardcore gamers (not necessarily of the video game variety), is quite an understatement. Some of them even participate in the extremely high profile gaming tournaments there. This type of environment breeds intense competition, and even though there are many nice players with great sportsmanship- there are those players who certainly are not great sportsmen. You can't really blame the establishment, because it's a great facility. These type of people are really just a by product of the type of environment they have have come to foster there. Because of the experience and nature of this environment, basic strategy is generally taken for granted. Everyone knows what to do given a set of situations for (relatively) optimal game play decisions. It's a good challenge to play there- but I would never want to play there with random people casually (tournament fee or otherwise).

Hammergirl's Environment
Cut to the Anime store. Currently the big game I play at the Anime store each week is Pokemon: Trading Card Game. It has had a long and changing history (a topic of another essay perhaps- one that I will not write because I am not completely familiar with it), but eventually it came to the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl expansions which made the game good again. The environment here is a little different. A long time ago when it was first started (by a friend of mine), there was one two hour session on Wednesdays. After so many months of running- the word spread and it got much more popular. The store's quarters were much smaller- so it ended up becoming so crowded that they created another session on Thursdays. Why did it fill up? Well, there are college-aged students who play- and run the events each week. But the similarity to Millennium really ends there. There are young children who come to play (as young as 5-years-old), and event some of their parents play too! This environment is much more casual and relaxed- where the attitude to have fun is much more prevalent than winning. We also wouldn't want to se a bad example for the kids, would we?

Hammergirl's Community
The community of Pokemon players is much more diverse, as you tend to see young kids, their parents, girls and boys. But since the atmosphere is more general, the average player tends to have less experience and less knowledge of general "best practices" than those of seasoned gamers who either learn it themselves, or learned from others playing games in the past.

Deck Clinic
These are the general best practices that apply for many collectible card games, but it is not evident to the casual gaming community. I recently have earned a reputation for "Deck Clinics". I stole the phrase from an old column called "Deck Clinic" from my favorite, old (and dead) CCG magazine called Scrye. The purpose of the article was to improve a Magic deck sent in from a reader. So basically what I do is sit down with the "patient" and look through their deck. I try to give advice to improve the deck for the casual player. I'm not the most familiar with the available card base and cannot provide specific card names that would be "perfect" because of that unfamiliarity. However, I have found that it tends to help the patient's deck if you give them general advice and tips/tricks for constructing and playing their decks- it usually ends up being better because their card pool is limited. Kids and college students don't have money, and parents are reluctant to spend money until they have all the card for decks- so I find that general advice is the best.

Basic Collectible Card Game Strategy
There are many general concepts for collectible card game strategies, and even more specific ones for each CCG. But most of these principles will hold true for most CCGs with a direct objective and straight forward play styles.

Card Advantage
The first and most basic thing all CCG players should understand is card advantage. It doesn't necessarily mean that you should have more cards than your opponents- that's not what it means. It means that you are able to have more options at your disposal. This is usually maximized with a combination of card drawing and deck thinning.

Deck Thinning
The more cards that you use to remove cards from your deck during gameplay- the better. Why? The simple answer is statistics. This is good because it will reduce the number of cards in deck. The cards that are taken out of your deck are usually put in hand, played or removed and are typically less powerful cards (as being able to search and remove powerful cards isn't as easy/prevalent in CCGs). This leaves all the good/more powerful cards in your deck. Combine this with Card Drawing to increase the odds of drawing that next card you need to win.

Card Drawing
The more cards you draw- the more options you have because you could draw more resources or useful cards. It also acts as a less directed form of deck thinning. General rule of thumb- card drawing is good.

Resource Acceleration
Whatever mechanisms in the game exist for cost- there might be a way to increase your resources and/or card plays each turn. The usual flow of the game will follow a typical path/number of card plays per turn as the game progressing (depending on play style and card mechanics available). If there is a way to increase the available resources and/or card plays per turn as the game progresses (especially if it deviates from the normal "tempo" of gameplay), that buys you significant advantages against your opponent(s) who cannot match or counter your strategy.

"Tempo"
This is a phrase that I coined myself for describing the state of the typical flow of the game. The general idea, is if you are doing something to maintain a position to have more usable options than your opponent(s) at any given time, you are increasing your tempo. Idle time, unused resources and other similar inefficiencies, lower your tempo. If you are more reactive to your opponent, you tend to have low tempo because you are waiting to use your options against something. If you are proactive (or even pre-emptive) towards your opponent, you have high tempo because you are presumably playing something that either gives you more options and/or increases your position/decreases your opponents' position. If each turn you can play something, that keeps your tempo high- where if you have renewing resources that go unused, that's undesirable wastefulness. The more you apply pressure on your opponent and make them be reactive, you are dictating the tempo of the game ("tempo" can be seen in other games such as chess). This is a controlling factor that isn't easily measurable, but any card player can admit that it is a part of many CCGs.

Card Quality
Each card has specific mechanics that interact with the game state somehow. The more mechanics it interacts with, the more options you'll typically have with it. Examine the mechanic(s), and see how much it affects the game. If it's some obscure card that affects one other card- it's pretty useless unless it's in a deck that abuses a combo. Look for cards that are strictly redundant- cards that are useless because there is a better card that is completely better than it in any way. In which case- only use the better card if possible. Basically the more options, abilities, interactive mechanics a card has, the better quality of card it will be. If it supports one of the above strategies, it is also a decent card. Each card is functionally unique, but can be classified with other cards that provide a similar function. But the more interaction and versatility, the better it is. Use these guidelines to determine which cards are good, and which ones are bad.

Deck Construction
First thing about this, is keep the deck slim and trim. Because the more cards you have, the less focused your strategy is. Just put the cards that are the cream of the crop- and card drawing/deck thinning will work its magic (pun intended!).

The next thing to think about in deck construction is card quality. For most casual players, they will only have their own limited card pool to work with. You must determine which properties of cards are valuable in your deck building strategy (this will change with game and deck play styles). Any cards that are mediocre and/or has limited options for its cost should not be considered if better options exist. Problem with this is that sometimes you must consider some lesser options to be able to give the deck the ability to balance/maintain the other strategies (tempo/card drawing/deck thinning).

Constructed Deck "Synergy"/Troubleshooting Your Own Deck
All of the above strategies to combine to provide something I refer to as "deck synergy". This is the ultimate measure of performance for a deck. How consistently well does it play? You can evaluate for yourself by asking yourself any number of questions about the deck.
- Do you have enough cards to play? Do you have too many cards you can't play?
- Do you have enough resources to play cards at the right time? Do you even get the right cards at the right time?
- Do you notice the deck doesn't do anything early/late in the game?
- Do you always find yourself trying to "keep up" or "catch up" with your opponent?
- Do you see a card (combination) that doesn't work so well or just sticks out like a sore thumb in your deck?
If you answered negatively to any of these questions, you can improve your deck. But remember, there's no such thing as a "perfect deck" because if there was, the game wouldn't be worth playing. You could rectify the problems with your deck with any of the above concepts. It's usually a trade-off to balance all of these strategies. You just have to pick and choose which works best for that deck.

Gaming Night: 4 booster Magic the Gathering draft

Let's break this down into parts to build the understanding foundation first before I go and just dive into the event (for fear of scaring people away who don't understand). If you already know about Magic the Gathering and card games, feel free to skip to the section called "That Night."

What Is Magic The Gathering?
It is a collectible card game that pits players against each other in magical warfare. Each player is essentially a wizard that draw upon mana to summon creatures and cast spells in order to eliminate the other wizards.

Wizards typically draw their mana from resources from nature (gameplay-wise from Land cards) and focus it into a spell from their vast library (represented by your draw deck- actually referred to as a "library" in-game).

Victory conditions vary depending on cards, but the primary method of victory is to reduce all opposing Wizards' life to 0 (each player typically starts with 20 life in most formats). Another victory condition is forcing your opponents to draw cards, but if they have none to draw, they lose. There are many other card-specific win conditions, but we won't discuss them here.

What Makes MTG a Collectible Card Game?
There are easily tens of thousands of different cards available throughout the MTG universe. Why? The game originally came out in 1993, and has slowly been releasing cards between then and now.

For those who are not familiar with card game distribution (up until recently), they are generally released in various packages. Varying sized packages are available, but the generally the most common are called "starters decks" and "booster packs." Typically a starter, nowadays, will have enough cards for you to start playing a game right out of the box (trust me, this was not always how it was), and booster packs are smaller, but more randomized cards used to augment your collection.

The Money Machine
Since its inception, MTG became a great hit. Its popularity spread like wildfire. It became something to play, and with everyone playing it, it was there to stay.

Over the years, sanctioned tournaments popped up and it became apparent that the MTG card distribution system was biased in a way that gave some players (the ones who would spend the most money on cards) the best decks because they could get many of the rarest cards. With that... came the advent of limited formats.

MTG Booster Draft
There are several limited formats, but this article will only focus on booster draft. The standard way a MTG booster draft works is that each player sits around a table with 3 booster packs. When a drafting round starts, everyone opens one pack and takes one card from it and passes the pack to the next player (direction alternates, starting with left/clockwise). Each of the players take one card from each subsequent pack until every card is gone. This is done in hopes to make the best deck with the cards "drafted." This format is called "draft" probably because it is akin to drafting in sports teams. The difference between them is that for Magic, you are drafting the best available card to put into your deck instead of drafting the best available player for the team.

This not only puts a little luck into opening booster packs, but the skill comes in trying to use the cards you draft in innovative/creative combinations to assure victory over your opponents.

That Night
Now that I've explained everything you need to know, I can tell you about my night. I had a few people over. We had 6 players- it would have been better to have 8, but 6 was fine. I had many booster packs and no one could agree on which three packs to open out of the 4 available. So instead, we just did a 4 booster pack draft. The expansions included were Eventide, Shadowmoor, Shards of Alara and Alara Reborn. It was quite an interesting metagame because you wouldn't know what to expect from the later boosters being mostly multi-color (Alara Reborn was opened last). It also kept the playing field balanced because no one was familiar with all four expansions.

My basic strategy was draft anything/everything good earlier on, and then get as much mana-fixing in the last pack. Chances are, and good cards I got weren't going to be used. Even with the added pack, we were still playing with a 40 card minimum deckbuilding limit. My deck turned out decently. I went green/white splash blue, with big beefy creatures.

I gave everyone about 40 minutes to build their decks. We didn't really need all that time. Pairings happened, and we played through the rounds. Here's the reason why 6 people isn't too good- because someone always got paired up and paired down. We each played at least 2-3 rounds (best 2 out of 3) and there was a clear winner. Sadly, it wasn't me, but we all had a fun time. I think I was tied for second. Unfortunately he had to leave and we never got to play against each other. It's all right, because I plan on having another one next time.

Conclusion
I really enjoy draft format because it offers a generally fair playing field. There is definitely an element of luck in any card game when drawing a card, but in draft, your position in relation to other particular drafters, which packs you see first and a whole slew of other factors also matter. All one can do is make the most consistent deck- and so it comes down to deck construction. But in the end, drafting Magic still comes down to being a game of luck between people of similar skill; even then, those with a better understand of Magic and draft strategies will prevail over those that do not.