SWCCG? Best CCG ever?
If you like beating up players and making up your own timing rules, yeah, I guess so. I'll be accused of being bitter (again) because of these comments. But I was there at the beginning and I was there at the end, and I'm just reporting what I saw.
SWCCG was designed by people who had no more than a passing knowledge of CCGs. Only one or two of those people had even played Magic the Gathering, and not competitively. This is how we got cards about "bullseyeing Womp Rats," bedsheet-sized rules supplements, "open and enclosed," present/presence, and for God's sake, Attack Run. The vehicle inside/outside movement rules weren't even worked out until the third set. The Premiere set is loaded with ideas to be "worked out later."
The timing system for the game was an unholy disaster. In the concerted effort to do something "not like Magic," it had "valid response" (a term constantly used by players that had no rules support) and "just actions." Because somebody didn't like the LIFO rules of Magic, there could be no stack and no way of resolving complex interactions.
The "no-ban, no-restrict" policy (also an alternative to Magic) created a frightening assortment of counter cards and counter counter cards, which eventually had to have their own side deck because of the sheer number required for play.
"Your deck is your life" means that not only is there no comeback potential (always a nice thing to have an in game), but your comeback potential actually diminishes when you start losing. This provides a tremendous beatdown, which is one of the reasons that high level players like the game.
In fact, there were lots of reasons for hardcore players to like SWCCG. The rules and timing system were muddy and incomplete, letting Spike use the Rules Stick on Timmy and Johnny to get his way while the judge is on the other side of the room. A fat damage of 10 or 20 ensured that your opponent lost all the cards he needed to make a comeback. Tracking destiny was just like stacking your deck, and players who did that well had an unfair advantage over their opponents. They kick you out of casinos for counting cards.
All of which created haves and have nots. The top level players used their own rules and counted cards while the rest of the field were hammered into nonexistence. For God's sake, even the scoring system was based on how bloody you left your opponent, not just wins and losses. This was a hardcore tournament player's dream, and everyone else's nightmare.
The 144-page "Glossary 2.0" purported to answer all the questions about the game. It didn't change anything in the way players played, and just made the Rules Stick more effective since now you could throw a book at players who didn't agree with your rules interpretation.
Why was the Magic timing system, with its stack and LIFO, added to WARS TCG? Because the SWCCG timing system was a mess and it didn't work. A new system was needed quickly, and Magic has the best one. Curiously, this meant that a game designed specifically to be NOT like Magic suddenly had an identical timing system.
Lots of people liked this game because it was about Star Wars. If it had played like Super Deck, they would still have loved it. It sold like hotcakes because it was about Star Wars. If it had been about something else, it would have died an early death like other incomprehensible CCGs such as Firestorm or Ophidian.
24 comments:
Frak, I've missed something. Which misguided soul has judged SW:CCG the best game evar?
Is this also the sort of person who says "lollercakes" and "OMGWTFBBQ" on public forums? (Unironically?)
My biggest problem with SWCCG was the scoring system, even though there are many flaws. How bad I beat my opponent directly fits into how well I do in a tournament. I don't like it in college football why would I like it in something I view as my hobby.
I could go on for days with you Chuck but I'll spare everyone :) I bought a ton of SWCCG mainly because it was Star Wars not because it was a great game.
Trevor
The problem I've found (and I'm basing this on some recent experience) is that game designers don't want to look at what came before, properly analyze it, and understand why things were and weren't done and why they should or shouldn't be done in a new game. Just because those idiots who made Game X didn't know how to handle their cards doesn't mean I won't.
You should know this -- after all, what happened to all those playtest suggestions you had for STCCG?
I'll only cut Tom & Rollie slack for the fact that the genre was still in its infancy, as was the Internet, which made proper research difficult. But even I, a casual Magic player for all of six months, shook my head when I first saw Kivas Fajo.
Although I agree with a lot of this, I think you're missing the point of why some people loved the game (of which I am one).
The game was about things which happened at places. You could build forces over here, infiltrate your opponent's plans over there, set up a plan in the hopes to execute it, etc. To me, stuff happened in this game.
Magic, although fun, is a game where you just throw cards in the center of the table and it's an all-out brawl. STCCG (another game I loved) featured locations only as a way to score points without much interaction.
SWCCG was really the wild-west of card games. Yes, there was a ton of rules baggage and everything you site is stuff that happens at hardcore tournaments (which I despised). But two guys sitting across the table could really feel like they were living out the Star Wars adventure with cards and their imagination.
Locations: That's another flaw in the SWCCG mechanics, as far as I'm concerned. The game often lost all player interaction. When players have a fight only when they both want to, it doesn't happen often.
Which brings to mind another flaw: Battles happened when one side deployed a ton of cards and beat the crap out of the other player. Deploy before Battle = Bad. Massive beatdown makes Spike happy and his victims quit.
If it felt like living out the Star Wars saga, that came from the pictures. Otherwise, the game had some serious problems.
Anyway, glad you liked it. We all did some good work on that game.
I played Star Wars because I could get ahold of some poor little 1 power Rebel with a Wampa in the Echo War Room, send him to the Wampa Cave, and wreck him with the massive amount of Sith and Aliens with way too much power who were all hiding not-so-inconspicuously behind a rock.
That's really what EpIII should have been about.
There is no Star Wars production that would not have been improved by adding Wampas. That goes for the Holiday Special too.
Lies!
Come on, how awesome would be to have Vader sitting there behind a rock in the Cave telling Tarkin to quiet down?
IT WOULD HAVE WORKED.
*hugs his autographed One-Arm*
Okay, I'll try again, this time without the stupid double negative:
Any Star Wars production would have been improved by adding Wampas. That goes for the Holiday Special too.
We agree. Mark your calendars, people.
Dude...there was no hand limit.
nuff said.
I could draw cards and have between 0 and 59 in my hand and could make a decision based on that.
of course, that is viewed as a flaw.
Re: shocho: If deployment were moved after battle, what would have happened to movement? Was this statement made in the context of not having multiple simultaneous locations? I must concede that while locations were cool, they forced more lack of interaction and negative interaction than consistent, balanced interaction.
Another factor no one has mentioned was the money factor. The awful split rarity scheme made it impossible to use the big name characters in the early sets. This has as much to do with Mains And Toys beatdown as the cards themselves. Players with more money than sense could load up on Vaders and Tarkins. Add to this the lack of copy limits, and you could not help but have a completely unregulated game.
And, shocho, you can have your cake and eat it, too. You can have steer away from writing counter cards while maintaining a "no-ban, no-restricti" outside of set rotation. You just have to create the right game from the ground up. Look at Second Edition. How many true magic bullets are in that game as of this writing? The one I can think, Crowd Control, is fortunately common and fortunately never used, because it's poo-poo. Temba-style poo-poo. (Of course, had Decipher had the balls to ban two particular cards from Dagobah, yadda yadda yadda.)
We could also go into a discussion of the lack of set rotation until very recently. Yes, set rotation largely prevents the elegance of true uniqueness of gameplay across a game's entire set of cards, but that's just an excuse. Money is what keeps the games going, and set rotation is a surefire way to keep money flowing in. (Although Decipher has found a way to survive without cash inflow. It's disturbing.)
Funny thing is that set rotation is heading into other genres. Guild Wars is planning a forced rotation for their expansions, so new players aren't forced to buy a ton right off the bat.
Older games (like DAoC) get around that by simply giving you all the expansions at an obnoxiously low price. I think DAoC Epic is 20 bucks. I spent 20 for DAoC, 20 for SI, 40 for ToA, then two copies of Catacombs for 40 each, and two copies of Darkness Rising for 20 each.
Oh well.
As for the tiered rarity in Star Wars, in all fairness, tiered rarity was largely the norm in the industry during Star Wars' development. Granted, at that point, Decipher could have gone ahead of the grain and not done it (which would seem like a Decipherian thing to do), but alas.
Tiered rarity isn't as much of a beast as people make it out to be, necessarily, from a mid-range standpoint. It does, however, exacerbate the disparity between the top tier and bottom tier, as the kid who just got a Skywalkers is probably not going to stand up to someone who has two Vaders and three Tarkins.
For the most part, there are issues all over Star Wars, many of which I expressed rather loudly during LotR's design, and I think that turned out a lot better for going back and examining the issues with Star Wars. Granted, the gameplay was never really "similar" in the general sense, but a lot of similar lessons had to be learned to make it a solid game.
When Star Wars was being designed, there wasn't a streamlined game on the market, at all. There was no Pokemon, and Magic was as much a rules mess as Star Wars would become. I think the big difference between WotC and Decipher was that WotC was willing to sit down with their game with a big ol' rules iron and smooth everything out. Star Wars just kinda kept compounding.
Magic also never had "storyline" issues. They could ban or restrict all sorts of early overpowered cards, but it's not like Decipher could ban Darth Vader.
Several attempts to get into the game left me demoralised from beatdowns. This was around 1999, mind you, when you needed a degree in rules and a brain the size of a planet before you were allowed to pick up a starter deck. Oh, and I don't like Star Wars. That probably didn't help.
I believe that SWCCG is the CCG ever.
As for your list of reason why Swwcg is not:
1: The rules need work and are overly complicated.
The NFL has the largest rulebook of any sport and it is complicated. The NFL is still the best sport in the world.
SWCCG rules need a serious cleaning, but SWCCG is chess to Magic's checkers.
2: "SWCGC was designed by people who had no more than as passing knowledge of CCGs"
And the guys that made magic had zero experience so what.
3: Timing rules
Valid response in not as simple as the stack, but Magic's timing needed help and was revised. To be honest Magic is probably overall better, but I like the the stack has to be relevant to the top level action. Pretty close call here.
And as for "Because somebody didn't like the LIFO rules of Magic, there could be no stack and no way of resolving complex interactions. " Me and my opponents have been able to do this for years.
4: "no-ban", "no-restrict"
Somehow this is bad. Well I guess you like banned cards. Errata is way better for the serious player as there cards are not wasted just changes. Counter cards "Bullets" are not as good as errata. Still better than "That card is banned"
5: Lifeforce
Having the game inherently keep track of life totals is great. No dice, no markers need. That seems better than magic and contrary to your statement comebacks happen all the time in SWCCG, board control is more important than life total.
6: "Tracking destiny was just like stacking your deck, and players who did that well had an unfair advantage over their opponents. They kick you out of casinos for counting cards."
This is the dumbest argument yet. Players that played well had an unfair advantage. Really a game that playing well helps win, that sounds horrible.
7: "For God's sake, even the scoring system was based on how bloody you left your opponent, not just wins and losses"
You are right, differential leads to bad things. It is not without it 's benefits. The scoring reflect whether it was a close win/loss or a blow out, that is good. Encouraging blowouts is bad. Overall I agree with you here.
9: "Lots of people liked this game because it was about Star Wars. If it had played like Super Deck, they would still have loved it."
I have yet to meet this person. They may have collected SWCCG because it was SW, but play the game, not so much.
10: "But I was there at the beginning and I was there at the end, and I'm just reporting what I saw."
It has yet to end, so I guess this is wrong.
IMHO - There are 2 things that make SWCCG so much better than magic:
1: Draw/Pay for deployment
The ability to draw more that one card a turn balanced with paying for cards. What a great mechanic, almost never does a turn go by without opening many options for a player. The same cannot be said for Magic.
2: Locations -
Locations add such another level of strategy to the game. Magic has three locations as far as I can tell- Ground,Air and Shadow. Simple . Related locations, movement, ground and space, great strategic options.
I have played SWCCG since it came out, I have been playing Magic since before then. I still say Magic is checkers, SWCCG is chess.
Aaron Kingery
Um, did you guys play this game?
I started when I was 9 years old, around spec. ed., had no rules trouble, and managed to consistently beat older players with cards purchased with my weekly allowance of $1.50, meaning my collection was built off of prize support.
The rules, although initially intimidating, proved to be fairly simple, as long as you were willing to read a few rules docs.
The rarity distribution was easily overcome, as a halfway decent player could make a passable deck out of a few hoth sites and some x-wings.
I haven't played any other games, so I don't have much of a foundation, but in my mind complexity is what makes something enjoyable, the reason that SWCCG is , in my opinion, the best ever. It requires tactics and preparation, constructing a deck for the current meta, and being able to adapt on the fly to rogue decks.
This "misguided soul" is still playing this best of games. Besides, whats cooler than having Darth maul and boba fett in the emperors shuttle beat down Home one piloted by kal fan cndros? Its these anachronisms that make it endearing, the gameplay that makes it the best ever.
There are a few points that I disagree with; Kingery hit on them for the most part. But a LOT of it I do agree with: There certainly were 'haves' and 'have nots,' and still are. Unless you learn tracking, there is no way you will be able to compete. Also, the "win more" quality, wherein if you are already losing, it's hard to not KEEP losing, is absolutely true, and the two factors above are the main reasons my cards haven't come out of their box since the license was lost.
Chuck, i think your original message is kinda pointless, and honestly had me asking if you had ever even played this game before.
You always make all these generalizations about things, that really seems like you think everyone who played the game was an idiot.
Deploy before battle isn't a bad thign at all. If you are a good player, you will have thought turns ahead, and can likely figure out what was coming. Sure if you were a bad player, you would jsut deploy like darth vader alone, when your oppenent has 20 cards in hand and 10 force saved up. It doesn't make the game bad, it makes the player bad.
I can't remember the last time i got totally smoked in a battle because i was dumb enough to just deploy a lone guy with no tricks.
All games have bad players, and trust me, not all players make the type of plays you keep describing. The good players will always do well, the bad players will always do bad. I was bad when i 1st started playing, and you know what, i decided to do something about it. I have now qualified for worlds day 2 6 times, and made day 3 twice.
This mechanic is amazing, and complex. There is so many different things you can do in the game. I like games that give us decisions, and lots of different deck types that are viable.
To Trevor. Everyone gets to play Vs a few scrubs, and so they will get a higher dif. How else did you propose tie breakers? The amount you win by should always be totaled, because it shows how well you played. Against good players, you may not win by as much, but there needs to be a way to determine a winner if there is a tie, and this was the perfect way for this game.
In closing, every game that has been considered a success has had almsot the same mechanics. Magic, Vs, etc. Swccg was something different, and i, and i am sure many people who have played all 3 of the mentioned games, all agree that the swccg mechanic was the best, and most complex.
Knowing now that you helped design swccg, and have felt that it wasn't very good, it kind of makes me see why the game went down hill. Maybe you should ahve done a better job? I myself think it is the best game ever, and i know tons of people share my opinion. But if you didn't, maybe you shoulda done something about it....
Brian Fred
Brian, i love ya, but this sentence is just goofy:
"You always make all these generalizations about things..."
Brian Fred: I remember meeting you and thinking you were a good guy at some con or another, but maybe you should refrain from telling people they "shoulda done something" about a process that you know absolutely NOTHING about.
Unless you were there, you don't have clue one how things used to work. Love the game, that's your prerogative. But don't tell others, whose job it is to evaluate and ruminate on what may have been bad in a game and what may have been good, that they should look up the Doctor, get in the TARDIS, and keep it somehow from "going downhill."
To refute a single point in an otherwise perfectly justified post (because let's face it, opinion is opinion):
SWCCG Glossary
actions - step 2 - optional actions
For a response to be valid, it must specifically relate to the topmost action.
Ah HAH! I thought somebody might come back with that. If "valid response" is an official term, how come there was no room for it as a separate entry in a 144-PAGE glossary? We could have lost the "moose" entry.
NOOO not the moose!
While I don't agree with all the musings of Chuck about The Greatest CCG Ever Made, I do appreciate the overall theme.
So many elite players think it is so easy to fix this rule or target that deck.. a lot of players think even less. But very few players truly understand the choreography that is needed for a game to be successful. For all its flaws, and keeping in mind the weight of the licence (and the biatch it can be work with LFL), the Star Wars CCG is probably the closest thing to choreographed perfection a licenced game will ever get.
The only thing I regret is the game didn't have a chance to for a 2.0 release, or to take advantage of rotation.
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