#57 What makes trading card games fun?

TCGs have been taking over Crub bit by bit over the last couple of years, especially for Pokemon TCG for Nicco and Justin. This week we wanted to tackle what makes them fun, what keeps them relevant, how to deal with the ebbs and flows of expansion, and how digital TCGs like Magic's games, Hearthstone, and Marvel Snap bring their own twist to the table.

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SHOW NOTES
Here are links to a couple of the lesser-known games brought up in this episode:
Inscryption: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/
Wingspan: https://stonemaiergames.com/games/wingspan/

TODAY'S CRUBCAST HOSTS
Brody: https://www.youtube.com/@RACROX
Justin: https://www.youtube.com/@WorldFamousJtart9
Nicco: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl56kbl3tb-KiGEHT7MUGUg
Moriarty: https://www.youtube.com/@reallycool

CHAPTERS
00:00 Our history with TCGs
10:22 The economy of TCGs
22:28 On the price point of individual cards
29:13 How power creep happens in these games
37:09 Digital vs Physical TCG play
50:51 Would "fixed" TCGs be better than endless expansions?
56:55 RACROC's Crubscriber Question of the Week

Creators & Guests

Host

Brody

Brody is the owner of the RACROX channel on YouTube. Ask him about the Spyro remakes.

Host

Justin

Justin is Jtart9, world famous Twitch streamer. He's so famous.

Host

Moriarty

Moriarty is the owner of MRIXRT on YouTube, it's @reallycool.

Host

Nicco

Nicco is the artist behind AllHailBuckets, his personal music project. He has a TikTok.

What is Crubcast?

The Crubcast is a weekly podcast tackling various gaming and life topics with a touch of controlled chaos.

Nicco, you told me I'm a loser because I don't play Magic the Gathering.

What's up with that?

You know, that's a really good question, Justin.

I mean, first of all, why don't you play Magic the Gathering?

But second of all, welcome to the Crubcast.

Welcome to the Crubcast, everybody.

This is JTART9 here with All Hill Buckets, Nicco, Moriarty, and Brody.

And today we're going to be talking about TCGs and why we love them, what we would like them to do better, all things kind of like that.

And I threw that one on to Nicco immediately because he just started recently playing Magic, The Gathering again, and that's his kind of new obsession recently.

Yeah, dude.

I mean, it's...

Well, so first of all, we've been playing Commander specifically, but I'm trying to get into it in Magic Arena, which is the app.

And I think it's really fun.

I still think Pokemon is a better entry point to TCG's, but that's just because there are less cards to keep track of in the totality of what's legal.

And what's your history with trading card games?

I didn't give a full history of mine, but going around.

You know, I think my introduction to most of them is actually Puzzak from Knights of the Old Republic, which is a video game.

And it has a trading card game inside of it.

And then following that into Hearthstone and Gwent, and then actually Magic.

But I'd never played Magic until I was older, I guess.

I never played any of these when I was a kid.

You know, Pokemon never appealed to me, and the other ones never really did anything either.

And then eventually I did find my way into Magic thanks to these sort of digital card games.

Nice.

Which I feel like that's an easy way to get anybody really into a TCG is through a digital card game, because you're not going to give them the upfront cost of $100 to see if you like this deck and see if you want to play this deck.

Well, plus a big like a big hurdle, I think for me in a lot of tabletop gaming is like not automating the math and digital versions just get rid of that completely and I love that.

What's your history with card games Brody?

I was vaguely interested in Yu-Gi-Oh!

when I was in grade school and like caught the anime on TV occasionally.

So I had a few of those.

I think I had a dual deck at one point, but I didn't really get into it or like properly learn it.

Same with the Pokemon card game.

Like my friends would sometimes play it in like middle school, but it never really got it.

And then they eventually moved on to Magic in high school and they tried to sit me down and explain Magic.

And it just like fried my brain to the point where I was like, I think I just don't like trading card games actually.

And then many, many, many years later, Marvel Snap came out.

And I don't know what it was about that one, but it just clicked for me where like I'm like, I still have it on my phone even though I don't play it that often anymore.

But like I was going through every day trying to unlock the cards, trying to find new synergies, like make decks.

Like that was a lot of fun.

And then most recently, I really liked the, what is it called?

Queen's something, Queen's Blit, Queen's Blit.

In Final Fantasy Rebirth, there's an in-game card game in that game, and I was playing through that, and that one's really fun.

Yeah, it's not that.

Queen's Blood.

It's the kind of thing where I would love to see either a physical version of that game or a standalone digital version, like a la what The Witcher did with Gwent.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

That makes sense.

It also makes it a lot cheaper, right?

Because Gwent is now a free to play, very light game that can be on your iPad or on your phone or on a very weak computer or whatever.

And you can just kind of boot it up instead of paying $60 for the game.

So there's a lot, a lot less entry barriers, not just in terms of cost, you know, cumulatively, because owning a magic deck or owning several magic decks or owning enough cards that you can decide to build magic decks can be very expensive.

Owning enough Pokemon cards can be very expensive.

Owning Gwent is free and you can, you know, maybe not have access to everything, but it costs nothing.

And it is also very light because it works on your phone, your tablet, a cheap computer.

It's even on Macs, which really don't have any games.

So that's a big step.

It's true, right?

Because like Pokemon TCG live, which is where it really clicked for me, I suppose I should give my short background as well.

And then I'll throw it to you, Justin.

But like, so Justin got me into TCGs and he got me in through Pokemon because we went to PAX and there was an event where I was waiting in line for it.

And Justin was like, just, just stay in line for me.

And I was like, fine.

And then he came back and he was like, dude, just, just do it, right?

Like it's, they, they teach you how to play the game and they give you a free deck.

And I was like, did you say free?

And so then I, and then we came out of it and I was like, I was like, come on, Justin.

I was like, why is it good?

I was like, why is this fun?

Why is this a good time?

Right.

And now mind you, I hated Pokemon at the time, right.

And now I'm a fan.

Now I like Pokemon quite a lot.

But it's because of TCG Live that I was able to really go in there and see what it is I like about the medium of trading card games, which Justin, what's what's your background?

So you said you started playing.

You might have mentioned it on the pre show, which we stream live at twitch.tv/crubunderscoreofficial.

That's right.

This is the plug before we get to Justin.

You can find us at Crub official on every single platform except for Twitch.

Like I just said, Crub underscore official, patreon.com/crub, where you can support us for as little as $5 a month to get access to.

Was it all audio content, Justin?

Yes.

Yes.

If you want to hear what Chris and I think about most all Makoto Shinkai movies, it's there.

You can listen to it.

This is the voice of God intervening to say that it's $5 for all video content, $10 for all audio content.

Absolutely.

And what a great value that is.

Now, Justin, speak about your values with trading card games.

So for me, trading card games started with a game that doesn't exist anymore called MLB Showdown.

It was a card game that you would play using these specific baseball cards of players that played either back in the day or players that currently still play in the MLB.

And I got everyone in my school hooked on MLB Showdown.

We would play it during, I'm not joking.

Like I brought my cards into school, and then everyone was like, oh, I want those.

And then everyone bought them and everyone had a better team than me.

So I had to go spend more money.

Yeah, but I had more than required.

So I was killing it.

So we would play this at like recess and stuff like that during lunch.

And then as I got older, I just kind of fell out of it.

I'm not sure why, but I kind of just fell out of like TCGs in general.

Then college happened.

Everyone tried to get me into magic because everyone was playing magic at the time.

And I was just like, I don't have a reason to start learning how to play this game because I'm not, I don't have an affiliation with any of the properties in magic.

Like for me, the reason why I got really into Pokemon TCG was because I really like Pokemon and the game happened to be fun after that.

For me, it was a matter of enjoying the medium and then the medium having a card game.

And then I got into the card game and it turns out that I really like the card game, but I also really like Pokemon or I really like baseball or things like that.

Yeah.

I mean, so as like with many other things that we've spoken about, you need to have an affiliation or an affinity for the property before you really delve into any new type of medium.

Yeah.

I mean, like if you look at something like fighting games that I play a ton of, I don't play fighting games with characters that I don't care about.

I need to have something that I want to do or something that I want to make or something I want to play in the game for me to have an interest to it.

Because I started really getting to Pokemon TCG when they released the Tinkaton card, and I saw the Tinkaton card, and I thought it was really cool.

And so I wanted to make a deck with it, and then I really had fun with that deck, and then I was like, well, what else is there to do?

Because I only have one deck.

I'm doing the same thing over and over again, and I just keep winning.

It's nonstop dubs.

Well, and that's so that's the thing, right?

Like one of the things that I like about trading card games, and you guys can feel free to like bounce off of this or like, you know, weigh in.

I think it's the intrigue of seeing what other people are doing, saying, oh man, how can I think of something that I like to do like that?

And then circling back around and backing out of an idea to then execute it in your own way with whatever is in your immediate vicinity and whatever is available to you resource wise, in this case card wise.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, I get that.

I do think I find I think being in the Marvel Snap thing as my primary like trading card game experience, there was like a frustration I had with how you unlock the cards in that game because I was just like, I know that there's these decks that I can make, but I just can't make them until I unlock these cards.

And the only way to do that is to play more and more because you literally it's almost like an RPG system where the more you the more cards you get, the longer it takes to unlock more cards.

And so I was just like, I know I just need this one card, and it's just really annoying to have to wait for.

I think my ideal of an RPG or a trading card game would be one that just gives you all of the cards to work with right away.

I think that's everyone's ideal, though, right?

Like, that's pretty.

Well, but then how does it monetize?

That's always the question is how does it monetize?

Because we've seen games that kind of do do this where they give you everything, right?

But then if there is no monetization, then the company is going to go out of business, right?

Yeah.

They need to.

If you just could buy a single starter kit that came with every card that's out there and that's all they ever produced was just starter kits, right?

There is a certain amount of people who are willing to buy that.

And once you've reached that sort of critical mass, your company is out of business now, which is where even if you took that, I think inevitably you end up doing a booster pack or a expansion pack or something like that.

So even if you're trying to be fair about it, it's still going to end up being not perfectly everything, right?

Yeah.

And I think doing a booster pack would be fine.

I think it's the gotcha elements of it all that really, like that's where I don't like it.

I don't like the randomization.

I don't like the like, I get that that's a whole thing within the community.

I'm not trying to like, you know, knock anyone that likes that.

I get that it's kind of a culture thing where it's, you know, certainly predatory.

I think even gotcha fans will admit that it's predatory.

But I also, you know, I just, I know that there's their culture of like, Oh, I opened the pack and see what I got.

Oh, I got this cool car.

That's exciting.

You know, and for them, you know, if that's, if that's the thing that they like, great.

Not trying to, to harp on that.

But I, for me, I'm just like, give me the booster pack where it's like, this is a set, like a set deck of cards.

So you're adding more cards, but it's everyone's getting like the same cards when they buy this booster pack or.

Sure.

I mean, you do see some games that do that, right?

For example, Magic will put out a starter kit that has two decks in it with a commander and a guaranteed, you know, a deck behind it.

And they're relatively affordable too, but they're never going to be any of the quote, rarest cards or the most powerful cards of that season.

Those do tend to be random.

I think what's interesting, though, is that one of the formats and sort of the mechanics that you may like is actually in Hearthstone, where you can make any card at any time as long as you use enough of their, you know, whatever it is, dust, I think it was called.

Yeah, they have that in Pokemon as well.

Right.

You can make any card you want, right?

And this is something that I recall being considered a fairly, you know, fresh way to do it when Hearthstone, you know, came out with it, is that you can destroy your extra cards that you get from your packs and use that to create anything you want, even the rarest, most valuable and coolest, newest cards.

That's really cool.

I like that, actually.

Yeah, because the most, like, when you get those rare art cards or you get those holographic cards, they're mainly for the collectors of the game, like the ones that want to have all the cards.

The people who play the game generally don't care about it as much, which is why it's such an interesting push-pull, because the collectors are kind of, the people who are buying all the booster boxes and want to collect it and have their whole collection and it should look nice, they're kind of subsidizing a lot of the cost of the game for the people that are just in it to play the game, you know what I mean?

Which always happens, right?

This is where the term whale comes from.

Whales didn't start in mobile gaming, they started in this kind of booster pack mentality.

In fact, loot boxes are directly an anagram or I guess analogy or whatever the word is of old school tops and starter baseball cards.

Yes.

Right, that's where that came from.

So we already had this in the real world and they took it and put it into video games and took it and put it into trading card games and things like that.

And people made these trading card games.

I think what's really important is the first two parts there, right?

Trading card.

They made games around these trading cards so they could do something with them.

Yeah, because otherwise, I used to collect baseball cards when I was younger, but when I got older, I was just like, man, these are just pictures of baseball players who don't play baseball anymore.

What am I going to do with these after I've looked at them and then looked at the stats?

What am I doing with them anymore?

Right, or X-Men cards or any number of things.

And all you have to do, right, you don't even have to really think it out too much, is just add in some stats and let people play with them, and now you have a trading card game.

And then, you know, as these things got bigger, especially with these sort of mega properties with, you know, like Pokemon, which very quickly became one of the biggest media properties in the entire history of existence, right?

They're making much more complicated sort of games, right, that are not just based around collectability like a trading card is, right?

It's not just collecting rare and valuable cards.

Now it's also strategic thinking and social interaction and creativity, right?

Building these custom decks and being able to have your personal play style or coming up with some new critical plans, you know, coming up with a cool thing or making friends, meeting new people, right?

That's what I like about it.

That's what I like about it, though, right?

Like, I've been telling people, you know, I've been telling people recently, right?

There's there's two guaranteed ways that I found to make friends as an adult.

The first one is karaoke, and the second one is Magic the Gathering.

And in this case, you know, trading card games in general, right?

Like, it just depends on your locality, and like, you know, do they have, do they have Magic events and Pokemon events?

Do they have just one, just the other?

Depends on what's around, right?

But you go and you make friends.

I've been, like, very, very pleased with the friends that I've been making, playing Magic the past couple weeks, right?

And like, and I'm not even good at Magic, right?

Like with Pokemon, I'm serviceable.

I'm capable of making a good deck that will do enough damage to win a couple games here and there, you know?

With Magic, I just bought a pre-con.

I bought one of the, I guess, I think it's the current set.

They did, like, Cowboys, right?

And my Magic deck is, again, we play Commander.

It just, like, slings spells, right?

So I told one of my friends is sort of my go-to guy with Magic, because he knows everything about the cards.

And, you know, he guided me in this direction.

I told him what I wanted to do, which is another one of the things that I love about trading card games, right?

Is whatever you want to do, essentially, there are generally tools to do it, which is super, super cool.

But I digress.

You know, he started taking me to play Magic, and we just met some really, really cool people who are really good at Magic the Gathering.

And they've been super friendly to me as a new player.

And it just seems like everyone who goes there goes there to have a good time.

And I am a big fan of that.

Huge proponent.

Yeah, the first time I ever played Magic in person, because I started, I picked up whatever Magic was on the computer at that time.

Because there have been like 12 different Magic games.

They cancel them all the time.

No, I remember this.

I played whichever one I was playing at that time.

And I was like, this is all right, but there's a limit to the number of decks you can have and things you can have.

And why don't we try this in person?

And we went to a Magic store and picked up some cards and, you know, joined like a little Magic night.

And Magic is the only thing that I can think of, right?

Where somebody will hand you a thousand dollars and say, go ahead, have fun with this, because they'll hand you their deck that they've worked on, that they've built and that this is, you know, a thing.

And they will teach you how to play with their deck.

And, you know, here, go ahead, have fun with it.

That's something that you don't really see in a whole lot of different hobbies, where someone's just willing to give you, not permanently, obviously, but they're willing to give you, here you go, this is my toy.

This is my hobby and my passion.

And I've spent, you know, 600 hours and $600 building it.

And you can go ahead and play with it, too.

That's really neat.

That's a cool thing about the community.

Dude, I love that so much.

Because when you think about it, right?

Think about music.

I would never hand like, I mean, I'll hand people my guitars now because they're like not all that nice anymore, right?

Like I don't I'm I'm a bad guitar owner.

I don't take as good take care of them as I probably should.

Right.

But I also don't buy expensive guitars.

The thing is, I wouldn't hand a brand new guitar to somebody.

I wouldn't let somebody sit down at my drum set who like I don't trust.

With card games and with magic, like the first times that I've that I played magic in the past couple of weeks, like my friend just was like, hey, here you go.

Here's my hundred and fifty dollar deck.

Like play it.

And I really, really like that.

That's a really good point.

And also really neat.

And as long as you have the etiquette of don't bend the cards, don't do anything crazy with them and you give them back.

People are it's in the TCG community.

People are very happy to try and get new people into the community, which is something that I found.

Yep.

I agree.

And people could not be friendlier.

Sorry, Brody, what my friends are still trying ever since high school.

They've been trying to get me to play magic.

And I just I never do.

But, you know, it's one of those things where I like watching them play.

I think a buddy of mine literally goes on one of those like third party websites that like resells cards and stuff.

So I think he said the most he's ever spent on one card was like four hundred dollars.

I believe that.

I mean, that's and that's one of the cheaper ones, right?

Like there's I've heard of cards that are like thousands of dollars.

Yeah, I sent him the picture years ago.

It was the person who took the Black Lotus card, which I think is like a fourteen thousand dollar card, and they turned it into a coaster and like to put like stuff on.

And I sent that to him and he screamed at me.

Yeah, damn, that's insane.

I mean, dude, people are like double to triple sleeving their cards nowadays.

Like it is actually, I mean, sick, right?

Because it's like, then you have that forever.

Like it's not going to, you know, even bending it to a certain degree isn't going to do much.

The price point of cards was one of the things that really held me back in my older years from really getting into TCGs, because I kept seeing the price of magic cards, and I kept assuming that that was the price of most, if not all TCGs out there.

But comparatively speaking, something like Pokemon is a drop in the bucket compared to what magic decks cost.

Like the most competitive decks in Pokemon right now, I think are around like a hundred bucks, and most of the stuff that you're buying for that one deck will be used in every other deck, and a lot of them are five cent cards.

Yeah.

And magic, I mean, I will say, and I alluded to this earlier, I think that magic is not a great entry point if you're not willing to dive in like super head first.

And part of the reason I think that is because of the cost, to your point, Justin, because magic is a little bit pay to win, especially if you play commander, where like I think, to my understanding, every card ever is like is legal in commander.

Like you can just use whatever cards there are.

And so that makes it so that like there are a lot of infinites that are possible.

There's a lot of just, you know, ways that you can spend a little more money and have like a much higher power deck.

And so with magic, they like, you know, they do like power level essentially.

And I just we just been telling people, I've been playing a pre constructed deck, right?

And so people have decks for that, but they also have their like competitive decks that are just like you win on turn three or four.

Or two even.

Pokemon, on the other hand, is an excellent place to get in, because A, the price, it's less popular than magic is, so it has, you know, the prices are more reasonable.

The availability of playing it, so like magic, if you primarily play commander or EDH, there's no real good online option for you to do it.

Magic Arena is like the way to go to like play magic online, right?

But it doesn't have like proper commander, right?

Whereas Pokemon has TCG Live, which is so easy to get into, they just give packs away, which to Brody's point solves the like, it doesn't solve the gotcha thing, but it helps because they just give you...

I would say that's a drug dealer giving you your first hit.

I wouldn't say that that's what you're getting there.

But it's so available.

I don't think so.

You're right.

To be honest with you, you're correct.

So just a couple of misconceptions there.

Not all cards are legal in Commander.

There are plenty of cards that are banned.

All of the standard set is allowed though.

There are definitely a lot of cards that are not allowed in Commander.

So it's not like you can take some jokey, you know, ridiculous thing.

I'm still super early in my tenure playing Magic, so I appreciate that.

Because I was going to say, I know there's like a cat deck, and it'd be crazy to know if the cat deck is legal.

Yeah, well there's dog and cat deck, yeah.

At any point, this card needs to have been able to be in regular play, right?

Yeah, right, right.

That's an important part of it.

It's not just...

Right.

Anyways, so like there are some misconceptions about these things, and I don't think that Magic is particularly expensive, to be clear.

I think that you can build a very powerful competitive, competition-ready card deck for maybe $15 to $20.

And there's a lot of people out there, including friend of the show, Cirrus, who builds commander decks for like $10 that are competitively viable.

So price is more like how much you're willing to do and not so much how much whatever you can spend, right?

You will get absolutely eaten alive by a $15 mill deck if you're not ready to go up against that because you've got an Eldrazi deck.

That's true.

That's a good point.

These are things that are just going to happen.

So when we're talking competitive, right?

Like, yeah, there are ways that you can go into it and you can have a very well-designed high-level deck that is designed to compete against these things.

And yes, of course, that deck is going to beat the deck that you threw together in 15 minutes at your home.

But I was able to buy, and this is to the cost thing, I had a store that was near me that would sell Magic Cards by the pound.

And it was like $1.50 a pound, which is, I don't know, a quarter of a penny per card.

So you can certainly get plenty of these cards very, very cheaply, well into the I'm spending a quarter and building a deck kind of price.

It's really just a question of do you want the newest, flashiest, most powerful, blah.

And if you're willing to not do this, then, you know, whatever.

This is part of the problem with a lot of these games though, where they will, I don't want to say ban the use of them, but they will start removing these cards from normal play, saying, oh, this isn't allowed, this mechanic's not allowed anymore.

Pokemon has that problem.

Exactly.

Pokemon also does this so that you have to go buy a new deck, right?

This, combined with things like Power Creep, which is absolutely present in Pokemon, makes it so that, you know, there's still this sort of churn that's happening, and that can increase the cost just as much as anything else.

That's so valid.

And Power Creep, yeah, I will say it did hit me very hard, very early in my card playing tenure, right?

So I, when Justin took me to get my first deck right after that, you know, that Pokemon event, I started playing it and then I started playing it online because in the TCG live app, you can like get, if you buy a pre-con, you can just get it like in the game, which is super nice.

You can learn how to play it.

And I did, and I became really good at playing with this deck, right?

And then the update happened and the new set dropped.

And now, like a lot of the cards in that deck just don't work anymore.

So the engine is busted.

You can't play it.

You can't really use it.

And none of the new cards really replace those cards that I had.

So I had to make a whole new thing.

So yeah, power creep is bad.

Yeah, power creep can be very bad.

And for anybody who's not clear on how it can happen, if you've got some ability, that ability could just suddenly, let's say, and I'm going to make this up, you have an ability that makes a card invulnerable to flying monsters, right?

Well, now I can, you know, create a whole deck of flying monsters and whatever, right?

Or however you want to create.

And then the new deck comes out, which makes it so that that particular ability is either illegal, which means your whole deck is useless, or is directly countered by this very cheap card that everybody has, right?

So that now it makes any flying creature a walking creature.

Well, now your immunity to flying creatures is irrelevant.

And if we're talking about competitive, well, now I'm going to put that into every deck I'm building because I know that most of the people are using this very powerful card.

And just like that, your entire build is meaningless, like actually meaningless, right?

Your whole thing, everything that you've built together, all the strategies and all of the interactions between cards that you've built, all of that is useless and meaningless.

So what do you do if you're a fan of this game?

Well, you don't stop.

You don't throw away your deck.

Yeah, and you're not going to just...

I mean, there will be some people that are like, I spend $1500 on this deck.

If I can't use it, I'm not playing.

I think those are rarer.

They're the exception, not the rule.

Yeah, I think they're right in that group of like, I'm banning Call of Duty.

Sure you are.

Right?

Like, yeah, OK, you're boycotting Call of Duty.

I sure believe that.

And then you look at the Steam group and they're all playing Call of Duty on the launch day.

Right?

Like it's that same sort of thing where it's like, yeah, I get it.

But really, though, you've spent $1500 on Magic.

You've probably spent more than that on Magic.

You spent hundreds of hours building decks and practicing and, you know, attending events.

It's pretty hard to just say, I'm not going to do this anymore.

Rather than go spend $50 on a new, you know, a new thing of boosters.

Yeah, sunk cost fallacy is really prevalent.

Right, which is one of the cons of TCGs, right?

TCGs have a couple of cons, not the lead.

We talked about, you know, cost and power creep.

But there is that sort of sunken cost slash addiction collectible FOMO thing that's part of it.

And as with any sort of physical tchotchke, right, there is a FOMO aspect that can be quite strong with these, where it's like, oh, all of my friends are doing this thing.

I want to do it, too.

It costs how much money?

Well, I guess I'll spend money.

It's true.

And that's like the beanie babies and things like that, where it's a physical thing.

I feel like it has more value to myself personally, because it allows me to go and perform an activity with friends and other people.

But at the end of the day, they are just pieces of cardboard that you're paying more than you would for any other piece of cardboard, just because it has a picture printed on it.

And like, putting that aside, it's like if you were, if you want to go to a game, like a convention for a video game or whatever, or a tournament for a video game, and they said, yeah, but you can't play until you buy the $300 controller.

And then once you bought that $300 controller, you might not even like the game anymore, but you have the controller, so you're either going to sell it for a loss or you're going to keep playing because you're having fun with friends.

Yeah, right.

And this.

And now imagine if they're introducing a new controller every year.

And it's another $200 controller, and it says, well, that controller you used before, that one's not legal anymore.

So you show up with that, you're not allowed to play.

Yeah.

And the worst is when I don't like the mechanics of the new card set either.

Right?

Like the current Pokemon new set, I like don't love the mechanics.

I haven't played around with it enough, but that's like getting it to what needs there.

Yeah.

No, I know.

I just like, I suppose the point there being that like the FOMO is still there, even if you're like, I don't like this particular era, you know, or this particular evolution.

Yeah.

And like the silver lining there is that it will, it'll eventually be gone because everything has to eventually be gone as they keep making new cards.

But like, you're going to have to wait for that.

And pay money to access it.

It is a weaponized sort of thing, right?

Like these are these are hobbies that should hypothetically not cost as much as they do.

And the reason that they are so expensive is because these companies are purposefully creating sort of rarity lists, right?

Because they could, as Brody said before, just give you every card.

That's not something that they couldn't do.

And they could even make it pretty expensive and I bet people would buy it, right?

But it's not as profitable.

So because it's not as profitable, there is this sort of perverse incentive to never give you the thing that you want, to make it all about luck, right?

To make not only the game itself slightly about luck, because, you know, what card you draw, but also to make it the luck of the draw with regards to the boosters.

If I buy a booster and has 20 cards in it, right?

I could get very honestly all 20 of a card I already have and don't want.

That can happen.

And then I have to go and trade it or sell it or sell it.

Something or just have these extra 20 cards in there.

So it is sort of weaponized and it's not necessarily a wholesome thing, right?

It's predatory in a way.

And it will always be predatory in a way because it is a commercial activity.

It is true, right?

It is something to be aware of when you are getting into these things.

However, I think the major positive for someone like me, to Justin's point, ends up being the social aspect of it.

I just think like having something to do with my friends.

I've seen Pokemon cure friendship divorces.

There have been friendship divorces that I've seen Pokemon cards fix.

And I think that is, you know...

That's beautiful, Nicco.

And look, that's devoid of all the under the hood, gilded age, scratch under the surface type downsides, right?

Like glass half full.

Yeah, and a lot of the time, they're fun games and things to do with games.

And something...

Yes, sorry, Justin, if you had something to add.

No, you go.

Okay, so something interesting I've been seeing with regards to this idea of bringing in new cards that invalidate old mechanics.

Something that you can only see in a game like Marvel Snap that does not have a physical addition of any sort, is that game will literally balance.

Like it'll patch cards, it'll change their properties.

Sometimes it'll be as simple as changing the mana cost or changing the power.

And sometimes it'll be like, oh, we changed this card's entire effect.

It's a new card, essentially, now at this point.

I will say I like the physical medium for that reason, because then I don't feel like I'm getting gaslit.

Yeah, there's a record of everything.

Exactly.

And I think that there is a level to it where in playing a game, like I saw Marvel Snap change so much over the course of playing it for not a lot of time, probably maybe six months of like really like dedicated going in, playing while I'm on the toilet at work or whatever kind of thing.

And it went from like, okay, well, I don't know anything about trading card games to, oh, I'm learning the mechanics.

I'm learning like, oh, here's a graveyard deck.

Here's a movement deck.

Here's a like a like a kill deck.

All these, you know, I was learning sort of, you know, babies first trading card games type of mechanics, learning them all, finding what I found fun.

And when I my my most fun deck that I had was sort of a deck that like consolidated all of my power into like one or two cards over the course of the game.

And it was very easy to like can.

Yeah, well, so it was a discard deck where like my cards would power up based on how many cards I discarded, which was really good for because you only have 12 cards in your deck.

So if you can like consistently use a card to discard one or two other cards, you can guarantee your final hand to be exactly what you want it to be, which was like when my final hand was literally one card and then that card would be powered up, duplicated, and then that power would be sent to another card as well once the match was over.

And so it basically ensured that unless someone had a specific deck designed to counter exactly what I was doing, I would, you know, I would pretty much always win.

And I really enjoyed that.

And then eventually they introduced a bunch of cards that sort of invalidated the discard deck, which was fine.

It was probably too powerful.

And, you know, I had other decks that I wanted to use anyway.

But it was it was just interesting seeing, like, I think at one point there was a movement.

The movement system was so underdeveloped, like there weren't really cards for it that like made it good.

And then they introduced this one card, which moved all of your cards into a certain location at a certain time and like boosted their power or something like that.

And it basically became the meta card.

Like it was, oh, this is the win card.

And they decided, okay, we're going to up the cost of that because it's too powerful.

We don't want to get rid of the effect because it's a fun effect, but we don't want it to be because they can literally measure the win rates.

Like they can measure the the win rates of cards to be like, oh, this card is winning 75 percent of games.

This card is winning 20 percent of games or whatever.

And they can adjust accordingly because they're ideal.

I think they've said is they want cards around like a 40 to 60 percent win rate generally.

And they can just balance to that, which is interesting.

But it's probably the fastest changing card game I've seen because of that.

There are a lot of cards.

Digital card games in general are going to have a lot of change like that.

They're going to have patches, right?

Hearthstone's going to have a patch.

Gwen's going to have a patch.

These things come out and they're going to update these games because of that.

Like this is one of the benefits, the pros of a digital trading card game is the fact that you're going to have that.

It's also in the same breath, one of the cons.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it makes sense, right?

Because I agree with Justin.

I like having the physical media, at least in this case.

I generally am not very pro, like, physical video game, because...

and not that I'm not pro that, but just...

I don't know.

I don't like to get up and switch games, switch disks out.

But, you know, I am pro physical media in this case, because I really like the...

being able to have a record that, like, I'm not crazy, this is what this card does, and this is what it did at this time when it was printed.

And number two, I like being able to play in person with my friends and have sort of a...

you know, something to talk about, something to do.

Not that you always need something to talk about or something to do, but if you're in a bad mood, if you have, like, something that's on your mind or whatever, and you just want to, like, you know, let's say you're not ready to work through it yet.

You just want to, like, put it out of your mind, put it on the back burner for a little bit.

Having the physical TCG there to do with people is, to me, one of the easiest cheat codes to do that.

Of course, there's a negative to that immediately, right?

Yeah.

Which is that it leads to speculation.

There are speculators who will buy these cards as investments because they're physical items, right?

And if they're rare, then now they're worth thousands of dollars.

So that is something that precludes people from being able to get into these things.

Because if you go right now and you say, I want to go play Pokemon, right?

And I want one of the historic decks.

I want to play the deck that won this thing.

How much does it cost?

$600?

Well, I guess I'm not doing that.

But if you're able to go into a digital game, right?

Even an expensive digital game like a Hearthstone or Magic, whatever it is today, right?

Like where you're paying.

You're not paying anywhere near as much money.

And you're able to have that same experience.

I think it's a question of sort of priority there, right?

Because I attribute very little meaning to the actual physical cards.

In fact, I would argue that playing Magic physically is a worse experience in almost every single way.

The actual game itself.

I have to physically remember to do these things.

Tap this or un-tap that.

Remember that I have this effect.

There's the significant amount of cheating that's possible in a physical game like that.

Whereas in the digital version, it's like, no, this does this, does this, does this, and my turn is over, so now I get these things back.

It's a much more streamlined and simple experience, and a much more user-friendly one.

But...

That's fair.

By having that sort of digital experience, you are potentially missing out on socializing, right?

You're potentially missing out on going to a place.

So it would be interesting to see, and I'm sure we'll see it in the future, a physical digital trading card game that you will bring with you somewhere and plug into, you know, a thing on like a Star Wars thing.

You know what I mean?

That will happen eventually, I believe.

Yeah, because like, you could, like...

When you're playing a TCG on digital, you can't be like, Oh, actually, I'm going to take that back.

Once you've done it, you've done it.

You have to commit to that.

Commits.

You make it commit.

Well, and the thing is, I find that you learn more about how to play when that happens, if that makes sense.

I find that I like...

I do that and I'm like, No, stupid, stupid, stupid.

And then it makes me be like, Oh, the next game I play, when that exact thing happens, I don't do it again.

I don't make the same mistake.

So I do kind of appreciate that about the middle nature of the digital card game.

Yeah, because the digital card game is very cut and dry.

If you're doing this, okay, we're going to do it.

And in the physical card game, you would be like, Actually, do you mind if I take that back?

And then you untap all your lands and put everything back in your hand.

And then you do something else.

And then the whole validity of the game is in question.

But if you're just playing with friends, it doesn't really matter.

Like, right, it's a whole thing like that.

Brody did make the excellent point of doing the math for you.

M is M, you know, talking about the user experience.

I do agree.

I mean, for what it's worth, like TCG Live is the way to play Pokemon cards.

Yeah, like how many times when you were learning how to play Pokemon, do I have to say, Hey, Nicco, did you draw this turn?

Right.

And I did.

I forget in Magic all the time, the fundamental mechanic of a card game, drawing a card.

I will tell you what I think I enjoy the most about sort of trading card games is not actually the games themselves, but the mechanics that get sort of ported to other games.

So, for example, there's a game called Minion Master, which is essentially a trading card game, picture a Hearthstone or something like that.

Only when you throw down your your card onto the field, it creates an actual unit in a 1v1 battlefield, right?

And it's not quite like I wouldn't call it a pure trading card game.

It's not by any means.

Yeah, it sounds like it's a deck builder.

It's a deck builder.

And the fact that you're able to do that and have sort of that sort of mechanic in it, I think is very cool.

And we do get to see those used more often in some really good games.

Some of the best games around have been these deck building games.

Absolutely.

It's one thing that I started getting into it after Marvel Snap and after I started to learn the basics of how to play a deck builder and how to like find those synergies and things like that.

I got into Inscription.

I got into Inscription, which is this little indie horror deck building card game.

It's a roguelike at first, but then it becomes not a roguelike later, and then it tells a story.

It's so good, and it uses mechanics that are really only possible in the medium that it's doing, to the point of using your friends list as cards and different things like that.

Or you can make a card, and at one point you send it out to somebody, and they send you a card, and you have to hope that that card is really good to help you beat this boss battle.

It's almost like a strand type mechanic, but it kind of is.

That's funny.

Inscription is an absolutely fantastic game that I would not have played had I not gotten into the deck building side of things with Marvel Snap.

Same with Slay the Spire, which I tried playing many, many years ago, but bounced off of very quickly.

And then when I came back to it, understanding more of how to play these games, it was like, OK, I understand how to play Slay the Spire.

I can do this.

And it got to the point where I was actually playing the most complex character with the crazy synergies that I never thought I would be able to even comprehend.

And it was incredible because I broke the game, and it feels so good to break a deck builder.

It feels so good to do that.

And you start seeing these mechanics in a lot of different games, right?

Everything from, as you mentioned, Slay the Spire, which is one of the most successful versions of that, to a cultist simulator or Hands of Fate or even Monster Train, right?

Which uses the deck building mechanics in order to strategically place your units and things like that.

I think they're fantastic.

And I really like that we're able to take that mechanic and adjust it to other things.

Yeah.

I mean, and I will say, a game that I think I might need to revisit post-TCG understanding is Wingspan, the board game.

No, that game doesn't get any easier, I promise.

It makes no sense in any land that you've ever been in.

Nicco and I almost won the first time we played.

It's true.

Brody and I played together, and I think we were playing five people, but it's a four-person game, so Brody and I were a team.

That game is an engine builder, you know?

If you can build an engine, you can make it happen.

Wingspin is not an easy to understand game, and I don't recommend it to anybody who thinks that they're getting a trading card game.

Okay, yeah, maybe not a PCG.

Not a PCG, however, I think I might need to revisit it looking through that lens and perhaps a lens that I did not understand the first time I played it at all.

So, yeah, it's more about, I suppose, something that I'm interested in trying doing.

If you already know about Wingspan, then there's that.

But if you don't, maybe, I don't know.

Maybe it's not for you.

Who knows?

Question I have to the boys.

After this conversation, and talking about what we like and dislike about TCGs and just the inherent flaws that come with them, would you rather have a game like a TCG, or would you rather have a set board game with a bunch of cards like a deck builder that is completely put together and like there is a clear cut.

These are the cards that are still here.

These are the ones you're going to be able to use.

Or would you rather have that freedom that a TCG kind of provides?

Because personally, I could go either way.

It depends on the kind of experience I'm trying to have with my friends.

I think it's a different muscle, a different mental muscle.

That's what I'm thinking.

Yeah.

And I think for me, my mental muscle is much stronger when it comes to doing the building and the testing of the deck on my own time in private.

And then when I go to play with my friends, I have a deck that I can just play with them and have fun.

So I think that doing a real time deck builder for me is maybe a bit of a hurdle still.

Just I mean, maybe I have to revisit them now again after having played TCG's like right for the same reason that I said about Wingspan.

Like, I don't know.

I've never known what to like synergize with that type of thing.

I've never even thought about it in that type of a way.

So who knows?

But I do think it is a different mental muscle.

Sounds like I need to bring Star Citizen to too many games.

That's my personal favorite deck builder.

Yeah, that's the one that you like to play.

And whenever we play it, I'm like, yeah, this is fine.

But I think I need to revisit it.

I'm happy to.

Let's do it.

For me, I would say like I think the answer is is is deck builder.

But I think more than that, it's because like in Marvel Snap, there's a certain there's certain types of decks that you make.

And then you get the cards that you need for them.

And then you make those decks and you play with them.

And that's fun.

It's very fun to do that.

But I didn't realize until I played inscription in Slay the Spire that, oh, I like the rogue like element of building my deck on the fly as I'm playing.

Right.

So it's not just about the cards you draw when you're drawing them.

It's also about the cards that you roll whenever you're getting rewarded with cards throughout it.

So you can say, you know, oh, I really hope that I can do this kind of deck.

I want to build towards this kind of deck through this run.

But I don't know that I'm going to necessarily get the cards to do that.

So I have to sort of like optimize and compromise and try out new like different synergies and ideas.

And I think like that sort of it's very appealing to me because I'm the kind of person who loves getting a nat one in D&D and like trying to play off of that and see where I go from there.

So just having having things thrown at me and say, OK, make the best of what you got.

And, you know, in the same rogue like way of like, OK, well, you might get a synergy that's just absolutely breaks things if you're smart enough about it.

I love that so much.

So I would say deck builder all the way, not even the sense of like, because obviously I said when it comes to TCG's, I would rather just have all of the cards laid out on the table than have to like, you know, use the gotcha mechanics to like go through and collect them.

But I do understand the appeal of building with what you have on hand.

So I think my platonic ideal is having a game that does have all of those cards available, but then gives them to you at certain points.

So you still have to build as you go.

Yeah, that sounds like a deck builder to me.

Yeah, I mean, I do think so.

It's funny, right?

The way that you're looking at it, I feel is very zoomed out in the randomness.

Like you want it to be random for you and the person you're playing against, like what you are doing, what your goals are in the game, what your mechanic is.

I like the randomness on that micro level.

Zoom in to the randomness of the deck.

And like my deck is random, my opponent's deck is random, but we both know what our decks do, like predetermined.

So that's interesting.

And what's your feelings on this?

I just like the digital ones.

I don't want to spend $5,000 on a thing.

And if I quit, I don't want to feel like I'm losing out on that.

I don't want to have to deal with selling them.

I don't want to have them sitting.

I'd rather just play digital.

And that's kind of the end of my thought for it, right?

It doesn't really matter if it's a deck builder in that case.

Doesn't matter if it's a collectible or a trading card game.

I would rather just be able to pick up this thing and play it with my friends and then move on when I'm not interested in it anymore.

I'm not looking for these long-term hobbies.

That's fair.

That's honestly a very good way of thinking about it too.

It is a long-term hobby, I will say.

I think it's quite a fun one for me personally, but I can totally see it being not for everybody.

Yeah, it's very much so.

You're getting out of TCGs what you're putting into TCGs, and if you want just a deck to just break out with friends, you can do that.

If you want to consistently go to events and keep playing with people and keep being on top of the meta, it's there for you as well.

Yep, but I will say I did have to have it click.

If it hadn't clicked for me, I don't think I would be here talking about this right now.

That's fair.

So I do sort of know both sides of it.

I've sat at the tables being like, well, what can I do now?

What's my next move?

I've done that.

I've sat there just reading cards and reading cards, and you feel like it's fine.

I'm like, oh, I'm with my friends and that's cool.

But then when I started playing online, it really did click for me.

The strategic element of it and the critical thinking that I think ends up being the main appeal to me.

Well, sounds like we've wrapped this one up.

Do you guys want to head over to the Patreon Question of the Week?

Give it to us.

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So thank you to every single one of our Patreons, our patrons.

Yes.

Just to continue.

This one is from our patron known as Ray Croy.

He's a good friend of ours.

The question is, what is the most ridiculous thing you've ever done to keep playing a game?

And for this one, I honestly, like I've had some crazy games of Monopoly that I just have like sitting at the table, and we're there for hours, and we're just not stopping because it's like, well, we have to, we have to find a winner.

We're not stopping.

Can you ask that question one more time?

I was multitasking.

Brody, you asked the question.

You want to you want to elaborate a bit and give your answer?

Honestly, let's see the most ridiculous thing I've ever done to keep playing a game.

Like, yeah, I'm thinking in the moment, like, I don't want to get off.

So I am just like I'm doing probably what Nicco is doing in multitasking while trying to play.

No, I've definitely I've definitely stood up while playing, you know, like just literally like walked around like while doing things, still trying my best to like.

But Marvel Snap is actually a great example for this because there's a turn timer on that where you have to take your time or within a turn.

And usually I'm playing it while I'm at work or I'm like I go to the bathroom or something.

And sometimes like my boss will message me or whatever and I'll have to get back to them or something will just take my attention away.

I'll have to to keep going.

And I will sometimes just let that timer go all the way down to the point where I know the guy on the other end is so angry at me.

Like all six turns, possibly seven, depending on the game of just I think it's like a minute.

I think it's like a full minute that you get.

And I've won games that way where they're just like you're taking too long.

I'm leaving.

Man, I mean, I've definitely I've definitely done the thing where you like run to to take care of bodily functions as you as quickly as you can to try to get back in time for like while the multiplayer lobby is loading.

Take your bio break.

Yeah, I like.

You know, I've never done anything to the point of like, you know, when you see those people with the desks full of like piss bottles, no, it's never got never that bad.

It's never that important.

It's never important, but I have I have contemplated.

I'll say that.

No, I would never do it, but there's been some games where I just I have contemplated.

Thumbs down to that.

Thumbs down to that one.

You know, it's really just it's the human skill of empathy.

I understand those people.

I don't want to be like them, but I understand them.

Yeah, Nicco, have you ever taken shifts while trying to play a game of Minecraft with it where someone has to keep the server open?

Because like I've I when I played a game called Kingdom for Keflings, I did it with me and a friend of mine and it would be like, all right, I'm going for dinner.

You got to keep the lobby open and I'm going to leave my controller here and you're going to keep the lobby open.

And then when I get back, you can go eat dinner.

Okay, I have I mean, we've kept crawlers alive and zombies in the past, if that makes sense.

That's classic.

It does make sense.

Yeah, right.

Like, so for those not in the know, when Call of Duty used to be a viable property, there was a mode called zombies that was really good and used to be really good and is no longer really good the way that it used to be.

Now, during those days, you could throw a grenade and you could blow the legs off of a zombie.

The zombie then would crawl around and it would be a lot slower than the rest of the zombies that walked normally.

And so if people needed to go get food or go to the restroom, take a break, whatever, you'd have one person leading the crawler around and their job was to not kill it, but they had to keep moving because it constantly would be crawling toward you.

And it's a classic, I would say, certainly one of the more known instances of that in all of gaming, I would say, one of the one of the more normie experiences, if you will.

M, do you have any of these moments?

You know, I was trying to remember which game it was, but I can't.

But I do remember putting a rubber band on my controller so that my character would keep moving.

Dude, you know what it was?

I can tell you what it was if it was recent.

Is it Fortnite?

Because if you go to the in Fortnite in the last season, I don't know if it's still there.

If you went to the jam stage two seasons ago, if you went to the jam stage and you just like left your console on, you like or you left Fortnite running, it would just give you XP.

And you would get like five or six levels if you just left it on for a day.

I had to keep the joystick held with a rubber band to stay online in Fortnite for that.

So I don't know if you had the same experience or if it was not that.

It wasn't that, but that's a good example.

Yeah.

All right.

Sometimes you just got to do things like that to keep the game going.

But you got to do you need you need five levels in Fortnite when you know, the you got to get the Petercopter 200.

Right.

Right.

When the Petercopter is a bonus reward at level one hundred and forty.

And, you know, I usually I'm I usually only get to like one hundred and two violin normally playing.

So those five levels matter to them.

Five levels matter.

But as much as those five levels matter, unfortunately, we are at the end of our time for this episode.

So it's time to say I have been JTART9 with All Hail Buckets, Moriarty and Ray Croy, Racrocs.

We'll see you next week.

Take care and have a great rest of your day.

It sounded like a voicemail.