The WMDs of CCGs

To become fully immersed in the culture of any collectible card game, one must first learn the lay of the land; to what ends victory can be achieved, what means facilitate them, and from where their power is derived. Game designers strive for balance every time they take pen to paper and thumbs to calculators, but something always slips through the cracks. Some little card, intended to be a game changer, ends up becoming a game breaker. The result is the deification of these cards--an elevation in status from simple to armament to legendary artifact. They are highly sought after, command high prices in the aftermarket, and can define a format in some cases. Let's take a look at a few examples, and quake in their presence, recognizing them as one would the ballista or the atomic bomb.



Magic: The Gathering developed a core of strong cards early on, mostly thanks to nearsightedness in the design phase. After all, there weren't a ton of other card games to draw from and the genre was kind of nascent at the time. Most notable, of course, is the Black Lotus, a game breaking card that was hastily released into the wild and quickly shut away. It's the Hope diamond of Magic, and commands a very steep price. Three mana of any color for no cost . . . you probably don't even need to know the rules to the game to see how a quick resource with no drawback can tilt the game in one player's direction pretty swiftly. Other cards like Dark Ritual at least have a color assigned to the mana you get and actually cost something to cast, but the Lotus is free pass. It's a freakin' gift card from the elder gods.

The Lotus is all about the potential to break the game through quick access to mana, and the Mox cards fit that same mold, but the remaining three cards in Magic's "Power Nine" are the bullets in the gun. Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Timetwister are blue spells that shift the momentum further in one player's favor through quick card draws, gaining an extra turn, or breaking the natural flow of the game by ping-ponging off of other cards in devastating combos. The aura that surrounds the Power Nine is interesting to me. They are mostly cards that help other cards do things. They aren't super strong creatures or offensive spells, they're little relics (in the case of Lotus and the Moxes) and time-based magicks (in the case of the blue spells). It's fitting to me that sleight of hand can reign supreme in a game called Magic. Might makes right, but not if you skip his turn!

Wizards of the Coasts other card game juggernaut back in the late 90's was Pokemon. It borrowed many design elements from Magic, but structured the game in a way that resembled a Pokemon battle. Rather than instants or sorcery cards like in Magic, you could influence the battle on the field in Pokemon with Trainer cards. Trainer Bill was a big one at the time; not as hard to come by as any of Magic's Power Nine, but just as game-breaking and rife with potential. Bill fetches you two cards for nothing. With card advantage being the most important thing in virtually any CCG, this card saw a lot of play and against certain combinations (see Scyther and Double Colorless from back in the day), it was wince inducing to know that the other player was going to speed through his deck after already dishing out 60 damage on turn two.

Pokemon had a pretty fast tempo to it, now that I reflect on it. Rare promos like Birthday Pikachu were strong enough on their own, but one day out of the year that card is a Watchwolf-level beast. Dropping a Shining Jolteon onto the battlefield early on was like having a shotgun that fired chainsaws. Electric types had a lot going for them, and the poison/stall tactics from most plant types and the slow, evolutionary process of titans like Charizard could never keep up in my experience.

The dark-type Pokemon Sneasel made a splash upon its release, resulting in an almost immediate ban from competitive play. Fury Swipes is a cheap attack with a huge upside and Beat Up gives the little guy the potential to take down nearly any Pokemon in the entire game. (Just gotta win those coin flips!) Sneasel was a brutal, faster version of the aforementioned Scyther. This actually marks the first time I encountered a banned card in a format. Pokemon was my first competitive CCG, and his sneering little Pokeface pops up in my mind anytime the term "OP" is thrown around.

Another anime and hobby sensation that gripped my peers at the time was Yugioh. (Or is it Yu Gi Oh?) The intended rock-paper-scissors of Monster, Magic, and Trap cards was often broken by simple Trainer Bill-esque cards like Pot of Greed, but where Yugioh differentiates itself is by having really powerful Monsters that function like spells. The monster itself is usually just there to deliver the killing blow, like with Light And Darkness Dragon, but the real kicker is the effect that occurs upon playing the card. I guess I visualize Yugioh in a weird way. Moreso than with Magic or Pokemon, I feel like Monsters in Yugioh really shout "I'M HERE NOW!" upon arrival. Maybe it's an anime thing, sheer presence and intent, like a karate fighter's "Ki-Ya!" I dunno.

Card games reached a breaking point for me by the time I threw myself into Score's old Dragonball Z CCG. This game was a hot mess from a design standpoint, as I've written about before, but some of the most powerful cards in the game are just unchecked attacks, be they physical or energy type. Whereas Magic's WMD cards were all about sleight of hand and ancient relics, DBZ's were mostly face punches and nut shots. Tempo cards like Red Knife Hand and broken promos like Good Advice made the game into a fetch quest for both players. Sure, you could use those same fetch mechanics to grab things like, oh I dunno, the DRAGONBALLS, but instead the game becomes more about grabbing a handful of big-whammy attacks and having one good turn on your opponent. It went from quests and adventure to braindead fighting pretty quickly. Just like the show. Weird.

Decipher's Star Wars card game was already out of print by the time a friend introduced me to it, but it went a long way toward healing the damage done by Dragonball Z's faulty mechanics and sloppy R&D. Star Wars, with its Light Side and Dark Side Mechanics, felt more like a role playing game than any other CCG and it's fitting that one of the best cards in the game is simply Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. He's a pliot that makes any ship he hops in better (with an added bonus if it's Vader's Tiefighter) and makes any imperials around him stronger as well. They're probably worried he'll force choke them!

These are just the CCGs I was immersed in as a youth, and not even all of them. I wonder what the best cards were in the early 2000's Lord of the Rings card game, or the Warhammer 40K deckbuilding game. Or Marvel/DC Versus, a game that sadly slipped by while I was in college. Are there other Lotuses out there, making the rich richer and causing nerds to flip tables?

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