Deck Dissection (I)

Because it's taking me too long writing interesting posts that nobody reads, I'm going to try a different strategy. I'll still post advanced thoughts about game design from time to time, but I'll alternate them with light-weighted sections that (I expect) can be written faster. If it works, it will let me update my blog more often.

One of these ideas, is to review some decks from different card games. Particularly, trading card games give plenty of freedom on deckbuilding, and lots of cool concepts can be built with the given tools. I confess that I'm constantly impressed by the creativity shown by some of the deckbuilders I've met on the net. There are truly masterpieces around here, which can be beautiful, funny, or just plain weird, but always amusing. As different games give different possibilities, I'll include decks from different games in these articles.

I'll start with an example of the first Trading Card Game ever, Magic: The Gathering. Magic has been around for more than a decade, and has the vastest card pool (a term refering to the ammount of unique cards available in the game) of all card games. As such, there's room to fit any crazy idea that one can imagine. As an example of the many oddities this game allow, here's a joke deck that was submitted for the 2007 Auction of the People.

// NAME: Spell it!
// AUTHOR: Carlos Hoyos (DrJones)
2 Aysen Abbey
4 Brushland
2 Captain Sisay
2 Disappear
1 Emmessi Tome
3 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Icefall
2 Jalum Tome
2 Killer Bees
4 Lotus Vale
3 Manacles of Decay
2 Nature's Chosen
2 One Dozen Eyes
3 Path of Peace
3 Quirion Explorer
3 Ranger en-Vec
3 Sea Drake
3 Treva's Ruins
1 Ur-Golem's Eye
1 Veiling Oddity
1 Wall of Ice
1 Xun Yu, Wei Advisor
4 Yavimaya Coast
1 Zhang Liao, Hero of Hefei

This is an alphabet deck, which means that the names of the cards start with one each of the 26 letters of the english alphabet. If that wasn't enough of a restriction, the deck pushes the joke even further by also having every non-land card named like letters of the alphabet, as if in a spelling test. Now that's a deck with character! What's more appealing than beating your opponent with a bunch of I's and "one U"? Just look at his/her face when "D's appear"!

Unfortunately, some of the best card names had to be cut from the final decklist: "Ow!", "Perilous forays", "Icefall" and "Presence of the Wise" (among others) were left out for either being awful playability-wise, or puny-wise (specially the last one).

The good thing about this deck, is that you don't need to know anything about Magic to appreciate it, which is the sole reason I picked it to introduce this new section. The next ones will include a brief description of gameplay, to make them accessible to people unfamiliar with the games and/or the cards.

Have a nice day!