LogFAQs > #939003969

Zeus posted...

Now you're sending mixed messages. Agents of SHIELD seemed every bit as bad if not worse than anything on CW. The acting and writing killed my interest almost immediately.

Ehh, while I'd agree that the writing in Agents of SHIELD could definitely be bad at times, and there were certainly weaker actors on it, it was easily better than anything that I saw on Legends of Tomorrow or in the Crisis clips from the CW. I'd absolutely rank it higher.

That being said, I also stopped watching Agents of SHIELD after the first couple seasons, so it might depend on when you're watching.

I could see if the first couple episodes turned you off and drove you away for good, though, because let's be honest, the first couple episodes of pretty much every series ever are usually pretty weak.



Zeus posted...

Now that you mention it, I'm trying to recall ever seeing CCG booster packs sold at Hot Topic.

If they weren't, that would be a massive lost opportunity.



Zeus posted...

That's really the board game crowd at that point, so basically just comics and games shops if enough of those still exist.

Yeah, but I was talking more about aesthetics than mechanics, so that doesn't really apply.

Though honestly, I'm not sure that "boxed set" card games have more in common with board games than they do CCGs. Sure, you lose the "keep buying boosters and chase the dragon" element, and the "build your own deck" aspect, but overall playstyle with randomized card interactions tend to be the same.



Zeus posted...

While the interlocking rings are a great visual and tie into the name, it's not a particularly illustrative concept. I kinda prefer the coin/token look even if the game name looks stupidly out of place. The backgrounds for both cardbacks are trash, though.

Honestly, I don't think the M:tG backs are illustrative or evocative of anything at all. The five colored dots are absolutely meaningless unless you already know what the color pie is and how it interacts, at which point you don't really need the dots. And then you've got the "Deckmaster" part, which is a meaningless artifact left over from the time when they actually planned to publish CCGs other than Magic. And the brown is just kind of ass (and was mostly picked because it was cheap to produce, and at the time it was created WotC was basically a start-up company with no money).



Zeus posted...

but it also leads to issues like having to make more general cards multiple times.

the factions are generally combined in booster packs (for pragmatic reasons).

L5R basically used to get around that by having faction-specific cards come in faction-specific starter decks, and then the boosters just contained cards that were theoretically usable in any deck (though realistically, which Clan you were playing tended to influence your strategy, which in turn influenced which cards you'd be using, so it was similar to the different styles that the colors of Magic tend to encourage simply via color pie design philosophy).

But it's not completely out of the question to release booster packs that cater to a specific faction as long as they're clearly labeled. It isn't inherently more expensive than producing a more randomly-distributed set in boosters with multiple wrappers - and can have the added advantage of potentially showing you which factions are popular, if you want to phase some out or introduce new ones, or to see which factions need better cards to help make them more popular (something that L5R used to do, based on who was playing what decks in tournaments).

Magic's actually started doing something like this as well - if I play red/black 99% of the time, then buying boosters is almost worthless to me, because I don't care about any of the white, green, or blue cards I'm getting, and unless I'm trading (which was never as significant a factor as WotC always sort of hoped it would be), I'm almost better off just buying individual cards via a dealer or online. But now they sell "Red Boosters" and "Black Boosters", that I can buy and be sure that every card in them will be potentially usable in my deck (even if realistically, most of them will be common trash and pretty much worthless).



Zeus posted...

As for the different cardbacks in L5R, would they be in the same deck (meaning that both players would have some clue as to the next card) or did you have multiple decks in a game?

Multiple decks. Each player had a Dynasty deck and a Fate deck. Players also had to have a "Stronghold" card that represented your specific Clan.

It's hard to explain how to play in a short summary (it's more complicated than Magic, which is probably part of why it never caught on as strongly, but part of why the fans it did have were way more fanatical), but basically the Fate deck worked the way your cards do in Magic, with you holding them in your hand and being playable, whereas the Dynasty cards got played directly to the table each turn and are sort of like the Lands in Magic, where they represent territory you control and which generate resources.
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