Fantasy

GAME SYSTEM

This entry is to allow for discussion/rating of the game system as a whole. It is not for a specific product or release. Versions will appear on the individual item pages.

From the official website: In the Magic game, you play the role of a planeswalker—a powerful wizard who fights other planeswalkers for glory, knowledge, and conquest. Your deck of cards represents all the weapons in your arsenal. It contains the spells you know and the creatures you can summon to fight for you.

This is the grandfather of the collectible card game (or CCG) genre. Cards are categorized as common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare. Players collect cards and build decks out of their collection.

Players build a deck of cards and duel against an opponent's deck. Players are wizards attempting to reduce their opponent's life total to zero. The first player to reduce his opponent's life to zero (or meet another set win condition) wins the game.

An important part of the game is deck construction, which is done prior to the actual game by selecting what cards are included in a particular deck. There are nearly 20,000 different cards from which to build your deck!

Cards can be lands, which usually generate mana of various colors, or spells, which require a certain amount of mana to be used. Some cards (creatures, artifacts, and enchantments) stay on the board and continue to affect the game, while others have a one-time effect.

Players randomly draw spells to see what they get and can play each turn. Although this limits your choices, there is a lot of strategy in how you play those spells. A robust list of game mechanics, including intricate rules for reactive card play called "the stack," provide for rich tactics and tough choices each turn.

Though traditionally a two-player duel, there are several casual and tournament formats to Magic that allow more players to play.

Once upon a time a witch lived alone in her house in the depths of the forest. Her favorite hobby was baking yummy gingerbread; in fact, she loved gingerbread so much that she built her entire house out of it. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one who loved it! Rude fairy tale characters passing by were eating away her walls, windows, and doors! One day, the witch decided that she'd had enough of them all helping themselves and, paying attention to which types of gingerbread these greedy intruders liked the most, she came up with an idea on how to get rid of them once and for all...

In Gingerbread House, you place domino-like tiles in a 3 by 3 grid, covering symbols that provide you with four different types of gingerbread and special actions. Tiles may also be placed on existing types of tiles, forming a 3D structure in front of you. Covering two of the same symbol is extremely valuable as it provides a bonus gingerbread or action. Victory points are awarded for building the tallest structure, completing orders by discarding sets of gingerbread, as well as being the quickest to achieve certain conditions. In the end, the player with the most victory points wins.

From the imagination of legendary game designer Richard Garfield comes a game unlike anything the world has ever seen—a game where every deck is as unique as the person who wields it and no two battles will ever be the same. This is KeyForge, where deckbuilding and boosters are a thing of the past, where you can carve a path of discovery with every deck, where you can throw yourself into the game with the force of a wild wormhole and embrace the thrill of a tactical battle where wits will win the day!

Along with this new breed of game comes a new world: the Crucible, an artificial world built from the pieces of countless planets across the stars. Here, anything is possible. This world was built for the Archons, god-like beings who, for all their power, know little about their own origins. The Archons clash in constant struggles, leading motley companies of various factions as they seek to find and unlock the planet’s hidden Vaults to gain ultimate knowledge and power.

KeyForge: Call of the Archons is the world’s first Unique Deck Game. Every single Archon Deck that you'll use to play is truly unique and one-of-a kind, with its own Archon and its own mixture of cards in the deck. If you pick up an Archon Deck, you know that you're the only person in existence with access to this exact deck and its distinct combination of cards. In fact, in just the first set of KeyForge, Call of the Archons, there are more than 104 quadrillion possible decks!

Every Archon Deck contains a full play experience with a deck that cannot be altered, meaning it's ready to play right out of the box. Not only does this remove the need for deckbuilding or boosters, it also creates a new form of gameplay with innovative mechanics that challenges you to use every card in your deck to find the strongest and most cunning combinations. It is not the cards themselves that are powerful, but rather the interactions between them—interactions that can only be found in your deck. Your ability to make tough tactical decisions will determine your success as you and your opponent trade blows in clashes that can shift in an instant!

KeyForge: Call of the Archons is played over a series of turns where you, as the Archon leading your company, will use the creatures, technology, artifacts, and skills of a chosen House to reap precious Æmber, hold off your enemy’s forces, and forge enough keys to unlock the Crucible’s Vaults. You begin your turn by declaring one of the three Houses within your deck, and for the remainder of the turn you may only play and use cards from that House. For example, if you take on the role of the Archon Radiant Argus the Supreme, you will find cards from Logos, Sanctum, and Untamed in your deck, but if you declare "Sanctum" at the start of your turn, you may only use actions, artifacts, creatures, and upgrades from Sanctum. Your allies from Logos and Untamed must wait.

Next, you must strive to gain the advantage with a series of tactical decisions, leveraging both the cards in your hand and those in play to race ahead of your opponent. If you wish to weaken your rival’s forces, you may send out your allies to fight enemies on the opposing side, matching strength against strength. Otherwise, you may choose to use your followers to reap, adding more Æmber to your pool.

Notably, no card in KeyForge has a cost—choosing a House at the start of a turn allows you to play and use any number of cards from that House for free, leading turns to fly by with a wave of activity! Yet balance is key. If you simply reap more Æmber at every opportunity, your rival may quickly grow their team of minions and destroy yours, outpacing your collection and leaving your field barren. But if you focus on the thrill of the fight alone and neglect the collection of Æmber, you won't move any closer to your goal! If you succeed in finding a harmony within your team and have six Æmber at the start of your turn, you'll forge a key and move one step closer to victory. The first to forge three keys wins!

—description from the publisher

In Villainous, each player takes control of one of six Disney characters, each one a villain in a different Disney movie. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, conditions, and (for some characters) curses. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player's fate deck, then play one of them on that player's board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player's locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain's movie, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

In Hunt for the Ring, one player takes the role of Frodo and his companions, who are journeying from the Shire to Rivendell, while up to four other players represent the Nazgûl who are trying to hunt down the hobbits. While traveling, Frodo and others must resist being corrupted by the Ring that he wears.

Hunt for the Ring is a hidden movement game played in two chapters, with each chapter being played on a different game board. In the first chapter, the Frodo player attempts to move from the Shire to Bree, gaining corruption points if they fail to do so after sixteen turns. If the Frodo player succeeds, they can either record their exit point (and other game details) to play the second chapter at a later time, or they can continue immediately, with the second chapter having the Frodo player move from Bree to Rivendell. In this chapter, the Frodo player doesn't control the hobbits directly, but instead draws cards from a journey deck, with each card showing one of many paths to Rivendell.