Fight Klub -- new CCG from Decipher

[slantz]

http://www.decipher.com/fightklub/

I just got a mass-mail spam from them, and I'm still trying to decide what I think about this, but I find myself skeptical and grumbly about it.

First: "Fight Klub"? Really? C'mon guys, show some more originality than ripping off the title from a popular and awesome movie in a blatent attempt to ride on its success.

Second: "The business model of the future." So the deal seems to be that this is a physical CCG that you have to order through a website. It's 'invitation only', and the person that referred you gets 10% of your purchases dropped into their paypal account.

Third: They brag about not selling boosters, then reveal that they sell "kilos" instead, which are just packs that represent what would have been in 10 seperate boosters. Oookay, so you abandon the booster-based models by replacing them with something requiring 10x the financial commitment, but is otherwise the same? Hmmm...

Fourth: "Fight Klub Girls". I was hoping that stuff like Ubisoft's Frag Dolls were becoming less common rather than more common. I guess I was wrong. These guys are assuming tits will sell their cards. *sigh*

I think the idea of a physical CCG ordered through a website, using a pyramid scheme in the mold of Amway/Quixtar, is destined for failure.

They don't really talk about the card game itself, other than the fact that they scooped up tons of cheap licenses to put old TV/movie characters onto their cards to fight each other. It sounds like Sabertooth's UFS, but less focused.

I totally respect CCG companies trying new things, but I think this approach has so many things wrong with it that it that it'll end up being a raw deal for those who participate (like most CCGs but with even more exploitive potential), and I'm skeptical that it will reach any real success. I think it earns a thumbs down from me, at least until I hear more. Or am I being too skeptical?

[charmtrap]

I can't imagine this idea being any more shitty...low-rent licenses, braindead pyramid scheme, the internet voting on what cards to include? Jesus, where do I sign up?

On the other hand, people actually watch professional wrestling and dating reality shows, so what do I know?

[Jasper Phillips]

Or am I being too skeptical?
It's from Decipher, so if anything you're being overly optimistic. ;-)

There's no reason to expect anything beyond an attempt to cash in on somebody else's idea, backed by a poorly designed game. All of the CCGs I remember them making (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.) were just abysmal, by far the worst CCGs I ever saw played.

[Harkonis]

http://www.decipher.com/fightklub/

Fourth: "Fight Klub Girls". I was hoping that stuff like Ubisoft's Frag Dolls were becoming less common rather than more common. I guess I was wrong. These guys are assuming tits will sell their cards. *sigh*



It's got tits?! I'm in!

[slantz]

It's got tits?! I'm in!
Well, the girls wearing the Fight Klub t-shirts will presumably be selected for having the most notable tits. So there's that.

[JoshV]

Wow, this is perhaps the creepiest card game i've ever seen.

[shift6]

I just got a mass-mail spam from them,
REPORTED

Not impressed by their advertising strategy for the "business model of the future" up to this point.

[Funkula]

All of the CCGs I remember them making (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.) were just abysmal, by far the worst CCGs I ever saw played.

I will say that your experience with CCGs was unfathomably lucky, and leave it at that. Bad designs? Maybe. The worst? Not a fucking chance in hell.

[Tom Chick]

Aww, I thought the Star Wars CCG was wonderful. At least before it got ruined with a bazillion expansions. But I really liked the deck building, and the balance between powerful characters and high numbers, and the split between space and planetside, and the territory control aspect, and the way the deck was not only a random numbers generator, but also your hit points.

In fact, of all the CCGs I've played (it's been several years, so I haven't kept up with the latest and presumably greatest), the Star Wars one was my favorite.

-Tom

[Jasper Phillips]

I will say that your experience with CCGs was unfathomably lucky, and leave it at that. Bad designs? Maybe. The worst? Not a fucking chance in hell.
Heh, perhaps. I generally made it a point to stay away from the obviously bad ones, so perhaps I've just forgotten them. I know I've never actually owned cards for a worse game though. ;-)

Now I'm curious though, which train-wreck CCGs are you thinking of?

[Jasper Phillips]

Aww, I thought the Star Wars CCG was wonderful. At least before it got ruined with a bazillion expansions. But I really liked the deck building, and the balance between powerful characters and high numbers, and the split between space and planetside, and the territory control aspect, and the way the deck was not only a random numbers generator, but also your hit points.

In fact, of all the CCGs I've played (it's been several years, so I haven't kept up with the latest and presumably greatest), the Star Wars one was my favorite.

-Tom
*boggle*

I remember it having few to zero interesting decisions, and not being balanced either. I recall this being so obvious that I'm left wondering if we're talking about the same game... It was a long time ago.

Perhaps it's moot though, as it certainly didn't hold a candle to Shadowfist, which is the only CCG I'd still play.

[Hans Lauring]

*boggle*

I remember it having few to zero interesting decisions, and not being balanced either. I recall this being so obvious that I'm left wondering if we're talking about the same game... It was a long time ago.

Perhaps it's moot though, as it certainly didn't hold a candle to Shadowfist, which is the only CCG I'd still play.

I'll second Tom then, and I played every trading game that came out back then (anybody up for a quick round of Dixie... I still have four decks). It was a great game and initially well balanced and managed to capture the liscense well at the same time.

I even heard good things about the Star Trek CCG, but I couldn't get past the fact that it was Star Trek, so I didn't play it much.

My all time favourite was Vampire: TES, though (followed by Illuminatus, Star Wars and Magic)

[Tom Chick]

Yeah, Jyhad was awesome, and I never felt like the expansions or the Vampire:TES rebranding hurt the core gameplay. The problem, however, was that it really required at least four people to play well. Brilliant design, though. But one of the reasons I ultimately prefer Star Wars is because it only takes two people to play, and it's relatively quick. Jyhad matches could take all night.

Jasper, as for Star Wars having "zero interesting decisions", I really can't believe we're talking about the same game. Take, for instance, the decision to control space or ground, or both. Or whether or not to bring out a territory or planet because you're not sure if you can control it. Or the different characters' abilities when it came to deck building. Or whether or not to take a card once your deck got low and you therefore had fewer "hit points". The Rebels and the Empire each had very different approaches as well. I still remember some of my deck themes, and how they'd play out against other decks. It really was an elegant CCG that lent itself to interesting -- and often very close! -- matches.

-Tom

[Hans Lauring]

Oh yes, it was Jyhad we played. Not V:TES. I forgot.
And I agree about the number of players. I pretty sure Garfield designed it as a proper multiplayer game and not a duel game like MtG (or Star Wars), which is why it was a favourite.
After all we're talking about the days when I had friends that played games, we always played Magic multiplayer and a goblin deck with dual lands was still allowed/viable (because only a few dudes cared about tournament play).

But of all the cash in "hey we need a CCG too"-games that appeared Star Wars was a rare gem that worked both as a CCG and as Star Wars... allthough the geeks hated getting their Darth Vader decks beaten by a deck with only lesser known characters.

[garin]

Jasper, could you be thinking of Young Jedi (http://www.decipher.com/youngjedi/index.html), the prequel-themed game that Decipher put out? It was a much simpler and less interesting game than their other Star Wars CCG.

[Reldan]

I've played a number of CCGs over the years. Back at the beginning the Star Trek and Star Wars CCGs were actually quite good. They declined to a shadow of their previous selves as the licenses got more and more milked with a bajillion expansions, but the original designs for the games were far from "worst-ever."

The Star Wars game, as Tom pointed out, did a lot of unusual things with the design and managed to make it all work.

I think the Star Wars game was more interesting and fun to play, than, say Vs. or L5R.

[Funkula]

As for trainwrecks, I'd nominate Overpower and Spellfire. Overpower squandered the Marvel license on a battle-only system with about as much depth as Crazy Eights. Spellfire didn't have even the slightest pretensions to balance and its art consisted of existing D&D artwork chopped, flipped, and reused to high heaven. That one was truly bad because it had no cost mechanic, so 90% of the cards were completely useless once you had better ones.

As for ones that I enjoyed, X-Files was the best licensed CCG I can remember. It came out at an unfortunate time when the market was flooding, so it only got one expansion, but it had a Clue-like mechanic that worked beautifully.

My favorite CCG of all time, though, has to be L5R. I got into it long after my initial CCG tenure, and it's the only game I've played competitively to date. The depth, the diversity of mechanics, and the way that flavor and mechanics interacted were all just excellent.

[slantz]

My favorites are the early WotC CCG's that Richard Garfield worked on (Magic, Jyhad, Netrunner, MechWarrior, and yes, Pokemon) and Doomtown. Oh yeah, and Chron-X!

Doomtown was heavily flawed, really. Games took forever, and the movement mechanics were pretty klunky. My attachment to that one is mostly sentimental, with some great times with frends.

But the early WotC games were all really great designs, each in their own way. They had some flaws too of course. Netrunner had its divided cardpool. Jyhad wanted lots of players, and then took way too long if you had them. Mechwarrior was somewhat difficult to learn, and its cardpool was really fractured with all the factions. And most CCG players dismissed Pokemon for being too simplistic.

But man, I loved and respected every one of those games.

And oh yeah, Rumor has it that ChronX is coming back soon (in the form of ChronX 2)under a Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates-ish model. i.e. you get credits slowly for free as you play normal games and tournaments, and you can use those credits to buy what you want. (You can still buy credits with cash, of course.) I haven't heard too much about it, but I'm jazzed as this was my favorite online CCG hands down. It's supposedly in Alpha now, and due to hit a closed Beta soon.

[Funkula]

Doomtown was actually a Five Rings design IIRC.

[slantz]

Doomtown was actually a Five Rings design IIRC.
Correct. That's why I didn't put it in the parenthases with the list of Richard Garfield games.

[Adam B]

Man, I loved the Star Wars CCG. Mostly, I think, because I had good people to play it with and it did a fantastic job of "feeling" like Star Wars. (Most of) the expansions sucked because they tried to get too gimmicky with it, with all the garbage about gamblers or cloud sectors or skiffs or whatever. The core game design was really fun (though still best when you played decks designed to go after each other, space/space or Endor/Endor or whatever), but the extraneous shit that got worse with every expansion was just lame.

[WarrenM]

I clicked on the Fight Klub Girls link and became embarassed for Decipher. Ugh.

[Hans Lauring]

My favorites are the early WotC CCG's that Richard Garfield worked on (Magic, Jyhad, Netrunner, MechWarrior, and yes, Pokemon) and Doomtown. Oh yeah, and Chron-X!

Doomtown was heavily flawed, really. Games took forever, and the movement mechanics were pretty klunky. My attachment to that one is mostly sentimental, with some great times with frends.

But the early WotC games were all really great designs, each in their own way. They had some flaws too of course. Netrunner had its divided cardpool. Jyhad wanted lots of players, and then took way too long if you had them. Mechwarrior was somewhat difficult to learn, and its cardpool was really fractured with all the factions. And most CCG players dismissed Pokemon for being too simplistic.

But man, I loved and respected every one of those games.

And oh yeah, Rumor has it that ChronX is coming back soon (in the form of ChronX 2)under a Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates-ish model. i.e. you get credits slowly for free as you play normal games and tournaments, and you can use those credits to buy what you want. (You can still buy credits with cash, of course.) I haven't heard too much about it, but I'm jazzed as this was my favorite online CCG hands down. It's supposedly in Alpha now, and due to hit a closed Beta soon.

Ah yes, Garfield was (is) a true genius (his boardgames are equally great... I wish he was keeping busy like Knizia) and I agree with you on all the WoTC games. Nothing beats Jyhad, but we had great fun with Netrunner and Mechwarrior too.
I know a lot of people liked L5R and it seemed like a very solid game, I just never really got into it.

I liked Illuminatus a lot (even more than the original board/card-game). Deckbuilding was great fun, especially when building for satire instead of strategy. Like the XXXenophile game they were great casual games that really didn't need the first C in CCG.

Spellfire was the worst example of "we need a CCG too" ever. I liked D&D and wanted to like this, but there was just nothing to like.

We also played a fair bit of Rage: The Umbra, which was o.k. but introduced the notion of ultra rares... I sold mine and quit.

Final games I remember was Dixie, which was simple but fun and introduced territories to fight over. I also bought a load of the Guardians CCG because of the artists, it also had territories but not much else to recommend it.

Man, this thread makes me want to go find the huge box of cards I still have (for no good reason, I sold all the valuables so I guess only the less popular games are complete enough to play)

[slantz]

Ah yes, Garfield was (is) a true genius (his boardgames are equally great... I wish he was keeping busy like Knizia) and I agree with you on all the WoTC games. Nothing beats Jyhad, but we had great fun with Netrunner and Mechwarrior too.
He actually has been busy, just in very quiet ways and in very diverse ways.

From what I understand, he does all sorts of freelance/consulting work, going where the winds (and his whims) take him. I know he worked on the upcoming Specromancer (http://www.spectromancer.com/), for instance.

[Jasper Phillips]

My all time favourite was Vampire: TES, though (followed by Illuminatus, Star Wars and Magic)
Jyhad was my second favorite. Probably my favorite to actually play, but it was much harder to get new players into due to a combination of the theme, much trickier deck construction, and long play time. Plus Shadowfist is just so damn funny.

The fact that you guys like Jyhad leads me to suspect perhaps I didn't give Star Wars a fair shake.

[Jasper Phillips]

Jasper, could you be thinking of Young Jedi (http://www.decipher.com/youngjedi/index.html), the prequel-themed game that Decipher put out? It was a much simpler and less interesting game than their other Star Wars CCG.
That was probably it.

[Jasper Phillips]

As for trainwrecks, I'd nominate Overpower and Spellfire. Overpower squandered the Marvel license on a battle-only system with about as much depth as Crazy Eights. Spellfire didn't have even the slightest pretensions to balance and its art consisted of existing D&D artwork chopped, flipped, and reused to high heaven. That one was truly bad because it had no cost mechanic, so 90% of the cards were completely useless once you had better ones.

As for ones that I enjoyed, X-Files was the best licensed CCG I can remember. It came out at an unfortunate time when the market was flooding, so it only got one expansion, but it had a Clue-like mechanic that worked beautifully.

My favorite CCG of all time, though, has to be L5R. I got into it long after my initial CCG tenure, and it's the only game I've played competitively to date. The depth, the diversity of mechanics, and the way that flavor and mechanics interacted were all just excellent.
Ahahaha. Oh yes, I remember Spellfire and Overpower now. Those were bad enough I'd forgotten them entirely.

I played L5R for quite a while, from when it came out to several expansions after when it was originally supposed to end. In the end I soured on it, as multiplayer games took too damn long and had to much turtling as everyone knew the first player to make a move almost certainly wouldn't win, and it suffered from bloat in the sets after the originally slated end, with lots of cards that encouraged a sit and build approach. I was never fond of the Speed Racer one on one games, where essentially you either played a speed combat deck, a speed honor deck, or you lost.

[Jasper Phillips]

I liked Illuminatus a lot (even more than the original board/card-game). Deckbuilding was great fun, especially when building for satire instead of strategy. Like the XXXenophile game they were great casual games that really didn't need the first C in CCG.
I liked that one too, mostly for the theme. It was horribly broken though! you could win on the first turn, before your opponent even had a chance to place -- except the rules specifically disallowed winning on the first turn, so you won on the second turn. :-/

The only other CCGs I remember being so broken were Blood Wars and Arcadia.


We also played a fair bit of Rage: The Umbra, which was o.k. but introduced the notion of ultra rares... I sold mine and quit.
I played a bunch of the 2nd Rage, which was a much better, faster, and interactive game. It also had flat rarity.


Final games I remember was Dixie, which was simple but fun and introduced territories to fight over. I also bought a load of the Guardians CCG because of the artists, it also had territories but not much else to recommend it.
I never got into Dixie, but I still have a bunch of Guardians around. One of the first games to have territories and terrain you could move around. The game mechanics weren't so great, and while the artwork was all good, it all felt borrowed and cobbled together in a way that didn't fit.

[Jasper Phillips]

And oh yeah, Rumor has it that ChronX is coming back soon (in the form of ChronX 2)under a Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates-ish model. i.e. you get credits slowly for free as you play normal games and tournaments, and you can use those credits to buy what you want. (You can still buy credits with cash, of course.) I haven't heard too much about it, but I'm jazzed as this was my favorite online CCG hands down. It's supposedly in Alpha now, and due to hit a closed Beta soon.
That would be awesome. I had a bunch of fun playing that, and only really stopped as I'd rather play card games with people I am sitting at the same table with. The neatest bit was the stealth mechanics, which you can't get away with in a tabletop CCG.

[slantz]

That would be awesome. I had a bunch of fun playing that, and only really stopped as I'd rather play card games with people I am sitting at the same table with. The neatest bit was the stealth mechanics, which you can't get away with in a tabletop CCG.

Totally. I really enjoyed the stealth mechanic too. I had plenty of crazy moments where my enemy thought his base was safe, only to find 8 guys coming out of stealth to attack at once. Or likewise, I'd do a search at my HQ just because I thought I should, only to find a huge number of units that were hiding there. Ouch.

I found the base-hunting mechanic a little meh though. If Player A found it in the first place they looked and Player B found it in the last, that definitively caused an imbalance.

Still though, it hardly ruined the game. I know luck is a part of every CCG, but that was like rolling a die at the beginning of the game to decide how much of a (dis)advantage each player would have compared to the other. Otherwise, it's a very graceful game.

[JoshV]

Jyhad was alot of fun, throw me in that camp. The expansions really did a decent job of keeping things balanced, though some of the clans were a little less defined. (Ravnos) It was fun doing the huge eight player games that took all night, and alot of the game would end up trying to be as strong as possible while looking weak so that people wouldn't hit you with cross table votes and things.

[malkav11]

I've invested more in Jyhad/VTES than any other CCG and it's one of only a couple I still own. It really works for me in ways that, e.g., Magic doesn't because it's rich in its complexity. Everything is full of vampirey flavor and there's all sorts of cool mechanics like the tightly limited resource that is your pool (life and funding in one!). Plus the genuine multiplayerness of it. But yes, it does tend to take ages and it has a fairly steep learning curve, so I rarely get to actually play it. One reason I haven't bought any cards for it in years. (I think they'd just introduced bloodlines when I quit spending on it.)

NetRunner's also awesome. I did buy a booster box for it when I found one on the cheap, but I've never done any deck building. My random starter assortment seems to be perfectly enjoyable. This non-compulsiveness may be part of why it didn't succeed. (Also, the pretty strict two-player limit probably didn't help.)

I like Doomtown and L5R and the other Five Rings CCGs a lot, but I prefer to use other people's decks to play...it just seems like too much investment to get polished, effective decks going.

Also, one other failed CCG: Hecatomb. The overlay mechanic it's based around is neat, the theme very interesting, and overall it plays to me like Magic without the bloat and the broken core rules (like Magic's mana system, which still fundamentally destroys the game for me now that I've experienced systems that *don't* randomly screw you.). Plus I could pick up a nearly complete collection for well under a hundred bucks. Hard to beat that.