On New Year’s day, The Time-Waster’s Guide had a very interesting party—we all got together and did a 13-person draft of Magic: The Gathering using fake cards we’d made up ourselves. Most of the participants created 15 cards each, while EUOL and I did around 250 each to fill out the rest of the 600 or so we needed. We decided to come up with a handful of keyword mechanics and use them liberally to give the set a more cohesive feel. This worked out pretty well, and the common keywords did in fact make it easier for people to grasp certain cards. The keywords themselves turned out to be a mixed bag, though: some were better than we expected, some were worse, and some were a little bit of both. Here’s a little hindsight analysis of the successes and failures of our first major experiment with CCG design.

Produced by Wizards of the Coast, Guillotine is one of my favorite card games to pull out on board game night, or bring along during those hours spent at airports. The subject mater is macabre in the most hysterical of fashions, with simple game play and very nice artwork.

While I was at home for Christmas, I went with my sister to Target to return a board game. (Granted, it wasn’t the most interesting of activities, but it’s about the most exciting thing I had to do.)

I was genuinely surprised at how much I liked Hecatomb. The general themes of horror and despair are, of course, among my favorites, but I was still quite disappointed with all of the early previews and coverage the game received. The basic rules are, in typical Wizards of the Coast style, essentially just another variation of Magic, and the transparent pentagonal cards really felt like a desperate gimmick. Once I actually played it, though, and the rules and the card interactions started to make themselves clear, I was completely hooked. It is not a perfect game, but it is a very cool one, and a very fun one, and I look forward to seeing where they take it in the future.

Warcry is the CCG version of Warhammer Fantasy wargaming, and as an adaptation of battlefield tactics it works surprisingly well. It is produced by Sabertooth, the same company that makes the Horus Heresy CCG for Warhammer 40k, and some of the same principles are present—the game follows a similar pattern of deployment and battle, and requires you to win two out of three battles to win the game. Beyond these superficial differences, however, Warcry is completely new and original, and perfectly suited to the regimental style of fantastic medieval warfare.