Card Game Terminology

Following on from our popular board game terminology episode last year, Ian & Jason have been requested by a member of the community to do a episode dedicated to the myriad of card game terminologies used across the hobby that new players & experienced players may not fully understand.

Paul is also back with his faithful rubber duck Brian in the news shed to bring you all the news, crowdfunding campaigns & event information we think you need to know about including but not limited too.

• The witcher: Old World https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/331106/witcher-old-world
• Coraquest https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/318546/coraquest

(go back this game ) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cabbagedan/coraquest

• Human Punishment: The beginning https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283137/human-punishment-beginning

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Transcript

Jason: 0:18

What's up guys, welcome to the Meeple Minded podcast, the podcast where we talk all things tabletop gaming. My name is Jason.

Ian: 0:24

And my name is Ian, and along with Paul in the newsroom, join us as we Bumble our way through the gaming industry. So pop the kettle on, grab a brew, and let's get on with today's episode.

Jason: 0:35

Indeed, Ian, do I have my brew here? It's all ready to go. How are you today?

Ian: 0:40

Yeah, I'm not too bad. How are you?

Jason: 0:42

I'm not bad at all. I'm not bad. Yeah, it's good to be back. It's been it's been an interesting couple of weeks. Two weeks, isn't it?

Ian: 0:52

I would use the word more frustrating.

Jason: 0:55

Yeah, yeah. Frustrating does probably meet the criteria of what has been a little bit better. But hey, whoa, we soldier on. And yeah, we had some contacts, didn't we, from one of you? Yeah. One of the the card gaming community?

Ian: 1:12

Yeah, people seem to enjoy last year, our episode on generic terminology used within the industry. And we'd like us to continue a bit further. So we thought we'd start with the trading card game stuff. And run through just a little bit more on terminology used within trading card games, or tcgs, as your first one, just to try and break down what people use, and why and give you a better idea on what to expect when you're talking to his trading card game player and understand the language of what's being used.

Jason: 1:47

Yeah, definitely. I mean, when I first stepped into the world of TCG, yeah, it becomes a minefield of acronyms and all sorts of terminology, that just doesn't doesn't mean anything to anyone who doesn't know what it means. So yeah, it's another one of the things I enjoy doing terminology one before so to be asked to do one for called gaming was, it was a no brainer, really?

Ian: 2:12

Yep. So me and Jason have come up with a list of sort of terminology, we put it into alphabetical order. So it's gonna be a bit all over the place. But hey, whoa. And there might be a couple that I think we've missed that I might try and segue in hasn't when we go along the list. So

Jason: 2:30

yeah, there's always guaranteed to be ones that we've missed. So if you do, you know, figure out that we've missed something, please do? Let us know. And we will try and correct that in the coming week. But without further ado, I think we should dive into this because there's a lot of terminology to go through on this one. Okay, so we'll start off with one of the main ones, you hear it quite a lot with various different types of games, which is aggro.

Ian: 2:54

So in the trading card context, this is usually around deck archetypes, which in itself is terminology. So the type of deck that you play, or define what sort of strategy you have an aggressive deck or an aggro deck is trying to win the game as fast as possible by you know, usually killing your opponent's cards. Pokemon, you know, it's obviously my go to aggressive decks just want to knock out as many Pokemon as you can, as quickly as you can. don't really want to have to set things up quickly just literally charge out. Magic. Also, the red deck archetypes are usually are aggressive of cheap, quick spell is going to chip away at your opponent as fast as possible.

Jason: 3:40

And second one, we move on to the BS. And this one's not so much really a card game terminology, it's you know, you hear this in normal life as well, especially if you're from the States. But that's when someone gets a really bad beat.

Ian: 3:54

Yeah, simple one, this one, you just add a load of bad luck. Good example, for card games. The luck based element of any card game is you shuffle your deck of cards at the start and you draw cards out for whatever you're trying to achieve. You can no matter how hard you try even in things like poker and stuff, you can get the wrong cards come out at the wrong time for you and just get beaten by you know, luck. And as this is labelled, it is a bad beat. I'm going to segue in a B that we have missed. That was another I missed off the list. And that is the acronym b d f and that is for best deck in format. This comes with all card games. And I was surprised that this wasn't on the list we got for my dad. And basically as you know you pay in for different different formats which will probably come across later in the in the lists. They are defined on what type of game you're playing. Good example is magic and Pokemon I know very well both run off of multiple format things. Standard is usually a particular Set to another particular set, usually spanning over about two or three year timeframe. So the best deck in the format is the best deck you that is doing well and performing well at that given time with the sets available. It's always rolling. It's always changing as people notice more combinations of cards. But it's worth noting that he used quite a lot.

Jason: 5:20

Yes, I have no idea how we've got to put that on the list. But I blame him for this is called gazes his bag. Okay, so moving on. Starting back on the list, we get to board wide.

Ian: 5:37

So this again, mainly known for Magic the Gathering. But some other games do use this is destroying all the creatures that are used on the board. Or to clean out all of your cards your opponent has on the board. It's almost like resetting everything from for the game, so that you can catch up. certain styles of decks are designed to with this in mind. You know, this is the complete opposite to an aggro deck. When you're faced against an aggro deck, you want to clear what they're trying to use quickly as you can, as efficiently as efficiently as you can. So that you still surviving the game long enough to control your opponent back down.

Jason: 6:16

And this one is a fairly common one as well, when someone refers to the body.

Ian: 6:23

So this is basically what are the stats like on your cards. Most people want a big bodied card, you know, like a big bodied creature or something in magic Pokemon or dijamin. The higher the stats for the lusts, the bigger body that they have, you know, high health and high Attack Damage often mean your thing's gonna survive a long time and kill lots of things. Yeah, yeah.

Jason: 6:47

So yeah, big believer essentially, is your most powerful cards essentially. Yep. This one? Well, again, not particularly common, but I have heard it said quite a few times for various different games, and that is bomb.

Ian: 7:04

So this is the idea that you have a card that will have a large impact on the game, usually deciding its outcome that genuinely like really big spells or really big creatures or something that take you a while to get to that the moment you get to play in normally send to the game in your favour, because it is like setting off a bomb.

Jason: 7:23

Okay, so next one is bounce.

Ian: 7:27

This is the idea of returning cards back to the player's hands both your own or your opponent, some a lot of card games likely come into play effects on their cards, so you get one good effect that happens when it when it enters the game board. So if you can return that your hand you get to do it again. Usually, you know, it's it's a way of recycling your cards. And the terminology used to do that. Okay,

Jason: 7:53

this one is a pretty, pretty common thing. And that is burn.

Ian: 7:58

Yep. So this is in regards to dealing damage to a particular target. It's often referred to for Magic the Gathering of like spells that literally do XML damage usually to the player rather than any of the things they have on the field. But other games can do this as well of just literally trying to do, you know, large points of damage to one particular thing.

Jason: 8:22

Okay, so next one is we're moving into the seas now we are going to can trip.

Ian: 8:27

So you'll often hear this with things like dungeons and dragons and role playing, as well as a really cheap reusable spell. Same things applied to card games, it's a very inexpensive card. So like they're usually either free or one or two resources that give you a minor benefit, like small amount of damage or drawing a card. The origin of the name for it, as I said with the DND style things is a small trick or a small magic trick.

Jason: 8:55

Okay, so moving on, we move on to card advantage. And I think this one has some self explanatory things to it, but also parts that you might not think about.

Ian: 9:04

Yeah, this is used in most games. The more cards you have available, the more options you have, and the quicker you can get to your overall goal in a game. Magic uses this. Because drawing cards is actually a lot harder to do in magic. Obviously you draw a card or stop every turn, that they're drawing cards can often be an expensive thing. Imagine the gathering but when you hit the more cards you have, the more different options you have available to counter different strategies of your opponent. Pokemon on the other hand is the polar opposite you half the cards in the game are designed to draw you as many cards as possible. Literally to try and find the particular things you need to get your strategies out you know, like your particular Pokemon evolved up. That sort of thing. Same with Digimon the cards that when they evolve, let you draw cards or come into play let you draw cards helps speed you into finding the particular things you need in a game. So card advantage is the more cards you have than your opponent, the better You're more likely to own strategy. Okay, so

Jason: 10:02

the next one is, is an interesting one. We have covered this, I believe in the in the previous episode, but we're gonna cover it again here and that is CCG. What is CCG?

Ian: 10:13

It's a collectible card game. And then we'll refer to TCG at the same time. So we'd have to cover this later, is a trading card game. So the difference is just the cards are designed, like trading card games are magic, Pokemon YuGiOh dijamin. You know, they're all designed as randomised booster packs that you're likely to want to have to trade with people to get, you know, the cards you need for the particular decks you want to play. collectible card games tend to come more as just continuous booster packs of things coming out. But they'll always be the same things in the booster packs. You know, it's it's a bit easier off the shelf sort of type thing.

Jason: 10:50

Okay, moving on clock? Well, I'm pretty sure this is exactly self explanatory, isn't it?

Ian: 10:56

Yeah, it's just how many turns it takes doing it takes to defeat your opponent or be defeated. Like sometimes you can see that someone's got a card building up where you've got a one or two turn clock, for example, means you've got one or two turns to be able to win. Otherwise, you're guaranteed to lose.

Jason: 11:14

Okay, so moving on, we're gonna move on to constructed so surely every deck that you play was constructed, isn't it

Ian: 11:21

in a way, so I'm going to stick with this. You know, I mentioned about the different types of formats earlier, things like standard is a constructed format. So you will enter that a tournament into that format with a prebuilt deck that you have made yourself and you enter you know, with a listed deck. As as you have built, there is other formats, I think the list is limited, where you get booster packs of cards and things and build them as you go, you know, at the start of the tournament. These are constructed tournaments, where you've already built your deck in advance.

Jason: 11:52

Moving on, it's back to the deck types now as we move on to control.

Ian: 11:59

Yep, so the next two things in our list are to do with these deck archetypes, control archetypes. These are gonna be careful how I word this because some people take a very negative look at control. But it's a valid way of winning games. For control in its name. These are the ways where you win games by taking control of the game, usually by preventing the other player from, you know, performing the actions they need to do. I actually did really well a couple of years back with a control variant of a Pokemon deck that stopped my either of player being able to play trainer cards, while slowly chipping away when they can't do anything about that problem.

Jason: 12:37

Did they stop and that used to be referred to as a manipulation deck,

Ian: 12:41

possibly I've not really heard it and that sort of terms, but it's the same sort of thing. Controlling magic is all designed with things like counter cards, or enchantments that stop certain cards, types of cards working, which will shut down your opponent's way of playing the game, same one, we mentioned board wipes earlier, that's usually part of a control deck to just shut down what your opponent's doing at the time, wipe their board, reset everything and keep them and then generally have one sort of way of winning the game that comes out a lot later in the game.

Jason: 13:14

Okay, so this is one that I do hear quite a lot of and this covers for most games. And that is to play a counter or in this particular instance referred to as a counter deck.

Ian: 13:25

So counter decks, every format, you'll find particular deck start doing well. You know, we've already mentioned that so far today. But these decks will all have their own weaknesses, you know, there's no invincible cards out there that mean you just cannot, you cannot lose sort of thing. So good example, with Pokemon every Pokemon has a weakness. So you'll find if one deck archetype often gets good, shortly after someone will find a counter deck of the Pokemon that in a type that that's weak against. For example, if a duck duck that gets big, you'll usually find a fighting deck shortly follows. And then someone will find a psychic deck or something to counter that, etc, etc. These decks are usually really good against the top deck that's out there. They have huge weaknesses that other decks that can appear from time to time.

Jason: 14:12

Cool. So you find this actually, the next one comes under multiple different categories, but we've singled it down to just the one word which is curve. And the ones that you will think of other than that are things like manna curve, cost curve, things like that.

Ian: 14:29

So this is in reference to games with resources, your it's how, how you've manipulated your deck, you know, built your deck, so that as you gain more resources as the game goes on, you can spend them on the better cards. So for example, you might want more low cost cards that you can play earlier in the game, while you build up to less of the bigger cost cards. All decks and all games do this. Did you want being one of the more recently Examples Did you want itself runs off of a memory system, which is quite a cool mechanic in itself. But the dijamin evolve, you know, and you don't want to have to be playing them just outright onto the board, it's an expensive way of doing it. So the decks that want to hit the level six, level seven digital need to have low accounts of the higher end cards, because you still, you still need to be able to find the stages underneath to play. So you'll find that it'll almost be on the cost curve side of things of needing more rookie level three digit One, two, then slightly less Challenge Level four, slightly less level fives like level 60, or top end. You know, same with like magic the gathering a man a curve, you want a fair few, one cost cards or two cost cards to play on your first few turns. But you don't want like a full deck of like massive like eight cost cards, because you can do nothing for the first eight turns, you know, and you may well even lose in that time.

Jason: 15:55

So yeah, moving on to the ease, we are now on to evasion.

Ian: 16:00

So it's fairly self explanatory. It's an ability or feature on a card or usually on a creature to try and avoid harm or make it difficult to get past your defences. And again,

Jason: 16:11

okay, so this one is a well, a big family favourites, shall we say in the Pokemon game, and that is a factual fetching.

Ian: 16:20

Yep. So this is again fairly self explanatory, a card or an ability on something that allows you to search your deck and retrieve specific cards. quite rare in some games, really common and others Pokemon, as mentioned is one of the ones where half the cards in the game are designed to search for a particular type of card to speed it up, as Pokemon requires evolving in, you know, specific things. And it was the only way of that game to counter that problem. Things like magic, it's a much different, much more difficult to use go searching for your deck for a particular card. And again, most games I've seen, there's a very few thing, it's usually inexpensive ability to be able to go and find particular things out of the deck.

Jason: 17:00

And moving on to the next one. This one is I think this one's been stolen from one of my other loves, which is professional wrestling, and that is to perform a finisher,

Ian: 17:09

pretty self explanatory. Once you get the right cards or the right pieces. It's it's how the last thing you need to do to to end the game or win a game. Normally, you have big cards in your deck or combos of cards that almost guarantee you that when they're in them.

Jason: 17:23

Okay, moving on, I'm going to skip to gene now. And that means we are going to be going face What the hell does going face me.

Ian: 17:33

So that is more of a Magic the Gathering term. This is aiming at you directly at your opponent ignoring everything else they have on the board. Some other board games and card games use this. But again, I think as we've noticed now, my three games that I know on the trading card game from inside out are magic Pokemon. And did you on that? Yeah, this is the idea of the game winning thing is knocking your opponent's health down to zero. So this just ignores everything else and going face is the quickest way to do that.

Jason: 18:00

So moving on, the next one is going infinite. And now I do know this one. And I've seen it happen a few times. And I think it's a horrible thing to do.

Ian: 18:10

Yep. So this is when your combo is able to be repeated indefinitely until you choose to stop. So sort of know referred to as looping and stuff like that. So it's often a way of winning the game. I've also even seen digital versions of card games having to ban cards purely because going infinite can take so long to do things on a game until you get to a point of you know, so many clicks you needed to just achieve that point where you get what you're actually looking for. But yeah, it's basically sort of fun in a real life game, you might say I can do this 50 times to get 50 damage, I win the game that sort of thing. And prove the loop that you can do that. When you're trying to do this on a online version of a game it can be much harder to just do that.

Jason: 18:55

I can imagine

Ian: 18:56

a subset of this just to save us having to go through it again. There's also the terminology of going off which is when a combo plays that will win the game going infinites often only a subset is usually a subset of going off. So yeah, that

Jason: 19:09

goes that takes us through the GS moving on to the eyes now and that is in response

Ian: 19:15

and lots of games use this. So this is normally like a priority thing of when a player does an action there is usually a lot of games that allow a response action to quickly occur in response you know just to activate inability or cast another spell quickly or something like that.

Jason: 19:33

Okay in cover the next one earlier, so I don't think he needs to go into this one. That is the limited style of games. Do you want to say anymore?

Ian: 19:43

Yeah, just a quick run through this is the opposite where like a draft or something, which is something we haven't actually mentioned, you know, as a game star where you can play with cards you're provided rather, rather than stuff you've brought to the tournament. So you might get given six packs of a card game and told to build a deck from that was You might do pass around things where you open up one of your packs, take a card, pass them around until the packs have gone. I'm gonna build a deck that way and then you play like a fun tournament. Pre releases for most games tend to be what's called a sealed, limited event, where you just get X amount of packs, go and build a deck and then play a little mini tournament afterwards, just to enjoy the coach

Jason: 20:20

got short and simple. Love it. Okay, next one, I don't love so much. But unfortunately, it is something that plagues every single tabletop game as well, especially my love of Wargaming. And that is the meta game is the meta game any different in car gaming in?

Ian: 20:37

Nope, same thing, you work out what's big. So it's the game outside the game, you work out what's most popular and what's big in their format, and work out what you're going to play in trying to beat them. So if you know there's like a triangle of decks, you know, deck a beats B, BB, C, C beats a, you got a hope in playing guests on which is going to be the most popular one on the day and play the counter to it.

Jason: 20:59

Okay, so moving on what's a mid range deck.

Ian: 21:02

So these are, ironically, the balance between the aggro and the control that we mentioned earlier. So you want like almost a standardised deck, you want to survive the early turns and have enough to keep yourself going. And then you just want to keep pumping stuff out like in the mid game with like average reasonable cost, costed cards that can keep keep you stabilised and keep you winning, and occasionally cope with the bigger stuff from the the end game sort of thing.

Jason: 21:31

Okay, so I brought this one up earlier on in chat. And yeah, I think I was totally wrong about it. So Ian, what is a man a sink.

Ian: 21:40

So man, a sink is something you can spend all your manner on when you start to have a lot more than you'd normally need. So a good example is like Magic the Gathering. If you can play a land every turn once you're hitting like turn 10 to turn 12 if you've been lucky and got headlands coming out, you know, for every single one of those turns. There aren't many cards in magic that require more than like six on average. So you may have something that's got like a x cost that you can make it bigger or do lots more damage by having spare men are available. And they're what's called a man a sink or a man a dump. So you want something big that you can just drop. So when you're not just playing all your cheap spells. Okay, so

Jason: 22:21

the next one I've heard quite a few times and that is a mill.

Ian: 22:24

Almost every TCG has at least one mill deck most games say if you can't, if your deck runs out, then you lose, you know, depending on the order of the turn. And when that happens. mill decks are designed to remove cards from the top of your opponent's decks into the graveyard or discard piles, whatever you want to call them. To try and win the game originally came from the name came from like the millstone sort of way of seeing things of grinding people out of games in magic. You know, I've seen Pokemon decks use this. You just want to play cards that just make your opponent discard as many cards as possible, so they don't get to do anything.

Jason: 23:03

Indeed, yes. And quite the opposite of that, in fact, and this is something that is transposed over to other games as well. And that is a mulligan system. What does that mean? Right. So

Ian: 23:15

a lot of games, as we said earlier, like the luck based side of gaming is you start the game with XML cards. But if you don't have the right sort of cards that you need at the start, some games allow you a free Mulligan or Mulligan's at the start, which is where you can replace your initial hand and draw a new hand of cards. magics way of balancing This is every time you do that you get one less card start the game Pokemon has a forced Mulligan because you have to start with a basic Pokemon. If you don't shuffle and draw again, but your opponent allows to get is allowed to have an extra card every time you do it.

Jason: 23:47

Yeah, I mean, I'm actually a big fan of Mulligan Mulligan systems in games, it does help move the game along a little bit faster. But I also appreciate that we games need to instal a way of basically not allowing you to burn through your entire deck to find the cards you want before you even start. So yeah,

Ian: 24:05

otherwise games would just tell you pick XML cards from your deck to start the game.

Jason: 24:09

So yeah, Mulligan's is a love hate thing I think amongst gamers but I think something that definitely swings far more towards the hate side of things is our next one, which is net decks and net decking.

Ian: 24:22

So I'm old enough and I've been playing card games long enough to have been around when net decking wasn't such an easier thing. The term basically comes from finding a competitive deck from the internet. And nowadays, it's common practice that you see a tournament you see what does well, people copy the deck that wins. And that isn't that decking you copy the deck list from an established list that people have tried, tested, ironed out, and then learn to play that

Jason: 24:49

easy way of love winning games. Okay, so obviously, this is something that most games have as well and that is phases.

Ian: 24:57

So these are the different steps in a turn. That a game has allowing you to do different things, I'm going to continue and use digital mana magic for this, like Digimon has its raising phase where you deal with your digital camera and like the baby section first. And you have your draw step, and your main phase of, you know, building everything up that sort of thing. Magic is the same, it's a little bit more complicated, you have an untapped step where you just refresh all your cards, you have your upkeep and a draw a main phase and attack, a second main phase, discard and an end all those different phases, you know, in each of those phases, you can do something different in

Jason: 25:34

Okay, so moving on rapidly, we move on to playset.

Ian: 25:38

So a lot of games require or have a limit of cards of what you can have most games, it's four copies of any named card. They don't want slightly different. It's four copies of any numbered card. But yeah, you only allowed four copies of those cards in most decks. So a place that would be the four copper you know, the four copies you own.

Jason: 25:58

Okay, so moving on. This is another one that is a very heavily used within the Magic the Gathering community and that is ramping

Ian: 26:06

yet, but we can refer it to most you know, any games that use a lot of resources, including Pokemon it's just not referenced as ramping much is how quickly can you speed up the resources you need in play. Good example is magic gathering, you can play one landed turn. But then you can use those lands to play cards that you put all lands into play. Same with Pokemon, you've got its classes energy acceleration, that every Pokemon needs energy cards attached to it to attack or retreat. So you want cards that can attach your energies quicker. So you're ramping up the speed in which you can maximise your resources.

Jason: 26:43

Okay, so the next one is a rogue deck.

Ian: 26:46

So this is the opposite to an NEC deck. This is where people sort of like appear at a tournament with something they've Home Brewed specifically tailored to the metagaming. And being unknown or under tested or people just sort of written decks off that's been classed as a rogue deck is sort of like sneaking in there. And sometimes these decks only work once you know, if you've spotted something that would has an obvious counter to it, but no one's playing that counter. You can appear at a tournament and do really well once, but then everyone will find make sure there's a counter available for in case people tried to do it again.

Jason: 27:23

So yes, moving on to game stables.

Ian: 27:26

So again, similar to the playset thing, these are the cards that everyone should have the playsets of poker one is normally your staples, our trainer cards, and support poker won't allow you to draw cards that, you know, all games have cards that are if you're playing this colour, or this type of deck you need for this card sort of thing. So the type of cards that get used repeatedly and lots lots of the time,

Jason: 27:50

a lot of staples may well be in in Pokemon, for example, you might get Pokemon with just staples. And that's generally because they have this next thing which is swinging for x. So what is swinging for axe.

Ian: 28:02

This is when you attack with your creatures with x being the amount of total damage they've done. So a good example of easiest ones, this is like magic gathering. If you tap say three different creatures, and between them, they give you nine damage. So you're suing him for nine,

Jason: 28:17

perfect, perfect and you even moved on to our second one there as well, which is tapped

Ian: 28:22

lots of games have active abilities or ways to show that they're being used. This is called tapping, and you often turn the card sideways just to show that it has been used and activated this turn. Lots of games give you the option between like tapping a creature to attack or attacking them to do tapping them to defend you know, which limits what you can do. Or that you can't defend with a tapped creature because it's exhausted that type of thing.

Jason: 28:50

Okay, next one is a tech card.

Ian: 28:53

So this is a card with a very narrow effect. It's only good in certain conditions. As I mentioned earlier, it's required to keep you to survive against certain matches and things. Good example is you may have one or two copies of Pokemon that stop certain other types of Pokemon being able to hit you, you know, so you can completely shut down an entire deck. If they haven't got a counter to that, you know, it's a little one option cards that sometimes may define a game if you can find them, but you don't want a full set of them because most of the time they won't do what you require, you know anything useful to you.

Jason: 29:31

Okay, so we are starting to get towards the end of the list now. So not much longer, but we got a few more to go and the next one is referred to in a few different ways. You've got ramping up the tempo. You know bringing the tempo in a game down or just having the tempo so what does tempo really mean?

Ian: 29:52

tempo means like basically who's in the driving seat of a game. You know, tempo can exchange as the game goes on. But whoever And control is in control of the tempo again controls the game flow. So I might be playing a card and you're you're reacting to it. That means I have the tempo of the game, I have the control of the pace, I have the lead in the game almost, you know the flow is in my favour. If you can tip that tempo back in the offer your favour, then suddenly, I'm on the reactionary defensive sort of stance trying to catch back up again. So tempo, something you want in a game where you know, you're ahead and you're feeling a bit more comfortable with the game state.

Jason: 30:28

Okay, moving on. person that would usually be in the driving seat tends to have what is referred to as a tier one deck, but there's also things like tier two, tier three, tier four, so on and so forth. So what is a tiered deck?

Ian: 30:41

So tiered system for decks is when you get a deck archetype, you know, like, I play my Pikachu V max deck and Pokemon or I pay my war game on deck in Digimon. Where does that fit in regards to the meta tear one of the decks that are doing the best they are the top of the meta tos D, you might, you know, tier four or something like that. You might be lucky if you win a game. You know, it's, it's what's doing well, and people sort of split things into a tiered system because some decks are good, but not quite good enough, you know? So it's, and the decks don't always stay in the same tears. It depends on what cards come out, or what people work out for counters and things that come in malls around having all this information now of who's played what in tournament's all available on the internet gives people a wider range of what's what's, what's in there, and what is the top deck?

Jason: 31:33

And yeah, you just moved on to the next one, which is indeed top deck is there a more detailed description of what the top deck is.

Ian: 31:40

So there's two meanings for this one is like I've just said, What is the top deck play at the moment. But the more trading card element of this is, every time you every game, you tend to draw cards. So you get to a point where you just need to hope that the cards you draw are the right ones. Sometimes when you get a card you draw is like immediately the thing that wins you the game or just what you're after is known as top decking that card, you need that to be on the top of your deck, so you can draw it quickly.

Jason: 32:08

The next one is an interesting one, because obviously, we are talking about trading card games, the next one is actually trade and it has nothing to do with the name of the type of game. So what does trade mean with regards to gameplay.

Ian: 32:22

So this is often used with the creatures in Magic the Gathering is the easiest example for this. This is when both players lose creatures in combat, knowing when to trade and not when not to trade your creatures is crucial, you might sometimes prefer just to take damage to yourself outright. If you've got a three three creature you know three, toughness, three health, and so does your opponent, you know, if you're gonna attack, they'll defend and it'll wipe both creatures out. So that is called a trade. And the next one is actually kind of a derivative early of one that we can't covered earlier with the current advantage. But this one is actually two for one. I'm pretty sure I know what this one means. Yeah, self explanatory thing is when you're meant to remove two or more of your opponent's cards, usually for the cost of one of your own. And again, it's a common way to gain the kind of advantage and that that we mentioned earlier in the video earlier in the podcast, you know, you want at the end of the day to be playing cards that give you the biggest benefit. Overall, even in Pokemon if you can attack for Pokemon that might kill itself, but can take down two of your opponents, you You're still gaining an advantage out of it, it's still worth the sacrifice.

Jason: 33:24

Okay, so moving on. The next one is all evolved around the meta game, which we've already covered earlier. But basically what what is a card utility.

Ian: 33:34

So this is a card that has available in multiple situations, hence good for the meta. So I mentioned I think even earlier about utility Pokemon. You know, a good example is things like robot V and Pokemon, it lets you draw cards, it's just good in any deck doesn't matter if you're not playing a dark deck. It's good regardless. And so you'll find utility cards end up in most decks because they have the widest range of being used.

Jason: 34:03

And another term that has a wide range of being used is actually our next one. Now, this appeared twice on our list. And I ignored the one earlier because where there was two of us writing the list, we both put different things down. So it just shows how basically the same thing goes down as two different names, but that is vanilla. And it's also known as french vanilla.

Ian: 34:24

So this is literally a card with no rules text only a name and text on it. You know, you might get a creature in magic that is literally to manner to damage one time, you know, to help on toughness or something like that, you know, just a bog standard card doesn't do anything special, no special abilities. They're often usually slightly better started cards than an equivalent with an ability and they often fill the common uncommon slots. Something we haven't mentioned is Rarity, which I'll just quickly cover is all card games tend to have rares Commons uncommons and then other sorts of varying harder to find cards, but the comments as given in the name, often aren't as good and aren't as utilised as the rares or mythix, or expensive cards that you get the other end. So vanilla cards are just a bog standard ones that literally have decent stats and don't do anything else.

Jason: 35:17

Okay, guys, so that is our list for today. Is there anything on this list that we have missed? Is there anything that we have? That we have got drastically wrong? If we have blamed me, and here's the card game player? Yep. So of all those things that we just went through, and is there any there that you find that you use quite regularly, or maybe ones that you've never even heard of before,

Ian: 35:40

there's a couple in there, but it depends on the game you're looking at, you know, for example, me with Magic the Gathering, I've only really got interested in that in the last few years. So the terminology can still be fairly new to me. And, you know, like Pokemon, there's other terminology of different bits and pieces we haven't covered. You know, just a quick few for people of interest. Don't say a word that you don't get in many card games that you're doing Pokemon, when you can take it with them opponent out on the first turn of a game, or when they've got no Pokemon left to bring out, you know, so there are card game specific terminology. Now just trying to see having a quick look around it was anything else with things and other one that you might hear quite a lot where you, you drew cards that didn't go your way, you know, so you needed to draw something or you needed to play something, they let you flip a coin to determine what it whether it worked or not, and you got the wrong result you didn't need. And one other thing is rotation. We mentioned about sets earlier sets rotate, where some are allowed and some aren't. So that's something else you might hear. But loads of games have, you know, all the games have their own sets of terminology and slang that go with them as well. We'd be here for hours if we were to cover everything.

Jason: 36:49

So you may well end up seeing us do yet another one of these at some point in the future if you guys asked for it. So we'll see how that goes. But yeah, that is where we're gonna leave it for today. I think with regards to TCG terminology. And yeah, if you do want to contact us about any of these, if you have any questions, we're more than happy to answer them as well just contact us on one of the social media platforms. You can find us Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, just search for Meeple Minded Media. But other than that, I think it's time that we send across to our men in the new shed. So over to you, Paul.

Paul: 37:31

Ryan, did you hear what Ian called me last week after that Toy Story chat? I know pork chop. I always saw myself as more of a man Mr. Potato Head to be honest. I have you popped over him pooped in his shoes for me like you said you were nice. Anyway, what did you and Darcy get up to for Valentine's Day? Those of you not in the know Brian's girlfriend is called Darcy. She's hedgehog. Yeah, I know it's getting more and more like how McDonald's farming here every week. Oh yeah, very nice. Okay Yes. All right. You can stop there is a family show. Me Well, the wife and I had a somewhat unusual day I bought some flowers and droplets cards, some washing up gloves and a pretty awesome new scrubbing brush. Wow, she loved some of them. Oh, and then we had to take our old mattress to the dump. Sorry, recycling centre. Do you know what she did? She actually asked the attendant what section she needed to put me I know route right. But then the attendant said the husband's script was full and to just put me in with a general household waste. Exactly. With these guns I should easily have been put in with the scrap metal Yeah, I suppose you're right really should get on with the news. Right news this week surprised both ourselves and the general board gaming community as a whole is the acquisition of board game arena by publishing giants asmoday those not familiar with board game arena, where on earth have you been and secondly, you can still join the PI. Come on down. board game arena is a board game simulator alongside similar platforms such as tabletop simulator, and table topia. But with the main difference being that board game arena can be played from within an internet browser window rather than a specific standardised programme. Personally, boardgame arena is a slight edge over the likes of table topia and tabletop simulator, as the format has rules and mechanics in place to play through whilst adhering to the game's rules, whereas the latter requires knowledge of the game's rules and more hands on with the games components. board game arena also boasts tutorials for many of its games. The popularity of board game simulators, especially in 2020, has soared with board game arena experience and increased 600% yep 600 not just because of the increased spotlight and enjoyment of the board gaming community as a whole, but also because many of us have been in some kind of COVID-19 related lockdown over the last year. Essentially such sites let us play board games virtually with friends we may be separated from war game arena provides versions of over 250 games which do include asmoday favourites such as car zone, job or, and Seven Wonders as well as many others. The move has been considered natural as the teams have known each other for a long time. And doing so we'll support the continuous growth and development of the simulator, Gregory isabeli and Emmanuel, Colin or game founders comment working with asmodee allows us to continue on massive growth with a partner that shares our love and passion for board gaming asmoday fulfils a non criteria for us that board game arena is always run by absolute board game fans with core business in board games. Thomas kogler head of strategy as the day added our growth is based on one crucial commitment offer the best gaming experience to consumers and bring our brands to the widest possible audience. Having a platform that allows players all over the world to meet play their favourite games together or discover new games is a natural fit alongside our amazing catalogue of board games skull and splendour will be in the coming weeks the first of a long list of asmoday releases. As mentioned, talking to members of our various groups of fans of the show the news has come as a big surprise and to some not a welcome one. But news from the asthma day group confirms boardgame arena will remain independent and the current management will continue all game arenas basic features and a small selection of games is free. Although access to a large majority of the games requires the premium membership for a small fee. When I say small, we mean small. That's been confirmed not to change either, but just a monthly fee of three pounds 99 I mean, what's that the price of a posh coffee somewhere? Sorry, I don't drink the stuff. It gives you full access removing advertising, adding in game voice chat alongside access to the full and ever growing catalogue of games. Given the quality of games on board game arena, we look forward to seeing even more brought to it as top titles as per day will be added. scalpers are hard at work cornering a secondary market centred on McDonald's new promotion with a Pokemon Trading Card Game and a change in how the fast food chain sells its toys isn't helping matters. Last week, McDonald's franchises across the world started selling Happy Meals that included a 25th anniversary Pokemon TCG booster pack as their toy. This pack differs from normal sets in that includes four cards from a set of 25 depicting the starter Pokemon from each of the in game regions plus a pita chip. Each pack of four also includes one foil card along with sticker sheets, activity pages, or a buildable card box all packaged in cardboard envelopes embellished with illustrations of the cheeky yellow mouse, as often happens with limited promotional cards. scalpers immediately moved into the resale these cards on aftermarket sites such as eBay, Craigslist, and local Facebook marketplaces, a quick search shows foil singles going for anywhere between five and $70 whilst unopened boxes, each containing 150 promotional boosters and seemingly obtained directly from McDonald's distributors begin around $700 and easily reach four digit opening bids. collectors and fans are crying foul pointing out this ongoing fleecing as another instance of scalpers clearing Pokemon TCG products from the shelves of big box retailers and local game stores. Joe Merrick, owner and operator of popular Pokemon fan site surbhi wrote a Twitter thread Wednesday morning related past anecdotes of the fallout from widespread scalping and its continued effect on the hobby players, collectors fans and the young audience are being driven out due to this insatiable desire for profit. I'm seeing so many just stop playing stop collecting because they don't see a point please don't buy from scalpers and don't buy out all the stock. Think of other people too, with many a video game making its way to a tabletop near you lately with the likes of Space Invaders, Fallout Bloodborne Horizon Zero Dawn and the recently announced Monster Hunter. It's no surprise when we get another Polish game publisher go on board has announced a deal with video game developer CD Projekt RED to release a new board game set in the world of The Witcher The Witcher oh well designed by go on board cofounders Newcastle wasn't the act who's been responsible for Kickstarter successes such as Titans and Valhalla. Luke has quoted in the Witcher world you become a witcher, professional monster Slayer and immerse yourself in the legendary universe of The Witcher franchise set years before the saga of girl of rivia. The Witcher Old World explores a time when monsters roam the continent in greater numbers, creating a constant peril that required the attention of expertly trained monster Slayer is known as witches. Five competing schools trained their adapts through brutal regimes, Once fully prepared, is now recognised witches set off to explore the man seeking trouble and adventures and helping others for coin in this competitive adventure board game. two to five players travel across a vast map, embarking on masterfully pen quests, encountering and making ambiguous moral choices, fighting monsters, and sometimes brawling with other witches to defend their schools honour the game lets players construct their own unique decks of cards by choosing from a wide range of abilities, attacks dodges Witcher combat magic known as signs through cards synergy players aim to achieve a powerful combo as they utilise their witches, schools or Mark abilities to their full potential quests, battles, and even dice poker allow each player to earn money, obtain new items and train their skills. You begin with a deck of 10 cards specific to your school. various opportunities in the game allow you to gain or lose cards trying to build combos and advance your skills. Each card has its own colour, the more cards you play and linked together the more powerful your combo the first player to acquire four to six trophies with a number being set at the start of play wins the game instantly. You can obtain trophies by killing monsters, instigating and winning chaotic Tavern brawls against other witches, training attributes to that highest level and resolving certain quests throughout the adventure. The game has already had some positive reviews from various sources, but no word is yet on a release with Luke as his last two being Kickstarter launches, we're gonna bet this one will too, which will keep you updated.