After more than 2 years, WoW TCG Sneak Previews came back to Europe! Cryptozoic’s European representative Matthias organized a fun event in our city of choice Berlin where 67 players showed up – most of them from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland! Not surprisingly, my team, the Bootcamp L.E., made a strong showing and we were able to claim 4 of the top 8 spots.

I was the luckiest guy of the bunch as I took down the whole event, winning an Epic Collection as well as a Corrupted Hippogryph Loot Card! All of these items are now up for sale at tcgmarket.eu. If you’re interested, go check them out. If you have any questions, feel free to send them my way.

Last Monday, OnNet Europe was kind enough to invite me over to their headquarters to take a look at their upcoming Online TCG Carte. The game has a lot of potential as it combines the advantages of a traditional TCG with the elements of a MMO. Let me break it down real quick for you:

• Gameplay:

  If you ever played a TCG, especially something resource based like Magic: The Gathering or the World of Warcraft TCG, you won’t have any problems understanding the core concepts of the game. Over the course of the game, you place more and more resources in a designated are to play stronger cards. This means games often start rather relaxed, but quickly pick up pace and culminate in exciting and game breaking turns a little later!

• The Resource System:

  There is no “Mana Screw” in the game, the most disappointing feature of Magic, as you can place every card as a resource. However, there’s a special card type called “Shards” (I only know the German name, so don’t blame me if this translation is a little off), which can be compared to Quests in the WoW TCG. You can place them face-up in a designated zone and they allow you to draw a card right away. The downside? They won’t generate resources right away – you’ll have to wait until the start of your next round to gain this benefit. Still, it often makes sense to place Shards face-up to draw into fresh cards even if it means you have to underdrop. They give the game a nice and unique feeling and might as well be the best solution to the typical problems resource systems have to deal with that I’ve seen so far.

• The Playzone:

  You can play creatures either in the Attacker or Defender Zone (once again, I’m not entirely certain about the English names for these zones). You can only attack with them if you play them in the Attacker Zone. You can choose freely what opposing creature / hero you want to attack, however, all creatures in your opponent’s Defender Zone can be used once per turn to become the Defender of your attack. So things can get tricky in no time and depending on if you play your cards in the right zone, you can have a lot of influence on the outcome of the game.
  There are also ways to move creatures from one zone to the other, so don’t rely too much on your creatures sitting in the Defender Zone.

• Damage:

  Unlike Magic, damage on creatures is permanent in Carte. That means even if your opponent is playing that 5 / 5 fattie, you can take him down with 3 2 / 1 creatures. This won’t always be the best possible move; maybe you should slam them right into the opposing hero to win the game fast before your opponent can gain the upper hand on the field. I prefer this concept as it always made for exciting games in the WoW TCG.

• Heroes:

  *You* are not some imaginary being in Carte. A hero is representing you and he can also play a major role in the game. Every single hero comes with 2 built-in abilities that you can use once per game (only one of them, not both). They also have different Life Points, so deckbuilding will be quite interesting with so many things to consider.

• Double Mulligan:

  Carte features the most interesting Mulligan that I’ve ever come across. Twice (!) per game, at the start of your turn, you can shuffle your hand back in and draw as many cards as you added to your deck. While your hero takes a point of damage if you do so, I would always prefer this to a dead hand that doesn’t provide you with some viable outs to turn the game around.

• Tarot Cards:

  Without Tarot Cards, I think Carte would be missing out on something. They are there to cause some chaos in the game as they represent the “randomness factor” of it. Every deck features 4 Tarot Cards and you’ll pick one at random before the start of the game. You can use this card once during the game; as soon as you can afford it’s resource cost. They all have rather powerful effects, so it’s a good thing that you can never rely on any particular Tarot Card – you simply don’t know if you’ll pick it at the start of the game (you can’t add the same card more than once to your deck). Without Tarot Cards, the decks I’ve seen so far might turn out way too consistent, making it almost impossible for starting players to stand a chance against more experienced players.

Impression so far

The developers left me with a very positive feeling. They made it perfectly clear that the game will be completely free2play – you’ll never have to invest a single Cent to unlock some item in the game. On top of that, they don’t believe in new players having to grind forever to stand a chance. So the starter decks will be quite useful and you won’t necessarily lose all of your first 50 games.

I think Carte holds a lot of potential. It brings enough new and unique features to the table to attract experienced players and with its dramatically low price tag, it should get picked up by plenty of interested TCG players and grow in no time. I’ll definitely give it a try once the game is out, so head over to the Carte website and become a fan on Facebook to follow the latest developments.

Over the years I’ve heard time and again that Yu-Gi-Oh! didn’t feature a proper “resource system”. Contrary to popular belief, I think there are quite a couple of things you have to take into account when it comes to making the best move possible in a Duel. In my weekly column, I’m talking about all of the resources that are present in the game: The Tale of the missing Resources.

I’m sorry I can’t provide you with more exciting content these days. I’m quite stressed as we’re looking for a new appartment and at the same time my company is undergoing some major changes. I’m still positive that this will all turn out great, however, don’t get mad at me when I don’t have time to get back to you these days.

Anyway, I still somehow managed to write a weekly column. This time, I’m trying to draw some conclusions between the workings of other trading card games and Yu-Gi-Oh!. It’s quite interesting what you can learn from playing a bit of Magic: The Gathering or the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, so go and check it out: Lessons learned by playing other TCGs.

Happy New Year everyone!

After explaining how to become a much happier Duelist last week, I’m back with some more insights about a Duelist’s psychology. This week, I’m providing you with a rundown through the 7 Stages of Grief. I’ve experienced them after I realized I’m no longer a competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! player.

In the last article I’ve written this year (at least for eTCG.de), I’m trying to explain you how to become a happy Duelist. I did a rough estimation of the number of articles I’ve written this year and it turned out I must have written something like 216 articles. Alright, so much for self-adulation, now go and check out the article: Unter den Hut geschaut: Road to Happiness.

The past weekend, the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series stopped in Brighton. Here’s a link to the coverage in case you’re interested.

After everything was said and done and the dust had settled, the whole community started to complain about the seemingly unbeatable Dino Rabbit decks that rocked the tournament. Are they really that broken and is it really a problem that a new deck claims the top spots? I’m trying to answer these questions in Unter den Hut geschaut: Rabbit Season.

Wow, I’ve really made it. Hard to believe that the first article of my weekly column “Unter den Hut geschaut” has been published more than 5 years ago. A lot has happened in the past years, but for most of the time, you could count on one thing: You’ll read an article as part of this column once a week.

To celebrate the anniversary, I’m looking back at my own inception into the game and try to draw a couple of conclusions of what’s always been true for this community, be it 2004 or 2011. It’s quite the ride if you ask me: Unter den Hut geschaut: 200! Inception and Reincarnations.

I didn’t really find the time to update my blog on Friday or the past weekend as I was constantly on the move and catching up with some friends. Anyway, I published a weekly column and it dealt with the current banned list. I went as far as claiming that it’s the best list ever and I’m sure you have something to say about that. Go and check out the article: Unter den Hut geschaut: The best Banned List ever!

Better late than never, but never late is better; on Friday, I published another weekly column. This time I was trying to sum up the current status quo of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG (in Germany). Have a read and catch up with what’s been going on the past year in Germany: Unter den Hut geschaut: The Status Quo 2011.