Warhammer 40,000 Conquest Living Card Game Coming This Year

[Starke]

OK, if the definitions of the two game types mean squat to you, then how about this, Games Workshop did it first. Warhammer: Invasion started production in '09. High Command only started production last year.
I would like to note that there IS a difference between Deck Building Game and LCG business models. With a deckbuilding game, only one person needs to own everything for a game group to have a complete experience, it plays like a boardgame. An LCG is like Magic: the Gathering, everyone who wants to play needs their own stuff. One of those business models seems far more profitable to me, I'll leave it to you to figure out which one I mean.

I'm not sure how you can say the definitions of the two game types mean squat to me when you never elaborated on how a LCG differs from a deck building game until just now, and Fantasy Flight Games own website has a page defining a LCG and none of it ever mentions anything other than the business model of selling a complete core game and monthly expansions. Exactly the thing that High Command does as well.

Never mind that the same page mentions that the core game they sell in their LCG model contains everything you need for two players to have a complete experience. I'm not sure how that jives with your statement that everyone who wants to play needs their own stuff, but it seems to directly contradict one of your main points. Point being though, for someone getting so uppity over my understanding of the definitions, you haven't done a very good job of explaining how they differ. At all.

The LCGs usually require separate card pools. The core sets will give you everything to set up a single two player game (at least the ones I've played (GoT, SW & WHI)). But, the games encourage building up a personal collection, the way CCGs do, to build your decks with.

That said, they are way less costly than CCG releases, but Deck Building games are even cheaper, as I said above, they're built around the core box being a complete game for everyone involved, and customization is something that happens as part of the game, not before the game begins.

A game like Warhammer: Invasion or Game of Thrones assumes each player has their own card pool to build from. You can share, and build the decks on the spot, but you could also just prebuild your deck, and play against someone who'd prebuilt their deck, from their own collection.

EDIT:

For reference, Warhammer: Invasion is a lot like Magic. You pick a faction (Empire, Dwarf, High Elf, Orc, Chaos, or Dark Elf), and then build a 50 card deck. You then take that deck and face off against an opponent. You draw and play cards, and your goal is to burn two sections of his capital (which requires dealing ~ 8 damage to that section). I'm simplifying, but that's the idea.

Dominion (The only deck builder I have a frame of reference for), starts you off with a small preselected deck of resources, and sets out cards in specific stacks of ten. You draw your hand, and use the resource cards to buy cards from those stacks to enlarge your deck, or buy cards that represent victory points. The actual stacks are a shared resource between the players, but there's no "collection of cards to draw on", the way there are for LCGs and CCGs.

The difference between LCGs and CCGs is just distribution. CCGs (like Magic) use a random distribution method... which you probably already know, but... just in case. LCGs are non-random. Meaning, each copy of the Core Conquest box will have a complete set of the cards for the game (before expansions). (The Core sets aren't complete playsets, and there is a reason to get additional cores, but it's not to chase after some missing card, it's for getting redundant copies to even out your decks.)

 

[ccggenius12]

Never mind that the same page mentions that the core game they sell in their LCG model contains everything you need for two players to have a complete experience. I'm not sure how that jives with your statement that everyone who wants to play needs their own stuff, but it seems to directly contradict one of your main points. Point being though, for someone getting so uppity over my understanding of the definitions, you haven't done a very good job of explaining how they differ. At all.

Wikipedia is your friend.
LCG [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Flight_Games#Living_Card_Games]
Deck-building game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck-building_game]
In any case, yes, technically two people can play with the core game, just like two people can play Magic: the Gathering with two intro packs. If that's enough for you, great. However, most people aren't satisfied with such a limited card pool, and I'm quite certain that at the least, most people would buy their own copy of the core set so they can customize their own deck without having to worry about who gets to use which cards.

Also, at least with Star Wars, only one player actually needs to have the cards. In standard format light and dark players can't use each other's card pools in deck construction, and in multiplayer (via Balance of the Force), deck construction limits apply to all players. (So, if you have a pod that's limited to one per deck, no one else can use a copy.) So a single card pool is enough for everyone.

That's not true of Game of Thrones or Invasion. I don't know about Call of Cthulhu, Netrunner, or LotR, though.

Netrunner is asymmetric, so yes, technically you have enough for two people to play, though in tournaments, you need to have a deck for both roles, so there's that. From the looks of things, Conquest will not be like this. The deck building restriction is the ally wheel, so you can have two people playing the same faction. It's a non-issue if the two players like opposite ends of the wheel, but if everyone wants to play Space Marines, they'll have to get their own core set.

I would like to again stress, that while technically multiple people can play with the same box, it's hardly ideal. If you're just going to play with a friend, sure, go for it. But you'll find yourself at a distinct disadvantage if you're playing against someone who owns playsets of everything. Going back to my MTG example, it would be like playing your Intro Deck against their fully tuned Legacy deck; they're going to win, and it will probably be so one sided that no one will have any fun.
Basically, how invested you get with the game will depend on how often you intend to play it, and with who. You can treat it like a complete board game and be no worse off. But if you choose to treat it like a card game, it's actually quite affordable as far as those go. ~$45 for the core set, (though you'll probably need to buy multiples of those if you want to have the maximum number of playable copies of every card, if the past is any indication.) Then they'll be releasing an expansion every month, which will either be a large expansion ($30), or a small expansion ($15), with the small expansions being several orders of magnitude more likely. Those you'll only need to buy one of, because they will have full sets of every card included. So, for less than what you probably spend if you go see one movie a month, you can 100% an LCG.

Anything else not make sense?

 

[Starke]

Netrunner is asymmetric, so yes, technically you have enough for two people to play, though in tournaments, you need to have a deck for both roles, so there's that. From the looks of things, Conquest will not be like this. The deck building restriction is the ally wheel, so you can have two people playing the same faction. It's a non-issue if the two players like opposite ends of the wheel, but if everyone wants to play Space Marines, they'll have to get their own core set.

Yeah, I was actually making a point, Star Wars is highly unusual in that the deck construction rules for multiplayer (2v2, 1v2, or 1v3) actually make additional collections irrelevant. If you stick two copies of Fall of the Jedi, or A Hero's Journey in your deck, no other player on your side can use a copy. (If you only take one copy of either, then another member of your team could take a copy, but the two per deck limit is extended to a team wide restriction.) It's great for informal play, where everyone's working from one pooled collection, but, it's the only time I've ever seen something like that in a CCG, but Star Wars is kinda the champion of strange deck construction. (Interesting that Conquest is taking one part of that, though. It seems the Warlord will work as an objective set, and then you build the rest of your deck normally.)

I keep threatening to pick up Netrunner, though. I've got some of the old Wizards era cards around here somewhere, and as I recall it was freakin' brilliant.

Even in cases like Warhammer: Invasion, you can work from a shared card pool for informal play, again, so long as everyone doesn't want to play the same faction. And, to an extent, it's actually more forgiving of this than Magic, because unless you're splitting your purchases with someone else, or trading cards away, you'll have an equivalent collection of cards for factions you don't play.

 

[ccggenius12]

I keep threatening to pick up Netrunner, though. I've got some of the old Wizards era cards around here somewhere, and as I recall it was freakin' brilliant.

If there's a sizable playgroup in your area, I say pull the trigger. I'm just waiting for the next data pack to drop, then I'm splurging at Coolstuffinc.com. One of the stores around here averages ~40 people on their Netrunner night, and I'll be getting all of that stuff for ~$220 shipped. As someone who plays Magic semi regularly, I can't justify not getting into a popular game that I can 100% for less than half the cost of a tier 1 Magic deck.