Flesh and Blood
Oh man, oh boy, well if it isn’t flesh and blood. My favorite Trading card game ever! I don’t even know where to begin with my praise of this game. It has everything that I think anyone could really ask for in terms of a competitive TCG. It has all the familiar archetypes, Midrange, Aggro, Control, and combo. It has a very robust resource system where you will rarely get “mana screwed” or “mana flooded”. What really got me deep into playing regularly is how much this game feels like a card game version of street fighter. There is a ton of options in terms of how you can play out each of your turns. Sometimes you have to use your hand to block, sometimes it’s best to take damage to send even more back on your turn, sometimes you do a combination of both. Depending on the character you are playing these basic tools are used entirely different. For example, the main class I play, Wizard, Is all about bidding their time until they can end the game in a burst of damage that is too much for the opponent to block out. It turns my health into a timer, get my HP to 0 before I find the combo hand and take you from 36HP to 0. I could go on and on about what I like about this but I’ll save that for another time. Maybe I’ll make a video about this TCG and just illustrate all the coolest aspects of it.
Pokémon
Let me be totally honest with y’all. I only learned this game so I could run a camp for elementary schoolers, and I only ran a camp for elementary schoolers because I was working at a private school with very wealthy parents. They paid well and their kids had a fun time with me acting as the professor of the camp. I actually did it two years in a row and eventually started enjoying my time playing the game with my students. I even started cracking open a couple of packs and kept a small collection of rare cards for the kids to trade with me to learn the value of their cards. It was a wholesome time overall. Since those two camps though, I have not played Pokémon and I don’t plan too. I’m a one TCG type of guy and even if I had the money for multiple, Pokémon would not be my first choice. I have nostalgia for the video games but I didn’t grow up collecting the cards at all. The TCG is as simple as the games themselves, doesn’t do anything too complex, but works as a fun game that parents can play with their kids from time to time. I wish scalpers would leave this game to its wholesomeness but alas, everything’s got to be for profit underneath capitalism.
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Shuffling...