Yesterday Jamey Stegmaier posted his weekly Sunday YouTube video (embedded below). This time is was a discussion about living card games (LCG).

It turns out from the video that Jamey is kicking around the idea of designing a LCG. And this video was his spitballing the idea, asking for feedback on certain aspects of the genre.

I think we all know how I feel about Stonemaier Games, and Jamey as a game designer. So I’m pretty excited to see what Jamey’s take on the genre turns out like if it comes to fruitition.

Firstly Jamey is correct in identifying that KeyForge is not a LCG. It is a collectible card game (CCG), but instead of trading cards and building decks you are buying/trading complete decks. However Jamey did miss identify Star Wars: Destiny as a LCG. That too is a CCG that also has dice. And for the record a pretty awesome game.

I’ve played the LCGs Ashes and Android: Netrunner. The co-operative LCGs haven’t appealed to me. I like that competitive element,

I also like the deck building side and all that entails. Which is something that Jamey is not a big fan off. However Ashes shows that it is possible to offer a compromise. That still has all the deck building, and players can happily build their own decks. However they provide deck lists in the core set that players can just throw together and play. Plus when they released more cards they came as playable decks straight out of the pack.

Jamey mentioned a LCG he’d played (can’t remember which) that you take groups of cards and put them together to form a deck. I got the impression that it is similar to how decks are constructed in the game Sorcerer by WWG. As an alternative to full on deck building, I like this. It’s quick to construct a deck at the start of a game. However it has the draw back of taking a bit longer to pack away as you separate the cards in to the respective groups of cards again.

One thing I loved about Android: Netrunner was the theme. The game itself just oozes cyberpunk. The art was amazing, with some great flavour text on the cards. I also liked that with the data packs (this is what FFG called new packs of cards) you also got an A4 page of flavour text. Each cycle of data packs told a story with the data packs advancing that storyline.

One thing I didn’t like about the FFG LCG model as they implemented it was that the core set for which ever game usually required the purchase of multiple copies to get full sets of some cards, or have the ability to build all the decks so they could be played without taking cards from other decks. I believe that Marvel Champions has improved on this. But the cost has gone up also to match.

One issue a LCG has when it comes to the deck building side is in the early days the card pool size. It’s too small. A publisher needs to get expansions out fast to improve the options players have for building decks. If I remember correctly this is why FFG had an aggressive schedule (iirc) weekly for the first few expansions for their printing of L5R.

I like how FFG released expansions for Netrunner. They would release six expansions as part of a cycle on a monthly basis, and in between cycles a deluxe expansion. For me the sweet spot for an expansion would be around $15. For a deluxe expansion $30 is the upper limit I’d pay. A core set if it meant not having to purchase additional copies to get a complete card pool to build with shouldn’t be more than $40.

Also for expansions they need to be kept in print and easily purchasable. There were times with Netrunner when earlier expansions were ‘between printings’ and their price shot up. Particularly those expansions that had cards that went into 99% of decks.

Ashes failed to become as popular as it deserved due to a couple of reasons in my opinion. The first was there was over a year when no new expansions were released. This was mainly due to various corporate buy outs, that saw the publisher change owners a couple of times in that period. Poor communication during this period didn’t help. Also support of the competitive side and the FLGS was also poor compared to the likes of WotC and FFG.

Particularly for a competitive LCG the support for the FLGS has to be there in the form of prize support for tournaments and running weekly events. Not to mention the bigger tournaments such as nationals, regionals and worlds. A competitive LCG needs a player base and supporting the FLGS is a major part of building and maintaining it.

Oh and you have to have cool playmats for the game. Plus all the other accessories that players like such as deck boxes and sleeves. But most importantly token upgrades. I’m also going to assume that any core set by Jamey continues the inclusion of a great insert to storing all the cards sleeved.

So that’s my thoughts on the video Jamey made.