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I never played Magic. I briefly tried the original Vampire: The Masquerade (V:TM) themed CCG (Jyhad?). I had some Illuminati: New World Order (INWO) cards. I bought and listlessly toyed with a deck of the A Game of Thrones CCG. I really, really tried to like HeroClix. But every single time, the collectible element drove me away. I just couldn't see the merits of the game outweigh the pressure that random buys would put on my completist nature.

Now, there are a number of games that seem to take the good parts of the collectible games and do away with the collectible part. Can anyone offer a compare / contrast thumbnail of what seem to be the big deck-building games out today?

  • Dominion
  • Thunderstone
  • Ascension
  • Nightfall

I'm an experienced RPG and boardgamer, so it's not like I'll be put off by some complicated rules or emergent complexity arising from multiple card interactions. And it's not like I can't hit BGG for some reviews. I just want to know what these games share and how they differ.

If there's another game like this, I'd be open to hearing about that, too. I'm not sure that the Fantasy Flight Games Living Card Games for A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu qualify - aren't they just repackages of the old CCGs?

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@gomad: it would be great if you could expand some of the acronyms. As a former casual collectible card game player I would be interested in knowing what games you are talking about, but I'm not in the scene enough to understand any acronym beyond CCG. (For reference, see this answer on meta.) – Erik P. Oct 29 '10 at 23:56
@Erik P - I expanded them. Sorry! – gomad Oct 30 '10 at 5:51
Yes, "Jyhad," although it ran for several years afterward as "Vampire: The Eternal Struggle." – Jadasc Oct 30 '10 at 13:33
@gomad: Thanks - no worries! – Erik P. Oct 30 '10 at 15:35
The Fantasy Flight LCGs may be worth considering; while they are in a sense 'just repackaging CCGs', they remove the randomness. If the random buys are what drives you away, the LCGs should be considered. If the ever-increasing-card-game-size also drives you away, then steer clear. (Also, @Jadasc: Vampire was also revived by White Wolf and ran for many years since; in fact they've only just shut it down again this year. But that's an aside.) – Tynam Nov 14 '10 at 19:48
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Okay, I'll give it a shot.

First, what they have in common:

  1. Static Cards: They are all static (meaning not CCG) card games. Some (Dominion and Thunderstone) have expansions, but none of them require collecting or hunting down 'rare' cards to make the game better.

  2. Victory Points: They all use a Victory Point system to determine the winner. This is called "honor" in ascension (I think) but in essence, its still victory points. The person with the most at the end wins.

  3. Flexibility in numbers:They are all flexible on the number of players: Ascension is 2-4, Thunderstone is 2 - 5 (or 6) and I think Dominion is 2 - 6. Not sure on the numbers exactly because Thunderstone has a nice single player variant, and both Thunderstone and Dominion can be expanded to include more players by playing with expansion cards.

Now the differences.

  1. Deck Building:

    1. Dominion is focused on building a deck to buy victory points.
      While there are cards to interact and "attack" the other players, the game is centered around building a deck that will allow you to buy the most victory points.

    2. Thunderstone focuses on building a deck from a general pool of cards, and then using your hand to "defeat monsters in the dungeon", thus gaining your Victory Points from the defeated monsters. Some Victory Points can be purchased as well, but not usually enough to win the game, so defeating monsters is important to winning.

    3. Ascension is much more like Thunderstone than Dominion. In Ascension, you must also build a deck to defeat monsters to gain Honor (Victory Points) but unlike Thunderstone, the cards in the general pool are revealed one at a time. So you have a line of 8 cards, and when one leaves play (your deck, or the discard pile) another fills that spot.

All are fairly easy to pick up, especially if you have played CCGs before or one of the above.

Dominion is probably the most well known and most played, as it's been around longer and there are several (many...) expansions.

I like them all and while I played Thunderstone first, then learned the others, I think that they all can be quite fun. Most game shops will probably have Dominion on their "demo" shelf. Several around here have Thunderstone and Ascension as well.

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I'm a big fan of Dominion, and haven't played the others. I read the rulebook for Thunderstone, and it didn't really appeal to me. It looked like a dungeon-themed clone of Dominion. The limited supply in Ascension sounds interesting, though...I'll have to look into that. – Andrew Vandever Dec 15 '10 at 3:53
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The LCG's aren't strictly "just repackages". While some of the cards are subtly modified from the CCG, they are essentially the same. The rules are the current CCG rules yet have new gameplay elements present. The most important distinction is there is none of the traditional CCG randomness to the Chapter Packs. They are fixed card packs used purely to customize or expand your game.

However I would agree, in my opinion they are not "deck building" games (because you don't build a deck as a primary component of gameplay) but deck building is a component if the owner chooses to buy Chapter Packs.

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