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Mike Ricotta
United States
Norfolk
Virginia
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Today, instead of my inane rambles, we will look at the history of the now ever so popular deckbuilder genre of games. This is a history I have spent a lot of time researching and didn’t make it all up in 20 minutes. I swear everything is fact checked 23 times. Especially that last bit, that isn’t a blatant lie. You might find it hard to believe that famed designer Donald X. Vaccarino once proclaimed to Richard Garfield “You sir are worse then Hitler”.
I actually hope you do find that hard to believe since I just made it up. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet kids. Unless I review something, then it’s the God’s honest truth. Gospel.
Magic: the Gathering was an early example of a deckbuilder game. The game has some interesting mechanics. First, instead of buying cards in game and placing them in your deck you had to buy cards in a completely separate game called Real Life. Real Life is an odd little game. There are several paths to victory, but is impossible to tell who is winning (except for Charlie Sheen, who is winning, jokes like these are still topical right?). Anyway, the farther you advance on the money you can waste on bits of cardstock track the more cards you can add to your magic collection and thus add to magic decks. It may seem like an ungainly system and is very prone to fiddelyness but these are the early days people! So people who may be farther down the mortgage track or the having a family track may not have as many cool cards. People claim that you can make a winning deck out of the common cards or the less expensive cards but these people are wrong. They have clearly not seen Wizard’s business plan nor have they read the “Secret History of magic set XXX”. In which it is revealed that the new plan is just to print money. I write XXX since I have no idea what the newest Magic set is and I’m far too lazy to look.
So this CCG idea prevailed for a while. People wasted money on bits of cardboard that had pictures of computer hackers, Lord of the Rings dudes, Star Wars dudes and so on. Personally I enjoyed Spellfire. Ohh it’s got some broken cards, but it’s fun. I especially enjoyed it when they decided that they should use pictures of people dressed up in costumes instead of art. Also they half assed it which made it way better.
Eventually Hero of the People Donald X. Vaccarino (HPDXV) decided that enough was enough. Card games should be based on skills and stuff not who can blow the most expendable income. So HPDXV designed Dominion. A card game for the masses! The deckbuilder genre was born. Finally designing a deck was a game and not just part of a game. I love Dominion. If you don’t believe anything else in this entry (and you really shouldn’t) you can believe that. Even though HPDXV had created a wonderful game he still needed that sweet sweet cash money so he releases an expansion for Dominion every 23 minutes. I buy them all. And the promo cards, buy them as well. I draw the line at the fan made cards though. I only play with cards officially sanctioned by HPDXV and not the malarkey that is conceived by the unwashed masses.
With the success of Dominion in place a lot of other game designers decided that they will lovingly rip off the ideas of HPDXV and make their own deck building game. Thus we have a billion of the things. In doing my extensive research for this I looked at the BGG Family of Deck Building. There are 8 pages of the damnable things. Really people? I can’t be bothered with 8 pages. Some notable examples:
Thunderstone: You know what Dominion needed, violence. Now I can agree that every game is improved with violence (My Puerto Rico: the Slave Uprising expansion never panned out) but for some reason this one doesn’t grab me. I’ve never played it.
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer: You know what dominion needs, not having all the cards available all the time. Also it needs the ability to murder a cultist every turn. That cultist gets murdered a lot! I have played this and it annoys me. Every time I try and build a workable deck the cards I need don’t show up and I just murder the cultist until I lose.
Tanto Cuore: I whole heartily agree that Dominion needs more scantily clad maids. Most games do (My Puerto Rico: The Brothel expansion never panned out). My wife disagrees. Never played Tanto Cuore. (My real life happily married track remains high)
Nightfall: You know what’s popular with the kids these days? Vampires! Never played it.
A Few Acres of Snow: Dominion as a wargame! Sign me up! I really want to try this. I love war games, I love Dominion….The rules make it sound fun! Very interested…
So, some people decided that deckbuilding games should not be limited to cards! You can clearly have decks made out of other things yes? On a side note if anyone wants to play a deck building game that doesn’t use cards I have a great one. It’s called build me a deck. You play with 2x4s and it is played entirely in my back yard.
Puzzle Strike: So instead of cards we can use little cardboard chits drawn out of a bag. The unwashed masses haven’t already done this Dominion have they? (they have) It looks kind of neat but I am not very excited. Never tried it.
Quarriors: So instead of cards or chits we can draw dice out of a bag. Then we can roll a bunch of dice! Now this I like. I love rolling dice. I would be interested in trying this out. The rules however did not really grab me. I don’t know if I care for the monster battle part of the game. Perhaps it works better in person then on paper. On paper it sounds a little dull. Monster battles should be more exciting! Perhaps you could roll some dice to determine if you dice win the dice battle. Now that sounds great! Also the name of the game is terrible.
Of course there are some other games that sort of use deckbuilding. 7 Wonders for example. This uses a draft which is a way some people build decks in magic. I don’t care for 7 wonders as I just don’t see enough going on. It seems like the cards should do more after I play them. Of course 7 Wonders stole the draft idea from Fairy Tale which is a much better game. The cards don’t really do anything in Fairy Tale either, but the game is over quickly.
So there you have it. The history of the deckbuilder (fictional).
P.S. If Donald X. Vaccarino started refering to himself as HPDXV he would be even more awesome...
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For a well-written blog and history of deckbuilding. Unfortunately, you also receive a 
for failing to mention the oft-maligned 
for mentioning Tanto Cuore, which actually really sucks, but is made by Arclight, the publisher of 
