I don't want to play MTG with a Traveller skin

[GamingGlen]

The TL;DR part: if I wanted to play a Magic The Gathering-style game, I'd just play MTG. (I don't)

I hate the tournament feel of CCGs so I looked at this game with trepidation.

Having recently played Firefly the Game, IMO that is a much more fun and easier game of doing the same thing: Find a crew, find a job, keep flying. Get the rights to that game and rework it for Traveller. You'd have lots of mapboard options (meaning expansions) with subsectors of the OTU. Ship miniatures have already been made so perhaps the molds are still available.

This game is not "Traveller" as it does not encompass all that Traveller has. A better name might be "Traveller: Plying the Mains".

I took 4 tries of breaking out the CCG to finally get a grasp of how to play (didn't help that I did that during the slow periods while working at my game store so the occasional customer interrupted the learning). The first try was aborted when I saw the myriad of icons on the back of the rulebook and reading the rules full of icons is not easy. It would have been better if words were used with the related icon in () after the word. It helps with association. The whole rulebook needs another rewrite.

I dislike the mixing of cards and keeping track. If you wanted to add a complication to someone's adventure card, why not just pull such card off of THEIR deck?

Suggestion: orient the back of the Adventure cards to landscape. The face of those cards are set up that way. (yeah, too late for suggestions)


I've come to the conclusion to avoid any game designed by MTG players.

I have added the starter set to my store's game library (soon game cafe library whenever the construction gets completed) where it will probably collect dust. There's not a lot of Traveller fans around here. *sigh*

 

[Fovean]

Unfortunately I have to agree with you.

The rule book is just... so unfortunate. There are some real clunker passages in T5 but in terms of comprehension and grasping concepts the rules for the Traveller CG blow T5’s clunkiness out of the water.

Also, the icons on the cards (besides being utterly non-intuitive) are so small it’s frustrating. The Firefly game got it right with the big, bold and simple icons that are easily understood.

I too tried four solo games, the fourth game finally hit the intended flow (I think) and it was somewhat fun but diminished by the Byzantine nature of the turn sequence. It could have been something a lot less clinical than Procurement Phase and so forth, like maybe:

Startown (replenish your hand, apply upgrades, hire crew)
Patrons (draw contract cards, choose which ones to try to resolve)
Jump (pay for your crew, fuel, gear; line up resources)
Contact! (resolve missions, piracy, etc)
Payday (gather victory points, clear finished contract cards)

It’s a bummer. Another missed opportunity for Traveller. But for the record, despite all my complaining, I find the cards themselves to be really quite beautiful. Just wish they gave a better play experience.

 

[Mako]

I've read similar reviews on-line.

Aside from the icons issue, which I suspect can be dealt with by creating a cheat sheet, or playing the game more often, are there other ways to make this game more interesting, challenging, and/or entertaining?

Can the cards be used with the Traveller RPG in some way?

 

[Kersus]

I wish it was a deck-building game instead of CCG. Despite all the reviews like this I did recently purchase it at Travellercon/USA but am very hesitant to sit down and try it. The YouTube videos about it are so long I'm worried the game will just take forever.

 

[whartung]

I wish it was a deck-building game instead of CCG.

I though all/most CCGs were deck building games. Save the detail that most folks have a different collections of cards from which to build their decks.

I like playing deck building games, I just don't like deck building.

 

[LeperColony]

I though all/most CCGs were deck building games. Save the detail that most folks have a different collections of cards from which to build their decks.

I like playing deck building games, I just don't like deck building.

You're correct that all customizable card games are deck building, though it is possible to eliminate all the mental work by using pre-constructed decks or copying someone else's decklist (sadly, you still have to actually make the deck, unless you can get someone else to do it...).

But there's been a rise of games wherein creating the deck is the game itself. Dominion and Star Realms, for instance. In those games, each turn the player adds cards to their deck. These are generally called "Deck Building," which means the Magic style game, whether collectible or not, is often called a ccg/collectible card game. I've also heard TCG/Trading Card Game.

Traveller is not collectible, which means there are no rarities. Cards come in fixed sets. There are other games like that as well. For instance, Fantasy Flight calls their fixed games "living" card games or LCGs.

For what it's worth, Traveller does not play like Magic in any sense, and it's almost impossible for anyone who has played both to think it does. The Traveller card game is no more just a skin over Magic than the RPG is a sci-fi skin over D&D. The mechanics, game engine and basic play experience are fundamentally different.

 

[whartung]

But there's been a rise of games wherein creating the deck is the game itself. Dominion and Star Realms, for instance. In those games, each turn the player adds cards to their deck. These are generally called "Deck Building," which means the Magic style game, whether collectible or not, is often called a ccg/collectible card game. I've also heard TCG/Trading Card Game.

I play the solo "dungeon" scenarios in Hearthstone from time to time (online card game).

The basic premise is that there's a list of opponents, of increasing power, in the "dungeon".

I think the total is, like, 8.

And there's, perhaps, 3-4 different opponents for each slot.

As you beat each level, you're given a chance to add 3 cards to your deck. There's, again, perhaps, six or so different categories of cards for the dungeon, and they randomly pick 3 of them, from which you get to choose one.

I believe the categories are tuned for each class (you play that game as a different class: mage, warrior, etc.).

Anyway, the goal is to defeat all 8 levels. You don't know which 8 competitors you're going to get, and you get random cards to build up your deck.

This works ok for me, as I only need to make a decision of which 3 cards I want, vs picking 60 out of a thousand, and I do so incrementally. Whether your plan (for example taking from the same category if offered each time) will prevail in the end, who knows.

But it makes for good replay value. I've yet to conquer a dungeon, but I have been to the 8th layer once or twice.

 

[LeperColony]

As you beat each level, you're given a chance to add 3 cards to your deck. There's, again, perhaps, six or so different categories of cards for the dungeon, and they randomly pick 3 of them, from which you get to choose one.

That's conceptually a little similar to what are now deckbuilding games, except in those you build your deck during the game itself. For instance, in Hearthstone terms, you'd get to add a card to your deck at the end of every turn.

The interesting thing about deckbuilding games is you get to create your engine, and even change it, on the fly. Card draw tends to be even more powerful in them, because the goal is to use your entire deck as often as possible, to increase the rate at which you see your most potent effects.

 

[aramis]

The current industry terms of art:

• TCG: Trading Card Game - if it's sold in randomized booster packs
• LCG: Living Card Game - no boosters, only expansion boxed sets. FFG's adopted the term, but being used for others.
• CCG: Collectible Card Game - generally used for both TCGs and LCGs
• CDG: Collectible Dice Game
• Deck Building Game: a game where the player's deck is NOT prebuilt, but is increased in play by play.

Notable DBGs: Dominion, Legendary, A Few Acres of Snow.

Notable LCGs: Star Wars, L5R, Sentinels of the Universe/Multiverse

Notable CDGs: Star Wars: Destiny, Dragon Dice, Dice Masters

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I did some artwork for the rare cards found in the game. But if this was a Kickstarter thing, I don't think the stretch goals were met to produce them. Or the add-on rules were not published that used them. It's been awhile, I don't remember.

 

[LeperColony]

They were made, but since they were promo cards rather than being in the basic sets, they're much less common.

http://travellerdb.com/find?q=i:"Shawn+Driscoll"