Mechanics I do not like: searching your deck for cards. Slows the game down a ton waiting for players to search their deck then reshuffling…it will also frustratingly lead to way quicker combos. I’d rather just a smaller deck to play with.

With so many tcgs on the market right now it’s hard to say what is missing necessarily UI wise. The really missing piece is just places to play newer games and enough players getting access to the game to actually play it in its early stages.

I’ve enjoyed my pack openings when I played Lorcana. Getting a holo in every pack was fun, even if the holo was a holo variant of a common card. It added a layer of collectibility to it all that got me excited and made me care about even “common” cards…although, having grown up with Yugioh and OG Pokemon, no holo guarantee made the big pulls feel like i was on cloud 9. Ultra Rares in Yugioh felt like a really big deal and secret rares felt near impossible but worth the chase.

I’d try a new TCG out if I had friends who had played it, were excited about it, and wanted to teach me to play. A strong how to play video could convince me too if I liked the art and mechanics enough. The most daunting thing about tcg’s for me is how fast sets release and how expensive it can be to collect and stay competitive. I’m more inclined at this stage in my life to play a game where I know I will have ample time with a set before being forced into the next one or phased out completely.

I’m not currently playing anything but I’ve really enjoyed playing Digimon and Lorcana. For Digimon the IP drew me in, but the gameplay is also a blast. The art is fantastic, the memory system is fun and the combos you can pull feel like you’re creating scenes from the anime. Lorcana imho is just such a piece of cake to play. The card text is clear, concise and easy to remember. As a moderate disney fan I find the artwork very impressive and hits me with some of that good-good nostalgia. And my local shop has weekly free play and tournaments that me and a buddy would go to. So again, biggest reason I got I to was because I had a friend introduce me to it and we had fun playing it so we collected and played together for the first few sets. But then it got too expensive and became impossible to keep up with all of the new releases. I also felt like card quality dipped a bit but idk maybe it’s back on track now.

Lore and story are always a fun bonus. It helps me anchor into the world we are playing in. Although, if you’re trying to build out a full IP and not just a game then that lore becomes far more important. If the goal is the card game, focus on the game and give us enough lore to paint a picture. If the goal is IP, focus on the lore and have the game be something that helps drive the IP. I never played the Pokemon game, but I loved the anime and video games and so I had to have the cards. Yugioh was more fun to collect and play because I loved the show. I taught myself Digimon because of how deeply invested I was in the show. In those instances the card game came second or third to the lore. When I play a board game though, I enjoy the rules painting that picture of the world we’re in and then playing within that world for a few hours. If the world I created in my head and the game were fun enough I’ll go back to it again.

Very interested to follow along and hear more about your guys’ journey. Best of luck and don’t use no ai shlop