Ranking SEVEN TCGs that I checked out at Gen Con 2024!

[@WatchItPlayed]

Glad you’re feeling better. Appreciate your continued stance around AI, and enjoyed getting your thoughts on these various games. Thanks!

[@MaindeckGames]

Thank you Rodney!! It's really heartening to hear that from you (not that I expect any less)! Sometimes the fight feels futile, but I have to do what I can with whatever platform I have.

[@RedZoneRogue]

Tcgs having lanes/zones is a VERY Japanese tcg thing. Yugioh, Vanguard, Wixoss, Z/X etc 👍 Also great video man!

[@MaindeckGames]

Yeah, I think I didn't take enough time to make the comparison, but the Ultraman lanes are much more akin to Marvel Snap in that they open up over time, and they represent a growing number comparison in each lane. I never got to play Z/X but the others definitely act differently even though they also have designated board lanes!

[@pippen6606]

I saw the lane thing in Artifact first

[@brandonthaxton8830]

Primal looks very interesting to me, but the art is all over the place. Great video per the norm.

[@RolyGuacamole]

Shoutout to the Primal TCG crew. Real good peoples. I met them a few years ago when at Miami TCG convention. Wishing them success 🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@Monkey_D._Elliott]

Very excited for Warlord. Shame the KS got delayed till next year. Neopets has been a real surprising darling at my LGS. One of my close friends got into it due to loving neopets and it has grown from there. Shop has gone through several cases of product and we managed to launch a full 8 person tournament on Sunday. Game has real good mix of yugioh style archetypal synergy and flesh and blood arena style combat.

[@DefiasBrotherhood]

Warlord looks really cool! And I dig the old late 90s artwork. But Union Arena, I can't understand the hype there. First it's made by Bandai who I personally don't think are very good at balancing (or reprinting cards you need for their games!) their TCGs. Also I like the varied IPs, but I'd rather just play Universus there. Also did I mention it is made by Bandai? But anyway, glad you're feeling better Dan! Thanks for the video! Really enjoyed you checking these games out!

[@mrabyssal]

Warlord is launching with a "standard format" that doesn't use the old cards other than reprints in the launch set. The box of greed reprints are for the "Ancients" format and aren't standard legal. Basically it's just for those who want to play the equivalent of Legacy and isn't needed for normal Standard play so it won't affect new players unless they want to play Ancients.

[@MaindeckGames]

That's what we like to hear! Thanks for the added info!

[@CardGameCrypt]

Ultraman - It's wild that this game is going for a worldwide release, does the IP have enough power to support a TCG? Soul Masters - The Leader cards in this game got EIGHT numbers on them! The spell cards are static characters with "hit" effects on top of them! If this isn't AI it's like the worst of both worlds where a human actually put effort into it and then people go "eh, looks like AI" - also agree the rules were very rough the last time I tried to learn the game. Basically unplayable. Things were referenced but sometimes not explained. Universe of Legends - Yeah, it's another any card as resource, shield system, multiverse game but I think it has some neat elements like you said. Stacking units under other units to give them a buff is probably my favorite. Neopets - 50 card deck made of 2 ofs and 1 ofs, and then attacking is dice rolling. It's like RNG on top of RNG. Rolling 10 dice at once does have a little bit of a thrill too it, but then you look and you only had 2 successes somehow. High highs and low lows. Union Arena - missed it somehow lol. "Bandai game #6" (DBS, Digimon, One Piece, Battle Spirits Sage, DBS Fusion World, this) Seems about right, one of the games of all time. Primal - ayyyy, I need to play more of this. The new starter deck has a pretty neat mechanic where you stack a bunch of guys under your field card and then flip it into a powerful unit. Warlord - It really doesn't seem like a card game concept from 2001 does it? A lot of the mechanics and even the DnD reference seem very contemporary.

[@MaindeckGames]

Great thoughts as always, thank you for sharing them!!

[@Zutang777]

Neopets looks like a fun non competitive TCG. it’s also still a big IP. I need to check out warlord. Not sure I know what that one is. Also Hi Crypt - QueenRush here.

[@level3xfactor]

Ultraman is insanely popular in China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan

[@GTheepicguy]

Thanks for the video Dan! I’m most excited for Warlord, and now Universe of Legends, after you mentioned the complexity

[@dalegna87]

great video brother thanks for the love

[@ShivanAngel15]

Warlord is a great game and I’m glad you enjoyed the demo. It has a chance to really carve out its own space in the TCG world as it’s got a lot of unique mechanics and feel. And like you said it’s just so much fun to play. The overlord/dragon lord/medusan lord challenge system is also just such a cool idea. The fact that it’s been “dead” so long and sustained by a passionate community also says a lot about its quality.

[@MaindeckGames]

There will be some more Warlord content coming in the future. Definitely a game that was worth the (official) revival!

[@skurai]

Primal is pretty fun indeed, art is getting better for the newer cards

[@MaindeckGames]

The direction seems good!

[@GamerDadDan]

I picked up neopets a couple months ago and have really been enjoying playing it with my 8 year old (you’re right about the age point). The RNG aspect of it actually is what makes it more accessible IMO. The painting neopets is also a really fun touch and I think it will become interesting with more sets hopefully.

[@MaindeckGames]

For sure! I hope it can go on for a long time because it does hit an excellent balance to play with a younger audience!

[@BlindedGuardian]

For soul master TCG : at 8.59, the building : 100% AI. as someone who was beta tester for Midjourney and using it until V4 for architectural elements, there is NO doubts. makes you question the characters..

[@ImDoneItsOver]

Covid is still real, but great to have you back!

[@MaindeckGames]

I've never managed to test positive nor shown the telltale symptoms, but I pretty much always get something after Gen Con! This one has faded much faster than some previous years, though, so that's good news at least!

[@ericv5435]

I'm hyped for union arena. The game is really fun.

[@MaindeckGames]

Glad you are digging it!!

[@kingokaze]

Ah yeah Maindeck Dan video!

[@UnoDosTres-qn4lm]

When it comes to the soul masters tcg using AI as a reference that’s completely fine imo that’s what AI is supposed to be used for as a reference not as a artist itself

[@Queenofthesevenseas]

Just got into playing Grand Archive and I’m quite enjoying it❤ the mechanics and art are not bad ether. Stumbled onto Soul Masters TCG a few days ago and decided to order a deck out of curiosity 🤔 love the artwork ( I don’t care if it’s AI art or just used as a reference) as long as the individual artists get credit and are paid that’s what matters. The mechanics are definitely intriguing for soul masters, confusing and a bit different for sure. However their also familiar things from other games as well. I’m interested to see how the game weathers the tides of time Dose anyone know if theirs a deck for the Satin RavenHeart girl? As I noted a few of her cards in your video

[@Peeweez0]

For sure I thought you were going to talk about Altered! But I suppose that was last year's Gen Con list lol I am interested in checking out Neopets if not just for nostalgia reasons

[@MaindeckGames]

Haha yes, for many people Altered is new this year and if it was new to me, it would have been at the top! I also have huge neopets nostalgia, that certainly helped in making it fun. I like that Painting your neopet makes it stronger too!

[@reginaldpatterson7621]

Primal is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@D_Mo94]

Mmmmm last year Gen Con brought so many great games (SWU/Altered/Disney) but this year seems a little dry. Excited to try out Warlord though.

[@enoch7564]

Say what you will about their art but soul masters binders and deck boxes are pretty impressive.

[@MaindeckGames]

I did buy one of the binders, it is really nice!

[@NAMinRAMen]

Hi Maindeck! Great video! Could you explain your reasoning for not covering Wonders of the First? What choices have they made that led to you not discussing them? Just curious because I discovered them recently and thought it looked pretty interesting. Maybe have a video about it? Thanks!

[@MaindeckGames]

Hey! Thanks for asking. I have a personal creed to not cover games that choose AI artwork over human artists for their final product. I am friends with artists in the industry and the majority of them are feeling threatened and concerned about their livelihood as well as their ownership of their work as our society begins to embrace cost- and time-efficient alternatives to hiring human artists by using AI instead. Additionally, WotF began its life with an attempt at an NFT sale and offering "IP rights" to the (AI-designed) characters in the game, which felt way too "grifty" to me as it's essentially trying to sell digital ownership of a nebulous right to use of a computer-designed character in other media - in other words, making money off of the hope that people will do the company's marketing for them for characters they already paid bottom-dollar to have generated. It's unfortunate, because the designer of the game, Brian Tinsman, is a designer I respect greatly, but in addition to those red flags about NFTs and "IP rights", I've chosen to take a stand for an industry I care for greatly in not covering games that are attempting to push AI artwork into the mainstream. I may not have much of a voice all things considered, but I feel the need to do what I can which leads me to not covering WotF or other games with similar operational methods.

[@ConleyPMusic]

I think your review of Universe of Legends explains why people lean towards AI a bit. Art is indeed expensive but if the art being less appealing and sharp is going to be a critique point, you have to expect people to try anything to lure you into trying the gameplay.

[@TheJoevovich]

Did you get to try Sandland? I enjoyed the tactical and tug of war aspects to it, definitely a nice change of pace from other Bandai games. Garfield still cranking out some fun gems.

[@MaindeckGames]

I didn't manage to get a Sandland demo! It's a little weird because it's not a TCG *per se* so I admit I didn't make a concerted effort to try it. I wouldn't have turned down sitting down for it, but it was a Bandai thing, so it was somewhat popular and I wasn't ready to put in the effort to try it out yet either 😅

[@ekolimitsLIVE]

Interesting. Why is no one making multiplayer (4 player) tcg games?

[@MaindeckGames]

I think this is possibly a niche that the right lightning-in-a-bottle design could do well in!

[@ekolimitsLIVE]

@@MaindeckGames Great to hear. I’ve been designing something and it would be cool to connect with you about it.

[@ianoble]

Star Wars Unlimited multiplayer (Twin Suns) is great!

[@markusbiewer2756]

@@ianoble Yep, played with 2 friends this weekend and we had a blast!

[@bIeaq]

I've got no problem with AI art if the model is only generating art in the style of a specific artist (this is possible to do via fine tuning and RAG) and that artist has consented and gets paid for it. Basically, artist makes a bunch of reference art, model creates ai art based off of that, artist gets paid

[@TimothyScamp]

Hey if they can save money and not trickle it down to the customers I'm fine. As long as the art is beautiful that's OK by me. AI is going to be doing a lot more in the future to keep costs down. We'll just have to live with it.

[@olegivanov4229]

I am surprised you haven't mentioned chronocore tcg. It looks like a good game.

[@MaindeckGames]

I tried to get a demo of it but was unable to get to the table in the First Exposure hall - I'll do my best to get it at some point!

[@olegivanov4229]

@@MaindeckGames I think you really should. It has some nice mechanics and the art is pretty good too.

[@animeaddiction00]

Yay neopets was on the list! And not dead last! Haha.. but yeah I tried the demo there and loved it. It was so accessible and quick to learn after a couple of turns, and the dice add a random element to it. After I got the booster box, I can see some kind of nasty strategies to try and use with “legend” cards to play during the prep step.. like a lot do straight damage to the opponents neopets that doesn’t mention it can be blocked. Main concern is if they roll a critical attack, I don’t see why I can’t block it if I roll a critical for defending. We were rolling so many. But I like how fast and back and forth it was and it never felt like you were too far behind.

[@CreedATM]

Neopet player here, I do appreciate that criticals cannot be blocked. It adds a layer of inevitability to the game so it doesn’t feel like the game stalls on forever. Otherwise you have a bunch of high defence pets designed to just waste time until deckout

[@animeaddiction00]

@@CreedATM Hmm, yeah that’s a good point. Maybe I was more surprised we both kept rolling cross so much. If only I had that luck when I played dnd XD

[@saulashley7204]

I know the point is to focus on high rarity art work of union arena (Which is just concept art and simple background), but why doesn't any point out how all the other commons and rares, that you are gonna be using 80% of the time in a game, are just unedited anime screenshots. Why are we accepting these kind of things as consumers?

[@MaindeckGames]

I think that's a great point. I place it on the list entirely on gameplay, but I agree that a lot more could be done on the artwork side of the game. There's no doubt that Bandai puts out cool *treatments* on their high rarity cards and they look great as cards, but I'd love to see more original artwork being used across the board.

[@zst0rme700]

I walked by the Ultraman booth multiple times and never bothered to try it out. Just too niche of an IP to really consider anything of note imo other than those who might want to collect more Ultraman stuff. Ive enjoyed working with the Soul Masters team testing their upcoming products and assisting with the rules cleanup (full rulebook has been drafted and undergone a handful of revisions so far.) Personally, I dont normally go for anime TCGs in general, but im interested to see how a small studio builds themselves up without KS or Gamefound Universe of Legend was a hard pass based on art style alone unfortunately. Also had a great chat with the people there, but the game art direction felt cheap and lacking direction. Neopets was a funny throwback, but not really something me or my partner had any real levels of nostalgia drawing us to revisit it in any capacity. Union Arena was a hard pass for me based on Bandai alone. Ive written them off since their fumbled with Dragonball Super. They always have too many unique promos to chase, aggressive release schedules, product scarcity and product surpluss issues among many other pitfalls that just doesn't leave me with any confidence they can do better. Primal fell into the anime category of TCG theming i dont normally get into. I saw it last year, but have still yet to try it out myself. I also found the art level to be akin to Universe of Legend in that its pretty underwhelming and looked cheap, but I do have fond memories of the Naruto TCG. Warlord is great! Unfortunate about them not being able to get product in for all the events they originally had scheduled. Backed this one on KS, have some of my OG stuff still and definitely punped to see the return of such a beloved game in the hands of some hardcore fans able to ressurect this via crowdfunding.

[@numnut154]

The only problem I have with AI generated stuff right now, is that it's all theft. There are no regulations or repercussions for taking someone's art without permission and feeding it into the model, you basically pay an AI company to generate images based off stolen artwork and those artists get no credit or compensation. I empathise that starting a tcg is expensive, but it's really no excuse to enable the immoral behaviours that fuel AI right now, there's always another option and always another choice, and I'd urge the Soul Masters people to look into them rather than exploiting artists by proxy.

[@Nick_Stick]

The AI is sure is interesting, it seems that the Soul Masters team is using it in the most responsible way. Personally i could give a team a pass if they use it in a “beta” testing phase, but transition to traditional art for an official release.

[@GamerInTheWardrobe]

Need Alpha Clash TCG on here.

[@MaindeckGames]

I had already played it!

[@cab2459]

Who’s the character that looks like Ken Kaneki?

[@remyboudreau2098]

I'll just stick to Grand Archive and SWU, none of these 7 seem like a challenger to me.

[@MaindeckGames]

Good choices!

[@MontaveraGames]

I have a question about this Ai discussion. What if a game used a hybrid Ai approach to create the game, but labeled it “Pre-Alpha” just to get the game created and to establish a community and player base. THEN, the game would offer sponsorships for the artwork as a tier, so that the actual “Alpha Set” would be entirely done by actual artists. In short, use Ai to get the pre-release done so to build a community, then crowdfund that community to pay for actual human art (and put names of patrons on the cards) for the official release. Since I foresee, some people will say that a prototype game can simply use hand drawn cards to build a community, instead of AI, Wood counter with the FACT that most people do judge books by their cover, and will initially lose all interest if they don’t see something that looks nice. For a prototype game, AI art can do enough to draw the attention of those who would otherwise turn their noses at hand drawn cards. Again, the idea with this model and proposing is that a card game would not make money with the AI because they’re simply using it for the prototype. When they actually launch it, all the art would be sponsored by members of the community and the names of those members would be on the cards that they sponsored. Thoughts on this approach?

[@michaelkeller3769]

That is exactly what Primal TCG did during the alpha!

[@MarceloPai7]

i`m kinda lost. wich game is using ai art?

[@MaindeckGames]

Soul Masters TCG isn't directly using AI art, but has a pool of reference art that is AI generated and sometimes uses AI generative images in the background of their human-drawn character art.

[@nesterpilgrim]

Agree that Warlord was the most interesting! I did not like Soul Masters. Great recap, sir!

[@Serjohn]

the ultraman hate is unjustified, the first set is mostly vanilla cards, they are going to make various effect on the second set and it will be interesting, for now they are just trying to teach you the rules

[@MaindeckGames]

Hope they can improve that demo when they have more effects - but even with that, I don't find myself very excited. The options turn to turn seem fairly limited, and the rock-paper-scissors type system doesn't strike me as something that will feel good to play with. But that's just my personal opinion - if you have been digging the game, that's awesome and I hope you continue to!

[@level3xfactor]

There are much more effect cards in set 1 and we’ve been seeing a lot with the previews on Twitter!

[@JM32JM32]

None of these are remotely appealing tbh

[@rebelresource]

I got sick as well... and so did Loopee from L8Night... I was able to push through though!

[@MaindeckGames]

Glad you guys are feeling better! Something was really going around that weekend!

[@emanking3099]

And altered?

[@MaindeckGames]

It wasn't new to me this year - it was #1 on my list last year!

[@syfyfan969]

There's too many of them Master Skywalker, what are we going to do?!

[@MikeTheSith200]

Soul Masters looks terrible

[@seventfour9247]

Ai discussion is really annoying. This won’t stop. I’m mostly interested in gameplay because AI art won’t ever make a good game bad and human art won’t ever make a bad game good.

[@GrievelornTCG]

Sorcery def disproves your last point.

[@Fome]

AI art always makes a good game bad.

[@MaindeckGames]

AI artwork will continue to be a discussion topic around new TCGs going forward. Sorry if it bugs you but I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment!

[@Monkey_D._Elliott]

I think it's worth considering the value we put on art and the creation of it. Especially since current AI art is always going to be trained on the art of others. It's very process is, for lack or a more nuanced term, theft. So a game that uses AI, however many steps removed from full on stealing you consider it to be, is choosing to use work that only exist on the back of often unpaid and unconsenting artist. Obviously there's one right or wrong view, but there's no reason to not have the conversation, and there's no reason to not express an opinion about it.

[@ENTPDuelist]

I agree with this comments point that if a game uses AI art the reviewer should briefly mention it and move on. It's been months and everyone already knows how they feel about it. It's a waste of time to fumble around with the topic.