The standard condition for winning in most popular trading card games is to reduce your opponent's life total to 0.
How do you do that?
You play cards. Magic, Hearthstone, and Yu-Gi-Oh! have this in common. Of course they do: this isn't a fighting game, where you are constantly aware of your full arrangement of options, because you don't have a full spread of them.
Most of the cards you brought into this duel are locked away in your deck. But you can try to use the ones you have been given this game to achieve that victory.
This is the fundamental motivation and the first basic resource system of every card battle game: To win, you have to fight. To fight, you have to play your cards.
But how hard you must fight, the way you must fight, and the ways in which you can spend your cards varies very much across card games. Let's take a look at each.
In Magic: The Gathering, your opponent is playing first. They play a Mountain, tap it for one red mana, and play this dude. Look into his eyes, and recognize his bloodthirst:
In Hearthstone, it is your opponent's first turn. With their 1 mana crystal, they play this lady. She shoots you. She shoots you in the fucking eye.
You are playing Yu-Gi-Oh! at the lunch table in 2004 and your opponent, Cool School Bully, is about to steal your lunch money with this duel if he wins, and he SLAMS THIS DOWN:
So what do you do?
FIGHT.
The basic interactivity between two players in card games is quite different from the dance that fighting game players do. But still you must fight.
Your opponent isn't attacking and telling you to block. You can't block. You can't hold your arms in front of you to take less damage from these monsters.
You have to attack their cards with your cards. This is the difference, and this is the center of pressure that makes card battle games exciting.
To keep yourself alive, you do the same thing your opponent did. You have to play cards. And your opponent will respond to your cards by playing more of theirs. By spending more of their resources.
This is the battle. This is what many card games call the duel.
In a fighting game, the point is to defeat your opponent but in order to do so you must speak the language of the character you are playing. As a player, you are incapable of exerting some kind of force on the game to damage the opponent yourself--you are using the proxy of your character, and limiting yourself to the pool of their moves to deal damage.
In that very same concept, you are relying on the pool of cards available to you, built into your deck and made available through your hand, to deal damage to your opponent.
Now this is where the difference lies. Ryu is not expendable. Hadoken, as a move, is not expendable. Because Ryu, in a vacuum, can use his basic actions and specials infinitely, the mechanic of a timer exists to punish excessively conservative play.
But in a card game, every single card you run, and every single card you draw is expendable. Your opponent in these examples, by placing one of the cards in their hand on the board, has made a commitment like Ryu does to a strong attack. If Ryu whiffs and gets punished for it, he has lost value. Specifically, the value of that kick, because it failed to do damage and has left him open.
If you are able to play a monster that can defeat your opponent's monster without losing your own, you have made Ryu's commitment whiff. You punished your opponent, because they lost value, specifically the value of that card because they expended it and accomplished little.
(This relationship explains the attractiveness of Goblin Arsonist's ability in those examples: few cards of similar strength can defeat it without also being expended in the process.)
Your opponent does not necessarily lose life in this exchange, like Ryu would. But if their field is left open, then you are in a position where you can pressure their life total until they commit again.
The player who has lost value is under greater pressure to commit resources.
If Ryu has been struck and taken the first hit, he must make up for it or else the timer will run out, and he will lose for his lower life total.
As for the player who is now behind in cards, you at some point must commit again. Your opponent will only ever have more cards than you do, putting them at an advantage that will cost you the game. In order to make up that advantage, you must regain value. Which could be as simple as doing the very same thing: playing a creature that will efficiently destroy the opponent's.
And doing that would shift the situation, pressuring your opponent to do what you just did.
Upon release, this was the idea around which Yu-Gi-Oh! revolved, almost entirely. Before effect monsters, the hierarchy of power belonged to a constantly rising ceiling of ATK, because Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the only card games where the card with higher ATK is king. (In a world without Effect Monsters.)
The different ways card games have found to create interactions between playable creatures so that they have complex and varied match-ups with one another, all leading to the idea of sustaining value, is a great topic I'd like to write about next time.
But in this post I wanted to just cover the fundamental necessity to play them. You are on a timer as soon as your opponent has committed to the field a way to deal damage to your life.
In Magic, you probably aren't going to be too worried about taking 1 or 2 damage every turn if you know you have something that will get in its way soon.
But in Hearthstone, you cannot allow a Leper Gnome to bop you for several turns, or else you will have given a cheap card too much value. Especially if it also takes one of your cards down with it.
And in Yu-Gi-Oh!, well, you can expect to lose up to half if not all of your Life Points if you leave yourself open.
We can observe here that the varying intensities of pressure lead to very different kinds of games. Magic is methodical, and leans towards giving each player time to find their answer. Hearthstone stands in a middle-ground where you can afford to wait, but not for long. And in Yu-Gi-Oh! you often do not have the choice to wait at all.
But in terms of the player and the spectators, the satisfaction of being able to mount a successful answer and overturn the relationship between the advantaged and disadvantaged player is what makes all of these games function, it's what makes them fun.
Next time we'll get into the actual nitty-gritty detail of how card games tend to handle this relationship, and the complexity existing between how playable creatures battle each other for efficiency, because across all three card games there are some clear parallels.
In a fighting game, the point is to defeat your opponent but in order to do so you must speak the language of the character you are playing. As a player, you are incapable of exerting some kind of force on the game to damage the opponent yourself--you are using the proxy of your character, and limiting yourself to the pool of their moves to deal damage.
In that very same concept, you are relying on the pool of cards available to you, built into your deck and made available through your hand, to deal damage to your opponent.
Now this is where the difference lies. Ryu is not expendable. Hadoken, as a move, is not expendable. Because Ryu, in a vacuum, can use his basic actions and specials infinitely, the mechanic of a timer exists to punish excessively conservative play.
But in a card game, every single card you run, and every single card you draw is expendable. Your opponent in these examples, by placing one of the cards in their hand on the board, has made a commitment like Ryu does to a strong attack. If Ryu whiffs and gets punished for it, he has lost value. Specifically, the value of that kick, because it failed to do damage and has left him open.
If you are able to play a monster that can defeat your opponent's monster without losing your own, you have made Ryu's commitment whiff. You punished your opponent, because they lost value, specifically the value of that card because they expended it and accomplished little.
(This relationship explains the attractiveness of Goblin Arsonist's ability in those examples: few cards of similar strength can defeat it without also being expended in the process.)
Your opponent does not necessarily lose life in this exchange, like Ryu would. But if their field is left open, then you are in a position where you can pressure their life total until they commit again.
The player who has lost value is under greater pressure to commit resources.
If Ryu has been struck and taken the first hit, he must make up for it or else the timer will run out, and he will lose for his lower life total.
As for the player who is now behind in cards, you at some point must commit again. Your opponent will only ever have more cards than you do, putting them at an advantage that will cost you the game. In order to make up that advantage, you must regain value. Which could be as simple as doing the very same thing: playing a creature that will efficiently destroy the opponent's.
And doing that would shift the situation, pressuring your opponent to do what you just did.
The relationship between duelists is like a never-ending battle to wear the Number One Headband.
Upon release, this was the idea around which Yu-Gi-Oh! revolved, almost entirely. Before effect monsters, the hierarchy of power belonged to a constantly rising ceiling of ATK, because Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the only card games where the card with higher ATK is king. (In a world without Effect Monsters.)
The different ways card games have found to create interactions between playable creatures so that they have complex and varied match-ups with one another, all leading to the idea of sustaining value, is a great topic I'd like to write about next time.
But in this post I wanted to just cover the fundamental necessity to play them. You are on a timer as soon as your opponent has committed to the field a way to deal damage to your life.
In Magic, you probably aren't going to be too worried about taking 1 or 2 damage every turn if you know you have something that will get in its way soon.
But in Hearthstone, you cannot allow a Leper Gnome to bop you for several turns, or else you will have given a cheap card too much value. Especially if it also takes one of your cards down with it.
And in Yu-Gi-Oh!, well, you can expect to lose up to half if not all of your Life Points if you leave yourself open.
We can observe here that the varying intensities of pressure lead to very different kinds of games. Magic is methodical, and leans towards giving each player time to find their answer. Hearthstone stands in a middle-ground where you can afford to wait, but not for long. And in Yu-Gi-Oh! you often do not have the choice to wait at all.
But in terms of the player and the spectators, the satisfaction of being able to mount a successful answer and overturn the relationship between the advantaged and disadvantaged player is what makes all of these games function, it's what makes them fun.
Next time we'll get into the actual nitty-gritty detail of how card games tend to handle this relationship, and the complexity existing between how playable creatures battle each other for efficiency, because across all three card games there are some clear parallels.
