Got a favorite dead TCG? If so, why do/did you like it?
Mine would have to be the original VS System based on Marvel and DC characters released around 2003/2004. The artwork is really great in a lot of cases and they featured extended/full arts before it was a thing.
Aside from art, it was really good gameplay-wise and was pretty difficult to be good at a high level. It featured draft and constructed play with a vibrant tournament scene. For constructed, they eventually had multiple formats similar to Pokémon’s Legacy, Expanded, Standard, etc.
Gameplay was focused around character vs character combat. Each turn you could rearrange your team into two rows (front row and support row) to allow characters to be protected in the support row by sitting behind characters in the front row. This gave it a really unique “board game” feel that no other mainline TCG had. If you messed up your formation, you might leave your team very vulnerable to attacks and may not get the chance to counterattack.
All in all VS was pretty complicated and I think its complexity grew until it reached a point of choking out newer players. Upper Deck also managed the game and somehow put themselves into a financial hole with it (as far as I can tell). My playgroup has a VS cube and we find it really fun to play for a change of pace from the Big 3, but adding new players to it has been challenging.
Gotta be Duel Masters for me. Technically dead on the English side, In Japan the game is still being produced. It was produced by WOTC in English for only a few years but it was very fun to play, simple to understand and the cards had amazing artwork. The arts only gotten crazier on the Japanese side since! I also played the DM video game for Ps2, lots of great memories from that. Here’s some pictures of some of the cards and games:
I dont think it was particularly good of a tcg or even popular but I was a big fan of Bleach when it started so naturally I was happy when they made a tcg. I happened to be at a convention where Score was promoting it with exclusives and custom embossed cards. Misplaced the Ichigo I had that they used for testing the embosser with like 10 different color stamps on it. Just a fun memory for me even if its lost to history now.
Without a doubt Duel Masters! Great cards, fun to play and like @cyberurchin said, an easy game to get into. One day I will make it a priority to get a DM01 box to open.
DBZ score for sure. I was actually into DBZ score more than Pokemon as a kid. Went to tournaments more frequently and played a lot of matches with my friend over the phone. I still have my old decks in case I ever get the chance to play again.
Ah, DBZ Score. I have fond memories of opening packs from Walmart for next to nothing. Looking back I’m not sure why they were so cheap, but they were sure fun to open and collect.
My areas was into Duel Masters for a bit, but it quickly died out. Never really got a chance to do much playing or collecting. Can remember drawing some of the monsters, but that’s about it.
That Digimon card game takes me back to being at my friend Matthew’s house and 4-5 other kids being in his bedroom looking at each other’s cards lol. Wish I would have kept those. The holos are worth a lot now.
Harry Potter and Bleach… never got into them. I think I recall one friend trying to get us into Harry Potter on the school bus, but we were balls deep in competing in big Yugioh tournaments. Didn’t have time for much else.
I don’t think it’s a TCG, but it’s defintely a TC collectable: Dutch FoxKids cards. One of the many collectable auctions done by one of the many national supermarkets when I was a kid (and they’re actually still doing similar stuff these days, since I sometimes collect plushies to five to the son and daughter of my cousin ).
These were basically a Quartets game (groups of four) of cartoon cards, and there were also special holofoil; WINNER; and 100-point cards in addition to the regular set.
I tried to collect those special cards a few years back for nostalgia sake (me and my little brother completed the regular sets when they were released by trading), but they’re not sold separately. Most of the larger collections were advertised a bit too expensive for my liking on marktplaats, considering I could probably never get the money back I would spend on these, unlike Pokémon. I might see if I can find some more later this week, though.
The second set also contained some Pokémon cards, btw:
).
