Anatomy of a disappointment: the Wing Commander CCG

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
DrPraetor
Duke
Posts: 1289
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Anatomy of a disappointment: the Wing Commander CCG

Post by DrPraetor »

trigger warning: this post mentions wing commander, the movie version of which touched many 90s kids in their no-no zone (the eyes.)

It was 1995. Bill Clinton was President, and main-stream marketing companies had just discovered that they could make money by being "edgy". The Simpson's episode with Poochie the dog wouldn't come out for another 2 years. People born that year can now drink.

Origin was very aggressive about the Wing Commander brand. Why didn't we get an Ultima movie or CCG? Those might have actually been good... but, anyway, they decided to do a Wing Commander CCG.

I responded to a message on rec.games.trading-cards.misc, asking if I was interested in playtesting it.

It only had two teams. The kzin expies in Wing Commander are called "kilrathi", if you've forgotten the 90s, or repressed memories of the wing commander movie.

It wasn't boring to actually *play* (at least the few times we played it) but the deck design completely lacked balance or depth. The game tended to be resolved in the first combat, and the game had no ramp except medals - medals came off of the biggest and most expensive stuff. But it took a couple turns to cross the board, so being faster in mustering your stuff didn't really give you a chance to bomb the enemy carrier before they could get their own stuff out.

You could read the rules but:
http://ccg.jetlag.us/index.php/All/k-lu-traitor
you get the idea.

The rules are here:
http://www.wcnews.com/wcccg/cardgame.shtml

You can view all of the cards here:
http://ccg.jetlag.us/index.php/All

It was profoundly unbalanced and a bit ugly (I think some of the card art were in-game images; the drawings of cat people are pretty uninspired), but you did fly stacks of fighters around on the table going "kew kew kew!". So, that was something.

NOW. Who is going to review Spellfire?
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

The movement mechanic with nav points is neat
Post Reply