Carte - an online TCG

[Vexing Vision]

If you've read these forums, you probably know that I tend to have an opinion. Especially about strategy games, Blood Bowl and strategy games. And Blood Bowl.

However, I'm also working as a Producer for GamesCampus.eu, and rarely in my job do I come across a title I genuinely like - of course I need to see at least some kind of appeal for the games we publish, but just because it's mass-marketable doesn't mean I like it. I still don't understand the following MineCraft gets. (This is going to get me into trouble, no?)

So it's a rare pleasure when we're about to launch a title that I am genuinely, really excited about. Yes, I am biased. Yes, I'm responsible for the European (German-only at the moment) version, but I'll go ahead and do private, free advertising for our American colleagues who got English covered. We're aiming to go into global Beta on February 23rd, and you can sign up >here for the German version< and >here for the English version<. There's also a Japenese version coming out a few weeks later.

Carte is a hardcore trading card game. We'll ease newbies in with a pretty decent tutorial, and the pre-designed (and free) Starterdecks remain competitive in tournament play. If it comes down to luck to decide who's winning, the game is very evenly matched - this is something that sets us apart from other trading card games.

Here's a short video of the German alpha. I've been trying to get my American colleagues to do something similar, but they've been afraid of me since I defeated them gloriously.




And here's something more international. We do have extremely pretty art.





Carte will be real Free2Play - you will be able to upgrade your decks by buying random booster cards, but good players will be able to win booster packs for free (by playing regularly), and will have access to all content.

If you are even remotely interested in anything TCG, feel free to visit us - it's free (once we launch), no strings attached, and if you don't like it we'll happily remove your data from our system on request.

Apologies for the minor outburst of self-publicationing (since I've been joining the RPS forums, we launched two games I never mentioned ;)), but I'm finally in a position to actually publish a game I'll spent the weekends playing myself way after I'm supposed to!

[Screwie]

Looks intriguing. I'm playing the hell out of Planes of the Duelwalkers (or something) right now so I would be up for more of that kind of thing.

Is there a price for the booster packs yet?

[Berzee]

It looks rather good and entertaining! I am interested, or was until I discovered (though not to my surprise) that the artwork is very good but includes all of the ubiquitous immodesty that has come to be expected of fantasy-style artwork.

So I will pass (as I presume it's not possible or at least easy to mod the card appearances, and judging from the screenshots it would take a rather lot of modding to make an army of fully-clothed people) -- but with a twinge of regret over the fun I might have had. =)

[Zyrden]

Seems interesting. The english site layout seems a bit wrong though.
And now I have to wait 21 days to actually try it out. Waiting, yay.
Nice to polish my german a bit though :P

[Vexing Vision]

Prizing is still under discussion. Booster packs will come with 15 cards, but since we're all going to play on the same global server (and we have some TOUGH Koreans there who've been playing for a few months already, ho boy), prizing is a bit tricky and we're still figuring out how to make enough money not to starve while still not trying to give players the feeling they got fleeced. It's a surprisingly delicate balance.

There are also ways of earning free booster packs by regularly participating in games - deckbuilding is a lot of fun, and we don't want to keep the fun bits from the people who haven't decided yet whether or not to support us.

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about the artwork-style, Berzee... please note that the game is rated 15+, and you need to be 18+ to sign up with us on the German service anyway. :) If you still want to give it a try, you'll be a happier person if you don't play Red or Green decks.

I am afraid I am not qualified to comment on the design of our US colleagues. They're doing their own thing, but I'll gleefully forward your comment.

[Berzee]

No probs, Vex! Just wanted to speak up for my particular minority-within-teh-games =)

[apricotsoup]

Ok I'm interested.

How does it play, is it similar to any existing card games trade-able or otherwise?

[Prester John]

Looks interesting, signed up !

[Vexing Vision]

We've been described as a mix between Magic and the WoW TCG (which I admittedly never played), with better artwork and cleaner mechanics.

One of the local G´ameMasters in Korea was 2010's South Korean champion in Magic, so we got some really experienced people working at it - which is one of the reasons I'm so happy about promoting (and playing) the game myself.


Thanks for your interest, guys. If you do decide up for the German service, drop me a pm with your account name so I can make sure you get a beta-spot - they're mine to give away, after all!

[Vexing Vision]

So!

Tomorrow is the big day - evening for Europe, morning for the US people.

For the Beta, that is, not the live service.

We'll be throwing tons of in-game currency at players to purchase tons of cards to test tons of things. Now's the time to go crazy and experiment around for free.

We also added many features that players requested, such as the ability to have "multicolour" decks. With a twist. Previously, it was only possible to use cards (of which there are tons) determined by the faction of your hero. Now you can use whatever card you wish - but whenever you play a card that's not from your hero's faction, you take a point of damage.

This allows half a billion strategies even with just the starter decks, and there's a lot of lively discussions on our forums for that already. :)


We absolutely hope to see you online with us (both the US and us Germans will share a server).

[Vexing Vision]

After we kind of killed the online userbase of Magic the Gathering on Steam last weekend (they were down by 30% compared to their usual numbers, we apparently had three times as many people on our servers), we think we're doing something very, very right.

And while our colleagues Americana are appropriately shy, just let me tell you that we're going live tomorrow at 6pm CET both with the German version of Carte at carte.gamescampus.eu and the English version on carte.gamescampus.com. On the global server, you'll be able to also play versus Korean and Japanese player, who are an immensely tough nut to crack.


Hope to see you guys online. Also hope I'll finally be able to catch some sleep again - the past few days have been ridiculously exhausting, but I am just as ridiculously excited about the game.

[shawk]

Hello Vexing,

Lucky for me I was on the look for a TCG and found this thread. I downloaded and installed Carte yesterday and was hooked. Read the rules, played the quick tutorial and then I went ahead and played a dozen matches against the CPU. I like the Carte mechanics very much. Looking forward to see how I feel in a week or two but for now it's great.

One thing which I am curious about though: The shop system with the boosters and cards. I feel very much overhelmed. Looking at them all I feel like an ant looking through the big window and don't know what to buy. There is a whole lot of episode packs. I am not sure I understand them though. Where should I start?

[Zyrden]

I'll second that. As a new player I could use a "recommended starter pack" or something like. What is the difference between the episodes even?
Otherwise quite enjoyable.

[marcelovaranda]

I really liked the game, the thing to be said is the same said by the others. "Booster shop is confuse indeed".
I can't know what to buy. What's the difference between them? Or episodes?

However, gtz for the game! Keep playing hre! =)

[Vexing Vision]

It's something we're definitely working on...

Basically, these boosters come out once every 30 to 50 days, like different editions of Magic. You can see the cardlist in each of the ones you buy.

For starters interested in investing something, we did prepare a couple of starting decks. Click on "Deck Shop" (I think, I don't have the English client installed) instead of "Booster Shop", those give you predesigned decks that are quite punchy. And can be plucked apart for the cards, too.

[victory]

I played MtG casually for many years as a kid. Initially there was a thrill of sorts in trading the cards. With very little money to spend and no card shops, trading with other players was the only way to increase the quality of my card pool and build towards better decks. No one was yet looking up ready-made deck lists from the internet, either.

Thing is, I never was interested in collecting, and the acquiring, organizing and sleeving cards all gets in the way of actually playing. That's why I'm now leery of any collectible game. I wonder how feasible it would be to have a non-collectible card game where you could build decks out of a wide card pool; building decks is still fun.

I was just thinking about buying a new non-collectible card game to play with friends - David Sirlin's Yomi.

[ntw]

I played MtG casually for many years as a kid. Initially there was a thrill of sorts in trading the cards. With very little money to spend and no card shops, trading with other players was the only way to increase the quality of my card pool and build towards better decks. No one was yet looking up ready-made deck lists from the internet, either.

Thing is, I never was interested in collecting, and the acquiring, organizing and sleeving cards all gets in the way of actually playing. That's why I'm now leery of any collectible game. I wonder how feasible it would be to have a non-collectible card game where you could build decks out of a wide card pool; building decks is still fun.

I was just thinking about buying a new non-collectible card game to play with friends - David Sirlin's Yomi.

Dominion is very good, technically a boardgame, but you build your deck during the game.

[victory]

Dominion is very good, technically a boardgame, but you build your deck during the game.

I have played a couple of games of Puzzle Strike, which does that as well (and apparently is preferred over Dominion by a lot of players?). Works well for that game, I think, but is not a substitute for the variety and surprise that is possible with prebuilt decks.

[pakoito]

Carte will be real Free2Play - you will be able to upgrade your decks by buying random booster cards, but good players will be able to win booster packs for free (by playing regularly), and will have access to all content.

Same bullshit everyone says. We're the real stuff, you can win EVERYTHING by playing, a lot. Of course you do, that's F2P by design, just a paywall hidden by a petty excuse grindwall to access all content.

The TCG model needs to die already, LCG is the way to go.