Failed Game Purchases

My wife and I have finally started cutting through all the clutter that's accumulated in our room over the years. As I started tackling the box full of my stuff I found several trading card games I hadn't played for years. Although I hardly played many of them, each still has its place in my gaming timeline.

• YuGiOh. You guys know this game played a big role in taking me out of video games and enjoying the full range of gaming. I had sold most of my cards to fund my starting Khador army, but I apparently still have a binder full of cards that I had planned to sell as a cheap lot. I have never really missed YuGiOh since I quit after having a moment of clarity where I realized the game was made to make money while pretending to be competitive.
• WoW TCG. My YuGiOh buddy and best friend Dan left the game with me and we were looking for something to fill the void. Cue the trumpets, because we were also Warcraft junkies and they'd just released a trading card game. We both bought a couple starters based on our favorite classes (mage, hunter, and shaman for me at that time) and started learning it. Although the game was decently made it just never clicked with either of us. Sure it featured WoW characters and drew inspirations from the game, but we never really felt like fights were ever even. If one person got a leg up on the other it was difficult for the other to recover. I don't think either of us regretted not giving the game more time and money.
• Pokemon TCG. I'll always love Pokemon, and I was curious how the card game played. I bought Dan and myself a starter deck and played a few solo games so I could learn the rules and explain it to him. [Apparently I'm the rules guy where I go.] Although he liked Pokemon more than I did, he never seemed comfortable with playing a game aimed at kids and teens. I have little shame for my hobbies and nuts to anyone who wants to judge me for it. At the same time I doubted I'd find another adult to play the game with me, and I have low tolerance for face-to-face gaming with kids so I never got to try the game. I do wish I'd gotten to play the game because it seemed like a good casual game to play while hanging out with friends.
• VS System. Dan got busy with video games while I still refused to give up finding a game I could play with real people. VS System was a highly thematic game that used the Marvel and DC licenses to make an amazing game. My local comic shop even had a local league going on, so I cobbled together a Spider Friends deck and gave the game a whirl. The players there weren't terribly friendly and I got verbally dismantled as I politely asked for help on deck-building. It took me a few years to give up on the game, and I spent a lot of time just following forums and building Shadowpact and Checkmate deck. I really wanted to take these for one final spin, but I had a lot of social anxiety at the time and dind't want to get completely turned off of gaming if I dealt with a group of jerks again.
  
  However, I still had my mind on the game because it was an incredibly fun game. I even bought a Hellboy starter set in an attempt to recruit my wife, but apparently I can only convert her to so many geeky hobbies in a given year and I had maxed it out with D&D. I was a touch heartbroken when I did some research today and realized that the game went out of production several years ago.
• Naruto. My sister got me in to Naruto, and we both geeked out to it for quite awhile. When I was walking around Borders I saw a Gaara/Naruto starter set and immediately bought it. Being a huge Gaara fan I played it each time, and while the game was fun and thematic it was also really bland My sister stuck with it out of love for the show, but ultimately she just wasn't that much of a gamer. I'm still waffling on what to do with the cards, because I know I'm missing some but I still hold hope that I'll try to play it again some day.

Out of everything, I really wish I'd picked up on VS System before it fell in to obscurity. I realize that it's hard to dethrone a game like Magic where people have so much money invested, but it was such a good system! I looked at all these games on eBay and it's not like I could get much for all of them anyway. Still, I don't have much room in my gaming cabinet, and it seems silly to keep so many things out of sentimentality. I'll probably sell the YuGiOh cards out of spite, hold on to Pokemon because it's still being made, and maybe hide my VS cards from the wife so she doesn't call me a flip-flopper because I always throw out clutter that I know I won't use any time soon.

I will say that my itch has mostly been scratched thanks to Warmachine. The game plays a lot like a 3D version of Magic. Still, I wish I could find a card game that isn't Magic that I really enjoyed. I'm slowly trying to work Netrunner in to my group, but most people are crazy and don't want to learn 10 different games at a time. Mind boggling, I know, but it's what I have to work with!

Are there any lesser-known card games you guys have enjoyed throughout the years? Is there anything out there that's still worth looking at?

See you tomorrow!

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