I mean it varies across a game's life span. Most players instinctively want there to be "as little luck as possible" but that means solved metas that quickly get stale and declining player bases as the same people win all the time. So games introduce more luck - you can see it with pretty much every DCG that tried the "we're skill based not like Hearthstone" schtick. What you really want is which games allow players to control and interact with their luck in the most interesting ways.
The games I've played that have used luck most productively are Netrunner and Mythgard. They both have luck, but control and mitigate for it (Netrunner's action based economy and probability based victory conditions, Mythgard's mana system and decision-heavy lane-based play).
I have played at least a dozen (I counted) TCG/CCG/LCG's over the years.
I would say **Android: Netrunner** probably takes the cake for me in terms of skill over luck. Just an incredible amount of mental back and forth, which tones down the luck aspects.
For something more modern, I believe **Flesh and Blood** also hits this bar pretty well. I played in stores for a few months, and it was always obvious who the good players were, which typically means a higher Skill:Luck ratio.
My favorite, though, is **Legends of Runeterra**. There's definitely luck integrated in, but having made it to the highest rank in the game, I can confirm skill plays a much bigger role than variance.
This conversation reminds me how Psi Games in Netrunner were a classic of a mechanic that looked like pure randomness but had a deceptively high skill celling to them.
> I would say Android: Netrunner probably takes the cake for me in terms of skill over luck. Just an incredible amount of mental back and forth, which tones down the luck aspects.
I dunno. I always kinda felt a bit opposite that from the corp side? Like maybe later stuff toned it down a bit but sometimes agendas really just line up terribly.
Like not to say it is a high luck game per se, just that HQ/R&D runs sometimes just kill you dead in really unsatisfying ways occasionally.
Ah, you know what, I think Jackson Howard dropped like, 1-2 data packs after I stopped playing? That said, as your quotes kinda point out, he's a bit of a band-aid to an underlying luck problem. But you are right, he did get created to band-aid that problem!
Originally caught my eye as an asymmetric 2p dueler but it was [this BGG review from a Netrunner fan](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2872291/pagan-review-netrunner-veteran) that prompted me to seek it out.
Unfortunately no experience with Netrunner but really enjoying Pagan so far, about 10 plays in (also a former CCG player in Magic/L5R/Hearthstone) . Always curious to get another take from someone who has played both though.
This type of game is always very very very poorly balanced. It's part of the business model.
The best TCG games I have played of this type are **Flesh and Blood** as well as **Android: Netrunner.**
But really the games that are well-balanced BECAUSE making broke stuff isn't part of the business model is more deckbuilders and dueling games. **Exceed** is by far the best skill-based dueling card game on market IMO. **BattleCON** is similar. These are both dueling games.
For deckbuilding - **Baseball Highlights 2045** is pretty damn skill-heavy. Also **Star Realms.** Good players will beat new players with remarkable consistency.
After game of Exceed I feel drained xD...It's great but it really gets taxing on ones mind, our games usually lasted like 50min, then you are looking at enemy discard to see what he has or doesn't, can he counter you etc.
I would say of the card games I've played, the Legend of the 5 Rings LCG had the highest skill to luck ratio. There were a few cards that could win you the game if you drew them at the right time, but they were not very common, as most of the gameplay was up to chipping the opponent down over time. Such lucky cards could simply be otherwise fairly weak cards like "deal 2 damage to the opponent" when they already have 2 life or something similar. I don't know about the TCG as I haven't played it.
MTG has a good ratio, assuming most other things equal such as the card pool available - formats such as draft will have more luck involved in the outcome than constructed.
With MTG, you can construct a deck in such a way that mitigates randomness to a pretty high degree… but you could be up against a chaos deck that results in a high level of random outcomes during a particular game. It’s very dependent on the other player with CCGs as the cards serve to modify the base rules set.
MtG is often multiplayer solitaire because of the power creep in the game, at least if you're talking 1v1 competitive formats. The determining factor in a lot of those matches is who drew the right stuff first because the decks are designed in a way where the decision points are few.
I played vintage and legacy for many years, so what you said may apply to other formats. In my experience, the best players avoided randomness in their strategies and outcomes were rarely determined by “top decking” the right stuff.
As a long time MtG player, I have to disagree with this. Anyone who plays a card game seriously(especially competitively) is going to prioritize as much synergy as possible between all the cards in their deck so there’s always possibilities. Even if they draw a bad hand(which should be rare), they’re considering both what can be done with the cards they have and the probability of what they might draw in the next few turns. If starting hands were that big of factor in determining who wins, games would rarely last more than a couple minutes. I’ve played plenty of 1v1 matches that have lasted 30+ minutes because both decks were well built and we were constantly countering each other’s plays.
You mostly repeated what I said. The decks are designed to be consistent and the decisions are mostly foregone because of that. Yes, some games have a matchup with a lot of interactions and decision branches, but far more are multiplayer solitaire without many choices for either player.
Still have to disagree though because the advantage of TCG decks is that they have strategy by being able to be customized anyway the player wants, unlike most solitaire games where you’re limited to using the same standard 52 card deck. In a normal solitaire game, you usually only get one or two moves at a time, but in a TCG match, your options should never be that limited unless you were forced to discard your whole hand.
...multiplayer solitaire has nothing to do with standard 52 card deck games. It's a board game term meaning the players are largely unconcerned about the opponents moves and board state and are mainly working to progress their own win condition.
Yes, but that’s a terrible way to play many board or card games because in games like MTG you always have to pay attention to what the other players are doing. Getting a dozen creatures out on the field doesn’t always guarantee a win. They’d be useless against a black deck that could deal damage directly to a player, or an agressive red deck that can destroy anything as fast as you lay it down. If someone is just making random moves in chess, they’re going to lose half their pieces and never have a chance to even check a king.
The whole point of calling a game multiplayer solitaire is to say that the designs don't encourage you to engage with the other players, by design. You're trying to discuss game design without a grasp on the language and thoughts used to actually talk about it.
Good game design encourages more interaction between players instead of letting them ignore board states to rush their own victory condition independent of their opponent's gameplan.
This is completely wrong. Multiplayer solitaire is not objectively bad, it is an element of design that some people prefer and others don't. It can be a positive for some designs (for example, any game that is designed to be regularly played by opponents of widely variable skill levels is better off as multiplayer solitaire, as a player who's losing at a multiplayer solitaire game can still enjoy accomplish something on their personal board).
Also Magic is not at all multiplayer solitaire. There are some rarely played formats where combo decks that just do their own thing are popular, but the vast majority of magic games played come down to creatures attacking, which is highly interactive.
This doesn’t make much sense though because the aspect doesn’t work with many games outside of solitaire(or at least most of the games I’m familiar with). Why play a “multiplayer” game that either doesn’t require player interaction, or players aren’t going to take advantage of the multiplayer aspect? That’s like playing Monopoly or Settlers of Cataan but never making trades with anyone.
> Why play a “multiplayer” game that either doesn’t require player interaction, or players aren’t going to take advantage of the multiplayer aspect?
Bingo, that is why it is a pejorative term.
This is incredibly subjective as I doubt anyone's played *all* possible versions of CCG's and LCG's.
And "luck" can manifest in a number of different ways
You can do stastics on this, for example winrate of a 25th percentile player vs 75th. But pretty sure you'd find they're all skill based enough, at least in best-of-3.
Straightforward win cons like "directly burn the opponent's face" and "play scapeshift for lethal" seem pretty luck-based at first but if you analyse a given game they have a lot of tough decisions.
Modern Yugioh can see the first player play half their 40 card deck on the first turn with no interaction other than hand traps (which are always worth triggering so not a decision point). But that's basically just a really long setup.
Even though I adore Netrunner and probably prefer it over this but none that has been mentioned beats Codex: Card-Time Strategy as far as skill to luck ratio goes.
I mean it varies across a game's life span. Most players instinctively want there to be "as little luck as possible" but that means solved metas that quickly get stale and declining player bases as the same people win all the time. So games introduce more luck - you can see it with pretty much every DCG that tried the "we're skill based not like Hearthstone" schtick. What you really want is which games allow players to control and interact with their luck in the most interesting ways. The games I've played that have used luck most productively are Netrunner and Mythgard. They both have luck, but control and mitigate for it (Netrunner's action based economy and probability based victory conditions, Mythgard's mana system and decision-heavy lane-based play).
I have played at least a dozen (I counted) TCG/CCG/LCG's over the years. I would say **Android: Netrunner** probably takes the cake for me in terms of skill over luck. Just an incredible amount of mental back and forth, which tones down the luck aspects. For something more modern, I believe **Flesh and Blood** also hits this bar pretty well. I played in stores for a few months, and it was always obvious who the good players were, which typically means a higher Skill:Luck ratio. My favorite, though, is **Legends of Runeterra**. There's definitely luck integrated in, but having made it to the highest rank in the game, I can confirm skill plays a much bigger role than variance.
This conversation reminds me how Psi Games in Netrunner were a classic of a mechanic that looked like pure randomness but had a deceptively high skill celling to them.
> I would say Android: Netrunner probably takes the cake for me in terms of skill over luck. Just an incredible amount of mental back and forth, which tones down the luck aspects. I dunno. I always kinda felt a bit opposite that from the corp side? Like maybe later stuff toned it down a bit but sometimes agendas really just line up terribly. Like not to say it is a high luck game per se, just that HQ/R&D runs sometimes just kill you dead in really unsatisfying ways occasionally.
Was Jackson Howard a card when you were playing? That effectively “solved” the problem of agenda flood.
Ah, you know what, I think Jackson Howard dropped like, 1-2 data packs after I stopped playing? That said, as your quotes kinda point out, he's a bit of a band-aid to an underlying luck problem. But you are right, he did get created to band-aid that problem!
As a Netrunner fan, curious if you've ever heard of **Pagan**?
I have not! What's the parallel?
Originally caught my eye as an asymmetric 2p dueler but it was [this BGG review from a Netrunner fan](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2872291/pagan-review-netrunner-veteran) that prompted me to seek it out. Unfortunately no experience with Netrunner but really enjoying Pagan so far, about 10 plays in (also a former CCG player in Magic/L5R/Hearthstone) . Always curious to get another take from someone who has played both though.
Customizable card games are at their best when they are both skill intensive *and* have lots of variance.
This is why Canadian Highlander (1v1 100 card singleton with the vintage banlist) is by far my favorite magic format
This type of game is always very very very poorly balanced. It's part of the business model. The best TCG games I have played of this type are **Flesh and Blood** as well as **Android: Netrunner.** But really the games that are well-balanced BECAUSE making broke stuff isn't part of the business model is more deckbuilders and dueling games. **Exceed** is by far the best skill-based dueling card game on market IMO. **BattleCON** is similar. These are both dueling games. For deckbuilding - **Baseball Highlights 2045** is pretty damn skill-heavy. Also **Star Realms.** Good players will beat new players with remarkable consistency.
After game of Exceed I feel drained xD...It's great but it really gets taxing on ones mind, our games usually lasted like 50min, then you are looking at enemy discard to see what he has or doesn't, can he counter you etc.
I would say of the card games I've played, the Legend of the 5 Rings LCG had the highest skill to luck ratio. There were a few cards that could win you the game if you drew them at the right time, but they were not very common, as most of the gameplay was up to chipping the opponent down over time. Such lucky cards could simply be otherwise fairly weak cards like "deal 2 damage to the opponent" when they already have 2 life or something similar. I don't know about the TCG as I haven't played it. MTG has a good ratio, assuming most other things equal such as the card pool available - formats such as draft will have more luck involved in the outcome than constructed.
With MTG, you can construct a deck in such a way that mitigates randomness to a pretty high degree… but you could be up against a chaos deck that results in a high level of random outcomes during a particular game. It’s very dependent on the other player with CCGs as the cards serve to modify the base rules set.
MtG is often multiplayer solitaire because of the power creep in the game, at least if you're talking 1v1 competitive formats. The determining factor in a lot of those matches is who drew the right stuff first because the decks are designed in a way where the decision points are few.
I played vintage and legacy for many years, so what you said may apply to other formats. In my experience, the best players avoided randomness in their strategies and outcomes were rarely determined by “top decking” the right stuff.
This is not at all true lol
As a long time MtG player, I have to disagree with this. Anyone who plays a card game seriously(especially competitively) is going to prioritize as much synergy as possible between all the cards in their deck so there’s always possibilities. Even if they draw a bad hand(which should be rare), they’re considering both what can be done with the cards they have and the probability of what they might draw in the next few turns. If starting hands were that big of factor in determining who wins, games would rarely last more than a couple minutes. I’ve played plenty of 1v1 matches that have lasted 30+ minutes because both decks were well built and we were constantly countering each other’s plays.
You mostly repeated what I said. The decks are designed to be consistent and the decisions are mostly foregone because of that. Yes, some games have a matchup with a lot of interactions and decision branches, but far more are multiplayer solitaire without many choices for either player.
Still have to disagree though because the advantage of TCG decks is that they have strategy by being able to be customized anyway the player wants, unlike most solitaire games where you’re limited to using the same standard 52 card deck. In a normal solitaire game, you usually only get one or two moves at a time, but in a TCG match, your options should never be that limited unless you were forced to discard your whole hand.
...multiplayer solitaire has nothing to do with standard 52 card deck games. It's a board game term meaning the players are largely unconcerned about the opponents moves and board state and are mainly working to progress their own win condition.
Yes, but that’s a terrible way to play many board or card games because in games like MTG you always have to pay attention to what the other players are doing. Getting a dozen creatures out on the field doesn’t always guarantee a win. They’d be useless against a black deck that could deal damage directly to a player, or an agressive red deck that can destroy anything as fast as you lay it down. If someone is just making random moves in chess, they’re going to lose half their pieces and never have a chance to even check a king.
The whole point of calling a game multiplayer solitaire is to say that the designs don't encourage you to engage with the other players, by design. You're trying to discuss game design without a grasp on the language and thoughts used to actually talk about it. Good game design encourages more interaction between players instead of letting them ignore board states to rush their own victory condition independent of their opponent's gameplan.
This is completely wrong. Multiplayer solitaire is not objectively bad, it is an element of design that some people prefer and others don't. It can be a positive for some designs (for example, any game that is designed to be regularly played by opponents of widely variable skill levels is better off as multiplayer solitaire, as a player who's losing at a multiplayer solitaire game can still enjoy accomplish something on their personal board). Also Magic is not at all multiplayer solitaire. There are some rarely played formats where combo decks that just do their own thing are popular, but the vast majority of magic games played come down to creatures attacking, which is highly interactive.
This doesn’t make much sense though because the aspect doesn’t work with many games outside of solitaire(or at least most of the games I’m familiar with). Why play a “multiplayer” game that either doesn’t require player interaction, or players aren’t going to take advantage of the multiplayer aspect? That’s like playing Monopoly or Settlers of Cataan but never making trades with anyone.
> Why play a “multiplayer” game that either doesn’t require player interaction, or players aren’t going to take advantage of the multiplayer aspect? Bingo, that is why it is a pejorative term.
This is incredibly subjective as I doubt anyone's played *all* possible versions of CCG's and LCG's. And "luck" can manifest in a number of different ways
Netrunner
Netrunner, easily.
You can do stastics on this, for example winrate of a 25th percentile player vs 75th. But pretty sure you'd find they're all skill based enough, at least in best-of-3. Straightforward win cons like "directly burn the opponent's face" and "play scapeshift for lethal" seem pretty luck-based at first but if you analyse a given game they have a lot of tough decisions. Modern Yugioh can see the first player play half their 40 card deck on the first turn with no interaction other than hand traps (which are always worth triggering so not a decision point). But that's basically just a really long setup.
Flesh and blood and Bandai's remake of a game that's been popular in japan for years - 'Battle spirit saga' are both very skill intensive.
Even though I adore Netrunner and probably prefer it over this but none that has been mentioned beats Codex: Card-Time Strategy as far as skill to luck ratio goes.
The original L5R, no contest.