its better to give than receive

What?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spoils_(card_game)

I'm sorry. For reference:
Wikipedia)
Basic Rules

I asked this question because I spoke to someone who was convinced that the Spoils is a great deal better than Magic, in design, gameplay, and balance. He was even convinced that the way it's designed led to it having more design space than Magic.

I've heard of it (on Maro's podcast, of all places) but that's all.

Looking at wikipedia, it's clear that if nothing else, they really needed to hire a user-interface designer; because it just screams "Unplayably flashy borders" to me, with a side order of "HOW many stats?!"

It's probably not that bad, but no, never played it, never seen it on sale. Given it came out at the tail end of the CCG glut, that's not really surprising, though.

To be honest, the flavor never appealed to me, so I never picked it up. That's a shame, really. Good games shouldn't be judged by their flavor... but there it is. I suppose one could always comment that, if the designers made their game so open ended, then they made a mistake in choosing a setting that would only appeal to a certain crowd. But in truth, it's hard to find as open a setting as 'Things that represent Magic'.

On a separate side note, I've heard that 'The Spoils' uses the "any card can be played face down as a resource mechanic". I never liked that, personally. It leads to repetitive game play, as the same cards see play, mechanically coming down at their same position in the curve queue. I'm all for more balanced game play, but not at the expense of replayability.

I believe Maro said he's not a fan of that. He sees Magic's mana system as a feature, rather than an error.