I've mostly drifted away from Magic. I still love magic, the varied settings, the intricate gameplay, the interesting match of flavour and mechanics. But I don't have much time, and keeping up with a constant stream of new cards is increasingly less interesting.

Other card games I've brushed up against:

The indie Android: Retrunner resurgence. It's really well designed. The game feels good in the same way as magic while working in quite a different way. Instead of creatures on a battlefield, the corp player plays cards representing servers, and the hacker player makes hacking runs on the servers or the corp's hand or deck or discards. The corp plays firewall cards which can be bypassed at varying costs depending on the hacker's equipment, like "is it worth attacking".

I love the socially diverse cyberpunk flavour. But we only played a few games, I found the tension of second-guessing the opponent almost all of the time actually too adversarial.

I got sucked into the Marvel Snap mobile game. Each deck is 12 cards from your collection, each turn you have 1, 2, 3... energy and play card(s) from your hand to one four slots in one of three locations. Each location is won by the side with more power, try to win more locations. It squeezes an awful lot of tactics and deckbuilding into really short, quick games.

And I've played some amount of Slay the Spire, and other roguelike deckbuilders like Inscryption. To me "build a deck as you go" without being able to CHOOSE the interesting synergies is quite different, but also works well.

There was an explosion of magic-inspired (to be kind) games back in the day.

Original netrunner really should be taught as a masterclass in asymmetric game design. And there are lots of tools you can choose to use to take the gueswork out; but they do of course have an opportunity cost vs just guessing and bluffing.

Garfields next games in the series (rage and battletech) are not nearly so good. But looking back one more we come to Jyhad. (Sorry, 'vampire the eternal struggle to have enough room on the back of the cards for the game's title') - which is... it's a pretty good game, with a few different strategies to meta around and lots of room tfor tactics and politics and bluff in between. The downsides are that it's only really playable multiplayer, and it is long. So evolving those strateggies likely takes longer than you're willing to stick with it.

The warhammer 40k card game is shocking well designed, given its provenance.

The illuminati card game is roughly the illuminati boardgame in card from; shared deck to draw from. Still fun, but a ery different fun.

If you can find it - wyvern is a deck-building version of stratego. It's fun; though it feels like it needs a couple of weeks more playtesting and balancing. Or maybe I just didn't have a particularly good selection of cards.

There's a print and play Alex had - I want to say 'inspiration'? No - Ascension. Something like that. Its about half dominion and half magic; you add a card from your collection to your deck each turn, but also manage a board of creatures.

There's a bunch of mostly terrible computer games with the mechanics - ranging from etherlords to faeria. (Etherlords 2 is moderately fun for a while; faeria is inexcusably bad).

Honourable mention to things tht really push the boundaries of deck building - "Megaman Battle Network" and "Stacklands" are both quite engaging and add a realtime component to your deck management.

And of course we can't leave off without mentioning the big ones: Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and Hearthstone. They, uh, exist. Tha's the nicest thing I can say.

Yu-Gi-Oh Crossduel is their new video game adaptation, which seems to be Commander-inspired. It's 4 players, with one lane attacking each opponent, and you can essentially choose an upgradeable monster to be your commander

I sometimes play Pokemon card game. (I also play Pokemon Card GB2, sometimes. The AI is not very good. For one thing they tend to like to draw a lot of cards, which means they will often run out of cards. Their defense is often not very good, either, in my experience, and they will often attack without regard for defense.)

so we just list other CCGs we've ever played or liked?

Ultimate Combat! fast paced emulation of martial arts. Each turn you try to chain as many cards into a powerful strike against opponent.

Gridiron is American football. but with humor. ex. Dallas team is bunch of convicts. so they can get away with penalties. players take turns playing offense or defense. offense chooses pass or rush. cards have symbols, and defense tries to guess what play the offense chose, and what symbols are most abundant. offense gains X yards depending on play chosen and success or failure.

Shadowfist goal is to gain control of Sites. Some artists for Magic also illustrated for Shadowfist. Various factions ranging from Hong Kong triads, to aliens, to elemental gods, etc. Very solid and flavorful game for duels (multiplayer needs rules tweaks).

Pokemon only played on Gameboy. Pretty good adventure mode. Except late game AI cheats with coin flips. (I have designed a CCG inspired by their zone layouts. i.e. uses a main "battlefield" and reserves).

Guardians has amazing art, arguably still the best looking cards in any card game to date. Three factions in roughly rock-paper-scissor struggle. Form armies and vie over terrains between the players. Very strong humor. Solid strategy (although after expansions, some factions were overpowered.)

Also worth mentioning Arcomage, the card game within Might and Magic 7/8. Defend your tower while blowing up your opponent's.

Dragon Dice is collectible dice. Different sizes, shapes, and colors. Even had a computer game. Chucking physical dice is great feeling.

Played many other CCGs back in the day: Jyhad, Netrunner (original and rebrand), Rage, Battletech, Wyvern, Illuminati, Blood Wars (Planescape), Dark Ages: Feudal Lords, Ani-Mayhem, HEX. Some are these are good games, just didn't have the player base to keep them afloat.

I needed something to pass time today and finally downloaded Marvel Snap. It's not bad, though it seems getting the cards is slow and I don't like spending money on mobile games.

I used to play Elder Scrolls: Legends from its release until about a year after we got the news that it was dead and the last monthlies had been rolled out. I liked Skyrim and was interested by the lore, but the mechanics weren't balanced and the meta got boring, which had already been at risk even before Jaws of Oblivion's release.

Marvel Snap's monetization is annoying. You can only buy cosmetic upgrades, not new cards, so it should be fine ... except you need the cosmetic upgrades to unlock new cards

If I'm actually enjoying a mobile game, I'm happy to pay something, even up to battle pass levels some of the time. But only for a reasonable "this much per this", its constant drip of pushing ridiculously pricy upgrades is awful.

For me the paradox is I really love deck building, especially finding interesting uses of cards from a set, but I don't like chasing or buying to collect the cards you need.

In theory I like the idea from early magic of "I have these cards, you have those cards, a small proportion of the total pool, what's the most effective I can be with them". But it feels like in practice it comes down to "who has more cards" or "the designers basically built this deck and you do or don't find the key pieces"

The latter is how Hearthstone feels a lot of the time