I spent so much time in TCG’s that I thought I’d never want to look at cards again. And here I am, playing games with cards in them. Whodda thunk it? But there are some excellent ones out there, and we’ll look at two of them today.

So. You went out and you bought into this cool new gaming system. You bought the first release and it played so well you bought every expansion that was printed. You built decks, you tweaked them, you traded for just the right cards - and when you couldn't find those, you even bought singles online. You played in league, you competed in tournaments, and you even collected all the promos.

This is for the person who has everything, but loves games and always wants more. This person will try anything new, but all the expensive board games are really just the same game repackaged - expensively.

Let's talk about cards. Card gaming, in its current incarnation, is fairly new, having only been born in 1993 and exploding since. There are more card games than there are RPG's � and that's some trick. Since designing a card game is much cheaper than a board game or an RPG (way less production costs) and many of them are spin-offs of an existing license anyway, it's faster and cheaper to get them to market; which means lots of companies have dived in with both feet.

I admit, I used to play Magic when it first came out. I have also played several other card games from different companies. I admit this with a certain amount of shame. I am proud that I managed to unload almost all of my cards. With this in mind, I wasn't looking to learn or buy a new card game this year at Gen Con. That is, until I ran across the nice Canadian gents at the Anoch booth. I sat down for a demo and was impressed.