Impressions: Collectible vs Living in Card Games

This week I wanted to go over the ostensible death of the wide field Collectible Card Game (hereafter referred to as CCGs) and the rise of Living Card Games (LCGs).

Before I begin, I wanted to clarify that this doesn’t necessarily mean that all CCGs are doomed; quite the opposite in fact, as Magic the Gathering has stormed to incredibly successive heights and continues to grow, YuGiOh still continues to the best of my knowledge, and the Pokemon card game has continued and likely enjoyed no small booster shot of success from Pokemon GO’s release.

Where wallets go to die, crying in happy bliss

No, this is about all the other CCGs, the ones that withered and faded as the above Triumverate took hold and survived the rise and fall of the CCG market Magic helped create. It’s also about the overall market in the wake of the CCG boom and bust, and the niche that may be available there. For the majority of this I’ll be using Magic as the reference CCG, as I am more familiar with it than YuGiOh and Pokemon, but broadly the same strokes can be applied to all three games.

Tangent: Homemade Game Mats

So, a few weeks back I was at an art fair thing in a nearby town, and the local theater was giving away old(ish) movie posters.

That’s how I snagged this:

Apparently it’s about the whale that inspired the Moby Dick story, and the release date got bumped to later this year.

What’s awesome is that the poster is big, like 3′ x 6′ big, and is obscenely high-detail. I’ve got a bunch of the Pirates of the [Fill-in-the-blank] plastic ships, and this is definitely going to be my new game mat to play on top of.

Aw yiss, little plastic ships. I have far more of these than any sane person should. I also have no regrets either.

Plus, if Uncharted Seas ever gets dusted off, my wife and I can duke out the Iron Dwarves vs Bone Griffons on top of there as well.

So what all sources do you guys use for your game mats? Are there any other good posters that would make ideal game mats?