So I've recently come across the deck building game genre, and I was curious if anyone else here plays (or has played) any.

TL;DR at bottom of post, if you don't feel like reading my walls of text.

A friend of mine introduced me through Thunderstone. I wasn't immediately hooked, though I did find it interesting. My first game I didn't really do anything, and I lost with... 10 or so VP (can't remember the exact amount). The problem (I realized after I had experience) was that I was "all over the place" in terms of how I built my deck, so I wasn't drawing what I needed. This problem was why I initially didn't like the genre.

It wasn't until Penny Arcade the Game: Gamers vs. Evil that I really got into the genre. The same friend with Thunderstone got me to play PA, and I immediately loved it. Not only was it humorous, it was simple to learn, with a pretty straight-forward strategy. After several games, and advice from my friend, I was able to learn the strategy behind most (if not all) deck-building games: thin your deck. Yes, I'm aware how simple and obvious this fact is, but for some reason I didn't pick up on it. >_>

From there I've played Nightfall and the Resident Evil deck building game. I wasn't impressed with Nightfall, though I did find the chain system interesting. Resident Evil, with just the base set (since that's the only one I have), seems like it doesn't have enough variation, since there are only 200-something cards. But it remains one of my favourites simply for the content. I plan on getting a couple of the expansions in the coming months; that should help with the variation.

Finally, I've been playing Thunderstone online recently. At http://www.yucata.de. They have a ton of other games that I haven't researched yet, so I'm not sure if the rest are any good, but for playing Thunderstone, it works. They only have the first base set due to their contract with AEG. Sometimes it's easy to find random people to play with, but other times an entire day can go by without anyone joining your (or creating their own) game. This is part of the reason I decided to make this thread: if anyone here plays Thunderstone, you should join the site so we can play some quick games. All moves in all games are stored in memory, so even if you can't dedicate a consecutive hour or two to playing, you can come back later. I still have a game from two weeks ago that me and a friend started.


TL;DR - Thunderstone, Penny Arcade, Resident Evil, Nightfall... these are the games I enjoy. I haven't played any others, actually, so does anyone else have any interest in, or stories about deck building games?