Hey PI-Fans,

Continuing our series of Horrible Game Experiences; last week, we talked about Awful Board Game Experiences. This week, it’s all about Collectible Card Games.

The joy of CCGs is they can be played quickly and anywhere: over a lunch break, after school, a short session after work.

But as with all games, things sometimes turn iffy and at times, get very awful. Presenting the worst ever CCG Experiences ever!

People Who Are Rough With Your Cards: The Furious ‘Poker’ and The Ripple Shuffler

Vernon recalls that some players have a tendency to poke other people’s cards very hard to the point it’s fingernail to cardboard. ‘Ah I attack that one!’ PO-PO-POKE It’s like ‘don’t hurt my cards!’ Jack especially dislikes people who ripple shuffles his cards and violently.

You Get Schooled by An Arrogant Player

Getting schooled is one thing, but getting schooled by a douchy uber-player is the worst. Especially for Magic: The Gathering. ‘UNTAP YOUR LAND’ growls your opponent, as you accidentally skipped a step. After you declare attackers, uber-player than smirks and responds by telling you that you triggered a trap and than he demolishes you with the most elaborate chain combo that wipes out all your life points into the negative. Uh yeah sure. GG.

You’re Progressively Losing and There’s No Way to Stop It

CCGs is all about the quality of your cards. And it’s natural that the person with the better cards can easily bulldoze your deck. There was once I was up against a player in Magic: The Gathering, who kept milling my deck and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t cancel, I couldn’t counter, and I watched helplessly as half of my deck ended up in the discard pile… Losing is one thing but losing in ‘slow motion’ is just painful.

Absolute Rotten Luck

In Magic and Pokemon: you draw your starting hand and it has no lands/ energy. All right, that’s cool. You mulligan and start over. The same thing happens. You mulligan again. You get 1 land/ energy. Fine, that’ll have to do. Then you discover you have no basic creature/ Pokemon. You wait and see if one will show up when you draw next turn. It doesn’t. It’s now Turn 3 and still nothing. Curse you, luck. Seriously.

Everything You Do is Cancelled

You attack with everything you have, and everything you do is just cancelled by the other player and his/her arsenal of cards. ‘No you can’t do that because I play this.’ ‘No, I nullify that with this card’, ‘No that triggers a trap and your attacking creature is disabled’ At this point, you’re just powerless because everything you do is ‘Nope’.

You Get Destroyed on Turn 2

You’re playing Modern format Magic. It’s Turn 2. You play your land, things are quite relaxed. Then your opponent unleashes the goods and plays cards which combo into combos of the combos of the more combos till your head spins. Somehow he/she did something to wipe out all of your life points in a single turn. I’m sorry, what just happened?

The Magnificent Turn Around

You’re almost going to kill off your opponent, you just need to unleash 1 more attack and he/she is done for. When suddenly, your opponent’s eyes glint and he/she responds in the most fantastic turn around you’ve ever seen. The tables turn, your life flashes before your eyes. Your surroundings blur and he/she is back up to full health. At this point, you don’t know if you should laugh or cry. Ok but you gotta admit, that was amazing.

The Inconsiderate Veteran Who Forgets How to Play with Casuals

Veteran players generally play very fast among themselves. However sometimes, some of them forget how to play with casuals. Some of them are also not very communicative with their actions and expect you to know everything about what each card does, even if its a foreign language card. Then when you play slower than them, they’re actively shuffling, reshuffling their cards, twitching their feet, drumming their fingers and give you the ‘hurry up’ look. Then when they respond to your actions, they play some super fast combo and when you ask them to explain it to you, they give you the ‘Tcht’ noise and an eye roll. And they don’t even explain it to you verbally, they just point at each card in sequence and expect you to figure out how their mind works.

People Who Steal Your Cards

CCGs are special in that some cards are very valuable. Just when you thought you could trust a friend by letting them borrow your stuff for a game, your stuff goes missing. Or more like they ‘conveniently forgot to return to you’. Another instance is when you discover, to your horror, that your precious binder folder for trading has gone missing. And it’s impossible to find who took it. Moral of story: don’t leave precious stuff lying around and don’t lend people your good stuff.

A Player Hurls Discriminatory Insults at You

You win an opponent and he/she proceeds to insult you with ‘I can’t believe I lost to a [noob/ race/ gender/ religion/ nationality comment] Go play games ‘your people’ are good at’.

The first thing you gotta remember is: that person has the self-esteem the size of a pea. He/she is actually a total coward and wants to say the worst possible things to you to make themselves feel better. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Go report to the venue staff/ judges about this player so they can go deal with him/her. The incident shouldn’t stop you from playing games at all. It is traumatic, it will sting for a while. But remember, not every player is like that creep.

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