THE WORST STARTER DECK EVER?! How Beast Clans Tries To Get You To Buy Their Starter Decks.
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- Опубліковано 29 січ 2021
- I've done breakdowns on Starter Deck product before, but what happens when a product does step 1 right, but flubs it everywhere else?
"Beast Clans" is a game where Royal beasts lead the armies of their regions in battle against other royals. It also has probably the worst product design of any TCG I have yet encountered. Bad layout, insufficient contents, and a poorly-written rulebook are the book under an otherwise eye-catching cover.
An extension of the Seven Deadly Sins of TCG Design.
Follow me on twitter!: kohdok - Ігри
This game looks like a fictional game you'd see played in a Disney sitcom in one episode.
Beast Clans is what my abuelita buys me from the dollar store because she saw me playing Yugioh one time.
God I love grandmothers, cherish that while you can
That's so cute
It’s not what you wanted, but you cherish it anyway because abuella tried so hard.
I'm proud of your Grandma, even though you didn't ask for it
I know this is an indie production, but everything about the look and design of these cards seems like it came straight out of the early 2000s. It's as though nothing in the past two decades ever happened; it's like no attention was paid to how the world of TCGs has evolved in all this time.
Can you elaborate on this? I definitely understand Kodok's points about the back being very bland and even looking like a counterfeit product, but your comment about the cards themselves piques my interest. I'm not super into TCGs myself; what about the cards is so out of date? And is it a purely stylistic thing, or are there actual genuine game-impacting issues with the design decisions?
@@Shenaldrac Sure thing! I'll try to hit on a few notes here. When you look at the cards themselves, notice how much every bit of information is contained in either a really strict and bold shape, or is uncontained in anything and is just floating there (the Life count). There's no curves, there's nothing that makes the design "funky" in the sense of the designers really playing with the space they have available to them. Another point is the flat coloration on all the information there; nothing is shaded or in a gradient except for the Biomass symbol which admittedly looks crisp, modern, clean, and great. Lastly there is the creature art itself, which looks like average comic book fare and exists as a stock asset thrown onto the card, rather than "interacting" with the card in a 3D "coming-at-you" sense or in a manner of having a background that creates the scene so to speak. I hope this helps!
@@GundamChao Thank you for the reply :)
Wow...maybe this is just thier aesthetic choice. I understand the booster pack randomization and packaging details are bad. But I know I personally love early 00s yugioh style art. Very nostalgic to me. Maybe that's why I like it lol but yeah, this game seriously needed some quality control. And I agree with you on the fonts.
My instant response to seeing the back was an out-loud "What the fuck is that?"
This looks like a one off card game they'd put in a 2004 cartoon to use as a plot device
all grown up card game episode
That's literally how Yu-Gi-Oh! started and we ended up with something that has its flaws but is technically playable, unlike Beast Clans.
still trying to get my games to work, but all this info will definitely come handy once I decide to publish them
The back of that box kinda reminds me of the amount of information you’d get on one of those repackaged “Yu-Gi-Oh! Mystery Cubes.”
Damn, nothing about this game catches my eye. It just looks super generic and dull.
Complains about the weird curling of the foil cards that are three years old, as I look at my commander legends foils with major curl right out of the pack from this year. I guess wizards sources from the same printer.
Preach.
As someone who used to work with the creator of the game, he was not too keen on changing the game or trying to revamp it, the wording on some of the cards made no sense what so ever, he was more focused on sales instead of making a quality game or something enjoyable (not that trying to focus on sales is a bad thing but the game sucked.)
So, he tried to focus on sales with something that feels like it's from a one off episode in a TV show in 2003? The mind boggles
@@littlemisspipebomb4723 nah man, this shit reminds me of the ranger Rick card game
Wait, sales? People are buying it like this? 💀Wouldn't giving obvious flaws improve the sales??? Please tell us more lol.
obviously focusing on sales is a bad thing when you forget that good games sell lol
Lance? I met him at NY comic con a few years ago.
I feel kinda bad for these guys, I can see this product design being done by the game designers themselves, and them being just game designers having no idea how to design a retail product.
I mean, that's kinda why these videos exist...
Which is why you at *least* hire an art consultant for this, if not hire someone to do the full design for the packaging entirely. There's an old adage: Actors act, and directors direct. This applies to basically any endeavor that involved multiple skill sets. You want at least one skilled person for each skill set required, because unless you happen to be quite talented and have a solid grasp of multiple disciplines you're not going to do as good a job on things that aren't your main focus. People who are all about the game design need to stick to designing the game, then pay someone to actually figure out how to best market the product.
I'm especially passionate about this because one of my favorite IPs was incredibly badly mismanaged back in the 80s, because it was handled by just a few dudes who came up with a game system but had no real business acumen and so to this day the various rights to it are this tangled mess. Stick to what you're good at, and seek help for what you're not good at.
As someone in the same position (trying to do every part of the process myself), it's real hard to look at your work objectively even if it is good. Hats off to them for getting something so close to decent out there.
There are people out there to consult with at every point but each one is expensive, so you gotta pick your battles.
EDIT: That said, a lot of the issues brought up here should have been picked up in early playtests.
If I saw this product on a shelf I think I'd probably ignore it without even really registering its existence.
Kohdok,
As an aspiring game developer, it has been my dream to put out a quality product I can be satisfied with and others can enjoy. Your videos are a blessing to have and I can't thank you enough for the outstanding quality of each one. It seems with each new video you out out, I find myself note taking and revising aspects of what I have. Thank you for everything you do.
Another great review and analysis, really liked that you gave them credit where credit was due, and when you had criticism you broke down both what they did wrong and how to fix it.
26:12 Fun fact: The YuGiOh rule book / beginner's guide doesn't even tell you the correct rules any more, as they didn't update it for MR5 (Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz can again be summoned from the extra deck to any main monster zone). The rules guide for Speed Duels at least explains the gist of the game more simply, but it's far from comprehensive. It's kinda nuts how hard it is to actually learn the game.
I mean everyone in japan knows of yugioh ...
this channel is basically roasting all the creative types who think they don't need business types to actually make good products
He also roasts the business types who don't think they creative types to make enjoyable products.
Eh... the good creator types generally also know how to make their product look good. Normally it is the business types that ruin things. Pick anything. The Disney Star Wars movie sequels originally had great scripts and concepts, but the Disney executives came and took a complete shit on them.
Wow, I'm amazed that, as someone who loves trying out tcgs just because, how profoundly I lost interest after flipping to the back of the box.
They told me literally nothing other than "we hired a talented artist".
"We hired a talented artist, once."
This product's packaging is basically the 8th deadly sin of trading card game design.
Yeesh. Glad to see my first instinct to begin my own game's rulebook with the win condition was based on having seen it done right! I've just been testing it in Tabletop Simulator with some prototype cards that don't even have any temporary artwork (I'm just using a card template and putting the effects in the space where the art would normally be). At best I only intend to turn my game into some kind of online game like MTG Arena or Hearthstone, if I ever publish it at all, BUT if I do, I will for sure be hiring some properly skilled people to handle my graphic design, marketing, etc. Heck, I'll even hire a few people who know game design to try out the game and I'll keep an open mind regarding suggestions to change game mechanics... Though I think that may stem mainly from a lack of self-confidence instead of any latent talent in business or game design. 😂
pretty sure one of the cards has sonething about stuff costing 1 biomass less and therefore would make the deck feasible, it just forces you to combo, which imho is not that bad
Second comment
Also, have found these videos helpful for understanding the industry and what NOT to do. Without your series on "The 7 Deadly TCG Sins" I wouldn't have been able to avoid some design errors; I enjoy your videos and hope to see more!
Note his opinion on Vanguard's "unmixable attributes" is wrong now because it was made before D Standard.
Except it isn't wrong? It applied at the time and then Vanguard decided to change the format to reduce the region count to 5. When applied to how Vanguard was at the time, it is still applicable, and the fact that they changed it means that I might actually have been *right*.
The word you want is "Outdated", not "wrong".
@@Kohdok eh fair, technically outdated would be the term. But now it's everyone gets 24 (20 when lyrical monasterio comes out) cards per set release rather then the whole clan drought issue which was one of your points (aka "Well my clan isn't supported so I dont care".)
Basically what Im saying is, not all of the video is applicable anymore towards vanguard and pretty sure you haven't addressed this in a video.
@@summermermaidstar756 What he says about how Vanguard was may no longer be applicable to Vanguard now, but it's still not a good thing to do which makes it applicable advice.
@@summermermaidstar756 the sin used vanguard as an example a lot, but it's not specifically about that one game. It's not an incredibly common sin but there's a fair amount of offenders, vanguard just used to be a very obvious and easy to point to example.
This reminded me about my experience with Vampire the Eternal Struggle, it was just released an official translated product here at Brazil, but the company linked to a manual that is outdated, overcomplicated and the terms differs from the cards it self, like intercept became perception.
Very frustrated experience because the game is interested, but how to get into it it's just so convoluted that you lose all the interest.
Wow! Pretty interesting that you are covering this game as I just came across it after becoming obsessed with tcgs after watching the 7 deadly sins series.
I opened a booster box of this and didn't get ONE level 2 or 3 ruler. The randomization in packs was also pretty insane. If the 2nd card in a pack was a level 1 ruler, almost guaranteed the next 2 cards would also be level one rulers.
The game also changed rules pretty hard in the "Beast Clans V2." Like significant changes. In the V1 rules beasts could attack other beasts. They cannot in the V2 rules. Only guardians are blockers in v1. In v2 anything can be a blocker and guardians must be attacked first. I think the game concept is pretty neat but boy it's rough.
Oh dear it looks you got halfway to the twist of episode 2.
Oh man, I probably know the other half of the twist but haven't thought of it.
There's a couple of card typos and my starter deck the level 3 royal still has the same evolution condition as the level 2 version even though it only goes to 3. It also has the same issue where one character has 13 biomass at level 3 but the heck only comes with 12.
Do we need a new sub-circle of hell for games that use a ridiculous amount of packaging to make it look like you’re buying more than you are? Even MTG is pushing it a bit with the new commander decks.
Regarding the comments on YGO relying on the anime to teach people to play:
That's an even WORSE idea than just having a poorly-written rulebook! The show's rules don't line up with the actual game in a lot of places, ranging from specific card design (and legality; cards like Pot of Greed keep showing up despite being banned for years) to basic things like how many life points each player has. Expecting a new YGO player to use anime rules is a recipe for disaster the first time they play with someone who actually knows the game.
Of course, the entirely different ruleset used by the digital version doesn't help things at all...
This is so disastrous. Damn, it fails in so many fronts...
Why on Earth would you talk about factions before you talk about how the game works? Aside from flavor, it'll just be meaningless to new players.
S c r i p t n e e d e d
Beast Clans just looks super unappealing lol
i still have the rule book/s for the pokemon trading card game "BASE SET" by Wizards of the coast.
and wow, it nails everything right! everything is in the correct place in the book. beautiful and easy to understand illustrations of the cards and how to play the game, and step by step rules of what you can do during the turn, and at the back even has an FAQ and appendix of terms. Nower days, all the rules are always printed on the paper playmats that come with every deck.
Wixoss low key being super influential on modern TCG design lol
Sounds like I need to research Wixross more then.
I appreciate your critical analysis of card games, I find it funny there are some card game sins that just made me want to see if I can make the macanic fun lol oops
Sweet mama, watching this video after watching the booster box video is so ominous. I wish there was a way to warn the Kohdok of this video about what the Kohdok from the next video knows lol
Dang, a late 2010s product, I assume, with quality and content of an early 2000 "accompanying toy" for a low budget cartoon.
Like, I guess for first release indie product it COULD be worse? They could straight up not even give enough card for a full playable deck lmao
That backing looks almost like the back of a Dollar Tree action Figure.
Hey Kohdok (and anyone else) there was this card game where the mechanic of it was to spin the card itself, then when it stopped would decide what you got to do - you also had this toy robot that came with the starter, you could give it equipment, and it would gain or lose parts and move to attack the other robot... I have no idea what it was called though, anyone know?
With the vanguard reboot coming to the US, in may, and possibly fixing some of the issues you’ve talked about in the past, will you be willing to do a review on that?
From what I can tell, his main issue was the constant release schedule combined with each individual product only appealing to a small section of the playerbase leading to product clogging up the shelves. All issues that the revamp fixes, because now there are only six clans and all of them are getting supported each set.
The starter decks are 4 dollars so it would be pretty easy to get a review for it.
Id like to see him talk about the new Vanguard format
@@Stinkoman87 *Nations
Thank you so much! You are teaching me so much stuff! Building my own TCG! KEep the VIDS comin' ma MAN!
I think the reason the cards warp is due to the foiling because sometimes even with Yu-Gi-Oh! The foil heats up and expands faster than the cards themselves and since the card stock itself is not that great it probably makes the problem worse
Some pages of the manual were in color and others were grayscale, that’s super lame.
It'd work if it was showing a turn order in greyscale with the color being the image of the turn
Rhinox maximize Scorponox terrorize followed by beast wars transformation sounds
"Rumbling across the plains of the Savannah Kingdom, Prince Stronghorn believes in peace through overwhelming force. Though some see him as brutish, he has pledged his life to uniting the disparate Beasts of his home Kingdom.
But a new threat is rising. The treacherous Desert Kingdom seeks domination not through battle, but deception. Their assassins lurk in every shadow, ready to cut throats and poison cups in the name of Prince Dark Sting.
When Man is gone
The BEASTS shall inherit the Earth"
I know nothing about this game, so who knows how accurate it is. But it's better than what is currently on the back of the box.
A couple of other things:
Rather than cards or counters to track resources, I would include 2 double-wheeled spinners. 3 pieces of cardboard, held together by metal or plastic fasteners. The wheels can be individually rotated so that a number between 1 and 20 shows in a window. Each player has one wheel for life and one for biomass.
Each Kingdom has a King, Queen and Prince/Princess? Do these terms have game significance? If not, I would vary the terms a bit: Pharaoh, Khan, Emperor. It's boring to see the same titles over and over.
They should hire this guy! I do believe every clan has a king/queen/prince/princess but the words have no relevance to the game.
To me the extra funny/sad part to me about the Beast Clans Starter box. Is that the "2 player starter kit" blurb is a massive waste to me, because those huge side panels are for that kinda thing, especially as most of those things are hangers and if I come around the side of the display I can read what's included before I pick up the starter.
The back of the case looks good to me. As a kid I'd have kept that in my room
I really like the art though, don't know why people in the comments don't like it 😂
For me i dont like it because it have a cloudy and blurry colors and the characters are unappealing
I find the designs really generic, just monster men on top of unappealing blank backgrounds
The artwork is one of the few things I like a out it as well. It has that oldskool yugioh vibe to it. ☺️
9:55 when I was getting into mtg I got Lililana the last hope in my zombie intro deck packs and I got super excited
It kept me interested in mtg since
I got a cool mythic in my starter deck which paid for the deck itself. Sold it to buy Yugioh cards.
that's the worst back of a box i've ever seen what does it even *MEAN*!?
I won't defend most of what I saw here, but I will say that the needs of packaging for sales through retail are a lot different from the needs of packaging for direct sales online. All that info you're asking about should be on the page you bought from, not on the box. The box can be designed as a showpiece (not that the ones shown here achieve that...).
Except that local meetups are the lifeblood of paper card games. To have local meetups, you need a venue happy to host them. To have a venue happy to host them, you need a product that will make them enough money to make said meetups worthwhile.
It might be easy to talk about online sales in an age of lockdowns, but not having your product prepared for sales out in the wild, or even at cons and trade shows, is incredibly amateur.
It doesn't even contain a playmat? Or any counters?
5:06 what a bummer! Alot of cool stuff could have been done there!
You should review the best starter deck ever. Whatever your opinion is on that, but I think the League Battle Decks in Pokémon are the best starting product.
You're wrong, the worst Starter Deck is the Star Trek CCG starter deck that is just 60 random cards from the base set with 8 cards to make them playable with each other rather than using it to teach stradegy
A lot of the really old card games just had random cards for starter decks. It's pretty weird from a modern lens but back then magic did it so everyone else did it.
@@2Lainz I guess I'm problem with it was this was released in 1998 after Wizards had started making theme decks and starter decks for both magic and Pokemon
It was definitely weird the first time I opened a random "starter" deck too. I think the worst ones are the ones that are half-random. WHY?
@@2Lainz it's pretty in the Star Trek CCG because they have 12 card types and nearly as many factions
The first magic starters were just a bunch of random cards from alpha and some lands. At least the defense there was that this was the first time anyone made a starter product for a trading card game.
im sry, im no graphic designer but is the rule book in comic sans ?
This looks like someone tried to have a rhino from mtg fight against red eyes black dragon in a small skin off game.
Looks like reused Magic Duel Decks box filler with YGO chaff.
I get the feeling that the maker of this game doesn't like criticism and isn't critical of their own work. It's something of a common theme with game designers that they take criticism as a personal attack. Left unchallenged, this is what you get.
Yeah, people are telling me in private that they are a bit of a 50-shades type.
@@Kohdok huh? What does this mean?
@@duane_313 The writer of 50 Shades of Gray is a known control freak with a fragile ego.
you said it uses some wixoss mechanics (limit and level), is it an interesting use of them???
In this game you have a card called your royal and it is basically your main character card. If a certain condition is met, the royal will level up, gaining more maximum biomass - the game's resource. You get your entire biomass allocation every turn but you have to pay upkeep on your beasts. They do not have a one time play cost, but a cost that must be upkept every turn. Leveling up your royal also makes his ability either better or cost less biomass to use.
I have never played wixoss but I hope that helped.
@@2Lainz thanks!
Basically you use your Limit to also pay costs, so maxing your Limit isn't always the best move.
Yugioh’s new playerbase is so fun. So many people just immediately break the rules because season one ignored the rules until like 45-ish episodes in
I've never even heard of this game
You gotta really dig into TCGs to find it. I'm not even sure how I found it any more.
14:31 I've see a lot of MTG cards that look worse than that brand new lately.
Oh boy.
I knew a local game store owner who invested in this game. Bought a ton of product and it basically just rotted on the shelf. The design of the cards just isn't very good. Text and art are often placed over tinted backgrounds and/or patterns, which looks really cheap. They really needed to have lightly textured vanilla grounds for text and full backgrounds for artwork. The holofoiling is way too excessive, doesn't really emphasize important parts of the artwork. The game plays funny, you have 8 biomass to spend each turn on playing cards but everything also takes biomass to use. Games don't really have a pace, it kind of feels like things happen and then one player is informed they have lost. I guess it just sucks to see the TCG space is so overrun with grifters.
Looks like I am in for a ride
The Dark Sting deck might have ways to reduce or cheat in different sizes.
If someone told me this was a rejected Mega Man X TCG retooled into its own IP, I would believe them.
I'm betting that the rhino deck has more biomass than needed if you opened it, to balance it out.
There's a lot of flaws within this game(packaging info, booster randomization, awkward dated font,etc) but you can really tell the creator was passionate about the art and just making a tcg no matter what. 🤷🏿♂️ Like y'all hating on this art but I think it looks great for the most part. The art style is much more consistent and thought out compared to other indie TCG's ( I'm not a fan of Exodus TCG art for example).
So we dont judge it by the cover? Got it.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! rulebook is fine.
Decks don't even include them anymore
It's outdated
Lmao why are the card names different fonts
There’s plenty of advantages to digital games
I actually think the Digimon starter deck box looks terrible. You've got a cool looking card and then you've gut an ugly green thing just hovering over it with a bright outline that makes it look like it was poorly photoshoped, and that has a completely different art style. I don't know much about the show, but just seeing the box it really does not make me interested in trying out the game, the opposite actually.
I guess you're suppossed to buy 2 or 3 copies of the decks....which is kind of a bad move for a starter deck specially for a new or small game
And Yugioh is such a beautiful mess, it's chaoticness is part of it's identity by now
The chaoticness of yugioh is definitely it's biggest asset but I really would like to see one tcg that tried to pull the same high speed gameplay with more interactivity.
Nah most of the cards in the starter decks for this game are 2 ofs and whole playsets (3). They just flubbed up giving every deck the same amount of biomass when some royals get more than others.
I have the displeasure of playing this one. It's horrible.
vanguard starter deck $4
Wow what did this poor card game do to you? Jeez haha
You'll see in the followup. It will blow your mind.
@@Kohdok Oh no! lol
@@Kohdok Oh boy! It's the booster box randomization isn't it?
I almost disliked the video based on how mediocre the product is >_
Yugioh wants the show to follow the rules but they make it impossible to watch without a streaming service, which means less new players.
Also, unfortunately the Digimon Card Game (International release) was pushed back to March 12th.
first
No
@@brittanynguyen3794 yes
I would really love to participate, but I feel like if you’re not gonna put in the effort to edit out the five seconds of silence over and over and over again, or the incessant unrelated puttering, I can’t either.
I can mirror this with some jingling keys added in if paying attention long enough for someone to breathe is that much of an accessibility issue
This could have been a 2 minute video. You repeat yourself way too much.