Since the Magic: The Gathering game was released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993, collectible card games (CCGs) have grown to claim a sizeable share of the gaming market, and the concept of collectible gaming has since expanded to include miniatures games and other kinds of games.

The CCG craze was at its height in the late 1990s with every publishing company and license holder trying to jump onto the bandwagon. The historical list of CCGs shown on Wikipedia shows that nearly 200 different CCGs have been produced by various companies over the years. Sadly, most of these games are now defunct, some because of their poor quality, and some simply due to economics.

Wizards of the Coast played a strong role in shaping the market when they patented the concepts and the mechanics of their Deckmaster products in 1997. Other publishers that used similar mechanisms in their games had to pay a license fee or cease their production. Some companies starting referring to their products as Trading Card Games (TCGs) instead of CCGs, but the terms are effectively similar and interchangeable.

The following are my own personal choices for the top ten best CCGs ever released.

10. Heresy: Kingdom Come

Heresy: Kingdom Come makes the list by virtue of being both the most beautiful card game ever produced, and the most complicated. Designed and published by Last Unicorn Games before the company folded, Heresy was a complex game of strategy and resource management set in a dystopian near-future where the forces of heaven and hell have descended to the earth to fight over the right to rule paradise.

The play area was divided into two areas devoted to the real world of the Wilds and the virtual world of the Matrix. You could bring characters and locations into play which only existed in one of the two areas, but many characters could cross the divide between them (known as ‘jacking in’ and ‘jacking out’).