Originally Appearing in Polyhedron Magazine

Some years ago, shortly after I began working full time in the game industry, an older friend -- a college professor who had been something of a mentor to me -- asked, with all the best intentions, I'm certain, "Are you sure gaming isn't just a fad?" From his perspective, role-playing had been around for less than two decades, and he wasn't aware of wargaming's long history, so neither seemed to him a safe bet for me to be supporting a family of six upon.

If the truth be told, I had already spent a year wrestling with that very question. (And with the merits of making any sort of entertainment a career: a puritanical, blue-collar upbringing had hammered into me a sense of "America's shameful fixation on fun" and the necessity for "sweat of the brow" toil, so it was a while before I could fully take pride in a creative job providing people with escapism in games.

I'm much better now, (thank you.) But by the time my mentor asked his question, I had become confident of my new career choice, and I reminded him that several silentmovie stars had declined roles in the first talkies because they thought the addition of sound was just a fad. Boy, were they wrong. On the other hand, while sound in film was to become wave of the future, and color would soon be just as much a necessity, 3D never really caught on, despite some truly impressive effects.

The point is that it is difficult to predict what will be a fad and what will soon be taken for granted. Twenty years ago, hard-core wargamers scoffed at the advent of role-playing. But presently, both paper and computer games are dominated by role-playing products, and die-hard wargamers are becoming harder and harder to find. Currently, many people see a parallel in the advent of collectible card games, predicting that role-playing is the new dinosaur, doomed to follow wargaming into obscurity. Others view the CCG phenomenon as nothing but a fad, soon to fade as consumers grow tired of buying yet another booster set for their collections.

I'm somewhere in the middle, I suppose. Shortly after Magic: the Gathering was first released, I received a couple of review copies, played with them, and wasn't particularly impressed. (And boy, do I feel like a minority of one.) But since then, I've become thoroughly addicted to Jyhad/VES, Mythos and Highlander (I carry at least one deck each wherever I go, so feel free to challenge me at any convention you find me),and I'm getting hooked on Legends of the Five Rings and the Battletech CCG, just to name a few. During my stint at TSR, I had quite a bit of fun with Spellfire and Blood Wars, as well as Dragon Dice, of course (which isn't cards, but still fits into the collectible, "build your own' genre). My cool reception to Magic was something of a fluke, but didn't run into an indictment of CCGs as a whole.

Having established my credentials as neither a whole-hearted CCG-aholic nor a total hater of the genre, I should like to point out that trading card games provide gamers with several new facets of weaselly play. That fact alone suggests a long life for the genre, give just how many weasel gamers there are in existence. Let's take a look at a few of those facets.

Weasel gaming is based on competition. The thrill of stabbing someone in the back -- arguably the signature aspect of weasel games -- is not the treachery itself, but in the raw need for it and in its exact timing. In weasel games, back-stabbing is a necessity for survival and ultimately for supremacy. The player who best recognizes the moment for that necessity and best executes it is the one who will end tip on top of the heap.

CCGs are highly competitive by nature; just take a look at any of them on the market. But their very collectability adds a new level of competition to their make-up. The player who collects the most and the best cards will usually have a listinct advantage over others with fewer and weaker ones. Sure, people are driven to collect them in order to gain a full set as well, but let's not underestimate the impentus to collect in order to build a "killer" deck. Even the dickering to trade cards between games can be seen as competitive in nature, as collectors vie for the best and fullest collection at the least cost to themselves. Only the very foolish or supremely confident trade cards without thinking how they're strengthening their opponents' decks.

One problem with trading is that is gives your soon-to-be opponents a peek into your collection. Nor only do they know what cards you have gained from them, by noting what cards you offer in trade they learn something of the cards you hold, and certainly what cards you think you can spare. This mitigates one important tactic that CCGs allow more fully than most other games: the element of surprise.

In most games, play begins with everyone fully aware of the resources that everyone else has. But because players build their own decks in trading card games, they can come to the table with their strengths and weaknesses a complete mystery to the other players. That can be a critical tactic. As long as no one else knows what theme you have built into your deck, they must be hesitant about how they play, and guard themselves against a nasty surprise.

But if you let them know ahead of time the basic strategies built into your deck, there is no sense of mystery to keep them off balance. And of course, if everyone knows roughly how many cards are in your collection, and if -- through trading with you -- they have a pretty good idea of exactly what cards you own, it becomes difficult for you project that unnerving sense of the unknown. With this in mind, it may be best to save your trading for conventions and the Internet, to keep your local friends in the dark.

The only time it actually becomes an advantage to let everyone else know the "theme" of the deck you are playing is if that deck has consistently beaten all others. Then your opponents will be daunted by the deck's reputation. And if you can make them sweat, they're more likely to make a fatal mistake at a crucial moment during play. Keep in mind, then, that reputation is just one more weapon in the true weasel's bag of tricks.