Medantasy (Original Series)

## Medantasy TCG

**Medantasy** **TCG**, known more simply as **Medantasy**, was a trading card game created in 2012. It was the first trading card game that I had ever created.

## General

The exact rules of Medantasy are lost due to the fact that I was 8 and never wrote them down, however the general premise of the game was simple: each player would play from their own deck of cards consisting of Troops, Items, and Spells. Players would attempt to knock out their opponents troop cards, with the winner being granted one of the rare Realm cards. Troop cards could be powered up using spell cards, while items granted special abilities, altering play.

The Realm cards offered "lore" to the game that few of my other games ever offered. These realm cards added nothing to the game, and served only as collectibles and prizes to be won from games. Sets of cards could be collected with the realm cards, as all troop cards were assigned to a realm, similar to the colors of mana in Magic: The Gathering. These realms were: Leafien, Firethon, Darklick, Magork, Winzy, Undie, Freezer, and Shapre.

Other cards types included God, Overlord, and Building cards, with God and Overlord cards acting as more-powerful Troop cards, and Buildings acting as permanent item cards. The God and Overlord cards would be the most sought-after cards in the game, while there was only ever one Building card in the game.

Two sets were created for the game, both unnamed and simply referred to as Set 1 and Set 2. Set 1 included at least 29 cards, while only 1 card from set 2 remains to this day.

## Review

Medantasy will always remain to me the most mysterious of my cards games since I do not remember much of its creation, and I never bothered to write anything down. Even the year 2012 could be wrong for its creation date. The game also holds the record among my games for the most lost cards. At the time, I did not know I would end of making so many games, so I took little effort into preserving my early work. What remains paints a faint outline of the rules of the game.

In 2012, I was in the 3rd grade. It was around this time that I began to play and trade Pokemon cards, which no doubt played a large influence on the design of the game. The game was creature-oriented, with many of the names being made-up, and the monsters do not resemble anything in real-life or mythology. Items and spells in the game even shared the name of items in Pokemon, such as the Great Potion and Revive.

Something funny about the Set 2 of Medantasy is how it mirrors Arabian Nights, the first expansion set for MTG. The story goes that while designing the cards for the set, they almost printed the cards with a pink and yellow card back to differentiate them from the original set. In the end, designers realized that the game would benefit from all cards having a unified design, so that cards from different sets could be played together, increasing the number of possible unique decks. I did not put this much thought into my design, and put a giant "2" circled on the back of my set 2 cards. While it did not really matter in the end for my game, since I'm not even sure one game of it was ever even played, this story just goes to show how even these small card games we make at home must take the same design considerations that the "real" card designers must think about. Our games are not lesser

Even if I knew the rules, this is not a game that I would continue to play today. When I made these early games, the design process was very much "make it up as I go" and it shows. With the game being mostly a rip off of Pokemon, you would think at least the card design would be decent, but this seems to be the one thing I **didn't** copy. The layout does not make sense, and the readability is terrible.