It is possible that many of you are playing card and board games esspecialy that such games have recently becoming popular again. Unfortunately, these games always have one flaw which is fac that not always we have somebody to play with. And although game among friends gives the most fun there are some interesting computer alternatives. One of most interestings are OCTGN and Vassal Engine.
OCTGN (Online Card and Tabletop Gaming Network) is a program that allows us to play card games via the internet currently supports games such as:
7th Sea CCG
A Game of Thrones LCG
A Game of Thrones LCG 2.0
Android NETRUNNER
Call of Cthulhu LCG
Card Fighters’ Clash
Cards Against Humanity
Doomtown
Duel Masters
Duel Masters OCG
Dune CCG
Force of Will TCG
Kaijudo
Legend of the Five Rings
Mage Wars
Magic: the Gathering
My Little Pony CCG
NETRUNNER CCG
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game
Romance of the Nine Empires
Sentinels of the Multiverse
Spycraft CCG
Star Realms
Star Wars: The Card Game
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
VS System
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle
Vs. The 2PCG
Warhammer 40,000 Conquest LCG
Warhammer Invasion LCG
Aditionaly if we have appropriate knowledge we can create new module for selected card game.
But to start using OCTGN we have to make some configuration:
First download software from this website https://www.octgn.net/Home/GetOctgn is currently available only in version Windows.
After turning on the program we create a new account giving our mail, login and password
At the begining it is limited to samll number of simple games. So we enter tab “Games Manager” and click on the “Add Game Feed”. We see a new window where we have to enter the following information:
Name: OCTGN Directory
Feed URL / Path: httpss://www.myget.org/f/octgngamedirectory
username:
Password:
Click “Add”.
Next to the “Add Game Feed” there is a drop-down list. Click on it. It should be now possible to choose “OCTGN Directory”, select it. We will get list of mentioned above OCTGN games. We select the ones that we are interested in and click install
We have almost everything done it remains only to download card images. Unfortunately for all of the games we have to do it separately and manualy. Becouse of copyright reasons many manufacturers do not allow placing their card images on the internet hoping that players will buy first physical version of the game and scan the cards themself. Cards available on the web will often have a watermark or their descripctions will be censored.
Photo cards can be downloaded from this website https://octgngames.com On the right side should be category “Game Directory” where you can find links for dedicated games. In them there should be a bookmark called image pack/sets or similar.
Once we have downloaded .08c or .zip files, simply select “Add image packs.”
Many players have already prepared themself files with images of high quality and often we can simply ask if they could share their resources, saving us the work. I personally use this platform from time to time to play Warhammer 40,000 Conquest. If anyone would be interested in a duel/learning I invite you to contact me.
Another interesting platform is Vassal Engine. Vassal Engine allows us to play nearly 2,000 board games both popular titles like Mansion of Madness, Twilight Struggle or Arkham Horror and less popular games. Aditionaly anyone can create a module for this platform. It is written in Java and runs on any environment where we have installed Java Virtual machine.
Vasal Engine is very easy to use. We have to instal software from this site https://www.vassalengine.org/download.php After the installation, we still need to download titles which interest us. A list of all modules can be taken from this site https://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Category:Modules After downloading game which you want, select file -> open and thats everything.
Other platforms worth mentioning are:
https://www.jinteki.net – Page dedicated to the popular CCG game “Android NETRUNNER”
https://innovation.isotropic.org – Page dedicated to the popular game “Innovations”
https://en.boardgamearena.com – browser-based platform with a quite extensive list of popular card and board games.
And thats all, maybe you know some other platforms worth mentioning here?