I like to design CCG's and recently had an idea that I think would yield a very different flavor of gameplay from what we are mostly used to. It's traditional to make one of the conditions under which you loose in a CCG be when you run out of cards, but what if this was taken even further? What if the victory condition for the game was to return all of your cards to your deck?
At the beggining of the game you would have to draw cards and place resources, to build up your system for returning cards to your deck. Of course, as in almost every game, it is an advantage to have more cards at your disposal, but this will only make your job more difficult later on. Also, this would be an interesting way to keep the game close, if damage often came in the form of forcing card draw, then the damaged party would get a boost from it.
I've toyed with several ideas for a setting. One is a fantasy story; you would play as an Elemental lord trying to restore natural ballance to your land while countering a threat from without. Total balance is a state of having no cards in your hand or disgaurd pile.
What do you think? This is still only a concept, but I think there may be somethign to it. Am I out to luch?
There is also the fact that if the player only concentrate on returning his own card in his deck, it becommes some kind of solitaire game with little interference between players since they do not need to confront other each other to win. This is the bug of a few CCG like the old "star trek" and "Wizard Eye".
Well, these are good objections, and thank you for your response, but I think I could get around at least some of the problems you posed. Here is how I envisioned it working:
When you begin the game, you already have a hand of ~5 cards, and returning them to your deck won't be easy, so you can't score some kind of instant win. Then, your oponent will try to make you draw more cards, and also make you disgaurd cards (disgaurded cards would be harder to return to your deck than non- disgaurded ones).
To stop your oponent, and also to score damage against him, you would need to lay out resources, and use them to play other cards. Think of it this way, each resource is like a land in magic, only you can tap it to return it to the bottom of your deck. That way the rescources can be the first in and last out. The other cards provide you with ways to attack your oponent (damage is card draw!) and ways of getting your own cards off the table and back into your deck or your hand.
Now, all this isn't to say that this is a good idea (after all, that's what I'm here to find out), but I just wanted to let you know I wasn't so poorly thought out as your post seemed to assume.