City of Heroes CCG (2005)

The City of Heroes Customizable Card Game (COHCCG) was designed by David Williams and produced by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). There were a total of two sets of cards released for the game. The first, Arena, was released in January, 2006. The second set, Secret Origins, was released in October, 2006. Since then, there have been no official releases.

The COHCCG was designed to be a quick game. Rather than using a turn structure where each player takes multiple actions in a row, the game used an alternating action structure. This lead to faster and more interactive games. Each player was represented by a Hero card, which began play with 2 starting powers. As their action, a player had many choices, including:

• Play a card, being:
  1. a Sidekick
  2. a Power that can be used by the Hero or a Sidekick
  3. an Enhancement on a Power already in play
  4. an Edge card with the keyword "Action" or "React"
• Activate a Power already in play
• Move the Hero or a Sidekick
• Search your draw deck for a Sidekick
• Recharge your Powers
• Play a Mission card
• Use the Defeat text on a mission to complete it
• Draw 2 cards

Unless otherwise specified by the cards played, play continued until only one Hero remained, who was declared the winner.

In addition to the 33 Heroes available in Arena and the 22 Heroes available in Secret Origins, players could create their own hero using "Paragon" Hero cards. These cards allowed a player to create new combinations of powers that were not available on existing Hero cards. Players could either play solely with the Paragon Hero cards available in the Arena set, or go online to access the HeroBuilder which allowed players to create Hero cards in the same template as the already available Heroes, including a picture uploaded by the player.

After the game was discontinued, a fan community effort created the Hamidon set. Although the generic Hero cards listed all power sets available to the archetypes at the time, it wasn't until The Hamidon set was developed that many of those power sets were codified for use.