Tropes common to collectible card games include:
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: To play constructed formats competitively, you'll often have to spend lots of money, either because the most useful cards are the rarest, or because their usefulness increases demand (and therefore price).
- CCG Importance Dissonance
- Crack Is Cheaper: Those little booster packs add up over time. You can drop a hundred dollars (USD) on a huge box, or instead spend that much directly buying the most useful cards for your setup. Pick your drug.
- Discard and Draw
- Expansion Pack
- Game-Breaker
- Highly Specific Counterplay
- Junk Rare
- Kingmaker Scenario
- Loads and Loads of Rules
- Metagame
- Obvious Rule Patch: Restricted and banned lists
- Prestigious Player Title
- Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage
- Power Creep: An old card set from a long-runner is usually useless.
- Random Drops
- Random Number God
- Serious Business
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Richard Garfield, creator of Magic, called it "Rich Kid Syndrome" and tried to avert it with his game. He failed.
- Theme Deck
- Tournament Play
