Wakfu TCG

One of the game mat designs available for purchase

Wakfu TCG is a trading card game game designed and published by Ankama, based on their Dofus/Wakfu franchise. It features their usual art style with the accompanying humor, sexiness and abundance of word play. Like many of the company's products, it is only available in French - so on Valentine's Day, 2011, when interest for the Wakfu cartoon was peaking on /tg/ and shortly before it was banned from the board, a few anons decided that they should translate it for everyone's enjoyment. The project was taken to plus4chan's project board and the translation was ultimately made by Seth with the help of a few plus4chan users for proofreading as interest from /tg/ eventually vanished. It was uploaded to Wakfupedia.com, whose administrator (Cédric Longo from Ankama) helped with all the technical aspects, including a LackeyCCG plugin pulling up-to-date cards from the website.

Note: Ankama suspended development of the game at the end of 2011 due to lack of profitability. Therefore, new cards are no longer being made, with the total count sitting at 1450 cards from seven sets.

The original project thread is (or was) located here: plus4chan/coc/

Seth can also be reached here at user:S or via Wakfupedia for anything related to the game's translation.

Links and downloads

• Wakfupedia - A comprehensive card reference in French and English. The English cards do not feature flavor text (this was decided to save time and space). Also with a forum and a few tools related to the game. Unofficial site.
• Introduction to the game - A short PDF covering the basic gameplay elements and rules. Translated from an official resource.
• Comprehensive tournament rules - Translation of the full ruleset used in official tournaments. Based on the October 29, 2011 update, the last before development stopped.

How the game works

An example of the game's card layout, art style and humor.

For details, see the introduction PDF above. Wakfu TCG uses decks of 50 cards, in which one is always your Hero and another your Haven Bag, the former determining your HP and advancement and the latter working as a safe zone, among other things. Other cards include Allies who fight in the World, Actions that influence battles, such as Spells, Scrolls and Quests, various Equipment types (armors, weapons, items, mounts, etc.) your Allies and Hero can use, Workshops for crafting them, Rooms and Zones that affect you or every player, and a few others.

The game is focused on having your Hero and Allies fight those of your opponent. One way to win is to kill your opponent's Hero, which makes them the most important cards to keep an eye on. The other way to win is to take your Hero to level 3 by earning XP, which is done mostly by defeating enemy Allies. In effect, your Hero begins at level 1 and gets a stat boost and improved ability at level 2 (6 XP). Those stats are on the back side of the Hero card. Level 3 (18 XP) doesn't really exist as far as gameplay and stats are concerned. XP gains depend on the particular Ally you defeat and can be affected by other cards.

The game's resource management is based on Elements. Every card is affiliated with one of the classic four elements (or Neutral) and can be tapped to produce one unit of that Element. However, tapped cards lose utility as they can't be used in a fight and sometimes lose access to some of their abilities while tapped (or their abilities are triggered by tapping, in which case you have to choose between generating resources or using the ability). At the beginning of the game, you place your Haven Bag on the table and your Hero inside it (which protects it from attacks as the bag would have to be destroyed first). To put more cards in play, you need to produce resources equal to their level, but only one needs to match that card's Element. So in order to play a level-3 Earth card, you need to tap three cards currently in play. One has to also have the Earth element, but the other two can be from any category.

The plugin

On August 5, 2012, the roughly finished LackeyCCG plugin was made public for testing and improvement. Though bugs remain, lack of enthusiasm for the release killed what motivation remained in the project. It is however playable as it is with issues ranging from minor to annoying.

To install the program and plugin

1. Download LackeyCCG. It's a free program designed to play any CCG/TCG online that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux (through Wine). Extract the file to where you want the program to sit on your drive, launch with LackeyCCG.exe.
2. Install the Wakfu TCG plugin. Go to the Preferences > Plugin tab and enter the following address in the "Install or Update from URL:" field: http://www.wakfupedia.com/public/lackey/en/updatelist.txt Click the button and wait for the download and install to finish. As instructed, exit the program and reload to refresh the plugin.
3. Go back to the Plugin tab, click Browse installed plugins to load one... Select WakfuTCG_EN and click Choose. That will load the tabletop view. You can go back to the Plugin tab and click "Download all missing card images" if you expect to go offline, but otherwise it's not required as they will be downloaded on demand.

Using LackeyCCG

See lackeyccg.com's video tutorials and guides to learn about how the program itself works. That will teach you the less obvious functions and buttons to improve the gameplay experience, but you can also just have a look around and try stuff.

Creating Decks

Go to the Deck Editor tab. The top window is your current deck; the bottom window is your card collection. Simply move cards from one window to the other, and use the "Selected +/- x" buttons to change quantities. When your deck is ready, look for the "Load to zone:" button near the middle. Make sure "Deck" is selected next to it and click it. "Load entire deck to you" does the same thing in one click.

You can also use the Card Pool and Packs... interface from the bottom panel to load boosters or randomly-generated decks.

Playing Chi-Fu-Mi

Wakfu TCG uses Rock-Paper-Scissors for some cards or mechanics. Import the cards from the Chi-Fu-Mi set (as you would normally prepare a deck) using the "Load to zone: (Chi-Fu-Mi)" button. When you need to play Chi-Fu-Mi, in your Chi-Fu-Mi zone, flip the card you wish to play so you don't see its face, then move it to the playing area. Your opponent does the same, then one of you flips both cards at once. When you're done, move the cards back to your respective Chi-Fu-Mi zones.

Setting up a Wakfu TCG game

After building your deck and setting up your Chi-Fu-Mi zone, start the game and pick your Hero and Haven Bag from your Deck and move them to the board (you can recognize them easily as all other cards show the common card back image [see Known bugs, below]). Make sure to adjust your stats in the left panel based on your Hero and Haven Bag. The most common values are set as defaults. For the rest, refer to the game's rules or LackeyCCG's guides.

Known bugs

• Character encoding (accented characters aren't showing)
• Back missing from Hero and Haven Bag cards makes it more bothersome to set the game up