I managed to pick up a pair of Huntik starters and a pair of Chaotic starters the other day for £2.99 each, figured it was rude not to.

Huntik looks interesting, I've never seen an objective-based TCG before so looking forward to giving it a crack. Anyone who I've spoken to who has actually played it has said it's good fun.

Chaotic though - has anyone actually played this? I've seen it around for a while but there's no OP at any local stores, and I'm guessing this has something to do with the online element of the game, which still seems active on chaoticgame.com (though a lot of the forum posts are just people asking for free codes for cards).

Also, while the art itself is a bit boring, the cards are lovely - there's no outer borders on the cards like you have on WoW or M:TG, so the print goes right up to the edge of the cards, even on the foils. It looks fantastic.

From a quick skim of the rules it appears to play like Pokémon with instants.

If anyone would fancy a game of either game at some point, I'm happy to bring the lot along to Ripley one evening.

I've played both, Huntik is fantastic to play but reminds me a little bit of Spycraft just with the addition of positioning. Great to play though.

Chaotic (sigh) was something I managed to get quite cheap. I tried it and decided that it was an opportunity lost. I think it's because they tried to add an element which only really works in a stand alone card game. If they had tried to do something like UFS or even Free Realms TCG then it might have worked.

Care to elaborate? What's this element of which you speak?

The attack deck. Since this can be tweaked so that your attacks are more powerful (build points don't have much effect when it easy to get through a 20 card deck in a couple of battles), there is very little balance involved with it which ruins the game. The closest mechanic in a game to that is one shown in UFS, Need for Speed and Free Realms to name but a few - the control check. Each card has a control number and is still part of your main deck, no side deck like the attack deck. The difference is that the control number would be weak if the card was powerful, meaning you had to have a balanced deck to succeed. Free Realms changed this slightly by using gems instead, certain monsters have abilities which get stronger if you have draw at least the gems shown on the card.