Trading card games are among the most popular games. You must have seen children playing in the parks with all sorts of cards, looking like all the rainbow’s colors, with strange characters printed on them, each one having special powers. This is just one side of the story. Trading cards, also known as customizable or collectible cards, are a game subject for many famous games that you can find on the internet. And it is not just a passion of the little ones, but something to fascinate people of various ages.
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Magic: The Gathering
This is one of the oldest trading card games of the modern ones, invented by a math teacher, Richard Garfield, in 1993. However, it is definitely a part of the oldies but goldies CCGs, since even nowadays there are over six million people who play it, in more than 70 countries around the globe. This wonder might have been possible because of the magic that hovers around the game. It is all about magic and spells and fantastic creatures and wizards. These wizards are called planes walkers and they fight against each other using all those items that I have just named.

In fact, every player represents one wizard and has his own deck, containing at least 60 cards. Starting the game with 20 life points, the goal is to drain all these life points from your opponents. You receive 7 cards for the first hand and the two main types of cards are called lands and spells. While the spells cards obviously allow you to cast spells towards the enemies, they are conditioned by the energy you have. And the energy, also known as mana, is provided by the lands cards. So you need to find the best balance between improving your magical fuel and using powerful spells. You can also use additional resources represented by special cards with artifacts, graveyards, creatures or sorcery. The best part is that you can have several copies, no more than four, for all your cards excepting the lands. And you can use various spells, represented by an essential color: white, blue, black, red, green but also colorless or multi-color.There is a whole philosophy leading this game that combines skills with luck and that might steal you long hours once you get to experience it for the first time.

Vampire – the eternal struggle
Here is another trading card game to wow many of those who are passionate about vampires or other mythical creatures. There are the Methuselahs, which are ancient vampires extremely powerful, and the younger vampires, also known as minions. Any player will represent a Methuselah and will fight against his opponents by using the minions in what is called Jyhad. The more younger vampires you manage to bring under your control, the higher will be your chances to obtain a resounding victory.

Millions of people, from all over the world, use Yahoo to check their e-mails. However, one can do so many other things on that web site. Playing games is a pleasant way of filling time. Card games in particular, are not just funny, but also interesting and useful because they often require a good concentration, quick thinking and even a sort of strategy. In addition, there is a wide variety from where you get to choose. Here are a few examples.
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Ace Solitaire
Solitaire is a popular card game, which you can find in various forms. This particular version can be quite a challenge since it requires speedy fingers, basic math skills and, as I previously suggested, quick thinking. It is a race against time, on three levels. Every level displays on the main window a pile of cards, a deck with the rest of them and two positions where you can add new cards. You need to group the ones that are spread and that sit on the top of the pile in order to gather eleven points. Once you do that, the group will disappear and you can use the ones coming on top. If you get stuck, you can extract new cards from the deck. You need to clear the main window before time is up. Aces value one point. You are also free to jump from one round to another by clicking a special button.

Aloha TriPeaks
This is still a card game, but one that uses an appealing scenario of the Hawaiian Islands. There are more than 70 different levels, so you have little chances to get bored. In fact, you could become addicted. Unfortunately, Aloha TriPeaks can be played free only one hour. After that, you must pay 7 dollars to download it. Therefore, if you decide to pay it and have this game at your service all the time, you should also now that there are two levels of difficulty – normal and hard – and you can advance to the next round if you finish the scenario or if you use a power up card. Do not get too excited on this last perspective and use those special cards from the very beginning because they are limited.

Lottso!
Lottso is a funny and colorful card game you can play while the clock is ticking. You have a number of Lottso! cards with numbers on them and a lot of numbered balls that quickly appear on the screen. You must be fast enough so as to match the balls with the cards that have the same number. After finishing this first task, if the time has not expired, the cards will flip and you get a scratcher game to gather extra points. But can you get to that part? Designers thought to some interesting ways of making things more exciting. So, there are eight themes, three dozen of Lottso! cards and charms and power ups can be used to advance. Just like Aloha TriPeaks, after one hour of trial playing you will have to pay 7 dollars to download the full version.

Other options
If these are not good enough for you, you can always try many others: Addiction Solitaire, Hearts and Spades, Ali Baba, Blackjack, Bumper Jack, Freecell, Go Go 21, Canasta and so far. You might discover you have spent the whole day playing them, since there a lot of them and you can try each one for a whole hour. All the Yahoo card games are easy to play and entertaining, but what makes them widely appreciated are the catchy designs and the innovations regarding the scenarios. They are a good way of spending and evening or even more than just an evening…

Game passionate people just know how these things work. So if you are interested in what card games could you use on your new Vista operating system, it means you are a beginner in this field. Anyway, there are a lot of card games available on the internet. Some of them are free, others request you a sum of money, smaller or larger, but the thing they have in common and that also concerns you, is that they can all be played under Vista. Therefore, here are a few names to make a quick search on the internet for them. Chances are you will get into others, even more interesting, once you start this research.
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Solitaire 7
As you know, almost any operating system has a classic Solitaire preinstalled. If you are a fan of this game, you can download a considerably improved version. One could not say for sure for what reason the game was called Solitaire 7. But definitely not because it has seven variants inside of it. In fact, it has 170 games, allowing you to create a personalized model. You get to choose everything, starting with the background of the window and ending with the card’s suit. You establish the rules and the design. With what cards can you win and how should they look – the distance between them, the size of the cards, the types of shadows, the colors of the borders and so far and o son. All these can be done through language. And check it out, this is a brand new application, released only at the beginning of February, this year, in 2011. The menus are in English, but this should not be a problem for those who really want to learn playing it. In order to download Solitaire 7 you will have to pay only 10 dollars, and you get the 11 MB installation kit.

Western Strip Poker
Does not anyone love poker? I bet you all do. However, isn’t it way more interesting and exciting when you are playing strip poker? If you download this card game for Vista, you will sure enjoy playing poker with punishments that involve good - looking girls, dressed in the western style, getting rid of their clothes… Probably the best part of this experience would be the fact that you, as a real player, will never have to literally take off your clothing. Otherwise, the game respects the general poker rules, is simple and fun. Since it is a rather old one, dating back from March 2008, and it is not sophisticated at all, Western Strip Poker will only ask for a processor clocked at a minimum value of 800 MHz, which I do not think it might be a problem nowadays. If you want it, you can have it for 20 bucks.

Boat
Have you ever played Bridge, Rook or Spades? They are all bidding games. You can now add to this list another name – the Boat game. As you can imagine, it is all about competing with your partner and biding on every single hand. The one who wins a hand will receive as a bonus other five cards to help him settle a new winning round. Isn’t it adorable that Boat only asks for at least 5 MB free space on your hard drive, 64 MB RAM and a Pentium 266 processor? It was entirely designed to amuse you and was released in 2007. We could suppose that age does not make a difference when the game is funny. Moreover, it is even free and it works not just on Vista, but also on Windows.