by kryyst
Maybe they do use different engines, but if they do they are very similar.For a quick comparison Penny Arcade works like this.
You determine which action cards and bosses you'll be using at the start of the game. Then:
1) Deal 2 character cards to each person, each character card has a power and determines your base starting cards.
2) Gather starting cards, which are a combination of coins and power
3) Draw your hand
4) Play cards - When you play a card you perform the action on the card (draw 2 cards, hand out a pax, delete a card etc.) You play all the cards in your hand.
5) With the cards you just played you also use them to buy more cards. , some cards cost coins others cost power. You can buy as many cards as you can afford
6) At the end of your turn the cards you played as well as bought or have left in your hand are all discarded and you draw a fresh hand. Deck gets reshuffled when you need to
7) As for types of cards you have regular cards and boss cards. Boss cards are more expensive then regular cards but are better, they are also random
8) Game ends when one of the boss piles (each game has 2) is depleted OR you run through a number of piles of regular cards.
So the big difference here is that this game seems to be layed out like Ascension with 1 huge pile of the random 'good cards' and then a few other piles of standard boring cards. Penny Arcade on the other hand is much more like Dominion in it's layout.
As for other games to recommend. Penny Arcade may be a little to crude for your 7yr old. Not that it's got actual swear words in it but there is some rude humor. But I think they'd probably like the general cartoon looking artwork and it is a fast playing game.
Dominion is the grand daddy of deck builders. It's theme is very vanilla and the strategy of puzzle solving that comes from is very deep. The default turn is play an action and buy a card. But your actions will allow you to perform other actions or buy more cards. Like Penny Arcade (or rather Penny Arcade is like Dominion) which cards you can buy from are determined at the start of the game and don't change. The goal of the game is to buy cards that earn you VP's. Once all the province cards or a certain number of action card piles are depleted the game ends.
Ascension is safe, the artwork is love/hate. It plays more like Penny Arcade in that you play the actions on the cards as you lay them down then you can buy as many cards as you can afford. But the availability of cards is random. You attack monsters in the deck which earns VP's, the game ends ones all the VP's are earned.
Nightfall game setup is like Dominion in that the action cards are fixed. The difference is that there is a draft mechanic. So you'll have fixed action cards anyone can buy but then 2 types of action cards that only you can buy. Action cards are minions (guys that fight for you) or action cards, cards that just do something. Each card is color coded so you create chains based on these colors. You attack other players by assigning wounds to them. When the wound pile is gone game ends, whoever has the least wounds wins. You can play as many cards as you can chain together and buy as many cards as you can afford. It's themed after vampires and werewolves. It's also probably pretty safe. But the chaining mechanic can be hard to grasp.
So those are the 4 pure deck builders I'm familiar with and have played a lot of. There's also Thunderstone which is a fantasy deck builder that I've heard is kind of similar to Dominion, but I haven't played it. Then there are also others like Resident Evil and Uncharted which I don't know at all.
Of the 4 I know Dominion is probably the deepest strategically. But it's also kinda bland for the theme. But more then makes up for it in the play.
Penny Arcade has a silly theme has some funny cards, plays faster then Dominion and I think is more accessible in that the strategy of which cards to buy and play is more obvious then Dominion. But you may not feel it's appropriate. One example of crude is a card called Touching Wieners - which is depicted as a couple wiener dogs hugging. Again all crude is implied but it's there.
Ascension is just a big game of random. You win buy trying to weight random to your favor. Nightfall largely comes down to figuring out the best chain and hopefully locking those cards down to you in the draft. I prefer it over Ascension but I don't find either of them as remotely enjoyable as Penny Arcade or Dominion. They are filler games I'll play on my iPad when I have nothing better to do. Where as Penny Arcade and Dominion will have multiple games played on game nights.
I rate Dominion slightly higher then PA because it is a much richer game. But PA hits the table more often because for the general crowd it is more fun (more approachable , silly cards etc...)
One other game I'd put in while not technically a Deck Builder is Blood Bowl - Team Manger, the style of game I was hoping DC would be. In BB-TM you have a starting set of players. You then actually use those players to win match-ups. Winning a match-up will give you points, new players and team upgrade bonus action kinda cards. So there is a deck building mechanic. But the real game play comes in using your players to win matches. It's not a pure Deck Builder. Which is what I hoped DC would have you do. Using your cadre of heroes to defeat bad guys not just buying them.
All of these games though can be pretty deep in strategy and tactics. The actions you play are usually geared towards reaping some benefit that is further down the road. So in terms of any that are good for a 7 year old, it really does depend on that 7yr old. I mean a 7yr old can learn and play chess, but prodigies aside, they are only seeing a move or 2 ahead. Most deck builders are usually geared towards the 12+ crowd because of the concepts behind them.
Wow, this post ended up being way longer then I thought.