TUAW has a fascinating article about a TCG called Urba Rivals getting a test run on the iPhone where players can do battle using various cards, and its worked decently well outside of the iPhone environment already.

The game uses an interesting model of in-game “pack” purchases (similar to the model used for Magic: The Gathering Online) where you can purchase 1 pack of 3 cards for 99 Cents (the cost of the app), or 11 packs for $9.99 right inside the game. It’s a new way of looking at generating revenue from an app, and it’s cause a bit of controversy as people debate over whether this model will work for the iPhone.

There will also be a free version available for play, though that probably will have ads and/or limited card pool/gameplay more than likely. It’ll be interesting to see if such a game/revenue model will work on the iPhone.

The article is here: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/25/iphone-tcg-to-charge-9-99-for-in-app-purchases/