Deck Size in TCG Design 

Pokemon's card economy is kind of wild. Tons of card draw and consistency, but the rules act as a kind of natural floodgate to keep everything under control. Definitely an interesting game system!

Pokemon is like modern yugioh, but the rules and "mana system" keep the degeneracy at bay, while also not having a strong graveyard recursion plan to get extra resources

​@@tcgacademiait's also the fact Pokemons interaction is almost non-existent, and I don't just mean disruption, pokemon cards don't really have things like 'enter the battlefield' so the combo potential is super low besides energies

Yep. something like Pot of Greed in Yu-Gi-oh is probably the single strongest draw card printed in any TCG ever, even with a general three card limit. if it were legal to have 3 of them, you basically start playing with a 34 card deck instead of a 40 card one, raising the overall percentage value of each card from 2.5% to 2.94%, vastly increasing how consistent a deck is. as for something like MTG, it's been _relatively_ balanced by the fact that drawing two cards has almost always been a 2+1 affair. two mana + one more mana two mana + sac a creature two mana + 1/10th of ypur life total (assuming 20 life) two mana + discard a card or even one mana + discard two cards. cards that went lower than that have almost always been HIDEOUSLY broken in the metagame...Nectopotence anyone?

42 XD

Their card designs are very very good as well

I'll be honest, the limit based on rarity seems like a very bad idea - it limits how cards can be reprinted, since they'll always have to match their first printed rarity.

@@AtomTomZeitalter I hate the concept of changing rarity so that's fine with me. It makes it easier to get a playset of the more expensive cards. It also adds a lot of complexity because higher rarity cards can be more "broken" as they are essentially restricted like in Legacy MTG but you are paying the trade off of consistency with them.

​@@MrColtux At the same time, Commons can be just as broken, if not more broken than higher rarities. You can't find all possibilities during playtesting, Multiple cards, that were originally printed at common are restricted in Legacy. Examples include: Gush, Lotus Petal or Brain Storm. There is a reason, why Pauper decks in MtG (a format restricted to only cards that were at some time printed at common) can beat Modern decks.

Haven't played it yet, but Sorcery is a gorgeous-looking game. It is interesting that most games with extra decks (creatures or lands), still tend to fall in the 40-60 range whether you count the extra deck or ignore it. I don't love limiting by rarity, though, as it tends to just make the game more swingy - like when one player draws their one-of Pot of greed and/or Raigeki, and the other doesn't. And it doesn't fully stop decks from gradually becoming all Unique or Elite cards, it just slows it down a bit.

Battle of Wits sounds to me like an Un-set card.

Yu-Gi-Oh! also has 40 as a minimum, but after some guy abused the absence of a higher bond ( aka the image where two people carry a big deck at 1:22 in this video ), a limit of 60 was put in place. Most players stay at 40, for consistency issues, but some strategies work best with more cards, like ones based on That Grass Looks Greener ( mills card from the top your deck to the graveyard until your deck is the same size as your opponent's ).

@@draghettis6524 MTG's max decksize rule is simply "can the average person shuffle unassisted quickly" with a "You'll know it when you see it" advice for judges. So while on paper the ultra thick deck could be submitted, you can be told to fuck off regardless and that counts as a legal enforcement lf the rules.

My favorite deck I ever played was around 100 cards that milled itself and put out super trample creatures based off of my graveyard + life regen based off of my graveyard. Could face-tank everything without blocking and swing to wipe or win. It wasn't terribly inconsistent either. But I don't recommend decks that large...

​@@SenkaZverYou should try Commander.

Good point! I definitely simplified the variance a little, but the size of the starting hand definitely plays a role in how much of the deck you see, and what size of deck will work for the game.

You start with 5 in Yu-Gi-Oh, a game lasts 2-3 turns, but you see your whole deck and extra deck.

​​@@ItsPForPea And the 2-3 turns includes your opponent's turn. Yeah, the game is degenerate. It wasn't like that which is why it has 40-60 cards (Used to be 40+ but 2 german trolls went to a tournament with a 2222 deck).

@@N12015IIRC those two were judges, and they saw the lack of upper deck size as a potential source of issues, so they pulled the stunt to grab attention to it and fix it. And it worked.

@@ItsPForPea Yu-Gi-Oh! is a bit of a strange case because every deck can tutor for exactly what they need multiple times. I think there's zero expectation that you'll draw into anything other than your combo starter.

Yeah I believe the reason rogue like deck is usually 15 to 20 cards is because most of the cards are unique and each game is meant to be completed relatively quickly when compared to a full TCG game TCG‘s usually expected to have full plays sense of your core strategy, and expect their games to last from 5 to 20 minutes unlike rogue lakes that benefit from not having complete play sets and expect you to finish each opponent encounter quickly to get onto the next opponent encounter Of course there are exceptions Slay the spire has most of your deck be strike and defense and card apocalypse has games that goes Way past five minutes easily

Deckbuilders and the like can get away with much smaller decks since so much randomness comes into how the decks are constructed in the first place. It's a bit interesting the Keyforge uses 36 card decks, just a bit below what is normal in TCGs, and has a very generous card economy (draw to 6 each turn). So there's definitely some interesting design space for smaller decks, even if they wouldn't necessarily work as a full constructed TCG.

the main thing about roguelikes is that they aren't pvp, so degenerate strategies are fun, while in pvp games only one player has fun.

Also I was wondering if youve played any ccg or games with more extreme deck sizes and how they affect things. Hearthstone has 30 with a unique deck out punishment while something like Eternal has a massive 75 card deck with 25 min for lands.

@@TempestDacine Thanks! I can't think of any off the top of my head with more extreme sizes, outside the obligatory Commander format. I feel like there are some factors that could make going above or below that range work out, but they're pretty specific and most games are going to just be better off sticking in the standard range. For Hearthstone, for example, I've heard it generally tries to have faster games than most other tcgs - so in that case a smaller deck size is less of an issue.

Interesting! I didn't realize Garfield worked on the Mechwarrior TCG. He's definitely a great game designer, it's interesting seeing all the different mechanics he's played with over the years. Does not surprise me at all to learn he's designed a game using a life deck.

If it makes you feel better, the cards in the thumbnail aren't actual decks, just piles of bulk I counted out to the right deck size XD

@@tcgacademia Oh thank God.

Its definitely a unique case compared to the games mentioned here. Snap games always end on turn 6 (unless you run Magic or you get Limbo location). You tend to draw most of your deck each game. Also the decks are only allowed 1 copy of a card per deck. So a smaller number makes sense. You probably couldn't get away with a 12 card deck and 3 card starting hand (plus draw) in a game that goes longer than 6-7 turns. You would just run out of things to do and the game would likely stall out.

It's digital, thus the game you compare it to should be other digital games. Like say Clash Royale.

​@@j453or Hearthstone. Or Faeria. Or mtg arena. Or yugioh master duel

The Devs have said that locations add a lot of variance to snap, such that you can get away with more deck consistency.

​@indiejarm then proceed to do location spotlights to remove some of that variance.

I'm not sure - personally I prefer just having a set number, since it minimizes the number of unexpected things that can happen with variable deck sizes, but Magic's relative freedom in deck size is also nice, even if almost all decks fall into the minimum anyway. I think it depends on the game, really.

Personally I prefer a min deck size, but in practice a min and max deck size is most often ideal for deck building creativity. Think of it like this: if a game has a min and max deck size the deck builder when building a deck including cardsthat either want more of certain cards to function, or the more of particular cards u have access to the bigger the payoff, has to weigh the prose and cons of how many cards they want to run. Do they want to run the min to increase consistency or have more cards to maximize the payoff. And if a card can and does want more cards to increase it consistency or something and there is some groups of cards that can each be used to get said card, do they want to run more of said groups of cards to get that card at the cost of the consistency of other unrelated cards, or do they want to add in more of those groups of cards to having more chances to c the card they want. This allows for more deckbuilding philosophies to form in the game and makes for greater variance in deck builds. Altho I personally do think the max deck size in yugioh is rather tight for some decks, maybe 80 MD and 30 ED, I like the option to throw in 1 additional 3of that doesn’t fit in 40 cards but is a huge help in consistency.

I’d say the range style of deck limit is better overall, since it allows for deck variety and variance. If you have a strict limit on how many cards can be played, it could limit the strategies, but too much freedom could lead to shenanigans. I mean, yugioh USED to only have a minimum of 40 cards, with no max deck size limit for a good while. Then two guys made a 2222 card deck that needed a special apparatus to carry it and brought it to an event with the sole purpose of shuffling it over and over again. The 60 card limit was put in place not long after.

In theory a range is better for creativity, but in practice people end up almost always treating the minimum as an absolute number to increase the chances of drawing what you need. A larger deck may be tempting to run since you'd have more options, but all that really does is make it harder to draw your key cards. So I'd say there's not really a difference - the minimum of a range will be treated as a fixed number anyway. The only exception to this is if you have a "life deck" system like the original DBZ TCG, where damage is handled by milling. In that case you might want to have a bigger deck.

Most people will stick to the minimum size anyway. That said: • A range is better if you want to avoid people bringing comedically large decks they can't shuffle, or making mill strategies miserable by including more cards. • No maximum is better for designs like Yorion and Battle of Wits, which are fun but also extremely niche.

Also depends on starting hands, naturally, but there's definitely some interesting design space for smaller tcgs!

That reminds me of YuGiOh Duel Links. While it has the three card maximum normal for YuGiOh, it uses a 20 card deck, and outside of your combo starters you actually don't want to run more than two copies of a card.

@@VestedUTuber Duel links (and Hearthstone, to a lesser extent) are interesting outliers here. It seems like they work because the games are noticeably faster than standard tcgs, but I am kind of curious how good the gameplay is. If it's just as good, or nearly as good as more standard deck-size games, it does open some options in how to approach deck size.

@@tcgacademia I've played both Hearthstone and Duel Links, albeit early in their releases, and at the time they felt really well-paced. Duel-links' pacing actually kinda reminded me of earlier Yu-Gi-Oh formats, albeit with better consistency due to more modern cards existing and shorter duels due to lower life point amounts. However, as you'd probably expect, both games have experienced significant power creep since then and have sped up quite a bit. I think a game with smaller deck sizes can definitely work but power creep needs to be kept in check even more to maintain the same game pace.

@@VestedUTuber That's kind of what I figured - power creep seems like an even bigger risk in a shorter game. I know a lot of people really enjoyed Duel Links when it first came out, though.

I did that caveman spongebob meme irl when I saw that. Still go :o when I see stuff like that outside of vtuber spaces despite the literal millions of subs across all their channels

Not sure how big an overlap there is between tcg players and vtuber fans, but there's definitely a few of us!

​@@tcgacademiabased choice 😊

That is very interesting! I've heard of VTES before, but I hadn't heard that particular aspect. Having no maximum does sound a bit risky in terms of balancing, sine any unbalanced cards will have a much higher impact on the game, but it does make deckbuilding really interesting.

While turn 1 advantage is arguably even too powerful for "skip first draw" to be a hindrance one issue is that if the turn 2 advantage is too noticeable it can "feel" like it's worse. If the going second player has a handicap in card advantage and the games still are generally advantageous to the going first player it might be enticing to try and give them a better handicap but it might make the game seem like it's a bit too skewed towards the going second player. Like if you had a game where you said, "The going second player gets to add to their hand 1 dummy card every turn that does nothing but could be used for discard fodder or whatever," even if the game is structured such that it has very little mechanical use for this dummy card, just the idea of the going second player getting a +1 every turn "feels" more broken. I've heard that for instance in Yu-Gi-Oh one proposed rule change is, "Neither player draws on their first turn but the going second player opens with 6 cards" which on its face is exactly the same as it currently is except what it does do is it gives them far more consistency in being able to hand trap the going first player. It's a very subtle change but one that statistically benefits the going second player way more than a lot of possible alternate changes.

In Shadowverse (I play the online version but I believe the physical version is similar), the 2nd player draws 2 cards on his first turn, as well as something related to one of the game's core mechanics called Evolving. In Shadowverse, you can evolve all followers once per turn, giving them the ability to attack other followers on the same turn they are played (similarly to Hearthstone, in Shadowverse, the attacker decides what to attack, and followers usually have summoning sickness), as well as some other effect. Usually this other effect is a +2/+2, but it can also change the card entirely. If you're starting first, you can evolve starting on your 5th turn, and can evolve twice throughout the game (this is called having 2 evolution points). If you're starting second, you can evolve starting on your 4th turn, and have 3 evolution points. This means that if you're going second and losing on tempo, you get to evolve earlier, and due to the removal of summoning sickness this should usually help you stabilize, and you aren't really penalized for doing this as you'll have the same amount of evolution points as the player going first, even after using one on T4 to stabilize. (That said, going 2nd is still significantly worse especially after the first few sets, so there have been many cards that give a strong extra effect if you have more evolution points than your opponent, which almost always helps the player going 2nd) I'd also like to mention how Legends of Runeterra has no method of compensating for you going second, because on average the difference in win rate is extremely minor. This is because each player takes turns to attack, ie. 1st player attacks on turns 1,3,5,7... and 2nd player attacks on turns 2,4,6,8... so if you're going second you're kinda able to invest more into your turn 2 attack compared to if you went first and attacked on turn 1.

Thanks for your replies :D So, what I got out of it was: Goind 2nd still is worse. Now I wonder, what would be a nice little effect to add that's not too much "in-your-face", but still helpful enough to the second player. Again, when thinking about my example set of possible 2nd player 1st turn options, could the first player choose what benefit the 2nd player gets? They would have to be "balanced" somehow, but this would give the 1st player control over what kind of benefit the 2nd Player gets. And also, what happens in a multiplayer (3+ players) game? I'm especially interested about the player base in general. How would players new to the game react to and deal with that? How would power games react to and abuse that? Basiacally, I want to create something that let's most people enjoy the game, but I'm definitely focused on these 2 edge cases, because for 1 group it shouldn't feel too unfair and the other group could see it as a chance of disruption or an extended part of the game. What do you think?

​@@fruitspunch As someone who has played YuGiOh, Pokemon and digimon, having tried a bit of Magic, I feel like Digimon has a good balance of the first-second turn. Because you have to pay memory for most actions (playing a card or digievolving unless the cost is 0) and the memory gauge starts at zero (once it passes to the other player, what you could say -x, your turn ends) there are fewer plays you can make, while the going 2nd player usually can make 2 or more moves. Player 1 might only give them 1 memory, something know as memory chocking, but that play might be inefficient for player 1. Also, something that is not talked about much because of the modern state with the game, and I understand that many games have it, but in YuGiOh the inability to attack the first turn nor have enemy targets to interact with is bad for certain decks. As someone who plays with non-meta decks and archetypes, I have some that, if going first, either I waste effects or I can just create a wall of bodies hoping that my next turn I can go on the offensive.

@@fruitspunch I think that it's really important to point out the significance of individual card design for balancing going first. Shadowverse and Yugioh both lean into either extreme at different points in time: In Shadowverse digital, the player going second gets one extra evolution point, worth about 2 mana, very similar to Hearthstone. This worked alright for the first couple of years of the game's existence when evolution points were a precious resource. But nowadays everything evolves for free, so it doesn't really make a difference. So card design ruined the balancing mechanism for going second. In Shadowverse Evolve, the physical game, the player going first no longer gets any evolution points, the player going second gets 3 and they are worth 1 mana each. This is already much more balanced, but the real key comes in some individual cards: 2 mana cards that evolve for 1. Going first, these cards reach their full potential on turn 3. But going second you can already use them on turn 2, which allows you to catch up right away. This concept can also be applied in the midgame, where some powerful cards will come out one turn earlier for the player going second. This balance works so well that voluntarily going second is a very valid strategy in this game! Everyone knows that going first is broken in Yugioh. Decks usually aim to get to a winning position on the very first turn, usually by preventing the opponent from playing the game. There have been tons of bandaid fixes to this, some well designed (Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay), some not so much (Dimensional Shifter). High attack monsters that negate opposing cards are fundamentally broken and make the issue of going second much worse. But there was actually a period in time where going second was preferred! This was due to a blend of powerful going second cards like Shaddoll Fusion and Nekroz of Trishula, but also due to a lack of oppressive moves going first. Some decks would prefer to draw the extra card going second and some would prefer to set traps going first. Game design and card design go hand in hand! Make cards that use your rules to the fullest.

It's not exactly unique to Pokémon since some TCGs including Duel Masters, WIXOSS, and Digimon have similar systems that withhold certain cards from your deck at the beginning of the game to track your life (and WIXOSS is this channel's main game I guess). While it makes it impossible to search for certain cards, Prize cards and other similar mechanics don't affects the odds of drawing a card (just think of the cards as being the very bottom 6 cards of your deck). In TCGs where you don't have the ability to go through your entire deck, the mechanic doesn't impact the way the game plays very much. In Pokémon, the cards you can't access by searching and going through your deck could screw you over since you usually expect to go through your entire deck in the first few turns

I don't mention it specifically, but it is part of the second consideration - it is definitely important to think about! I mention Weiss Schwarz pulling cards from the deck to track damage, and there's not much of a difference between pulling them out during the game as damage and pulling them out at the start of the game as life. And like Chiffonaise mentioned, it doesn't actually impact percentages of drawing them - it can screw up searches, but that's more a gameplay consideration, and I don't think it impacts deck size much.

I've heard good things about Chaotic in the past - it does seem really interesting.

Definitely sounds interesting! And yeah, it make sense that it would work more like a board game or LCG, but there's definitely a lot of interesting design space for card games with smaller deck sizes!

nice call out

Clicked on this video to make this comment! Sakura Arms is a beautiful game and the tiny deck size does a ton of interesting stuff. Even with only 14 options, it can be wickedly difficult picking what to cut. Since decks are so small, you can build your deck directly in response to your opponent's chosen characters, which leads to lots of interesting decision making around matchups. And the strategy considerations with shuffling go deep. Do I take damage to shuffle early, knowing I have a 1 in 3 chance to draw the card I want? Do I hold onto this card for the right moment, even though I'm about to shuffle and it'll miss the shuffle if it's in my hand? So many tough decisions in every game trace directly back to the seven-card deck. And it makes the game really accessible, too! Just an absolute gem of design.

@@BLiZIHGUH I'm officially sold - I'm bookmarking Sakura Arms to pick up. The gameplay sounds really neat and focused, and I do really love games that work with small deck sizes. Thanks for the recommendation!

Very good point! I play both MTG (see a small portion of your deck) and Wixoss (see all of your deck every game), so I definitely see both extremes!

Glad it's helpful, good luck with your game!

formats should be diferent, right?

Games that use smaller decks are definitely interesting cases to consider, but I think the economics of tcg systems generally pull to a larger range close to what I have in the video.

@@tcgacademia yeah the TCG with lower card count tend to go towards being video games and use a leveling system, or a point/rank system where you need more powerful cards (which you can't get/use at lower rank) at higher ranks, that's either whole new cards, or just upgrading the cards you have. the other card games with low deck count tend to be on a "buy the whole game and buy expansions" model. though having cosmetics might be an interesting way to go around the small number of cards needed. another option may be to have a mana deck and a creature deck (or some other form of multiple deck) edit: an obvious solution would be making the official format BO5 with 3 deck elimination, so there's a need for 30 cards with a deck limit of 3x10

A lot of the time it's just going to come down to what feels right while you're playtesting - but it is good to keep in mind! Good luck with your game!

Haven't played any games like that, so I can't comment with any authority, but one thing going in their favour is that card acquisition is somewhat random - so it's not as crazy as it would be in more standard constructed games. Still not exactly a class of card I'd be designing a ton of, though!

Max copies divided by deck size x100. It's fairly simple, but it makes for a good point of comparison.

Unless you're running That Grass Looks Greener (For those who don't know, it's a Yu-Gi-Oh card that, if you have more cards in your deck than your opponent does, mills your deck until it's the same size as theirs, so people using it will run the maximum deck size of 60 cards to maximise its benefit)

Very true - it's why I mentioned the deck sizes in the video as the minimum, rather than as a range. There are some interesting situations where players play more than the minimum, though, like in DBZ, where the deck is also you life, and some decks want the consistency while some just want more life.

La+ actually got a few really cool sleeves as part of a collab with Shadowverse. I still have a few packs I haven't opened - so many cool sleeves, not enough decks!

@@tcgacademia I am the jealous.

The minimum number of unique cards is a really good point! It's also interesting that those also fall into a really similar range. Definitely worth mentioning in the video if I had thought of it!

Definitely a really interesting thought experiment! It is really dangerous, though, even if the game is built for that. Too much freedom in deckbuilding, and you have to be really, really careful about balance, and I'm honestly not sure that level of balance even possible for a human or AI over a game as large as a tcg. It would be interesting, though. Using Magic as an example, you could probably make a FTK kill with disruption in only 7 cards. But then all you need to beat that is a mana source and targeted card draw - with only 8 cards in the deck (in case you're on the draw), it would be really easy to deck you out. Or the opponent could just build a deck stacked with Force of Wills. The number of playable cards in a format like that would still be very low, but it would be interesting to see where the meta settles.

The game looks neat - I don't play a ton of digital games, but I've bookmarked this one! Smaller deck games are really interesting (even if not exactly TCGs), and there's a lot of interesting design space there.

The issue with a 1 of rule is that it really limits engine decks and pushes games more towards good-stuff piles. There are plenty of neat strategies in tcgs that use 1 or 2 main cards and build the rest of the deck to support them, and that's a lot harder to do in singleton formats without a ton of search effects, which have their own problems.

@@tcgacademia then it's a design choice not an issue, I was tinkering with making a board lock centric card game, and that could definitely be one of the elements. it does make tutoring and discard way more powerful when you only have one of, so yeah one trick poney decks are very glass cannon because removing one part of the combo makes the deck dead, but you can include more than one combo also if you do heavy keywording you can get away with same card but not same, let's say you have a 3/4 for 4 that tutors and a 5/4 for 5 that tutors, they are basically the same card.

@@satibel Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily bad game design, I was more just getting at why so few games do it. Commander is a thing and people do really enjoy it, so it is definitely a fine game concept. Although you do bring up another issue with singleton games - they need a ton of unique cards, which means more time balancing and a whole lot more money on art. If you have a 3/4 for 4 that tutors and a 5/4 for 5 that tutors, they are very similar, but they both require unique art, which can be a substantial up-front cost. It's a lot easier adding singleton formats into pre-existing tcgs , because they already have a large card pool, and also they have a much better sense of how large their audience is, which helps them set an art and development budget with a lot more confidence.

That actually sounds like a really interesting system! I'm not sure how well it would work as a tcg, purely from the economics side, since having to collect 3 or 4 copies of a card for a playset will sell a lot more boosters, but it does sound like a really good way to make a smaller deck size work in a tcg-style game.

@@tcgacademia it was a video game tcg. Frozenshard is the company name. They actual had 5 tcg I was competitive in 3 of them. All had the evolve and shuffle mechanic. One of them a war tcg. Had a 3 grid for melee soldier and a second 3 grid behind it for ranged soldiers. Let's say I battle my 5/12 to your 10/10 then my 6/8 archer behind my 5/12 would do his 6 damage to your troop. Without receiving damage back like the foot soldier. In order to damage an archer you need to clear the soldier in front of him. That version had a 4 action system. Instead of evolve this version called it ranking up as in the military ranks.

@@Serjohn Video game-based systems do seem to have a slightly more forgiving environment than paper distribution. It definitely leads to some interesting mechanics and experimentation.

That would be an interesting experiment to see what happens. Magic especially has the card pool to make it a viable option.

I've actually had some discussions with Magic friends about whether Battle of Wits is essentially soft-banned from tournament play due to shuffling rules XD

​@@tcgacademiaIt's definitely better to play that kind of deck in digital

It is interesting how Flesh and Blood approaches card uniqueness - depending on how you look at it, it could be 18%, or 6% to hit a specific card. Which is either really consistent, or not very consistent -- although in both cases the draw system means you'll see most of your cards anyway.

@@tcgacademia Yeah, and due to the nature of how most real decks are constructed, you most likely won't ever have all 9 copies of a card in your deck, since certain colours synergise with your hero better than others, so it could really be a huge mix of ranges. Like, one of my blitz decks for example, has a single card in all six copies, 2 of each red yellow and blue, but that's really the only one, all the other ones I only have in either blue or red. So for everything in the deck, it's around 5% chance of drawing what I need, but around 15% for a variety of that one card instead.

It's hard to say with how interactable the graveyard is, since that can change quite a lot over the course of a game as more mechanics are added. In most situations, I don't think it impacts deck size much, but I could imagine systems where it would make a difference, and maybe let you go a little smaller with deck size.

There is exactly one card that can grab other cards from your sideboard without being absolutely terrible, and it deserves to be banned because it's missing the words "unless they're mana abilities"

​@laytonjr6601 I can name 3 cards that aren't bad that grab cards from sideboards. Obviously, you're talking about Karn, the Great Creator which is indeed an incredibly potent card. Enough to get restricted in Vintage at least. Burning Wish is played in Legacy Storm decks as a hedge against surgical effects. It just fits well in the deck as a thing that serves its purpose well. Living Wish used to be a massive contender when it was first introduced to standard, but it's relatively unplayed right now. I'd say it's still a very good card. Honorable Mention to Cunning Wish, which is still a super solid card.

Fun fact: In Dragon Ball Super you do lose immediately when your deck runs out of cards. You don't need to draw or wait until you next turn.

That's really interesting! I didn't know that, although I'm not surprised that other deck sizes exist for traditional playing card games, given all the variants of chess that exist. One thing that could have been added is that less cards can work if the game is meant to be faster than usual, like yugioh speed duels. Thanks for the European context, I love learning about things like that!

@@tcgacademia Different suits and designs entirely as well - e.g. Spanish suited decks (also used in Southern Italy, because centuries ago that was under Spanish influence) use swords, coins, cups and clubs, and the ranks go ace, 2 to 7, then jack, horse, king, no jokers. Also, the suits don't have two matching colours like in French-suited decks (which are the ones that are now everywhere). This has a lot to do with card games in these countries using 40/36/32 card decks for faster games (though games existed which instead added Tarot cards, but those are rare now), which manufacturers then matched by just selling a smaller deck, while British games preferred a full deck, and the Americans later added the Jokers. You can still see this today with card games in Italy/Spain usually either using a traditional deck or using a french-suited deck and throwing out the 8s, 9s, 10s and Jokers, and with Jokers being rare in card games especially in the continent because they're much newer. I like the spanish-suited Neapolitan cards myself because nostalgia and also because of the colourful designs, but I believe that's at least part of the reason why the much simpler French-suited designs won out when cards started to be mass produced (besides the cultural dominance of France and the UK, of course).

@@randomguy555 Really interesting stuff! It definitely makes sense that french-suits caught on since it's probably significantly easier (and cheaper) to print. I was always curious how the evolution of tarot cards intersected with the evolution of deck games, but I never really heard much about it until now. I might have to do some digging - it's a really interesting subject!

@@tcgacademia Really is! Tarot cards are probably the most interesting to me, since their connection to fortune telling was almost entirely invented in the 18th century, while they were originally just a massive suit of trump cards (the original Jokers, in a way, but entirely unrelated) from the 15th century which mainly originated and were popular in in France/Northern Italian States/Southern German States but spread everywhere in Europe except the British Isles. On the other hand, the Victorian fascination with the occult meant Tarot cards quickly became popular in the English speaking world solely for that and never as part of any card games. From the perspective of the game design, it seems to boil down to the fact that in the many centuries and hundreds of varieties of trick taking games (the most common type of card game, where each player plays a card matching the suit of the first card placed if possible and the best card (matching the leading suit) wins all cards that were just placed down, and then at the end the person with the most tricks/the tricks with the highest point value wins) the entirety of Europe managed to make pretty much only two additions to the genre: Trump cards (which beat regular cards) and Bidding (where players estimate from their hand how well they'll think they do at the start of the round in some kind of contract/auction and get rewarded for being correct). What better way of adding trumps than adding like 20 of them? Though since most of the trump cards couldn't be placed if you could have placed a normal card of the same suit, they couldn't just win every trick. If you want a browse for a couple of hours, there's an excellent website called www.pagat.com that's just one massive collection of rules for basically every card game in existence (and some that have been reconstructed from the historical record, which is something historians do surprisingly often). I sometimes wonder - especially after having played Balatro for a while - if TCGs could ever borrow some mechanics from traditional card games, or if the whole standardised deck thing is too fundamental a difference for that to happen. Extra fun fact: Queens in French-suited decks originate from Tarot decks. Originally there were only the jack/horse/king of Italian/Spanish decks, which then had queen added to it as part of tarot decks (they weren't part of the trump suit, just an extra card between King and Horse) and then in French suited decks the horse was dropped and the queen kept. For reasons.

Tarot has like 78 card deck

Yeah 2,222 cards was a bit much Also the extra deck used to be 20 cards not 15

The other approach is MTG, where you need to be able to properly randomize your deck within a time limit or get hit with slow play warnings - similar result in either case, though, and definitely a good thing to have in the rules (hopefully before someone shows up to a tournament with a 2222 card stack).

@@tcgacademia well that was a protest deck no reasonable person would show up with that many cards simply becisse of how impractical it would be

@@jmurray1110 The extra deck used to be "all the fusion cards you own"

Really interesting that both ranges are viable, especially with such a wide difference between them!

Still have a screencap of your comment beside the script - it was a good idea!

Also, this is one the fastest I've seen view counts go up on a video, so turns out it was a pretty great suggestion! Thank you!

I think there's reasons out there to make a game outside of any of the norms. You just want to be aware of why the norm exists, and what the trade-offs are of going above or below it.

@@tcgacademia Indeed

It's definitely an interesting case! High consistency, but also very high speed. It's great as a mobile game, but I'm not sure how well it would work in person - in person the speed seems like it could be more of a debuff if you're trying to have a solid game night. I can definitely see how it would be fun, though!

Nice

Technically it can apply to any card in the deck. For example, there's a 7.5% chance card 12 is a specific card. As soon as you get external information about the location of cards (cards in hand, cards scryed to the bottom, etc) those odds start to shift, but the abstract odds of a particular card in a particular location is 7.5%. Definitely more useful as a point of comparison than any kids of gameplay analysis, though.

@@tcgacademia But as soon as you draw that first card of 7.5%, there are only 39 cards left. Raising the %tage of the others, right?

I haven't personally played it, but it is an interesting example. It'll be interesting to see how balanced it stays long term, since OTKs seem way easier, but if it could be an interesting counter-point to this video.

The Digi-Egg deck can have 5 cards actually, it's just that most people prefer only 4.

Commander is a weird one in terms of deck size, and while it does have a solid play base, I think there's a pretty good reason no tcgs start with base rules calling for 100-card decks - mostly shuffling and a lack of consistency.

Good point! If the game is meant to be faster and take less turns than the average tcg, then you can definitely get away with smaller deck sizes as well.

I'm definitely interested in the game, but there's a lot of other channels with good overviews. Honestly, one of the reasons I make game-specific videos is so I can remember how to play smaller, less popular TCGs. It's really easy to forget the specific mulligan rule of Dragoborne, for example. I think it's also more interesting for most people to learn about a game they've never heard of, so that's where I'm mostly focusing my single-game videos for now. If time wasn't an issue, though, I'd love to dive into Star Wars!

with so much search does deck size actually matter? outside initial hand math, of course. also, why doesnt yugioh have mulligans? all comes downto consistency and balance.

It's actually the same as Magic - 0.0666etc. Each card can be a maximum of 2 out of 30, or 2/30. If you just plug 2 divided by 30 into a calculator, it converts the fraction into a decimal (x100 to make it a percentage).

Not too sure why certain games go for hard maximums and other games just shrug and say "whatever you can shuffle". I think it comes down to designer preference, since in 99% of games players are going to be playing the minimum number regardless.

​@@tcgacademia from what I know no deck size limit tends to be the starting point, probably cause mtg does it, and is only changed if necessary yugioh's hard limit for instance only exists cause a judge thought the lack of a limit could be easily exploited so showcased what a troll could do with no limit so limits got imposed. schwarz limit is for game design reasons which are quite obvious. pokemon is still the odd one out odder still as it used to be made by wotc so if any game was gonna follow mtg no limit rule you'd think it would be pokemon maybe it has to do with prize card I really don't know

Very true point on games with shield cards taken from the deck - your deck feels very small very quickly!

I just looked over a few cards when it came out and it looked like another DM clone (nothing wrong with that, but there are a lot of them). The field of play and passing actions back and forth do look interesting, though - so thanks for the recommendation! Hopefully it doesn't have the distribution issues One Piece and Lorcanna both ran into :(

Commander in MTG is an interesting exception to the range - I think there's strong reasons for the standard, but there's definitely room above or below that standard as well.

I think it works well for Snap because the game time is so tightly controlled. It's definitely neat looking at the outliers and seeing why they work!

Or 98 + a Commander and Background or Partner. Depending on what you run.

Triple sleeve your deck. It's fun. Trust me bro. Then run all the fetchlands to make your mana consistent. 👍

Very good point! Another thing I didn't mention, but is also worth considering, is how many options you can fit in below the maximum. 30 cards with a 3-of rule and 40 cards with a 4-of rule both have the same draw odds for a card at the maximum number of copies, but it's much easier to sneak in a few tech one-ofs into the 40 card game.

This is a very important point, although it's hard to quantify variance other than by bringing up a calculator and trying out some numbers. But yeah, bigger deck is bigger variance even if you adjust the number of copies.

It's a great game, and I really need to do a proper video on its resource system at some point, but it'll likely be a while before I do a bigger video on it - there's a lot of other really good Digimon videos out there, so for now I'm sticking a bit more to games that are a little less known.

I am?

@@tcgacademiaoh you sounded like Kripp!

@@ollieknoxx I can kind of hear it! First time I think someone's mentioned my voice sounds like someone else - kind of neat, thanks!

Interesting! I'm not sure how well 30 works for a pure TCG, but there's definitely some tcg-ish games that can make good use of that deck size.

Keyforge is a really good game, and a really interesting example here - since most of the randomness comes in the pre-generated decks, the game runs just fine with a smaller deck size than usual, even with the high level of card draw.

I do really like 30 card decks, but my worry with that is it limits the number of 1-of and 2-of cards. So even if the ratios still work as 40 with a 4-of rule, or 30 with a 3-of rule, you still end up restricting deck variety a bit more with a smaller deck size. I do prefer smaller deck sizes in general, though. Also good point on MTG's deck size - the earliest rule books mentioned a 40 card deck with no uniqueness limit, like their current limited rules. So 60 with 4-of limit was their second pass at deck size rules, and I guess it worked well enough they stuck with it.

Or you play 60 if you have that grass looks greener so you can mil 20

Grass and Reasoning go brrrrrr

Try making videos about it. I am interested

Yeah, I mostly focus on physical card games, since even that can get a bit overwhelming and adding digital games adds a whole other layer. Snap is interesting because of how precise its game length is - you can generally say 'the game will take exactly 6 turns to finish.' While that allows for a smaller deck size, it'll also be interesting to see if it limits design space over time.

@@tcgacademia oh yeah thats an interesting consideration. Best-in-slots would be like, so much worse if there were only 12 slots to fill

In most games with a range of allowed deck sizes, people still stick to the minimum in 99% of cases - the hit to consistency is rarely worth it, even if it's not unheard of.