Theory 306 - Essential Elements of TCG Design - Card economy 

I want to shout out DBS for having an interesting take on how Rules Based Interaction intersects with Card Advantage. Since every "creature" card is also a boost spell, and combat against a player is against a deck identity card with its own power, every direct attack becomes a question of spending cards from hand to lose card advantage and prevent damage or to draw cards form life to gain card advantage, but move closer to losing the game.

Love all the Risu art you used in this series of videos!!

I would love to see a more in-depth discussion on how card and resource economy interact and shape the player experience of a game. But for a short overview, I enjoyed the video. Keep it up!

Having fewer cards like in MTG does have the benefit, though, of making each individual card feel like they matter. For example, in a game where draw is practically free, but other resources are more limited, if you use two cards that together cost 2 Mana to destroy a 3 Mana card, that could be considered a good trade, whereas that would almost certainly feel bad in MTG to have to waste a card, even if you're saving on Mana.

I'm really curious to learn more about how the fixed card vs fixed hand games feel when playing. I hope you do a video on this at some point in the future.

Monster Collection TCG and Digital Monster Card Game (1999) have a interesting approach to draw up, where you discard cards you don't want in your hand before drawing up to hand size.

Another interesting case for card economy are games where you can always choose to draw cards as a game action, at some cost. The extra agency to be able to spend another resource to draw out of a bad hand can really help mitigate the luck of the draw. Some examples: I've never played it, but Luck and Logic allowed players to spend their resources to draw cards, in addition to their normal draw. In Netrunner, the runner player is never forced to draw for turn and both players can spend one or more of their actions to draw a card. Cards that draw more cards are often still more efficient than the basic action, but it's nice to always have the option to draw out of a bad situation.

There's a chilean TGC called "Mitos y Leyendas" where you draw 1 card at the end of your turn (you start the game with 8 tho)

Arguably, the better Draw Up variant is "Discard Any, Draw Up" (DADU), as used in Star Wars: Destiny. DADU further mitigates variance's impact; players can discard those currently unneeded to search for playable cards. DADU also mitigates the inequity that exists in exclusively Draw Up (ie: play more, draw more). Another variant, "Discard Any, Draw Discarded" (DADD), can combine with Fixed Draw: discard any number, then draw up to number discarded plus # (DADD+). From the lenses of fairness & player agency, I think games without a Discard-Draw (DD) mechanic become hard to defend. Variance will inherently result in unfair initial states that can directly lead to non-games, such as having a Land Flood or Land Drought Hand in MtG. Although MtG has mulligans, this Band-Aid ultimately still punishes players for bad luck. Similarly, without a DD mechanic, players have no inherent method to influence future states due to variance. After an MtG mulligan, it's still possible for subsequent draws to Flood or Drought. Otherwise, one must use draw or search effects to mitigate variance, which is impossible if variance is preventing the individual from playing cards. Of course, variance is inherent & "bricking" will always be possible. However, enabling player control over variance makes for a superior experience (even if they still have bad luck in the end). Card draw is simply a means to play the game, which centers around effects & combat, and bad luck should not gate-keep players from interacting with those components. The listed cases regarding MtG are actually why I don't play anymore.

I am toying around with the idea, of letting a player at their end phase, discarding 1 card from their hand; in order to draw 1 card from their deck. Although they cannot use it until their next turn. This is of course in addition to a player drawing 1 card, at the beginning of their turn.

Will we get a Battle Spirits 101 anytime soon? As a long-time player, I'd love for an explanation of and thoughts on the Core system of Battle Spirits of someone who might not be as invested as myself.

this is also relevant to resource system, but the Bleach tcg had you make 2 decks, one regular and a resource deck. each turn you got to draw 3 cards, but you picked from which deck you drew them.

Great video. Are there any videos that go over tcg concepts like neg plays, positive plays as they deal with card advantage etc?

I wouldn't say that Yugioh has a particularly aggressive combat system relative to the other games being compared. While you are reducing the opponent's life total and their resources on the board at the same time, often their is an inverse relationship between the impact on the opponent's life total and the quality of the game pieces removed from the board in the attack.

After playing Magic for a few years and comparing tô Wixoss which i have tryed because of your vídeos, now i feel like Magic land system is really boring and to me is bad, because u can flood or get no mana for ur plays, which Just makes you waste time, what doesnt lead to Fun or actually playing the game.Wixoss format or now , Build Divide in which cards can be mana as well looks more interesting tô me

The Spoils had a rules effect that let you pay resources to draw cards.

How can i know if my tcg is good

Have you done any videos on Universal Fighting System and how that games mechanics leave it fairly unique?

combo of image at 3:07 and what you say here lost me. How is the yugioh extra deck even related with too many decisions in you opening hand? this topic, as seen in the video, connects to many thers. speed of the game is an intersting one. consider mtg vs pokemon or yugioh. as said, the hand size is the same and they all have the standard 1 draw per turn but the amount of thing you do is incomparably higher in the last two games.

0:56 one of these cards is not like the rest Can anyone guess what is? It's Bill if you couldn't figure it out. While the other 2 are design mistakes Bill is not super op it's a pretty good card but nothing format defining, not even comparable to the other cards shown in the each games context. Bill wasn't even the best draw card when it came out, if any card should have been on there from Pokémon it should have been Professor Oak.

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Games that null hand advantage is kind of a rarity.