BEST and WORST TCG Resource Systems | Talk TCG

When you are making a TCG you need to look at the good and bad of each resource system. In this video we will address the different resource systems within TCGs and what makes them great and what makes them bad. Analyzing the Best and the Worst of these TCG resource systems can help us avoid card game resource systems in the future that may not work with other TCG mechanics that you might be thinking of adding to your own homemade TCG. We even look at an example of Shard TCG that uses multiple resource systems, one being a stockpile resource system and the other being a fixed resource system. Overall there are many TCG resource systems to implement and experiment with while learning how to make your own homemade TCG.

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[bassheadgg]

Legends of Runeterra has mana system but with a twist. You can bank 3 unused mana as spell mana. Spell mana can only be used on spells. This adds a lot of depth for example you don’t feel bad not playing a creature on turn 1 and 2. Go into turn 3 to play a 3 cost creature and you still have 3 spell mana to use if you want. Or play a 6 cost spell instead. There’s lot of strategy and it makes the game more deep on whether you need to play for tempo or mana efficiency

[alexrivera]

One thing that is lost in external resources is added effects. You either have mana or you don't. Unlike in MTG where you have basic lands, but you also have nonbasic lands. In Pokémon you have basic energy but you also have special energy. So you are getting resources but also something else which is fun.

[Zarren_Redacted]

With the scaling resource system I think a problem for it is that it allows the game to be "road-mapped" a bit too much. Especially the more game knowledge that you have of your deck or your opponent's deck. You also know that you're never really getting anything out early, so that 6 cost card is just sitting there (I do believe there are some ways to temporarily ramp in hearthstone, but that applies to all resource systems). While interaction with your opponent will change this a bit, you probably know exactly what the first few turns will be after looking at your opening hand.

Not saying its a bad system, just pointing out a downside to it.

[smallbros]

Something to add to FaB’s resource system is the fact that because you can choose the order and what cards you pitch before they go to the bottom, one can set up their deck in a vary favorable order for the second round of the deck. In FaB this is a high level technique called pitch stacking, where you pitch some more powerful cards early and remember when that card will come back around to your hand.

[Terminator]

I think people forget about the innovations of Duel Masters TCG

[rlwarner]

I feel like a lot of resource systems are left out here and it needs to be a 3 part series video. Like "action points" systems where you can play a number of cards per turn. A "card level" system where the cards cards can only be played after a threshold is met, such as the turn number. Rolling 2 dice could also work as a basic resource system. Grand Archive uses a system where you pay for cards cost by putting cards face down in front of you, you pick those cards up at the end of your turn if I remember correctly. Final Fantasy lets you discard a card to gain resources.

[JakeTheJay]

I've always loved how Inscryption had a separate resource deck for the game. I've been thinking of mixing that with magic's land system to give the player the choice of getting more mana, or cards to play with said mana

[decrabtra]

I have played most of the tcgs here and more and personally, my favorite energy system so far has to be one piece tcg. It's kinda a scalable resource except at the beginning of each turn, unless its the first turn of the game, you add 2 energy to the field. First turn player only gets one of their first turn but 2 every other turn. This helps balance the problem with scaling resources where it greatly favors turn one player (which im kinda surprised wasnt taked about in the video cause its a big problem with each person getting 1 a turn). In one piece, turn 2 player gets more energy for the first couple turns but the turn 1 player is the first to hit the max limit of 10. Oh top of the way it scales being really good for balance and game speed, each energy has an effect to add 1000 power to a creature or character if you attach it, leading to a lot of skill expression on how your energy is managed. Also means nothing will ever go to waste on your field unless you want to bait your opponent with an event card on their turn by leaving some energy open

[darkmage]

I love what Keyforge did. You simply pick a color for that turn and can only control monsters and play cards of that color. So there is no conventional "cost" at all.

[navataru]

The drawback of the "perfect mana system" is that it streamlines the strategy and controls the pace of the game for you to some degree. It removes player ownership on strategy over how they wish to build their own decks around their resources and resource systems.

It does a bit of hand-holding and control. Whereas the other resource systems are more free-spirited and luck plays a factor in your resource system. Making it swing like a pendulum where you can have crazy OP games and very poor, bricked games.

TLDR: Hearthstone's system takes away player agency on resource system.

[trickyplays]

Great video! I would think the best “mana” resource system is from Duel Masters, every card is a resource! I know plenty have talked about it and many have followed, along with shield triggers being a thing new games picked up!
I’d say DM is the grandfather of modern TCGs

[Kylora]

I like Yugioh's "the cards in your hand are your resources" since you absolutely can come back from having an empty board with a single card (most of the good Yugioh decks have one-card combos). I also like Hearthstone for "mana" style games, where you only need to play actual cards in your deck. I'm not a fan of actual resource cards, since it feels kinda back to have 40% of your deck being cards that don't actually do anything (outside something like MTG's utility lands...that don't give you resources most of the time).

[jesusceren]

Resourcless tcgs can turn on really long turns; that can break the fun of the game itself

[Pistallion]

Great video. I love this topic because I think the resource system is the fundamental thing that defines the game for each tcg. I wanted to make 2 comments, one on mtg and then the other answering your HS question at the end of the video.

One thins mtg's system does well is it sort of self balances archetypes. To hit a land every turn you must have 24ish lands for example. This means that aggro decks who doesn't want to get flooded only runs loke 18 for example. They are more susceptible to not having land drops and running out of steam naturally in the later parts of the game, which I find really cool.

This somewhat relates to the Hearthstone system. When having consistent scaling mana every turn, the game has 2 problems. First is that the game can run into the problem of feeling same-y every game. Secondly because of the fixed system, Sligh deck aka hitting perfect mana curve (playing a 1 drop on turn 1, playing a 2 drop turn 2, playing a 3 drop turn 3 etc) can become the optimal strategy. This was apparent in HS during The Grand Tourney expansion. To combat both of these HS introduces a decent amount of randomness on the cards, which can be seen as a bad thing. Lastly because you aren't playing resources from your hand, card advantage becomes almost irrelevant, something that is integral to games like mtg and Lorcanna for example

[Will_Forge]

4:55 Oh when you said Yugioh was an almost cannibalistic resource system it really put into words nicely how that system works. Also it made me think "oh in that case it's a -1 resource system rather than a 1.5" which I figured you'd get a kick out of. Instead of adding +1 land card to the field as a resource you're adding -1 card from the field or hand to turn it into a resource. 😆

[DetectiveThursday]

The dual resource system you are describing for your game reminds me of Netrunner. That game has one resource for putting cards into play, another for the action economy. Basically time and money. time is renewable, money is not but if needed you can trade in time for money. And because the game is asymmetrical the way these resources get used are totally different too. Runners are more flexible with time but need to have the up front cash for their rigs. Corps are starved for time but are more flexible in making money. And each archetype and corp specializes in a different way of getting or spending those resources. It’s a shame WOTC screwed over fantasy flight out of continuing the game but null signal has really done a lot to keep it alive with new content. The economy is a bit of a learning curve but it’s also one of its most rewarding aspects and the source of the great mind games that occur when you play this game.

[mondoyikes]

Great video explaining this important aspect of game design! Resources are such a interesting fundamental, whether keeping pace, setting boundries, or even promoting diversity. Building a whole game around this mechanic can be tricky. 😅

[danielpayne]

A great vid covering many of the major resource systems. Of course, the comments litter this video with "what about this offshoot idea you've never heard of?" Which is great, reading them has given me even more ideas to consider.

I don't know if any real TCGs use a "churn & burn" resource system, but I am leaning towards implementing such a system from the game Isle of Swaps on Steam (which has a free demo everybody should try). Isle of Swaps is a flagrant Pokemon parody with two major twists to the Energy system: Energy is generated by playing Energy cards, but they are not attached to the monsters. The Energy cards are used & discarded. The game also has no decking out, and each turn the discard is shuffled back into the deck so you always have the same chance of getting each card. There's also a stored Energy meter at the top that allows you to hold up to eight Energy that can carry over between turns.

[redhood]

For me the main drawback of a scaled resource system like Hearthstone for physical game is that in a physical game where a lot of the effects arent automated it can make for a more stale game. Hearthstone works so well because of the digital landscape it uses and automated effects, which often make it far easier to learn that physical tcgs. The problem with porting that into physical tcg is that its kind of boring, little to no interactivity which can be a sore point for people who like removing energy in pokemon, or disruption cards in Yugioh, or other ways to keep your opponent from ramping resources

[ZaQ]

The thing about Cardfight Vanguard's resource system is that as of now, it has not 1, not 2, but 3 explicit resource systems that all decks can utilize. For some quick context, decks are built with like 95% unit cards (like monster cards in yugioh)
First is counterblast (or CB for short) and is probably the most interesting of them all. In Vanguard, each attack generally deals 1 damage to the opponent and the one taking damage takes the top card from their deck and puts it into the Damage Zone face up, and a player loses when they reach 6 damage. What's great about this is that many card effects can use CB as costs by flipping the face-up damage to face-down, so the player has to find the balance of how much damage they want to take to activate their cards' effects while treading the line between life and death. Another aspect of this is that the opponent has the choice to not attack the opponent to try and CB deny the opponent so they can't activate their cool effects.
The second system is the Soul (similar to XYZ Material in Yugioh, using mainly monsters/units), which is kind of similar to a mana system, but is passively obtained in the early turns and can be increased on-demand by certain card effects. The Soul can be used to fulfill effect costs, but some decks can utilize the soul as something like a second hand and call units to the board from the soul.
The third system is the newest one, the Energy system. This one is just a simple stockpile one where you passively get energy per turn and it is not reset at the end of the turn. Some card effects let you charge additional energy, though.
While not an explicit universal resource system, some decks have effect costs that utilize the units on the board themselves, similar to the yugioh system. You'd have to destroy those units or debilitate them for the turn to activate certain effects.