The Most HATED TCG Mechanic Designs | TCG R&D

Today we take a look at the most hated TCG game mechanics that you have chosen to be in this video. Join me as we dive into TCG design ideas and figure out if these card game mechanics can be repaired, replaced or even disposed of completely, when making your own homemade TCG.

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0:00 Intro
0:41 Floodgate Cards
2:40 First Turn Advantage
3:51 Dedicated Resource Cards
6:57 Infinite Combos
9:22 Triggers
11:33 Clutter
13:56 Single Card Per Turn
16:12 Duel Purpose Cards

[peterattilaradivojevics]

I like how 2 of the problems mentioned was solved by SW Unlimited by just simply saying "Eh, screw having turns."

[etnoxfactaest-qkbd]

COPY THAT LINK. Copy link= the algorithm thinking that you’re going to share the video, meaning someone else is going to watch.

[TheJaguar]

"No shuffling once the game starts"
In digimon, all of our search is "reveal the top X and select Y, button deck the rest." There's positives and negatives to that, but I like not having to shuffle the deck during the game.

[OttaviusAeterna]

the "trigger" cards mentioned might refer to the "trigger units" used in cardfight vanguard, EX burst cards in Final Fantasy TCG, and weiss schwarz's "climax cards" in addition to the "shield triggers" used in duel master and the likes.

These types of "trigger cards" do in fact add more luck based aspects to the game, for better or worse.

[guijauregui]

I believe "single card per turn" meant _playing_ a single card per turn, not drawing one.

[ValdiosBlaster]

The person talking about Triggers is talking about Shield Triggers in particular. The mechanic of attacking the opponent, they add a card to their hand, and if the card attacked has a trigger, it can be played for free.

[rmt]

14:43 Actually, that might be a solution I needed. Instead of drawing at start of turn, draw to handsize at the end. And to balance First Turn Advantage, the player who goes first could have handsize-1.

[MrNoob_]

I think combos (infinite, big finite, or non-deterministic) are good for the game since it gives a cool win condition to Johnny's. You just need to make sure the deck the combo goes into isn't too powerful and has meaningful counter play.

[yaboismashing]

4:10 DONT DO THIS
any card as resource isn't a fix, it's an option. Mana doesn't need to be fixed, but you can take another route like yigioh and vanguard

[SneeKing]

Single Card Draw:
Its a skill check; before I can play a deck I must build one, and I build it how I want. Aggro decks try and win fast with their starting hand, other decks build elaborate sifting engines allowing them to pick their card from a set of revealed cards, still others draw whole stacks of cards at once and don't have the resources to play them all so much choose in that manner, still more decks prefer to retrieve cards from the discard pile and reuse them. Some decks like scrapping with few resources, others spend great effort to acquire more resources. Even the 'one card per turn' isn't sacred, as many cards will 'skip your draw step' for some other advantage. All of these decks are different engagements, and are lost if you standardize to 'draw two cards'.

[Muhahahahaz]

16:13 “Duel Purpose Cards”

Them’s fightin’ words! 🤺

[ARDIZsq]

I like the Pokémon TCG answer to the first turn advantage issue. The player who goes first can’t attack AND they can’t play a Supporter, a powerful once per turn type of card. It means that they still get a chance to set up, but the player who goes second doesn’t have to worry about things like getting donked by a high damage low cost attacker, or worry about a Supporter majorly disrupting their hand.

[Icrtor_Official]

4:00 I address this in my developing TCG. It's one of the reasons (and the constant coin flipping) I never got into Magic and the other clones of it because of the issues with resources. As I did more research on card games, I learn of the terms mana flood and mana screw, and I'm like, I was right! 😂

[PERIX_QR]

3:20

The problem can be fixed depending on the core design of your tcg.

One way would be to make it so a player going first simply won't matter to the game. Making it so it wouldn't provide any advantage to the player.

A digital ccg like marvel snap fixes this problem by simply removing the cause of the problem.

The game ends after a fixed amount of turns and cannot end before that unless somone concedes. The winner is the player who manages to get more points in 2 out of 3 location thus winning them. The turns are also simultaneous. So no player goes first.

[abelw.]

I've made a tactical card game played on a 9x9 grid with some of my friends (approx. 500 unique cards). To address really powerful cards that would give one player a superior advantage over another, I have put a lot of those abilities onto Terrain cards - cards that don't do anything unless there is a soldier occupying that tile on the map, and then whichever player controls that soldier gets the benefit of that powerful Terrain. Essentially, this allows powerful cards to be controlled by any player and gives players an incentive to fight for the ability to control that tile.

[TheJaguar]

In Digimon, our flood gates are all low-level, weak digimon that only block one particular type of special effect. They're easy to kill, and their usefulness is very dependent on who you are facing.

[PawDieFur]

My game I’ve been making and tweaking for 7 years helps with a lot of issues.

1: floodgates.
-most of the floodgates are only affecting one side of what can be played. However they are specific to card types and are removed after the battle. The battle is a “both players play at the same time” part while everything before is just the turn player.
2: first turn advantage:
- both players cannot attack their first turn. The second player gets a +1 to their field called the hospital. (This gives them 1 extra “recovery” card resource.) ontop of that creatures that have battled become tapped. Tapped creatures cannot be targeted by the opponents creatures for attacks.

[Magicannon_]

Coming from this as a Magic player perspective, the mana system does get ragged on a lot, and while it does make feel bads I do think it makes for interesting strategic gameplay and deckbuilding.

Moving to a Hearthstone-like system where mana is automatically generated doesn't really feel right as I feel it takes away from a turbo-ramp strategy where a deck seeks to use its early turns to get as many resources out as possible at the detriment of its early to mid game board state.

A Lorcana-like ink system is a little bit closer, and Magic has delved into this a little recently with dual-faced cards with a spell on one side and a land on the other. But, making mana generic ruins the whole color system and risk-reward for running more colors. If you just go the MDFC approach on everything, then it also homologizes the mechanics. Now you're kind of stuck with a select few ramp methods without much creative room to expand on, plus also making other dual-face card concepts impossible.

An Inscryption-like concept of a second deck with guaranteed resources is another concept, but that feels like it generalizes strategies and lowers variance too far. It can also feel slower when you're forced to draw resources to outright refuse to draw cards that actually do things.

It's certainly not perfect, but I couldn't really think of Magic without its mana system.

For infinite combos, it would be nice to stop easy ones to set up under 4 cards or so, but beyond that it's more of a Rube Goldberg machine that is just fun to set up. Not only that, but Magic benefits from smaller numbers of stuff and things being capable of making much larger numbers, often not deterministically infinite. It just is possible with its current design space, and that makes it fun. Doing cool stuff and making many 5 power things eventually allowing you to deal over 100 damage in a turn is fun. There can be weaknesses that can be exploited in these strategies as well, which is also fun.

[Zutang]

You always make every video, fun, entertaining, and informative all at the same time. Such a force for positivity.

[jacobbrown]

I think there are a few bad takes here from commenters tbh but I think calling infinites a mechanic is just inherently dumb. It’s not a mechanic it’s a situation that can arise from cards just working. And it’s only like really a problem if like they’re popping up when the game still has a small card pool (indicative of sloppy design) or is like conquering major tournaments.