The Most Loved TCG Mechanic Designs | TCG R&D

Naruto CCG had hand costs but only on big cards. Basically you had to send 1(occasionally 2) cards from your hand to your chakra zone of the same element(color). You could then spend cards from the chakra zone later on jutsu(instants). This encouraged everyone to run proper interaction as you were always going to be generating some chakra in almost every deck. In fact used missions(sorceries), jutsu, and squaded(evolutions) cards would all go there as well so most well built decks would never have to hard charge for jutsu. So on the rare occasion you did hard charge from hand it telegraphed removal hard.

I'm sad I missed out on this thread to contribute to this video. I played a ton of different TCGs in my youth, and currently I enjoy studying and designing them (since I don't have time to play). Here are some of my favorite mechanics through TCGs or game mechanics that could work in TCGs. These are ones not mentioned in the video, because things like Tokens in both the counters (ie +1/+1) or Tokens of "cards" like the Goblin token. Passing actions instead of turns - When you're passing actions you're never disengaged from the game. Your opponent plays a card, then you get to do something. There isn't much time between it being your turn. You don't get the opponent playing solitaire for five minutes doing some combo that might not work out and still take just as much time. I've used this a lot in my games. I've started to do this by default for me designs. If I'm going to do a full turn, it's more intentionally. 'Reconcile' - Draw back to Hand Size at end of the turns. The first game I played with this was Lord of the Rings TCG. Then it became the main driving mechanic behind Deck Building Games, which has become one of my favorite genres of Non-TCG card games. The main game I'm designing (A fan game for All Elite Wrestling based on WWE Raw Deal CCG) Life Force from Star Wars CCG (Decipher) - Your resources are your draw deck. You begin your turn by moving N cards from the top of your draw deck into your Force Pile, those are your resources. Using them will put them back under your draw deck at the end of turn. You can draw any number of those at the end of turn, or save them. Creates a lot of hard draw choices. 'Pitch' resource from Flesh and Blood TCG - A discard for resources kind of mechanic. Those cards will go under your deck to be drawn in the end game. Cards come in 3 strengths, weaker gives more resources. You can use your strong cards for cheap things to set up the final turns. This and the SWCCG Life Force are also some of the most unique, and I haven't seen anything do SWCCG's system or anything close since.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think that Yu-Gi-Oh chaos monsters was really cool, and even though they were kind of broken, I think if they were properly balanced and used in Way to incentivize more unique deck building, I think they would have a lot of potential For those who don’t know, basically, chaos monsters, were monsters that you could summon out of your hand by vanishing two or more monsters, with specific attributes in graveyard, such as a light, and a dark monster

i'm surprise nobody is talking about tapping mechanic. I guess is so influential people just don't think about it because is everywhere. What do i mean by taping? you can 'tap ' a card on the table to mark that it beign used. Once per turn, usually at the begining of your turn you refresh everthing by untaping the cards on your table. In magic you usually tap cards for commiting an attack , but you also tap cards for activating card abilities. So in most games you esentially are doing by playings cards is tableau building, with the taping mechanic it gives a dynamism into the tableau because your cards in the table aren't just static, also, you are not only doing hand management but also tableau management because tapping card might have concequences, for example in magic cards tapped cards can't be used to block attackers.

I like how flesh and blood handles resources where you pitch cards in hand to play other cards. It touches on the duality cards you talked about. I also like how the cards you use for resources in FaB will come back around and aren't just lost forever. Stacking your deck and lasting until second cycle rewards skilled players and gives an out to unfortunate game starts.

This gave me some HUGE ideas for my game i am working on and i am going to have to totally revamp some things about it but for the better, Thank You So Much i think this may just have made my game a winner

i find it funny how duel purpose cards were in both this video and the most hated tcg mechanics video

So many TCG mechanics I'd love to talk about but there's definitively 2 mechanics I would love to see more in TCGs which are more related to game feel and pacing. 1 - No Shuffling once the game starts: I think this is self explanatory. I really only noticed how much I like not having to shuffle and cut decks 20+ times in a game after playing Digimon. 2 - TCGs where you go through at least 50% of your deck or even your whole deck multiple times: I don't know how to explain it but it makes you feel like that 1 of you put in your deck as a tech or the sideboard you put in matters because you know you'll eventually get to it. Some TCGs on top of my head that I've played that does that are Digimon, FaB, Weiss Schwarz. ... I guess I could turn this around and also say I hate search effects and not getting a card I need when I need it

How about a 3 way duel card? Thanx for the inspiration I was trying to spice up my TCG. So now in my game, the cards you got can be used in 3 ways: As they are, play them. Resources (You may pitch a card once per turn to the RCC zone, if your card has a level to or below the amount of RCC in that zone you may play that card, every card is a one cost so "tap" that RCC card to play a card. And colour matters to, if there's a card in that zone that has a colour, you unlock colours in your hand, so if you have a yellow in there, you can play as much yellow cards as you want as long as you have cards to tap, if a multi colour is in your hand, you must have exactly 1 or more of those cards in the RCC, if you are missing atleast one of them you can't play that multi coloured card. Oh and key words bends and warps the rules in interesting ways like playing a unit from the RCC but it will cost you a RCC from that pile permanently, let's say, I tap one RCC to play this unit from the RCC, it's now on the battlefield and no longer in the RCC, now I have one RCC short but this guy needed battle presence real badly.) Or, Barriers: Much like duel masters but not mandatory, to play a card as a barrier you must use up your RCC choice, meaning you either pitch a card for RCC or protection, can't do both, lag behind but be protected or ramp up and be risky, you can do this despite battle on the first turn being non existent (oh the fun I'll have with tension, I'll make a card just for that moment, a player on their first turn goes barrier mode, and doesn't go for the typical RCC, "What's wrong with these dude? NANI! Only ONE card does that in this game, no, HE can't have THAT, NOW! Why did he pick that card! Anyway his hand is still randomized." Ohohoho yes he does, even though I let players choose 1 card from their deck and add it to their hand no Matter what it is (unless I say it's limited in the ban list), there is still downsides for doing this. These barriers are a 1 time use, once attacked they are discarded, they protect your HP, up to 3 can be there at a time, and oh boy there will be a keyword that goes beyond that limit. They are also face down, so if they do go on that limit, I want to build tension, aka, you can't say what you put down, but because you go over that limit, the other player trusts you're aren't cheating, there's a rule for concealed cards like this, a trust clause, and if you violate the trust clause you lose the game, match, tournament, whatever, cheating is punished severely. I want to build tension like this, this is but one example, if they realize they went over the limit, there's only a few cards that can do that but which one did he play, they may even shuffle their barriers for more drama. And the best part, they can be used as RCC! BUT! They don't affect the RCC zone, meaning if your zone has 5 cards and 2 barriers, you cannot play level 6 or 7 cards, only 5 and below, the barrier colour can't affect it either, it's face down, so there's a risk and reward here. Either that or I Retcon it and instead use a keyword that says "this card may be tapped for RCC, don't violate the trust clause now, HeHeHeHe." I want them to keep guessing, to build tension, to THINK and grow their brain skills. These cards aren't only entertainment, but also education and brain games to help your brain grow, but casual at the same time.

This is an awesome video! Especially as an aspiring designer. I’d say that my favorite mechanic (which I’ve incorporated in my current game) is to start with a setup of cards already on the board. Like having a Hero with equipment cards on it and then being able to activate their effects, but also to change their loadout with other cards that you kept in your deck. I’ve found that to be a very fun rpg-like function. For your follow up video about worst mechanics: costs not being costs. Griping a bit with Yugioh lately, because paying costs just triggers more effects and snowballs out of control.

Star Wars TCG from the late 90's had the best mechanic for random number generation called 'Destiny' that was very similar to the way 'Clash' would eventually work in M:tG's Lorwyn block. I liked it better than die rolls and it helped give higher costing decks an advantage.

As someone who has not played a lot of TCGs (I have played Hearthstone for years, and am only just trying Lorcana) what is the first thing that draws in players to a TCG? I have studied video game design before and I know the aesthetics are the first thing that draws a player in or they notice, at least. So is it mechanics? The theme of the game? The price? Is there a primary attractor?

I really like Buddyfight's Impact cards, which I rarely see in other TCGs. Though, they're simultaneously frustrating. Impact cards are cards that you can only play during your "Final Phase", which, as the name implies, is the last phase in a turn. Impacts are generally meant to be finishers, and it feels great to finish your opponent off just as they thought they managed to survive the turn, with a card dedicated for that one purpose. Impact cards are also landscape to highlight them. On the other hand, it also feels bad to lose to them, especially since even on release, Impacts cutting off 40% of your starting life was pretty common, and it took about 3 years for one single Impact card to cut off 80% of your starting life (with the only real condition being to draw the cards that you're already tutoring for) (though, it was banned). But if they weren't so strong, it wouldn't be worth running such an inflexible card and it wouldn't feel as good to play, so idk.

Look mom, it's me!

My favorite mechanic is deffinitely searching: Terraforming searches any fieldspell. Normal summon Aluber searches any Branded spell or trap. Normal summon Elemantal Hero Stratos searches any Hero monster. (It's the Stratos of the Hero deck.) Put Magical Abductor in the pendulum zone, for 3 spell counters she searches any Pendulum monster. I totally love that one. Those crazy combos in Yu-Gi-Oh, where it doesn't really matter what you draw, since you search your entire deck anyways ... Ah, just wonderful. Btw, to answer the question: Yu-Gi-Oh nowadays doesn't really have one theme. Every deck archetype has a different one. And there are many, although often they are just random combinations of themes because of silly wordplays: We have dinosaurs that are also steam engines (the Dinomysts), also dinosaurs, who are also Wrestlers (the Dinowrestlers), beasts who are also airplanes (the Mecha Phantom Beasts), giant battle ships that are also sushi (the Suship archetype), goblins on motor cycles (the goblin bikers), a crossover of Star Wars and the Wizard of Oz (the Kozmo archetype), Power Rangers and secret agents (Superquant and S.P.Y.R.A.L.), a girl who dreams of giant monsters made of desserts (the Nemleria archetype), witches who are also crafts people (the Witchcrafter archetype), an entire archetype of cards that have to do with tears and card names like "CRYme" (the Tearlament archetype), a deck of poltergeists that are also cyberhackers, for some reason (the Altergeist archetype). We have even cards that depict other cards (the Flowercardians, that are inspired by the japanese "hanafuda" cards) and like 300 more of those deck themes.

Thank you so much for doing all of this

5:07 hes probably also taking a further dig at mtg by referencing how much of a mtg deck has to be dedicated to just fixing the inherent problems mtg has. In commander, you run 10+ ramp, 10+ card draw just to be able to play. ~36 lands and thats over half your deck predetermined for you just so that you can play When ygo still respected its normal summons as resource mechanic, it was the best tcg

DoomTrooper had the player make two decks: one for the heroes and one for the villains and had players play both sides of the war against each other, with your heroes attacking his villains and your villains attacking his heroes.

I'm so sorry I said "card" so many times lol

do u have a video on how to start and finish a tcg in terms of kickstarter/ fulfillment / future sets and more