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.
In a game like Duel Masters, you can still have effects on cards when used as resources. There's no rule saying that such a system needs cards to become "basic". Dragon Ball Super already does this.
You could still have a land based resource system, with non basic lands, but still redesign the game to prevent non games happening due to flooding or getting mana screwed. It would require a clean slate with cards specifically designed knowing that each player will be able to play the game.
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
I love LoR 's resource system. personally if you run multiple color, I thing you should get alternating color gems as that's more flavorful, but I get why they stuck with 10 generic mana and 3 extra spell mana for ease of designing cards. People(who often have no idea why people hate MTG's land based resource system), will often say things like "build your deck better" or "it a feature, not a bug" or the increased variance is better because it allows less skilled players to beat more skilled ones"....none of these are the point. If only 1 in 100 MTG games resulted in mana screw/flood, no one would care. But in MTG, a very significant amount of games result in only 1 player playing the game...that is a symptom of bad design and likely why Richard Garfield IIRC said one of the things he would do differently is the land/resource system. Lands aren't the problem. You can still have all sorts of cool lands. It the RNG of the resource system itself cause alot of non games.
There is still a massive LOR shapes hole in my soul. I know the game is still technically still around, but its just not the same anymore. Not a day goes by where i wish the devs would start supporting competitive again. ;(
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.
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.
It's an up and down side. Sometimes it's comforting knowing your first few turns ahead of time, gives you less stress when plotting a bigger strategy as things progress. You get to coast for the first 2-3 turns and dip your foot into the broader battle before diving in, later turns get stressful and tough decisions will be made. It's like a natural easing in. I'd say a major downside for the way HS implements the resource is their is no mixed color decks. I can't choose to hybrid Priest and Hunter for instance. Mana is generic, and it's hard to adapt scaling to multicolor. You can give the player a choice of mana color each turn to scale, but that is lame and it adds boring decisions each turn.
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
Hmm... I should have a look at different side decks and extra decks that have been in TCGs over the years to see how well received they are, and try to figure out their pros and cons. Thanks, your comment sparked an idea.
Force of Will used such a system. What was best about it was that you had a choice to either tap that game's version of a "Commander" to get some, or use that Commander for its printed effects.
After playing the pc card game faeria, my kids and I now use a system based on that game for magic. We call it fast magic, and it does a great job of removing mana screw/flood. It does break some cards in the game so we just remove them from play. Fast magic is played as follows: 30 card decks, no dups, no lands, no land related cards On your turn, once per main phase you may grab one basic land card from a pile of all lands set outside the game space. If you so choose, you can pass on playing a land on your turn and instead draw a second card from your deck to your hand. Rest of the game plays basicly the same. Optional rules include increasing life pools to 30 and reducing initial hand size to 3-4 cards. Still havnt settled on if these are beneficial or not but seem to help.
Update: we have had a lot of fun playing with a cube I created. 45 random cards...rainbow magic...no constructing a deck. Just deal it out and play. Edit( using the fast magic rules above for lands)
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.
The dice one is a good example of a different resource system. Though I feel the action point example could fall into some of the categories I have brought up, but it depends entirely on how you implement it into your game.
@ShardTCG I meant more like time as a resource. I guess Yugioh's normal summon limit is like that. There's a mobile game I like called Insilentium that uses time as a resource.
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
Energy that has multiple uses sounds great for avoiding waste. I enjoyed your description, and it makes me think I may have to revisit energy systems in another video as I have barely scratched the surface. Thanks!
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.
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.
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
That's so weird. I have a friend who almost had this exact conversation with me about aggro decks a few days ago. You've got some great insight for me here. Thank you.
The now unsupported digital only game Mabinogi Duel had a scaling resource system. What's the resource? IIRC there were 6 of them, each turn each one will be a random one applicable to your deck. Do you play more colors for a wider cardpool or less for more consistent resources
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).
Yeah, it's the thing that puts me off competitive magic tbh - there are some interesting choices it adds to the game, but the majority of those happen in deckbuilding. And honestly it feels slightly distasteful to have rare and expensive resource cards in a game. Also the impact of ygo revolving entirely around cards in hand can be seen in how it's the only one that I've played that doesn't allow for a mulligan, and the game balance would swing wildly if it did.
Your comment made me realize that what you said was originally the thrill of Yugioh since the days of its early manga. Drawing that ONE card that can turn your situation around. In the anime world they call it an ass pull but in reality it’s topdecking. Other card anime have their version of this main “thrilling concept” too. Duel Masters version was the Shield Trigger mechanic, which the manga-ka specifically stated was created to have a flashy comeback maneuver that can literally save the Duelist’s life, as in the manga the duels were “real,” and players would get hurt from the shards having their Shields broken.
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
@@infiniterer287 yah but still, it became it’s own thing. Mana system is not MTG as any card is a resource. Sure it was to promote mtg but it’s not the same
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.
@@ShardTCG Thanks! Too many games copy MTG's Land system, which I had considered at first but decided against in favor of standing out. Going to use one of those cardboard flipwheels for counting resources (a Eurogame staple) instead of a ton of tokens so the game doesn't have too many components.
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. 😅
Compared to many others, hearthstones mana system has the downside of not including a built-in deckbuilding restriction, so a separate deckbuilding restriction system is needed. In hearthstone they use the model where cards are separated in different class packages, and you are not allowed to mix cards from two packages in your deck. This system is one of the least creative ones available from deckbuilding perspective. There are no new creative decks to be found, because most of the interesting ways to mix cards are outright forbidden. You are bound to what can be found inside a singular class package, plus the neutral cards. In games like pokemon or mtg, you are allowed to mix cards in any way you like, and the deckbuilding restriction is built in the mana system. This gives much more room for creativity, because you can basically choose any two cards and start thinking, what would happen if you put them in the same deck. I'd also like to point out that automatic generation of resources does not mean that you have to cover the entire cost range. You could omit certain cost and play multiple cards of lower cost at that turn, and will still end up using your resources efficiently. And if you are playing aggressively, you could omit all the high-cost cards. I believe there have been multiple times when there has been a strong HS deck with no cards costing more than 4.
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
You should try shadowverse evolve. It's the physical version of the mobile game with much needed changes when swapping to physical like instant speed interaction after your opponent attacks and on end phase. It has a scaling resource system, but the special thing is the leader cards have nfc chips that you can scan into your companion app and you get a nice energy tracker and life tracker that is fully voice acted and animated.
An interesting variant of the Shared Resource system combined with a stockpile system is the Lord or the Rings card game. It was a card game with a short run since there wasn't much more they could do after mining the movies for image stills to use as card art, but it was actually very interesting. The goal of the game was a race to Mordor to destroy the ring which was done across location cards. The interesting thing was that each player had Hero cards and Villain cards. On your turn you would play your hero cards to your heart's content without paying any cost... sort of. As you played your Hero cards you would add glass cabochons to your opponent's Villain resources. The Villain resources was a pool that would stay and fill up over each turn unless you spent it, so when one player is slowly building up their Heroes, the other can be hoarding the resource until they're ready to do a big set battle, or they can use a few on each of their villain turns to whittle their opposing Heroes down over time. This back and forth of who gets to play the Heroes had an unfortunate side effect of the Hero half of your deck feeling a bit samey from player to player, always starting with Frodo, really kind of needing a Sam in case Frodo dies since he's a half as good ring bearer (they had corruption points like health, 10 for Frodo and 5 for Sam). Anyway, it has its strengths and weaknesses, but it was definitely a VERY unique card game and very fun. I think the same system could be recycled into a new game and it would play very well. The one thing holding it back was its lack of diverse characters from outside the books/films. Which is to say the thing holding it back was the very IP that made it so interesting to pick up, but the gameplay really deserved to be unleashed from its IP. I dunno if this has already happened or not, but if it has I need to know what game it is, because I still often get an itch to play The Lord of the Rings TCG and never have anyone to play it with. No one has any cars but me it seems!
I just looked at the website yesterday. Is this the Fantasy Flight Games coop game? Considering getting that. Wonder if anyone's made it in Tabletop Simulator. Would love to try it.
@@danielpayne1597 It's unfortunately the "Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game" which has been out of print since 2007. I'd love to past a wiki article for you here, but YT would just block it. It's a really cool card game from the 00s that had some interesting game mechanics. I would say that SOME of those mechanics while interesting did make the game feel very samey match to match the way they were implemented. This is because they built the game around travel between key locations in the story represented by "Site Cards" and yet didn't introduce enough of those site cards to allow for more variety. This is the core of its undoing, as the limited selection of sites doesn't let you feel like you're retelling the story your way, but rather focusses on a race between the two players to see which of them can get their own version of Frodo or Sam to mount doom or which can kill the other's ring bearer first. This is done by having both players juggle both hero and villain cards where on my turn you get a villain phase and on your turn I get one, and then combat ensues at the end of each turn between the current heroes and villains. Anyway, these are all super cool mechanics, but it was the way they were implemented and the rigid story they were made to tell that made it die. You never really felt like you needed to get more cards because the initial deck and a couple of boosters let you already experience almost all of the game. It was like a race on a track that doesn't change much even from deck to deck due to a lack of variety. A strange case of a railroaded card game where we usually use that term for tabletop games or video games. It was basically a game build for where the Venn diagrams of huge TCG nerds who like exploring new card mechanics even if they have little bearing on the game overlaps with super fans of the Lord of the Rings. The only reason it lasted as long as it did is because that overlapping group is still a pretty large one since Magic the Gathering is already high fantasy and is the strongest TCG.
@@Will_Forge Ah, thanks for the explanation. Makes sense they'd put in a travel mechanic, they did something similar with LotR: RISK, and that was less elegant.
@@Will_Forge Yeah, the map worked really well. There were cards you could use to enact naval travel in a limited fashion, and the reinforcement totals and national boundaries worked great for RISK. Far superior to the original RISK world map. Worth a play if you & your friends enjoy RISK.
A really interesting resource system is that introduced by Grand Archive TCG In Grand Archive you place cards face down to make them your memory (mana), similar to Lorcana, but at the start of your next turn, those cards return to your hand. Certain cards also burn memory, causing the face down cards to get discarded
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. 😆
I am using a hybrid card/stagnant/scaling resource system. Were both players start with a stagnant pool of resouces which refills every turn and can add cards throughout the game to increase the the ammount that the pool can hold. I am thinking off adding an overflow system as well as a catch-up mechanic, where if you generate too much resources any extra goes to a shared resource pool.
It has a clever catch-up mechanic in the sense of gaining from taking damage. I may have to revisit resource systems in a new video to cover some obscure twists in other TCGs
I loved the GUTs system in monster ranchers battle card. It went well with its dodge and block mechanic. Was fun to think through if you should hold cards or use them for resource.
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.
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.
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One of my favourite games use a fixed resource system. It is Start Trek 2nd Edition, and you get 7 points each turn. You have to spend all your points. But drawing cards cost 1 point, so you have to balance card play and card draw in a very interesting way. It is also played in a very different way than most card games, as you fly around in your star ships and try to do missions, in a similar way to the TV series.
I feel like Hearthstone's resource system works because of how strict deckbuilding is - there are classes and you can only have in deck card of one class and neutrals and there's little to no way to cheat around it. This stops players from just putting together the best cards and instead creates different, diverse deck archetypes. I'm thinking that the other way to mitigate it would be mixing it with color separation from energy-based system. Player still would get one guaranteed point at the start of turn, but would be forced to put it into building up one color. This would be more open and stable than MTG's land system but also much safer than HS's barebone mana.
Im using scaling system just like Heartstone. My game is for now one single closed deck, one copy of it for each player for playtest. Not planning on creating an entire collection, just balance the game as 'battle decks'. As you said the problem is getting a lot of resource so you want to keep you cards played each turn in the curve. I have the problem of not enough draw because cards are being played as soon as they are draw. Do you think there is a solution? Maybe change the pace of the game by allowing players to 'buy until you have 5 at start of turn'? Im afraid of a card slam fiesta.
It depends on how you want to pace your game. If you feel it is running a bit slow, then buying draw power isn't such a bad idea. It will speed up your game, but probably not as drastically as you would think. The more you buy, the fewer resources you have to spend on playing the cards you've just drew.
Another idea is to have some resource cards provide lasting resources (it's there until used) and others are churn & burn, you get the resource for the turn you use it only. If you have a hand size limit, that will put pressure on players to strategically play the resource cards.
When it comes to resource systems, I really like Battle Spirits/Battle Spirits Saga one. I am not sure what would it quality as, but it works like this: At the start of the game, you get a number of shards. At the start of each of your turns, you get another one. But, your health is also measured in shards! At the start of the game, you get 5 shards as your health points. When you take damage, that shard goes into your stockpile, which then you can use. Every used shard returns to your stockpile at the start of your turn. However, your monster cards have levels, which depend on the number of shards you have on top of them - and which you can freely move around during your turn. Really love this aspect of the game, too bad it's not too popular ^^"
Nice comeback mechanic with taking damage to then stockpiling for later. It's a good system to keep the game closer in competition. This is a fun system.
Love to hear your opinions on Battle spirits saga... it's a scaling system with your life total factoring as mana... you hit your opponent they get an extra resource on top of their normal increase at start
I don't think you mentioned the resource made out of damage (though it might be iffy if though of how it rolls.) By either sending a card there as damage or have the card that was defeated in battle, it should be a battle that can count itself off.
I'm making a Backrooms-themed TCG. Players can put a card (noclip) on the bottom of their deck (the backrooms) after drawing to generate a resource for each turn, but they don't have to. Some cards will let them do this multiple times, or just generate resources for later turns for quick "combo" style gameplay. It's a stockpile system.
I have a pretty cool system that uses external sources and rewards fast play with early returns but also rewards more paced play with more powerful returns. I'm having trouble naming it something easy to remember, but how can I tell if it's too complex to implement? It's no more complex than mana, and uses similar principles for the activation visuals.
It is just a case of playtesting and feedback. Something can look genius on paper, and then the issues start to appear once you get it in play. The same goes for the other way. Sometimes, an idea can seem so stupid, and then it turns out it's great! So just test it with different people and see how they react to it.
Vampire the Eternal Struggle gives you 30 Life at the start of the game and that's it. To bring out cards, you have to put a certain amount of your life counters onto that card. then that card can play abilities by paying that life. There are some cards to generate new life counters and to move life between yourself and your creatures, but in essence, you get a fixed amount of resources at the start and then it's about how you use those throughout the game. By making life your resource and not just your win condition, this also heavily changes how combat is done and what the purpose of combat is, because just burning some life off a creature means now it can play less cards.
My TCG has a Resource system that is unique, Haven't seen it yet. and its really fun, I pray I can be the first to push my system into development. I've play tested with my nephews and really close friends, Its one of the funnest games I played in TCG in ages. And I can't wait to start hiring Artists for each card. Resource systems are super important because of turn order. If a player goes first they are able to interact with the system first giving them an advantage, but also if the resource system is really balanced
Marvel Snap nailed the scaling system! Shared location effects are revealed each turn, so your information grows together with the resource pool. They embrace luck as part of the mechanic, so every play is a risk . Ah, and both players reveal their plays at same time, so there is no 1st player advantage.
I played Digimon TCG for a while and, while I think the concept of memory is cool, the problem is that the game has very little "progression". It's either early game or late game with it. There's no permanent development in game state like it usually happens in most games where you spend resources to get more resources. In digimon, if your board gets cleared, you are basically back to the beginning of the game. In MTG and most other TCGs, if you get board wiped, at least you still have your lands so you can teorethically play big next turn. The other problem is that big cards are simply not designed to be played on the table when you have nothing else in hand, in the sense that the risk is almost never worth it. Most of the time, if you just slam your biggest monster from you hand into the field, you just gave your opponent enough energy to 1 turn KO you. So instead of a fun risk, it's usually a fancy way to commit in game suicide.
Tamers are effectively permanent progression against all but the few decks that can remove them and can substantially speed up the process of rebuilding. Ace cards help solve the problem of passing 5+ memory by hard playing a level 5 or 6, though risky it's still the preferable option. We also have a lot of really good delay options now that are only affected by the right floodgate and can help players set up their board again after getting wiped.
Best system I've seen so far is Star War Unlimited's. Not only it completely erases flooding and screwing, it also adds a layer of decision making to the resourcing process (which card do I resource, when do I stop resourcing cards, etc).
The TCG BattleSPirits has been using a Scalling Resource System for the last decade and a half, combined with a Catch-Up mechanic where your Lives are also the same Resource. When you lose a Life, that Life goes to your Pool of Resources, so you have an Extra in your next turn.
10:00 You've not heard of mega zoo meta? It was quite a brutal build to play against at one point. It was all about having beefy things, with ways to just remove problems from the opponent zone. It was also hard to counter considering it had answers to almost any problem it faced. Magi Nation Duel. Energy based system. Each player has 3 Magi in a stack. One will fight until defeated at which point the next will show up to resume the fight. They gain energy each turn to use for a number of things. Tokens are used for this. There is no death death. Duel Masters. There are no Lands, or Energy cards. Any card can be used as a currency generator. Digimon TCG Your ability to play cards is based on the digmon you have, and the cards you draw. The one I am referring to is the old tcg where they came in red, green, and yellow with a kind of paper scissors rock power system. Final Fantasy TCG has you discarding cards from the hand of appropriate number, plus at least one color of the correct kind. KeyForge you picked one of the 3 factions your deck has, which allowed you to play any and all cards from that faction for that turn. .Hack//Enemy you only get to play 1 card per turn. What you can play is determined by the requirement of the individual card. I've played way too many TCGs... there's many more, like Legend Of The Five Rings (both versions), One Piece (3 on 3 fight, defeat the opoosing boss, or deck death your opponent), Vanguard, Tomb Raider, Neopets, Gruff (Not a TCG but it's still a card game), Warhammer Invasion, Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, yes I've been involved in all of these, including YuGiOh, Pokemon, MTG, Digimon (recent one), and Dragon Ball GT. Should I even mention Millenium Blades??? 😋 I've played a few others that I've not purchased any products of. the world of TCGs, CCGs, and LCGs is vast and all of them are unbalanced broken works of chaos.
Haha, I love it. It sounds like you should be running this channel. I'm very impressed. I'm sure I will refer to this comment when making a future video. Thank you!
@@ShardTCG lol. I'm not attractive enough to be on screen, and really don't have the personality to make it work. I've been on the fence about doing something, like solo plays written up in a first person story form, something akin to a dairy, but that is a lot of work with equipment I don't have (including space).
@@ShardTCG I also can't show most of these cards any more since I've gotten rid of almost everything to make room for other games. Showcasing proxies wouldn't be clean. I've been making my own proxies for some since my eyes aren't too great any more and I need bigger text.
If you're not sure and things are getting in the way, then that is fine. But when an idea comes to mind, something that really excites... You'll find all those obstacles can be moved out of the way easily, and you'll just go for it.
In my game each card has a set number of stamina and they use their attacks/effects by usuing stamina and as expected if you have not enough stamina to use the effect you cant use it I assume this is a fair resource because theres cards that can regain or give more stamina then what you’re actually given on play. Is this good?
It's simple and effective. I personally am also making a game that allows free card plays and the resources are spent on activating abilities, similarly to your system. Make sure there's a good comeback mechanic and I think your idea will work.
I think would be cool if some tcg turnned the resource from the Scaling system into a secondary deck, wich every card was a "land" or "energy" card. That would allow more deckbuilding complexity, since the game would be capable of giving their resource cards unique effects.
resource cards with unique secondary effects is a great twist for deck building. I am not sure about making a second deck just for them cards. There secondary effects make them act more like everyday cards which justifies them staying in one deck more, I would think.
Shard has a dual resource system. Mana for spells and Shards for creatures. Now, I think it helps keep things quite neat when it comes to balancing your cards to play cost. The issue with two resources is that it can bloat your game and potentially put off new players.
@@randomrants148 I'm making a three resource system for my game, it can work. The trick, I believe, is to make different cards require different blends of the resources, and make sure each of your factions emphasizes a different blend of resources. Have ways to exchange one resource for another, but possibly at a 1:2 ratio so that you can squeeze out of tight situations at a cost.
For yugioh your card is your resource makes sense now, it allows for combo styles, that you really dont see in other games. Yugioh's problem rn is just power creep, but the way archtypes is really neet, and sometimes you will get really nice cards working with old cards
@@ShardTCG Yeah, it's interesting that they've stuck to an eternal format (although they do use the banlist as pseudo-roatation for the most powerful decks) - and quite amusing to see mtg commander players criticising their eternal format for tip-toeing towards some of the same issues that people have with ygo.
I'm pretty sure digimon's card system sets your energy minimum at 3 at the start of your turn by the rules, so even if you are left with no energy, you can still come back (you can also overexpend in your turn if you are left with low energy, so it can bounce in both directions)
It will set to 3 if your opponent chooses to end their turn while on 0 memory or higher. If they spend over, then you get what they give you. But very commonly, players have tamers that set their memory to 3 at the start of their turn. But the overspending is great for getting out of tight situations (at the risk of giving your opponent more resources)
Sorry I’m late to the conversation. I started up my TCG again and went to a Threshold system. each card is worth one resource no matter how powerful it is. to attack you require a threshold in play and when you attack you basically lose one resource. So the game progresses slowly but also had dips as you choose to attack more.
in a scaling mana system you aren't forced to play 10 costs in every deck just because potentially a game can reach turn 10. an aggro deck will cap out at 4 cost, try to deal as much damage as possible before they lose the board and then try to finish off with instant attack creatures or burn spells from hand. midrange would cap out at 6-7 and only control is expected to play higher costs. i have played multiple online ccgs that use this system and not a single one of them had a meta where you put 10 costs in aggro just in case.
I do like the fixed resource systems if it is handled properly. It can act as rounds in a fighting game. Same hand size same resources and you have to out play your opponent see who comes out on top. Then move on to the next round resources and hands reset... maybe board is mostly temporary.... round 2... and first to 5 rounds wins the game.
Many people don't like pvz heroes but it's reasorse system is pretty cool you get "mana" iqual to the current turn what means you can't play big cards first turn and at the same time you will be to play them yes or yes on the latest turns
In Heartstone you are not forced in any way to put cards from thw whole mana-cost-range - you can simply play 3x 3 mana cards instead of 1x9m. You also forgot about Warhammer Invasion's system which is quite interesting...
Though it’s definitely moved away from the full on everything deck that used to exist It isn’t gist anymore you don’t just put in a pot of greed, 2 graceful charity a delinquent duo and a change of heart in every deck now you plsy a consistent engine that gets added onto with your hand tracks and (at least since the tune out rules change) the off burn or light point gain cards (ie gagaga cowboy) but they no longer make up your main deck list anymore
@ it has been so far, we are in a rigorous playtesting phase currently to make adjustments before finalizing the set. Hoping to generate some content here soon. Love your videos by the way!
Yuguioh i thing was the best idea for resorce system now a days it looks like an issue because konami for some reason just has forgotten to put restriction in cards like they used to do but if you go 5-8 years back you'll find that the game was more balanced
There is a "format" that has poped out in Magic Arena sometimes that instead of using lands, you can discard any card as a land. I think dinseys new TCG uses something like that. Is not an "card energy resourse" per se cuz ANY CARD is resource, or maybe a very flex card energy resource. I like it a lot and think there is much potential on it, mainly cause of the simplicity to use and complexity of strategies
Why is the system where you can lay every card as a resource not covered, it is in my opinion one of the best... it gives a lot of flexibility but still limits you in a good way and you cant become manascrewd.
One of my favorite systems is from Keyforge which I call an "opportunity cost" system. Your deck is made of three houses (colors/factions) and step 1 of your turn is to name a house. You can only play, discard, and activate cards in the active house. Creatures that enter play have summoning sickness. This leads to very interesting hand and board management questions. You could be sitting with a board full of Mars creatures and a hand full of Shadows cards. Your board is telling you to call Mars and your hand is telling you to call Shadows. You have to decide on your turn which actions are more valuable because there are tradeoffs. Also if you ever have a turn where every card in your hand is one faction, you can have an uber turn and play all of them! I'm working on a hobby card game project that uses a similar house system. I'm trying to fix the main flaw I see in Keyforge. There will be some turns where a good chunk of your board sits idle for many turns because it's more important to play another house. I want to see if having six houses in a deck + choosing two houses per turn allows you to more consistently keep part of your board from being idle.
Would love to hear your perspective on games like Final Fantasy TCG and the original WoW TCG. These two games offer a mix of multiple different systems you discuss in this video and I think they actually did an amazingly elegant job of fixing their inherent problems. In WoW you could play any card in your hand face-down as a resource card if you didn't have a normal resource card to play, but it also had "quests" which were resource cards that you could cash in for additional effects during the course of the game. Final Fantasy uses a mixture of a land-based system like Magic while also using a card-based system that allows you to discard any card from your hand to make 2 temporary mana of the discarded card's color to play any cards from your hand with, but even the "lands" in FFTCG cost mana to initially put into play, with the idea being that the economy that they produce over the course of the game will make up for the initial investment. This lends itself to situations in high level play where if you hand 10 different people the exact same opening hand and the exact same deck, you may actually see 10 different opening lines on turn 1.
I have seen something similar to FFTCG resource system with the initial investment for future gains. I have been thinking of doing a follow-up to this video with other examples of resource systems. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Thank you so much!
I think the best resource system is the lack of resource system, or one you can just ignore no problem. The golden example of what happens when you lose resources is YGO, and is honestly a disaster... Honestly, I would be lying if I said it lacks resource system, it has one: The normal summon. Normal summons indeed were a good limiting factor for decks so they would be forced to run spells and traps to gain tempo advantage. Then extra deck came, made special summon more frequent and reached a point of parody in the last 6 years with links.
Was designing a card game, then watched this video only to just now learn about Flesh & Blood and to learn that I’ve literally been making an almost exact copy of Flesh & Blood. From the head, chest (I called it core) arms, legs armor, to the combat cards and the combat chains LMAO. I’m so fucking frustrated right now knowing I have to start all over but so glad that I stumbled across this video today 😂😂😂
Duel Masters had a nice twist on mtg's system where any card can be used as a resource instead of having dedicated lands. I don't like the rest of the game, but I really like its resource system.
And now Lorcana is using that system, except there are more poerfull cards that are "uninkable" - cannot be used as a resource. You can put a lot of uninkable cards in your deck, but you risk not having cards to put to ink.
@@TheMorbidHobo yes, I too liked more when on Duel Masters it was possible to put any card into mana. But it is quite a nice way to limit the power od a card - if you put 4 copies of an uninkable card, you feel it. And the limit - yeah, I like that one more. There is no sense in making colours and factions if you can simply put them all into a deck.
@@Bartosz_LoQ In DM you had to use mana of the color to play the card of that color, which I think is a better system. The problem I have with uninkable cards is that I've brewed decks built around certain mechanics only to find out the deck is completely unusable because I have almost no inkable cards, and replacing the deck synergies for inkable cards destroys the whole point of the deck (and makes it so the deck is basically lands and nonlands)-- they weren't strong decks, to be clear, just fun synergistic ones that are rendered impossible to use due to the lack of inkable cards.
@@TheMorbidHobo I know how it works in Duel Masters - that's the first TCG I played more of and I have player it for quite some time. But I still prefer the limit. And there are plenty of synergies and decks that do work. You just have to have that limit in mind.
Closed archetypes that only interact with those of the same name are great for designers because there are fewer variables to consider for balancing cards that interact with them.
for FaB, about the players "afraid of losing cards because they want to play the cards". this is not the case. In FaB, there are cards that you want to use as a resource more than playing it, and vice versa. So players are not really afraid of pitching cards for resource.
It kinda sucks that he skipped over duel masters resource system which was kind of a combination of card based whatever yugioh is and time based resource systems
I think most TCGs avoid the scaling resource system because, using Hearthstone as a great example, decks all get built around a curve. And when all decks get built around a curve, they all tend to look the same. Its incredibly dull to watch every game play out the same: 1-drop on turn 1, 2-drop on turn 2, 3-drop on turn 3 etc... While this systems avoids players having a discrepancy in resources, it also takes away most thrills and excitement from the game as well. That all said, I prefer a scaling resource system to the hard resource systems of MTG and Pokemon.
@ShardTCG i think there should always be a non-zero amount of "luck of the draw" to a card game. Exactly for that reason, we're playing CARDS, and it's your turn to draw, pardner!
Nothing worse than being stuck on 3 lands because your deck doesn‘t wanna give you those while your opponent plays one every turn. Vastly prefer the Duel Masters / WoW TCG method of using any card as a resource, because Magic is inherently more inconsistent
A system that you didn't mention and that is interesting is the "no ressource" system keyforge used The decks are made out of 36 cards , 3 house, 12 card per house You always draw up to 6 cards at the end of the turn ( you cant deck out, when you cant draw more you shuffle your discard and make it your new draw pile ) And when you start your turn you choose which house to play and you can only play cards of that house in that turn The house effectively become a "ressource" per turn and creates interesting mechanics like , not allowing your opponent to choose a house next turn or the opposite, forcing them to choose
Very biased opinion but IMO Digimon's resource system is incredible. I'll never go back to playing lands or land equivalents in a card game again. The way the game begins slowly but the memory gauge beings to make bigger and bigger swings over the course of the game is great design. Close games feel very intense and down to the wire with both players being forced to take big risks. Trying to maximize the value of your own memory while giving the opponent as little as possible is a fun minigame and can be diabolical if implemented at the right time.
Honestly this video seems to pretty drastically misrepresent Flesh and Blood’s resource system. Cards that are pitched, or used as a resource, are put back under the deck at the end of the turn. A card can be used as a resource literally an infinite number of times. Only when cards are used to attack, defend, or perform a function other than pitch for resource, do the cards go to the banished zone/graveyard. As a long time MTG player, I think FAB’s resource system is BRILLIANT.
Just mentioning that that the system fits DBZ PERFECTLY. This is a game about dudes punching each other in the face. Not grandmasters analyzing and coming up with perfect strategems. Stockpiling just doesn't fit the games desired tempo or flavor.
Nice and extensive video but I think you don't really understand the resource systems if you think decent players in hearthstone have cards from 1 to 8 mana in their decks any more than MTG players have 1 to 8 cost cards in theirs, that sounds like someone who barely played the game would say if they just analysed its ruleset in a nutshell which makes me question the validity of any of the points brought up.
Yes, you should never blindly follow someone. It is always important to do your own research. My videos are a guide and are largely focused around my own opinion, but a lot of how I see things can be interpreted in a different way.
I'm sorry, but Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't have a real resource system since in a way the only things they use is life points and cards which don't really have a cost unless used for systems that they added in later in their life. (Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, Links) At least I get flesh and blood with the cost and pay mechanism that was built in.
I do think of yugioh as a resourceless TCG, but through the use of card effects and tribute summoning, it closely falls under 1.5 in a less traditional sense.
@@ShardTCGthe only resource system I see is effects that require discard or xyz monsters using their materials to be detached to activate their effects
You're kidding right? About the Dragonball Super TCG. That's completely wrong, Dragonball Super TCG falls under your #1, except any card can be an energy card and no limit to how much energy you can have. Even just looking at a card gallery or something, some cards cost over 6
Sorry about that. I got some bad info. My fault for not double checking this as I am not familiar with the trading card game but I am a childhood fan of the series.
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.
Yes, this helps the issue of having 10+ cards being the same as each other.
In a game like Duel Masters, you can still have effects on cards when used as resources. There's no rule saying that such a system needs cards to become "basic". Dragon Ball Super already does this.
@@fernandobanda5734I would say those games have internal resources.
@@alexrivera5747 My bad. I thought you meant games that didn't have specialized "land"/resource cards. I agree then.
You could still have a land based resource system, with non basic lands, but still redesign the game to prevent non games happening due to flooding or getting mana screwed. It would require a clean slate with cards specifically designed knowing that each player will be able to play the game.
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
I love LoR 's resource system. personally if you run multiple color, I thing you should get alternating color gems as that's more flavorful, but I get why they stuck with 10 generic mana and 3 extra spell mana for ease of designing cards.
People(who often have no idea why people hate MTG's land based resource system), will often say things like "build your deck better" or "it a feature, not a bug" or the increased variance is better because it allows less skilled players to beat more skilled ones"....none of these are the point.
If only 1 in 100 MTG games resulted in mana screw/flood, no one would care. But in MTG, a very significant amount of games result in only 1 player playing the game...that is a symptom of bad design and likely why Richard Garfield IIRC said one of the things he would do differently is the land/resource system. Lands aren't the problem. You can still have all sorts of cool lands. It the RNG of the resource system itself cause alot of non games.
it had*
There is still a massive LOR shapes hole in my soul. I know the game is still technically still around, but its just not the same anymore. Not a day goes by where i wish the devs would start supporting competitive again. ;(
I think people forget about the innovations of Duel Masters TCG
The Western tcg world, perhaps. In Japan basically every other TCG is a Duel Masters derivative
marvel /dc vs system 2004
perfect one, but i will study this one you mention
your avatar look like the mask logo of metalcore band DEMON HUNTER!
@@througtonsheirs_doctorwhol5914 It is exactly the logo of Demon Hunter!! It is my favorite band
Cause there's really only 2 innovations, and they aren't necessarily good (shields/universal mana)
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.
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.
This is brilliant!
I wish I had said this word for word in the video. You've hit the nail on the head. Thank you.
It's an up and down side. Sometimes it's comforting knowing your first few turns ahead of time, gives you less stress when plotting a bigger strategy as things progress. You get to coast for the first 2-3 turns and dip your foot into the broader battle before diving in, later turns get stressful and tough decisions will be made. It's like a natural easing in.
I'd say a major downside for the way HS implements the resource is their is no mixed color decks. I can't choose to hybrid Priest and Hunter for instance. Mana is generic, and it's hard to adapt scaling to multicolor. You can give the player a choice of mana color each turn to scale, but that is lame and it adds boring decisions each turn.
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
Hmm... I should have a look at different side decks and extra decks that have been in TCGs over the years to see how well received they are, and try to figure out their pros and cons. Thanks, your comment sparked an idea.
Force of Will used such a system. What was best about it was that you had a choice to either tap that game's version of a "Commander" to get some, or use that Commander for its printed effects.
After playing the pc card game faeria, my kids and I now use a system based on that game for magic. We call it fast magic, and it does a great job of removing mana screw/flood.
It does break some cards in the game so we just remove them from play.
Fast magic is played as follows:
30 card decks, no dups, no lands, no land related cards
On your turn, once per main phase you may grab one basic land card from a pile of all lands set outside the game space.
If you so choose, you can pass on playing a land on your turn and instead draw a second card from your deck to your hand.
Rest of the game plays basicly the same.
Optional rules include increasing life pools to 30 and reducing initial hand size to 3-4 cards. Still havnt settled on if these are beneficial or not but seem to help.
Update: we have had a lot of fun playing with a cube I created.
45 random cards...rainbow magic...no constructing a deck. Just deal it out and play. Edit( using the fast magic rules above for lands)
I'm actually looking to do something like that with my own game
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.
The dice one is a good example of a different resource system. Though I feel the action point example could fall into some of the categories I have brought up, but it depends entirely on how you implement it into your game.
@ShardTCG I meant more like time as a resource. I guess Yugioh's normal summon limit is like that. There's a mobile game I like called Insilentium that uses time as a resource.
Urban Rivals - unique system
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
Energy that has multiple uses sounds great for avoiding waste. I enjoyed your description, and it makes me think I may have to revisit energy systems in another video as I have barely scratched the surface.
Thanks!
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.
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.
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
That's so weird. I have a friend who almost had this exact conversation with me about aggro decks a few days ago.
You've got some great insight for me here. Thank you.
Resourcless tcgs can turn on really long turns; that can break the fun of the game itself
The now unsupported digital only game Mabinogi Duel had a scaling resource system. What's the resource? IIRC there were 6 of them, each turn each one will be a random one applicable to your deck. Do you play more colors for a wider cardpool or less for more consistent resources
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).
Yeah, it's the thing that puts me off competitive magic tbh - there are some interesting choices it adds to the game, but the majority of those happen in deckbuilding. And honestly it feels slightly distasteful to have rare and expensive resource cards in a game. Also the impact of ygo revolving entirely around cards in hand can be seen in how it's the only one that I've played that doesn't allow for a mulligan, and the game balance would swing wildly if it did.
Your comment made me realize that what you said was originally the thrill of Yugioh since the days of its early manga. Drawing that ONE card that can turn your situation around. In the anime world they call it an ass pull but in reality it’s topdecking. Other card anime have their version of this main “thrilling concept” too. Duel Masters version was the Shield Trigger mechanic, which the manga-ka specifically stated was created to have a flashy comeback maneuver that can literally save the Duelist’s life, as in the manga the duels were “real,” and players would get hurt from the shards having their Shields broken.
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
It has laid a good foundation for TCGs of today.
Thanks.
Final Fantasy definitely took a lot of inspiration from Duel Masters, and I'm glad because Duel Masters is such a good game.
my favorite tcg is duel masters btw
DM is literally a knock off of MTG that tried to "dum it down" for the kids. "Universal resourcing" is 1 way they tried to simplify.
@@infiniterer287 yah but still, it became it’s own thing. Mana system is not MTG as any card is a resource. Sure it was to promote mtg but it’s not the same
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.
The offshoot TCGs will be a good source for a follow up video.
Good luck with the "churn and burn" strategy. I like that terminology.
@@ShardTCG Thanks! Too many games copy MTG's Land system, which I had considered at first but decided against in favor of standing out. Going to use one of those cardboard flipwheels for counting resources (a Eurogame staple) instead of a ton of tokens so the game doesn't have too many components.
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. 😅
Oh definitely! But try to enjoy the challenge and of course limitations breed creativity.
Compared to many others, hearthstones mana system has the downside of not including a built-in deckbuilding restriction, so a separate deckbuilding restriction system is needed. In hearthstone they use the model where cards are separated in different class packages, and you are not allowed to mix cards from two packages in your deck. This system is one of the least creative ones available from deckbuilding perspective. There are no new creative decks to be found, because most of the interesting ways to mix cards are outright forbidden. You are bound to what can be found inside a singular class package, plus the neutral cards.
In games like pokemon or mtg, you are allowed to mix cards in any way you like, and the deckbuilding restriction is built in the mana system. This gives much more room for creativity, because you can basically choose any two cards and start thinking, what would happen if you put them in the same deck.
I'd also like to point out that automatic generation of resources does not mean that you have to cover the entire cost range. You could omit certain cost and play multiple cards of lower cost at that turn, and will still end up using your resources efficiently. And if you are playing aggressively, you could omit all the high-cost cards. I believe there have been multiple times when there has been a strong HS deck with no cards costing more than 4.
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
You should try shadowverse evolve. It's the physical version of the mobile game with much needed changes when swapping to physical like instant speed interaction after your opponent attacks and on end phase. It has a scaling resource system, but the special thing is the leader cards have nfc chips that you can scan into your companion app and you get a nice energy tracker and life tracker that is fully voice acted and animated.
An interesting variant of the Shared Resource system combined with a stockpile system is the Lord or the Rings card game. It was a card game with a short run since there wasn't much more they could do after mining the movies for image stills to use as card art, but it was actually very interesting. The goal of the game was a race to Mordor to destroy the ring which was done across location cards. The interesting thing was that each player had Hero cards and Villain cards. On your turn you would play your hero cards to your heart's content without paying any cost... sort of. As you played your Hero cards you would add glass cabochons to your opponent's Villain resources. The Villain resources was a pool that would stay and fill up over each turn unless you spent it, so when one player is slowly building up their Heroes, the other can be hoarding the resource until they're ready to do a big set battle, or they can use a few on each of their villain turns to whittle their opposing Heroes down over time. This back and forth of who gets to play the Heroes had an unfortunate side effect of the Hero half of your deck feeling a bit samey from player to player, always starting with Frodo, really kind of needing a Sam in case Frodo dies since he's a half as good ring bearer (they had corruption points like health, 10 for Frodo and 5 for Sam).
Anyway, it has its strengths and weaknesses, but it was definitely a VERY unique card game and very fun. I think the same system could be recycled into a new game and it would play very well. The one thing holding it back was its lack of diverse characters from outside the books/films. Which is to say the thing holding it back was the very IP that made it so interesting to pick up, but the gameplay really deserved to be unleashed from its IP. I dunno if this has already happened or not, but if it has I need to know what game it is, because I still often get an itch to play The Lord of the Rings TCG and never have anyone to play it with. No one has any cars but me it seems!
I just looked at the website yesterday. Is this the Fantasy Flight Games coop game? Considering getting that. Wonder if anyone's made it in Tabletop Simulator. Would love to try it.
@@danielpayne1597 It's unfortunately the "Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game" which has been out of print since 2007. I'd love to past a wiki article for you here, but YT would just block it. It's a really cool card game from the 00s that had some interesting game mechanics.
I would say that SOME of those mechanics while interesting did make the game feel very samey match to match the way they were implemented. This is because they built the game around travel between key locations in the story represented by "Site Cards" and yet didn't introduce enough of those site cards to allow for more variety. This is the core of its undoing, as the limited selection of sites doesn't let you feel like you're retelling the story your way, but rather focusses on a race between the two players to see which of them can get their own version of Frodo or Sam to mount doom or which can kill the other's ring bearer first. This is done by having both players juggle both hero and villain cards where on my turn you get a villain phase and on your turn I get one, and then combat ensues at the end of each turn between the current heroes and villains.
Anyway, these are all super cool mechanics, but it was the way they were implemented and the rigid story they were made to tell that made it die. You never really felt like you needed to get more cards because the initial deck and a couple of boosters let you already experience almost all of the game. It was like a race on a track that doesn't change much even from deck to deck due to a lack of variety. A strange case of a railroaded card game where we usually use that term for tabletop games or video games.
It was basically a game build for where the Venn diagrams of huge TCG nerds who like exploring new card mechanics even if they have little bearing on the game overlaps with super fans of the Lord of the Rings. The only reason it lasted as long as it did is because that overlapping group is still a pretty large one since Magic the Gathering is already high fantasy and is the strongest TCG.
@@Will_Forge Ah, thanks for the explanation. Makes sense they'd put in a travel mechanic, they did something similar with LotR: RISK, and that was less elegant.
@danielpayne1597 oh I never played the Risk LotR game. Was it good otherwise?
@@Will_Forge Yeah, the map worked really well. There were cards you could use to enact naval travel in a limited fashion, and the reinforcement totals and national boundaries worked great for RISK. Far superior to the original RISK world map. Worth a play if you & your friends enjoy RISK.
A really interesting resource system is that introduced by Grand Archive TCG
In Grand Archive you place cards face down to make them your memory (mana), similar to Lorcana, but at the start of your next turn, those cards return to your hand.
Certain cards also burn memory, causing the face down cards to get discarded
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. 😆
I am using a hybrid card/stagnant/scaling resource system. Were both players start with a stagnant pool of resouces which refills every turn and can add cards throughout the game to increase the the ammount that the pool can hold.
I am thinking off adding an overflow system as well as a catch-up mechanic, where if you generate too much resources any extra goes to a shared resource pool.
What’s your thoughts on the battle spirits resource system
It has a clever catch-up mechanic in the sense of gaining from taking damage.
I may have to revisit resource systems in a new video to cover some obscure twists in other TCGs
I loved the GUTs system in monster ranchers battle card. It went well with its dodge and block mechanic. Was fun to think through if you should hold cards or use them for resource.
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.
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.
One of my favourite games use a fixed resource system. It is Start Trek 2nd Edition, and you get 7 points each turn. You have to spend all your points. But drawing cards cost 1 point, so you have to balance card play and card draw in a very interesting way. It is also played in a very different way than most card games, as you fly around in your star ships and try to do missions, in a similar way to the TV series.
I feel like Hearthstone's resource system works because of how strict deckbuilding is - there are classes and you can only have in deck card of one class and neutrals and there's little to no way to cheat around it. This stops players from just putting together the best cards and instead creates different, diverse deck archetypes.
I'm thinking that the other way to mitigate it would be mixing it with color separation from energy-based system. Player still would get one guaranteed point at the start of turn, but would be forced to put it into building up one color. This would be more open and stable than MTG's land system but also much safer than HS's barebone mana.
I like your suggested improvement.
Im using scaling system just like Heartstone. My game is for now one single closed deck, one copy of it for each player for playtest. Not planning on creating an entire collection, just balance the game as 'battle decks'. As you said the problem is getting a lot of resource so you want to keep you cards played each turn in the curve. I have the problem of not enough draw because cards are being played as soon as they are draw. Do you think there is a solution? Maybe change the pace of the game by allowing players to 'buy until you have 5 at start of turn'? Im afraid of a card slam fiesta.
It depends on how you want to pace your game. If you feel it is running a bit slow, then buying draw power isn't such a bad idea. It will speed up your game, but probably not as drastically as you would think. The more you buy, the fewer resources you have to spend on playing the cards you've just drew.
Another idea is to have some resource cards provide lasting resources (it's there until used) and others are churn & burn, you get the resource for the turn you use it only. If you have a hand size limit, that will put pressure on players to strategically play the resource cards.
Out of all the tcg games i have played i feel that FaB is a resource system as close to perfect as can be
Maybe it is. My opinion is one thing, but it is how the game makes you feel that is the most important
@BadGaming367 flesh and blood
@BadGaming367 Flesh and Blood
When it comes to resource systems, I really like Battle Spirits/Battle Spirits Saga one. I am not sure what would it quality as, but it works like this: At the start of the game, you get a number of shards. At the start of each of your turns, you get another one. But, your health is also measured in shards! At the start of the game, you get 5 shards as your health points. When you take damage, that shard goes into your stockpile, which then you can use. Every used shard returns to your stockpile at the start of your turn. However, your monster cards have levels, which depend on the number of shards you have on top of them - and which you can freely move around during your turn. Really love this aspect of the game, too bad it's not too popular ^^"
Nice comeback mechanic with taking damage to then stockpiling for later. It's a good system to keep the game closer in competition. This is a fun system.
Love to hear your opinions on Battle spirits saga... it's a scaling system with your life total factoring as mana... you hit your opponent they get an extra resource on top of their normal increase at start
I have been suggested this game a few times now. It will feature in one of my videos eventually.
I don't think you mentioned the resource made out of damage (though it might be iffy if though of how it rolls.) By either sending a card there as damage or have the card that was defeated in battle, it should be a battle that can count itself off.
I'm making a Backrooms-themed TCG. Players can put a card (noclip) on the bottom of their deck (the backrooms) after drawing to generate a resource for each turn, but they don't have to. Some cards will let them do this multiple times, or just generate resources for later turns for quick "combo" style gameplay. It's a stockpile system.
Wow, that's freaky.
I have a friend I need to mention this to. He loves the backroom videos.
I have a pretty cool system that uses external sources and rewards fast play with early returns but also rewards more paced play with more powerful returns. I'm having trouble naming it something easy to remember, but how can I tell if it's too complex to implement? It's no more complex than mana, and uses similar principles for the activation visuals.
It is just a case of playtesting and feedback. Something can look genius on paper, and then the issues start to appear once you get it in play. The same goes for the other way. Sometimes, an idea can seem so stupid, and then it turns out it's great!
So just test it with different people and see how they react to it.
@@ShardTCG I'm overthinking again, a samsara that stops my progress. All of my ugh right now. ✅️
Vampire the Eternal Struggle gives you 30 Life at the start of the game and that's it. To bring out cards, you have to put a certain amount of your life counters onto that card. then that card can play abilities by paying that life. There are some cards to generate new life counters and to move life between yourself and your creatures, but in essence, you get a fixed amount of resources at the start and then it's about how you use those throughout the game. By making life your resource and not just your win condition, this also heavily changes how combat is done and what the purpose of combat is, because just burning some life off a creature means now it can play less cards.
My TCG has a Resource system that is unique, Haven't seen it yet. and its really fun, I pray I can be the first to push my system into development. I've play tested with my nephews and really close friends, Its one of the funnest games I played in TCG in ages. And I can't wait to start hiring Artists for each card. Resource systems are super important because of turn order. If a player goes first they are able to interact with the system first giving them an advantage, but also if the resource system is really balanced
Marvel Snap nailed the scaling system! Shared location effects are revealed each turn, so your information grows together with the resource pool. They embrace luck as part of the mechanic, so every play is a risk . Ah, and both players reveal their plays at same time, so there is no 1st player advantage.
That's a nice fix
I played Digimon TCG for a while and, while I think the concept of memory is cool, the problem is that the game has very little "progression". It's either early game or late game with it. There's no permanent development in game state like it usually happens in most games where you spend resources to get more resources. In digimon, if your board gets cleared, you are basically back to the beginning of the game. In MTG and most other TCGs, if you get board wiped, at least you still have your lands so you can teorethically play big next turn.
The other problem is that big cards are simply not designed to be played on the table when you have nothing else in hand, in the sense that the risk is almost never worth it. Most of the time, if you just slam your biggest monster from you hand into the field, you just gave your opponent enough energy to 1 turn KO you. So instead of a fun risk, it's usually a fancy way to commit in game suicide.
Tamers are effectively permanent progression against all but the few decks that can remove them and can substantially speed up the process of rebuilding. Ace cards help solve the problem of passing 5+ memory by hard playing a level 5 or 6, though risky it's still the preferable option. We also have a lot of really good delay options now that are only affected by the right floodgate and can help players set up their board again after getting wiped.
Best system I've seen so far is Star War Unlimited's. Not only it completely erases flooding and screwing, it also adds a layer of decision making to the resourcing process (which card do I resource, when do I stop resourcing cards, etc).
The TCG BattleSPirits has been using a Scalling Resource System for the last decade and a half, combined with a Catch-Up mechanic where your Lives are also the same Resource. When you lose a Life, that Life goes to your Pool of Resources, so you have an Extra in your next turn.
10:00 You've not heard of mega zoo meta? It was quite a brutal build to play against at one point. It was all about having beefy things, with ways to just remove problems from the opponent zone. It was also hard to counter considering it had answers to almost any problem it faced.
Magi Nation Duel. Energy based system. Each player has 3 Magi in a stack. One will fight until defeated at which point the next will show up to resume the fight. They gain energy each turn to use for a number of things. Tokens are used for this. There is no death death.
Duel Masters. There are no Lands, or Energy cards. Any card can be used as a currency generator.
Digimon TCG Your ability to play cards is based on the digmon you have, and the cards you draw. The one I am referring to is the old tcg where they came in red, green, and yellow with a kind of paper scissors rock power system.
Final Fantasy TCG has you discarding cards from the hand of appropriate number, plus at least one color of the correct kind.
KeyForge you picked one of the 3 factions your deck has, which allowed you to play any and all cards from that faction for that turn.
.Hack//Enemy you only get to play 1 card per turn. What you can play is determined by the requirement of the individual card.
I've played way too many TCGs... there's many more, like Legend Of The Five Rings (both versions), One Piece (3 on 3 fight, defeat the opoosing boss, or deck death your opponent), Vanguard, Tomb Raider, Neopets, Gruff (Not a TCG but it's still a card game), Warhammer Invasion, Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, yes I've been involved in all of these, including YuGiOh, Pokemon, MTG, Digimon (recent one), and Dragon Ball GT. Should I even mention Millenium Blades??? 😋
I've played a few others that I've not purchased any products of.
the world of TCGs, CCGs, and LCGs is vast and all of them are unbalanced broken works of chaos.
Haha, I love it.
It sounds like you should be running this channel. I'm very impressed.
I'm sure I will refer to this comment when making a future video.
Thank you!
@@ShardTCG lol. I'm not attractive enough to be on screen, and really don't have the personality to make it work. I've been on the fence about doing something, like solo plays written up in a first person story form, something akin to a dairy, but that is a lot of work with equipment I don't have (including space).
@@ShardTCG I also can't show most of these cards any more since I've gotten rid of almost everything to make room for other games. Showcasing proxies wouldn't be clean.
I've been making my own proxies for some since my eyes aren't too great any more and I need bigger text.
If you're not sure and things are getting in the way, then that is fine.
But when an idea comes to mind, something that really excites... You'll find all those obstacles can be moved out of the way easily, and you'll just go for it.
In my game each card has a set number of stamina and they use their attacks/effects by usuing stamina and as expected if you have not enough stamina to use the effect you cant use it I assume this is a fair resource because theres cards that can regain or give more stamina then what you’re actually given on play. Is this good?
It's simple and effective. I personally am also making a game that allows free card plays and the resources are spent on activating abilities, similarly to your system. Make sure there's a good comeback mechanic and I think your idea will work.
I will say a lot of TCG's are starting to use the ramping resource system. Both lorcana and star wars unlimited recently use it in interesting ways.
I think would be cool if some tcg turnned the resource from the Scaling system into a secondary deck, wich every card was a "land" or "energy" card. That would allow more deckbuilding complexity, since the game would be capable of giving their resource cards unique effects.
resource cards with unique secondary effects is a great twist for deck building. I am not sure about making a second deck just for them cards. There secondary effects make them act more like everyday cards which justifies them staying in one deck more, I would think.
marvel /dc vs system 2004
perfect one
Resource Systems are hard to come with what if I have mana to cast spells and something deferent to cast creatures what problem I will face?
Shard has a dual resource system. Mana for spells and Shards for creatures. Now, I think it helps keep things quite neat when it comes to balancing your cards to play cost. The issue with two resources is that it can bloat your game and potentially put off new players.
@@ShardTCG What about three resources life, coins and mana?
@@randomrants148 I'm making a three resource system for my game, it can work. The trick, I believe, is to make different cards require different blends of the resources, and make sure each of your factions emphasizes a different blend of resources. Have ways to exchange one resource for another, but possibly at a 1:2 ratio so that you can squeeze out of tight situations at a cost.
For yugioh your card is your resource makes sense now, it allows for combo styles, that you really dont see in other games. Yugioh's problem rn is just power creep, but the way archtypes is really neet, and sometimes you will get really nice cards working with old cards
The power creep is so blatant. But I do love that they pull older cards back into use with fun support.
@@ShardTCG yeah it just gotten too much recently. But the extra deck is still my favorite concept
@@ShardTCG Yeah, it's interesting that they've stuck to an eternal format (although they do use the banlist as pseudo-roatation for the most powerful decks) - and quite amusing to see mtg commander players criticising their eternal format for tip-toeing towards some of the same issues that people have with ygo.
I can play a monster that has 4000atk, is immune to everything and automatically destroys cards for free every turn but I cannot play Pot of Greed. :(
Mtg, but the turn player can choose to skip their draw phase and instead, search and add one basic land to the field
Another great video, as always your content is useful and fun!
Thanks again!
I'm pretty sure digimon's card system sets your energy minimum at 3 at the start of your turn by the rules, so even if you are left with no energy, you can still come back (you can also overexpend in your turn if you are left with low energy, so it can bounce in both directions)
It will set to 3 if your opponent chooses to end their turn while on 0 memory or higher. If they spend over, then you get what they give you. But very commonly, players have tamers that set their memory to 3 at the start of their turn.
But the overspending is great for getting out of tight situations (at the risk of giving your opponent more resources)
Sorry I’m late to the conversation. I started up my TCG again and went to a Threshold system. each card is worth one resource no matter how powerful it is. to attack you require a threshold in play and when you attack you basically lose one resource.
So the game progresses slowly but also had dips as you choose to attack more.
Lunatone and Aurorus are some others pokemon that got absolutely awesome in ER
in a scaling mana system you aren't forced to play 10 costs in every deck just because potentially a game can reach turn 10. an aggro deck will cap out at 4 cost, try to deal as much damage as possible before they lose the board and then try to finish off with instant attack creatures or burn spells from hand. midrange would cap out at 6-7 and only control is expected to play higher costs. i have played multiple online ccgs that use this system and not a single one of them had a meta where you put 10 costs in aggro just in case.
Scaling system is interesting. Having it in a physical copy, that may peak curiousity.
Thanks for another great video!
No 😮
Thanks for the encouragement.
Every time I release a video it scares me that it is no good, so it means a lot to me to hear this.
I do like the fixed resource systems if it is handled properly. It can act as rounds in a fighting game. Same hand size same resources and you have to out play your opponent see who comes out on top. Then move on to the next round resources and hands reset... maybe board is mostly temporary.... round 2... and first to 5 rounds wins the game.
Many people don't like pvz heroes but it's reasorse system is pretty cool you get "mana" iqual to the current turn what means you can't play big cards first turn and at the same time you will be to play them yes or yes on the latest turns
In Heartstone you are not forced in any way to put cards from thw whole mana-cost-range - you can simply play 3x 3 mana cards instead of 1x9m.
You also forgot about Warhammer Invasion's system which is quite interesting...
I really love yugioh Frankenstein decks tho
Though it’s definitely moved away from the full on everything deck that used to exist
It isn’t gist anymore you don’t just put in a pot of greed, 2 graceful charity a delinquent duo and a change of heart in every deck now you plsy a consistent engine that gets added onto with your hand tracks and (at least since the tune out rules change) the off burn or light point gain cards (ie gagaga cowboy) but they no longer make up your main deck list anymore
Xylon will be using a scaling resource system similar to hearthstone :)
Nice. I hope it is a good fit
@ it has been so far, we are in a rigorous playtesting phase currently to make adjustments before finalizing the set. Hoping to generate some content here soon. Love your videos by the way!
Yuguioh i thing was the best idea for resorce system now a days it looks like an issue because konami for some reason just has forgotten to put restriction in cards like they used to do but if you go 5-8 years back you'll find that the game was more balanced
Grand Archive did the perfect job walking the line between Magic's mana and yugioh's play whatever system. Its a crime that it wasn't mentioned.
There is a "format" that has poped out in Magic Arena sometimes that instead of using lands, you can discard any card as a land. I think dinseys new TCG uses something like that. Is not an "card energy resourse" per se cuz ANY CARD is resource, or maybe a very flex card energy resource. I like it a lot and think there is much potential on it, mainly cause of the simplicity to use and complexity of strategies
It is a good way of scrapping unneeded cards. Very nice.
Why is the system where you can lay every card as a resource not covered, it is in my opinion one of the best... it gives a lot of flexibility but still limits you in a good way and you cant become manascrewd.
One of my favorite systems is from Keyforge which I call an "opportunity cost" system. Your deck is made of three houses (colors/factions) and step 1 of your turn is to name a house. You can only play, discard, and activate cards in the active house. Creatures that enter play have summoning sickness. This leads to very interesting hand and board management questions. You could be sitting with a board full of Mars creatures and a hand full of Shadows cards. Your board is telling you to call Mars and your hand is telling you to call Shadows. You have to decide on your turn which actions are more valuable because there are tradeoffs. Also if you ever have a turn where every card in your hand is one faction, you can have an uber turn and play all of them!
I'm working on a hobby card game project that uses a similar house system. I'm trying to fix the main flaw I see in Keyforge. There will be some turns where a good chunk of your board sits idle for many turns because it's more important to play another house. I want to see if having six houses in a deck + choosing two houses per turn allows you to more consistently keep part of your board from being idle.
Would love to hear your perspective on games like Final Fantasy TCG and the original WoW TCG. These two games offer a mix of multiple different systems you discuss in this video and I think they actually did an amazingly elegant job of fixing their inherent problems. In WoW you could play any card in your hand face-down as a resource card if you didn't have a normal resource card to play, but it also had "quests" which were resource cards that you could cash in for additional effects during the course of the game. Final Fantasy uses a mixture of a land-based system like Magic while also using a card-based system that allows you to discard any card from your hand to make 2 temporary mana of the discarded card's color to play any cards from your hand with, but even the "lands" in FFTCG cost mana to initially put into play, with the idea being that the economy that they produce over the course of the game will make up for the initial investment. This lends itself to situations in high level play where if you hand 10 different people the exact same opening hand and the exact same deck, you may actually see 10 different opening lines on turn 1.
I have seen something similar to FFTCG resource system with the initial investment for future gains.
I have been thinking of doing a follow-up to this video with other examples of resource systems. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Thank you so much!
I think the best resource system is the lack of resource system, or one you can just ignore no problem. The golden example of what happens when you lose resources is YGO, and is honestly a disaster... Honestly, I would be lying if I said it lacks resource system, it has one: The normal summon. Normal summons indeed were a good limiting factor for decks so they would be forced to run spells and traps to gain tempo advantage.
Then extra deck came, made special summon more frequent and reached a point of parody in the last 6 years with links.
In my game, I have a scaling resource, but with a twist! I would love to ask your opinion on it. 😃
You have my curiosity...
Was designing a card game, then watched this video only to just now learn about Flesh & Blood and to learn that I’ve literally been making an almost exact copy of Flesh & Blood. From the head, chest (I called it core) arms, legs armor, to the combat cards and the combat chains LMAO. I’m so fucking frustrated right now knowing I have to start all over but so glad that I stumbled across this video today 😂😂😂
Duel Masters had a nice twist on mtg's system where any card can be used as a resource instead of having dedicated lands. I don't like the rest of the game, but I really like its resource system.
And now Lorcana is using that system, except there are more poerfull cards that are "uninkable" - cannot be used as a resource. You can put a lot of uninkable cards in your deck, but you risk not having cards to put to ink.
@@Bartosz_LoQ I don't much like the color restrictions or uninkable cards, personally.
@@TheMorbidHobo yes, I too liked more when on Duel Masters it was possible to put any card into mana. But it is quite a nice way to limit the power od a card - if you put 4 copies of an uninkable card, you feel it.
And the limit - yeah, I like that one more. There is no sense in making colours and factions if you can simply put them all into a deck.
@@Bartosz_LoQ In DM you had to use mana of the color to play the card of that color, which I think is a better system.
The problem I have with uninkable cards is that I've brewed decks built around certain mechanics only to find out the deck is completely unusable because I have almost no inkable cards, and replacing the deck synergies for inkable cards destroys the whole point of the deck (and makes it so the deck is basically lands and nonlands)-- they weren't strong decks, to be clear, just fun synergistic ones that are rendered impossible to use due to the lack of inkable cards.
@@TheMorbidHobo I know how it works in Duel Masters - that's the first TCG I played more of and I have player it for quite some time.
But I still prefer the limit.
And there are plenty of synergies and decks that do work. You just have to have that limit in mind.
Yugioh archetypes are a nice way to design a card game. I really like it!
Closed archetypes that only interact with those of the same name are great for designers because there are fewer variables to consider for balancing cards that interact with them.
A better fixed resource system would be lightseekers. I recall you only get 2 actions per turn in it.
That's a great example, thanks!
Marvel snap does scaling resource system the best because cards dont fight each other each turn
Yeah. I can agree the MTG and Pokemon Mana is torture.
Pokemon resource system is not that bad
for FaB, about the players "afraid of losing cards because they want to play the cards". this is not the case. In FaB, there are cards that you want to use as a resource more than playing it, and vice versa. So players are not really afraid of pitching cards for resource.
Surprised you didn't talk about Ashes Reborn's very unique system, technically falls under your #4
I just saw this game in the shops today and remembered you mentioning it.
@@ShardTCG Ya and what's cool is Plaid Hat made a promise to keep it in production as long as there is enough subscribers to the product.
@@ShardTCG Also you can play for free online (with the company's full knowledge) if you ever wanted to learn.
Star Wars CCG had by far the most elegant resource system. Digimon has the most creative and engaging
Ascension
There’s also Battle Spirit, which I think is a superior scaling system than Hearthstone.
It kinda sucks that he skipped over duel masters resource system which was kind of a combination of card based whatever yugioh is and time based resource systems
I think most TCGs avoid the scaling resource system because, using Hearthstone as a great example, decks all get built around a curve. And when all decks get built around a curve, they all tend to look the same. Its incredibly dull to watch every game play out the same: 1-drop on turn 1, 2-drop on turn 2, 3-drop on turn 3 etc... While this systems avoids players having a discrepancy in resources, it also takes away most thrills and excitement from the game as well. That all said, I prefer a scaling resource system to the hard resource systems of MTG and Pokemon.
True, a game should be a bit more wild west when it comes to progress. The scaling system does tidy things up, but at the cost of thrills, perhaps.
@ShardTCG i think there should always be a non-zero amount of "luck of the draw" to a card game. Exactly for that reason, we're playing CARDS, and it's your turn to draw, pardner!
lorcana is the best imo, the 90 percent of cards able to be resourced with a few being uninkable.
4:23 Agarpain ptsd
Nothing worse than being stuck on 3 lands because your deck doesn‘t wanna give you those while your opponent plays one every turn.
Vastly prefer the Duel Masters / WoW TCG method of using any card as a resource, because Magic is inherently more inconsistent
A system that you didn't mention and that is interesting is the "no ressource" system keyforge used
The decks are made out of 36 cards , 3 house, 12 card per house
You always draw up to 6 cards at the end of the turn ( you cant deck out, when you cant draw more you shuffle your discard and make it your new draw pile )
And when you start your turn you choose which house to play and you can only play cards of that house in that turn
The house effectively become a "ressource" per turn and creates interesting mechanics like , not allowing your opponent to choose a house next turn or the opposite, forcing them to choose
That is so different from other card games, thanks for telling me.
Your welcome , I'd suggest you have a look at keyforge they had a lot of novel ideas in the design ! @@ShardTCG
Very biased opinion but IMO Digimon's resource system is incredible. I'll never go back to playing lands or land equivalents in a card game again. The way the game begins slowly but the memory gauge beings to make bigger and bigger swings over the course of the game is great design. Close games feel very intense and down to the wire with both players being forced to take big risks. Trying to maximize the value of your own memory while giving the opponent as little as possible is a fun minigame and can be diabolical if implemented at the right time.
I also love the memory gauge!
2:12 Many magic the gathering players [ask the question ...]
Honestly this video seems to pretty drastically misrepresent Flesh and Blood’s resource system. Cards that are pitched, or used as a resource, are put back under the deck at the end of the turn. A card can be used as a resource literally an infinite number of times. Only when cards are used to attack, defend, or perform a function other than pitch for resource, do the cards go to the banished zone/graveyard.
As a long time MTG player, I think FAB’s resource system is BRILLIANT.
Just mentioning that that the system fits DBZ PERFECTLY. This is a game about dudes punching each other in the face. Not grandmasters analyzing and coming up with perfect strategems. Stockpiling just doesn't fit the games desired tempo or flavor.
The feel of a game is so important. Totally agree!
Vs. System the original one, had the best system.
That's so weird. I had just watched an old vs system pack opening.
Nice and extensive video but I think you don't really understand the resource systems if you think decent players in hearthstone have cards from 1 to 8 mana in their decks any more than MTG players have 1 to 8 cost cards in theirs, that sounds like someone who barely played the game would say if they just analysed its ruleset in a nutshell which makes me question the validity of any of the points brought up.
Yes, you should never blindly follow someone. It is always important to do your own research. My videos are a guide and are largely focused around my own opinion, but a lot of how I see things can be interpreted in a different way.
I'm sorry, but Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't have a real resource system since in a way the only things they use is life points and cards which don't really have a cost unless used for systems that they added in later in their life. (Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, Links) At least I get flesh and blood with the cost and pay mechanism that was built in.
Tribute summoning does exist since the beginning.
@@fernandobanda5734 ...how much has it been used? As in as of recently. (In Yu-Gi-Oh before gx, I could agree.)
I do think of yugioh as a resourceless TCG, but through the use of card effects and tribute summoning, it closely falls under 1.5 in a less traditional sense.
@@ShardTCG Probably...I don't feel it in a way...
@@ShardTCGthe only resource system I see is effects that require discard or xyz monsters using their materials to be detached to activate their effects
I think Legends of Runeterra has the best one.
lightseekers - best sistem
My fav is still yugiohs no resource system
😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮
HS and One Piece have the same sistem
You're kidding right? About the Dragonball Super TCG. That's completely wrong, Dragonball Super TCG falls under your #1, except any card can be an energy card and no limit to how much energy you can have. Even just looking at a card gallery or something, some cards cost over 6
Sorry about that. I got some bad info. My fault for not double checking this as I am not familiar with the trading card game but I am a childhood fan of the series.
@@ShardTCG I've never played either, just use to work with a card shop and got exposed to the basic rules.