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A Guide To Making Cards + Card Art Sources

Aix

By Aix
in Realistic Cards

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Aix

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I know this guide is seriously long, but it is worth the few minutes to read it. This contains the basics of what people are talking about when they review your card so you aren't left completely in the dark. I suppose if you have a understanding of something already then you may skim over that section.
 
Scroll down to Finding Pictures for Card Art Sources.
[hr]


CARDMAKING 101

[hr]Course Prerequisites
[hr]Before reading this thread, you should fulfil the prerequisites and learn the basics as they are not covered in this course.

This course goes by the assumption that you already know how to play the game itself and that you are able to behave yourself maturely on this forum. Making good cards is also much easier if you have experience with playing the actual game at a meta/competitive level. If you are unable to afford cards and/or cannot attend tournaments to play at a competitive level, you can Duel online on Dueling Network. Feel free to ask for a Duel with someone in the status bar, people here on YCM would be happy to help you if you ask politely.
[hr]Course Outline
[hr]Below is a Table of Contents for this thread and what this course covers.

  • Foreword
  • Making the Card
  • Tools and Templates
  • Finding Pictures
  • Card Balance
  • Usability
  • Levels and Stats
  • Card Advantage
  • Possible Drawbacks
  • Abusability
  • Card Design
  • Fair Matchups
  • Player Interaction
  • Thought and Skill
  • Card Flavor
  • Making Archetypes
  • Additional Tips

[hr]Foreword
[hr]Please note that Cardmaking, like anything else, requires much time and practice. Reading this thread will not instantly turn you into a magnificent Cardmaker, you will need to actually make cards, post them and receive and accept feedback from others and over time your Cardmaking skills will improve.

~Professor AixDivadis

[hr]Making the Card
[hr]So, what do you need to get started before anything else? What do you need to make a card? In reality, you don’t really need anything other than text for a card, you can simply write down the name, Attribute, Level, Type, effect and ATK/DEF and then you have a written card which can be posted in the Written Cards section. But, we all know that actual cards with a picture look better.
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Tools and Templates
First, we need a way to make the card. Sure, if you’re skilled enough, you can create your own template and/or cardmaker, but for those of us who can’t, there are plenty of tools out there for making a Yu-Gi-Oh! card. Of course, first and foremost, we have the cardmaker on this site, probably the first thing you saw when you came onto this site. It can be accessed again by clicking the “Cardmaker” button in the top right of this page. To use the cardmaker to make a card, you simply have to fill out the form and then click Generate. To post it onto this forum, you click on the card and a bit of code and a URL should pop up beneath the card, maybe after a bit of loading. Just copy and paste that into your post. But, the cardmaker here is far from perfect. For one thing, it can’t make Xyz Monsters. I frequently use a different site called Yugico to make cards because they are able to make Xyz Monsters, I prefer their template to the template here on YugiohCardMaker and they have a quick and easy way for you to crop your card images so they don’t looked squashed. Making cards there is pretty similar to making cards here on YugiohCardMaker.
However, if I want to make a really good looking card, I use Judas’s or Zextra’s Photoshop/GIMP template. It’s a bit trickier and less convenient to make cards with Photoshop or GIMP, but the result is a much better looking card. Just go to one of their threads and download the template and then download GIMP if you don’t already have Photoshop or GIMP. (Photoshop costs money while GIMP is free)
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Finding Pictures
Here are some sources I use.

  • deviantART - The world's biggest art site and community, I believe. There is a huge variety of art, however, there is a lot of not-so-good art to sort through to find pictures you want.
  • JazinKay's Albums - JazinKay was a member on this site who compiled a large collection of art and even cropped them so that they are perfectly square and easy to use. Note that the art is sorted into albums on the side.
  • Safebooru - An anime art site. Plenty of users use this site, but there is just as much not-so-good art to sort through.
  • Danbooru - Another anime art site. Pretty much the same as Safebooru, but larger, however, warning there is hentai (anime porn) on it.
  • Sword-Summoner's Albums - This album belongs to our former Custom Cards Moderator, Koko. She has a smaller collection all tailored for Yu-Gi-Oh!
  • Magic Deck Vortex - A large collection of cards from Magic: the Gathering. You might not like it because they are already used on cards from another card game, but these pictures are obviously suited for cards.
  • Pixiv - A Japanese art community, there's plenty of anime art, but there's non-anime art as well. I personally have started to use this site, because there is some really high quality and absolutely gorgeous art here. However, it is hard to navigate in the first place (they won't let you sort by popularity unless you pay), made harder by the fact it's in Japanese (thankfully I have automatic translation on) and that you have to sign up to properly browse. I personally find the really good artists and then browse through their bookmarks.
  • Kyng's Card Art Dump - belongs to Kyng, of course. Has a total of 1474 pictures.
  • Toyo's Art Vault - Have you figured out the pattern? Belongs to Toyo.
  • Axi-sensei's Collection - belongs to me. Gathered from the various artists I follow.
  • Legend of the Cryptids Card Gallery - Because so many of our images come from Legend of the Cryptids anyway, I decided to put up the card gallery. Note that they all have the card frame on them.
  • Kingdom Hearts Keeper's Card Images - Kingdom Lombax/Samhain's gallery.
  • M M - I dunno who this one is either.
  • Zanda's Imgur - Zanda Panda's card art collection.
  • hunduel's Deviantart - a gallery of custom images made by the member hunduel.
  • J-Max's YCM Archives - an archive made by J-Max. (duh)

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Official Card Grammar (OCG)
Official Card Grammar is the way that cards are supposed to be worded. I won't cover that here and turn you over to Zazubat's OCG Thread, Common Terms and Phrases & Other Useful Tips.
 
[hr]Card Balance
[hr]How can I make a card both fair while powerful enough to be useful? This is a question asked by many an aspiring Cardmaker. There is no simple way of doing this, it involves carefully analysing a card and it's applications, something not easily done by Cardmakers who are just starting off and requires a great deal of experience in Yu-Gi-Oh! itself. However, there is a way of breaking down this process and some general rules to follow to retain some balance in a card.
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Usability
To make a card useful, you must think of its purpose first. It should fit nicely for a specific use, don't just go making a random card. Then, after thinking of its use, think of the cards that have a similar use, will your idea make a more suitable card for that use? Is it actually something that is needed. Of course, this requires knowledge on the game to know what would be useful and what would be a good use for a card.
 
When thinking of the power level of a card, it is a good idea to relate it to a similar pre-existing competitive card and come close, but don't match or surpass (because Konami is horrible at making balanced cards) its power level. For example, if you were making a Rank 6, you may look at Photon Strike Bounzer and how useful it is.
 
Often a card's power level is very much related to the card advantage it generates so look below to the card advantage section.
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Levels and Stats
There are some lenient rules to deciding the Level and Stats (ATK and DEF) of a monster. First of all, a monster’s Level and ATK and DEF are usually, supposed to be, correlated, the higher a monster’s Level, the higher their ATK and/or DEF, though this is not always the case. Often, higher Level monsters will have low ATK and/or DEF as a drawback because they have such a powerful effect, but we’ll discuss effects and drawbacks later. A general rule is that Level 3 and lower monsters have less than 1700 ATK, Level 4 monsters have less than 2000 ATK, Level 5 and 6 monsters have less than 2500 ATK, Level 7 & 8 monsters have less than 3000 ATK, Level 9 & 10 monsters have less than 4000 ATK and Level 11 to 12 have less than 5000 ATK. If a monster has high ATK, it should not have high DEF and vice versa. Many of these rules have exceptions, but it is best to follow them.

It is also dangerous to have high-level monsters be easily Summoned/Special Summoned because there are powerful high Rank Xyz Monsters who are only balanced because it’s supposed to be hard to bring them out.
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Card Advantage
The most basic way of keeping a card balanced is to keep it from giving too much card advantage and to keep it playable, one prevents it from taking away too much card advantage. Allow me to first explain what card advantage is: It is the number of cards a player has on their side of the field and in their hand -- the number of cards they currently have accessible to play with, use and/or pay costs with -- compared to the number of cards their opponent has on their side of the field or in their hand. Obvious, a player wants to have a lot of card advantage and there is no real such thing as too much card advantage. Some cards give or take away card advantage -- increase or decrease the number of cards a player has on their side of the field and in their hand compared to the number of cards their opponent has on their side of the field or in their hand.

Calculating how much card advantage a card gives or takes away is simple, you count how much card advantage a player would have before and after activating an effect. We refer a card that increases card advantage by one as a +1 and a card that increases card advantage by two as a +2 and so on. We refer to a card that decreases card advantage by one as -1 and a card that decreases card advantage by two a -2 and so on. A card that ultimately does not increase or decrease card advantage is a +0.
 
In terms of card advantage, losing cards that get used up (I mean like, Spell Cards are sent to the Graveyard after being used) are counted as a cost for the effect. For example, Pot of Avarice is a +1 because it lets you draw two cards while at the same time, when it is used up, it itself is sent to the Graveyard, so if you started out with 5 cards in your hand, you end up with 6 when the card resolves, the fact that it affects your Graveyard is irrelevant to card advantage. Monster Reborn is a +0 because it Special Summons a monster from either Graveyard, making a monster come onto your side of the field, but is also ultimately sent to the Graveyard when it resolves, so if you started off with 1 card on the field and 4 cards in your hand for a total of 5, you end up with 2 cards on the field and 3 cards in your hand for a total of 5. Dark World Dealings is a -1 because it lets you draw a card and then discard a card as well as sending itself to the Graveyard, so if you started out with 5 cards, you would end up with 4 cards. It is to be noted, however, that a card like Broww, Huntsman of Dark World is a +1 because it does not use itself up, its effect activates when you are supposed to lose card advantage, and you lose none instead since you draw, so what was supposed -1 becomes +0.

Usually good cards are +0 or +1 but have a very specific use and can't just be used at any time. Otherwise, they should be -1. The ability to properly judge whether the restrictions are sufficient is something that comes with experience, but +1 should be only something that happens very rarely in a turn.
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Possible Drawbacks
Some possible drawbacks you can have for powerful effects include:

  • Discarding is a very standard cost and directly relates to card advantage. Notable examples: Number 22: Zombiestein, Lightning Vortex.
  • Banishing a monster(s) from Graveyard is another common cost, however, note that it often isn't much of a cost and doesn't relate at all to card advantage
  • Preventing Special Summoning for a turn. This is for more powerful effects, usually those that can help with pulling off powerful combos. Notable example: Pot of Duality.
  • Preventing attacking or preventing you from conducting your Battle Phase. This is used for destruction/card removal effects or powerful effects that help comboes. Notable example: Number 61: Volcasaurus, Hieratic Dragon King of Atum, ----------
    Abusability
    The other thing to consider when making a card is whether your card can be abused -- used in a way that would make it far more powerful that it is intended to. I can't really help you with this, you simply have to think of ways that this card would be used. It's something that comes with experience with Dueling. Some cards can create loops with other cards and result in OTKs.
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    Dangerous Effects and Mechanics
    There are some effects and mechanics that are quite dangerous or abusable and aren’t to be used without big restrictions or drawbacks. These include:
    • <a data-ipb="nomediaparse" data-cke-saved-href="http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Battlin" href="http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Battlin" _boxer_sparrer"=""> Drawing: Drawing is dangerous because it can be easily abused, even if you add a cost, like discard a card to it. Lots of draw cards allows for you to turbo through your Deck and acquire the cards you need for an OTK. Notable examples: Dark World Dealings, Trade-In, Allure of Darkness.
    • "Bouncing": Returning a card from the field to the hand, especially, returning a card you control to the hand. Returning a monster your opponent controls to the hand is already quite powerful because it bypasses any sort of effect destruction, but returning a card you control to the hand simply gives room for abuse, especially when you return a Spell/Trap Card to the hand. Stuff like Fire Formation - Tenki and Call of the Haunted are meant to only be used once, but if you are able to return it to the hand, it can be used again and again. Notable examples: Compulsory Evacuation Device, Genex Ally Birdman, Blackwing - Zephyros the Elite.
    • "Milling": Sending cards from your Deck to the Graveyard may seem like a cost to newer players, and it was a drawback during the good old days of Yu-Gi-Oh!, but really, it just thins your Deck so that you can acquire your combo pieces, not to mention that some combo pieces need to be in the Graveyard. There is a reason why Foolish Burial is Limited despite being a -1. This mechanic allows for really big and powerful plays or even FTKs and OTKs. A lot of Decks right now want monsters in the Graveyard, so "milling"/sending cards from the Deck to the Graveyard is not a cost. Cards that draw and discard are also sort of milling. Notable examples: Lyla, Lightsworn Priestess, Bugintei Kagutsuchi, Dragon Shrine.
    • Sending: Sending to the Graveyard is quite powerful because it bypasses from cards such as Maestroke the Symphony Djinn. Notable example: Number 50: Blackship of Corn.
    • Banishing: Banishing (from the field) is very powerful because it bypasses destruction immunity and also prevents cards from hitting the Graveyard, as many cards in the Graveyard can be retrieved or Special Summoned again quite easily, such as Grapha, Dragon Lord of Dark World. Some Decks don't mind getting their cards banished, while other Decks, like Dark Worlds, can hardly stand getting Grapha banished. Notable examples: Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, Chaos Sorcerer, Spellbook of Fate (third and most-used effect).
    • "Spinning": Returning a card from the field to the Deck is like banishing in that it bypasses destruction immunity and also prevents a monster from hitting the Graveyard. Pros to this compared to banishing is that some cards don't mind to be banished and can be retrieved/Special Summoned, but they have a hard time coming back from the Deck. However, some cards would like to return to the Deck. There's also the fact that returning a card to your Deck, such as a Limited card, let's you reuse a card that isn't really meant to be reused. This is an uncommon effect. Notable examples: Madolche Queen Tiaramisu, Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Cardinal, Phoenix Wing Wind Blast.
    • Not targeting: Targeting is something that many cards that only affect 1 card are expected to do and there is protection against targeting. However, cards like Spellbook of Fate which doesn't target bypasses such protection. Also, not targeting means that if your opponent chains/responds to your effect and protects their card somehow or removes the card from the field, you can choose to apply the effect to a different card, making this extremely powerful. Notable examples: Madolche Queen Tiaramisu, Spellbook of Fate.
    • Negation: Negation is really powerful, particularly Quick Effect negation effects or Counter Traps. As many cards and effects have costs, if you chain and negate the card, not only have you made your opponent waste a valuable card that they evidently thought worth using, but you've also made them pay a cost for no reason. Other negation renders cards useless for a certain duration of time and allow you to bypass annoying effects like destruction immunity, which is still really powerful.

    [hr]Card Design
    [hr]What's just as important, probably more important, than Card Balance is Design. Design is all about the very concept of the card, while cards can be toned down in terms of balance, usually a simple matter of adjusting the amount of card advantage, they often cannot be toned down in terms of design, because to change a card's design is usually to change the fundamental concept of the card, so you'd effectively be creating a whole different card.
     
    Design is all about keeping the game smart and fun, all about how to make the game smarter and more interesting or amusing and better in general. The goal of Yu-Gi-Oh! is to have fun (okay, that's not strictly true from Konami's viewpoint, but f*** Konami, they are horrible card designers). There are the do's and don't's of design, while there are almost always exceptions to the rule, if you are starting off, it's best to stick to them.
     
    However, figuring out if a card is bad design requires you to actually think (oh my god, I can't believe it) about what a card does and what sort of applications it has, but there are some general ways to avoid some forms of bad design.
     
    Elements of Fun
    Okay, I've just said that Design makes Yu-Gi-Oh! fun, but what are the design elements of the game makes it fun? Let's look at Yu-Gi-Oh! as a game, it is a relatively fair game played with two (or more) people that incorporates a combination of luck and skill.

    • Fairness. All games have to be fair for all participants so that everyone can have fun and there's no less soreness over losing. While it is not entirely possible to keep it 100% fair in a Trading Card Game, there are some design elements that can keep it as fair as possible.
    • Player-to-Player Interaction is what makes Yu-Gi-Oh! a two player game, otherwise, we could just mind our own business and do something on our own. I will elaborate later in the Player-to-Player Interaction section, but there are many Decks and cards which inhibit this crucial element of the game.
    • Luck keeps the game more amusing and unpredictable, the unpredictability puts the spice and excitement in life and in games, with luck even a newcomer to the game as some hope of winning, unlike in Chess where the player with less skill is pretty much guaranteed to lose and the player, unless they are very diehard and stubborn, will decline from games against more skilled players. Luck also means comebacks, which brings a certain degree of drama into the picture. How epic is it when you turn the tables on an utterly hopeless-seeming situation? However, too much luck removes skill from the picture, and skill is also something that makes the game fun.
    • Skill keeps us in the game with the desire to improve and also, for all you parents out there :3, improves our thinking skills in real life... somewhat... It adds depth to the game, it adds a fun, strategic element and increases our elation upon having outplayed our opponent because we have just won something fair and square with partially our own skill, we feel like a war commander who applied his tactics to bring a glorious victory, we feel like a deviously cunning and smart person like Lelouch vi Britannia (okay, maybe neither of these examples, but I gotta make this sound cool, you know?), however, while you may not know it some cards destroy that strategic element and thus are badly designed.

    These elements are integral to Yu-Gi-Oh! and extremely important to consider when making cards. I will explain each of them in greater depth in the sections below and explain how to incorporate them into your cards and how to stop your cards from hampering these elements of design.
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    Fair Matchups
    Pretty much any game has to be fair for it to be fun, both players should have an equal chance at winning. True, it's nigh impossible for a Trading Card Game to be completely fair as some Decks as somewhat better than others, however, that doesn't mean we don't try to make it fair. I'm not just talking about balance here, balance is a whole different topic, there are some things that shouldn't be done that affect how fair a Duel can be. What I mean is that some cards and Decks specifically counter or fare especially well against another Deck or play style meaning that one player has an especially high chance of winning and this leads to a game state known as Lame Duck, where the Duel drags on but it's obvious that unless a miracle happens a specific player is going to win.In this kind of Duel, one player can't do anything whether because their cards have been wiped out with ease or a card effect is preventing them, removing the Player-to-Player Interaction part of the game covered in Section IV.
     
    Stuff that do this are cards like Macro Cosmos, Dimensional Fissure, Skill Drain and any of the other Drain cards, Light- and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, and Evilswarm Ophion. These cards destroy your opponent's options, a Zombies player can't do anything against Macro Cosmos, unless they manage to topdeck Mystical Space Typhoon or Heavy Storm. A Synchro-oriented Deck can't do anything against Evilswarm Ophion. And then there's System Down which allow you to utterly obliterate Machine-Type Decks. If you are running a Deck that can effectively utilise any of these cards, against the right opponent, you are almost automatically guaranteed a win, which is unfair and not fun at all.
     
    How to stop this? Don't make cards that pick on a specific Type, Attribute, Level, kind (as in Ritual Monsters, Fusion Monsters, etc.) or play style. Simple as that.
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    Player Interaction
    I'm going to quote Griffin, the previous guy to speak about design, on this: Why do you think Soltaire is not played at parties? That's because if you're going to be playing a game with someone else, it's more fun if you are actually interacting and doing something with them rather than sitting across from each other, each to their own. Player-to-player interaction also makes each game unique, and thus interesting, as different things happen each time, your opponent may react differently each time and you can't just follow a pre-thought-out routine and repeat it game after game.
     
    Decks that decide the game in one turn, often decide the game by the opening hand, destroy player-to-player interaction as only one player does anything and the other can only watch as they lose. These Decks with cards, such as Exodia Decks, Blaze Fenix Decks, Shooting Quasar Dragon Decks, hard lockdown Decks, Stall and Burn Decks and Decks that just follow a pre-determined routine, such as Spellbook/Prophecy, don't require interaction with the opponent. Cards that promote these kinds of Decks are badly designed. You got to think on this one, think about how your card would be used and if it would promote such play.
     
    Cards that have player interaction are cards that react to your opponent or do things depending on what your opponent does or has done or even give your opponent a choice to make. There is also Battle Interaction, which is making cards and effects trigger off of monsters battling.
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    Luck
    Luck keeps each game different and gives players of all skill levels a chance to win. This game really doesn't need any more luck than it already has, so stay away from it. All the luck needed to keep this game interesting is in the drawing and opening hard part of this game. Too much luck decreases the amount of skill in this game. However, if you really want to do a luck card, don't give it a negative effect.
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    Thought and Skill
    What if I told you... games that require skill and thinking are more fun? Don't tell me it isn't, because that would just shine bad light on you. Strategy is another part of this game, it engages you and your mind. Skill lets us improve and get better, it gives us something to come back to the game for as each time you get better. It gives you something to be proud of when you win. So how do cards increase the skill and thought to be put into this game? Skill is all about judgement, decision-making and choices, putting thought into each move you make, so to put skill into a card, you have to make it so that the person has to think before using the card. This is frequently accomplished by giving a card good costs and/or drawbacks and make the player decide whether the cost is worth the pay-off.
     
    One particularly infamous card that requires no thought would be the banned Pot of Greed. There is no thought that is required to use it, you simply play it the moment you draw it, there are no drawbacks, no reason not to and all the reason to use it when you can.
     
    On the other hand, we have Pot of Duality, which is more often than not a card that requires thought to play with its drawback that prevents you from Special Summoning and the choice it presents you. Pot of Duality reveals three random cards from the top of your Deck and quite often it can be a hard decision, skill dictates how well you make the right decision for the situation. There's also the drawback. If it didn't have the drawback, there'd be no reason not to use it, just like Pot of Greed, because who doesn't want a deck-thinner that presents you with a choice of what you want to draw? Many Decks nowadays require Special Summoning and yet still use this card. Why? Because it's so good. However, now you are also presented with the decision between sacrificing your ability to Special Summon for a moderate chance to draw something awesome.
     
    Costs and Conservative Playing
    Conservative playing is a big part of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s skill component. It's about using the least amount of cards to take care of a situation, whether it's removing a particularly card from your opponent's side of the field or surviving your next turn, you don't want to squander your resources, no one uses a cannon to slay rabbits because that would be a waste, and you want to save cards to use next turn. Cards with costs make you think more about choosing what to do and what not to do that turn because it limits the number of things you can do. If you can only do a certain number of things, you want to make sure you do the best things possible.
     
    Using too many resources or doing too much in a turn, unless you are putting yourself in a situation where you can win, is called overextending and is a bad idea because you are doing unnecessary things when you could be saving your cards for when you really need them.
     
    However, some cards, like Spellbook of Judgment and Super Rejuvenation promote and encourage overextending. You no longer have to make hard choices, you no longer have to manage how much you do in a turn because Spellbook of Judgment and/or Super Rejuvenation will let you regain all your resources again, thus they are really badly designed. Spellbook of Judgment makes a Spellbook player just think about how many Spellbooks they can activate in a turn and Super Rejuvenation gets a Dragon Rulers player to try to do as much as possible, overextend as much as possible.
     
    Punishing Unskilled Play
    Punishing unskilled play and bad choices forces players to think more. Cards like Dark Hole and Heavy Storm are great for this because if your opponent overextended and filled their field for no particular reason, you can just play one of these cards. The reason they may be bad and they are Limited is because they also clear the field so you can easily OTK. If you can make cards that punish unskilled play without allowing OTKs, then kudos to you.
     
    Skillful cards are hard to make and require a lot of thought into how the card works and its applications, but basically, you want to have costs and present the player with hard choices.
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    Card Flavor
    Less so in Yu-Gi-Oh! and more so in other games, there is a backstory to the cards and a reason they do what they do. For example, WIND and Winged Beast-Type monsters return to the hand because they can fly back into the hand. FIRE monsters often inflict damage directly to your opponent's Life Points, which is called Burn, or they get stronger in ATK, like adding to the fire and making it bigger. Warrior-Type monsters often have effects that relate to ATK and DEF and the Battle Phase or Equip Spell Cards because Warriors fight and use weapons. Spellcaster-Types generally have a lot of effects that have things to do with Spell Cards. Make sure to give your card a name and picture that is actually relevant to its effect, so a card called "Kill" that shows a guy getting killed should not Special Summon a monster from your Graveyard.
    [hr]Making Archetypes
    [hr]The first thing to do when making an Archetype is deciding its gimmick and flavor. Gimmick refers to its general theme in its effects or play style as well its win condition, for example, Lightsworns mill (send cards from the top of your Deck to the Graveyard) in order to get four Lightsworn monsters into the Graveyard for Judgment Dragon, Bujin revolves around protecting Bujin Yamato, Dragon Rulers spam Special Summons by banishing other Dragons and etc. Archetypes that revolve around simply Special Summoning each other (such as Wind-Ups and Umbralis) are boring and overdone so you should stay away from those. Another thing that is overdone, as well as being bad design, is turning what would be costs into effects, like Dark World and Fabled, where one would think discarding is a cost but its not, and Atlanteans, which do almost the same thing except they can be triggered from anywhere as long as it’s a cost. I’ve seen more than enough of these archetypes which do this, except instead of discarding, they banish, or they Tribute (ahem, Hieratics), or they shuffle themselves into the Deck and etc. Turning costs into plusses is bad design because you are effectively nullifying or removing the cost. Costs are an important part of skill and design, managing costs is a part of skill and forces you to make harder choices.
     
    Flavor refers to the aesthetic theme and what your archetype is, it should tie very heavily to what your Archetype does and may in fact dictate what your cards do, for example, Lightsworns are some sort of religious order seeking to bring down Judgment on their foes, turn after turn they accumulate power (faith and/or followers?) until they are able to Summon Judgment Dragon, and Gladiator Beasts are anthropomorphic pit fighters who switch out after a round of fighting (presumably to rest and prepare for the next round), the player is rewarded when their gladiators successfully battle.
     
    With this decided, now it’s time to actually make the members of your Archetype. You only really need up to 10 cards possibly excluding Extra Deck monsters. Any more and people won’t review it because it’s so big and you are bound to have a bunch of unnecessary cards. Think about what your Archetype is meant to do and remove any cards that don’t help with what it’s supposed to be doing. The following is types of cards that Archetypes generally tend to include:
    -          The Searcher – Searching is something very common and is very important to contributing to a Deck’s consistency as well as giving you a choice thus contributing to an archetype’s design and skill. Without enough consistency, a Deck may be too luck-based and thus less skill-based, but too much consistency can make an archetype overly linear or too powerful. Try to stay away from the typical Stratos-esque searcher that searches a monster upon being Summoned (Stratos is especially overpowered because he can get his effect from being Normal Summoned or Special Summoned) and stay away from the typical Emergency Call-esque Spell searcher. These cards are Limited/Semi-Limited for a good reason, they are extremely fast and set you up immediately, they also thin the deck very well, so you are effectively running a Deck with less than 40 cards. Try to vary it and slow it down by making a Trap searcher instead or maybe a searcher that only searches upon being destroyed or when it destroys a monster by battle. Better yet, tie in your searching with your archetype’s gimmick. You may even not have a searcher as some Archetypes are consistent enough without.
    -          Card Removal – Almost all Decks have a form of card removal for getting rid of problem-some cards. However, it is not actually completely necessary in the archetype. Mind also that many Decks have access to card removal and such in the form of the Extra Deck monsters they are able to access including none-Archetype specific Extra Deck monsters. Archetypes that can go into Rank 7 can get Dragossack for example and Rank 4 Decks can use Diamond Dire Wolf if they really have no other way around.
    -          Special Summoner – Special Summoning has become a very big part of Yugioh and it gives you access to Extra Deck monsters on turn one. As I have said before Decks that only Special Summon are overdone and boring and they usually have a very linear play style, beware also that a lot of Special Summoning can lead to loops. Special Summon effects should typically be once-per-turn.
    -          Beatstick – The monster that is easy to Summon and has high ATK or is able to boost its own ATK so that it can defeat your opponent’s monsters. After all, the main way to win in this game is to battle.
     
    In the current game, Decks must either have speed or defensive capabilities to fend off opponents with speed or a bit of both. By speed I mean how soon they can make big plays and pull off combos to destroy your card advantage and/or bring out powerful monsters, Decks like this include Dragon Rulers which can easily pull out a bunch of beatsticks or Dracossack and Big Eye for massive damage and Mermail which can destroy your cards quickly and attack with a bunch of monsters, often OTKing you. However, there are Control Decks like Evilswarm, which sits on Evilswarm Ophion and has Infestation Pandemic to protect it, Decks like Constellar with Constellar Pleiades blocking off all of your plays and Constellar Omega protecting it, Decks like Bujin which protect Bujin Yamato so you can’t do anything against them. Properly judging how well your Deck compares to these Decks requires you to have knowledge of these Decks and how they play as well as being able to imagine what sort of plays and combos your Deck can make (experience playing Yugioh itself is irreplaceable, if you are new to Yugioh feel free to call up any YCMember onto DuelingNetwork or YGOPro), but you can still look at your cards and see how much card advantage your cards can create and how much you can do in a turn. Typically, make your cards work together and once per turn create a +0 or +1, make sure that by the end of your turn, you should have LESS cards in your hand than what you started off with even if you are a conservative player, think of the combos that can be made with your cards.
    [hr]Additional Tips
    [hr]Never give up or get angry. Be sure to take criticism and try to understand the reasoning behind anything anyone says. If you do not understand something, just ask. Also, be sure to check out other people's cards, learn from cards other people have made and try to figure out a card's good points and flaws. Reviewing a card can be just as beneficial, if not more beneficial, to you as making a card.
    [hr]I'm sure I've missed stuff in this thread, and I apologize. If there is something that I have missed, please point it out to me and I will try to fix it as soon as possible.

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Zazubat Newbie

Zazubat

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Very nicely done. The links you provide are very helpful. I would suggest adding it to all cards at some point as well. Examples are very good to have, and you do it well. I can't say there is anything really wrong with it right now. Hopefully more to come? I don't know if it's a typo, but when you mention Broww, you call it a +1, shouldn't it be +0, since when you lose him, you go -1, then +0. I don't know, I always found card advantage to be confusing myself. While I get how you cannot help with abusability, I would suggest adding an example of a card (custom or not) that can easily be abused with something, even though it was not intended.

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Aix Newbie

Aix

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Very nicely done. The links you provide are very helpful. I would suggest adding it to all cards at some point as well. Examples are very good to have, and you do it well. I can't say there is anything really wrong with it right now. Hopefully more to come? I don't know if it's a typo, but when you mention Broww, you call it a +1, shouldn't it be +0, since when you lose him, you go -1, then +0. I don't know, I always found card advantage to be confusing myself. While I get how you cannot help with abusability, I would suggest adding an example of a card (custom or not) that can easily be abused with something, even though it was not intended.

For example, Dark World Dealings is a -1. Broww makes it a +0. Turning -1 into +0 is a +1.

 

Yeah, I'll be adding to this, I just wanted to at least get it out, so that if any noobs come by I can just point and say "Read this."

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Zazubat Newbie

Zazubat

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For example, Dark World Dealings is a -1. Broww makes it a +0. Turning -1 into +0 is a +1.

 

Yeah, I'll be adding to this, I just wanted to at least get it out, so that if any noobs come by I can just point and say "Read this."

Alright, I get what you mean now, that makes more sense in that context now when I think about it.

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Aix Newbie

Aix

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Permission to add this to the RC guide so people don't have to change threads? 

I still have stuff I want to add to this. And it's easier to just point people to a thread of just cardmaking because some of them actually aren't all "NO IM NOT THE NOOB! UR THE N00B!!1!!11!11!!"

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Loyalist Newbie

Loyalist

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how do you make the card xyz


i'm not able to make it xyz

It is actually quite straight forward, use the drop down menu that lists "Monster" and click "Xyz", then click generate and it will change your card into an Xyz.

 

Example:

[spoiler='Aix is a chet']Before:
[url=http://s1267.photobucket.com/user/loyalist1/media/Test1234_zps0a7b9ecf.png.html]Test1234_zps0a7b9ecf.png[/URL]
After:
[url=http://s1267.photobucket.com/user/loyalist1/media/Test123_zps30ec1fe2.png.html]Test123_zps30ec1fe2.png[/URL][/spoiler]

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-Dom- Newbie

-Dom-

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This was really helpful, and I've now made my first card, thanks. This may seem like a really stupid question, but how can I now put that card in RC? As in, is the image of the card I made (on this site) saved in my documents, or elsewhere? I can get to it fine on the card maker section, I'm just somehow struggling to actually put it anywhere.

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