Card Design Guide

[Zauls]

So if you’ve been in Realistic Cards long enough, you will probably have heard the term “card design” uttered here and there, but very few people currently understand fully what card design actually incorporates. Hopefully this guide shall help with that somewhat.

 

Contents:

Card Concept and Flavour

Balance and Fairness

Player Interaction

Skill

 

Card Concept and Flavour

 

Card design starts with the entire concept of the card. In the initial stages of designing a card, you need to think about what the card sets out to achieve and how it will achieve it. What role will it play in the TCG meta? If you don’t think about this, you could end up creating something that is outclassed and useless or something that wouldn’t have a place in the game.

 

The concept of a card is embedded in right from the start and cannot be changed by fiddling round with the effect. If the concept of your card is either broken or useless, then you have to start over completely.  The concept of a card (and indeed, card design itself) cannot be changed by simply adding a heftier cost or limiting the use to once per turn or something like that.

 

Another part of the initial concept of a card includes the flavour. This covers things like artwork and fitting it properly with typing and attribute and stats, but it is also about the background of the card and where it fits in in the Yu-Gi-Oh world. Normally, competitive players don’t even think about this kind of thing but it’s nice to think about it because it adds an element of interest into the card. When you’ve thought about all this, you can even design the effect of the card based around the creature itself, which is a surprisingly difficult thing to do when you’re also trying to create an effect that also fits in with the TCG meta.

 

Balance and Fairness

 

This is something that most members should be familiar with. You need to make sure your card doesn’t create unfair combos or doesn’t affect the game far too much on its own. Cards with fairly powerful effects are fine, but they should have significant costs/restrictions. This doesn’t mean that you can create something ridiculously powerful and then put a huge cost/restriction on it because that is terrible design and should always be avoided. There are also certain mechanics in the game that should be avoided or restricted because they are too powerful. These include:

 

Special Summoning from the Deck: Cards that Special Summon from the Deck are extremely powerful because it creates ridiculous consistency and it can make powerful plays far too easily. I would avoid it altogether or restrict it to being destroyed by battle, since that makes it difficult to trigger. Examples of badly designed cards that Special Summon from the Deck include Artifact Sanctum and Geargiagear.

 

 

Floodgates: Floodgate cards are cards that completely restrict a certain mechanic in the game. They are normally Continuous Spells/Traps. This is obviously bad design because they stop certain decks from functioning entirely while the player using the floodgate can continue to play their half of the game. It turns the game into solitaire, essentially. Examples of Floodgates include Soul Drain, Mistake and Macro Cosmos.

 

 

Banishing: Banishing your opponent’s cards is extremely powerful because banished cards are more difficult to bring back, so they are cut off from that card for the rest of the game. Also, a lot of existing cards can protect themselves or other cards from destruction but not banishing. Banishing gets round those protection effects and is extremely difficult to stop.

 

Non-targeting removal: Whether it destroys, banishes or returns to the hand, make sure it always targets. Non-targeting cards are ridiculous because if your opponent can save one of their cards from destruction, you can choose to destroy another at resolution since your opponent has to respond before you decide what card to destroy. This means they have to waste resources protecting the card they most want to keep, while they lose another card anyway. Examples of this include Artifact Moralltach and Spiritualism.

 

 

Mass Summoning: This is to be avoided at all costs. Any card that can Special Summon more than 1 monster at a time, or that can lead to a swarm of monsters hitting the field, can lead to broken combos and OTKs. Examples of this include Rekindling and Hysteric Party.

 

 

Mass Destruction: Any card that can destroy a large number of cards in one go should be avoided for obvious reasons. It can lead to easy OTKs or can completely reset the game. Examples of this include Judgment Dragon and Black Rose Dragon.

 

 

 

Player Interaction

 

Yu-Gi-Oh is a 2 player game. This is a very important thing to remember when designing cards. There isn’t much worse than sitting there watching your opponent do all their silly combos not noticing you’re even sat opposite them. Not all individual cards have to interact with the opponent because the game itself will cause some interaction, but make sure that if you’re making an Archetype or something that it doesn’t just play solitaire all game. Examples of solitaire decks include Infernities and Spellbooks.

 

Skill

 

Everyone complains that Yu-Gi-Oh takes no skill and is all luck-based. This is partly due to bad card design on Konami’s part. Cards are so easy to use these days and players are no longer rewarded for conservative play as cards are always going to be good whenever they are played. Giving an element of decision-making in cards is an excellent way of putting skill back into the game. I have created an example of this with my Doomcaliber Lord card (this is also an example of good player interaction).

 

[Spoiler Doomcaliber Lord]

Cannot be Special Summoned. When this card is Normal Summoned: Both players draw 1 card and reveal it. If your opponent reveals a Monster Card by this effect: Send it to the Graveyard. If your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card with the same name as a Spell/Trap card revealed by this effect: Tribute this card; negate the activation and effect of that card and destroy it. You can tribute this card; add 1 "Doomcaliber" monster from your Deck to your hand.

[/Spoiler]

 

Hopefully this guide can be helpful both to newer and more experienced members and it can be used as a reviewing/judging reference as well. This guide will probably be updated every now and then if I get suggestions from other members, so keep checking up.

[Maeriberii Haan]

Looking quite superb Saber, though I really believed that the "Card Concept" part should be expanded, and elaborated further, especially on designs that is fundamentally flawed part. Other section maybe have to be expanded in the future, but so far I believe that some examples or further elaboration would make that section better.

 

Something I'd also mention in the inherently powerful mechanic is spinning (returning a card into the deck) or just non-destruction removal in general. A somewhat more iffy ones would be draw-locking in any way (things like Mega Raiza or Time Seal, but not sure on this), alternate win conditions, hand-killing effects, and maaybe, Stratos and RotAs, but really not sure about that one.

 

But yeah, great stuff.

[Atypical-Abbie]

I'm kind of a believer that everything can be balanced enough to even make mass Summoning, or one of my most hated things, floodgate cards balanced enough. Of course, making them too balanced is a problem too, and then there are some Decks that can abuse the balance some cards have, such as Bujin with Vanity's Emptiness. Of course, it all depends on what your card does at the end of the day.

 

On another note, here are a few things I think needs to be mentioned, and of course, this can be subjective, so only add them if you feel it's needed. I would also have included what Nai said, but you know, he said it already :P

 

ATK/DEF is more important than you think. While it's obvious that you don't give a Level 4 monster 3000 ATK, unless of course you restrict it good enough, giving your monster a lower ATK/DEF can change how powerful the card becomes. It's also important that you don't make cards specifically to be most useful with that amount of ATK/DEF, since that is just a cheap way to make it more powerful. Also note that you shouldn't give a card low ATK/DEF and a powerful effect, but then have the ability to easily make a Synchro/Xyz Monster with it, making the lackluster ATK/DEF not actually matter all that much in the end.

 

Searchers should never be able to search anything that searches. Deck thinning is powerful, getting the right cards is powerful, getting more cards is powerful. If you make a searcher that searches itself it means you replaced that card, making your Deck thinner, giving you access to your combo pieces more easily.

 

Floaters, more specifically, floaters that do more than just float. These are becoming more and more common, with things like the Shaddolls making dying a non-issue. You should avoid cards that replace themselves here as well, Gusto and Yang Zing are examples of things that do that, though Gusto also don't have any other effects and they are also different from card to card and they also restrict what you can Summon, making triggering them tougher sometime. You can do this right, but don't make it so killing the monsters provides you with more benefits, even though it took your opponent 3-4 cards to actually kill it.

 

Type/Attribute/Level/Rank hate is rarely a good thing. For me, unless it's quite hard to use or so specific that it isn't of any use, you should probably avoid this. Qliphort is an example of Level/Rank hate that is good for the wrong reasons, not to mention everything else that Qliphort do. Ally of Justice does this quite balanced, since it's only against a specific Attribute (besides Catastor of course), and LIGHT Decks are still allowed to play. I would still not advise to do this, but you can do it properly, as with everything else.

[Zauls]

Thanks for the feedback and the advice, guys. Really appreciate it. As I said, the guide isn't entirely complete or comprehensive and there is definitely room for further elaboration, but I put it up now because it was so desperately needed. Your points are all valid and I will edit them in soon. 

[Atypical-Abbie]

Thanks for the feedback and the advice, guys. Really appreciate it. As I said, the guide isn't entirely complete or comprehensive and there is definitely room for further elaboration, but I put it up now because it was so desperately needed. Your points are all valid and I will edit them in soon. 

Take your time, no need to rush something like this.

[Trebuchet MS]

On the point of non-targeting removal, I feel that the problem arising from cards like Moralltach and Zielgigas is that its controller chooses the card during resolution, and the opponent has very little information on what card would be threatened. On the other hand, Fissure and Smashing Ground don't target, but also don't let their controller choose (outside of a few circumstances), and their removal criteria also allows the opponent to see what's being threatened and make an informed decision.

 

Also consider the nature of removal. S/T bounce (that doesn't affect your own) is hardly that big of a deal outside of particular situations (like defusing a large array of I-Barriers) due to the fact that the S/T can be re-activated or re-Set during their controller's next turn. This is why it can non-target and shrug off negations and still not be spammed to hell and back in all Decks - you'd rather be destroying S/Ts rather than bouncing them (unless those are your own). Monster bounce, or any form of destruction, banishment, or spinning, that allows a choice during resolution, is far more problematic to be subject to.

[Blake]

I just noticed this, so where to start...

It's really not that hard to mix flavor with usability. It just takes sitting down and thinking it through, as opposed to slapping it all together immediately.

I dislike the point about SSing from the deck. It's not wrong to SS from the deck, it just requires intelligence to not go overboard. Onslaught of the Fire Kings clones aren't the way to go, but Road Warrior (itself) is fine. Shadow Vampire is fine, but Batteryman Charger is not. It's all down to how restricted the execution is. It's fine if it's done in a coherent, restricted manner.

Only issue with the floodgates section is that it assumes you have knowledge of WHY this is bad design. Oh, and that other floodgates exist albeit in more vulnerable ways, like Majesty's Fiend or Banisher of the Radiance.

Banishing is right, but it needs to mention that banishing (from the board/hand) should be avoided. Trishula's a +0, but it banishes, which makes it a "+2" in a lot of situations. Granted, Trish is horrendous design and a bad example... So let's say Caius and Ebon Illusion Magician. The former is fine design, and the latter isn't quite. Yeah, it requires vanillas, but it rewards you a bit too much for using them, similar to Rescue Rabbit, in exchange for them being harder to summon in general. Also needs to cover banishing as a cost/from the grave/deck, as these are all different.

I don't feel like the mass summoning point is correct, either. The Traveller and the Burning Abyss may not be the best design, but it's not the worst, either. Its biggest issue is that it is prone to restricting design, and if that design is not restricted, it will be broken... But in a finished set, it could be fine. Same for Gagagaback, iirc.

And Mass Destruction is also off-target. It's incredibly black and white and doesn't really cover why or what. I mean, is Arcanite Magician bad design? It's not quite mass destruction, but it's still 2 cards of removal. Dark Hole's not bad for the game. I'd say that BRD isn't awful design or for the game in a Heavy Stormless format.

This also doesn't take into account impact vs design, which is real. Case in point would be Exciton (like BRD). It's definitely horrendous design, but it is positive to the gamestate at times. Granted, your design should come before that here, but it's an important discussion point for understanding design.

Both Shaddolls and Dragon Rulers encouraged skill a lot. Both are terrible design. They do encourage that resource management, but they still do too much in design. YGO has actually had some skillful decks showing up for a while, now.

Also lacks the fact that generating card advantage just because (pot of greed) or mass thinning (Kuribandit, Graceful Charity) are not well designed. Also leaves cards, milling, etc. Then there's the flip side with, say, Cardcar or Duality.

This just feels really... bare bones, and not even to the point with most of it. It's not bad or outright wrong, but it oversimplifies a complicated process.

EDIT: Also that konami breaking design or flavor is not a reason for you to do so. Kerykeion and Sombres technically break flavor, but not in actuality.