One thing you touched on but in my opinion is the biggest advantage of having resources in deck like mtg is the deckbuilding implications. It does make it more complicated but also makes it more interesting. You can't just jam all the best cards in and often have to balance putting on cards that help you actively win vs making your deck more consistent (card draw, land cyclers, dual faced cards, etc...)

@goncaloferreira6429

6 ай бұрын

i share your opinion but it is hard to pass the idea of the importance of deckbuilding skills when netdecking is the norm.

You forgot the best part of lands. They are infinitely bling-able. Choose your favorite arts! Nothing else comes close to the level of individually stylized bling that basic land cards have.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Good call, definitely a big pro in the expression that it can allow for a player. Even if it isn't functional change in the game itself.

@Death_by_Tech

6 ай бұрын

Maybe just chess knights

I feel like using magic as an example of resource systems being an added "deck tax" is a bit silly - we're all aware that if it weren't for wotc intentionally making good quality dual lands inaccessible, mana bases would easily be the cheapest part of the deck. Yes it's an added cost but mtg intentionally inflates the value of lands massively. Show me another tcg with as bad an issue in that department, and i'll happily be proven wrong, but I really feel mtg is just the extreme example. Other than that this was really interesting. Personally I really enjoy lands, but I remember when I started mtg I had a string of such bad luck my friends would genuinly tell me to just "draw untill I got land", which isn't the best introduction haha.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

That's a good point, and I could have clarified the range of what kind of tax is possible. MTG is the top end in cost, whereas something like Argent Saga was basically just token cards. I do remember from my Force of Will days, the dual stones typically trended higher than other cards due to being mandatory to fix your stones. Same with Old Legend of the Five Ring and the better gold producing provinces. MetaZoo's all color/dual lands are also some of the most expensive cards in your deck. MTG is 100% the extreme, but it seems that MTG has conditioned people to make the resources a higher rarity and that tracks back to people selling them higher than most.

@balistafreak

6 ай бұрын

MTG has crafted itself to have an excuse for strong mana-fixing lands being at the "rare" rarity; the Limited format, namely sealed and draft formats. The thing about mana-fixing land cycles is that, by unique card-count/name, printing a cycle of lands occupies a lot of space relative to all the actual spells. Multi-colored blocks often have one cycle of mana-fixing lands of some kind at common rarity and the presence of this ONE cycle, usually only 5-10 cards, dominates the color-strategies of what is possible in that set's Limited formats. If extremely strong mana-fixing lands are printed at common or uncommon rarity, drafting and Sealed become EXTREMELY wild. I remember Shards of Alara, a three color set, merely having uncommon tri-color lands that came into play tapped, and it was very common to see primarily two-color decks randomly splashing a third, fourth, or even fifth color (!) for random high-power cards they drafted out of their main colors, simply because there so many good mana-fixing lands were floating around that it was possible. It was fun in its own way, but it also made matchups feel hilariously random at times. You might be playing around the set's normal commons and uncommons from your opponent's two showing colors then they randomly show a third splash and blow you out with some bomb rare they opened and took first-pick in their 3rd pack. The Constructed formats are accustomed to having access to these consistent mana-fixing lands, though, and they have to be printed "somewhere" into sets at a regular pace. And thus, they get printed @ rare; to keep them from overwhelming the Limited format, but to keep enough of them floating around in the market supply at a pricepoint that, for better or worse, people are willing to buy. Now, could WOTC print special "mana-fixing lands" into their own special sealed product to increase the market supply of them? They could. But that would be killing their own golden goose. The market has proven to be willing to pay through the nose for rare lands, opening tons of sealed product just to get access to them, and WOTC's bottom line has no motivation to sabotage this fact.

Flesh and blood doas resources in a really cool way. You get new cards every turn and you use some of tge cards from your hand to pay for other cards. Lorcana is also interesting when you can make your cards into "lands" instead of playing them, however, not all cards have the ability to do so which makes some cards stronger but harder to include in your deck.

@revimfadli4666

5 ай бұрын

And basically every Japanese TCG does that (other than Vanguard and YGO)

First and foremost, I wanna thank KZread Recommended tab for showing me this video. I love the subject of TCG and ECG design and from the looks of it you're talking about topics that interest me the most. I'll most likely be binging these tonight lol Now, after years of iterating and experimenting, I'm finally feeling on track with creating some sort of dueling card game of my own, and of course I have my own spin on a resource system. And if it's not too much to ask, I'd love some thoughts and feedback on it (from anyone reading this comment, really). Otherwise you can feel free to ignore this part and I'll just take the opportunity to formulate my thoughts into text lmao. So, during deckbuilding, you choose 5 "shield" cards. You begin with all 5 shields in play from the beginning and never gain more. These effectively function both like Basic Lands in Magic, and like Shields in Duel Masters. They "tap" for one resource of their type/color, which are used to play cards, and if a player is hit by an unblocked attack, one of their shields break. However, a broken shield isn't removed from the game, but instead you flip it over to its "Unleashed" side. An Unleashed shield no longer provides any defense, but it produces double resources, and you draw an additional card at the start of your turn for every 2 Unleashed shields you have. If a player is hit by an unblocked attack without any unbroken shields, they lose. The idea is that every player starts at a decent middle-point in the game, hopefully removing some of the slow early build-up turns while not letting you go completely hogwild like in Yu-Gi-Oh (cards currently mostly cost 2, 3 and 5 depending on whether I want you to play them alongside certain other cards in the same turn). The more you're hit, the more your resource and card advantage ramps up, hopefully allowing for some strategic decision-making as well as comeback potential. I'm currently refraining from making any maindeck cards that cost more than 5 to prevent dead draws early and crazy power spikes late game that would deter people from attacking at all. I'm also wary of adding cards that break your own shields, as that could also be a recipe for disaster, though time and playtesting will tell if I stick to this - it's possible it could add some interesting gameplay stuff as well. Anyway, that's my wall of text for today. If you read this far into the comment, thanks for taking the time and keep up the good work! EARLY EDIT: I just realized you only have three of these Drag-and-drop Design videos out, but I'm hoping to see many more in the future. I also started the Pokemon Evolution one and immediately felt called out for trying to be "Magic but with YuGiOh and Duel Masters-like systems" lmao

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! KZread recommendations doing work haha. I do enjoy talking about TCG/ECG design a lot, I definitely don't wanna pretend to be any kind of expert or anything but it's a hobby I really enjoy. Hopefully you'll find some value in my ramblings. As for your system, I think it's a really clever twist on the Shield system! (which I do have planned in a future video). On the surface I think it sounds like a really great starting point for testing. Skips the first issue of a shield/resource hybrid system of losing resources for not being able to block. I dig it! Good call on the cost thresholds, recognizing the ability to play certain cards with others with cost, is really great for telling players what cards could/should be played with others without being super explicit about it. My gut check notes for the system as stated would be: If you are providing an additional resource to the opponent by attacking, you may de-incentivize people from attacking until they have some form of game on board. They may poke once or twice to setup for a large swing late game. This is a common issue with the shield system, especially in games that have your draw or play the shields when broken(which isn't . Tying the color part of a cost and allowing the shield to product them means that decks could be homogenized to just playing all the best stuff as a player would have access to all the colors out the gate. But I think those are super solvable, good luck!

@Duskstone89

6 ай бұрын

@@GrievelornTCG Thank you for the fast reply! I think you can give yourself a lot more credit than you seem willing to lol, your "ramblings" are great :] As for the issue with people running every color, that is something I've been considering. It's an option I want people to have, but obviously I don't want the game to degenerate into just Good Stuff piles a la Arcum's Astrolabe meta in MtG a few years back. I'm currently trying to solve this with a combination of MtG style costs (requiring multiples of a single color of mana, thus locking more powerful cards out of decks that wanna greed for more colors) and an extra deck with Yu-Gi-Oh style Fusion cards which would require more niche strategies for the real big payoffs that you might not be able to get in a more generic rainbow deck. Much like Magic, it'll have to be a weighing of synergy vs versatility, or at least that's the idea. It's also interesting that you assumed there would be 5 colors ;) Don't worry, I know why - and it's not a wrong assumption either, considering it's what I've been using so far. But there _is_ also the potential fix of having 6 or 7 colors, thus completely locking decks out of playing them all When it comes to the second issue, players feeling deterred from attacking before they have a big board in play already, I'm much more worried. I knew it might be an issue, but I also thought maybe it wouldn't be. A potential fix I'm considering is letting players draw cards when they break shields. This might push aggro decks a bit, since it would cover their main weakness (running out of cards), and they would benefit from it the fastest. But if the control tools are good enough to handle it somewhat, that might not be as much of an issue. I don't know, I'm just brainstorming at this point. I'm sure this'll feel a lot more clear once I've tested the game more thoroughly. Thanks again for the quick answer and the feedback!

@OdelyxRa

4 ай бұрын

As far as avoiding "Good stuff" decks. Do you think its a good idea to implement a "color limit" into the base rules of the game. I'm making a game with a 6 color system, but wanted to stop this problem by only allowing players to have a max of 3 colors in their deck (excluding the white 'Standard" color) and then spreading good cards healthily across all colors. ​

@OdelyxRa

4 ай бұрын

​​@@GrievelornTCG As far as avoiding "Good stuff" decks. Do you think its a good idea to implement a "color limit" into the base rules of the game? I'm making a game with a 6 color system, but wanted to stop this problem by only allowing players to have a max of 3 colors in their deck (excluding the white 'Standard" color) and then spreading good cards healthily across all colors. ​

@Duskstone89

4 ай бұрын

@@OdelyxRa For me, I’m not even sure I want to avoid the idea of 5 color goodstuff decks altogether, but choosing to play 5 colors would have to result in some big tradeoffs. Since I’m making cards that require two or even three of a certain color to play, running 5 colors would lock you out of those cards completely - cards that probably have a much higher power level or build around-value than cards requiring just one of any given color. I personally don’t like limiting players to only a certain amount of colors in a game. It’s been my main gripe with most post-Hearthstone digital card games for a while that you can usually only run cards from one or two factions, even though letting us mix and match as we want seems like it’d open up some very fun deckbuilding opportunities. Not to say you can’t make your game that way, I don’t think it completely ruins the expereince or anything and you shouldn’t take the opinions of internet strangers too seriously anyway. I’m just saying I’d rather keep the deckbuilding as open as possible, letting players decide for themselves how much versatility vs how much power and synergy they want. EDIT: So to answer the question, _I_ personally don’t like the idea of limiting colors, but I think you should try it out for your game to see how it goes. Just be wary of players finding their creativity stifled by artificial restrictions, is my only warning

The Jak ost in the background is a touch of “magic” to the video

Really solid. Surprised you only have 106 subs.

Great info! You earned my like and subscribe. Looking forward to more videos from Grie Velorn!

Great video and Merry Christmas!

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Thank you!

This was an emotional viewing for me. I've played Magic, but not any of these other games. In designing my own card game, I cycled through all these other options without knowing other games were already using them. So every entry I kept saying "Hey, I tried that!" If you're interested or want to implement this yourself, I eventually settled on a hybrid situation, which I'm happy with. In Magic language, at the start of each player's untap step, that player receives four resource counters. They may spend one resource counter to pay any non-X mana portion of any cost. They still have to pay any other costs (tapping, life, etc.) and still must spend mana on X mana costs. Players may only spend mana, cast spells, attack, or activate abilities as long as they have at least one resource counter. The following actions also consume a resource counter: Playing a land; casting a 0 mana spell or casting a spell without paying mana for it (i.e. Pact of Negation, or by way of Omniscience or Dream Halls); activating a 0 mana activated ability (i.e. Lightning Greaves); and attacking with a creature power 7 or greater (one RC apiece). Note that attacking with any number of creatures power 6 or lower does not consume any resource counters, but you can't attack with anything unless you have at least one unspent.

hey wait... this isn't digimon joking aside, another thing worth mentioning is how magic also has many other non-land cards that stay in play with resource generating capabilities while also having lands that gain their own effects to function in ways other than just resources. this could lead to someone making a deck of all lands or even a deck with none if they utilized 0 cost cards effectively.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Good point! I think the ability of MTG to still have resources persist in play beyond being lands is a good system.

One significantly less common resource system that has a ton of design potential is a persistent resource, usually used in conjunction with an action point mechanic. You start with some number of resources, you can gain more as an action, but there are cards that have effects dedicated to gaining resources more efficiently than that. This opens up design space for every color's resource economy to feel different, by simply making their resource generating cards function differently.

Big up to this creator. Better sub now cuz he's about to blow up!

Love it. Thanks for the video!

I just found my new favourite gem of a channel

i especially like the complimentary blue/orange gradient. oh and the informative content!

I love the fact that ur playing music from jak and daxter one of my most beloved childhood games

Thinking about the in-deck approach, I think it has a small advantage in portability. Multiple decks or separate trackers make it harder to sneak a game out to recess than a quarter and a rubber-banded stack of pokemon. Maybe less of a factor nowadays with digital tcgs and the omnipresent smartphone, but I wonder how much the portability of various tcgs affected their popularity. Portability and the design decisions that affect it might make an interesting video.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

That's a great point! I know Kryptik had this as a goal in mind. They wanted to make a game you could just roll up with a deck and nothing else to play. Then they added a bunch of effects that added or removed to a stat and it made it not quite as possible haha. I'll add that to a potential video!

a very personal issue, but the people around me say flood and famine for lots of, and no lands and we dont say screw and everytime you said it I was like NO WE DONT NO ONE DOES lol but besides that this was a well made video, im glad I got to see it while you have a small following

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Hahaha, growing up in my region it was always flood and screw. Love learning the different variations of the same systems.

@gatesofnocturne3700

6 ай бұрын

My area calls it flood and screw, but occasionally also says flood and hosed, which is not confusing in any way 😅

Honestly, with proxies, and the London mulligan, most of the problems with lands in MTG are minimized. I love Magic, but I also love Hearthstone. I think they're both great in their own ways. Cheers!

3:41 Magic the Gathering has that as well: Sovereign's Realm. I love the design space on it. It's only available in limited environments, and I have used it as a variant on wizard's tower which we've played at a game store I was working at by shuffling in the starter decks into a singular deck to play from centrally. 7:40 This has been something they have tried to solve with mulligans from the very beginning, and when I started as an adult in 2014-2015 we've seen iterations on the mulligan system to make it better. 10:44 Oh they do, I've heard that being one of the main complaints about MTG, is it's resource system, the way it affects play and the physical cost to it, oh yeah, they complain about it. The people I've seen playing other systems. 11:22 Board games like Ascension do use, an in-deck resource system. In a sense they use 2, "buy" and "fight" which buy two different types of cards. I think technically they are called runes and I don't recall what the red-combat ones are called, it's colloquial around here.

highly suggest looking into the Memory system from the Digimon TCG. Absolutely fascinating system to both study and play.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Yup, will explore it in non-land resource system video.

I really like the Digimon card game's resource system. You can choose to play the high cost card and give your opponent more resources, or you can play the safer option that does less but is cheaper to limit the amount of resources your opponent has access to

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

It's a very interesting back and forth, definitely going to be in a video at some point.

Missing a fair few examples from the eastern side of TCGs. For example, the Hearthstone incremental mana is replicated well enough by One Piece, where you also carry a set of 10 token "Don" cards, put one on your board every turn, and tap it to indicate it was used. No need for physical number trackers or measures for both max and used mana, and could theoretically be expanded like an extra deck in future expansions.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

I tried to get a generally grab from various places/timeframes, but I could always get more! My only concern is treading too much of the same ground when talking about multiple systems. One Piece is a good example of a deviation, it does function the same as Argent Saga, but the added effect of the DON is a great pivot on the system. I think having different types of effects on DON in the future could be a great way to change how some decks function without changing any of the maindeck cards.

.One TCG that i think did resources so well its ridiculous is Zenonzard. Instead of lands and creatures, the game has Base Minions and Field Minions. On this games version of the upkeep step, you get a "movement phase." Where you can turn one base minion into a field minion or vice versa. This gives a lot of strategy around if you want to ramp more or output more manpower on the board. In addition, if you dont have a base minion to play, you can instead play one neutral mana that cant be moved, essentially giving the player a wastes for free. This helps avoud screw, but since its colorless it still requires you to play base minions. It was very elegant for a game with a lot of consistency

I am brainstorming a resource system in my mind, coins and mana, artifacts are your recourse and cards that help you play the game.

❤

One Idea I've been toying around with is a finite resource system. You'd have some way to consistently generate one resource per turn but the game would be heavily structured around ways of generating more resource each turn. Resources are kept between turns and removed from the pool when spent. For mtg people, think of it like playing with tressures instead of lands.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

There's been a couple systems I've seen that work similar to your idea. The typical issue they need to overcome is players having to overspend once they fall behind. The basic dilemma was once a person gains the lead in the game, they have to spend less resources to stay that way. Whereas the person who is behind will need to overspend to get into parity, and even more to get into the lead. But now they have a resource deficit compared to the person who was in the lead. But if you can find a solution to that I think there is a lot of potential for that system!

Missed some key systems. For example Digimon's resource system is (largely) based on how many resources your opponent overspends with the player essentially playing with the debt of the other player. You want to play a big monster first turn? Sure, you can. But now I can play a lot of smaller monsters, spells or a similarly big monster while limiting your resources. Otherwise great video.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Thanks! I consider the digimon system functionality unique enough to not just be considered a derivative of the Land system. It's spawned from the Chrono Slash system, which I think fits better into non-linear resource systems. Will definitely be in a video at some point.

cool video, well explained but no new point to had to existing knowledge ong the matter. you covered digital games, something that is rarely done but missied bynot going further in the exploration of the topic. the importance and historical relevance of some games like naruto (mixed resourses) and bleach as well as the more recent legends of runeterra( spell mana) and digimon. 12:44 both hearthstone and LOR, the best examples of the incremental system, dont have the problem pointed out here( they use a class and region system to avoid this.)

What do you think about Fab’s resource and pitching mechanic?

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

I think it's a very interesting pivot on a non-linear in-deck system. I think it has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, I don't really like how it's ended up with having 2 copies of a card that are usually situationally worthless, and 1 copy that is almost always worthless (yellow pitch, outside of something like Prism or Boltyn. Or M's that are only Yellow pitch). Due to the balancing matrix that FaB has, you have to hit certain thresholds to make a card playable. And the resource system is a big part of it. It led to a lot of dead/useless cards in a set, especially with generics and underpowered cards. But I 100% plan on talking about it in a non-linear resource system video along with some other games.

To me MTG's system is the beast out there, and it's flaws could be solved by making lands do more than just add resources, and non-lands be able to generate resources. Of course the game already has this kind of cards but they simply suck most of the times, and are strongly related to green or artifact synergies.

I really liked the video, although I will say Yugioh does have a resource, and for those who play the game you understand what I mean. I feel like Yugioh gets a bad rep of being HYPER TURBO all the time, but it's really not. Also for reference I also play Pokemon, and have dabbled in both Digimon, Hearthstone (at one point), Runeterra, and even Magic.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

Thanks! I talked about Yugioh in my previous video. It's pretty nuanced, but the system is primed for super fast combos without the hard resource system. When it comes down to a card advantage/normal summon, it generally isn't quite the same as something like MTG. It does exist, it's just not quite the limiter that a typical resource system would apply to a game.

I disagree with the cost problems because that's not really the resource systems fault it's the fault of the game. No one needs to shell out $300 for One Piece's resources, magic just chooses it to be a pressure point in the secondary market. In fact if you make sure that your resources aren't that expensive you drop down the cost of your deck significantly because up to a third is cards everyone owns.

There's a cool resource system used in Genshin Impact's Genius Invocation CCG. The game behaves in rounds, each round giving 10 (or more depending on the cards in play) resources where you get the colors by rolling these 10 dices (they'll be shown as the elements in the game) and you can reroll as much dice as you'd like once. This system allows both players to exhaust the resources / plan ahead based on what they got before moving to the next round.

would love to see your take on digimon's tcg memory system

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

It's on the list! I just need to find where it goes, I don't know if there is enough around it for it's own video. But it's a great example of a non-linear resource system. Would likely need to bundle it with some other ones.

@ClubbingSealCub

6 ай бұрын

@@GrievelornTCG I will wait with great interest then

Bruh is that jak and Daxter music in the bg?

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

;)

You forgot battle spirits

Screw or flood can be irritating, but it’s the great equalizer. It’s the reason why love Magic so much - that a player who just started playing the game can beat a veteran with crazy expensive deck because he got screwed. Without a resource system that you need to randomly draw from your deck it would be just about who has the best and most optimized cards and who is more skilled.

The Duel Masters system (play any card as a resource) has a big drawback that you didn't bring up. It forces tough decisions on the player starting from the very first turn. Every time you play a resource, you have to think ahead several turns to decide which card you think you won't need in the future. (It also comes with potential feel bads when you have to throw away a card you really like for a resource.)

Y did u say at the end that lands r the oldest resource system “behind Pokémon’s Energies” MtG came out in 93 n Pokémon tcg came out in 96, MtG is older. U also mentioned “beloved” in there too which is more subjective but r u arguing that people like Energy better? Cuz I can’t think of any decks in Pokémon that r 80% Energy cards but MtG has Legacy Lands which is a deck that plays almost no spells. So I can’t say which people would like more but me personally I prefer Lands cuz they r more powerful n more versatile.

@GrievelornTCG

6 ай бұрын

I just mean that mtg was before mtg. I was ranking them in an ascending order which would put MTG behind Pokemon going top down for in deck resources. Lands are 100% beloved. It's subjective, but people do love lands. The expression and potential for customizing is basically unmatched to any other game. Mainly due to time and card count, but still. I wasn't saying they were liked more than pokemon's energy. But there is something to say about mtg gating all actions behind the lands, whereas pokemon only gates attacking behind them. Pros and Cons.