When it come to player mentalities, I like to think I'm pretty even but I really lean a bit towards what Blaise refers to as the "occult" camp. I have an obsession clean-looking ratios and whatnot like a lot of digital players, but at the same time I like to play 90-card decks and pretend I'm creative when it's really just Dragonblood Sect with an Ancient World draw engine (Big Blood Ein deck check when?). Why am I telling you all of this this? Well, there's always the fact that I like talking about my preferences in card games. Aside from that, though, this information means that I probably wouldn't be good at making a game. I'm a Johnny at heart and would rather work with what's given to me than make it myself, when it comes to card games. However, I like to tell myself that my experience with games allows me to at least critique what I see, even if I wouldn't be able to create a perfect game or anything (as Blaise says, "all card game creators are digital people; this is a given."). It helps me sleep at night. Anyway, let's start off with a couple of stories that drove me to write this post.I recently got back into Shadowverse. This was well after Wonderland Dreams and Starforged Legends rotated out. These were two of the most important sets for me as a Swordcraft player back when I played. I missed Purehearted Singer in particular. At least there's Prince of Cocytus to fill that splashable neutral card-shaped hole in my heart, I guess.
About a week ago, I was looking for deck ideas in Buddyfight and started messing with the Generic lineup of Battle Deity Robos. They're... Not a good deck, to be honest. They've been outdated for well over a year now and their arguable best variant's (Dungeon World's) best tools (Bonus Quest and Pillar of Fire) have started to show their age. After trying Magic Deity Robo, I'm not sure there's a way to make the archetype work. However, I had fun with it.
A few days later, I was perusing the Buddyfight card pool for some sideboard stuff because that's what I do when I'm bored. I saw stuff like Skill Binder, Chess Break, and Loyalty. I thought to myself, "Man, I should pick up a set." Then I saw that Loyalty and Chess Break were hard to get a hold of. This wouldn't be a problem except that I was already slated to buy Dungeon World Knights and therefore wouldn't have the money on hand to pick this stuff up.
All of these are to say that Buddyfight and Shadowverse have some good generic cards. I think it could be done better, but games can certainly do a lot worse.
Cardfight!! Vanguard had this group of cards during G (2014-2018) called Cray Elementals. These cards were usable in every deck and had a lot of effects to counter certain decks, such as Honoly to stop multi-attacking decks and Dogetts to stop Legion from being a good mechanic (ignoring the fact that it hadn't been a useful mechanic in about two years when Dogetts was released). These were some really specific and niche cards. Several of them saw play, though, such as Air Element, Sebreeze and Honoly even in current premium lists.
In my opinion, the problem with these cards comes from the fact that Vanguard has no sideboard. Not even a 10-card side. The lack of a side makes sense considering Vanguard is best of 1, but the fact still remains that these are side-minded cards in a game with no sideboard. This means that most of these Cray Elementals aside from a select few saw next to no play. The ones that did see play were either Air Element, Sebreeze as a generic out to a gameplay strategy or meta calls such as Pokkur and Bobo. Some of them, such as Dogetts, were even narrower in use, as Legion hadn't been useful for about a year on its release. Poor Dogetts was relegated to a casual/locals level meta call.
Sometimes, generic cards being too good can stunt players' innovation in card games. In Shadowverse, Purehearted Singer was such a good card that it was seen in just about every deck in Rotation (Standard, for you Magic players) before it got rotated out. In Buddyfight, Obstruct was used so frequently that Bushiroad had to limit it to one copy per deck. Yu-Gi-Oh! is also a victim of this concept, with things like handtraps being so quintessential that a lot of casual players I knew refused to play the game simply due to the uniformity among competitive decks. None of these are digs at these games. All 3 have a history of good and interesting generic releases, after all. However, having overly-powerful generic cards can sometimes be a double-edged sword, and these examples demonstrate that.
As an add-on to that, some generic cards are hard to find. I mean really hard to find. Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring? $90 a playset before the reprint in the Soulburner structure deck. Pot of Desires? Formerly $100 a set. Borreload Dragon? $40 a copy, at least for a while. Moving beyond YGO, let's keep going. Dark Element, Dizmel? or so at its peak. Loyalty, Chess Break, and Buddy Block! are all around or above $5 from most sellers.
While some of these prices are very clearly more reasonable than others (Yu-Gi-Oh! handles its archetypes drastically differently and short prints a lot of good cards), the fact still remains that supplies are limited and prices are therefore far higher than they would be if these cards were exclusive to certain decks. In Buddyfight and Vanguard, examples of cards that are usable by all decks in the world or clan are also rather expensive, such as Aurageyser being $20 or more for most of Vanguard G's life and Fake Out! for Buddyfight's Magic World being nearly impossible to find online. Shadowverse and other digital card games get a pass since they don't have a secondary market. Congrats for existing, I guess, DCGs.
The last thing I want to cover before I wrap up today is generic cores/shells. These are really tough to balance. While I wish I could say they can't be too weak, I'd be lying. In truth, generic decks can be relegated to casual playability without a second thought. It's a harsh reality, but I don't think that generic decks are even capable of being anything better than casual-only without being horrifically format-warping like the Wonderland Dreams era of Shadowverse. Perhaps you could do something with set rotation, but even that's risky, as it means players may have to wait a year or longer before the format moves past "Flavor of the Month Generic" as the top deck. Creating a powerful generic archetype is a risky move that can cause player disillusionment, in my opinion.
With all the points I've gone through in this article, I figure I can make some sort of vague checklist for what I believe makes good generic cards:
- Function/Viability: Generic cards need to be useful in a situation that will arise with at least moderate frequency. If you make a generic card for a situation that will nearly never arise in a competitive setting, such as Dogetts, you make it look like you don't understand what your players want and are just printing crap so you can say you have the right number of cards for a booster set.
- This can be mitigated somewhat if your game has a sideboard. Dogetts would honestly be a worthy consideration for a sideboard if Vanguard had one, but it doesn't. I'm sorry to beat the dead horse that is Dogetts, but it's just such an easy example. If you look at YGO and BDF, you notice that sideboards are typically filled with generic cards. Sideboarding allows you to make meta calls without sacrificing main deck space, lending use to these generic cards.
- Availability: If your card game is physical, your players need access to the generic cards you print in abundance. If they don't get that access, you end up like YGO, where the generic cards act as a massive paywall for a player looking to compete. While, yes, some people will be willing to pay, that doesn't mean you can get away with making stuff impossible to find. Of course, you could force your game to have a tiny competitive player base, but I'd imagine that, as a company, you'd want more players since that means more money.
- Power Level: If you're making a generic deck, core, or engine, you'll want to make sure it's not too powerful in order to prevent the format from warping in response. For individual cards, you'll want to make sure that they're strong enough to see play but not crazy enough to become a 4-of in every deck, which is what happened with Obstruct. It's all about balance here, which I'm aware can be very difficult to maintain, especially in eternal games.
- Consistent Production: Here's a funky one. If you have generic cards, they should (in my opinion) be released with relative frequency. This ensures that you keep your players engaged with what's going on on the generic front and makes sure that people looking for some splashable cards (budget players, some Johnnies) will always have somewhere to look. This one isn't necessary, but I think it's a good way to show that you care about your whole player base.
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