Gale

I didn't grow up playing the Pokemon TCG (especially in the era where Light Pokemon were a thing {that being the WoTC Era}), but I remember Light Pokemon being meant to be the defensive counterparts to Dark Pokemon. They were apparently pretty half-baked so only 2-3 of them were ever good, but I just thought of one small detail that could be added if they ever come back.

Light Pokemon have altered Weakness/Resistance mechanics. While most Pokemon take 2x the damage when hit by a supereffective attack, Light Pokemon only take +20 instead.

This is a very small change, but in the modern era of the TCG, it could help these Pokemon be better at Defending and Supporting their allies, while not doing anything to make them overly-powerful. If a Pokemon has 120 HP and takes a supereffective hit with 60 Power, they take 120 Damage (a One-Hit Knock-Out). Alternatively, if a Light Pokemon in this scenario were to be hit by the same attack, they would instead take 80 Damage. This means that they survive the hit with 40 HP to spare.

Now this isn't very reliable (Playing towards Super Effective Hits stopped being a thing around Gen 5), but it's a better alternative to requiring them to run multiple color energies on their attacks and giving them no support cards to do so.

Okay, so I've been getting back into Card Games. I don't really play against other people because I don't have a Driver's License, Friends willing to drive me places, or a Local Card Game Spot in walking distance. Even still, I really like conceptualizing card game ideas, and I'd love to get into some games again like Pokemon TCG, Yugioh, or Magic the Gathering (or the Digimon TCG if I could buy a few decks/cards in the near future). However, I realize that I have a problem if I do that. Because earlier I mentioned that I can't really play with folks in LGS's or other Game Shops, the only players I can play against are casuals. This means that I can only get back to these games at a casual level; and I have no idea how to do that. I don't know how to make beginner-friendly decks that can be piloted by newbies, I can only think of mid-tier decks by someone who's interested in competitive. I can only imagine smashing the best cards together and hoping things work out. I don't know how to Deckbuild in a casual manner.

Has anybody considered playing a TCG/CCG format that uses a Whitelist? And I don't mean:

Allowing banned cards in a Standard/Expanded format

no. I mean:

Playing a format that allows cards up to a certain Era but, you allow cards that didn't exist in that time

Two examples I can think of are:

• Pokemon Neo-On or ADV Formats, but Blend Energy and Unit Energy are allowed (expanding Dark Types & Steel Types' efficiency)
• Yugioh GX Format, but you allow Support Cards from modern sets (adding consistency to some of the game's worst archetypes)

These are definitely the kinds of things that require lots of testing, but I want to believe that there's potential to this idea.

So I'm working on a TCG engine right now, and the fundamental idea is this:

You're an Onmyoji, a Shinto Priest who wanders the land purifying cursed spirits. To this end, you combat these dark spirits with Shikigami: Spirit beasts who protect you and help defeat evil and darkness by your side.

It's a Pokemon-Alike TCG with a heavy basis on Eastern Mythology and Japanese Folklore. It's got an Any-Card-as-Resource system where every Shikigami/Monster you have has an "Essense" value at the bottom. By placing a monster under another monster upside-down, that top monster is able to pay for attacks. This is meant to be a mixture of Pokemon's Base Set Era and the Diamond and Pearl Era, where there's a mixture of Big Basics (There's no evolution in this game), and Attack/Option Boosting cards.

Now, my main problems here are:

• What should I call the Units?
  • I currently want to name my creatures "Shikigami", like the spirits that real Onmyoji summon in order to cleanse local shrines. However, I'm unsure if players will be okay using the name or whether they just want them to be called "Spirits" or "Monsters".
• How should I implement the Color System?
  • I have a five-element system already lined up. Based on the concept of Wu Xing, the elements are: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal.
  • In Chinese Medicine, these primary elements make a harmonious cycle where every element interacts with another element.
    • For example, Water feeds Wood, defeats Fire, is defeated by Earth, and is eaten by Metal. However, I don't know how to implement this into my game.
  • On one hand, I could make it so the stronger attackers need energy from the element that feeds them (like a Fire Attacker needing Wood Energy to attack), but I'm not sure if I want to implement a hard Weakness/Resistance system into this game like pokemon.
    • Pokemon is able to handle this because they always had more than five elements in the game, and that some pokemon have different weaknesses than cards of the same type (Some Water Pokemon are weak to grass, while others are weak to lightning).
  • If I implement this system poorly, this could mean that every deck is hard-countered by another, and that matchups could be too one-sided to be fun.

These issues that I bring up lead me to the title of this post: How deep should my Aesthetics be? Or in other words: Should the aesthetics of the game overpower Gameplay? I can't tell if these are real problems, or if I'm overthinking things.