Gale

I'm working on a card game, and this card game features Leader/Captain/Commander/Commander/Hero cards. Players pick one of these cards per deck and it grants them several abilities. These cards also dictate how much MP (this game's resource) the player has. Players get 3-5 MP (depending on their Leader Card), and normal cards cost between 1-3 Mana. At the beginning of a turn, the Turn Player refills to Full MP so they can play their cards.
What I'm wondering is:

Should players start the game at full MP and just be limited on the first turn; or should they start the game at 1MP, and gain one further MP per turn (thus leading to Low-MP Leaders hitting maximum strength 2 turns earlier than 5 MP ones.

The main reason I wonder this is because 3MP Leaders and 5MP Leaders would already be balanced around having more-or-less resources than each other (3 MP Leaders gain stronger abilities to balance their lack of resources, 5 MP Leaders would have a detrimental ability to counterbalance more cards per turn, and 4 MP Leaders would be the standard with average abilities and no real downsides).

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.