because it’s 3 am and I can’t sleep and I have to indulge my special interest despite me being absolute horseshit at gaming
Thus She Spoke The First Law, To Be Inscribed Unto A Link Of Chain:
A trading card game should be measured up to these pillars:
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The game should have one or a small number of overarching abstractions (eg. flavor) that provide a thoroughline for learning, both in the initial rules acquisition and by making a game state as readable as possible both at a glance and over time.
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The game should be playable in a collection of different modes and play styles. While the game can encourage some of these over others, and metagames naturally form around the favored, it should still strive to allow for a variety of them to be viable ways to be at least competitive, including the ability for off-the-cuff or marginal builds to perform at least somewhat satisfactorily.
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The game should be built so that no single match is ever lost solely over deckbuilding or solely over in-game decisions. Game structure should allow good deckbuilding to provide a buffer against bad decisions, and for play performance to make a difference between players using the same suboptimal build.
- As a corollary, a good game minimizes situations where the game is lost before turn one begins, by either preventing snowball mechanics or by implementing reset points that prevent snowballing from determining an entire game.
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While advanced play may rely on intangibles that do not lend themselves to an easy read, the game should nonetheless be built so that a large variety of players may trace issues that lead to a loss to their proximate cause.
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Wizards has it right: the game should, in fact, be F.I.R.E. (Fun, Inviting, Replayable and Exciting).