And technically the Pendulum Summon. But the most tangible resource nowadays is your Deck/Extra Deck, running out of cards in grind game is pretty common.
I think even more interesting for Yugioh is, that the cards themselves are becoming the resources. There is a reason why a draw 2 effect card is completely fine in magic but banned for the longest time in Yugioh. As when the cards themselves are the resources, card advantage becomes super powerful.
Hard once per turns matter infinitely more than your normal summon. Like you could normal summon something like SE Ash 3 times and it wouldn’t even matter because only the 1st one will have an effect. Yugioh is very good at establishing resource loops that let you repeat certain combos turn after turn, but a hard once per turn is what forces the combo to eventually stop. Even looking at banned cards, a lot of them end up banned because they lack a hard once per turn. Like pre-errata Firewall Dragon was just infinite material for burn FTKs and now that it has a hard once per turn it’s just an okay end board piece in Cyberse piles, which ends up being like a tier 2/rogue strategy. Unlike in other mana-based card games where you can use a card as many times as you have copies of it and can pay the cost, which is how you get infinite mana loops in games like Magic.
@@jayfeather9063 "cards themselves are becoming the resources". as opposed to magic or pokemon where after you resolve a card it just goes back into your hand and is not discarded I guess
Digimon mana system is not only very lore accurate, but it also creates a very strategic dynamic of PASSING mana for the opponent to use. Possibly the best system in card game yet.
This. Decks actually have ramp times without forced clinkiness of wincon pieces + lands. Just Scry tutors + wincon pieces. The problem of choking to 1 Memory becomes non existant in early-midgame with "Set to 3 Memory" tamers or options like the Memory Boost/Trainings or Inheritables that gain Memory to keep turn. The borrowed Shield system from Duel Masters make the game so defensively sound. Brilliant game.
I actually hate the Digimon system. I don’t like the feeling of forcing balance through cost. It takes away most of the design space for investing purely in economy (at least in a way that’s not arbitrary)
Balance is boring imho. I like how green in magic create consistent mana advantages, and how red creates sporadic mana advantages. It gives us another way to make games more dynamic. The pendulum style mana system for Digimon specifically turned me off from the game.
@BS-gk2cb I would disagree greatly, because they have worked around it in several ways that have created dynamic deck concepts that really pushes the way the game works. As the most basic example, look up fanglongmon, the deva-sovergin deck. It just slaps a body down for 7 mem, it draws you a card, and then slots another body in the breeding zone. While this is a high cost, it is mitigated in several ways. You are setting up 2 bodies for one price, and it an an eminent ace deck. Meaning that you can go into large lol 6 bodies as interrupts.
My personal favorite has to be Digimon’s “memory” system. For those who don’t know, in Digimon theres the memory gauge that goes from 10 to -10. Anytime you play a card that card’s play cost to subtracted from the memory, but the big difference maker is that you’re allowed to go negative. If you only have 1 memory and play a card that cost 3, you’ll just go to -2. But the once you go negative, the cards currently activating will resolve and your turn immediately ends. Your opponent will start with the memory you went into the negative. So in the example above, you went -2, so your opponent will start with 2. It creates a fun back and forward game of chicken. You can ball out, but then you’r opponent can ball out for no penalty, or you can play safe and try to choke your opponent out, but you’ll also be short handed.
The fun thing with YuGiOh is that, while it doesn’t have an overarching cost like most other card games, it compensates by having various cards use just about anything and everything as it’s own personal cost (and also that even THESE costs can chain into other effects.) Tributing/Discarding/Banishing or sending to the GY for cost is pretty common, but there’s also paying LP, shuffling cards back into your deck, needing _specific_ cards in whatever position to get your effects off, etc… … After a moment of thought, I think YuGiOh might just emulate the craziness of its anime and manga A LOT more closely than many other real world games can with THEIR media spinoffs.
While that is true, it is also true that every card game has the possibility to do it too, while keeping their energh system as a possibility for limiting extremely powerful cards. But i do (agree) think that the main problem with yu gi oh is not neccesarily its cost system, but how little konami innovates with the costs Edit: Realized after writing the comment that the agree is wrongly placed, but now that i'm heard, i may aswell explain what i mean. I think yu gi oh would be a lot funnier if you could add costs that aren't related to throwing things to other zones (which lately is debatable if it is even a punishment for the card) and add costs like "you can't play this card until turn three" or "during your next turn you can't draw a card during your draw phase", but the closest there was when i last checked yu gi oh were effect like you can only play certain type or archetype for the rest of the turn which can be worked around
@@ButFirstHeLitItOnFire While I agree that these costs do lead to interesting gameplay and designs, they also lead to a lot of card text bloat and memory issues when you have to remember what you've played and what summoning locks you are under. Still, I do admit that the incredibly open design space has led to a lot of interesting archetypes.
that has came to be yugioh's core flaw. in other games its easy to make balance cards are theres a simple way to power scale a card and when it can be used while yugioh has to very carefully design cards that other games would balance in a minute.
no one has mentioned it but Flesh and Bloods resource system is easily the best in the tcg space. having cards have 2 uses opens up so much design space whilst not limiting them to being either a dead extra resource or an unplayable card. the draconic, light and mystic talents all prioritising one card colour makes their heroes play super differently (e.g dromai wanting to pitch reds which are the most resource inefficient to fuel her dragons or the mystics making blue cards ,which are typically underpowered to accommodate for their better resource generation, power cards) adds another layer to the game and tonnes of interesting decision points. if anyone is interested in playing FaB I'd honestly say that the resource system is my favourite game feature
While I do think the FaB's cost system is awesome and initial heroes are great & work interactively against each other (guardian, assasin, warrior, brute etc.), I feel like their design direction is not for me. Initial classes are very fun, but having to play rune counters against wizards' weird gameplay, stall fatigue being a relevant wincon, the overtuned heroes from newer sets and Illusions in their entirety are just very unfun for me. It is still a great game tho, just not my tcg.
@boraaksitozgun9912 I mean yeah there's a lot to debate on concerning the meta but the core resource system is what I'm talking about. plus on your point about arcane barrier protection I actually think that's a really cool part of the game, pitching cards to defend rather than blocking with them means you keep them for later which gives you more agency in how you choose to fight wizards, do you pitch your blues and try to play a hand of reds or do your other cards have higher costs that you'd rather keep the blue for your turn? plus wizard cards tend to be weaker numbers wise in order to make up for the unique way of defending against them (runeblade is still busted tho lol) also, assassin wasn't an initial class, they're the most recent class introduced to cc and are literally designed to be disruptive and play a different game outside of pure numbers/value
@ethn_chey yeah sorry wrong about assassin thing. Again, not saying game is bad at all, far from it. It is very cream of the crop stuff when it comes to TCGs. I just don't like interacting with the magic stuff, and illusions feel very match up based (stomps or you stomp them) for me. Again nothing that takes away from the game, just experiences of some noob. Hope anyone who enjoys it has a good time and will play it anyway.
@boraaksitozgun9912 yeah that's totally fair! glad you enjoy the game, it only gets better the more you play :) also, as an illusionist player the best tip I can give to beat them if you're having trouble is to go as wide as possible with multiple attacks with go again per turn. I get them feeling super polarising tho, it kinda feels the same way when you're playing as the illusionist lol
Yeah IDK if this game was popular anywhere outside of Poland but me and my homie are still playing it sometimes. Maybe its nostalgia or something but IDK just something about this game feels so good and mana system is also great.
Duel Masters is my favorite resource and life system and it's not even close. Lorcana is doing something similar with "Ink" that's pretty nice. Imagine Duel Masters but some of the cards can't be put into the cost area, and those cards tend to be more powerful.
One Piece let's you use "mana" or "Don!!" in order to both summon characters and also make your attacks stronger. You can also pitch cards from your hand to boost defense on your opponent's turn. Each card is partially balanced based on how much you can boost if you pitch them from your hand, so a super broken card can have 0 "counter" while a niche weaker card can give 2000 counter, and a balanced card can give 1000 counter. And unlike in pokemon, you draw when you take damage instead of drawing when you kill something, which makes SO much more sense. Opponents actually have to think because every time they hit your life, they are also giving you more potential counter. The One Piece tcg might have a few problems, but it is one of the most well-balanced and fun card games I've played.
Gwent has an interesting cost system in that a card's cost isn't relevant to playing the card. Instead, the card's cost is used when making your deck. Cards have a provision cost between 4 and 15. A deck needs at least 25 cards, and you can only have a certain number of provisions. Usually 150. So, you can make a deck of all 6 cost cards that have average power. Or you can make a deck with a mix of higher cost, more powerful cards, and lower cost less powerful cards. This is how the game is balanced.
@@alexrivera5747 this seems like more of a deck building restriction than a resource system like the video is about. I do like the system though, Netrunner has something similar where out-of-faction cards have an import cost to add them to your deck.
And it died, not saying that's the reason but it could be one of many. I played Gwent for a long time but the game was just not as entertaining as other tcgs after a while
I like the system from legends of runeterra I think it's really nice to bank mana you didn't spend to have a boost on your next turn, with the rule that it can only be used for spells
@@AlessioTheHero the ability to bank spell mana did help smooth out early turns. However it felt like a patch on top of hearthstone's system that didn't really do anything new. I think it would have felt more unique if there were more cards that interacted with spell mana in interesting ways.
Spell mana was the worst game design in runeterra. This mechanic alone forced the game to ever only be burn/aggro, as every removal spell had tò be balanced around "spell mana" mechanics, thus being horrible, and made the aggro plays completely unstoppable, as you could Always have up tò 3 extra Manas to protect your stuff. And of course, protection spells have tò be cheap, othersise nobody would ever consider them.
@@lucasalarcon3230 Agree. In MTG, I mostly play control deck like blue, blue/black, Bolas,...I win if the game play longer, but I MUST build my deck and think my play around surviving early. Because the opponent will most likely try to kill me before I do my things (or else they lose). Aggro will always be the cheapest and easiest way to win a game in a CCG, because the less your opponent play, the less they can harm your strategy.
I can encourage you to check out the resource-system of the Flesh And Blood TCG. It's the one thing that really won me over and it does things really different than any other tcgs Ive played yet. How you use the resources determines what cards you see in which order later in the game
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value. If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value. Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The one that pitches for usually trades its pitch value for playing power. Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage. At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs. This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies. If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards. You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force Hope that helps!
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value. If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value. Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The card that pitches for a lot of resources usually trades its pitch value for playing power. Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage. At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs. This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies. If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, since its very easy for you to pay for the cost of carfs, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards. You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force Hope that helps!
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value. If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value. Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The card that pitches for a lot of resources usually trades its pitch value for playing power. Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage. At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs. This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies. If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, since it is very easy for you to pay for resources, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards. You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force Hope that helps!
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value. If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value. Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The card that pitches for a lot of resources usually trades its pitch value for playing power. Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage. At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs. This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies. If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, since it is very easy for you to pay for resources, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards. You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force Hope that helps!
Pokemon TCG Pocket's system is pretty interesting. They borrowed a bit from Hearthstone by giving you a guaranteed Energy each turn of a randomized type from a predetermined pool. It helped solve the mana screw/flood issue, but now you have the issue of multi-type decks not being able to get the right Energy type. It's a big problem for Dragonite decks right now.
I enjoy the game but rn the mana system is really messy. Misty is a great example of how example a single mana difference in the first couple turns snowballs the entire game
I run Dragonite and tbh it feels pretty fair, it makes you consider energy placement more carefully and adds some extra drawback to its 200/turn. Allows other lines to shine sometimes (Tentacruel my beloved!)
LoR is similar to Hearthstone, players get +1 mana crystall at the beginning of each round, 10 maximum. The difference is, at the end of the round up to 3 unused mana is stored as spell mana. Spell mana remains untill it is used, it can only be used to play spells and spells will use spell mana in the first place. There are also specific ways how you can interact with mana. Ramp was historically weak, cards like Catalyst of Aeons, Cold Resistance, Faces of the Old Ones or Wyrding Stones were just to expensive and provided too little. Currently ramp is the strongest thing you can do in Freljord, becausr the region was basically re-imagined as a ramp region, getting cards like Winter's Touch, Wild Mysticism and sigil of the storm mechanic. Shurima is known for ability to sacrifice mana for some powerfull effects. Rite of Negation is the most infamous "...or destroy your managem" card in the game. Other, like Rite of Calling or Rite of the Arcane seen mediocre success. Some, like Rite of Dominance or Dune Swallower rarely seen play.
I actually think that one of the biggest aspects that I dislike in the energy system compared to mana is the fact that energy can only be attached to one pokemon at a time. Unlike in magic, every turn you're powering individual pieces instead of your whole board, which means that if you lose a pokemon, you have to start building resources again. It never feels like I'm building to something. Instead, it feels like I'm forced to play voltron more often than not.
that cuts both ways though, because it can also serve as a strategic target. in mtg, if you get rid of a bunch of land that's just... it. except for obvious exceptions, getting rid of those lands affects a lot of things you can do (if your deck has a few white staples, but is primarily blue, plains disappearing isn't the end of the world) but with energy you've gotta think ahead; is attaching worth it? is REMOVING energy worth it? i think they've both got their pros and cons!
In the "new" pokemon tcg-lite app there is not much energy acceleration and because of that it makes the once-per-turn limitation more impactful and you often don't have a clear answer to where you should allocate your energy to. It's more interesting right now. Modern pokemon though? I agree. Indeed it can feel weird. Decks like Lugia V or Baxcalibur often mean that after a bit of setup energy becomes an afterthought. And as an opponent, you have to deal with both the big beatstick as well as thwart the energy engine all at the same time.
Came here to say this. You never outright condemn a card as "mana" when reserving to memory as you recollect it all at the start of your next turn. Choosing which cards you do reserve provides another vector of strategy too, and splashier cards costing more reserve limits how many you can drop within one turn. Then all the cards that interact with the size of your memory, elements of cards in memory, balancing card draw through drawing into memory rather than straight to hand... It's all really great design. ❤
Keyforge doesn't really have a resource system, but you're still limited in what cards you can play and/or use. Each deck is 36 cards, 12 from each house, and at the start of each turn you call one of the three houses, which means you can only play or use cards from that house, so you often have to choose between using the creatures you have on the board or playing cards from your hand to cycle through your deck. Cards that let you circumvent this rule (Captain Val Jericho, Helper Bot, Exhume, etc.) tend to be very powerful, as they not only add efficiency, but can give access to combos that would otherwise be impossible.
What I like about KeyForge, being limited only by what cards you can play or use and (usually) having a fresh hand of 6 cards every turn, is that it gives you options on sequencing your turn and lot of decision space for the player (i.e. should I play this card first or this other card or use this creature?). Compared to some games with mana systems where turns can be pretty straightforward, i.e. play my 3 drop on my 3rd turn, play my 4 drop on my 4th turn. I guess one other limiting factor in KeyForge is "rule of six" where you can only play or use cards of the same name 6 times each turn, which (mostly) prevents infinite loops and does put a limit on what you can do on a turn
Lorcana seems to have to most flexible resource system with the inkwell. Being able to turn almost any card into resource if you don’t need it at the moment is very intuitive and interesting for gameplay.
The way Lorcana manages its resource system is really what got me into the game in the first place; I would love to see the game show up in Soda's videos
Honestly yeah shout out to Lorcana. At first I was kinda bummed that there weren't new ways to ink or play with ink types, but then it grew on me since you make hard compelling decisions for *what* to ink, the risk of how many uninkables to place in deck (or how many), and it's easy to process, so my partners easily picked it up as a first card game. Probably good for kids too
Having tried all, YuGiOh's system is easily the most fun to play with. However, the winner for best system instead has to go to both Legends of Runeterra and Digimon. Much better designed systems than all games covered in the video.
The best energy systems for me were either Duel Masters, which allowed you to play any card in your deck as a mana resource, which in turn led to some interesting resource management or Force of Will, which used an extra deck for your mana, which let you play without worrying about getting screwed/flooded while also not being completely broken.
Force of Will was legit. The resource gain was tied to your Ruler, (basically a commander from EDH) SO, you would have to decide when to stop using them to gain more mana, and when to flip them into battle themselves.
Vanguard also has 2 resource systems one tied to how much life you've lost and the other usually to archetypes and generator who make the resource. Recently a new resource was added that it based on turns or cards specifically to speed it up.
I loved old Vanguard but bounced back when they remade it. I loved the mechanic of counter blast, it was simple, elegant, and gave the losing person more comeback opportunities. Could you please say what's the name of the last mechanic you mentioned? I'd check it out on the wiki.
@furryfox12 the last mechanic added is energy. You get 3 per turn starting on turn 2 (so player 1 gets nothing on turn 1 and then 2 gets 3) and can get a max of 10. Regardless off deck you can always spend 7 to draw a card. There are cards that make energy much like cards that soul charge and there are cards that spend energy. For example because of how vanguard tends to ramp up when you are on your first and second grade 3 turns you usually have a stock of energy to use already a lot of decks that run 1 energy card don't even have to run anything that makes it, they just have to make sure they don't play that card too many times in a row.
I think Magic managed to get it right early on the existence of CCGs, and it has evolved well since. It and spell speed are what continue to keep it as the king of card games.
Magic has been a flop for a very long time now. Mark Rosewater has been ruining the game, and WotC/hasbro has been accelerating it. There's also a reason Richard Garfield never used his lands system again for any of his other card games, it's honestly pretty bad.
@@steveng6721 lmao imagine getting an anime-themed Llanowar Elves for 200+ USD. I know I wouldn't, but Hasbro being Hasbro, they saw that players are gullible anyway (Remember that 1 of 1 One Ring horsesh💩t that happened not too long ago?)
Gwent has unique resource system called Provision. In Gwent you can play any card at any time (but only 1 per turn), but provision is a cost you have to pay to put a card in your deck during deckbuilding. But it's not that simple. The basic provision ammount is 150 +you will get bonus provision depending on leader's ability you choose. The cheapest cards are 4 provision, the most expensive - 14 (considering basic design philosophy before gwentfinity). Your deck has to include at least 25 cards (but can include more) and at least 13 units. It is a fun concept and makes deckbulding really exciting, but on the other hand makes the game almost impossible to balance. 4-6 provision cards are in a "bronze zone", they are mostly statsticks. Card that cost more are usually the effect cards, that are played for something unique they have to offer. There is no objective way to say that for example Knickers should be an 8 provision card, or that Vilgeforz should be a 9 provision card. You basically can't set standarts for cards like this and compare them.
It sounds like a mechanic that's great for casuals though. Canadian highlander in mtg (and one can argue normal commander to some extent) has a very similar points system, and it seems to work fine thanks to the social aspect
Check out Mytos y Leyendas, it’s a Chilean card game where your life total is the cards in your deck. Damage dealt to you is done by milling cards. The resource system is similar to magics lands and are called the gold reserve however there are no color restrictions. What is interesting about it is that many gold function like magic’s enchantments, in that they provide an added passive or activated ability. I’m not sure if it is still in print, but I played it constantly as a child.
Legends of Runeterra has probably the smoothest mana system I've played so far. May not be a huge game right now, but the man system is really good. Like HS mana, but you can bank up to three unspent mana. This mana can only be spent on spells. May not sound like much at first, but this is coupled with a game that has high interaction and a staggered turn system. That spell mana allows you to aim for say a solid turn four drop and have two mana open to protect it with interaction. Or be ready to interact with the opponent's stuff. Makes the game really engaging and you don't end up with the classic hearthstone early game awkwardness where its like I guess I just can't use all my mana perfectly so fuck me. The whole mechanic just feels really well polished, and beautiful in its simplicity. And turns are staggered - meaning that one player does an action (playing a creature, casting a slow speed spell, or attacking if they are the player who can attack that turn) and then the other player does an action. If you pass, and the opponent also passes, the turn ends. So sometimes people will pass early to see what the other player plays, knowing that they probably want to play something. But sometimes you just want to pass back in order to make them burn mana. And having two different types of mana means you can interact with them differently. Spells that increase your regular mana are not common, more of a classic ramp. But you can also get cards that give you spell mana or have effects that take place depending on gaining or spending spell mana. There's one deck (or more idk, but one that I know of) that specifically wants to cast absolutely nothing on turn one and two in order to build up its full three spell mana immediately.
Real answer? Duel Masters, but also shout outs to • My Little Pony (like duel masters, but you also have a second pool of energy tokens to purchase effects such as movement or card draw) • Lorcana (*most* cards can be turned facedown into what are essentially lands, so there's a good mix of hard choices and versatility. But there are also Songs, which are special actions where you have the option to tap characters to perform actions instead of spending resource. Really cool) • Digimon (Play until you are in the negatives, and then your opponent's pool is equal to the negative you ended your turn in. Real push and pull. This *does* mean there's no ramp, but you get card draw and discount whenever you digivolve, so a volatile ramp up is a still a strong component of play)
I really liked Legends of Runeterra's addition of spell mana onto Hearthstone's mana system. Hearthstone tends to favor decks that can 'curve out' well and efficiently spend all the mana you have each turn, and you can fall behind if you missed an early turn. Hearthstone's Coin helped the 2nd player with this a bit, allowing you to say, play a 3 cost card on turn 2, then a 3 cost card on turn 3. LoR's spell mana allowed you to store up to 3 excess mana to be used only on spell cards, which makes it so you aren't punished as harshly for missing a turn. Control decks will want to always have this spell mana reserve full to be able to react to their opponent's plays, and there's even an archetype focused around 6 cost spells, so those decks would want to pass Round 1 and 2 to do a big play on Round 3 with 6 total mana for spells.
I'm working on a game with health as the resource. To preface this description, if I say something is like something from another game Assume that it is just to get you in the headspace, not exact. So to start your deck, you have up to 3 leader cards. Your deck can only have cards of the associated leader type. So, for instance, if it was magic, the gathering you would have 3 commanders, and you could only have cards of their creature types. Say vampires, zombies, and werewolves. Each leader gives you more health to start the game with. So base 1+x+y+z. It is always a number between 0-2. So 1+2+1+0=4 starting health. Your health can be used in one of two ways. Exhaust which is a temporary loss that you gain back at the start of your next turn. Sacrifice. Which is a permanent loss but you still gain one health, extra every turn. It's kind of like tapping versus sacrificing land in magic.
@dudono1744 yeah but with this it's designed to be. From the start. Meaning 1 health win is still a win is a lot different because 1 health is your screwed
Another strength with the mana system in MTG is that it allows you to understand what you and your opponent are capable of at any moment. You're not forced to sit there and spectate your opponent's turn like in Hearthstone, and you're not just waiting for some hand trap/spell BS like in Yugioh. Your opponent has 2 mana and they only have 2 mana of work they can do, which just deepens the play and counterplay that each person has. Like you're about to drop your win con, but you notice that your opponent has 3 blue mana sitting up so you drop something less important first and play around the information you have.
I really like running Simian Spirit Guide and Elvish Spirit Guide (very bad creatures with the ability to exile them from your hand for 1 mana at any time) so I can goofily go, "JOKES ON YOU I HAD MANA"
I like the onepiece system on don. It has a double use I've never played with before in anything else. I would love to see a video with that included next time. Keep up the good work!
Lorcana has a pretty good mana system as well. Certain cards can be put into the inkwell to be used as mana but they're not just blanks like lands are in Magic meaning you can build a deck with a ton of mana producing cards that aren't just dead draws at certain points in the game. Might be one of the better mana systems as you're giving up the ability to play a card from your hand to turn it into a resource to be able to play other cards instead. You hardly ever get screwed and you can really never flood cause once you reach a certain point, you don't have to play cards to the inkwell anymore.
Gonna put a different name in the ring and say the Final Fantasy TCG's Mana system is my favourite. Almost every card can be discarded for 2 Mana of it's Element, but there are also Backup cards you can play for a more per permanent resource, being able to tap them for 1 mana per turn, or be used for alternative effects. You also draw 2 cards per turn, other than First, though, so discarding cards constantly for cost feels better than it would at 1 draw.
IMO Duel Masters had the best resource system. It was basically like Magic, except there's no dedicated Land cards, but you can play any card upside-down as a land analogue that can tap for mana of the card's colors. So your whole deck is playable cards and you'll never get mana flooded or mana screwed (except maybe by color restrictions). Also, the only casting requirement was that you spend at least one mana of the same color as any card you're trying to play. In MtG terms, every card in Duel Masters has a single colored mana pip of its color, but the rest of the cost is entirely generic. There are even other TCG/CCG that use similar "every card can be used as resource": the Naruto card game worked similarly, where you could charge any card to your Chakra zone to spend on jutsu.
Great video, I would also say that Yu-Gi-Oh's mana system is effectively combo based, in that you need to plan to have your combo interrupted at any point, if you don't and you can't do anything else with a weak board state, you just lose to your opponent's combo. Equally you have to hit your opponent's combo at just the right place to stop them dead, if you counter something that their deck does a lot then it doesn't matter, they'll have a back up in place. I like the new Digimon TCG's memory system; each player has "memory" up to a max of 10 and they can spend that on playing cards until it hits zero or below and goes into their opponent's memory pool (which is then the amount they start their turn with (minimum 3 memory)) so you can play that big boss at the end of your turn if you want but then your opponent gets more room to do stuff on their turn, or you can use up all your turn's memory on it and leave them with only that basic amount but that was your entire turn so you kinda lose it on that. Lorcana's ink system is also cool, but really forces you to know your deck going in as it can be really difficult to decide in the early turns what to ink and lose forever.
Good points! I have to agree, that Pokemon's energy system is the best of the four main games mentioned in the video, since it has more flexibility than magic's lands, and does not limit your plays nearly as much a mana in MTG and Hearthstone. The more card games I play, however, the less I like MTG's and Pokemon's land/energy system, and one-per-turn mana systems like these and Hearthstone. Land screw and flood are a part of that, but I also think it feels terrible to have a significant portion of your deck that only is there to fulfill your land for turn. MTG and Pokemon have tried to fix this with land/energy cards that have additional effects, which does somewhat solve the problem, but those cards can often feel like a compromise where you run a bad land to make your deck less likely to get screw'd or flooded. Another issue with one-per-turn mana systems (mostly in MTG and Hearthstone) that was somewhat touched on in the video, is that, in the early game, most cards in your hand are completely unplayable, leading to few interesting decisions being made in the early turns of the game. MTG has tried to design around this issue with a variety of alternate costs on cards, but just because they can design around it doesn't mean it's a good mechanic. From my experience, there are many games that pace themselves quite well without the need for a one-per-turn mana system, or specialized land/energy cards in the main deck. These games often use the escalation of the board state, as more cards come into play, to pace the game. They use other resources to limit the players' actions on a turn, without requiring land/energy cards to bloat the deck, or limiting players' plays in the early game. Some Examples: Digimon's memory system allows players to play almost any card on turn 1, but at the cost of giving your opponent more resources to use on their turn. This can lead to interesting gameplay where players are trying to spend the minimum amount of memory on their turn until a player decides to make a big play at the risk of the opponent's counterattack. Netrunner (as mentioned in the video) gives each player a set amount of actions of their turn, the amount of which does not change throughout the game, so that even early turns have meaningful decisions on what cards you play and what other actions you take. The game does have a separate resource system, Credits, which are spent to play cards, but credits persist between turns and can be gained or spent without any one-per-turn limitations. Grand Archive's reserve system temporarily spends other cards in hand to pay for card costs, allowing you to play almost anything in your hand on the first turn, effectively treating your hand as your mana pool. This is kept in check by the game's limitations on card draw, and other mechanics that limit what cards you can play early in the game, or even weakening certain cards until the correct conditions are met later in the game. This allows players to play almost any card in their hand, even on the first turn, but uses other mechanics to modulate the flow of the game.
Resources in yugioh are the very same resources of other card games, but the ones people usually don't think about that much because they take them for granted. Cards themselves are always treated as a resource and card advantage in general is super important in every game, but in yugioh cards are basically your ONLY resource. Discard a card. Tribute a monster. Banish a light and a dark. This monster requires two level 6 monsters to make. Shuffle 3 monsters with different NAMES (this specifically is pretty unique to yugioh I think thanks to archetypes and how once per turn effects are designed) So yeah, yugioh may apparently not have a resource system on the surface, but in reality it's just a different approach to card games.
You’re doing great. These videos are all very interesting. You have really good insights. Totally deserved rapid growth. Keep it up. Maybe you could talk about the usage of different zones in each game. Graveyard, Exile/Banish, etc. For example, Yugioh is basically played entirely in the graveyard. Pokémon kinda does it too. Magic has a little bit of graveyard recursion but it’s not required. Etc.
I think one of the coolest things about Lands is that there's space for double-faced cards that are lands or another card type. While some might say this is just a worse version of an "any card as resource" system, the division between what cards can be used as resources and what can't does add a level of strategy to deckbuilding. There's also cards that transform into Lands or vice versa which are also really cool (I love the transforming lands from the Ixalan sets). While getting mana-screwed or flooded can be a problem, the most interesting thing about these problems is that they exist primarily in multi-color decks, since you need more different types of lands or cards that can filter mana, which requires more set-up. In most formats, this is relatively tricky to do (though eternal formats likely get broken anyways) which reduces the likelihood a deck will iust be a "good stuff" deck.
Lorcana deserves a mention here in my opinion. It has the best mana system out of all the games I've played (Yugioh, MTG, Pokemon, Hearthstone and Lorcana). Basically cards cost ink to play and you have an inkwell which you can add to in order to increase your mana. It's kind of just like how many lands do you control in MTG. The key difference is, you can ink basically any card in the game. Once you ink it, you just put it down face down and it's treated like a land. This means that if you draw an early game card late in the game it doesn't matter because you can just use it to add to your mana pool. It means you can never get mana screwed or flooded. It's also used as a balancing mechanic because if a card is especially powerful, they'll make it uninkable (you can't use it to make mana), so you can only run a sensible amount of those cards in your deck. Another thing I really like, is that it creates really hard choices. I have a really amazing card in hand, but I can't play it for a few turns. Do I ink it so I can play the rest of my deck, or do I have an arguably weaker start and use this card to recover? Do I want to skip inking a card for this turn so I can keep this removal spell in hand for later? etc. Not having to worry about lands also makes deck building more fun in my opinion. You can include those massive lategame cards that you might never get to play. Just ink it if it isn't useful. No worrying about what percentage of the deck to dedicate to the resource system. There are downsides. Much like most card games, Lorcana has a colour system and each colour has a different feel. However, because you can use ink to cast a spell of any colour everyone would just play all the best cards from each colour obviously. As a result, it's limited to two colours per deck. This is a shame, because I think having three, four or five colour decks like in MTG can be pretty fun but having access to every card is balanced by requiring a mana source of every colour. The second disadvantage is that the cards are not interesting after they're inked. Once again using MTG as an example, they have many lands that have an effect on the field. Lorcana doesn't have this. Neither of these things really matter, because they apply to most other card games too. I come from Yugioh and having no resource system other than the cards in hand and the one normal summon is super fun, but I wouldn't compare it to other card games. That aside, Lorcana has my favourite resource system out of anything that I've tried. MTG might come close because of multi-colour decks and lands that have fun effects, but I think Lorcana still wins in terms of the resource system. I honesty think it's a really underrated card game, even though I've only dabbled myself. I've also heard Digemon has a good system, but I don't know. I've never played it. EDIT: If anyone is wondering (I know no one is) I really hate energy in Pokemon. I think it sucks. I'd expand, but I have only played a small amount of pokemon and it isn't somehting I have a strong opinion of, unlike MTG and Lorcana. Hearthstone like you said is fine but boring.
Just started the video, but the answer is Duel Masters. Mythgard also has a pretty neat system, where you "burn" a card by shuffling into the deck to get a resource.
Mythgard has by far my favorite mana system. It's sorta like magic but instead of using lands you get the equivalent of a land in play by (once per turn) shuffling a card back into your deck. So you still need to spend one card to get one extra max mana but you don't have the issue of drought or flood and you don't have that awkward moment lategame where you have as much mana as you'll ever need but still draw a dead card regularly. Just flows smoother while keeping similar deckbuilding complexity as you need to balance color costs and can mix and match colors in creative ways. It also doubles as a mulligan since you can shuffle back your useless cards into your deck to turn them into ressources, but there is quite a lot of strategy to it since you can't do it twice with the same card you don't want to do it too early to not risk redrawing a card that's useless for the matchup later and being stuck with it and you also want to do it early for cards that are essential for the lategame of the matchup but useless early on to maximize your chances of redrawing them later. Overall it makes things a lot more consistent but in a skill based way and it also make niche cards more playable since you can use them as a ressource if they end up not useful, and you're also rewarded for picking a variety of cards with similar but slightly different use case which I think is cool since it increases the number of cards that can fill a slot rather than always picking the max number of the best card in that slot on average, you get an interesting trade off of consistency vs versatility, makes deckbuilding and adjusting your decks for what you face really fun.
this is very quickly becoming one of my favorite channels, absolutely love your content and presentation, and you explain things kinda how i try to explain stuff to my friends who don't play the kind of games i like, so your videos really resonate with me even though i know next to nothing about TCGs. thanks for your content and i hope you keep making these videos! :D
I’ve personally fell in love with the one piece Don system, a lot of times in other games you won’t have cards that can use your mana, but with leader you can always use your mana, plus you always start with one more Don than your opponent had last turn creating a very back and forth feeling to every game with each turn more powerful than the last
Yugioh does have a resource system. You get 1 Normal summon. You get 1 draw a turn. You get max 15 extra deck cards. You start your hand with 4-5 cards and use other cards in play as resources for bigger boss cards from your extradeck. Most cards have a "Once per turn" clause, meaning once the effect is spent, you can't use it again.
Lorcana and Star Wars unlimited are super interesting as it makes you choose between cards in your hand as opposed to having land/energy take up card slots in your deck. Star Wars Unlimited even better just because any card can be a resource and you draw 2 and resource one each turn with lorcana you can get "mana screwed" if you end up drawing cards that can't be inked.
Technically, in Yugioh (and I think the others except Magic), board space is a resource too. I was one of the things that kept me (a Magic player) away from Yugioh. In Magic, the board size is infinite, so you can generate infinite permanents which is somewhat common wincon in commander. I've heard Yugioh players say the main resource in their game is your hand, which is why cards like pot of greed are much much more powerful than in Magic.
One resource system that I think deserves a mention is the Vs System. The way it worked was it was an 'any card as a resource' system, but it had the twist that the cards you used for a resource could still potentially be used if they were plot twists, locations or reservists, to get around some of the feels-bad of other any card as a resource systems, where you want to play your cards, not just use half of them as resources (also didn't hurt that it was made in the post yugioh TCG boom, so the similarities to trap cards worked in its favor). There are however downsides: because it's an any card as a resource system, as well as some of the peculiarities of combat, curving out became kind of mandatory, essentially shifting screw/flood to not getting a good curve, though there were some decks that overwhelmed with numbers, so cared less about curving out. Additionally the designers were IMO far too meager in what they would allow plot twists and locations to do, since they were effectively like lands and spells at the same time, but this made it just feel like your combat tricks were never quite strong enough and your continuous effects were too situational. On the whole it's a system I wish more games would experiment with (though the combat system I feel is one that can be done away with; give me MTG combat over it any day)
I used to play a lot of Citadels with my friends, it's not a TCG, but it is a card game nontheless, and it has a simple solution with its resource system -- you can either draw a card, or get 2 resource required to cast them at the start of your game. Its a more money like resource, you keep it until you spend it. Other cards allow you to gain more of the resource in late game, but the basic mechanic stays and makes your gameplay not entirely bound to what is on your table
Something to mention is the integral relationship between Magic and Pokemon. Pokemon TCG was a product of Wizards of the Coast and was built as kind of the younger sibling to the more established Magic The Gathering. It was basically intended for kids to start in the Pokemon TCG, which was THE craze at the time thanks to the games and anime, and then eventually graduate to MtG, as they got older. This is super evident in Pokemon's energy which has almost the same role as Land/Mana does in MtG. Interestingly, we've got Pokemon TCG Pocket right now and it actually has a hybrid of Pokemon's original energy system and Hearthstone's Mana Crystals.
15:45 You can use EACH of Ash' effects once per turn. Cards that restrict players by making them able to activate one of their effect per turn do exist, and it's a different and harsher restriction (example: Arianna the Labrynth Servant).
The TCG warlords of time used a system of discarding cards from your hand to pay costs in its base set: cavemen something something. So a 4 drop is stronger than a 3 drop. It was really interesting bc your hand refilled every turn to 5, BUT if it was already at 5 you got to draw a card, which meant you could play 5 drops. Really interesting system, but then the second and third sets added special currency cards $ and coins which could be discarded to play cards from those sets specifically, but also added leader cards that could “convert” cards in hand into currency. Like the evil business man having the ability to discard a card to make some quick $. This mean that the stronger but riskier cards from the modern age cost $ but either require you to run specific leaders or put potentially slow draws in your deck $. You could also bank your $ between turns if I recall
You should look into Elestrals, I've been getting into it recently and I love the resource system, having it be the same thing as your health pool is very interesting and adds such a complex and interesting layer to deck building and literally every play you make
I find combining some of these systems pretty interesting at times and some newer or lesser popular games have. I'm primarily a Magic player, so I am partial to the land system in both its strengths and flaws, but I'm also into Hololive which has released its own TCG with support from Bushiroad. I haven't gone over the full card list as I'm patiently waiting for the English release. Hololive has appeared to have taken an approach on Pokemon's system where you require energy to attach to your game pieces to use their abilities or retreat them. This introduces a system with multiple colors where you can run a singular color for consistency or branch to other colors for flexibility. It also uses an extra deck specifically for this energy, so you avoid mana screw (on numbers) while also sort of being like the Hearthstone effect of bland once per turn. I do see design space, if they opt for it, where it could be possible to ramp out more energy or mess with your opponent's deployed energy. There's nonbasic energy design space too. There is also the challenge for the deck builder to ensure their color fixing. The life system also plays into this as a sort of catch up mechanic where when you lose game pieces it is you who get the prize cards; not the opponent (basically the opposite of Pokemon), but only your energy cards are used for those prize cards so it isn't like you'll be flipping a bomb card from them. There is also Lorcana, while not the first to do so it is the biggest now which basically makes every card a Magic-style MDFC (Modal-Dual-Faced-Card, which often had a spell on the front and a land on the back that you go to choose which to use). This means you will never screw and allows for ramp and resource denial design spaces. The real challenge for the player is deciding what to lose access to to make your ink drop. Perhaps you don't draw into a spell you needed as you already used a copy in your inkwell. You can also still potentially flood with ramp effects when they are unneeded for your situation. Having no real differences in your resource pool can be seen as a negative.
I have to say, I dont consider the resource system in Magic as the best, but its the most elegant. I got the idea from researching RTS's. Generally, a good RTS has 2-3 resources (Gold, Lumber, Food in Warcraft). Lands in Magic does this as Lands gives 2 variance in resource. There is a variance in consistency (because you have to draw into your lands) and a variance in granularity (because you have to pay for specific colors.) Its 2 resources in 1 game piece. Very elegant. But as for the question of best resource system in a game? Duel Masters and their dual-purpose cards 😅
A digital card game whose mana system I really like is that of chroma bloom and Blight (the game is essentially dead). It has a combination of the hearthstone and mtg elements in its mana system. There are heros and each of them come with some Abilities (a low cost active, a passive and a single use ultimate ability which you can only use at a later stage of the game) and a pool of mana that you can use to build your mana curve along with your deck. For example a hero can have 6 red mana, 9 purple mana, 4 blue mana. You then can sequence that mana on a curve of your choice depending on the deck you build. For example PBPPRPRPBB (10 in total). Each turn the next mana in the list gets unlocked. They use the coin system as well (it gives chromatic mana, ie a mana of any colour) and there is a hero who makes extra use of the coin system to ramp up fast for a quick single burst turn. On top of that, there is the act system which adds interesting considerations at strategies of different decks. You start in act one and when a player gets themselves down to some specific life total or a number of turns have been played out, then the game proceeds to act 2. The life total option acts as a shield that once you reach, you cannot deal additional damage to the opponent for the turn. The same applies for act 3. Once players have entered act 2, they have 2 extra colourless mana available to them in their mana pool (thus they can reach a maximum of 12 mana from their mana pool alone). Act 3 unlocks the ultimate. This makes some interesting decisions in different match ups. For instance agro might wait a turn out or force you to take damage on your turn so that you won't benefit from the next act's bonus first.
Legends of Runeterra had the best mana system for digital card games. An iteration on Hearthstones system, keeping it simple while reducing it's drawbacks of playing on curve and acrually promoting interactive gameplay with spell mana
I don’t know if it’s the best but I definitely think that one of the most interesting mana systems is Elestrals where you have a twenty card deck of mana that is also used as your life.
If we're bringing up Digital card games, Capcom's Teppen doesn't have turns, therefore it's resource (MP) is timed and caps at 10. Teppen has 3 character lanes where your creatures are placed and a line going from Character to player field shows how long it takes for an attack to go off. If the attack lands on another creature, then they trade health and damage. To balance out deck making, your MP cap is halved for every color you add. Monocolor decks = 10 MP, 2 colors = 5, 3 colors = 3 and an all 4 color deck is virtually unplayable at only 1 max MP. Because of this, multicolor decks are a meme in Teppen, and deckbuilding is very limited as the only way to make a deck synergize is to fill it almost entirely to make use of a set's specific mechanic. A second resource the game has is SP. Teppen has decks choose a character and one of 3 soecials they have access too. When playing cards, their cost gain you SP. Once you reach the specific SP requirement of your special, you may cash in SP to do said special. You can horde SP for multiple use of your special, but specials are always on a cooldown when used. Teppen is a DCG that doesn't just test decision making and deck building but also response and reflexes
I sir, would like to introduce you to the One Piece TCG. The DON!!! System is one that makes tempo play very important in a game with no hand limit. Both players have a 10 Don deck. The player that goes first get 1 don and from there on both players draw 2 don (to a designated resource area, they don't go to hand) similar to MTG, Don is tapped to pay for your cards but Don also have a secondary use of giving characters an extra 1K attack power on your turn by attaching Don to them. The game's purple decks have a habit of playing with their DON, with cards and leader effects that either allow you to ramp, or put dons back in the deck for massive effects.
I liked the wow tcg mana system. Dedicated mana cards in the form of quests, which gave you small objectives to do mid-game for a reward. In a way helped combat mana-flooding. On the other hand, if you weren't drawing quests, you could use regular cards for mana, at the cost of no quest rewards and losing that card.
Force of Will has/had (I think it's a dead card game, but there might still be some people playing it) an interesting mana system that felt like a combination of hearthstone and magic. Your deck has a "Ruler" (basically a commander like in EDH) they start in play, have a few minor static or activated abilities, and can be tapped to put the top card of your mana deck (crystals) into play. For some cost, you could flip your Ruler into a more powerful form that could fight and had more potent abilities, but if you used them to attack, you give up on getting a new crystal. If I remember correctly, if the transformed from was defeated, it went back to its original state, but lost its abilities other than making new crystals. So, mana screw/flood wasn't a thing, your mana deck had personality and deck building choices since there were different kinds of crystals that could have different effects than just a basic, and you could make the choice to give up higher levels of mana to go for a more aggresive strategy.
My favorite resource system was in Keyforge, you could do as many actions and play as many cards as you wanted for no cost, but only of one specific house (the houses are kinda like colors in magic) and every deck always has three houses, so you had to choose between using the stuff you played last turn or playing the new things you just drew that are most likely of different houses
Legends of Runeterra had my favorite system. Each player gains one mana per turn (up to 10) but you can bank up to 3 spell mana. This is mana that can only be used for spells. It may not sound like much but this adds a tremendous amount of depth to the game. Man, LoR was such a gooooood game. It's a shame it failed.
Duel Masters and Lorcana are both interesting in that they have the same idea of fixing Magic's land screw/flood system by making it so that *all* cards (or most cards in Lorcana's case) can be used as mana in Duel Masters, the bottom of each card has an inverted number (usually 1), and that's how many mana you can get if you sacrifice that specific card in the mana zone. Lorcana is the same, except with Lorcana only specific cards can be sacrificed for "ink" (Lorcana's version of mana) instead of any card, as indicated by the ring around the card's ink cost on the corner and you strictly only get exactly 1 ink per card sacrificed to your ink pool, you don't get extras afaik Lorcana honestly feels a lot like if Magic and Duel Masters had a baby i watched Lorcana playthroughs and a lot of the wording and effects in Lorcana are directly lifted from Magic (eg. flying = evasive), but it has that Duel Masters system of mana
While it's not a physical card game, I think that the sacrifice system from the game inscryption is probably one of the better ways to do a mana system. It functions like a combination of lands from magic with the tribute summoning mechanic from yugioh. In order to summon stronger creatures you have to sacrifice some number of creatures already on your board. and there is a card that functions similarly to a mtg land/ pokemon energy in the squirrel card, in that it does nothing by itself but can be played for free and then sacrificed to play cards that actually do something. But unlike mtg or pokemon the resource that does nothing by itself is kept in its own separate deck and you chose whether or not you want to draw a squirrel or a creature at the start of your turn. It allows games to go on for multiple turns but doesn't have the issue of drawing a land/energy when you need a creature to play leading to losing games entirely due to bad draw luck.
Every card game in the world: "I play 1 land/energy/mana and I pass my turn to you" "I play 1 land/energy/mana and I pass my turn to you" Yugioh players: "nice board dude, okay dark ruler no more? Battle phase? evenly match? CL2 droplet sending evenly match?"
@@jmurray1110 no, droplet only goes to the GY after the chain is fully resolved. Therefore it is still only 1 card that your opponent will have to banish. What you are thinking of is if your opponent destroys your Evenly with a card like mst
I really like the mana systems in the tcgs by bandai, such as OPTCG's Don!. It's a kinda like hearthstones system where you get the same amount of mana each turn, however here it is 2 (unless you go first then it's 1) with a cap of 10. What makes it unique is that you can either choose to spend your Don! to play cards regularly or attack them to one of your characters to increase their power for the turn. These games also have a pretty unique system for handling life which I won't go into here but I can really recommend anyone interested in some unique ideas to check it out.
Flesh and Blood and Digimon really should be represented in a video like this they both have resources systems way better than the ones discussed. Also duelmasters/kaijudo is another great system.
Original Vs System had a unique resource system that has been iterated on, but also dumbed down. Like a lot of other modern games, any card in your hand could be placed as a resource. Howerever Plot Twists and Locations could be 'flipped up' and used as though they were in your hand. Only playing characters and equipment spent resource points, but plot twists and locations just had to have that number of resources in play. It meant you rarely lost opportunity by putting certain things down, and they iterated on it a lot as the game progressed.
The best thing about energy in pokemon is depending on the deck they do not have the same role Depending in your energy acceleration method they may be played from your hand once, from your deck thanks to a card, from your discard pile thanks to a card, from your hand as much as you want... Every deck manages the ressources in a very different way I would say the way energy is managed is what makes pokemon fun to play and what creates so many different deck archetypes. In the past energy was tough to manage but now the current meta is amazing when it comes to energy usage
I always thought the Duel Masters "all your cards are also lands" was the best system I played with. Shame that it died, and that they never played much with it. Imagine if you could have a decent mana dork, but as a land it taps for more mana, so you have to decide if you want a little of both, or just need a big hit of mana.
I personally absolutely love the digimon tcg system The games starts a value 0 and each player can have a max value in their direction The interesting thing is that this system is shared, so the higher the cost of the cards you play, the more free counterplay your opponent gets And if you ever extend so much that the mana goes positive your opponent it becomes their turn In other words, even in turn 1 you can already get extremely string digimon on the board, whith the drawback that that is the only thing you will do that turn, and that the opponent can now play a ton of cards before it becomes your turn again
Genius invocation has a good one you get 8 per turn but have to roll them. You can use dead cards to tune the mana to match your colour. The cards all either want a cost, matching pairs or a specific colour to use. It's much more fun than it should be.
I really liked how Force of Will made you choose between tapping your ruler for mana or tapping them for an ability... for a short while before they just took the tap symbol off of rulers, cause, you know, power creep 😢😢😢
Digimon to me will always just be the best resource system in any card game, the risk reward of it all is amazing and your big plays allowing your opponent to big play back is amazing
18:08 Netrunner mentioned. Netrunner really has multiple resource systems. One certainly is the number of actions (clicks) but money (credits) to play cards is much more obvious as a resource system that doesn't feel like a classic resource system at all. In some damage-centric matchups cards in hand act as a pseudo-resource as well.
The original wow TCG had an incredible resource system. It worked like magic but you could play any card face down to act as a resource. Some cards had bonuses if used as a resource which added some fun deck building and decision making.
Thing i want to mention is Faeria: you gain 3 cumulative mana per turn and have access to a once per turn place a land (think place to walk your creatures like from dungeon dice monsters), draw a card or gain mana. in addition there are points on the board which if you have a creature next to them give you 1 mana. super fun system where you balance card advantage, mana value, board control and land placements
Sorcery definitely has the best modern take on resources. Separate decks to draw from and as you play out the resources you build the board (realm) that you're competing on. Top tier
magic the gathering nailed it with the land system because of a simple factor: you NEED inconvenience in your games. The varience of relying on land drops to hit to cast bigger spells is one of the reasons why MtG was able to establish itself as the leading card game outside of pokemon, which gets a lot of its sales from non-players in the first place.
MtG is the leader because it's the first major CCG with tons of synergies and mechanics to explore. It has a broad range of themes which broadens the appeal. It was the pioneer in CCGs and it was its lead to lose. The inconvenience is absolutely already there in all CCGs with your draw luck. You don't need more. It's an extremely bad feeling to get flooded or screwed and it's flawed. Not surprising given how old MTG is, it has a mechanic that wouldn't have been designed today (CCGs made in the last 10 years don't have that flaw). Lands being crucial plays to even being able to do anything is why lands got powercrept so hard that they often do a lot more than tap for 1 mana.
@@catzblu999 fully disagree. I started CCGs with Pokémon and yu-gi-oh. The fact you can get mana flooded or screwed IS AN UPSIDE of the system, not a flaw. If it’s happening to you consistently, you have built a bad deck. If it happens once in a while, you need to get better at mulligans. If it happens rarely, you’ve built a balanced deck and when it does happen is just poor luck. Yeah, it can sometimes feel bad when against all odds you get flooded or screwed even with a good hand and mulligan, but that feels infinitely less bad than turn 1-2 combos in yugioh. There is a reason despite what you view as a “flawed” system MtG has retained its popularity despite “better” systems being made.
Maybe in 2005 this would've been relevant but the only reason Magic IS still second is nostalgia and Commander+fanservice crossovers. The system is flawed and until Hearthstone became the first post-wow product, it was the actual second or first most relevant card game. Too bad it's attached to Blizzard. There are way too many outside factors to popularity, and almost nobody gets the first time right, so it's just marketing strats what keeps them afloat. People forget that powercreep is an obligatory thing due to companies having to profit to actually exist, unless you just kill your game in 4 years or less, and we keep forgetting this concept permeates the entire landscape of tabletop games: real world capitalism is the core thing in which you have to design around.
@ there are more newer players than there are old players, so nostalgia is not a major factor. Commander, last I checked, is still magic that uses the same system, lands and all, and if new players did not vibe with it they would not play. There’s a reason magics playerbase still keeps growing despite virtually no mainstream marketing, and it’s because the game systems themselves are good.
Yugioh is more of a tv show prop / plot device than a game. They just turned it into an actual game because so many people wanted to buy it after they watched the show.
The best mana system it's a digital card game monster battles tcg. You make a 20 card deck up to 2 copies each card. This game has no graveyard every card after use goes back to deck. Each turn you shuffle and you draw a new hand of 5 cards. You can only play 2 cards per turn. But instead of playing a card you can evolve a card. You sacrifice tempo for value. Because this game has no graveyard when you redraw this card it's going to be already evolved. Some cards can evolve only once a midrange deck. Some twice a control deck. And some cards that are a little too good cannot evolve an aggro deck. You love playing sticky minions in this game, you want your minion to survive in order to evolve it. Evolving it also fully heals it.
I think the closest thing Yugioh has to a resource system is the normal summon and that probably should have been mentioned
And technically the Pendulum Summon. But the most tangible resource nowadays is your Deck/Extra Deck, running out of cards in grind game is pretty common.
true
I think even more interesting for Yugioh is, that the cards themselves are becoming the resources. There is a reason why a draw 2 effect card is completely fine in magic but banned for the longest time in Yugioh. As when the cards themselves are the resources, card advantage becomes super powerful.
Hard once per turns matter infinitely more than your normal summon. Like you could normal summon something like SE Ash 3 times and it wouldn’t even matter because only the 1st one will have an effect. Yugioh is very good at establishing resource loops that let you repeat certain combos turn after turn, but a hard once per turn is what forces the combo to eventually stop. Even looking at banned cards, a lot of them end up banned because they lack a hard once per turn. Like pre-errata Firewall Dragon was just infinite material for burn FTKs and now that it has a hard once per turn it’s just an okay end board piece in Cyberse piles, which ends up being like a tier 2/rogue strategy. Unlike in other mana-based card games where you can use a card as many times as you have copies of it and can pay the cost, which is how you get infinite mana loops in games like Magic.
@@jayfeather9063 "cards themselves are becoming the resources". as opposed to magic or pokemon where after you resolve a card it just goes back into your hand and is not discarded I guess
Digimon mana system is not only very lore accurate, but it also creates a very strategic dynamic of PASSING mana for the opponent to use. Possibly the best system in card game yet.
This. Decks actually have ramp times without forced clinkiness of wincon pieces + lands. Just Scry tutors + wincon pieces. The problem of choking to 1 Memory becomes non existant in early-midgame with "Set to 3 Memory" tamers or options like the Memory Boost/Trainings or Inheritables that gain Memory to keep turn. The borrowed Shield system from Duel Masters make the game so defensively sound. Brilliant game.
I’ve only played digimon once but I thought the memory system was super cool and unique
I actually hate the Digimon system. I don’t like the feeling of forcing balance through cost. It takes away most of the design space for investing purely in economy (at least in a way that’s not arbitrary)
Balance is boring imho. I like how green in magic create consistent mana advantages, and how red creates sporadic mana advantages. It gives us another way to make games more dynamic.
The pendulum style mana system for Digimon specifically turned me off from the game.
@BS-gk2cb I would disagree greatly, because they have worked around it in several ways that have created dynamic deck concepts that really pushes the way the game works. As the most basic example, look up fanglongmon, the deva-sovergin deck. It just slaps a body down for 7 mem, it draws you a card, and then slots another body in the breeding zone. While this is a high cost, it is mitigated in several ways. You are setting up 2 bodies for one price, and it an an eminent ace deck. Meaning that you can go into large lol 6 bodies as interrupts.
My personal favorite has to be Digimon’s “memory” system.
For those who don’t know, in Digimon theres the memory gauge that goes from 10 to -10. Anytime you play a card that card’s play cost to subtracted from the memory, but the big difference maker is that you’re allowed to go negative. If you only have 1 memory and play a card that cost 3, you’ll just go to -2.
But the once you go negative, the cards currently activating will resolve and your turn immediately ends. Your opponent will start with the memory you went into the negative. So in the example above, you went -2, so your opponent will start with 2.
It creates a fun back and forward game of chicken. You can ball out, but then you’r opponent can ball out for no penalty, or you can play safe and try to choke your opponent out, but you’ll also be short handed.
If you're at -8, can you play a 3 cost card ? (you get to -8 cause your opponent keeps passing)
@ if the player passes their turn while they have any memory, it automatically sets them to -3.
Its a originally from a system called Chrono Clash.
The fun thing with YuGiOh is that, while it doesn’t have an overarching cost like most other card games, it compensates by having various cards use just about anything and everything as it’s own personal cost (and also that even THESE costs can chain into other effects.)
Tributing/Discarding/Banishing or sending to the GY for cost is pretty common, but there’s also paying LP, shuffling cards back into your deck, needing _specific_ cards in whatever position to get your effects off, etc…
…
After a moment of thought, I think YuGiOh might just emulate the craziness of its anime and manga A LOT more closely than many other real world games can with THEIR media spinoffs.
Also love in yugioh that those costs can be turned into benefits
While that is true, it is also true that every card game has the possibility to do it too, while keeping their energh system as a possibility for limiting extremely powerful cards. But i do (agree) think that the main problem with yu gi oh is not neccesarily its cost system, but how little konami innovates with the costs
Edit: Realized after writing the comment that the agree is wrongly placed, but now that i'm heard, i may aswell explain what i mean. I think yu gi oh would be a lot funnier if you could add costs that aren't related to throwing things to other zones (which lately is debatable if it is even a punishment for the card) and add costs like "you can't play this card until turn three" or "during your next turn you can't draw a card during your draw phase", but the closest there was when i last checked yu gi oh were effect like you can only play certain type or archetype for the rest of the turn which can be worked around
Bro you’re just coping. YGO is a terrible card game
@@ButFirstHeLitItOnFire While I agree that these costs do lead to interesting gameplay and designs, they also lead to a lot of card text bloat and memory issues when you have to remember what you've played and what summoning locks you are under. Still, I do admit that the incredibly open design space has led to a lot of interesting archetypes.
that has came to be yugioh's core flaw. in other games its easy to make balance cards are theres a simple way to power scale a card and when it can be used while yugioh has to very carefully design cards that other games would balance in a minute.
no one has mentioned it but Flesh and Bloods resource system is easily the best in the tcg space. having cards have 2 uses opens up so much design space whilst not limiting them to being either a dead extra resource or an unplayable card. the draconic, light and mystic talents all prioritising one card colour makes their heroes play super differently (e.g dromai wanting to pitch reds which are the most resource inefficient to fuel her dragons or the mystics making blue cards ,which are typically underpowered to accommodate for their better resource generation, power cards) adds another layer to the game and tonnes of interesting decision points. if anyone is interested in playing FaB I'd honestly say that the resource system is my favourite game feature
Agreed
While I do think the FaB's cost system is awesome and initial heroes are great & work interactively against each other (guardian, assasin, warrior, brute etc.), I feel like their design direction is not for me. Initial classes are very fun, but having to play rune counters against wizards' weird gameplay, stall fatigue being a relevant wincon, the overtuned heroes from newer sets and Illusions in their entirety are just very unfun for me. It is still a great game tho, just not my tcg.
@boraaksitozgun9912 I mean yeah there's a lot to debate on concerning the meta but the core resource system is what I'm talking about. plus on your point about arcane barrier protection I actually think that's a really cool part of the game, pitching cards to defend rather than blocking with them means you keep them for later which gives you more agency in how you choose to fight wizards, do you pitch your blues and try to play a hand of reds or do your other cards have higher costs that you'd rather keep the blue for your turn? plus wizard cards tend to be weaker numbers wise in order to make up for the unique way of defending against them (runeblade is still busted tho lol) also, assassin wasn't an initial class, they're the most recent class introduced to cc and are literally designed to be disruptive and play a different game outside of pure numbers/value
@ethn_chey yeah sorry wrong about assassin thing. Again, not saying game is bad at all, far from it. It is very cream of the crop stuff when it comes to TCGs. I just don't like interacting with the magic stuff, and illusions feel very match up based (stomps or you stomp them) for me. Again nothing that takes away from the game, just experiences of some noob. Hope anyone who enjoys it has a good time and will play it anyway.
@boraaksitozgun9912 yeah that's totally fair! glad you enjoy the game, it only gets better the more you play :) also, as an illusionist player the best tip I can give to beat them if you're having trouble is to go as wide as possible with multiple attacks with go again per turn. I get them feeling super polarising tho, it kinda feels the same way when you're playing as the illusionist lol
The real answer is Duel Masters. Had by far the best mana system in any card game.
Absolutely. Understandable why MTG never pivoted towards this system but it's still a shame considering both are WoTC
Yeah IDK if this game was popular anywhere outside of Poland but me and my homie are still playing it sometimes. Maybe its nostalgia or something but IDK just something about this game feels so good and mana system is also great.
also corrected pokemon prize system to prevent snowbaling
Duel Masters is my favorite resource and life system and it's not even close. Lorcana is doing something similar with "Ink" that's pretty nice. Imagine Duel Masters but some of the cards can't be put into the cost area, and those cards tend to be more powerful.
@@lodos3761Still a top 10 card game in Japan, although competition is becoming increasingly stiff.
One Piece let's you use "mana" or "Don!!" in order to both summon characters and also make your attacks stronger. You can also pitch cards from your hand to boost defense on your opponent's turn. Each card is partially balanced based on how much you can boost if you pitch them from your hand, so a super broken card can have 0 "counter" while a niche weaker card can give 2000 counter, and a balanced card can give 1000 counter. And unlike in pokemon, you draw when you take damage instead of drawing when you kill something, which makes SO much more sense. Opponents actually have to think because every time they hit your life, they are also giving you more potential counter.
The One Piece tcg might have a few problems, but it is one of the most well-balanced and fun card games I've played.
Gwent has an interesting cost system in that a card's cost isn't relevant to playing the card. Instead, the card's cost is used when making your deck.
Cards have a provision cost between 4 and 15. A deck needs at least 25 cards, and you can only have a certain number of provisions. Usually 150. So, you can make a deck of all 6 cost cards that have average power. Or you can make a deck with a mix of higher cost, more powerful cards, and lower cost less powerful cards. This is how the game is balanced.
@@alexrivera5747 this seems like more of a deck building restriction than a resource system like the video is about. I do like the system though, Netrunner has something similar where out-of-faction cards have an import cost to add them to your deck.
Is that the good gwent or the crap new gwent no one recognizes?
And it died, not saying that's the reason but it could be one of many. I played Gwent for a long time but the game was just not as entertaining as other tcgs after a while
I like the system from legends of runeterra
I think it's really nice to bank mana you didn't spend to have a boost on your next turn, with the rule that it can only be used for spells
@@AlessioTheHero the ability to bank spell mana did help smooth out early turns. However it felt like a patch on top of hearthstone's system that didn't really do anything new. I think it would have felt more unique if there were more cards that interacted with spell mana in interesting ways.
Spell mana was the worst game design in runeterra.
This mechanic alone forced the game to ever only be burn/aggro, as every removal spell had tò be balanced around "spell mana" mechanics, thus being horrible, and made the aggro plays completely unstoppable, as you could Always have up tò 3 extra Manas to protect your stuff. And of course, protection spells have tò be cheap, othersise nobody would ever consider them.
@@francescolofaro8258aggro wasn't unstopable but faster will always rise in any game because winning fast is always better
@@lucasalarcon3230 Agree. In MTG, I mostly play control deck like blue, blue/black, Bolas,...I win if the game play longer, but I MUST build my deck and think my play around surviving early. Because the opponent will most likely try to kill me before I do my things (or else they lose).
Aggro will always be the cheapest and easiest way to win a game in a CCG, because the less your opponent play, the less they can harm your strategy.
@@francescolofaro8258 I assume you played during the Azir/Irelia aggro meta, LoR has historically had a mid-range meta.
I can encourage you to check out the resource-system of the Flesh And Blood TCG. It's the one thing that really won me over and it does things really different than any other tcgs Ive played yet.
How you use the resources determines what cards you see in which order later in the game
you could have just explained it instead of telling someone to do their own research...
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value.
If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value.
Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The one that pitches for usually trades its pitch value for playing power.
Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage.
At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs.
This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies.
If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards.
You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force
Hope that helps!
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value.
If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value.
Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The card that pitches for a lot of resources usually trades its pitch value for playing power.
Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage.
At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs.
This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies.
If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, since its very easy for you to pay for the cost of carfs, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards.
You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force
Hope that helps!
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value.
If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value.
Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The card that pitches for a lot of resources usually trades its pitch value for playing power.
Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage.
At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs.
This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies.
If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, since it is very easy for you to pay for resources, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards.
You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force
Hope that helps!
@Always.Smarter It's so much easier seeing it visualized in a video or picture, but the gist is, that every card has a cost and a so called pitch value.
If a card costs two resources to play, you have to "pitch" one or more cards from hand that pitch for that value.
Most of times a card is available in three different pitch values from one to three. The card that pitches for a lot of resources usually trades its pitch value for playing power.
Ex: "Head Jab" with 1 pitch value attacks for 3 damage, but "Head Jab" with 3 pitch value (that can pay for expensive cards by itself) only attacks for 1 damage.
At the end of your turn all pitched cards go under your deck, and you draw at the end of your turn until you have 4 cards in hand. This means you will see your pitched cards later in the game, since you cycle through your deck relatively fast, compared to ther tcgs.
This resource system has at least two things that I like a lot: You virtually never end up with dead hands ever. Deciding which cards you pitch opens up a lot of strategies.
If you pitch only your three value cards, you will be explosive in the beginning, since it is very easy for you to pay for resources, but once you cycle through your deck, you will draw a lot of weaker cards.
You could also decide to pitch a lot of your strong cards, that pay for less resources and run your opponent out of steam. So when you go into the second cycle you can overwhelm them with a lot of force
Hope that helps!
Pokemon TCG Pocket's system is pretty interesting. They borrowed a bit from Hearthstone by giving you a guaranteed Energy each turn of a randomized type from a predetermined pool. It helped solve the mana screw/flood issue, but now you have the issue of multi-type decks not being able to get the right Energy type. It's a big problem for Dragonite decks right now.
I enjoy the game but rn the mana system is really messy. Misty is a great example of how example a single mana difference in the first couple turns snowballs the entire game
I run Dragonite and tbh it feels pretty fair, it makes you consider energy placement more carefully and adds some extra drawback to its 200/turn. Allows other lines to shine sometimes (Tentacruel my beloved!)
LoR is similar to Hearthstone, players get +1 mana crystall at the beginning of each round, 10 maximum. The difference is, at the end of the round up to 3 unused mana is stored as spell mana. Spell mana remains untill it is used, it can only be used to play spells and spells will use spell mana in the first place.
There are also specific ways how you can interact with mana.
Ramp was historically weak, cards like Catalyst of Aeons, Cold Resistance, Faces of the Old Ones or Wyrding Stones were just to expensive and provided too little. Currently ramp is the strongest thing you can do in Freljord, becausr the region was basically re-imagined as a ramp region, getting cards like Winter's Touch, Wild Mysticism and sigil of the storm mechanic.
Shurima is known for ability to sacrifice mana for some powerfull effects.
Rite of Negation is the most infamous "...or destroy your managem" card in the game. Other, like Rite of Calling or Rite of the Arcane seen mediocre success. Some, like Rite of Dominance or Dune Swallower rarely seen play.
I actually think that one of the biggest aspects that I dislike in the energy system compared to mana is the fact that energy can only be attached to one pokemon at a time. Unlike in magic, every turn you're powering individual pieces instead of your whole board, which means that if you lose a pokemon, you have to start building resources again. It never feels like I'm building to something. Instead, it feels like I'm forced to play voltron more often than not.
that cuts both ways though, because it can also serve as a strategic target. in mtg, if you get rid of a bunch of land that's just... it. except for obvious exceptions, getting rid of those lands affects a lot of things you can do (if your deck has a few white staples, but is primarily blue, plains disappearing isn't the end of the world) but with energy you've gotta think ahead; is attaching worth it? is REMOVING energy worth it?
i think they've both got their pros and cons!
In the "new" pokemon tcg-lite app there is not much energy acceleration and because of that it makes the once-per-turn limitation more impactful and you often don't have a clear answer to where you should allocate your energy to. It's more interesting right now.
Modern pokemon though? I agree. Indeed it can feel weird. Decks like Lugia V or Baxcalibur often mean that after a bit of setup energy becomes an afterthought. And as an opponent, you have to deal with both the big beatstick as well as thwart the energy engine all at the same time.
Grand Archive has the best resource system. Each card in your hand acts as mana so you have to rest them to activate effects. Good risk/reward system.
Came here to say this. You never outright condemn a card as "mana" when reserving to memory as you recollect it all at the start of your next turn.
Choosing which cards you do reserve provides another vector of strategy too, and splashier cards costing more reserve limits how many you can drop within one turn. Then all the cards that interact with the size of your memory, elements of cards in memory, balancing card draw through drawing into memory rather than straight to hand... It's all really great design. ❤
Sounds like what Duel Masters had
Keyforge doesn't really have a resource system, but you're still limited in what cards you can play and/or use. Each deck is 36 cards, 12 from each house, and at the start of each turn you call one of the three houses, which means you can only play or use cards from that house, so you often have to choose between using the creatures you have on the board or playing cards from your hand to cycle through your deck. Cards that let you circumvent this rule (Captain Val Jericho, Helper Bot, Exhume, etc.) tend to be very powerful, as they not only add efficiency, but can give access to combos that would otherwise be impossible.
What I like about KeyForge, being limited only by what cards you can play or use and (usually) having a fresh hand of 6 cards every turn, is that it gives you options on sequencing your turn and lot of decision space for the player (i.e. should I play this card first or this other card or use this creature?). Compared to some games with mana systems where turns can be pretty straightforward, i.e. play my 3 drop on my 3rd turn, play my 4 drop on my 4th turn.
I guess one other limiting factor in KeyForge is "rule of six" where you can only play or use cards of the same name 6 times each turn, which (mostly) prevents infinite loops and does put a limit on what you can do on a turn
Lorcana seems to have to most flexible resource system with the inkwell. Being able to turn almost any card into resource if you don’t need it at the moment is very intuitive and interesting for gameplay.
YESSS I wish he would include Lorcana in his videos especially since you can sing some cards to play them for free.
The way Lorcana manages its resource system is really what got me into the game in the first place; I would love to see the game show up in Soda's videos
Dragon ball did the same thing
Do you know duel masters? To say how it is different from that, as I don't know Lorcana yet. Will research anyway.
Honestly yeah shout out to Lorcana. At first I was kinda bummed that there weren't new ways to ink or play with ink types, but then it grew on me since you make hard compelling decisions for *what* to ink, the risk of how many uninkables to place in deck (or how many), and it's easy to process, so my partners easily picked it up as a first card game. Probably good for kids too
Having tried all, YuGiOh's system is easily the most fun to play with. However, the winner for best system instead has to go to both Legends of Runeterra and Digimon. Much better designed systems than all games covered in the video.
The best energy systems for me were either Duel Masters, which allowed you to play any card in your deck as a mana resource, which in turn led to some interesting resource management or Force of Will, which used an extra deck for your mana, which let you play without worrying about getting screwed/flooded while also not being completely broken.
Let’s go team Duel Masters. XD
Force of Will was legit. The resource gain was tied to your Ruler, (basically a commander from EDH) SO, you would have to decide when to stop using them to gain more mana, and when to flip them into battle themselves.
Vanguard also has 2 resource systems one tied to how much life you've lost and the other usually to archetypes and generator who make the resource. Recently a new resource was added that it based on turns or cards specifically to speed it up.
I loved old Vanguard but bounced back when they remade it. I loved the mechanic of counter blast, it was simple, elegant, and gave the losing person more comeback opportunities.
Could you please say what's the name of the last mechanic you mentioned? I'd check it out on the wiki.
@furryfox12 the last mechanic added is energy. You get 3 per turn starting on turn 2 (so player 1 gets nothing on turn 1 and then 2 gets 3) and can get a max of 10. Regardless off deck you can always spend 7 to draw a card. There are cards that make energy much like cards that soul charge and there are cards that spend energy. For example because of how vanguard tends to ramp up when you are on your first and second grade 3 turns you usually have a stock of energy to use already a lot of decks that run 1 energy card don't even have to run anything that makes it, they just have to make sure they don't play that card too many times in a row.
Flesh and Blood has an interesting and flexible system like the genius duel master system.
I think Magic managed to get it right early on the existence of CCGs, and it has evolved well since. It and spell speed are what continue to keep it as the king of card games.
Magic has been a flop for a very long time now. Mark Rosewater has been ruining the game, and WotC/hasbro has been accelerating it. There's also a reason Richard Garfield never used his lands system again for any of his other card games, it's honestly pretty bad.
@@steveng6721 lmao imagine getting an anime-themed Llanowar Elves for 200+ USD. I know I wouldn't, but Hasbro being Hasbro, they saw that players are gullible anyway (Remember that 1 of 1 One Ring horsesh💩t that happened not too long ago?)
MtG has been utter dog shit for years.
Gwent has unique resource system called Provision. In Gwent you can play any card at any time (but only 1 per turn), but provision is a cost you have to pay to put a card in your deck during deckbuilding. But it's not that simple. The basic provision ammount is 150 +you will get bonus provision depending on leader's ability you choose. The cheapest cards are 4 provision, the most expensive - 14 (considering basic design philosophy before gwentfinity). Your deck has to include at least 25 cards (but can include more) and at least 13 units. It is a fun concept and makes deckbulding really exciting, but on the other hand makes the game almost impossible to balance. 4-6 provision cards are in a "bronze zone", they are mostly statsticks. Card that cost more are usually the effect cards, that are played for something unique they have to offer. There is no objective way to say that for example Knickers should be an 8 provision card, or that Vilgeforz should be a 9 provision card. You basically can't set standarts for cards like this and compare them.
It sounds like a mechanic that's great for casuals though. Canadian highlander in mtg (and one can argue normal commander to some extent) has a very similar points system, and it seems to work fine thanks to the social aspect
Grand Archive’s system of being able to treat any card in your hand as energy is probably one of the best
Bringing up netrunner made me so happy. It needs to be talked about more
Check out Mytos y Leyendas, it’s a Chilean card game where your life total is the cards in your deck. Damage dealt to you is done by milling cards. The resource system is similar to magics lands and are called the gold reserve however there are no color restrictions. What is interesting about it is that many gold function like magic’s enchantments, in that they provide an added passive or activated ability. I’m not sure if it is still in print, but I played it constantly as a child.
Legends of Runeterra has probably the smoothest mana system I've played so far.
May not be a huge game right now, but the man system is really good. Like HS mana, but you can bank up to three unspent mana. This mana can only be spent on spells. May not sound like much at first, but this is coupled with a game that has high interaction and a staggered turn system. That spell mana allows you to aim for say a solid turn four drop and have two mana open to protect it with interaction. Or be ready to interact with the opponent's stuff. Makes the game really engaging and you don't end up with the classic hearthstone early game awkwardness where its like I guess I just can't use all my mana perfectly so fuck me. The whole mechanic just feels really well polished, and beautiful in its simplicity.
And turns are staggered - meaning that one player does an action (playing a creature, casting a slow speed spell, or attacking if they are the player who can attack that turn) and then the other player does an action. If you pass, and the opponent also passes, the turn ends. So sometimes people will pass early to see what the other player plays, knowing that they probably want to play something. But sometimes you just want to pass back in order to make them burn mana.
And having two different types of mana means you can interact with them differently. Spells that increase your regular mana are not common, more of a classic ramp. But you can also get cards that give you spell mana or have effects that take place depending on gaining or spending spell mana. There's one deck (or more idk, but one that I know of) that specifically wants to cast absolutely nothing on turn one and two in order to build up its full three spell mana immediately.
Real answer? Duel Masters, but also shout outs to
• My Little Pony (like duel masters, but you also have a second pool of energy tokens to purchase effects such as movement or card draw)
• Lorcana (*most* cards can be turned facedown into what are essentially lands, so there's a good mix of hard choices and versatility. But there are also Songs, which are special actions where you have the option to tap characters to perform actions instead of spending resource. Really cool)
• Digimon (Play until you are in the negatives, and then your opponent's pool is equal to the negative you ended your turn in. Real push and pull. This *does* mean there's no ramp, but you get card draw and discount whenever you digivolve, so a volatile ramp up is a still a strong component of play)
Cool idea! There are now other popular card games you could explore like the ink mechanic in Lorcana or the Don! Mechanic in One-Piece
I really liked Legends of Runeterra's addition of spell mana onto Hearthstone's mana system. Hearthstone tends to favor decks that can 'curve out' well and efficiently spend all the mana you have each turn, and you can fall behind if you missed an early turn. Hearthstone's Coin helped the 2nd player with this a bit, allowing you to say, play a 3 cost card on turn 2, then a 3 cost card on turn 3.
LoR's spell mana allowed you to store up to 3 excess mana to be used only on spell cards, which makes it so you aren't punished as harshly for missing a turn. Control decks will want to always have this spell mana reserve full to be able to react to their opponent's plays, and there's even an archetype focused around 6 cost spells, so those decks would want to pass Round 1 and 2 to do a big play on Round 3 with 6 total mana for spells.
HS hasn't been curvestone for many years. It's all about mana cheating (playing cards way outside their designed curve) and OTK combos.
I'm working on a game with health as the resource. To preface this description, if I say something is like something from another game Assume that it is just to get you in the headspace, not exact.
So to start your deck, you have up to 3 leader cards.
Your deck can only have cards of the associated leader type. So, for instance, if it was magic, the gathering you would have 3 commanders, and you could only have cards of their creature types. Say vampires, zombies, and werewolves.
Each leader gives you more health to start the game with. So base 1+x+y+z. It is always a number between 0-2. So 1+2+1+0=4 starting health.
Your health can be used in one of two ways.
Exhaust which is a temporary loss that you gain back at the start of your next turn.
Sacrifice. Which is a permanent loss but you still gain one health, extra every turn. It's kind of like tapping versus sacrificing land in magic.
Health usually ends up being a resource anyway
@dudono1744 yeah but with this it's designed to be. From the start. Meaning 1 health win is still a win is a lot different because 1 health is your screwed
Another strength with the mana system in MTG is that it allows you to understand what you and your opponent are capable of at any moment. You're not forced to sit there and spectate your opponent's turn like in Hearthstone, and you're not just waiting for some hand trap/spell BS like in Yugioh. Your opponent has 2 mana and they only have 2 mana of work they can do, which just deepens the play and counterplay that each person has.
Like you're about to drop your win con, but you notice that your opponent has 3 blue mana sitting up so you drop something less important first and play around the information you have.
I really like running Simian Spirit Guide and Elvish Spirit Guide (very bad creatures with the ability to exile them from your hand for 1 mana at any time) so I can goofily go, "JOKES ON YOU I HAD MANA"
I like the onepiece system on don. It has a double use I've never played with before in anything else. I would love to see a video with that included next time. Keep up the good work!
Lorcana has a pretty good mana system as well. Certain cards can be put into the inkwell to be used as mana but they're not just blanks like lands are in Magic meaning you can build a deck with a ton of mana producing cards that aren't just dead draws at certain points in the game. Might be one of the better mana systems as you're giving up the ability to play a card from your hand to turn it into a resource to be able to play other cards instead. You hardly ever get screwed and you can really never flood cause once you reach a certain point, you don't have to play cards to the inkwell anymore.
Gonna put a different name in the ring and say the Final Fantasy TCG's Mana system is my favourite. Almost every card can be discarded for 2 Mana of it's Element, but there are also Backup cards you can play for a more per permanent resource, being able to tap them for 1 mana per turn, or be used for alternative effects. You also draw 2 cards per turn, other than First, though, so discarding cards constantly for cost feels better than it would at 1 draw.
IMO Duel Masters had the best resource system.
It was basically like Magic, except there's no dedicated Land cards, but you can play any card upside-down as a land analogue that can tap for mana of the card's colors.
So your whole deck is playable cards and you'll never get mana flooded or mana screwed (except maybe by color restrictions).
Also, the only casting requirement was that you spend at least one mana of the same color as any card you're trying to play. In MtG terms, every card in Duel Masters has a single colored mana pip of its color, but the rest of the cost is entirely generic.
There are even other TCG/CCG that use similar "every card can be used as resource": the Naruto card game worked similarly, where you could charge any card to your Chakra zone to spend on jutsu.
Great video, I would also say that Yu-Gi-Oh's mana system is effectively combo based, in that you need to plan to have your combo interrupted at any point, if you don't and you can't do anything else with a weak board state, you just lose to your opponent's combo. Equally you have to hit your opponent's combo at just the right place to stop them dead, if you counter something that their deck does a lot then it doesn't matter, they'll have a back up in place.
I like the new Digimon TCG's memory system; each player has "memory" up to a max of 10 and they can spend that on playing cards until it hits zero or below and goes into their opponent's memory pool (which is then the amount they start their turn with (minimum 3 memory)) so you can play that big boss at the end of your turn if you want but then your opponent gets more room to do stuff on their turn, or you can use up all your turn's memory on it and leave them with only that basic amount but that was your entire turn so you kinda lose it on that.
Lorcana's ink system is also cool, but really forces you to know your deck going in as it can be really difficult to decide in the early turns what to ink and lose forever.
This has quickly become one of my favourite TCG channels. I love the comparisons between games
Good points! I have to agree, that Pokemon's energy system is the best of the four main games mentioned in the video, since it has more flexibility than magic's lands, and does not limit your plays nearly as much a mana in MTG and Hearthstone.
The more card games I play, however, the less I like MTG's and Pokemon's land/energy system, and one-per-turn mana systems like these and Hearthstone. Land screw and flood are a part of that, but I also think it feels terrible to have a significant portion of your deck that only is there to fulfill your land for turn. MTG and Pokemon have tried to fix this with land/energy cards that have additional effects, which does somewhat solve the problem, but those cards can often feel like a compromise where you run a bad land to make your deck less likely to get screw'd or flooded. Another issue with one-per-turn mana systems (mostly in MTG and Hearthstone) that was somewhat touched on in the video, is that, in the early game, most cards in your hand are completely unplayable, leading to few interesting decisions being made in the early turns of the game. MTG has tried to design around this issue with a variety of alternate costs on cards, but just because they can design around it doesn't mean it's a good mechanic.
From my experience, there are many games that pace themselves quite well without the need for a one-per-turn mana system, or specialized land/energy cards in the main deck. These games often use the escalation of the board state, as more cards come into play, to pace the game. They use other resources to limit the players' actions on a turn, without requiring land/energy cards to bloat the deck, or limiting players' plays in the early game.
Some Examples:
Digimon's memory system allows players to play almost any card on turn 1, but at the cost of giving your opponent more resources to use on their turn. This can lead to interesting gameplay where players are trying to spend the minimum amount of memory on their turn until a player decides to make a big play at the risk of the opponent's counterattack.
Netrunner (as mentioned in the video) gives each player a set amount of actions of their turn, the amount of which does not change throughout the game, so that even early turns have meaningful decisions on what cards you play and what other actions you take. The game does have a separate resource system, Credits, which are spent to play cards, but credits persist between turns and can be gained or spent without any one-per-turn limitations.
Grand Archive's reserve system temporarily spends other cards in hand to pay for card costs, allowing you to play almost anything in your hand on the first turn, effectively treating your hand as your mana pool. This is kept in check by the game's limitations on card draw, and other mechanics that limit what cards you can play early in the game, or even weakening certain cards until the correct conditions are met later in the game. This allows players to play almost any card in their hand, even on the first turn, but uses other mechanics to modulate the flow of the game.
Resources in yugioh are the very same resources of other card games, but the ones people usually don't think about that much because they take them for granted.
Cards themselves are always treated as a resource and card advantage in general is super important in every game, but in yugioh cards are basically your ONLY resource.
Discard a card. Tribute a monster. Banish a light and a dark. This monster requires two level 6 monsters to make. Shuffle 3 monsters with different NAMES (this specifically is pretty unique to yugioh I think thanks to archetypes and how once per turn effects are designed)
So yeah, yugioh may apparently not have a resource system on the surface, but in reality it's just a different approach to card games.
You NEED to try out Elestrals, was missing in this video and from my 20 minutes here I think you'd like it!
You’re doing great. These videos are all very interesting. You have really good insights. Totally deserved rapid growth. Keep it up. Maybe you could talk about the usage of different zones in each game. Graveyard, Exile/Banish, etc. For example, Yugioh is basically played entirely in the graveyard. Pokémon kinda does it too. Magic has a little bit of graveyard recursion but it’s not required. Etc.
Oh good idea thanks!
I think one of the coolest things about Lands is that there's space for double-faced cards that are lands or another card type.
While some might say this is just a worse version of an "any card as resource" system, the division between what cards can be used as resources and what can't does add a level of strategy to deckbuilding. There's also cards that transform into Lands or vice versa which are also really cool (I love the transforming lands from the Ixalan sets).
While getting mana-screwed or flooded can be a problem, the most interesting thing about these problems is that they exist primarily in multi-color decks, since you need more different types of lands or cards that can filter mana, which requires more set-up. In most formats, this is relatively tricky to do (though eternal formats likely get broken anyways) which reduces the likelihood a deck will iust be a "good stuff" deck.
Lorcana deserves a mention here in my opinion. It has the best mana system out of all the games I've played (Yugioh, MTG, Pokemon, Hearthstone and Lorcana).
Basically cards cost ink to play and you have an inkwell which you can add to in order to increase your mana. It's kind of just like how many lands do you control in MTG. The key difference is, you can ink basically any card in the game. Once you ink it, you just put it down face down and it's treated like a land. This means that if you draw an early game card late in the game it doesn't matter because you can just use it to add to your mana pool. It means you can never get mana screwed or flooded. It's also used as a balancing mechanic because if a card is especially powerful, they'll make it uninkable (you can't use it to make mana), so you can only run a sensible amount of those cards in your deck. Another thing I really like, is that it creates really hard choices. I have a really amazing card in hand, but I can't play it for a few turns. Do I ink it so I can play the rest of my deck, or do I have an arguably weaker start and use this card to recover? Do I want to skip inking a card for this turn so I can keep this removal spell in hand for later? etc. Not having to worry about lands also makes deck building more fun in my opinion. You can include those massive lategame cards that you might never get to play. Just ink it if it isn't useful. No worrying about what percentage of the deck to dedicate to the resource system.
There are downsides. Much like most card games, Lorcana has a colour system and each colour has a different feel. However, because you can use ink to cast a spell of any colour everyone would just play all the best cards from each colour obviously. As a result, it's limited to two colours per deck. This is a shame, because I think having three, four or five colour decks like in MTG can be pretty fun but having access to every card is balanced by requiring a mana source of every colour. The second disadvantage is that the cards are not interesting after they're inked. Once again using MTG as an example, they have many lands that have an effect on the field. Lorcana doesn't have this.
Neither of these things really matter, because they apply to most other card games too. I come from Yugioh and having no resource system other than the cards in hand and the one normal summon is super fun, but I wouldn't compare it to other card games. That aside, Lorcana has my favourite resource system out of anything that I've tried. MTG might come close because of multi-colour decks and lands that have fun effects, but I think Lorcana still wins in terms of the resource system. I honesty think it's a really underrated card game, even though I've only dabbled myself. I've also heard Digemon has a good system, but I don't know. I've never played it.
EDIT: If anyone is wondering (I know no one is) I really hate energy in Pokemon. I think it sucks. I'd expand, but I have only played a small amount of pokemon and it isn't somehting I have a strong opinion of, unlike MTG and Lorcana. Hearthstone like you said is fine but boring.
Just started the video, but the answer is Duel Masters.
Mythgard also has a pretty neat system, where you "burn" a card by shuffling into the deck to get a resource.
Mythgard has by far my favorite mana system.
It's sorta like magic but instead of using lands you get the equivalent of a land in play by (once per turn) shuffling a card back into your deck. So you still need to spend one card to get one extra max mana but you don't have the issue of drought or flood and you don't have that awkward moment lategame where you have as much mana as you'll ever need but still draw a dead card regularly. Just flows smoother while keeping similar deckbuilding complexity as you need to balance color costs and can mix and match colors in creative ways.
It also doubles as a mulligan since you can shuffle back your useless cards into your deck to turn them into ressources, but there is quite a lot of strategy to it since you can't do it twice with the same card you don't want to do it too early to not risk redrawing a card that's useless for the matchup later and being stuck with it and you also want to do it early for cards that are essential for the lategame of the matchup but useless early on to maximize your chances of redrawing them later. Overall it makes things a lot more consistent but in a skill based way and it also make niche cards more playable since you can use them as a ressource if they end up not useful, and you're also rewarded for picking a variety of cards with similar but slightly different use case which I think is cool since it increases the number of cards that can fill a slot rather than always picking the max number of the best card in that slot on average, you get an interesting trade off of consistency vs versatility, makes deckbuilding and adjusting your decks for what you face really fun.
this is very quickly becoming one of my favorite channels, absolutely love your content and presentation, and you explain things kinda how i try to explain stuff to my friends who don't play the kind of games i like, so your videos really resonate with me even though i know next to nothing about TCGs. thanks for your content and i hope you keep making these videos! :D
I’ve personally fell in love with the one piece Don system, a lot of times in other games you won’t have cards that can use your mana, but with leader you can always use your mana, plus you always start with one more Don than your opponent had last turn creating a very back and forth feeling to every game with each turn more powerful than the last
Yugioh does have a resource system.
You get 1 Normal summon.
You get 1 draw a turn.
You get max 15 extra deck cards.
You start your hand with 4-5 cards and use other cards in play as resources for bigger boss cards from your extradeck.
Most cards have a "Once per turn" clause, meaning once the effect is spent, you can't use it again.
Lorcana and Star Wars unlimited are super interesting as it makes you choose between cards in your hand as opposed to having land/energy take up card slots in your deck. Star Wars Unlimited even better just because any card can be a resource and you draw 2 and resource one each turn with lorcana you can get "mana screwed" if you end up drawing cards that can't be inked.
Technically, in Yugioh (and I think the others except Magic), board space is a resource too. I was one of the things that kept me (a Magic player) away from Yugioh. In Magic, the board size is infinite, so you can generate infinite permanents which is somewhat common wincon in commander. I've heard Yugioh players say the main resource in their game is your hand, which is why cards like pot of greed are much much more powerful than in Magic.
One resource system that I think deserves a mention is the Vs System. The way it worked was it was an 'any card as a resource' system, but it had the twist that the cards you used for a resource could still potentially be used if they were plot twists, locations or reservists, to get around some of the feels-bad of other any card as a resource systems, where you want to play your cards, not just use half of them as resources (also didn't hurt that it was made in the post yugioh TCG boom, so the similarities to trap cards worked in its favor). There are however downsides: because it's an any card as a resource system, as well as some of the peculiarities of combat, curving out became kind of mandatory, essentially shifting screw/flood to not getting a good curve, though there were some decks that overwhelmed with numbers, so cared less about curving out. Additionally the designers were IMO far too meager in what they would allow plot twists and locations to do, since they were effectively like lands and spells at the same time, but this made it just feel like your combat tricks were never quite strong enough and your continuous effects were too situational. On the whole it's a system I wish more games would experiment with (though the combat system I feel is one that can be done away with; give me MTG combat over it any day)
This is one of my favorite channels. Listening to someone talk about card games is this way is so fun
I used to play a lot of Citadels with my friends, it's not a TCG, but it is a card game nontheless, and it has a simple solution with its resource system -- you can either draw a card, or get 2 resource required to cast them at the start of your game. Its a more money like resource, you keep it until you spend it. Other cards allow you to gain more of the resource in late game, but the basic mechanic stays and makes your gameplay not entirely bound to what is on your table
Something to mention is the integral relationship between Magic and Pokemon. Pokemon TCG was a product of Wizards of the Coast and was built as kind of the younger sibling to the more established Magic The Gathering. It was basically intended for kids to start in the Pokemon TCG, which was THE craze at the time thanks to the games and anime, and then eventually graduate to MtG, as they got older. This is super evident in Pokemon's energy which has almost the same role as Land/Mana does in MtG.
Interestingly, we've got Pokemon TCG Pocket right now and it actually has a hybrid of Pokemon's original energy system and Hearthstone's Mana Crystals.
15:45 You can use EACH of Ash' effects once per turn. Cards that restrict players by making them able to activate one of their effect per turn do exist, and it's a different and harsher restriction (example: Arianna the Labrynth Servant).
The TCG warlords of time used a system of discarding cards from your hand to pay costs in its base set: cavemen something something. So a 4 drop is stronger than a 3 drop. It was really interesting bc your hand refilled every turn to 5, BUT if it was already at 5 you got to draw a card, which meant you could play 5 drops. Really interesting system, but then the second and third sets added special currency cards $ and coins which could be discarded to play cards from those sets specifically, but also added leader cards that could “convert” cards in hand into currency. Like the evil business man having the ability to discard a card to make some quick $.
This mean that the stronger but riskier cards from the modern age cost $ but either require you to run specific leaders or put potentially slow draws in your deck $. You could also bank your $ between turns if I recall
You should look into Elestrals, I've been getting into it recently and I love the resource system, having it be the same thing as your health pool is very interesting and adds such a complex and interesting layer to deck building and literally every play you make
I find combining some of these systems pretty interesting at times and some newer or lesser popular games have. I'm primarily a Magic player, so I am partial to the land system in both its strengths and flaws, but I'm also into Hololive which has released its own TCG with support from Bushiroad. I haven't gone over the full card list as I'm patiently waiting for the English release.
Hololive has appeared to have taken an approach on Pokemon's system where you require energy to attach to your game pieces to use their abilities or retreat them. This introduces a system with multiple colors where you can run a singular color for consistency or branch to other colors for flexibility. It also uses an extra deck specifically for this energy, so you avoid mana screw (on numbers) while also sort of being like the Hearthstone effect of bland once per turn.
I do see design space, if they opt for it, where it could be possible to ramp out more energy or mess with your opponent's deployed energy. There's nonbasic energy design space too. There is also the challenge for the deck builder to ensure their color fixing. The life system also plays into this as a sort of catch up mechanic where when you lose game pieces it is you who get the prize cards; not the opponent (basically the opposite of Pokemon), but only your energy cards are used for those prize cards so it isn't like you'll be flipping a bomb card from them.
There is also Lorcana, while not the first to do so it is the biggest now which basically makes every card a Magic-style MDFC (Modal-Dual-Faced-Card, which often had a spell on the front and a land on the back that you go to choose which to use). This means you will never screw and allows for ramp and resource denial design spaces. The real challenge for the player is deciding what to lose access to to make your ink drop. Perhaps you don't draw into a spell you needed as you already used a copy in your inkwell. You can also still potentially flood with ramp effects when they are unneeded for your situation. Having no real differences in your resource pool can be seen as a negative.
I have to say, I dont consider the resource system in Magic as the best, but its the most elegant. I got the idea from researching RTS's. Generally, a good RTS has 2-3 resources (Gold, Lumber, Food in Warcraft). Lands in Magic does this as Lands gives 2 variance in resource. There is a variance in consistency (because you have to draw into your lands) and a variance in granularity (because you have to pay for specific colors.)
Its 2 resources in 1 game piece. Very elegant. But as for the question of best resource system in a game? Duel Masters and their dual-purpose cards 😅
A digital card game whose mana system I really like is that of chroma bloom and Blight (the game is essentially dead).
It has a combination of the hearthstone and mtg elements in its mana system. There are heros and each of them come with some Abilities (a low cost active, a passive and a single use ultimate ability which you can only use at a later stage of the game) and a pool of mana that you can use to build your mana curve along with your deck. For example a hero can have 6 red mana, 9 purple mana, 4 blue mana. You then can sequence that mana on a curve of your choice depending on the deck you build. For example PBPPRPRPBB (10 in total). Each turn the next mana in the list gets unlocked.
They use the coin system as well (it gives chromatic mana, ie a mana of any colour) and there is a hero who makes extra use of the coin system to ramp up fast for a quick single burst turn.
On top of that, there is the act system which adds interesting considerations at strategies of different decks. You start in act one and when a player gets themselves down to some specific life total or a number of turns have been played out, then the game proceeds to act 2. The life total option acts as a shield that once you reach, you cannot deal additional damage to the opponent for the turn. The same applies for act 3.
Once players have entered act 2, they have 2 extra colourless mana available to them in their mana pool (thus they can reach a maximum of 12 mana from their mana pool alone). Act 3 unlocks the ultimate.
This makes some interesting decisions in different match ups. For instance agro might wait a turn out or force you to take damage on your turn so that you won't benefit from the next act's bonus first.
You should look into Flesh and Blood!! They have a very interesting resource system and also in general a really cool card game system!!
Legends of Runeterra had the best mana system for digital card games. An iteration on Hearthstones system, keeping it simple while reducing it's drawbacks of playing on curve and acrually promoting interactive gameplay with spell mana
I don’t know if it’s the best but I definitely think that one of the most interesting mana systems is Elestrals where you have a twenty card deck of mana that is also used as your life.
If we're bringing up Digital card games, Capcom's Teppen doesn't have turns, therefore it's resource (MP) is timed and caps at 10. Teppen has 3 character lanes where your creatures are placed and a line going from Character to player field shows how long it takes for an attack to go off. If the attack lands on another creature, then they trade health and damage.
To balance out deck making, your MP cap is halved for every color you add. Monocolor decks = 10 MP, 2 colors = 5, 3 colors = 3 and an all 4 color deck is virtually unplayable at only 1 max MP. Because of this, multicolor decks are a meme in Teppen, and deckbuilding is very limited as the only way to make a deck synergize is to fill it almost entirely to make use of a set's specific mechanic.
A second resource the game has is SP. Teppen has decks choose a character and one of 3 soecials they have access too. When playing cards, their cost gain you SP. Once you reach the specific SP requirement of your special, you may cash in SP to do said special. You can horde SP for multiple use of your special, but specials are always on a cooldown when used.
Teppen is a DCG that doesn't just test decision making and deck building but also response and reflexes
Your pace and breathing got so much better! I used to listen to you on slower speeds but now its good
I sir, would like to introduce you to the One Piece TCG. The DON!!! System is one that makes tempo play very important in a game with no hand limit.
Both players have a 10 Don deck. The player that goes first get 1 don and from there on both players draw 2 don (to a designated resource area, they don't go to hand) similar to MTG, Don is tapped to pay for your cards but Don also have a secondary use of giving characters an extra 1K attack power on your turn by attaching Don to them.
The game's purple decks have a habit of playing with their DON, with cards and leader effects that either allow you to ramp, or put dons back in the deck for massive effects.
I haven’t watched the video yet, but imo it’s digimon by a fair bit (from a YGO player)
I liked the wow tcg mana system. Dedicated mana cards in the form of quests, which gave you small objectives to do mid-game for a reward. In a way helped combat mana-flooding.
On the other hand, if you weren't drawing quests, you could use regular cards for mana, at the cost of no quest rewards and losing that card.
Force of Will has/had (I think it's a dead card game, but there might still be some people playing it) an interesting mana system that felt like a combination of hearthstone and magic. Your deck has a "Ruler" (basically a commander like in EDH) they start in play, have a few minor static or activated abilities, and can be tapped to put the top card of your mana deck (crystals) into play. For some cost, you could flip your Ruler into a more powerful form that could fight and had more potent abilities, but if you used them to attack, you give up on getting a new crystal. If I remember correctly, if the transformed from was defeated, it went back to its original state, but lost its abilities other than making new crystals.
So, mana screw/flood wasn't a thing, your mana deck had personality and deck building choices since there were different kinds of crystals that could have different effects than just a basic, and you could make the choice to give up higher levels of mana to go for a more aggresive strategy.
Of the 4 games mentioned I also love ptcg's mana system most. Screw/flood is rarely an issue because every deck has insane draw engine.
Improving with every video! Can't wait for the next one!
My favorite resource system was in Keyforge, you could do as many actions and play as many cards as you wanted for no cost, but only of one specific house (the houses are kinda like colors in magic) and every deck always has three houses, so you had to choose between using the stuff you played last turn or playing the new things you just drew that are most likely of different houses
Legends of Runeterra had my favorite system. Each player gains one mana per turn (up to 10) but you can bank up to 3 spell mana. This is mana that can only be used for spells. It may not sound like much but this adds a tremendous amount of depth to the game. Man, LoR was such a gooooood game. It's a shame it failed.
Duel Masters and Lorcana are both interesting in that they have the same idea of fixing Magic's land screw/flood system by making it so that *all* cards (or most cards in Lorcana's case) can be used as mana
in Duel Masters, the bottom of each card has an inverted number (usually 1), and that's how many mana you can get if you sacrifice that specific card in the mana zone.
Lorcana is the same, except with Lorcana only specific cards can be sacrificed for "ink" (Lorcana's version of mana) instead of any card, as indicated by the ring around the card's ink cost on the corner
and you strictly only get exactly 1 ink per card sacrificed to your ink pool, you don't get extras afaik
Lorcana honestly feels a lot like if Magic and Duel Masters had a baby
i watched Lorcana playthroughs and a lot of the wording and effects in Lorcana are directly lifted from Magic (eg. flying = evasive), but it has that Duel Masters system of mana
While it's not a physical card game, I think that the sacrifice system from the game inscryption is probably one of the better ways to do a mana system. It functions like a combination of lands from magic with the tribute summoning mechanic from yugioh. In order to summon stronger creatures you have to sacrifice some number of creatures already on your board. and there is a card that functions similarly to a mtg land/ pokemon energy in the squirrel card, in that it does nothing by itself but can be played for free and then sacrificed to play cards that actually do something. But unlike mtg or pokemon the resource that does nothing by itself is kept in its own separate deck and you chose whether or not you want to draw a squirrel or a creature at the start of your turn. It allows games to go on for multiple turns but doesn't have the issue of drawing a land/energy when you need a creature to play leading to losing games entirely due to bad draw luck.
Every card game in the world: "I play 1 land/energy/mana and I pass my turn to you"
"I play 1 land/energy/mana and I pass my turn to you"
Yugioh players: "nice board dude, okay dark ruler no more? Battle phase? evenly match? CL2 droplet sending evenly match?"
sending evenly with droplet wouldn't do anything though
@@Bi-Ceratopsmight matter if the reborn a negate from the GY, like summoning dies irae using the link 3
@@Bi-Ceratops would it not I know banishing evenly will make it so your opponent can’t keep any cards do the rules change if you destroy it yourself
@@jmurray1110 no, droplet only goes to the GY after the chain is fully resolved. Therefore it is still only 1 card that your opponent will have to banish. What you are thinking of is if your opponent destroys your Evenly with a card like mst
@@Bi-Ceratops forgot about droplet going to the graveyard
Yeah those my experience was evil loungyong
I really like the mana systems in the tcgs by bandai, such as OPTCG's Don!. It's a kinda like hearthstones system where you get the same amount of mana each turn, however here it is 2 (unless you go first then it's 1) with a cap of 10. What makes it unique is that you can either choose to spend your Don! to play cards regularly or attack them to one of your characters to increase their power for the turn. These games also have a pretty unique system for handling life which I won't go into here but I can really recommend anyone interested in some unique ideas to check it out.
Flesh and Blood and Digimon really should be represented in a video like this they both have resources systems way better than the ones discussed. Also duelmasters/kaijudo is another great system.
Original Vs System had a unique resource system that has been iterated on, but also dumbed down. Like a lot of other modern games, any card in your hand could be placed as a resource. Howerever Plot Twists and Locations could be 'flipped up' and used as though they were in your hand. Only playing characters and equipment spent resource points, but plot twists and locations just had to have that number of resources in play. It meant you rarely lost opportunity by putting certain things down, and they iterated on it a lot as the game progressed.
The best thing about energy in pokemon is depending on the deck they do not have the same role
Depending in your energy acceleration method they may be played from your hand once, from your deck thanks to a card, from your discard pile thanks to a card, from your hand as much as you want... Every deck manages the ressources in a very different way
I would say the way energy is managed is what makes pokemon fun to play and what creates so many different deck archetypes. In the past energy was tough to manage but now the current meta is amazing when it comes to energy usage
I always thought the Duel Masters "all your cards are also lands" was the best system I played with. Shame that it died, and that they never played much with it. Imagine if you could have a decent mana dork, but as a land it taps for more mana, so you have to decide if you want a little of both, or just need a big hit of mana.
I personally absolutely love the digimon tcg system
The games starts a value 0 and each player can have a max value in their direction
The interesting thing is that this system is shared, so the higher the cost of the cards you play, the more free counterplay your opponent gets
And if you ever extend so much that the mana goes positive your opponent it becomes their turn
In other words, even in turn 1 you can already get extremely string digimon on the board, whith the drawback that that is the only thing you will do that turn, and that the opponent can now play a ton of cards before it becomes your turn again
Genius invocation has a good one you get 8 per turn but have to roll them. You can use dead cards to tune the mana to match your colour. The cards all either want a cost, matching pairs or a specific colour to use. It's much more fun than it should be.
I really liked how Force of Will made you choose between tapping your ruler for mana or tapping them for an ability... for a short while before they just took the tap symbol off of rulers, cause, you know, power creep 😢😢😢
Digimon to me will always just be the best resource system in any card game, the risk reward of it all is amazing and your big plays allowing your opponent to big play back is amazing
18:08 Netrunner mentioned. Netrunner really has multiple resource systems. One certainly is the number of actions (clicks) but money (credits) to play cards is much more obvious as a resource system that doesn't feel like a classic resource system at all. In some damage-centric matchups cards in hand act as a pseudo-resource as well.
The original wow TCG had an incredible resource system. It worked like magic but you could play any card face down to act as a resource. Some cards had bonuses if used as a resource which added some fun deck building and decision making.
Thing i want to mention is Faeria: you gain 3 cumulative mana per turn and have access to a once per turn place a land (think place to walk your creatures like from dungeon dice monsters), draw a card or gain mana.
in addition there are points on the board which if you have a creature next to them give you 1 mana.
super fun system where you balance card advantage, mana value, board control and land placements
Sorcery definitely has the best modern take on resources. Separate decks to draw from and as you play out the resources you build the board (realm) that you're competing on. Top tier
I've always liked Duel Masters' mana system. it retains most of the flavor aspect of something like MtG, but without the limitations of screw/flood.
One of my favorite resource system is Vanguard's Counter Blast, basically turn your damage into resource to strike back.
magic the gathering nailed it with the land system because of a simple factor: you NEED inconvenience in your games. The varience of relying on land drops to hit to cast bigger spells is one of the reasons why MtG was able to establish itself as the leading card game outside of pokemon, which gets a lot of its sales from non-players in the first place.
MtG is the leader because it's the first major CCG with tons of synergies and mechanics to explore. It has a broad range of themes which broadens the appeal. It was the pioneer in CCGs and it was its lead to lose. The inconvenience is absolutely already there in all CCGs with your draw luck. You don't need more. It's an extremely bad feeling to get flooded or screwed and it's flawed. Not surprising given how old MTG is, it has a mechanic that wouldn't have been designed today (CCGs made in the last 10 years don't have that flaw).
Lands being crucial plays to even being able to do anything is why lands got powercrept so hard that they often do a lot more than tap for 1 mana.
The facts that lands in magic can actually do things other than tap for man is extremely unique.
@@catzblu999 fully disagree. I started CCGs with Pokémon and yu-gi-oh. The fact you can get mana flooded or screwed IS AN UPSIDE of the system, not a flaw. If it’s happening to you consistently, you have built a bad deck. If it happens once in a while, you need to get better at mulligans. If it happens rarely, you’ve built a balanced deck and when it does happen is just poor luck.
Yeah, it can sometimes feel bad when against all odds you get flooded or screwed even with a good hand and mulligan, but that feels infinitely less bad than turn 1-2 combos in yugioh.
There is a reason despite what you view as a “flawed” system MtG has retained its popularity despite “better” systems being made.
Maybe in 2005 this would've been relevant but the only reason Magic IS still second is nostalgia and Commander+fanservice crossovers.
The system is flawed and until Hearthstone became the first post-wow product, it was the actual second or first most relevant card game. Too bad it's attached to Blizzard.
There are way too many outside factors to popularity, and almost nobody gets the first time right, so it's just marketing strats what keeps them afloat.
People forget that powercreep is an obligatory thing due to companies having to profit to actually exist, unless you just kill your game in 4 years or less, and we keep forgetting this concept permeates the entire landscape of tabletop games: real world capitalism is the core thing in which you have to design around.
@ there are more newer players than there are old players, so nostalgia is not a major factor. Commander, last I checked, is still magic that uses the same system, lands and all, and if new players did not vibe with it they would not play. There’s a reason magics playerbase still keeps growing despite virtually no mainstream marketing, and it’s because the game systems themselves are good.
Yugioh is more of a tv show prop / plot device than a game. They just turned it into an actual game because so many people wanted to buy it after they watched the show.
Actually it was because of the manga
Your content is a gem in the youtube
Faeria imo.
Because it serves multiple purposes and you can freely choose your Progress. The optionswheel is just great.
Legend of Runeterra.
This is the game with the best mana system, by far.
The best mana system it's a digital card game monster battles tcg. You make a 20 card deck up to 2 copies each card. This game has no graveyard every card after use goes back to deck. Each turn you shuffle and you draw a new hand of 5 cards. You can only play 2 cards per turn. But instead of playing a card you can evolve a card. You sacrifice tempo for value. Because this game has no graveyard when you redraw this card it's going to be already evolved. Some cards can evolve only once a midrange deck. Some twice a control deck. And some cards that are a little too good cannot evolve an aggro deck.
You love playing sticky minions in this game, you want your minion to survive in order to evolve it. Evolving it also fully heals it.
For hearthstone there are fun cards to note like the turn your mana crystals into 2/2s as well but i get the point and its fair honestly
Chronoclash's system was really nifty. I wish the gane had stuck around a but longer. There was a lot of possibilities for that space oeft unexplored
Real ones know it's actually Force of Will. The guaranteed mana of Hearthstone with the strategy and unique deck building challenge of MTG.
@@tarekt8427 most literate mtg player