9 Balancing Mechanics for TCGs & ECGs
DISCLAIMER: Familiarity with at least one form of Trading Card Game will enhance your enjoyment of this article. This is a long one, folks.
The task of balancing is unique to most every game, and it should be: if you can balance your project in the exact same way as some other game, what’s the difference between the two? Each game faces its own challenges in the tradeoff between flavor, fun, and function. However, games within the same genre will often converge on strategies for fulfilling these needs.
Of note today are TCGs (Trading Card Games), CCGs (Collectible Card Games), ECGs (Expandable Card Games), and LCGs (Living Card Games). They’re variations on the same idea. TCGs and CCGs are your Pokémon, MTG, Yugioh: COLLECT and TRADE individually designed cards to construct a deck and engage in battle with your friends. ECGs and LCGs like Grim and Fantasy Flight’s products run on the similar mechanical premises, but differ in delivery. The cards all come in common sets with no element of random distribution between the same products. I crack open two TCG booster packs and hope to draw a rare. I open two ECG box sets and they’ll both be identical.
Back in college, the natal form of Diceratops Games was founded to develop an ECG called Battle 54. What started as a way to “play Magic with only playing cards” morphed into a beast of its own, with all the hiccups young game designers will experience along the way. Part of that was due to an element I was yet unaware of in TCG design: Cost Counterbalancing.
Within a given TCG (which I’ll say in place of the full list of acronyms), certain cards are objectively more powerful than others. A Charizard EX thrashes a basic Jigglypuff. Emrakul annihilates a Llanowar Elf. In exchange for this power-gap, the lesser-powered card is in some way is easier to play. Today I want to go through some of the different mechanisms employed by TCGs to accomplish this, and delve into a few pros and cons.
(For the following examples, assume cards A-D with A < B < C < D in terms of combat power.)
(I have invented many of the terms I’m using here. Better or extant ones may have already been established.)
Method 1: Scaling Cost
A costs 1, B costs 2, C costs 3.
I find this method to be the most straightforward; a stronger unit costs more resources than a weaker unit. In Magic the Gathering, spells with higher mana costs will typically reward the player with more potent effects than spells of lower cost. To build a competent deck, a player must include spells of low, medium, and high mana costs to succeed. Too many high-cost cards and you can’t get rolling until late-game. Too many low-cost cards and you might lose momentum.
Each card is individually balanced by the designers against an abstract standard established by the conventions of existing cards. If a 2-cost card draws 1 card, a 3-cost card might draw 2 cards. Or it draws at least 1 card and gives some other benefit worth 1 additional point of cost.
Pros:
Exceptionally tunable, each card can be adjusted.
Intuitive to learn.
Easy to scale outwards as stronger cards are implemented.
Cons:
Power creep is a real threat when making new cards relevant. This isn’t unique to this method, but it is noticeable.
Designers can’t consider cards in a vacuum: they must near-fully understand the game’s meta or they’ll easily destroy it.
Method 2: Inversely Proportional Secondary Value (IPSV)
A is a 1/3, B is a 2/2, C is a 3/1.
Though I’ve never played it, the Star Wars Destiny card game utilizes an interesting balancing mechanic. At various points in the game, you’ll reveal the top card of your deck and perform a Destiny check, based on a destiny value printed on every card. That card’s destiny value determines whether or not you succeed the check. It’s a parallel power system to things like life and damage values, allowing the designers to inverse the two. A powerful card in combat might have a weak destiny value, and a strong destiny value would appear on cards less useful in battle.
The IPSV method encourages a deeper problem space in game design: there must be at least two “tracks” you can move a card along to tune its potency, and strengthening it along one axis demands it be weakened in another. To an extent, many of the methods here are variations on this idea of a power trade-off. The key point is whether it’s a proportional or inverse relationship.
This is a method also employed by Magic, but to a subtler extent. Though most creatures have equal power and toughness, different creatures at the same mana cost might trade attack points for defense points. A 3/1 creature, a 2/2, and a 1/3 could all cost 2 mana, but the designer has room to “reallocate” those combat “points” to different stats, depending on their vision for the card’s design.
Pros:
There’s an obvious “formula” for how to balance a card by raising and lowering values.
Cards at the same “cost level” can still provide variety to playstyles.
Cons:
The “center” of the scale is key: once you set what an “average card” is, power-creeping outside of the set rails can devalue entire swaths of cards.
Managing 2 or more stat systems may require additional levels of fine-tuning.
You must give great thought to how the two parallel systems mechanically mesh. If one of the two stats has a disproportionate impact on gameplay with the other, adjust accordingly. The two systems in question may be too intertwined to work with this method.
Method 3: Scaling Loss Condition Attribute (SLCA)
A gives 1 prize on defeat, B gives 2, C gives 3.
Rather than putting the cost upfront for playing a stronger card, some TCGs place that cost on the back end. In the Pokémon TCG, each Pokémon is worth some amount of prize cards. When you defeat an opponent’s Pokémon, you draw a prize cards from a pool of 6, which were separated from your deck at the start of the game. When you draw your last prize card, you win. Most Pokémon are only worth 1 prize. However, others are worth 2 or even 3 prizes on KO. In exchange for this scaled liability, these cards are flatly more powerful than 1 prize equivalents: they do more damage, have more health, and get stronger abilities. If you can get rolling before your own monsters are KO’d, the downside is almost nonexistent. However, a single KO of your own Pokémon can be twice as devastating.
Prize cards could be swapped out in another system for life points, milled cards off the top of your deck, or some other nominal resource that is exhausted throughout the game as your units are defeated. As long as losing a unit moves you towards a loss condition, it falls under this method.
By contrast, Grim the Card Game is an example of Prize Cards used in a non-SLCA system. Whenever one of your units is defeated, you draw one banished (prize card). This is consistent between all units. It’s more accurate to say that Grim uses an IPSV method, scaling Health, Speed, and passive effects to fit the archetype of each unit’s elemental typing.
Pros:
Similar to Scaling Cost: highly customizable based on the game systems and individual cards.
Introduces beneficial elements of an economy system without necessarily involving a full economy/casting cost (a la MTG.)
Here, your units come into play, where their actions will move the game forward regardless of gameplay outcomes. In systems with an upfront cost, there’s an additional hurdle of paying the cost before you can fully engage in gameplay. Even when you do arrive at that point, if there’s no cost associated with losing units, reaching a loss condition may take much longer.
Cons:
Pokémon does suffer from balance issues in shifting that cost to the back end. A small selection of high-prize Pokémon dominate the meta, because they can eliminate their opponents well before the negative effects of running these stronger units are incurred. This has been an issue for a decade or more, and there’s little work they’ve done to resolve it.
Losing resources is a bit of a feel-bad, so cautious players might be wary of overextending themselves. It’s a breakable habit, but an obstacle to overcome, nonetheless.
Method 4: Sequential Development
A can be played anytime, B requires A be in play, C requires B.
This is another method employed by the Pokémon TCG, but which gets closer to the heart of the series. Evolving your Pokémon is a staple of the games, and in the TCG this is represented by different stages of Pokémon cards. Basic Pokémon like Charmander, Riolu, and Mewtwo can be played onto your board at any time with no prerequisite besides space. Stage 1 Pokémon like Charmeleon and Lucario can only be played on top of their pre-evolution cards that are already on the board. Furthermore, that basic Pokémon has to wait a turn after it was first played before it can evolve. Stage 2 Pokémon like Charizard must be played over their associated Stage 1, meaning that fully evolving a Pokémon requires significant resource investment and deck space. A fully evolved Pokémon line takes 3x the space a Basic Pokémon does , but in return, those evolved Pokémon are printed with higher health, stronger attacks, and potent abilities.
Basic Pokémon generally hit fast and weak, while stage 2’s become game-defining power-pieces once they’re rolling. At least, in theory. The presence of multiple-prize basic Pokémon as described in the previous method throws things out of whack, but that’s pretty specific to Pokémon.
Sequential Development balancing is a strong thematic choice for many games because it evokes a feeling of growth. Your units become stronger with time and energy, and in-turn, the player feels rewarded for their efforts when that level-up unit finally maxes out. While Pokémon uses a linear evolution system, designers can present branching paths of cards that are designed to balance against their counterparts. You create multiple tiers of cards that have expected features and values for their class.
Pros:
Designs are balanced within strict “families” of cards that will follow from a predictable progression throughout the game. You can factor the cadence of a card’s expected playstyle into the progression through its different stages.
Takes the scaling power-levels of Method 1 and rigidizes them.
Character-based properties can show off the progression of their personal development.
Cons:
If a player doesn’t own the full set of cards needed for the family line, they can’t play with them at all.
If they do own the cards, they must find all those cards in-game to utilize the units to the fullest. Players can feel locked out of play without good search or draw options.
In some cases, the units at the highest sequences will not be worth the investments to attain them in-game, causing competitive players to default to lower-tiered cards that are faster to set up.
Method 5: Card Tiers
Tier 1 A and B can be played anytime, Tier 2 C and D require A/B as components.
I’ve not played Yu-Gi-Oh, but I believe there are some categorical differences between its method of power scaling and Method 4. Monsters are assigned a level value between 1 and 12. Players can “normal summon” from their hand one monster of level 4 or less each turn. However, to normal summon a monster of level 5 or 6, they must sacrifice another monster on their field as tribute. A monster of level 7 or higher requires two tributes to normal summon.
This combines aspects of Method 1 Scaling Cost with Method 4 Sequential Development, with minor differences. There are more formally defined gradients of power variation even within the tiers, giving definable targets in “level 6 monsters” or “level 3 or less monsters” that something like MTG’s “creatures with power 3 or less” and similar text descriptions can’t as easily distinguish. And where Method 4 typically confines players to a single sequence with occasionally branching paths, Method 5 allows near any unit of the required level to be substituted into the chain. AND you aren’t confined to an incrementally increasing power level as in Method 4: you can spam low-level monsters as tribute-fodder to bring out your heavy hitters.
The arrangement of tiers, sublevels within them, and the costs to “upgrade” to the next tier are highly configurable. For games in which the units exist on different magnitudes of power (ex: infantry, vehicles, larger carriers) or which progression is key factor (but sequential development is too limiting), introducing card tiers is a complicated, albeit effective measure of balancing. Where Yu-Gi-Oh has a focus on sacrifice and summoning, perhaps a more traditional economy system could be implemented instead.
Pros:
Tuning exists on the level of the individual card AND at different tiers within the array of existing cards.
Benefits of Methods 1 and 4.
Cons:
Complex to learn.
As a meta develops, players may minmax within tiers, leaving higher or lower leveled options at the extremes of a tier in varying stages of desirability. It might be most useful to only play level 1’s, 6s, and 9s, leaving every other option as a subpar by default.
Method 6: Time-Gating
A can be played turn 1, B can be played after turn 2, C after turn 3.
Time-gating uses turn progression or similar chronological mechanics to limit how early cards can be played. In some cases, a card may literally be barred from play until after turn X has passed, disallowing its use in the early set-up stages. No direct example comes to mind, but I’m sure such a model is in use. In others, they may simply use a scaling cost system, but limit the available resources to pay those costs until after a certain point. Hearthstone is a direct example of this: the mana pool a player has access to grows incrementally each round. Turn 1 gives 1 mana, turn 2 gives 2, so on and so forth.
MTG implements this to an extent too. Mana production is heavily tied to land count, and players can only place a single land from hand each turn. However, MTG has an abundance of cards that act as land tutors, mana rocks, and mana dorks, granting room to ramp your mana pool at a faster rate.
Pros:
Cards can be designed for use at certain points in the game, gated from being accessed earlier than desired.
Nearly eliminates the possibility of Turn 0 KO’s or similar sudden early-game wins.
Cons:
The time-to-wait is key. Games of this nature will typically take longer because they require a minimum number of rounds to pass.
Games with a cap to their mana/resource pools cap the total number of actions a player can take each turn, further slowing the progression of the game.
If an individual game session goes on long-enough, this mechanic becomes mostly irrelevant.
Method 7: Resource-Gating
A uses cheaper/more abundant resource X, B uses expensive/scarcer resource Y.
A method I’ve not seen employed extensively is resource gating, maybe because it leans closer into board game design space. In TCGs with a more extensive economy element, multiple resources might be at play. Yes, of course, cards and life and mana are multiple resources that can be used extensively in games like MTG, but I’m speaking to games where there are explicitly multiple currencies. Catan is not a TCG, but its five materials are an example of this idea. Materials are acquired in different rarities and combined to produce units that contribute to a general strategy.
Imagine a game where players are granted a base amount of mana (resource X) each turn, which acts as the primary renewing currency. However, there is a lasting and acquirable resource Y (like gems or gold) which is required as a component in certain spells or to enhance combat units. The basic units might only require the cheaper and abundant resource X, whereas to develop into stronger units requires rare resource Y.
MTG does have some analog to this in its colored mana varieties. Some spells are given mana costs with many pips of specific colors that limit which decks the card can feasibly be included in. If a card costs 2 Generic, 2 White, and 2 Red Mana, you’re not likely to splash it into your deck with primarily red-and-black-mana producing lands. That white mana is hard or impossible to acquire in your deck and makes casting the card more difficult. This scarcity does disappear depending on how you build your deck, but the constraints are there regardless.
Pros:
Economy systems in TCGs are a unique idea, but I don’t know how successful attempts at implementing them have been in the past.
Requiring specific resources allows you to tie the viability of a card to the availability of that resource, gating otherwise overly-powerful cards.
Cons:
Economy systems can be a complex layer to add on top, and easy to screw up if you’re not careful. They might bog things down more than they balance out the gameplay.
Mentally more to juggle than a simple resource system.
Method 8: Card Scarcity from Deck Limitations
A can have 4 copies in a deck. B can have 3. C can have 1.
Another interesting mechanic to play around with is card counts. Each TCG typically has rules about how many copies of a card can be included in a deck (usually 3-4) for standard play. Playing multiple copies of a card is key for consistency because you’ll hit your game pieces more often and will have backup copies if the piece is removed. However, if a card is made particularly powerful, one way to offset that strength is by limiting the number of copies that can be included. Yu-Gi-Oh is notorious for its limited and ban lists, which create a roster of cards that can only be used a single copy or none at all. This puts the impetus on players to know which cards are legal, which can put off potential new players. However, the designers get direct control over how many copies can be included in a single deck.
In the Pokémon TCG, they’ve tried a number of gimmicks that only allow 1 card of a single archetype in a deck. Ace Spec Items, Radiant Pokémon, and Star Pokémon are all limited to not just one copy of each card, but one copy of any card under those labels. These cards are almost always objectively better than similar counterparts, but because they’re singleton, or one-off, cards, they don’t ruin the game as much as they provide a small boost to each player’s deck. They end up being a fun way to spice up a format rotation without completely ruining the game’s longform play.
Pros:
Designers can create cards of drastically higher power levels, comfortable in the knowledge that these game pieces will have limited impact in a given game.
Players are given a central power card to play around, which can help fill a hole in their strategy that they might normally need to allot many more cards to.
Cons:
Limited lists are more of a band-aid solution implemented when designers can’t prevent broken combos.
Bans leave a sour taste in the mouth of players who were using what was a perfectly legal game piece.
Must be used in conjunction with some other balancing method. These are aberrations from the norm, so there must be a norm.
These are good for spicing up a format during a set period of time. That means they work best when there are format rotations, where the cards leave the competitive scene after some time. In games with smaller player bases, no competitive scene, or no format rotations, this will be less viable. Otherwise, they may just become ubiquitous game pieces required to play effectively.
If the powerful cards are in a TCG or CCG (not an ECG or LCG), there is usually an attached scarcity to their acquisition, as discussed in the next method.
Method 9: Card Scarcity from Production/Distribution Rarity
A costs $0.05. B costs $0.50. C costs $50.00 and is mandatory in standard.
Now, this is not really an effective counterbalancing mechanic, but it is practiced by major TCGs, so it needs acknowledgement. If a card is physically difficult to attain, most players shouldn’t be able to play them in their decks as often. Imagine if Black Lotus wasn’t banned from MTG. It’s exceptionally powerful, but the limited print run means it’ll cost you multiple thousands of dollars to get one copy to play. This prevents it from dominating expanded formats by the fact that there aren’t enough in circulation. You could apply this at a greater scale through card rarity, and most TCGs do. Mythics and Rares in MTG are typically better than commons, regardless of mana cost. Chase cards like EXs, GXs, and Vs are multiprize basics that define Pokémon’s competitive scene. This doesn’t prevent players from building decks with many powerful-yet-rare cards, it just costs more money to build the decks, and it prevents the wider player base from getting access to the most powerful cards. It’s pay-to-win (or pull-to-win.)
The side effect is that kitchen-table card games are not likely to be interrupted by massive game pieces that often: the weaker “draft chaff” and commons that your average player will pull end up seeing the most play by end users. In effect, it creates a scenario where the designers are balancing around the existence of these rare power cards in the competitive scene, but the local low-end users are left to mess around in the shadows cast by these cardboard giants. The common cards are still balanced against one another, creating tiers of power like some other methods I’ve discussed. Still, the cost to play stronger cards is primarily monetary, which is a predatory practice.
Pros:
If your game is successful and you like making money, this is a good way to milk your consumers for everything they’ve got.
Cons:
This is not healthy for long-term success or for onboarding new players. It leaves a very bitter taste in their mouths.
It doesn’t balance the game; it just gives rich players the best chance at winning.
Conclusions:
As shown above, a game doesn’t need to limit itself to one form of power balancing. Many of the best games in the TCG market have maintained their staying power due to the implementation of multiple styles of power management. However, from playtesting my own game that previously had none of the above methods implemented, I’d say you need to use at least one. But that’s a story for another time.
I’m sure my list is not exhaustive, there are hundreds of card games out there and I’ve only played a handful. Can you think of any other possible balancing mechanisms? Leave a comment below.
