Transcript: What’s up, designers, and welcome back to Rempton Games. It’s been a while, but I’m finally back, and I’m really excited about today’s topic! Whether you are designing your own trading card game, or just a fan who wants to know more about how these games are made, today’s video is for you. Today, I’ll be going through the steps of how to design a TCG set – from initial concept to design skeleton, all the way through to finished sets. Because Magic: The Gathering is still the gold-standard for TCG sets, and they have the most information available about their design process, I will ..read more

What’s up, designers, and welcome back to Rempton Games. If you’ve played trading card games for a while, you’ve probably seen an overpowered new card burst onto the scene and totally wreck the entire meta, to the point where it seems like everybody is using it. On the other hand, you’ve probably opened entire packs of cards and felt like every single one of them was worthless trash that nobody would ever play. Why can’t trading card designers just design balanced cards, without some being broken or terrible? The short answer is that, depending on how you define “balance”, it can be a literal ..read more

In July 2021, Youtube Logan Paul spend nearly $5.3 million on an extremely rare Pikachu Illustrator Pokemon card. This is the most expensive Pokemon card ever sold, and among the most expensive trading cards in history. But what in the world could make a simple piece of printed cardboard worth such an insane amount of money? Let’s find out! At its core, the price of pretty much anything comes down to supply and demand. This simple principle means that the price of something depends on how many people want the thing, and how many of the thing is available. If nobody wants a particular card, th ..read more

Transcript: What’s up designers, and welcome back to Rempton Games. Today is the first in a new series on this channel – TCG Design academy. Trading card games are a genre that is near and dear to my heart, but they are also one of the most difficult types of tabletop games to design, right next to legacy games and tabletop RPGs. In this series I will be examining the design of these games, examining the challenges that come with them, and the solutions that different games have come up with. In today’s episode we will take a look at one of the most fundamental pitfalls in TCG design – the Qu ..read more

What’s up designers, and welcome back to Rempton Games. When designing a trading card game it’s important to be able to design fun, powerful cards – but equally important is knowing what types of cards NOT to design. In today’s TCG Design Academy we are going to be looking at some of the most broken cards, decks, and combos from various trading card games to see what makes them tick and why they are so broken, and also look at how you can learn from these examples to avoid making the same mistakes when designing your trading card game. Really quickly, before we look at what makes a card broke ..read more

What’s up designers, and welcome back to Rempton Games. Today I want to take a look at Gwent, the fictional card game from the Witcher universe that was turned into a standalone TCG. I’m going to be talking about the inspiration behind the game, the various different versions of it, and giving my thoughts on the game design behind it. Remember to hit that like button if you want me to break down more games from books, movies, and T.V. shows, and without further ado let’s get started.     The inspiration for Gwent first appeared in the Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, s ..read more

  Hey everybody! Nearly two months ago I wrote an article about evaluating different creatures in Magic: The Gathering (which you can find here). Today, I plan to do the same thing, but with spell abilities instead. If you are interested in designing your own trading card game, or simply want to learn more about Magic: The Gathering, then this is the article for you! Alright, We’ll Call it a Draw One of the most basic abilities to be put onto a Magic card is simply the ability to draw a card. However, not all card drawing is made equal. In Magic, there is a concept known as “card advantag ..read more

Hey everybody! Today’s topic is one that I am extremely interested in talking about. What would happen if Magic: The Gathering added a sixth color? Color Me Interested Before we jump into it, let’s start with a little background. Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game – actually the world’s first trading card game – that was originally released in 1993. In this game players take on the role of a powerful wizard known as a planeswalker, who has the power to travel across different planes of existence, summon powerful creatures from across space and time, and cast mighty spells. From a gam ..read more

I know I promised a continuation of last week’s article this week, but unfortunately I will have to postpone. I will also not have any article next week due to Thanksgiving, but should be able to resume regular posts the following week.  Instead, I hope you enjoy this article from a few months ago about resource systems in collectible games! Last week I started a new series of articles diving deep into various topics dealing with game design. Today’s topic continues this series with a look at designing resource systems. This article will be mostly focused on collectible games, especially ..read more

Ever since I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh with my friends in middle-school, I have been trying to design my own cards. I started out making new cards for the characters on the show to use (what if they made a fusion of Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Red-Eyes B. Dragon?!), and then moved on to making my own custom decks and archetypes. Eventually I moved on to inventing my own games entirely, and had to come up with entire decks or groups of cards to play with. In this process I learned a number of things, but one of the most challenging was how to evaluate a card once it was made. Was it good or bad ..read more