The next category is the infinite combo, which is when a handful of cards work together to create an infinite loop that wins the game. Getting higher numbers is nice, but typically isn’t enough to win the game by itself. In addition, while these tend to be very powerful individual cards, they tend not to warp entire formats in the same way as other categories on this list. Simply by comparing a card to other similar cards at the same cost, it’s usually pretty easy to tell when you are getting too much value for the price. The thing about Raw Power is that it’s actually probably the least dangerous category of broken cards, as well as the easiest to avoid. Typically drawing 3 cards will cost you around four or five mana, so getting that same effect for only one is super powerful. A good example of this is Ancestral Recall from Magic: The Gathering Alpha. Simply put, raw power is when a card simply does MORE than other cards at a similar cost, whether that be more damage, drawing more cards, more destruction, etc. Luckily, broken cards tend to fit into a handful of categories, which we will be looking at in order from least dangerous to most threatening. While it’s not always possible, it’s usually best to try and catch as many broken cards as possible BEFORE they go out into the wild. There is nothing wrong with powerful cards, but a truly broken card can damage the health of an entire game, and typically requires the makers of the game to intervene by banning or modifying the cards. Broken things also tend to be un-fun, promoting degenerate, boring, or un-interactive play. A broken deck might be so much stronger than the alternatives that it makes all other decks obsolete, and a broken card might require every other deck to specifically plan around it if they don’t want to be easily defeated.
When something is “broken”, it means that it warps the entire metagame around it. Really quickly, before we look at what makes a card broken, let’s answer a simpler question – what does being broken even mean? Broken cards tend to be extremely powerful, but it’s more than that. 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. 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. What’s up designers, and welcome back to Rempton Games.
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