Hey all! I'm really excited about my current TCG, feels like I finally have a good mesh of themes and rules. The problem I am having now is how to split out the cards in the sets to make "factions" or "colors". Its the standard Queen Problem.
The theme of the game is temple raiding. You're essentially racing your opponent to get to the relic at the bottom/top of the temple. This leads to a lot of great media to draw from: Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, and more. I have lots of inspiration as far as that goes. But I can't quite figure out how to split up the theme and the mechanics to make it so players aren't just putting all the best cards in their deck.
The resource system is not too different from Flesh and Blood where cards can either be played or they can be "pitched" to generate generic resource. Its all generic resource, not typed like Magic's mana. Most games I see that have a generic resource system just use colors to denote the different types of cards. I have the most experience with Digimon TCG for this kind of thing.
I don't mind a color system, but I don't love it. It doesn't feel very thematic in my game. I'm not really sure how I would split out the colors either. (I also hate hard deck building rules like "you can only play with 2 colors")
My other thought would be to go for something like Yugioh where you have archetypes that synergize. I like this a lot better, but coming up with new Archetypes all the time sounds exhausting.
Amy thoughts on other ways to split card sets? Any examples on how other card games do it?