General Guidelines
1. A deck consists of 31 cards.
A. 12 Special/Power Combat cards
B. 10 Major Character Basic Combat cards
C. 9 Minor Character Basic Combat cards
2. If the deck has 2 generic minors, they do not have any Special/Power Combat cards. If the deck has a single personality minor, that character has between 3 and 5 Special/Power Combat cards.
3. No deck should have more than 7 unique cards and 4 copies of a given card.
4. No character may have more than 19 Wound Points. No team of characters may have more than 28 Wound Points.
5. Weak generic minors have between 3 and 4 Wound Points. Strong generic minors have 5 Wound Points.
6. No attack value may exceed 10 in a given situation.
7. No direct damage may exceed 4 on a major character or 5 on a minor character. Total direct damage should not exceed 12 to any one target.
8. No effect may persist longer than one full turn.
9. No card may have a condition for playing it (instead, it can have prohibitive drawbacks if played in a given situation).
10. Cards should generally not affect every player. They may be balanced when every character is alive, but they become overly powerful when that is not the case.
A. 12 Special/Power Combat cards
B. 10 Major Character Basic Combat cards
C. 9 Minor Character Basic Combat cards
2. If the deck has 2 generic minors, they do not have any Special/Power Combat cards. If the deck has a single personality minor, that character has between 3 and 5 Special/Power Combat cards.
3. No deck should have more than 7 unique cards and 4 copies of a given card.
4. No character may have more than 19 Wound Points. No team of characters may have more than 28 Wound Points.
5. Weak generic minors have between 3 and 4 Wound Points. Strong generic minors have 5 Wound Points.
6. No attack value may exceed 10 in a given situation.
7. No direct damage may exceed 4 on a major character or 5 on a minor character. Total direct damage should not exceed 12 to any one target.
8. No effect may persist longer than one full turn.
9. No card may have a condition for playing it (instead, it can have prohibitive drawbacks if played in a given situation).
10. Cards should generally not affect every player. They may be balanced when every character is alive, but they become overly powerful when that is not the case.
Holistic Guidelines
1. A deck should have a unifying theme, which most cards should contribute to. The major and minor characters should complement one another.
2. A deck should not have cards that vary wildly in effectiveness. A good custom deck is filled with cards that all contribute to its path to victory in some way. Not all cards will be equal, but a good deck will not be a mixture of extremely powerful cards and filler cards.
3. Combos should not be forced and each piece of the combo should be playable alone. If a card references another card by name, make sure that the combination cannot be made more organic by using complementary effects.
2. A deck should not have cards that vary wildly in effectiveness. A good custom deck is filled with cards that all contribute to its path to victory in some way. Not all cards will be equal, but a good deck will not be a mixture of extremely powerful cards and filler cards.
3. Combos should not be forced and each piece of the combo should be playable alone. If a card references another card by name, make sure that the combination cannot be made more organic by using complementary effects.