Freelance Peacekeeping

Reverse Engineering the Design Book

2020.07.24

One assumes that the WotC Design team had a long series of internal rules they used when designing. Themes for traits, algorithms for attack/health/defense, things they won't do. We need to build that. The following are some ideas towards that.

Battle Icon Color Rules
  1. Outside of reprints; Only star cards get [OO], [UU], [OU], [BBB], and any triple battle icon card with [W]
  2. No quadruplet battle icon cards
  3. No [W][O] or [W][U] battle icon cards
  4. No [G][G] or [W][W]
  5. Battle Icon sort order is WOBUG
  6. A blue/black battle card is often a slightly weaker version of a blue battle card. It might be the same strength, but have an opposite-value effect on the target. For example, Scouting Mission does a damage to draw 2 cards, compared to various blue battle icon'd do 1 damage cards. The same is true for orange/black.
Trait Themes
  1. Cars typically have 'flip to' effects for alt-mode (18/45 Cars who are 6+ stars). They are about flipping and untapping.
  2. Planes are about moving damage. They have low defense.
  3. Dinobots are about Bold. Their alt-mode 'flip to' effects often help other Dinobots.
  4. Tanks have high defense (2-3).
  5. Leaders are Leaders in all modes. "Chromia, Special Ops"" is the exception, but that seems like an error.
  6. Motorcycles have the same attack in both modes. 3/4 have "flip to' effects for alt-mode. They have low star costs.
  7. 4 out of 5 Boats are Specialists.
  8. Helicopters (Whirl/Alpha Bravo) defend well against Ranged/Planes.
  9. Trucks are jack of all trades. They sometimes start with cards (Ratchet/Trailbreaker/Ultra Magnus), they are sometimes Upgrade focused (Gears, Outback, Primes, Capt Ironhide, Sgt Kup)
Upgrade Themes
  1. Weapons typically have from 0 to +4 attack. A +4 attack weapon is typically not repeatable (i.e. scraps)
  2. Armors typically have from 0 to +3 defense. A +3 defense armor is typically not repeatable (i.e. scraps)
  3. White/Green upgrades are most often Utilities.
Action Themes
  1. Many Actions are also found repeated as Character's abilities.
Statistics
  1. Average stats per star per wave
  2. Most attacks are typically +1 more in bot mode than alt mode; Tanks especially so.
Editorial
  1. In text, a character card of “Name - Title” is referred to as “Name, Title”.
  2. Character titles are left justified. The name in Ancient Autobot is right aligned in the banner background.
  3. Star counts use 1-star, 5-star, and 10-star denominations.
Star Costs
  1. Do not reduce the star cost of a card, instead increase the size of the star pool (i.e. from 25 to something higher). Blaster and Soundwave are good examples.