i need help in balancing my game

[yudencow]

in the game i would like to create, there are 3 types of cards:
fighters (health, basic damage and speed)
weapons (defense, damage and range)
and tactics (combo, damage and range)

the tactics are capable to add up to activate one of their more advanced abilities, resulting in their discard
the weapons are used to attack and defend the fighters from attacks
the fighters are up for positioning and representing creatures

how can i balance it, so a good deck (one color deck persume) preferrd to hold exactly 20 each?

meaning thier synergy would be so well, there would be no need in putting more cards of one type than the other

[Trevor]

Some games outright demand a certain ratio of one card to another in deck construction. WOTC's star wars CCG requires you to have a certain amount of earch kind of unit.

I don't like the idea of requiring a certain ratio of one card to another in deck construction. It is annoying to keep track of when building decks, and it is a inelegant way of encouraging deck variation.

And that's what this is all about, right? Deck variation. There is a natural way encourage the use of different kinds of cards. First, lets review the different kinds of cards.
Mechanically, there are

Unit/Character cards: These are the reusable cards that usually are the core of decks. They do things like attack, use equipment and other cards, and are core to the flavor of the game

Equipment cards: These are (usually) reusable items that function when attached to unit cards. They are often mutially exclusive to the unit, i.e., if the equipment is a shield, a unit often cannot equip a second shield

Asset cards: These are permanent and (usually) reusable items that continuously affect the game. An example would be a card that says "All soldiers get +4 power" or "At the beginning of each of your turns, draw an extra card".

Action cards: These are temporary effects that are played usually from a player's hand. These are the tricks that keep your opponent guessing what you could potentially do.

Resource cards: These are (usually) permanent cards whose main purpose is to help you ramp up so you can play other cards.

Pretty much all cards fall into one of these 5 categories. In order to get a balance of these cards in a deck you need to define their power such that they are (typically) best used with each other.
For example, consider unit cards. Unit cards are disproportionately weak with no equipment to pump them up, but equipment cards are worthless unless you have units to attach them to. Also, the value of equipment cards gets less and less as the ratio of equipment to units increases. Asset cards generally don't allow you to do the core gameplay (such as attacking and defending) that units do. Action cards are temporary, and so they can have disproportionately large effects for their cost (to balance out the fact that they have no permanent effect). Action cards are also surprises. Using some action cards swing a battle, but the battle is primarily fought with unit cards because those are reusable. And unit cards are useless without the resource cards used to play them.

One way to balance effects is to let one card type's functionality bleed into another. For example, a unit card could act like an action card if it said "When this comes into play, it deals 2 damage to any target". An equipment card could act like an asset card if it said something like "all units that share a type with this get +3 power". An action card could act like any other card if it lets you draw additional cards. A unit card could act like a resource if it made your other cards cheaper. A resource could act like an action card if it provided an effect like "when you are attacked, discard this resource and it deals 5 damage to all attacking units".

I think you should try to encourage all kinds of decks. Some decks might work better with equipment. Some decks could work better with lots of action cards and few units. But if there is healthy use of all card types, and games have the long term, short term, and interactivity that makes a good game, then you have done good design.

[yudencow]

i had this idea, what if 2 equipment cards can be swapped regulalry on your turn , carrying counters with some restrictions like type etc., and action cards differ in the amount they can be used.

also about having connections, i wanted to give different speed to different cards to determine effect chains by card type/stat and activation if equal.

i wanted to keep the arena concept though your advice. because if people are using playmats already, having two rows of cards with 10X10 cm in the middle can't harm (also it allows the game to change into a wargame if necessary by changing the size of it)

in this arena you will control a protector (temporary name), an invicible character which acts as you guardian spirit and starts with you the game. you can activate your action cards which are called "auguries" targeting units or equipment. leaving the action cards (aka the auguries) requiring to be in a certain range of it between the protector and the targetted unit to activate

i want to hear what the community and you think of this ideas