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I have lots of cards for Star Realms (2 decks of the standard game, 1 expansion deck), and I'm trimming everything down to fix balance issues and the overall deck size.

However, the tricky part is adjusting for the viability of certain Factions between the early-late game phases, the viability of Explorers throughout the game (2 cost, 2 Trade, Scrap: 2 Combat), and the prioritization of early-game resources (Trade) vs. late-game resources (Draw, Combat).

For example:

  • Red (Machine Cult) and Green (Blob) are very effective in the late game stages due to their high Combat values and deck efficiency/combo potential.
  • Yellow (Empire) is good for mid-game, due to the fact that their easy draws can accelerate your early game (when draws would normally be impossible) and their discard effect synergizes with itself to gain effectiveness in late-game.
  • Blue (Trade Federation) is good for early-game, since it deals mostly in accelerating your deck by producing a massive amount of Trade and purchase high-impact cards earlier than your opponents.

What is the ideal curve that should be used?

E.G. Should Blob have a limited amount of early-game Trade to force players into splitting off into other solutions that have less late-game potential?

By 'ideal', I'm referring to any mention of this topic from the developers, common trends of the various sets, or reasoning from experienced players.

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  • "common trends" and "reasoning from players" each indicate that this is an off-topic primarily-opinion-based question. Is there any non-opinion-based metric you'd like to investigate, or should this question be closed?
    – L. Scott Johnson
    Commented Dec 5, 2019 at 12:38
  • @L.ScottJohnson Though this might be better in Meta, I'd assume this kind of question is just as in-line as this boardgames.se question, which had the most votes for the mtg-manabase tag and has a similar topic.
    – Man_Over_Game
    Commented Dec 5, 2019 at 14:08
  • @L.ScottJohnson For reference, here is the entire linked question, with a few minor modifications to make it more universal: > "When choosing cards for a deck, one of the most important things to consider is the number of currency you put in. The biggest issue is [...] curve, of course. What shortcuts are best for determining the proper amount of currency with a given [...] curve?"
    – Man_Over_Game
    Commented Dec 5, 2019 at 16:52
  • Isn't exactly answering your question, but Card Tier List might be helpful. megahaulin.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/…
    – Deo
    Commented Dec 6, 2019 at 23:41

1 Answer 1

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+50

Alright, so I found google docs with cards, added some more data concerning base sets and made a diagram with it. I used a sophisticated formula of counting only half of the trade from ally and scrap abilities and counting optional abilities as full trade.

Google docs data

Here are some diagrams I came up with: Total generated trade per faction set

Trade federation only, generated trade by set This one shows generated trade by card costs, I didn't do other factions because they only have trade-generating cards up to a cost of 4 (with a single exception).

Initial source of data I used: BGG files

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  • 2
    Cool analysis! Can you please add a few summary points from the spreadsheet directly to your answer? Right now it's too close to being a link-only answer, even though you've put so much work into the page behind the link.
    – Benjamin Cosman
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 18:43

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