This morning I got a question on my “Things I Learned”… Over a Lifetime of TCGs post about variance in resource systems. It’s a great question, and while I answered it over there, I feel like the question merited the attention of a spot on the front page of the website too.
Grotusque and I have known each other for longer than I’ve been designing games professionally. We met through an online message board about Magic: The Gathering, and he’s helped me dissect and organize my thoughts about game design ever since then. But please don’t assume he’s getting a front-page spotlight because he’s an old friend; his question gets the spot because it’s not the only time I’ve been asked the question (nods to Hotsaucex11 over on Reddit), so I know it’s one people are thinking about, and it put me on a path to an answer that just as easily could have been its own post about TCG design. So now it is.
Here you go, Grotusque’s question, along with my answer.
grotusque
I have a couple questions!
How do you manage fun variance vs unfun variance, since variance needs to be part of the player experience?
What are your thoughts about making the “resources gathering” aspect of the game more engaging? Is it even possible?
In a game like Marvel Snap, resources are just given to the player each turn-similarly Warhammer 40K Conquest. In a game like X-Com, players are given the puzzle to build their base in a manner that suits them-but there’s clearly a more efficient way than others-but once that’s built, you just wait for the resources to be given to you.
In Magic, if you don’t have land, you don’t play (mostly) and there are some high level maths involved in getting mana ratios right-but I wouldn’t call that the fun aspect of the game for most players.
My reply:
GameMakerFletch
November 20, 2025 at 11:15 am
It’s funny, right as this question showed up in my inbox, I was meeting with the lead designer on one of my current TCG projects, discussing adjustments to the variance in the game’s resource system. I asked him for his thoughts, and he responded with, “Oh, man, that could be an entire GDC talk.”
A similar question came in on Reddit yesterday, and I compared the Magic resource system to an internal combustion automotive engine. It’s old technology by now, and better systems have been invented, but the “draw the resource cards from your deck and play (up to) one per turn” model is so much a core of the original, biggest, and best known TCG ever that there’s no avoiding it. There’s been a lot of design “technology” in Magic devoted specifically to mitigating some of the problems that come from the legacy of the land/mana system, and every time a new land-fixing mechanic is introduced to the game, the dynamics of variance are changed a little bit. Does it improve the fun factor of mana screw/flood variance? I think it depends on the specific environment we’re talking about.
Skirting the question a bit, I can say that both of the TCGs I’m working on identified the “resources in your deck has a good chance of feeling bad” issue very early on, if not from the start. Both have since found pretty interesting solutions that attach either variance that’s predictable over time, or player choice/agency to the accumulation of resources. In both cases, the resource element has been removed from the “playable cards” deck, ensuring that players rarely draw a card they feel is depriving them of more useful options in favor of resources they don’t need (or that they can’t play what they drew because they’re not drawing a resource that would have been more critical).
And in both of those cases, I can honestly say that I’ve never missed the tension that comes from anticipating whether my next draw is a resource or non-resource card.
Both games still have the capacity for “ramp” — or resource acceleration — strategies, and those are definitely fun ways to play around with the resource system, but that’s more of a variance mitigation/removal element than one that amplifies “fun variance” tied to resources.
So I think that mostly answers your question(s), in so far as having an intelligent, if not succinct, answer ready off the top of my head.
As always, if you have any more questions about my thoughts on TCG design, whether it’s about resource systems or something else, I’m happy to try to give a thoughtful answer. Keep ’em rolling in!
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