How Rare?

Rarity
Originally uploaded by TheGirard.

So I have been swamped these past two weeks trying to get Hunters out to approvals, Captains Log juicy, and Project G on course.

I find myself doing rarity for the Hunters set. Here is the breakdown.

194 cards
- 14 Starter cards
- 60 Rares
- 60 Uncommons
- 60 Commons

The starter cards will appear only in the two starter decks that are coming with the set. There are 5 unique cards in each and each deck share two cards between them. So now that this is all out of the way, where to put the cards? To some of my game designing colleagues out there, what do you think about when assigning rarity?

One of my former colleagues here at D used to have rarity set out when design began on a set for this product. I don't agree with this because you find yourself actually saying things like "well since this is a rare, it can break the scale." That is one thing that I don't believe in.

However, even with that belief in place, I was conversing with a former British player (not that we should hold it against him) and he says that Rings has had a bad time with most of the playable cards being rare and thus viewed as an "expensive game". We conversed about how Vs. does a good job about putting a fair number of the playable cards at the common/uncommon level to help facilitate a healthy sealed product environment. I know that I/we go through great lengths to ensure that there are enough playable non-unique nouns at the common/uncommon level to do the same thing. I think that rings sealed product suffers from setup of the game and some of those restrictions (not draftable out of the pack).

In other rarity talks, it's tough to label a card as specifically rare/uncommon/common. You don't want a kid to crack a pack be like "well that's a crap rare"(not that we make crap rares mind you) but on the flip side, you also don't want a game to be completely rare dependant and those with the most money/cards wins. I made a couple decisions to kick some functional reprints and potentially confusing cards down from rare to uncommon and hopefully those will help create some complex decks and not rare heavy decks like ... ugh ... Dunland.

What do you think about when deciding rarity? Are the foils enough of a chase to warrant putting the stronger cards at a less than rare status? These are some of the issues that I deal with on a regular basis that don't necessarily make my job easier.