PokeHearth - Card Design 2


This is a continuation of Part 1.
As we left off, we had just reached the 50th pokémon card, and while the first pokémon introduced a lot of new concepts, things were now starting to find a balance. Instead of introducing new mechanics, old mechanics were being fleshed out. So let us continue, see how far we will get, and see if there is time to lift the veil on some more over-arching game mechanics like idol powers and their connection to each type’s theme.

Meowth is a simple card, that in its simplicity holds a bit of flexibility. It can be used as quick removal, or it can attack the enemy idol to act as a wanna-be Charmander. Also, its low cost makes it a great way to catch up against the opponent’s turn 1 play if you did not play anything yourself.

Persian is a card that is quite synergistic. If you have a couple of low-health pokémon, for instance if you just made some trades with enemy pokémon, Persian will come in to save your board-presence. You might alternatively put it into a swarm-focused deck, hoping to get its effect off on as many pokémon as possible. Its high cost does however mean that it relies on pokémon from last turn actually surviving, which explains why its stats are quite good to compensate.

While the normal-type cards feel normal, Psychic usually has some much more interesting effects. I believe Psyduck shuffles your hand into your deck and then draws new cards. Perhaps it can be used to get rid of some unusable cards, or to fish for an answer to use the rest of your six mana on. In the lategame. Compared to the Hearthstone version, its low cost makes it much more flexible.

Golduck has an effect that sounds really good. Imagine that, you almost have no cards left, and your opponent’s hand is full, to then take all their card and give them nothing in return! It just rarely is as good as it seems. Its high cost and low impact makes it clunky, leaving it to sit in your hand for a while. Building your deck around it with a lot of low-cost cards, another question arises – do you put one or two copies of it into your deck? Because there is nothing worse than having two Golducks in your hand – your opponent can just trade right back.

Though Golduck is one of  those cards probably undervalued by the AI, it sits at a neat 51% winrate, and my own experimentations seem to suggest that this estimate is not too far off.

Attack this turn is just about what you’d expect – it is a temporary increase in attack that fades at the end of your turn, meaning that Mankey’s effect is basically “deal 2 damage” conditional on having a pokémon that is ready to attack and was going to attack the same target. If I were to give it a value, it would be around two thirds the power of dealing damage directly.

Primeape’s effect sounds similar but is quite different. You will always have your idol, after all. Instead it allows you to deal three damage, but your idol takes damage equal to the target’s attack. This is a pretty strong effect in the early game or when you are ahead, but if your idol already has low health, you might be better off attacking your opponent’s idol which has zero attack.

Growlithe gives permanent attack, opposite to the temporary attack of the previous cards. The difference between temporary and permanent attack is miniscule in practice, however. It does offer a different way of using the card, though, trying to keep your buffed up pokémon alive. This might be easy if your goal is to deal damage to the enemy idol instead of trading pokémon, as is the theme of the Fire type.

Arcanine kind of abandons that theme. Instead, it is a late-game, value-oriented card. Inspired by Arcanine being the legendary pokémon, it gives you a legendary dragon – or, well, a Charmander.

I think this might be a good time to mention that random card generation is way stronger in this game than in Hearthstone. Very few cards are weak or underpowered. Sure, the random card probably does not synergise as well as the other cards in your deck, but overall, random card draw is almost similar in power to normal draw. Considering Dragon cards are often late-game, Arcanine might be a one-stop shop for value in an otherwise aggro-centric deck.

Poliwag is a friendlier alternative to Growlithe’s effect. All things considered, its cost is also quite low, so even if it does not have a lot of stats on its own, it is a good end to a turn of flooding the board.

Poliwhirl is just a blocker, and I know you’ll say “boo”, but really, every deck needs a few blockers to be any good.

Finally, Poliwrath packs a punch, and because of that, it has been banished to the rare realm of 8 cost cards. Dealing four damage and putting a strong pokémon on the board with just one card is an effect that one should not underestimate. Also, I want to mention that it illustrates an overlapping theme between fighting and water in dealing damage.

Finally, some more Psychic type cards so we have something to talk about.

Abra is the first of a series of “infinite” cards. It might sound really good to be able to summon an 2 attack 2 health costing only 2, without having to worry about running out of cards. Well. No. It is nowhere as strong as a repeatable power, because you can only have one on your board, and your opponent will just know not to attack it, meaning that to use its effect, you will have to trade it in even though it is not strategically optimal.

But what if you had an Abra on the board, then played Kadabra? For the rest of the game, you could play it over and over again with cost 1!

And what about Alakazam? It can return your Kadabra costing 1, so you can use Kadabra again and again, and your Abra will be free, and you will have spent a lot of time creating a magical combo that ultimately does nothing to hurt your opponent.

These cards are what can be called combo-enablers. And it is even quite easy to make almost infinite combos with them. But the time it takes to put the combo together and staying alive makes this strategy alright, but far from unfair. If only you could have a Charmander, Primeape or Poliwrath. Unfortunately, psychic pairs with steel, and neither of them are particularly proactive. Or perhaps I should say fortunately.

In general, Fighting has an aggressive theme, but all themes need a counterweight. Like these three cards that are all based around blocking. Now, this might seem incongruous, but remember, one strategy for playing aggressive cards is to have a wall to protect them. And a card like Machamp could be used either for defence, or for giving your pokémon enough health that you can attack the enemy idol two turns in a row.

Talking of purple cards that return other cards to the hand, here is another set! Bellsprout is also a combo enabler, allowing you to play cards with strong cries several times, but at quite a cost. Important to note is that while most stat changes are kept when returning cards back to hand, when played, pokémon regain full health (even if that health has been raised from the original value). Bellsprout thus has three uses: Comboing with cries, healing cards fully, and being an okay card to play on an empty board.

Weepinbell, however, finds its strength in removing enemy cards with high cost and negligible effects. Sending a Poliwrath or Meowth back to hand is not particularly strong. Sending a Charizard back to hand is amazing. These three cards constitute the back-bone of control-oriented Poison-decks, and Weepinbell is both strong in the late game and helps you get there. Its use is a bit context-dependent, however.

Victreebel is slightly less context-dependent. It is pretty good in almost all cases where you are behind in the game. But again, you need to pay attention to whether your opponent has buffed their cards, or have several synergistic cries that you then enable them to reuse. But nothing can change that this card is pretty amazing. For the same reason, its winrate is almost unrelated to how good its stats are – the only important thing is its effect.

It should be noted that statuses like poison follow pokémon as they are returned to hand. It does not do anything while in hand, but when played again, the card will once more be poisoned. Or have block or whatever.



Hey, a couple of boring cards! The only thing I want to point out is their stat distributions. Block is strongest when attack is in the 2-4 range. 1 attack blockers only delay without changing anything. And more than 4 attack just is not as important as health.

Yeah, I have no idea why Machoke has a 50% winrate. It’s pretty strange. I guess all decks just need a blocker or two.


Our first rock types! You might even be able to guess what the theme of the rock type is. On Geodude, it is just a small flavouring, since gaining 2 health is nowhere near as important as dealing 2 damage. No matter how much health your idol has, it will not defeat your opponent.

Graveler, however, really leans into the effect, losing quite a few stats as balance to its whopping effect of giving ten health! With that amount of health-gain, it can actually turn around a game, giving you a few more turns before losing to aggressive decks, allowing you to regain control of the game with other, undisclosed cards.
Golem saying 5 armour is a typo from an earlier naming convention, oops, it should say “+5 health”.

Golem is fun because it has two effects in one. On one hand, it is anti-aggro, allowing you to remove an enemy pokémon the turn it is played, and healing you up at the same time. On the other hand, sometimes dealing four damage to the enemy idol can win you the game. Anyway, Golem had to have Quick, it’s a rolling boulder turned into a pokémon. On the third hand, if it sticks around, it can quickly give you huge amounts of health.

I should mention, there is a difference between attacking and being attacked. Golem’s effect only triggers when it attacks, not when it is attacked, so at max, once a turn.

Talking of the strength of quick pokémon! Ponyta might seem like a worse version of Meowth, but you need to remember what strategy the Fire-type usually uses. Also, while health is generally much less effective than attack on a quick pokémon, the difference between two and three health is possibly one of the most significant differences. For instance, Ponyta can survive butting heads with itself.

Opposite to Ponyta’s subtle power, Rapidash is a pure monster. Dealing six damage that can be spread strategically. Oh, I love this card. It used to be incredibly overpowered, but then I nerfed a lot of the other Fire-type cards, and that made this card much more fair. Still, I think it is generally an auto-include in Fire decks, even though they generally do not want to have many expensive cards.

It’s actually pretty strange that we have come this far without any cards that say “Draw a card”, since it must be one of the most straightforward effects a card game can have. Here we see that in this game, drawing a card generally costs 1 more than other effects and statuses.

It used to be valued even cheaper, until I at some point decided to nerf all cards that draw cards or add random cards to your hand. To my big surprise, it almost did not change the winrate of the cards. Apparently, the nerf hit almost all decks equally. The aggressive decks did not become much more oppressive either, perhaps because you will simply wait on playing your now weaker card draw cards until you are already winning the game.

A new status! Shield is one of the themes of steel-type cards. Shield protects the Pokémon from the first damage it takes in combat, then disappears. If we compare Magnemite to Machop, we can see that the Shield status is better than Block, more comparable to Venom. This however neglects the whole strategic aspect of Shield. Shield is really good against big enemy pokémon and mediocre against small enemy pokémon. It has a great weakness to effects, however, since they go right through the shield. For instance, Poliwrath can take out Magnemite with its cry.

Magneton shows a common card design, where its effects are a marriage of the two types the pokémon has. Steel has shields, Electric has spreading damage randomly, and as Magneton is Steel and Electric, it has both combined. This is a very easy, if not particularly interesting, way to design cards that are still technically unique. The possibilities are endless (or equal to 9*17 = 153 unique type combinations.)

This is our first example of:
a)  A card generating another specific card.
b)  A card that is not a pokémon but just an effect.
c) An uncollectible card. Like, you cannot just put a Leek into your deck, what a strange notion.

I have found this to be a great way to make new cards. It makes it easy to create unique, thematic effects, it enables easy balancing, and the resulting card has a strategic flexibility. You can play Farfetch’d as a simple 3 cost 3/3, or you can wait a couple of turns and play it as a 5 cost 5/5. Also, if you have another pokémon on your board, you can buff that up instead, giving a more immediate effect.

I am told that Farfetch’d actually is holding a green onion, not a leek. I think calling it a Leek makes it understandable to more people though.

Generally, attack is much more important than health when it comes to quick pokémon. This means that usually, quick pokémon are much weaker than their slow counterparts. But with low-attack high-health cards, you do not have to be as careful with their stats.

Dodrio is an interesting card. It seems quite simple, but both its statuses are high-impact, so it surprisingly creates quite interesting scenarios. It is a much more interesting way to deal with aggressive decks than a simple high-health blocker. It also becomes really strong if given a Leek.

I should note that while the Pidgey-line and Fearow-line have had their normal-typing removed, it stays on Farfetch’d and the Dods because they are birds that spend more time on the ground. Okay, I know that sparrows and pidgeons also spend a lot of time on ground. If we are to make a biologically consistent border, it is whether the birds are arboreal. Could you imagine a duck, dodo or ostrich sitting in a tree? No? I thought not. Therefore they can keep their normal-typing.
Why do ducks not sit in trees?

Talking of type-changes, it is a bit sad that so many Ice-type pokémon are also Water-type. There are enough water-types anyway, so they can do without.

The theme of the Ice type centres around freezing enemies! Frozen pokémon do not become ready at the start of their turn; instead, they thaw. Freezing is thus a one-turn delay. Freezing fits neatly in a control-style deck, but can also be used as a strange version of aggro where you simply disable the enemy from trading their pokémon into yours. The Ice-type cards generally lean into the control and combo oriented styles, though, having effects that become stronger the more frozen pokémon there are.

Seel might seem pretty strange, since usually the first pokémon with a mechanic had the simplest version of it. The problem is that later on, I made Spheal, which was almost like Seel, just better. Therefore, I had to go back and change Seel to make them different and equal. I like Seel’s effect. It just does not fit well with Dewgong, which has the base effect. Perhaps that can teach the pokémon company what happens when you make two pokémon that are basically the same. Your choice if that refers to Seel and Dewgong or Seel and Spheal.

Our good friends, simple pokémon. I should mention that while Shield has its strengths and weaknesses, it is really good together with Block. I hate Muk. It has ruined so many of my game-plans.

This also shows that not all pokémon need to stay within their type theme. Not all Poison-type pokémon need to poison or be venomous. Some of them can just be blockers. All decks need a few blockers, after all.

Have you heard that all decks need a few blockers? This is also true of Ice-type decks. Freezing is to Frozen as Venom is to Poison. Whenever a Pokémon with freezing is in combat, it freezes its opponent. It is a good way to add a few extra frozen enemies to the tally when you play your synergistic cards – you can only afford so many cards in a turn, after all, so playing some of them the turn before is a good idea.

You might say that Shellder is strictly better than Grimer. Well, not if your opponent is also playing a freeze-synergistic deck and want to freeze their own pokémon! I think this is another balancing mistake, where originally Shellder did not have block, but that made it too weak.

Cloyster is totally not identical to a well-known card from Hearthstone.

Maybe I was running out of ideas when I was designing these cards? I don’t remember.

Talk about really unique cards, the purple ones always save us.

Originally Gastly only had the positive effect, but that obviously made it too strong. I promise you that the drawback is not derivative at all but is made necessary by balance-testing.

Haunter, however, now that’s a bit more interesting. What would you rather, draw a card from your own deck or your enemy’s? Your own cards probably synergise better, but if the game goes on long enough, one of you will empty your deck, and Haunter helps making sure the enemy runs out faster. The effect is also quite thematic with the pokémon.

Gengar is really strong in theory, but it tends to mostly just fill up your hand with the cards your opponent did not feel were good enough to use. Either it has little effect at all, or it fills your hand so you do not draw the cards you want from your own deck – or at least, that is my experience from playing the card. It sits at a mediocre 48% winrate, as do its pre-evolutions.



Onix is a boring card, sure, but let me just go back to what I said about the value of Shield earlier – that it was valued to cost one stat more than the average effect. Well, with Onix we can see it is actually two stats. So which is it? One or two? 

It depends on the card, of course. Mostly on the attack-value, however. As Shield generally lets it attack one more time than if it were unshielded, the value of the shield depends strongly on its attack.

But health is important too, as effects go through the shield. Thus Magnemite could be removed with a 3-damage effect without caring about its shield, but it is a lot more difficult to find effects dealing 5 damage.

This explains why Onix has comparatively worse stats than Magnemite. They still are equally good cards. Magnemite sits at 50% winrate, Onix at 49%, a tiny change that probably can be due to variance.

Drowzee is basically a better version of Jigglypuff, but if you were to build a deck centred around sleep, you would probably want to include both of them, just to have more copies of cards that can make others fall asleep. I should also mention that psychic generally plays control or combo-oriented, so making pokémon fall asleep works great, even without having a specific combo to do with sleeping.

Hypno, however, is that combo. It might seem like a pretty strong card, to be able to, for just four mana, remove all the cards you have been storing away with sleep. But you need to remember that its effect relies on playing Drowzees ahead of time. And perhaps it isn't even that important to remove the sleeping enemies, if you just make sure not to wake them up.


As the Squirtle-line already showed, the main theme of Water has two interlinked effects: Spreading damage between enemies (bubble) and dealing direct damage (water-gun). The Krabby-line falls into the latter camp.

Dealing direct, controllable damage is a really strong ability. This means there are several ways to take it: Cards dealing small amounts of damage and having acceptable stats, or, like Krabby, having negligible stats, but dealing a decent amount of damage.

Both of these cards are missing three potential stat points, but Kingler is way stronger at 53% win-rate than Krabby at 48% win-rate. It might seem obvious, when Kingler deals 3 damage compared to 2 - but at the point in the game where Kingler is played, 3 damage is not as important as 2 damage is when Krabby is played. I think the reason Kingler is so strong is that it has both acceptable stats and acceptable effect, while Krabby, as mentioned, has negligible stats.


Voltorb might seem quite similar to Diglett, but since its effect only hits enemies, it can be played both when ahead and when behind, making it much more flexible. Thus, it has its stats reduced while being equal or perhaps stronger than Diglett. This, however, might also be related to the theme of the Electric-type, which has a lot of effects that spread damage out. Once weakened with spread-out damage, a weak-but-wide effect like Voltorb might be boosted quite strongly.

Electrode is both strong and weak at once. If the opponent has any pokémon with less than four health, it is basically a two-time "deal 3 damage to all enemies". Importantly, the opponent might be able to control the second time it triggers. As such, though its potential is high, its cost of six is fair, netting it a 53% winrate, which is good, but for from unfair.

Thematically for me, Electrode is stuck in my head as a pokémon that uses Self-destruct. Similar to that, if you take it out with one of your own pokémon, its effect makes it explode, dealing three damage to all your pokémon. I think that fits close enough to the bill.