Designing a card

The class decides what the rest of the card can be.

Deck master

The hero of your deck. The card costs no mana, cannot attack, and has a Signature that may cost mana when it fires.

Minion

The card that fights. It has attack and life.

Location

Stays in play and can act when played, at the end of your turn, at the start of your opponent's turn, for as long as it stands, or the first time something happens each turn.

Equipment

Attaches to a minion and makes it better. Each piece is worn on the head, body, back or hands, and a minion carries one piece in each.

Action

Does one thing, then is gone.

Reaction

Set face down, and goes off by itself on your opponent's turn when its trigger happens.

A keyword is a rule printed as one word. There are six, and each has a page of its own.

Guard

Has to be attacked before your other minions.

Ready

Can attack the turn you play it, including the enemy deck master.

Skirmish

Can attack the turn you play it, but only other minions.

Reach

Can attack flying minions from the ground, and blocks them when it also has Guard.

Flying

Can attack anything, and only a Guard with Reach or Flying stops it.

Death

The ability after this word goes off when the card dies.

A Location or a deck master can wait for one of these. Each goes off the first time it happens in a turn, on either player's turn, and not again until the next turn.

• You play a minion. It can help that minion.
• An enemy minion attacks, or attacks your deck master. It can hit that minion before its blow lands.
• One of your minions, or any minion, is Wounded. It can act on that minion.
• One of your minions, or any minion, dies.
• You play your third card in a turn.

Mana can only come from the ones that happen on your own turn, because mana gained on your opponent's turn is gone before you can spend it.

A Signature is the one thing a deck master does. Nobody plays the card, but its ability may cost mana when it fires. The card shows a paid cost before the action and omits a free cost.

A Signature is one of two kinds, and the first choice on the form is which.

Manual

You use it yourself, once a turn, whenever you like on your turn. The card prints no when, and it can be aimed at something you pick.

Automatic

It happens on its own at a moment you choose now: the start of the match, the start or end of your turn, the first card of a kind you play each match or each turn, the first time something happens each turn, or once when your deck master falls to half health. It cannot be aimed at something you pick, because nobody is there to pick it. Where it reaches one minion, the game rolls for which one, and the card says random.

Then you say what it does, how much, and at what. The form writes the sentence as you go.

What

Damage, healing, armour, a card drawn, a card summoned, a mana, or a discount on what a card costs.

How much

A number.

Which card

On a summon only. Pick a card the game already has, and the deck master puts a copy of it on the board every match. It is worth that card's attack and health.

How cheap it gets

On a discount only, here and on a Location. You say the lowest a card can be brought to, and 1 is the lowest the game allows. Cards already below that minimum keep their printed cost.

At what

Your deck master, one of your minions, one of theirs, or a whole side. On an automatic Signature, one minion is a random one. A manual Signature can also aim at whichever body you point at.

You can add a clause, the same one a card ability takes: only if the thing it is aimed at is damaged, only if it has no armour, or only if it has so much attack or health. That is what stops a Signature stacking the same bonus every turn.

Aimed at minions, a Signature can also name a minion type, as a card ability can: at the start of your turn, give every friendly Slime +1/+1. One that watches the minions you play can watch one type: the first Slime you play each match costs 2 less.

Name it if you want to. The name is printed on the card in front of what it does.

A deck master has no mana cost as a card. Its Signature is priced like a hero power: a small one can be free, and above that the form suggests what it should cost to fire. A cheaper one is not refused; a curator decides.

There is a box under the controls for anything they cannot say. What you write there does not happen in a match; a person reads it.

A minion can have one type: Angel, Beast, Cleric, Construct, Cyborg, Demon, Dragon, Elemental, Engineer, Fae, Mage, Merfolk, Nekomimi, Plant, Slime, Statue, Undead or Warrior. It is free, and some abilities affect only minions of one type.

The more a card costs, the more it gets, out of one budget for stats, keywords and abilities. The form shows what you have left to spend. See how cards are costed.

The Generate with AI box above the card name has three buttons. Each one says what it will write and asks you to confirm before it starts. You can change anything it writes.

• Text and Stats writes the whole card from your piece. A name, flavour text or description you already typed is kept, and only the empty ones are written. It switches the form to suggesting the card yourself.
• Text Only writes the name, flavour text and description, replacing what is in them.
• If your piece's title names one of CathryneDelamort's own characters, such as Rowan Fletcher, the AI writes the card as that character.
• Stats Only proposes a class, numbers and abilities from your piece and the text you typed, replacing what is in the form. It favours what the cards already in the game are short of, including rarities with fewer cards than the game aims for, when your piece suits one.

• Flavour text is one italic line on the card. Keep it short or it will not fit.
• A description can be much longer, and appears in the card's details rather than on the card.
• A description can use Markdown: **bold**, _italics_ and [a link](address). A link to anywhere but this game, DeviantArt or cathrynedelamort.com asks before it opens.
• Text Only, in the Generate with AI box, proposes a name, flavour text and description from your piece. Change any of it before you submit. Generating can take up to 5 minutes, and the fields it writes are locked while it works.
• You can switch away or reload the page while it works. The answer is filled in when you come back to the tab.
• If generating fails 2 times in a row, the box is off for 1 hour. A failure on our side does not count.