Status: Active design guide for the six v0.6 faction card pools.
Purpose: Govern the creation, review, revision, and playtesting of faction cards and faction packages.
This document should be used alongside:
Exact card text belongs in the governing faction guide once approved. This document defines how new faction cards and future package revisions should be evaluated; it is not an alternate card source.
Faction cards should be the part of Gauntlet that most strongly encourages players to imagine unusual plans, discover combinations, and develop their own interpretation of a faction.
They should:
A faction pool should be a strategic vocabulary from which players compose their own archetypes, not a preconstructed archetype that tells them what to build.
A card does not belong in a faction merely because it mentions that faction’s resource, victory condition, or most common game action.
A successful faction card should make the player confront decisions characteristic of that faction’s method of pursuing power or victory.
For example, a Military card should not merely provide a battle bonus. It should encourage decisions about concentration of force, momentum, risk, defense, retreat, capture timing, or the use of Command and Orders.
Faction cards should interact with broad categories of behavior, game state, and timing rather than naming narrow combinations or requiring specific partner cards.
Prefer synergies involving concepts such as:
A good synergy supports several plausible decks and can be used in different ways. A bad synergy points toward one obvious list of required components.
A faction card should normally have a reasonable purpose without a specific enabler already in play.
The preferred pattern is:
useful by itself → stronger through thoughtful interaction → exceptional under circumstances the player deliberately creates
Avoid the pattern:
weak by itself → mandatory combo piece → overwhelming when assembled
Narrow cards may exist, but their ceiling must justify their opportunity cost and they should not be required for the faction’s baseline plan to function.
Some cards may naturally favor one leader, but the faction pool should not divide into two sealed leader packages.
Choosing a leader should change how the player values, sequences, or exploits cards from the same pool. A leader-leaning card may be substantially better for one leader without becoming unusable or meaningless for the other.
The pool should also include cards whose purpose or optimal use changes depending on the chosen leader.
Each faction pool should contain several overlapping strategic threads rather than one dominant archetype.
These threads should be:
The exact threads will differ by faction. They should emerge from the faction’s rules, leaders, board incentives, resource system, alternate victory condition where applicable, and interactions with the Neutral pool.
Repeatedly rewarding the player whenever they perform the faction’s normal action may be functional, but it rarely creates a new strategy by itself.
Prefer effects that alter:
A combination should be interesting because it changes what the player wants to do, when they want to do it, or what they are willing to risk—not merely because two numerical modifiers add together.
The printed faction and leader rules must form a complete, functional system without requiring a particular faction card.
Faction cards may:
They should not repair a faction that otherwise fails to operate.
Low-cost support cards require particular scrutiny. A cheap card that simply improves the faction’s basic engine may become an automatic inclusion even if it appears modest.
Strong faction cards should be capable of creating stories: a risky offensive becomes a breakthrough, an apparent retreat becomes a counterattack, a prepared scheme is revealed at the critical moment, or two modest effects combine unexpectedly.
Dramatic effects should generally involve one or more of the following:
Memorable should not mean inevitable or unanswerable.
A faction pool should not be a simple efficiency ranking from best card to worst card.
Cards should appeal for different reasons, including:
Players should often want more faction cards than they can comfortably include, while disagreeing about which cards deserve the slots.
Balance, clarity, and thematic coherence are necessary but not sufficient.
Every faction card should ultimately pass this test:
Does this card make the game more interesting when it appears?
A card may pass by creating a clever decision, enabling an unusual plan, changing how the board is evaluated, encouraging interaction, generating tension, or producing a dramatic moment.
A technically balanced card that is routine, procedural, redundant, or joyless should not survive merely because it fills a cost or mechanical slot.
These principles apply to the faction package as a whole.
Begin by identifying several behaviors and tensions that express the faction. Do not begin by assigning one card to every keyword, one card to every leader ability, or a predetermined mechanical cycle.
Cards may reinforce the same thread from different angles, but the pool should not read like a checklist of the faction reference sheet.
A card may belong strongly to one strategic thread while remaining useful in another. The most productive cards often connect two threads and allow players to invent hybrid strategies.
Avoid sealed packages in which all cards within a strategy only reference one another.
A faction pool should support:
Not every card should attempt to define a deck. Glue, flexibility, and situational tools remain valuable when they create real choices rather than automatic efficiency.
The final pool must support legal, varied deck construction and an appropriate cost distribution. However, a card should not be approved solely because the pool needs another card at its cost.
When a curve slot is empty, identify what kind of decision, interaction, or strategic role is missing at that cost before designing the card.
Faction cards do not exist in isolation. Each proposal should be evaluated for how it combines with the completed Neutral pool.
Check whether the card:
Faction identity is partly defined by what the faction cannot do easily.
Faction cards may create conditional or expensive ways to compensate for a weakness, but the pool should not erase every limitation of the faction or allow it to outperform specialists in unrelated areas.
A card’s historical inclusion, prior faction designation, reviewed status, name, cost, or partial wording gives it no protected place in a finished faction pool.
When a faction package is built, every existing candidate must be evaluated under this guide on the same basis as a new proposal. A candidate may be:
Historical review records should preserve provenance, but provenance does not establish release eligibility. A card should not be kept merely to fill a pool-size target, a cost slot, or an inherited list.
Each v0.6 faction package targets 12 unique playable cards. Across six factions, the release therefore targets 72 faction designs in addition to the 50-card Neutral pool.
A candidate counts toward the twelve-card package only after it passes this guide. The number is a release target, not permission to preserve or invent filler.
Faction pools should deliberately lean more expensive than the Neutral pool. The Neutral pool provides universal fundamentals, low-cost connective tissue, basic counterplay, movement, smoothing, and positional tools. Faction cards more often embody specialized strategies, stronger character, build-arounds, and game-shaping effects.
Higher faction costs must still reflect power, reliability, flexibility, or strategic impact. Complexity, novelty, faction identity, or flavor alone do not justify a higher cost.
The default planning curve for a twelve-card faction package is:
| Cost | Cards |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 |
| 5 | 1 |
| Total | 12 |
This curve has 36 total unique-card value and a 3.0 average cost. It is a planning baseline, not a rigid quota.
A finished faction may deviate when needed to feel complete, varied, and fun. In particular:
A cost-5 statement card is not automatically Unique and should not be required for the faction to function. It should be optional, ambitious, distinctly factional, and supported by meaningful commitment, risk, timing, or counterplay.
When reviewing a proposed card, evaluate it separately with both faction leaders.
Ask:
Not every card must be equally attractive to both leaders. The goal is a shared faction pool with leader-dependent interpretation, not perfect symmetry.
Every proposed faction card should be tested against the following questions.
What new decision does this card create?
If it only increases output without changing a choice, its design may be too shallow.
What faction behavior does it encourage?
The answer should describe a style of play or tension, not merely repeat a keyword.
How many different cards, leaders, Neutral tools, or strategies could interact with it?
Look for breadth without generic universality.
Is it useful without those interactions?
Identify its standalone floor and the circumstances under which it becomes a poor draw.
How does each leader use or value it?
Note whether it is shared, leader-leaning, or meaningfully transformed by leader choice.
Could it become an automatic inclusion or required engine piece?
Consider cost, consistency, resource efficiency, and whether it repairs a basic faction function.
What can the opponent perceive, anticipate, contest, or punish?
Interaction may occur before, during, or after the effect, but meaningful counterplay should exist for major payoffs.
What memorable play might this card produce?
If no compelling answer exists, question whether the card is adding fun or merely filling space.
What existing card or ability does it risk making obsolete?
Compare both raw efficiency and strategic role.
What weakness, cost, or tension keeps its best use from becoming routine?
Strong cards should ask something meaningful of the player.
Reject or revise proposals that tend toward the following patterns.
The card mentions the faction resource or victory condition but does not create a faction-specific decision.
Several cards all reward the same normal action with increasingly large bonuses, creating an obvious deck and little strategic variation.
A low-cost card improves the faction’s basic economy or consistency so efficiently that nearly every deck must include it.
A card only functions with a narrow set of same-faction cards and has little value elsewhere.
A card is effectively blank for one leader or is so efficient for the other that inclusion is automatic.
The card is strongest only when the player is already decisively ahead and does not create a comeback, pivot, or difficult conversion decision.
The card presents multiple modes, offers, or timings, but one option is almost always correct.
A routine bonus is dressed in thematic language without changing the underlying play pattern.
The card exists because the faction’s printed mechanics do not function reliably without it.
The effect is dramatic but offers insufficient warning, risk, cost, or response.
Use the following sequence when building or revising a faction package.
Restate the faction and leader identities.
Identify the decisions each leader should emphasize and the weaknesses the faction should retain.
Define several overlapping strategic threads.
Describe behaviors and tensions rather than card lists or rigid archetypes.
Audit the existing faction cards.
Determine which threads, costs, effects, and leader relationships are already represented.
Identify missing decisions and interactions.
Do not treat an empty cost slot as a sufficient design brief.
Draft one card at a time.
Establish its strategic purpose before polishing exact text.
Map its interaction surface.
Review both leaders, existing faction cards, relevant Neutral cards, faction resources, victory progress, and board state.
Apply the review rubric and anti-pattern audit.
Revise or reject designs that are mandatory, parasitic, redundant, or strategically shallow.
Test packages, not only individual cards.
Look for solved builds, accidental card cycles, excessive stacking, dead draws, and combinations that erase faction weaknesses.
Evaluate play experience.
Record whether the cards produced new decisions, interaction, tension, experimentation, and memorable moments.
Approve and record durable decisions.
Update the relevant faction pool, metadata, review records, open questions, and project checkpoint only after the design is actually approved.
A faction pool is ready for release-level testing only when:
This standard should be revisited whenever a new faction card is added, repriced, or substantially redesigned.