Creating Card Pools

How do game designers keep track of the cards in their game? How do they design/release a set of cards? How do they keep track of everything?

Well I'm not sure so I kind of did my own thing, and of course I used Google Sheets cause I use it for everything.

This is just one way to do things.

I organize spells by synergy using a different color for each column. Flame orange, Frost blue, etc. If a spell has Flame and Frost synergies, then it will show up in both columns, but with the background color of the other column. If there's a third synergy, the text color can be changed as well. The goal is to have a well distributed amount of spells, though some synergies will have understandably smaller pools depending on how much of a central theme that mechanic should be able have.

It's quite boring to have the best/only option be making a deck with just one synergy. So we have to add some spells (like Acid Rain) that give a big bonus for combining synergies (Poison and Frost). Other synergies will have some natural combinations such as Poison with Push/Root/Break.

There's a lot of info this chart might be missing (so I also include mana costs next to each spell in my non-posted version) it might also be nice to have one with icons/descriptions. As a side note, spell icons also use similar color themes to show which mechanics they include.

Ideally each big spell pool has a few things including combo starters, poke, ramps, combo enders, and utility.

Here's an example of Flame synergy.

Starter - FireBreath/Firewall/Twinferno

Poke - Ember/Salamander

Ramp - Brushfire

ComboEnder - Eruption/Rage/Combust

Utility - StepBlaze

Since Duelists has so many game states, each spell can actually fill a few different roles, so take this with a grain of salt.