DEVELOPER INSIGHTS: ALL ABOUT RAM
As a part of our Alpha Kit gameplay guide, we included a section on deckbuilding. This might seem a bit strange, considering our Alpha Kits are pre-constructed 30-card decks, and don’t even follow the rules! But we included that section for two reasons. First, we wanted to excite players and encourage their imagination in building their own amazing edgerunning crew. Second, we wanted to introduce an important mechanic subtly supporting our game system from the shadows: RAM.
RAM in Cyberpunk TCG is more than just a deckbuilding requirement. It’s actually a hidden balancing knob that adds complexity and flexibility to card creation. It allows us to create powerful and interesting cards that might be considered too disruptive to the metagame without it.
DECKBUILDING REQUIREMENTS
To understand RAM’s role in balancing, we first need to understand the rules of deckbuilding. There are four rules for building a legal Cyberpunk TCG deck:
- Use exactly 3 Legend cards with unique names.
- Include no less than 40 and no more than 50 cards (not including your Legends).
- Use no more than 3 copies of the same card.
- Cards must stay within the RAM limit set by your Legends (see below).
Cards can only be included in decks with sufficient RAM. Your Legends set the RAM limits for your deck. The RAM color values on each card in your deck must be less than or equal to your Legends’ total RAM color values. You also can’t include more than 3 copies of the same card in a deck.
All Legends have a colored border and a RAM limit in the top right corner of their card. For example, Goro Takemura: Hands Unclean Legend card has 2 Green RAM. So, you can add any Green cards with a RAM value of 2 or less to your deck.
The cumulative RAM of your three Legends cards sets the maximum RAM value for color cards permitted in your deck. If you want to use more powerful cards of a specific color, you need to use more Legends of the same color to increase your limit.
Each Legend’s RAM limit only counts toward their own color. If you want to build a deck with multiple card colors, then you need to choose your Legends with RAM for each included color. For example, if you want to run a Green and Red deck with Goro Takemura: Hands Unclean (2 Green RAM), Saburo Arasaka: Stubborn Patriarch (2 Green RAM), and Yorinobu Arasaka: Embracing Destruction (2 Red RAM), then your deck may include Green cards with up to 4 RAM and Red cards with up to 2 RAM.
WAIT A SECOND…
Anyone who has seen our Alpha Kit gameplay so far might notice that our Alpha Kits actually break multiple deck building rules. First, the Alpha Kit decks each only have 30 cards, not the required 40. We also included two cards — Armored Minotaur and Jackie Welles: Ride or Die Choom — that require more RAM than their deck’s Legends provided. What gives?!
We wanted to show off a very simple and distilled version of the game that focused on demoing the core gameplay mechanics. Because we were building for ease-of-learning, we deliberately chose to make smaller decks with cards that demonstrated the key aspects we wanted to highlight, even if they weren’t exactly tournament-legal.
AN IMPORTANT BALANCING TOOL
While we ignored some RAM requirements for our Alpha Kits, they’re actually extremely important to balancing the Cyberpunk TCG metagame outside of the Alpha vacuum!
The RAM system provides competitive viability to versatile multi-color decks and specialized single-color decks, because they have reciprocal benefits and drawbacks. Multi-color decks reward you with a wider but shallower card pool, while single-color decks reward you with a narrower but deeper card pool.
This strategic balancing game also creates a new layer of skill expression for players. As the leader of your crew, you choose how you approach your gigs. Do you hedge your bets with lots of options and contingencies, or go all-in on one color? High-RAM cards are more powerful, but your card pool is also more predictable compared to a deck of multiple low-RAM cards. A rival may be able to predict where your advantages come from based on our color identity, and make moves to impede you more effectively.
From a game design perspective, RAM is a unique and exciting development knob. It allows us to restrict a card’s use without restricting its gameplay abilities. Players instead pay the opportunity cost upfront by forfeiting access to other colors. It gives us a chance to make lots of cool and powerful effects, without worrying about players stacking their decks with all of them at once.
Will you go wide or go deep? Maybe somewhere in between? Share your thoughts and strategize with other players in our official Cyberpunk TCG Discord server.
Until next time, happy gaming!
– The Weird Crew
