Mana curve
The distribution of card costs across a deck, tuned so a player has efficient plays available at every stage of a game. A good mana curve — the right mix of cheap early cards and expensive late ones — is fundamental deckbuilding skill: too many expensive cards and you're helpless early; too many cheap ones and you run out of gas. Designers create mana curves implicitly by assigning costs and by making 'curving out' (playing on-cost every turn) a rewarding line of play. Key decisions: the cost range and how steeply power scales with cost, cost-reduction and ramp mechanics that let players cheat the curve, how tightly efficient decks must curve, and format speed (aggressive formats reward low curves). Pitfall: mana curve is emergent from card costing rather than a system to build directly, so the real design lever is cost balance — if cards aren't costed with curve dynamics in mind, decks degenerate into all-cheap or all-expensive, and the strategic layer of sequencing plays by cost disappears.
- Dev effort: Small
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: card-game