EFURC ships 1 new card per week. That is 52 cards a year. Here is how.
The 4-step card pipeline
- Monday — concept: 30 minutes. Pick the faction, the cost, the effect, the lore hook. Write 1 paragraph.
- Tuesday — art: 2 hours. Generate the card art (procedural + manual polish). 8 cards batched at once.
- Wednesday — implementation: 1 hour. Code the card effect, write the test cases.
- Thursday — playtest: 2 hours. Play 10 matches with the card in 3 different decks. Adjust the effect if needed.
The art-batching workflow
Card art is the bottleneck. The fix: batch. Every Tuesday I generate art for 8 cards at once (this week’s card + 7 next-week backups). 8 cards in 2 hours vs 1 card per hour when done individually.
The playtest loop
Every new card needs 30+ matches across multiple decks. I run a 10-match playtest on Thursday, log the results, adjust the effect if it is overpowered or underpowered, and re-test on Friday.
Why this matters
52 cards a year is a sustainable pace. 4 cards a week (the unsustainable alternative) burns out the developer and floods the meta with untested cards.
See the EFURC tier list after 50 playtests.
