It's an interesting idea! I've often thought that decks that use a
zillion rare cards are somehow unfair to those who can't afford to spend

that kind of money (and it defeats the point of the word "rare" -- it
should simply be "expensive").

I've often thought there should be  a system where a deck can only have
4 or 6 rare cards total  -- I guess that's similar to what you describe
(maybe yours is better as it includes a weaker restriction on
uncommons).

Another possibility would be to allow as  many rare cards in your deck
as you want, but only one (or maybe two) of any specific card. Then the
tradeoff for using lots of rare cards is that you can't count on the one

you want at any moment being easily available. I suppose you could
extend this idea to uncommons, too... say allow at most  1 or 2 of any
rare (pick one), 2 or 3 of any uncommon, 4 of any common.
I would personally prefer bounds like 2 of any rare, 3 of any uncommon
and maybe 5 of any common, but I think a case could be made for 1 of any

rare (like the preconstructed decks), 2 of any uncommon and 4 of any
common. It might increase the luck factor a bit, but it would also spur
people to look more closely at common cards with useful properties --
and it would definitely make it possible to construct decent decks
without spending quite so much money!

How should promos be treated? As rares?

Ted Alper
alper@epgy.stanford.edu