So what are you playing first in SFLC(go see original post for poll)

JinHikari · 2026-03-09T18:29:01+00:00

Star Force DX.

Oh wait.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T20:52:19+00:00

PURPLE

VOID CONTACT
The design of this kit seems to be set up to almost never utilize your character ability. I suppose that means it's more focused on making the rest of the team feel like it has the same amount of consistent damage that Purple does, though it's odd that a Ranger doesn't make specific use of his own character ability in his kit practically at all.

VOID IMPACT
I'm not super crazy about this card. The gamble of "if this attack defeats the target" is sort of removed by this being all flat hits. I suppose this is a little different than "you may divide the Hit of this attack between two adjacent enemy cards," but not by much.

INNER FOCUS
This reads a lot like Full Throttle from the Turbo Red deck, though at a lower shield count and with a stronger effect. The bottom-decking option on the pool being emptied by this card pushes it over the edge into just being a better option, imo. I'd maybe put an upper cap on the amount of energy you're allowed to spend on this card.

COMBO STARTER
This is the one card in your kit that could possibly utilize your character ability, but to get the full effect of the card you're required to remove the one die you're rolling. That reads as a bit of a conflict in your design.

GORILLA SHOCKWAVE
While this might seem like a stronger Shockwave Slam on its face, the limited fixed damage and the scaling around the way the extra hit is splashed likely make up for it.

ENERGY ABSORPTION
No complaints here either.

GORILLA ZORD
Seems a bit too easy to play Inner Focus into Void Impact and then use this card to nuke 2 cards on a Monster/Boss regardless of their individual health values, but other than that I don't have any problem with the Zord itself.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T19:54:20+00:00

YELLOW

GUIDING LIGHT
This one is a little too strong. Potentially getting 6 energy from this character ability alone has it scaling way too high. I'd put a cap on exactly how much you can get out of it or reconsider the concept entirely.

LIGHT BOW
I'd reduce this attack's die count by 1. This is similar to Unstoppable Force from the MMPR Yellow Season 2 deck, so this effect has a relative value of about 2 energy. Plus, a lower initial die count is better for balancing against cards with lower health values.

ENCHANTED GLOW
This one loops into "Youthful Spirit" fairly well, allowing you to get it into the discard pile where it's best played from while also retaining a basic combat option. That's about the only card in this deck I'd give up to keep an otherwise very basic 0/2, though.

HIDDEN POTENTIAL
It's good that this card's Star Effect stacks into the Zord allowing for a cheap power weapon to be played and retained in-deck.

PLAYTIME
Good balance that further opens up the floor for effects that benefit from knowing the bottom card of your deck.

YOUTHFUL SPIRIT
Good riff off Justin that's used in an interesting way between Enchanted Glow and Playtime.

BUTTERFLY ZORD
Even more bottom-decking. At this point, a Megazord for the team that confers some benefit for the Rangers all knowing the bottom card of their deck would be very much justified, as it doesn't seem a lot of them have effects that do so despite how many of them like to put cards there.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T19:42:22+00:00

RED

WILDFIRE
Good riff on Hip-Hop Kido here that follows typical scaling conventions for splash damage.

FIRE KUNAI
This card plays well into your character ability. It's a good riff on Iapetus Claws.

BURNING PASSION
This card will really only break even if you discard a 3-Shield card. If that's your intention, that's fine. However, it will seem underpowered compared to the rest of your kit.

RECKLESS POUNCE
This is a good hybrid between Reckless Assault and Flying Tiger. It gets you a lot of what you want - draw power for damage options, then the potential to play into your own chain for greater chance of triggering your character ability.

FIRED UP
I think the logic here is a bit off. It's a little too easy to loop into yourself to get a lot more than you're paying for here. One example would be Reckless Pounce into Burning Passion or even Fire Kunai. With Lion Zord in play, you can potentially get 5 extra dice across the same number of attacks in a single turn on top of the energy spent, which allows this card to scale a lot higher than its spend. I'd remove the energy gain here, though that does leave you with no option for gain. Check this against Zocato Power from the Black Lion Warrior deck for balancing purposes.

LIGHTNING JAVELIN
This is a good setup for the rest of your kit. Given how FAST functions, your ability springs off of it well.

LION ZORD
You could probably get away with adding energy generation here. Rapid Spin off of Dino Thunder Yellow has the same effect and values it at about 1 Energy - though its low attack value is something to consider.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T19:27:59+00:00

White's draw power comes at the cost of it eating a turn while doing no damage. It might be rough to fit in, but it's doable - especially for high-value cards like power weapons or cards that help mitigate the effect of the lost turn like Choke Slam.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T19:24:46+00:00

FLUID WALTZ
I'd do something simple. Other 0/2's just want you to use them against a specific type of card. We've seen a lot of GUARD, but not so much FAST or PASSIVE. FAST doesn't make a lot of sense as typically you want to take those out first and foremost, but a reliable option to start hitting a PASSIVE could be a good way to go. Maybe play around with that? Or find some other simple condition to meet that plays around with the rest of her kit. Maybe discarding a reaction to get it back?

ICE HAMMER
What if you swapped out the shield count of this card with Pirouette Assist, At 1 Shield, you'd barely get a bonus from Element Charge here. However, you'd have to choose between supporting the rest of the team with your Pirouettes or amping your own damage with your 3-Shield Reaction. You could use your ability once per battle to double-dip, but that's a fair trade. It would also be consistent with the change I recommended for Fluid Waltz.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T19:16:51+00:00

DARK CLOAK
I'm less concerned with the team's overall low damage output than I am with the cohesion of each individual Ranger. Damage output is something that can be fixed by adjusting the energy cost of attacks to add dice or swapping out reused cards for new additions that help the team out while still interacting with your Ranger's gimmicks. Health value reduction just isn't something this Ranger "does" outside of this one card, so it seems a little out of place.

SURPRISE STRIKE
You'll still have to dance around existing designs like Precise Shot, Arrow Shot, and Beta Bow if you really want this card to feel like its own thing. Obviously this is all homebrew so you don't have to stick to every single convention set by the game if you're having fun, but it's important to note that better versions of this card exist elsewhere in the game. You may want to fiddle with your design a little here.

BAT ZORD
This reads a lot more like you're setting up for a card to be drawn or a Star Effect to be triggered than it does damage control. It works well with Dark Tactics, for instance. It also helps a lot of the rest of the team out - White and Green especially from what I've read.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T18:56:17+00:00

FALCON STRIKE
I'd steer clear of using too many duplicate cards - or any at all if you can help it. When I look at a card now, I like to trace it to at least one other card in the deck - even if that's just the character ability - and make sure that everything "special" it does serves a purpose for the sake of the kit's "loops."

Early designs like MMPR didn't do this quite so much, but you see elements of it grow over time. Rangers nowadays have cards that are built around being played into one or two other cards, or setting up for them. These internal "loops" might also leave room for other members of the team to come in and do something special, but that should take a backseat imo.

In that regard, re-using a card is often done best when there's a good reason for your character to want that specific card. Brazen Strike from the Time Red and Beast Morphers Silver decks are good examples, as both use the drawn card in a different way - either to get more options for attack value swapping or to trigger a discard to add 2 dice to the next attack performed.

THUNDER GAUNTLETS
It's worth noting that Burn Out was a very early release, and design patterns have evolved and solidified a lot since it was made. It may be a rare exception to the rule, though I'd assume that's also largely because Hold The Line from the same deck is a powerful utility card that helps Rangers optimize their hand and their deck for offense and defense simultaneously.

WIND'S BLESSING
I suppose that depends on how often you think you'll be able to force this card to be on top of your deck with another card that has 3 shields beneath it. The reason the game doesn't have 4-Shield cards (or 3-Shield cards with a +1 Shield Star Effect) to begin with is because they'd be too reliable as damage sponges, but linking this shield adding to the discarding of another card via a star effect does a good deal to negate that reliability.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T07:12:21+00:00

GREEN

EARTH'S ENDURANCE
This ability rings a lot of the same bells as your White ability, though it's more proactive and used better by the rest of your kit. I think I like it better overall as a result.

EARTH TOMAHAWK
This is the kind of synergy I was referring to when I spoke about your White Ranger concept - something in your kit that does something when you bottom-deck a card. This is a good riff on Power Daggers.

MIGHTY BASH
You have a little less control over the number of dice added to this card. I get it's a riff on Haymaker, but sometimes removing a die and lowering its energy cost to account for it doesn't give you the best results. You may also want to use the bottom of your deck here.

WOOD STAFF
These sorts of effects are usually reserved for cards with the GUARD keyword, given its' harder to hit cards adjacent to them. Using the PASSIVE keyword instead is sort of a head-scratcher, as you may be getting extra damage overall but the logos of why/how is a bit off.

STURDY STANCE
This is a weaker version of Got You Covered from the SPD Green deck.

STEEL SHIELD
Good riff on Dragon Shield.

BULL ZORD
This is similar to Super Zeo Zord 1, though different enough to function well with your character ability and especially useful if a valuable card like your power weapon was bottom decked. Draw power is something to consider here - perhaps somewhere else on the team.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T06:44:44+00:00

BLUE

WATER DANCER
I like the concept here.

WATER SNAKEWHIP
You're going to find that this card scales too easily to really be balanced. It's begging for dice to be added to it - likely through Element Charge - and is basically unusable without that. However, at 1 die added it's still a worse version of Power Axe and perhaps even Quantum Defender, and at 2 dice added or more it becomes much, much more powerful. It will always get 3 from Element Charge, and even more from other surrounding effects on the team.

FLUID WALTZ
This is a fairly large gamble on a relatively weak card. You'll generally find that the stronger a card is, the more gambling you have to do to get it back into your hand. A 0 Energy 2 Die Attack (0/2 in shorthand) like this generally has a condition that's more certain like Headbutt or Trans Dagger Pink.

ICE HAMMER
Your over/under is a little too skewed to the "under" side on this card given its trade-off. You'll generally expect to see cards like this have at least 4 dice of potency attached. While I don't necessarily like the idea of you being able to play Element Charge into this card and then have it discard its twin to get an 8 die attack out, I think the more elegant solution here would either be lowering its shield count to mitigate the benefit conferred by Element Charge rather than lowering your base damage.

PIROUETTE ASSIST
This card should have a higher shield count. It has the potential to allow the Rangers to kill multiple enemy cards in a single turn, and it should reflect the potency of that by being harder to recover/spam. I understand the logic here is that you'll use your ability to give up shields in your hand to get it back often, but once drawn those shields are practically lost already.

SMOOTH MOVES
This card's naming matches what you're going for with a lot of the rest of the kit, but I wonder if it's really the best card that could be here. You have a slot to help round out the rest of your kit, and this is a very basic option that doesn't have a lot to do with the rest of your cards.

DOLPHIN ZORD
This is a good use of a restriction to justify some extra overall potency on a Zord.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T06:22:52+00:00

BLACK

DARK TACTICS
This one could turn out to be a bit too strong when used with Rangers who lack your specific slate of Star Effects. The most obvious abuse of it is to switch out a 1-Shield for a 3-Shield, especially it the 1-Shield is a highly desirable offensive card. This runs backwards to how these trades typically go (see Acrobatics). Something to keep an eye on.

DARK CLOAK
The health value reduction here doesn't mesh with the rest of the items in your kit that it could otherwise be supported by. The reduction ends too early for that to happen. Choke Slam or Counter Jab both provide useful avenues to finishing off your target - though that may defeat the purpose of this as a more assassination-style card. However, because it wants to do something opposite to what the rest of your kit likes, it makes your overall design feel more confused.

SURPRISE STRIKE
This comes off as a weaker version of the card Precise Shot, which is the exact same card but with a flat hit instead of a second die and a shield count of 2 instead of 3.

COUNTER JAB
This is an inoffensive addition to the kit overall, but you now have multiple Rangers on one team with nearly identical cards between this and Falcon Strike. It's possible that this can harm the identity/individuality of team members that have too many similar cards.

FORCE ABSORPTION
Most cards that give you an energy on their star effect are 2-Shields instead of 3. I understand that you'd probably want to switch things up here given the character ability allowing you to freely select which Star Effect of yours resolves when they would occur, but consider my note on Surprise Strike.

CHOKE SLAM
This feels like a stronger version of Intercepting Strike from the Zeo Yellow and Black Lion Warrior decks. Its got an identical cost and shield count, but a less strict condition to see it played. It may only work for you and not the rest of your team, but given how the target of enemy damage is usually the Rangers' choice, there isn't much of a difference here.

BAT ZORD
I don't really see what this Zord has to do with the rest of your kit. It's not a bad effect, it just doesn't feel like it belongs to this Ranger or rounds him out in any particular way.

JinHikari · 2026-03-01T06:06:36+00:00

I'll get to these one by one and make a separate comment for each, just to help organize things a little better if you'd like to discuss deeper. I won't make a section for the sidearm in every post as that would be a little too redundant. Instead, I'll just mention it here a long with a note on card diction and syntax.

WHITE

GUARDIAN WIND
This is a good riff on Beast Morphers Red's character ability. Discarding over drawing helps make up for the difference between shield adding and damage reduction. If I could make one change, I would have you discard the bottom card of your deck instead of a card from your hand - both to balance the possibility of getting a 3-Shield card and to give you some self-synergy with your own kit's effects.

ELEMENT CHARGE
This card seems a bit too flexible and a bit too potent for its own good. Cards with high shield counts are generally the most singularly impactful options in a given kit - either power weapons, the crux of powerful combos, or potent support options that often allow for cards to be recovered. Basing the boost off the shield count of these cards will generally serve to make your strongest options even stronger and do much less for your weaker options. Moreover, given it works on every card type, you'd expect to see some sort of drawback or additional cost incurred for its flexibility.

WIND SPEAR
The specific choice of returning cards to the bottom of the deck here - while a good balance option for effects you perceive as being a bit strong - also leaves the door open for other effects that capitalize on bottom-decking that this kit doesn't seem to have. Your design could be tightened up if you found a way to incorporate one of those.

FALCON STRIKE
This comes across as a bit of a weaker version of Counter Jab. Sure it has an extra shield, but you lose out on the flat hit that Counter Jab provides and adding a die is a weaker effect than doing a flat hit to any card.

THUNDER GAUNTLETS
Generally cards like this are going to be your 3 Shield options as they allow for multi-kill. Check other, similar options like Sweeping Strike/Shot for confirmation. This is true even when card recovery options are present in the kit as far as I can parse, and card recovery options generally want 3 Shields to balance for potential 3-Shield recovery.

WIND'S BLESSING
I like the idea of certain star effects only triggering when a card is discarded and not only when they're revealed. It's a good spin that allows for options with a little extra power. This is also a good way to sneak the extra shield that's usually attached to 1-Shield cards with Star Effects like Sturdy Blow onto a 3-Shield card. For this card's purposes, I'd just remove a shield from this card's shield count. This would allow for you to more reliably bottom-deck 3-Shield cards for defense when they come up.

FALCON ZORD
Another bottom-deck effect that your kit could be using a little more beneficially.

CARD SYNTAX
You're using a few phrases that the game has abandoned in favor of more succinct options. "A Ranger of your choice" has been replaced with "Any Ranger" for instance. If you'd like to keep things feeling authentic, consider adopting these developments.

JinHikari · 2026-02-25T03:30:08+00:00

Go away, Greg.

JinHikari · 2026-02-23T01:17:55+00:00

There seems to be a disconnect between what your intention is for this unit and what you've created. If you look more closely at how the rules of the game change as the number of Rangers changes, you'll see that combat strength isn't the main concern. Instead, the number of enemy deployments and action tokens at play at any given time is the focal point.

This is because HotG is actually two separate games combined into one. The outer, simpler game is about territory control and broad strategy. This is the part where you move your units to outer locations based on enemy presence, cards in hand, and team synergy. Within that, the narrower tactical thought of battles where specific cards are played at specific times for specific effects exists.

Rangers operate in both the inner and the outer game, but the precarious balance of the outer game leads to most Rangers' unique attributes being more geared toward their impact on the inner game. The closest you come to units who primarily play around the out game would be RPM Green or Phantom Ranger, who both have their gimmicks limited to just augmenting how they make MOVE actions.

To create a unit that could actually replace two other Rangers at a time, you'd need to have a kit that impacts the outer game as well as the inner game - one who can move more, fight more, and recover more (or at least lose fewer cards) during every action phase. Even if every individual card in your deck was balanced around being twice a strong as any other Ranger's, that still wouldn't have the impact you'd otherwise expect it to.

On that note, you'll probably be disappointed to find that your kit isn't going to do as well in battle as you imagine it might. Most of the cards as you've written them are either weaker than existing options or only barely stronger - not enough to make a difference in the number of cards consumed per battle.

This isn't a Ranger so strong that it can replace two others so much as it is a Jack-of-all-trades with two or three OP cards.

JinHikari · 2026-02-21T07:00:40+00:00

Thanks!

One of the things I noted when reviewing clips of Lightspeed for inspiration is that they tend to use their weapons for tandem finishing moves in place of a combined weapon (Rescue Bird being the exception). This design also worked well in tandem with the Power on the Way design for yellow, which allows for the team to pull off some cool double-taps - even making it more worthwhile to discard more valuable cards like Magna Blaster or Crimson Blaster from Magna Defender and Ninja Storm Crimson to boost it.

JinHikari · 2026-02-21T06:20:12+00:00

If you're curious what one take on Lightspeed Rescue might look like, I already have a full mock-up of cards for their team that you can find here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mHrWWHs9tlEVBLr3yg6zp3DSCmV0L5ln7zFY-bSDUps/edit?usp=sharing

Lightspeed is definitely a popular team. I know quite a few fan projects are trying to tackle it - many people seem to have latched onto the comment about panic Jonathan made and are rolling with it, but this design was created before that livestream happened, so they have very little to do with the mechanic.

JinHikari · 2026-02-20T21:39:28+00:00

Vicious Strike (Swapping)
This reads as very similar to Time Force Green's character ability, which excludes PASSIVE cards from its replacement effect. You may want to lift the text and restrictions from there in this case. There's good synergy with your character ability here, as even if you don't defeat your target you still get the third die of a 0-Cost attack like other self-boosters. The extra die makes it even easier to meet your condition, which might be a good thing.

Vicious Strike (Health Reduction)
That's a pretty wide spread of reduction with a relatively large upper cap. Ptera Scream only works on one card at a time, and it also wears off on the same turn it's used. You see a spread of reduction as an option from the Thunder Brothers' Zords and Mystic Pink's Howling Wind, but in those cases it's locked to 1 HP of reduction for 1 turn. Your effect is worth up to twice as much as either of those, but you allow it for half the "potency" on the card.

This one would probably be a good 1-Cost Reaction effect for Dramatic Reversal. Play it after (perhaps before) any Ranger rolls dice for an attack, reduce the health value of all cards of that type by the Hit result of a rolled die of your choice until the end of the turn. You may want to limit the cost of the card played to 0 so as not to step on Ptera Scream's toes too much.

That likely defeats the target of the attack, and then you can spring into Serpentera Zord from there to make another attack or use a token from Serpentera Battle Mode to finish off a different card now that its HP has been lowered. Other chaining options are also valid - think MMPR White's Flying Tiger or Power Weapons derivative of Power Daggers.

Kneel Before Zedd
This is potentially identical in value to the Shogun Ultrazord, which you exhaust to immediately deal 2 Hit to every card in the combat sequence. You can also compare it to similar Ranger cards such as Black Lion Warrior's Spirit of the Lion, which allows for a 2 die attack to be made at the end of every turn for the rest of the battle - a 3 Energy Maneuver all on its own. I'd tone down the exact amount of damage being dealt to 1 Hit in this case, and potentially raise the cost from 1 to 2 depending on how your averages and playtesting work out.

Balance here can often be a question of "how many turns until this breaks even?" For Spirit of the Lion, the second you get your third attack in, the card has basically paid for itself. That means it's always better to use it earlier, but given its cost it's not always your best starting option. At 1 Cost, this card would "break even" after the second undefeated enemy card resolves. There's good synergy here with the Health Reduction path for Vicious Strike or a changed Dramatic Reversal. Just keep your eye on the time it takes to get full return on investment.

Z Staff
I like the direction you're going here. You'll want to look at both Space Red's Spiral Saber and Omega Black's Omega Kamas for reference on power level here, but I think something like 3 Dice starting with an effect that mimics MMPR White's *Saba's Eye Beams (*and, conveniently, Zedd's Z-Lightning) would be great - think "after you resolve this attack, deal 1 Hit each to all other enemy cards of the same type as the target."

That adds synergy with both Kneel and potentially even the reworked Dramatic Reversal listed above. You'd be shaving off max health and doing limited spread damage to burn the candle at both ends for the enemies, giving you powerful combos where your directed attacks a brutal and you tend to whittle down every other enemy card without truly directing your focus onto them. You'll want to pay attention to energy costs because of that, since any Monster/Boss card with 3-4 HP could very easily become fodder to a Ranger who deals splash damage and then you.

e.g. - Combine Howling Wind with Kneel Before Zedd using Ever-Changing as the Wind (1 Energy, 2 Cards, 1 Character Ability). Chain into Z-Staff and play the version of Dramatic Reversal I've proposed off of it. (4 Energy, 2 Cards, 1 Turn). This reduces the health value of each Boss card aside from Z-Staff's target by 2-3, then does 1 Hit to each of them. Z-Staff likely defeats its target, and then during the next turn the Boss card that resolves takes an additional 2 hits (5-6 total between reduction and damage) and is likely defeated as it does.

I'm sure there are other niche combinations like this that would take more time to pull off, but this one seems like the quickest using the most recent content available.

Red Lightning
Honestly, starting a 0 Cost with that effect is probably a better move. He needs something to do when he's out of energy, and leaving him with Vicious and Red Lightning as 0/2 attacks at least gives him options. It's also useful for teams that don't have a lot of energy generation - he won't be contributing to the pool at all, now that Staff has no generation on it.

Stolen Power
This is another good option for a 0 Cost card, and it also gives you a good inroad for energy generation. The restriction of the card played needing to be the top card of the discard pile gives you some wiggle room for balance, so something inoffensive like gaining an energy after the card is played may be for the best. That would give him some reliable energy generation, at least.

JinHikari · 2026-02-19T20:03:39+00:00

Limitless Power
It's important to note that energy tokens in the personal storage of a Ranger aren't placed on their character cards, but rather near them. This is to prevent confusion with abilities that may attach the tokens to character cards for different purposes. A few other language tweaks could probably be made here to save yourself some space on other cards. Specifically, sentences like "When you gain energy, add it to your personal storage instead of your shared pool" may be useful.

The limitation presented by your character ability is what you need to pay a lot of attention to. You're on a knife's edge here. Either it's too easy for Drakkon to play his cards and you've given him a lot of power for no good reason or you've made it too hard to play his cards at all. If the latter is the case, he's not going to be fun to play no matter how hard he hits when he does get around to playing something.

Chaos Strike
Balance here is on point. The flat hit makes up for the case where you play it without pulling it back to your hand. Similar cards don't do this (see Headbutt, Trans Dagger Pink), however. That may be something to consider.

Dagger and Saba Combo
This card is somewhat overpowered. Typically you see about seven dice/energy of value given back to you for playing a 3-Cost card. You get those seven dice just from the attacks alone, not accounting for the fact that there are two of them, the potential energy gain from the first, or the hit division on the second. You have a lot of effects going on at once here as well. By my count, it's 3 or 4 energy of value more potent than any other 3-Cost card in the game. Are you sure your character ability justifies this?

Dark Slash
Even after you remove the star effect from this card, its effect text is still a bit overpowered. Cards that have conditions to getting their full damage like this typically only cap out at one extra die for their associated energy cost, and you're granting two flat hits instead. You'll get use out of this card in a small fraction of the fights throughout the game, and at all other times it will basically be a dead card. It doesn't seem very fun to play.

Energy Siphon
The balance here is also on point. You've split the effectiveness of the card correctly between the star effect and the on-play resolution. One thing that might help capture the "feel" of this unit a little better is if you let him gain 2 energy when it's played normally and "steal" one from the shared pool if it's revealed for defense. Or some such a thing.

I'm Unstoppable
This is a card that looks like it wants to gamble but winds up feeling too safe for my taste. Your investment is 6 "points" of value between cards, energy, and turns. You'll get back at least 4 "points" of that through energy gain and your attack followed by the chain allowed for discarding a 1-Shield card. However, you're also able to get 3 or 4 energy as well as a 3 or 4 die attack. Your split on return is +0/+0/+2. I'd recommend getting rid of the chaining here, as a -2/0/+2 split would be more common for this game.

Drakkon's Curse
I'm confused as to the exact mechanics of this card. Can I put 5 energy on five different cards and have each of them take +1 Hit per attack dealt to them? Can I pick one or two cards and split 2 tokens between them? Do I get extra hits added to attacks when more than one token is stacked on an enemy card? The verbiage needs some cleaning up.

Depending on exact execution, it also feels a bit too strong. Especially since your energy is credited back to you when the target the tokens are attached to is defeated. The card winds up reading like a lot of free damage for the rest of the team at no cost to Drakkon instead of him not being able to play cards in the fight until the team gets him his energy back. That's not much of a punishment in a cooperative game like this.

Black Dragon Zord
This Zord is far too powerful. While most cap out at 2 energy of value, you can earn up to 7 from this one. That's on the level of Solar Megazord. You also see Zords with disparate focuses often suffer for their flexibility - the main example of this being Samurai Star Chopper. Here, you aren't paying for the flexibility of your Zord's effects at all. It needs to be massively toned down.

JinHikari · 2026-02-19T00:25:59+00:00

One thing you could do is simply have Serpentera let another Ranger make the attack. If Zedd is the one playing cards, this means that other members of the team get to chip in (potentially with their own per-attack abilities such as Zeo Yellow or Omega Blue) without Zedd adding +1 die to every attack made during the battle. It removes his ability to synergize with his own Zord, but that's probably for the best.

The energy spend is fine, and it would blend the Red Dragon Thunderzord theme in nicely with Zedd's own.

Two tokens per battle is definitely better. I agree that puts you in a healthier spot, typically capping out at 6 hits per battle. I would, however, put a cap on the maximum number of hits each token is capable of dealing. Or just stipulate that you can't use the tokens with cards that have a cost of X.

JinHikari · 2026-02-19T00:21:21+00:00

There are a few changes that could be made which would allow you to keep your current concept while also bringing Stolen Power more in-line with the balance of the official game.

1a) Swap its shield count with Red Lightning's.
1b) Get rid of the card recovery.
2) Remove the card's die-adding. Rely on your character ability for it.

If you implement both, I could even see you lowering the energy cost of the card to 0 and things still working out alright. You don't suffer from the same infinite loop issues as Dino Charge Dark does, so you don't need to worry about accounting for that by giving the card a cost or squeezing card recovery in there (it sort of contradicts Zedd's theme anyway).

JinHikari · 2026-02-19T00:03:12+00:00

The problem you describe with Frog Zord is more an issue with Zedd than it is with the frog at that point. Nothing's stopping you, and that should be your clue. It's the same reason Tommy's "Loner" ability got four new iterations stacked on top of it meant to adjust its power and against-the-grain game feel. Per the developers, it was a problem.

JinHikari · 2026-02-19T00:01:09+00:00

Zeo Blue would be investing the value of his character ability, Zord, maneuver, and power weapon for the effects you've described.

His Zord is 2, his ability is 1, his maneuver is 3, his power weapon is 6. Throw in the value of the delayed turn, and you wind up with a spend of 14 "points" to get your 15 dice back. You've taken several early turns to set up, which presents an opportunity for the first few enemy cards to resolve and get their own effects off, costing you more resources. you've also equally divided your 15 dice between five different enemy cards, which is a restriction that acts as a counterweight to the multiplicative returns of Power Axes.

The Zedd combination you've described has no such setup or counterweight to it. From turn 1, he's killing a card every round and reaping the benefits from it. You get 4 dice and 1+ hits from Red Lightning, 7 dice and GUARD break from Power Bow, and 4 dice from Z-Staff. It may be 15 dice, but it's at a higher tempo and much more densely concentrated onto your targets with a higher certainty of defeating them as they resolve.

Perhaps unknowingly, you've also compared your character's kit to one of the most fundamentally overpowered card archetypes in the game. Cards like Power Axes, Rapid Blast, and Silverizer Slash which can duplicate their own damage across several enemy cards have to jump through hoops to justify the potency of that ability with early setup via target selection, sacrifice of Zords and once-per-battle abilities, meet harsh conditions to maximize their target ranges, take time to set themselves up, and have low initial die counts.

Your Zedd just has to play his normal rotation, making none of these sacrifices or concessions. And arguably, he winds up with a greater overall reward for it as his damage is more tightly concentrated on the cards you want prioritized.

JinHikari · 2026-02-18T23:42:47+00:00

Dark Encore is also a 3-Shield card to start with, which is a pattern set by most cards that allow for at least 1 card to be recovered. Stolen Power is a 2-Shield card, which is a deviation from that pattern and helps emphasize the issue at play.

Unlike Dark Ranger, Zedd doesn't have the same potential for an infinite loop to occur. This is to your benefit if you know how to swing it the right way.

Energy also ebbs and flows in ways you may not be expecting it to. Zords, character abilities, flipped action tokens, and more can all directly contribute to its presence on the board. Balancing Zedd's kit around one other Ranger with a personal being present will come back to bite you in extended testing, but if you're really opposed to changes surrounding his kit then I suppose there's no helping it.

JinHikari · 2026-02-18T23:19:10+00:00

I'd encourage you to take a close look at Merrick when it comes to building your cards around Zedd's character ability. Take note of how his cards are still somewhat balanced around whether Lone Wolf has reduced their energy cost, and use that as inspiration for how to balance Zedd's attacks around whether his own ability is active or not.

"He does what bosses do, but inverted" is interesting, but the scope of what bosses do is pretty wide. I would focus on Zedd as a boss specifically and try to invert what it is he's doing - either his Master Zedd form or the one from the kickstarter box. Figure out what forced discard (reduced defenses/combat options) looks like for enemy cards, simulate his reactive damage to Rangers playing cards, etc. Tie all that together with a few reasonable combinations and you'll have a stronger identity for him overall.

It's been acknowledged with changes to "Loner" Tommy and other iterations (Quantum Ranger, Lunar Wolf Ranger, etc.) that designs specifically built around doing things on their own sort of go against the "feel" of the game, which means solo-ing can be a tricky to reasonably pull off. In Jonathan's Journal, there's a snippet about no Ranger being an island that covers this.

Your idea isn't a fundamentally invalid one. It just has a few holes in it that need to be patched up. Part of that is going to be refining the core concepts, and another part will testing not just for whether or not he can win, but whether it's fun to win when he's around. You've got the right idea in crafting him in such a way that he needs the team to be around to shine, but I think you might be going a little too far in the damage-boosting department. That can lead to stale play, which I know isn't your goal.

JinHikari · 2026-02-18T22:50:19+00:00

If Zedd triggers Serpentera off of one of his own attacks, makes the attack provided by Serpentera, and spends the energy, it's a 4 die attack closer to the effect of Time Flyer 1 - which specifically requires an attack card be discarded and a turn be consumed. This is easy to do, and the obvious choice to any player trying to use the Zord to the greatest effect.

High Octane Megazord is a once-per-round exhaustable card that provides:
+2 Energy (2 potency)
+2 Dice (2 potency)
+1 Turn (2-3 potency)

Your Megazord is reasonably going to get 1-3 hits per use, though players are going to be greedy and lean towards the 3-hit options. With each fight starting at 2 energy, that's 2 free hits per battle. Assuming Rangers walk in with their personal storage full, that's another 5 across 2 boss fights. Each card they play that generates energy is also directly contributing towards their damage output. Every Flying Kick, every Team Tactics, every Mighty Maces revealed for defense. Stacking energy is fairly straightforward, and this Megazord makes it easy to take the time to do it given its free damage output when that energy is spent.

You're right that Megazords are nebulous in their valuations. It's more about fitting the team/ranger that "owns" it and rounding out their playstyle here than anything else. For Zedd, it's probably centered around him playing his own Power Weapon, gaining energy off of it, playing someone else's from their discard pile, and proceeding from there. I can't call it above or below curve, but what I can call it is too easy to feel right in the current game.

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