6 sets of 30 cards (11 creatures, 6 non-creatures, 12 basic lands, 1 sac
burst land; colorless has different land setup), combine two sets like like Jumpstart and play. 1 set for each color + 1 colorless / sunburst.

General philosophy is to incorporate variance and difficult, meaningful choices. If a card feels hard to play optimally or makes it harder for the opponent to make decisions, then it likely fits better in this collection. The player that is better at reading their opponent and taking calculated risks (including knowing when to go all-in) should ideally win more.

Each set doesn't necessarily have a theme. Rather sets are just whatever cards I feel like will lead to interesting gameplay. Similarly, color bends / breaks are more tolerated, as long as it is still something that feels reasonably anticipatable / answerable.

The nature of the themes below tends to make games feel either tempo focused as the aggressor or attrition focused as the defender.

General themes across sets include:

• Curve tops out at 5, making lands beyond 5 as potential fodder resources.
  Making it harder for opponent includes instant speed (combat) tricks, anything that can force them to make a hard choice.
• No card draw / filtering for maximum variance. Card advantage is generally non-existent except maybe a few on high end creatures and even then it might be conditional. A lot of cards actually have built-in card disadvantage and it's up to the player to make the most of those cards. Other cards create meaningful choice by instead offering the player to trade long-term resources for short-term advantage.
• Mechanics that increase meaningful choice: landfall, kicker-like (cheap vs. expensive cost; evoke, kicker, channel, entwine, escalate), sacrifice/morbid (especially sorcery speed), limited/single use (energy, ETB), temporary buffs, choice buffs (riot, unleash), temporary creatures (fading, upkeep costs like echo, cumulative upkeep), trading tempo for value (self-bounce, evoke), opponent prophecy mana tax (limited windows of opportunity), suspend.
• Landfall, sacrifice, sac burst lands are especially nice because they create choice without taking up space by utilizing existing common game elements.
• Mechanics that increase tension in opponent choice: raid, morbid, bloodthirst, death triggers, manifest, morph, prophecy mana tax (increase tension in tapping out), instant speed life gain / damage prevention (increase tension in going all-in), flash creatures. Raid, morbid work better when there are instant speed combat effects in that color, making it less clear what the goal is behind an attack.
• Flying is very strong evasion and thus should be balanced with some tradeoff. Attacking should be dangerous and resource commiting (no vigilance). Trample should feel like meaningful pseudo-evasion and thus should be reasonably anticipatable (avoid big buff instant speed trample).