ART: | pineapple
| IDEA: | pineapple
| NOTES: | Star Orbs
| Introduction
 (Star Orbs) are not a new type of quanta, but instead an alternate-cost mechanic that fluidly integrates into the game at its current state. The theme is thus: Star Orbs represent the dedication you show to each of your creatures. As such, each creatures holds its independent number of Star Orbs, and only you can directly give your creatures Star Orbs. To find out more, read on.
| Gaining Star Orbs
When you target a creature with a buff, before the buff goes into effect, that creature gains 1 Star Orb. What is considered a buff, you ask? For simplicity, a buff is any spell card you control that manually targets exactly 1 creature you control.
Naturally, the following are considered buffs:
Counter-intuitively, the following are also considered buffs:
And naturally, the following are not considered buffs:
* Note that creating copies of a creature will naturally not transfer any Star Orbs from the creature to the copy (the copy will have 0 Star Orbs).
** Note that killing a creature or otherwise removing it from the field will naturally result in a loss of all Star Orbs that creature had.
*** You cannot activate Star Cards using Star Orbs on immaterial creatures, although immaterial creatures can still lose Star Orbs for other effects. See the following section for more details.
| Star Cards
Star Cards are activated by targeting a creature you control with a sufficient number of Star Orbs. The cost of Star Cards are displayed in the top-right corner, similar to regular elemental cards.
Naturally, the costs of Star Cards also follow the same rules: if there is nothing displayed in the cost section, then the card has no cost; if there is no Star Orb icon () in the cost section, the card costs random elemental quanta; if there is a number followed by a Star Orb icon (e.g. 4 ), then the card requires you control a targetable creature with Star Orbs greater than or equal to the number displayed.
To activate a Star Card, you must target an acceptable monster with it first. Then, the appropriate number of Star Orbs will be deducted from target creature, and the effect will activate (on target creature, if a target is specified).
Naturally, you cannot use multiple creatures to pay for the cost of 1 Star card, and Star spells themselves are considered buffs. Star Orbs can also be lost without using them to activate Star Cards. For example, Reverse Time on a creature that has Star Orbs will make the Star Orbs disappear with the creature's removal, and some cards may have an upkeep to be paid in Star Orbs.
| TL;DR Creatures you control gain 1 Star Orb each time you target one with a spell card. Star Orbs can be used to pay for Star Cards and related card effects.
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Star Shield | Superstar Shield
| Clarifications
- This card places a status on target creature. The status has a one-time effect. Consequently, when the effect is triggered, the status is removed.
- "would leave the field...instead" denotes the event that the creature is removed from the field viz. by reverse time, instant death, or being damaged to death. In the case that the creature is reverse timed or instantly killed, it will remain on the field with no alterations (except being delayed for 1 turn). In the case that the creature is damaged to death, it will remain on the field with 0 HP. If a zero-HP creature is "checked" by another damage-dealing effect such as "snipe" from Owl's Eye or alternatively by simply ending your turn, then the creature will die.
- The trigger "while it has " denotes that the creature must have 1+ Star Orbs for the effect to trigger.
- The supplementary cost of "remove all " and "remove up to 2 " only remove Star Orbs from the target creature. Other creatures with Star Orbs are unaffected, and their Star Orb levels are irrelevant.
| Discussion
This is a spell that targets one creature. Thus, playing this card will also refund the Star Orb required to play it. This maintains that the card is splash-able in any deck that uses buff cards, such as Adrenavamps. Also note that, although cards that would be damaged to death come out with 0 HP, they are not automatically dead because you can buff them on your next turn such that their HP is positive before they attack. In addition, this card mitigates the effects of a buff deck's number 1 counter: Reverse Time.
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Game Focuses
| Introduction
These cards focus on focus on giving underpowered buff decks a fighting chance in the meta. To accomplish this, they need to fix the three core weaknesses of most buff decks while making sure already scary decks like Ghostmare, Chaos Wyrms, and Neurotoxin don't get out of hand. These three weaknesses are a lack of reliability (easily stopped by CC and shields), consistency (bad draws), and hand advantage (using more cards than your opponent to do less).
| Reliability
Star Shield and Star Power allow you to get around most of the CC you would face, be it Reverse Time, Lightning, Freeze, or Guard. However, despite their effectiveness, Star Shield is still a one-for-one card and Star Power forces you to give up on attacking the opponent.
 
| Consistency
A lot of the time, buff decks are at a loss of what to do because their hand is filled with creatures or their hand is filled with buffs, but never the right amount of both. These two cards allow decks to tweak the numbers in their favor, ensuring a supply of creatures and/or buffs.
 
| Hand Advantage
To come out on top against the intrinsic loss of hand advantage, extreme draw cards are necessary. However, care must be taken that such draw cards cannot be abused in the decks that don't need them.
 
| DISCLAIMER: All example cards can and should be subjected to additional balancing.
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