Your collection
Why owning more cards is not the same as being better.
More cards is not automatically better
You draw a small hand out of everything you own, shuffled. So what matters is not how many good cards you have, it is how much of your collection is good. Adding an ordinary card to a strong collection makes your hands slightly worse, even though you just gained a card.
Basic Talent
Elite Talent - Pop
Day One Crew
The Look
Practice Session
Cut the TrackTalent is the exception: it grows in place
You cannot buy a talent card. You train the ones you already own, and the card in your collection turns into the better one, so the ten you started with are the ten you climb with. Your collection does not get bigger, it gets better, and the ten plain cards that would otherwise be dead weight all season are the thing you are upgrading.
You cannot start the next rung while you are still holding the old one, so the last plain card in your collection is the one thing standing between you and better hands.
Everything else, letting go is a real move
One training card retires a card from your collection for good. It is expensive and it looks like paying to own less, which is exactly what it is: a card you never want to draw again costs you something every time it comes up. There is a floor, so you cannot shrink down to a tiny perfect hand.
The shop keeps moving
Four cards on the shelf each Payday, and they wait there until the next one. If none of them tempt you, one refresh is free. New cards keep arriving all season, and some of the ones worth waiting for turn up late.
- Money spent early on cards that earn you more money has all season to pay you back.
- A few of the best cards are not for sale at all. You earn them by playing a certain way.
What a good collection looks like
Your ten talent cards trained as far as you have got them, a few collaborators and pieces of gear that suit the same kind of artist, and a couple of training cards. If you can describe it in one sentence, it is working.