When you’re in the early stages of a card game design, changes come fast and furious. There’s no sense taking the time to create beautiful artwork on quality cards that will be thrown away as the game evolves. Paper, however, is too flimsy to play test with. Card stock is expensive and time consuming to cut properly.

Designing a great board game is both fascinating and challenging. A skilled designer thinks deeply about all the dynamics at play in a game. They may see various mechanisms tied together in new ways. They may note how well a theme is integrated with those mechanisms and how players interact with each other.