Cyberpunk TCG deck building rules

What makes a legal Cyberpunk TCG deck: how many cards, how many copies, and how the colour limits work. The deck builder here checks all of it as you go.

How many cards in a deck

A deck is exactly 3 Legends plus 40 to 50 other cards. The Legends are not shuffled in: they are placed face down beside the board at setup, so your draw deck is the other cards alone.

You may run up to 3 copies of any single card. Legends are the exception, and are effectively one of each, because your three must all have different names.

  • Legends: exactly 3, all with different names.
  • Everything else: 40 to 50 cards.
  • Maximum 3 copies of any one card.

The unique Legend rule

Your three Legends must have different names, and the rule compares the full printed name rather than the character.

That has a consequence people expect to be illegal: two different printings of the same character carry different full names, so a deck may hold both. It is intended, and the builder here allows it.

RAM colour limits

RAM is a ceiling on each card. Every Legend carries a RAM value in one colour, your three Legends add theirs up per colour, and a card of that colour is legal only if its own printed RAM is at or below that total.

So the limit is about power, the bigger the RAM requirement the stronger the card can be. Three Legends of one colour give 6 RAM and make it possible to play any card in that color; a single Legend gives 2, and a card of that colour printing 3 RAM stays out.

x2+x2+x2=x4x2
  • x4A Green card at 4 RAM: level with the ceiling, so it is legal.
  • x5A Green card at 5 RAM: one over the ceiling, so it stays out.
  • x2A Red card at 2 RAM: level with the lower Red ceiling, so it is legal.
  • x3A Red card at 3 RAM: over the Red ceiling, even though 3 would pass in Green.
  • x2We didn't include any Yellow Legends, so all Yellow cards are illegal.
Two Green Legends and one Red give a ceiling of 4 Green and 2 Red. The Legend rail prints mirrored, which is how you tell the two sides of the comparison apart at a glance.

What goes in a deck

Four card types, and they behave differently enough to be worth knowing before you build.

  • Legend: three per deck, placed face down at setup. Call one per turn for its effect, or spend any number of them as 1 Eddie each.
  • Unit: your crew. Units fight rival Units and raid Gig areas, they enter with Lag, and almost none of them can be sold.
  • Program: resolves once and goes to the Trash. Every one carries the €⁠$ sell tag.
  • Gear: attaches to a friendly Unit or face-up Legend and travels with it. Every one carries the €⁠$ sell tag, and its power and its text both belong to the card it is attached to.

How many sell tags a deck needs

Selling is your only way of increasing your resources, and only a card printing the €⁠$ sell tag can be sold (see selling for the rule). A list that doesn't include enough sellable cards might have trouble getting to its most powerful (often most expensive) cards.

The €⁠$ tag falls almost entirely on Programs and Gear, and almost never on Units, so it pulls against the card type you most want on the table. For a target, try to stay between 55% and 65% of sellable cards

Your Legends do not count towards that share. They sit beside the board rather than in the deck, so a sellable Legend is not a card you can draw and sell: it is spent as €⁠$ from the Legends row instead.