So, I've was working on this project for a while, then I lost all the contents on my harddrive in November of last year including the original half-finished CCG* cards. Discouraged, I scrapped the project. If anyone actually pays attention to my shoutboard, you'd see that I recently UNSCRAPPED it. That's because my muses decided to keep poking me until I did it. I only agreed on one condition- that I could cheat on the attack, spell and weapon cards and use photomaniped images whenever possible. My muses gleefully agreed, and what you see before you is a 1 of a 3-piece smattering of the full run of 233 cards. [16 uncommons, 38 Rares, 179 commons] I attempted to print them, but only got as far as one set before my printer ran out of ink on me. I'll have to wait until I get another cartridge, find some way to color copy them, or just try testing them out by making 2 decks from the original 233. [Because I want to see how it works in actual play] The cards above were chosen for display because either I thought what I wrote was witty, I liked the picture, or a combination of the two.
This project took 11 months from concept to completion.
Interesting...Do players have different decks that they get to customize? Or do they have the same deck? Or they each have a copy of the same deck? If they get to customize their decks, no one would probably use Taro Cake or Banana Potion if they could use Sushi Box instead. However, if the deck lists are fixed, it would be okay to have those cards. (Well, you mention "common, rare and uncommon" so it kind of seems like you're implying that they're customizable...)
Like any CCG, you'd collect the cards and then build a deck from them. That's why to test, I wanted to have at least 2 full sets of the cards to build decks from.