What the heck is this?

Alright! So, Duel Masters was a trading card game from the mid-2000's,
it's got solid and intuitive core gameplay, the art's great and it's altogether a rather inspiring game.

The problem as I see it is how little of the game was released in the West before cancellation,
and how few of the cards in those released sets are actually useful to anyone choosing to play nowadays.

I've made a mission if not a habit out of supplying a version of the game that has a little more choice,
still utilising the original cards that came into the hands of Western players as a basis.

To do so, I'm using a fairly simplistic method of appraising card effects,
which is to give effects and creature traits a unit of appraisal that stays consistent.

Now, first off I'm going to make an example out of cards featured in the original game
to lend some credence to my basic methodology.

First of all, there's the basic principle that an increase in cost corresponds with an increase in power:

Vanilla Creatures (those without any effects or keywords)
have their power determined simply by how much they cost.

(Double Breaker is a biproduct of a certain power threshold and not an effect with a deducted cost)

	Non-Shield Trigger	Shield Trigger
Cheap Spell
Expensive Spell

So, first thing's first: Adding Shield Trigger to a spell effect always costs 1.
Doesn't matter how much the Spell costs or what it does, it always just adds 1 to the Mana cost.

	Vanilla	Speed Attacker
Cheap Creature
Expensive Creature

And you can see the same principle here, too;
All creatures great and small, Speed Attacker makes a difference of 2000 Power.

Obviously there's other examples within the card game of this not happening,
but moreso than looking for a pattern, my point is that it's an acceptable guideline
with which to build my own sense for consistency - it's a good lead that I can work with.

Shield Trigger Creatures are a little different but luckily simpler;
their starting power will always be x = (Cost - 1) x 10.

and so on and so forth.
Essentially, Shield Trigger creatures are priced the same way Spells are.

Now, for how Creature traits stack together, the simplest answer is the best.
In the first ever set, we have these four cards that provide a good example:

	Standard	Untaps after turns
Standard
Can't attack Players + Blocker

Adding "untap at the end of turns" to a 4000-power creature
should always wind you up with an otherwise identical 3000-power creature.
It's a sum total of the cost of various traits in the same place.
You can pretty easily figure them out with lists, like these:

Alright, so there's traits, they cost a certain amount of power, they stack,
another basic principle to go over is when creatures have the kinds of effects you can find on spells.

	Standard	Shield Trigger	Mixed
Spell
Creature

What's happening is that as an effect, tapping 1 Creature or mana ramping is worth 1000 Power,
and then having it activate when summoned costs an additional 1000 Power.
This is because there's other, slower activation methods like when attacking or destroyed,
so with When Summoned as the fastest method, it comes with a tax.