Uncommon cards lived in a gap. Powerful enough to be a specialty, not powerful enough to lay waste to cities. To change the world was to work slowly, accumulating effort. Each piece established the foundation for whatever you really wished for, stacking up results brick by brick. Knit together effects and modifiers until a strategy clicked together, and that's the outcome. To do this energy efficiently in a satisfying fashion was Distortion Wars. To do this for long term results was probably cultivation and mystical workings.
Below the uncommon lay common cards. Commons covered mundane affectations, materials, things of society, small pieces for something greater. Their outputs were basic, more examples of viable magic or a minimum threshold of competitiveness. Commons were typically compressed rituals and mortally plausible things delivered implausibly. A few template magic effects for interference altogether. Primarily this was aesthetic or kink enabling changes: recoloring, resizing, characteristics (chiefly the sexual ones). Intentionally transient commitments by default, they were easily made one's permanent until further changed baseline. Go beyond commitment into long term self integration, and take on a new form accordingly. Few people did this purely to skip energy cost, they genuinely found it affirming. The supernatural extensions of power were nice, albeit mostly substitution and handwaving.
Above the uncommon rose rare cards. Great beings of myth, daikaiju and the heroes that battled them. On the disruptive end lay storms to lay waste to cities, siegework to smash great fortresses, artillery to redefine battlefields, fantastically monstrous experts. On the actual card game end, there was a lot of current meta power creep. Things designed to adapt to whole classes of situation, really advantageous passives that could turn around a battle, whole systems of magic, and attacks that were frankly cheap tricks but worked well. The energy economy was somewhat messy. But the powerful had their workarounds. The lesser facets of gods, represented in popular fiction interpreting their miracles, did many things without explanation because that was kind of their gimmick.
Above that were super rares, higher god-aspects that turned the wheel or held it in place. Crow's Dhumavati to devour the end of the world, Huginn-and-Muninn to become the opposition's very minds. Jackal's Anubis to govern the trials of the dead, Wepwawet to open the way. Wolf's Fenrir-Skoll-Hati to crush upstarts and devour the heavens. Alligator's Florida Man to express human crimes. Sutta's Teaching of Canon, to speak truth into the world. And that was just the ones they were showcasing, because the cult knew that was behind the mask anyways. Reshaping reality, apocalyptic manifestation, and unfair mass controls were all available. These were the signature moves of the highest priests and treasures pried from bonus boss avatars. Most were more niche than that: things tailored for tournament winners or golden finger giveaways, leftover god-war things. Most were intentionally defanged, sworn in the ways of the gods to respect a Distortion Wars non-lethality barrier for the duration of this exercise. Thus they would not kill unless asked to kill. But to have too much power is to trivialize the story.
Uncommon cards answered that gap. Mechanics bridged heaven and earth to do most of the things Distortion Wars was about. Some were unconventional means, others were refreshingly direct no matter the exotica. Small group to large group actions existed. Palettes of standard supernatural beings rose from the archetypes which had enough samples to call something, not *the* somethings. Sure, the details differed. But that was what a gazillion subtypes and alt-variants were for anyway.
Many other Uncommon cards were definitions of concepts. Magical formulae, properties that could be leveraged, imposition, removal, change, all fell under their banners. Many were intended to be composited, but a few were standout 'you just do that' on their own. To change others, to change scenarios, to change perspectives: variety was matched only by the tendency towards poetic exaggeration. How much an ideal entered reality depended on who paid for it and how the opposition was shaking out. They were foundations, but rarely complete ones.
A card's rarity had much to do with its scope and power. What separated common from uncommon was probably how it could be leveraged beyond what it was. Most Shifts that were more than one-and-done gimmicks came with card-equivalent or echo-equivalent special abilities. A common card usually had a set 'what it did' with very little room for progression, or instead primarily being customization in and of itself. Perhaps it had one 'skill tree' of perks for its supernatural action set to develop with practice. Other commons let the user do some adjustments with sliders and sculpting. An uncommon card was a principle that could be leveraged more broadly. Sometimes it was programmatic, other times it was mysticism. A few things had several skill trees and lenience to create more custom ideas along those lines. Both levels combined well to create more novel things.
Above this simply had a broader scope. It was easier for rare cards to infect beyond a crowd, or blast more than a few buildings at a time with whatever change. Many heroic dramatics were more about single-target examples. The super-rares were not exactly scope-oriented to begin with, or had limits high enough to not matter.
Scattered flecks of lore were pulled from ancient texts. Mostly cultivation stages: Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul. Tidbits emerged about wanting a synergistic team or adventurer raid party to fairly fight a foe one stage higher, and a literal army for two above. While many cards were cult-manufactured, the cycle had allowances for opposition. Things the cult hadn't needed to proliferate, upstarts it had been bringing aboard or stamping out, finally allowed by the Turner of Wheels to rampage if not necessarily win.
Enough exploration had the potential to evolve a card's rarity, however. Enough work developing its skills and integrating other cards' concepts could metamorphose it greater. It would take time for even the most ardent Distortion Wars players to explore what it made possible, nevermind fill out advancements.