Thank You! (for Nissa2's design)

THEMAGICkMAN · January 2017

Firstly, thanks JC for replying.

Secondly, in theory, the idea of the rock paper scissors effect is great, in reality your see more dovin decks using full control. And I'm willing to guess more N2 decks running almost the same stuff as N1.

I think that trying to restrict a planeswalker to a plan should be something you put on your "DONT DO" list, it takes away from the casual audience somewhat, and it feels restrictive, which is something a planeswalker should rarely feel like.

In theory and design energy is aweseome! The first time I was reading through the kaladesh set I was thinking about how well designed it was, but as others have said, you didn't take into account the older more powerful sets (I'm looking at you SOI block) and along with that you made the best energize cards mythic rare (hard for casuals to get) and also heavily exclusive among the hardcore players.

So for aether revolt, in my mind you need to -
Make a few decent energize card at uncommon/rare
Dot heavily restrict their availability, an event reward for pve would be absolutely perfect, more people will be at least trying energy if you dish out the best cards for energy in an event.
And consider past sets when it cones to power level and impact. Whether you need to nerf and lower the power level a bit or increase the power level of aether revolt, regardless of your ideas for a standard format, they aren't here yet, and you have to take the casual audience into consideration. They won't be able to get the new cards as fast as the people who regularly post here.

Last thing: no more energy planeswalkers, we've had enough of those I think

. Try and keep it to 1 set specific planeswalker per set.

I'm happy you're learning from past mistakes and getting better at this whole thing! It's pleasing to see that you as a designer are growing

The_Cheater · January 2017

Hey I just had a crazy idea. What if: Instead of getting more ribbons from secondary objectives, you got an extra ribbon for each card in your deck from that event's expansion? And like 5 ribbons if you use a PW from that expansion.

That way in order to get a perfect score in a Kaladesh event, you gotta bring the ro sham bo triplets and all new cards. Same with terror and the eldrazi one. Huh? Huuuuh?

wereotter · January 2017

THEMAGICkMAN wrote:

Last thing: no more energy planeswalkers, we've had enough of those I think . Try and keep it to 1 set specific planeswalker per set.

Something to consider: every Innistrad planeswalker except Sorin played into the set mechanics.

Jace, Liliana, and Nahiri all enable madness with their discard loyalty abilities. Jace has investigate as a direct ability as well. Nahiri's second ability also helped enable white delirium by destroying white gems. Arlinn plays with werewolves with are an Innistrad-specific tribe, and Liliana is also tribal heavy albeit zombies exist on most planes.

I think the reason people didnt complain or perhaps don't consider that when talking about planeswalkers playing into set mechanics is that their abilities are useful even if you're not running cards from that block. I doubt, for example, people would complain if one of the planeswalkers from Kaladesh did Fabricate as one of their abilities.

Edit: Although we didn't realize it at the time of his release, Sorin in his original state would have worked into the Eldritch Moon mechanics. If his old original abilities killed your creatures to gain him life, then you would have gained mana for creatures with emerge.

Alve · January 2017

wereotter wrote:

THEMAGICkMAN wrote:

Last thing: no more energy planeswalkers, we've had enough of those I think . Try and keep it to 1 set specific planeswalker per set.

Something to consider: every Innistrad planeswalker except Sorin played into the set mechanics.

Jace, Liliana, and Nahiri all enable madness with their discard loyalty abilities. Jace has investigate as a direct ability as well. Nahiri's second ability also helped enable white delirium by destroying white gems. Arlinn plays with werewolves with are an Innistrad-specific tribe, and Liliana is also tribal heavy albeit zombies exist on most planes.

I think the reason people didnt complain or perhaps don't consider that when talking about planeswalkers playing into set mechanics is that their abilities are useful even if you're not running cards from that block. I doubt, for example, people would complain if one of the planeswalkers from Kaladesh did Fabricate as one of their abilities.

That is true. Most pws from SOI used mechanics from that block, but they were pretty self-sufficient - even if Jace 2 Investigated, it was just a way to draw cards and you didn't need to run other Investigate cards. Some of their skills were more reliant on creatures/mechanics widely used in the block (Sorin and Lifelink, L2 and Zombies), but they were still evergreen keywords or creatures present in other blocks too. Only Arlinn was limited by block-specific creatures/mechanics (without using any werewolves you can use 1/6 of her skills and we're unlikely to see more wws anytime soon). Nobody minds Saheeli being focused on Constructs, but making her 3rd skill reliant on having vehicles in your deck and her 2nd reliant on having Energy will be very limiting in the future (her 3rd could pull the next 4 vehicles OR constructs and it'd be fine). The same goes for literally every other pw from this block. We have four pws that basically have to use KLD cards to stay relevant and none that would be self-contained and future-proof. Not even one. What's more, they look completely different in paper. It's slightly disturbing.

ridfrenzy · January 2017

Hibernum_JC wrote:

The idea also was we were hoping players would actually enjoy the Kaladesh set, but the response has been pretty cold so far, sadly, so I think the plans didn't fully pan out. There is a pretty large backlash against Energy I personally was not expecting - feedback on Ingest/Process/Devoid in BFZ was that players liked the idea, but there wasn't enough cards that took advantage of the mechanic to be of any use, so we made sure there was plenty of Energy generators and Overload cards in Kaladesh to remedy this problem. What ended up happening is sort of the opposite - there's a lot of these cards, but players don't like them for multiple reasons. This is a big learning experience for me as I design the future sets.

I actually thought you would've made it easier to generate energy from specific cards. We are restricted to ten cards in our deck and if we have to add three just to ensure there is enough energy for the other cards to utilise then it weakens the overall decks.

In addition to that most of the really good cards are just locked behind the really bad drop chances currently not even factoring in that two of the best Mythics for energy I have seen have been the rewards for IF. Dynavolt and Marvel are amazing cards that make energy shine and majority of players will never be able to use them

I think a good example is Omnath, Locus of Rage compared with Architect of the untamed.

Omnath activates fairly regularly when used with green where you can fill the board and get match fours fairly easily plus it works when any player matches 4 and we know how the AI loves to prioritise match 4s.

Architect generates one energy by itself for each match and to be honest most of the time you end up removing that energy from the board with match 4/5s so it is so rare that you actually overload 2 and generate the creature that it just isn't worth playing without additional energy generation

Point being Omnath can function by himself with no support at all and you can make him shine if you build a deck around him but you have to build a deck around the architect to make him function at all

There are few cards that utilise energy well without needing support of additional cards.

I actually think Overload would have been better if it just stored any energy you activated until you hit the desired number rather than trying to do it with a single match which is incredibly difficult for anything more than one unless you design a deck around it. You could then have had crazy Overload 8 effects which you risked having your Creature/Support removed when it had almost fully charged on 7/8 energy required.

Alve · January 2017

ridfrenzy wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

The idea also was we were hoping players would actually enjoy the Kaladesh set, but the response has been pretty cold so far, sadly, so I think the plans didn't fully pan out. There is a pretty large backlash against Energy I personally was not expecting - feedback on Ingest/Process/Devoid in BFZ was that players liked the idea, but there wasn't enough cards that took advantage of the mechanic to be of any use, so we made sure there was plenty of Energy generators and Overload cards in Kaladesh to remedy this problem. What ended up happening is sort of the opposite - there's a lot of these cards, but players don't like them for multiple reasons. This is a big learning experience for me as I design the future sets.

I actually thought you would've made it easier to generate energy from specific cards. We are restricted to ten cards in our deck and if we have to add three just to ensure there is enough energy for the other cards to utilise then it weakens the overall decks.

In addition to that most of the really good cards are just locked behind the really bad drop chances currently not even factoring in that two of the best Mythics for energy I have seen have been the rewards for IF. Dynavolt and Marvel are amazing cards that make energy shine and majority of players will never be able to use them

I think a good example is Omnath, Locus of Rage compared with Architect of the untamed.

Omnath activates fairly regularly when used with green where you can fill the board and get match fours fairly easily plus it works when any player matches 4 and we know how the AI loves to prioritise match 4s.

Architect generates one energy by itself for each match and to be honest most of the time you end up removing that energy from the board with match 4/5s so it is so rare that you actually overload 2 and generate the creature that it just isn't worth playing without additional energy generation

Point being Omnath can function by himself with no support at all and you can make him shine if you build a deck around him but you have to build a deck around the architect to make him function at all

There are few cards that utilise energy well without needing support of additional cards.

I actually think Overload would have been better if it just stored any energy you activated until you hit the desired number rather than trying to do it with a single match which is incredibly difficult for anything more than one unless you design a deck around it. You could then have had crazy Overload 8 effects which you risked having your Creature/Support removed when it had almost fully charged on 7/8 energy required.

OR we could be able to trigger multiple overloads with one match. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be an overkill if we could trigger Overload 1 three times by matching three Energized gems, but it'd certainly make Energy much more interesting. Tbh that's what I expected it to work like when KLD hit the Vault. Most Oveload 1 effects are quite minor, as one of the devs has already stated and being able to trigger them often if we build a deck dedicated solely to Energy could be super fun. That'd require a lot of testing to make sure that KLD isn't broken, but hey, I can quite easily generate 200 dmg in one turn in Kiora, so it's not like we don't already have cards that can quickly become OP if you build a deck around them. And since Energy, when used to its max potential, will limit the effect of your ramp spells/supports and in some extreme cases even keep you from casting supports, we could just as well have a solid advantage when Energizing the whole board to offset those difficulties.

THEMAGICkMAN · January 2017

wereotter wrote:

THEMAGICkMAN wrote:

Last thing: no more energy planeswalkers, we've had enough of those I think . Try and keep it to 1 set specific planeswalker per set.

Something to consider: every Innistrad planeswalker except Sorin played into the set mechanics.

Jace, Liliana, and Nahiri all enable madness with their discard loyalty abilities. Jace has investigate as a direct ability as well. Nahiri's second ability also helped enable white delirium by destroying white gems. Arlinn plays with werewolves with are an Innistrad-specific tribe, and Liliana is also tribal heavy albeit zombies exist on most planes.

I think the reason people didnt complain or perhaps don't consider that when talking about planeswalkers playing into set mechanics is that their abilities are useful even if you're not running cards from that block. I doubt, for example, people would complain if one of the planeswalkers from Kaladesh did Fabricate as one of their abilities.

This is a really great point... I never even thought about it, this is part of what I like about N2, energy boosts her, but she works fine without it. Just like nahiri works fine without delirium etc, of course, N2 is a bit more blatently themed than the others -- but she's still very open to a variety of strategies. Unlike C2, where you can just use koth instead to greater effect. Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

Kevinanth · January 2017

Chavez303 wrote:

I think the idea of doing a Standard type restriction on events or even QB's would be a great idea. Similar to how there are Modern/Standard tournaments. This would let new players with small collections of the previous sets have a realm in which they will be competitive as well as provide some playgrounds for the older players with the large collections.

I can tell you right now, My main go to for any black or red deck is Olivia. If its white, Gisela is my staple. Its not that these cards need to be nerfed (selfish reasons as well as valid mechanical reasons), just limited in their use. I guess what I'm saying is i'd like to see things:

1. Introduce some kind of rolling standard like paper Magic (Origins + Current set or Origins + last two expansions)

2. Introduce some events that limit the types of cards that can be used (Origins + SOI/EMN, Origins + BFZ/OGW, etc.)

3. Make deck creation and management easier with the ability to save decks for certain types of events. I see this not being to hard if everything is table driven as I'd suspect. Maybe 5 slots for each PW. That should be enough to create decks for each for multiple scenarios.

Like Alve said, KLD is good in a vacuum. However, with the OP cards that have been published prior, they are just too slow and outmoded.

Couldn't agree more with this. Events with set restrictions would be awesome. Nerfing cards would be lame.

AettThorn · January 2017

Gotta say, Nissa2 is the first Kaladesh PW that I've really been having fun with. Dovin Baan is more, "Finally, a B/W combo PW!" than actually enjoyable, but he does allow you to do some cool things. Chandra2 needs some fixing, and right now I basically use a deck with her that does not rely on energy at all. Nissa2, on the other hand, uses energy quite well, and I've found a couple of fun cards to use with her. It might be that I just have some good mythics to use with her, but I honestly feel like her abilities just go well with her. All of them are useful, but you still want to save up to her ultimate if you can, which allows you to end a fight in one turn, even if it's turned against you.

Was doing one fight with her, had two creatures out, and no removal in hand. Opponent brings out an Olivia. On most other PWs, that's just an instant lose, as if you can't get rid of her, it's really over in the long run. But even though the opponent managed to bring out two other creatures (now all +3/+3 with lifesteal), I was able to save up loyalty, bring out a third creature, and take out the other PW in one fell swoop. Lifesteal that, b%*(#es.

sageofhalo451 · January 2017

I sit as one of the privileged few that own Dynavolt Tower (in game name: Arcannus). Honestly its what makes energy work. Aside from Empyrean Voyager it is the single best generator of energy period. The damage it deals is non-trivial especially in a meta where certain secondary objectives provide incentive to not level a PW fully. Example C2 in IF where you need to not take more than 15 damage you want the fight to end fast but also need time to generate 5 energy. DT makes that happen on both fronts.

Every deck I make that uses energy in any way even if EV is there has DT in it. I completely agree that this card should not have been limited to just a few. It is the keystone to make energy viable. I hope that in AER D3/Hibernum have had the foresight to make cards more readily available that have this level of energy generation. Only when the Energize/Overload mechanic is readily available can KLD/AER hold its own against SOI/EMN.

madwren · January 2017

I disagree that all of the planeswalkers are limited to this block. As a community, there's a tendency to dismiss planeswalkers as unusable because we don't like a couple of their abilities. I remember well the chorus of people saying Sarkhan was useless unless you had dragons--which was not true--and even Arlinn's werewolf dependency isn't crippling. Are the energy abilities generally underwhelming? Sure. But..

--Dovin is usable because of blue/white. His mana is somewhat weak, but his first two abilities are good.

--Nissa2 has a win-now ultimate and a ramp ability, and her mana gains feed into the "summon big creatures quickly" mentality that typifies green. She may wind up being a green Koth or Nahiri. That has longevity, because her success isn't tied to energize (since her ultimate provides its own fuel).

--Saheeli is very strong with red/blue and her mana gains. Her upper abilities are subpar (though I do get some use out of ability 2 in some PVE), but the color combination of aggro-control remains strong. She's one of my top pws.

--C2 is the worst. She's pigeonholed because there needs to be energy on the board, and red is weak at it. She competes with far too many red planeswalkers, all of whom can do her job better. The only niche I've found for her is winning speed objectives in Fateful Showdown against low-hp opponents. She CAN win regular matches, but there's no reason to use her.

AettThorn · January 2017

The only niche I've found for C2 so far has been because of a mythic I recently got: Crumble to Dust. Her Red/Black mana gains are so good, and if you put in a few processors into her deck, you can get out some fairly big creatures fairly fast. Or at least some good creatures and a bunch of Scions. Cast that spell, then you can usually get a few good matches in the next few rounds while your opponent can't do much, especially if they are white or blue.

However, even this strategy I think might work better on Sarkhan or Arlinn, with better creaturesat their command to make use of it. Still, it's a fun deck at least. Makes no use of energy, though.

rathedon · January 2017

Hibernum_JC wrote:

madwren wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

The idea also was we were hoping players would actually enjoy the Kaladesh set, but the response has been pretty cold so far, sadly, so I think the plans didn't fully pan out. There is a pretty large backlash against Energy I personally was not expecting - feedback on Ingest/Process/Devoid in BFZ was that players liked the idea, but there wasn't enough cards that took advantage of the mechanic to be of any use, so we made sure there was plenty of Energy generators and Overload cards in Kaladesh to remedy this problem. What ended up happening is sort of the opposite - there's a lot of these cards, but players don't like them for multiple reasons. This is a big learning experience for me as I design the future sets.

The point many of us have made is that the biggest problem with energy is that in general, it's too slow to compete with the big hitters of previous blocks. It doesn't mean the design itself was necessarily flawed in a vacuum--it's that in lieu of any sort of deckbuilding restrictions, people will gravitate towards faster/more powerful cards and setups.

This is completely understandable, and I think that the set would have likely performed much better if it had been restricted. This is, again, something we are looking into.

I really hope you guys get into a "restricted" format (Standard/Modern/Or Whatever). I think that the creation of a format system is needed. The game sets are going to grow. If we are not already there, the blocks are/feel blended, mushed. Its losing cohesion and it should to a certain degree.

In paper magic (I know you know) a standard/restricted format make players have to build new decks over a set cycle timeframe. The use of the other cards that dev like outside of rares could really shine. I like when you get an uncommon or common that performs much better than what it was designed to do. Those cards can be jewels in those type of formats. But with this, the ability to save deck builds to our planewalkers will be a must. Magic is about "baking" deck creation. Timmy's, Spikes and JOHNNY'S.

Keep up the great work, you guys deserve it. Thank you guys for listening and sharing with your community.

Astralwind · January 2017

Thank you JC, for sharing information about KLD design. Knowing their design better, we would be able to create more efficient decks to complement with the design.
I think Dovin and N2 are great. Pretty fun to play with.

C2 was a bit unfortunate and needs to be relooked.
When I play C2, her energy removal skills cost a bit too much.
I tried playing with a N2 that has a lot of energize cards but the removal just could not keep up.
I know there're cards that does complete removal like harnessed lightning but red needs more cards with overload in my opinion.

blacklotus · January 2017

A simple way to make C2 viable with the same abilities:

lower the loyalty costs to 6/12/18.

andrewvanmarle · January 2017

I agree with the above, while the energy mechanic is a well thought out one, it does require other players using it too. Cards likr dyna volt tower and aether marvel works would be energy staples for any deck and would have helped promote the mechanic.

I hope you have some good staple energy cards for all colors in aether revolt

Mainloop25 · January 2017

andrewvanmarle wrote:

I agree with the above, while the energy mechanic is a well thought out one, it does require other players using it too. Cards likr dyna volt tower and aether marvel works would be energy staples for any deck and would have helped promote the mechanic.

I hope you have some good staple energy cards for all colors in aether revolt

Yes, decoction module doesn't count. Era of innovation would be way better if it was colorless. Blue has enough card draw as it is.

majincob · January 2017

I posted my thoughts on the chandra 2 abilities in the relevant thread in the feedback/suggestions forum.

Thank you JC as always for taking the time to explain your design decisions.

Thank You! (for Nissa2's design)

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