Absolutely fantastic interview. Hamish, a great interviewer and Bryan, a FAB treasure. One thing was missing however. A question regarding arguably the finest hero in flesh and blood. Riptide! I'd love to ask Bryan if Riptide was intentionally designed as a "hard mode" for those bored with playing the game of easy or moderate difficulty settings?
It's great to see LSS focus on the art so much when other unnamed TCG's have art that is getting worse. Hamish's comment about how he went and bought cards for a class he had no interest in previously, solely because the art for the hero was so beautiful says it all. The Artists are such a huge core part of TCG's
Hay we did this topic with Karol (Developer). He talks through the difference. But I guess a quick snap shot: Design: the ideas of the product with the theme and structure. Dev: actually test it and build on it to make it all work.
I actually did spend about 2 weeks testing various Duskblade decks, mostly in Viserai shells after Rosetta left because I wasn't sure where to go with Viserai and I just wanted to satisfy my own curiosity about how bad it would be to bring it back. My conclusion is that the vast majority of the time, Duskblade is actively not very good and much worse than Rosetta. They are equally easy to 'turn on' but the effect of Rosetta is generally more impactful, except when you've been stacking Duskblade every turn for multiple turns & it's now a weapon attacking for like 6 or more. However, the downside of failing to keep Duskblade rolling is so much worse than not turning on Rosetta, & also Warmonger's hoses Duskblade decks even harder than it already cripples Runeblade in general. That, & the consistency is not always there to keep Duskblade rolling turn after turn to actually make it worthwhile. However, with all that being said, I have still not been shaken of the opinion that when Duskblade is humming & it's good, it's just egregiously unfun to play against, & for that reason alone it should probably stay banned. I don't think the card is a power level concern after a lot of testing, I think Rosetta is unquestionably a stronger weapon, but for fun & engaging gameplay that makes people want to play the game, Duskblade is just too unhealthy when it actually gets rolling & the opponent can't stop it. I doubt Brian will read this, but I just wanted to give my 2 cents since he specifically said to come talk when you've actually played with the card.
Spectra IS FUN to play with. It's the closest thing that FAB has to "control" decks from other games. You sac your life, tempo and pay above curve, so that you present an enemy with the question do they want to go speed up the game and kill you directly, OR they want to have an off turn and take care of this thing you put so much effort into paying and playing.
Dude just give people a better way to deal with spectra that's all you have to do. Spectra is fine it's just the lack of ways to deal with it. Same issue with Kano he's hard to deal with. I sware my dream to work on a card game I have so many ideas.
excellent interview!!! As a big fan of Viserai, i completely understand the issue of not releasing dusk. In my opinion, the real problem with runeblades is called warmonger, a generic, blue, block 3 card that makes a runeblade turn useless. It will be difficult to balance runeblade's PL with warmonger. I believe that similar to berserk, but in reverse, warmonger levels the runeblade down. Buffing runeblades to compensate for a warmonger can be tricky. I don't forget my experience in taking 3 warmongers followed by a kano and 3 of a dash in RTN 🥲😂😂
