The Essential Design Technique That Creates Broken Cards 

I feel like the fact that Pioneer exists, restricts their desire to reprint Lightning Bolt. Because without Lightning Bolt, you have all these interesting choices to make as to which burn spells you play. But if Lightning Bolt is in Pioneer, you just play Lightning Bolt

There's also a more sinister approach to "balancing after release" in digital games. Mavel Snap does this and so does Tekken. Because there's no rotation in these games, devs still need to generate excitement and desire for their new cards/characters to increase the value proposition. If you just released a new balanced card/character a ton of players will just say "oh, that's nice" but not buy it because they already have so many others to chose from. So the devs will release obviously busted versions of these cards/characters, so a ton of people buy the DLC or the Season Pass etc. because they want to play the strongest stuff. Then a couple of weeks later, they will "listen to the fan's feedback" and nerf it down from problematic to "still pretty strong" to bring it vaguely in line with the rest of the card/character-pool, just in time for the next DLC or Season Pass. It's a bit of an issue that makes a lot of players of these games unhappy, even if you realize/acknowledge that the devs need to find ways to monetize their decade-long-life-cycle game. It sucks because there's almost constantly one unbalanced thing in a game, that would otherwise be near perfect.

Nice vid! though, with Oko mentioned, it was more of the cannon misfiring than aiming; wizards has admitted that they didn't even consider using the elk ability on opponent's permanents when he was designed, and the loyalty cost was changed last minute without testing.

Reminds me of when they had to ban Faceless Haven… but ONLY in the ‘new standard’ format because Field of Ruin was rotating out with Theros but was conveniently going to be in the next set. So was going to be present after rotation. But the Faceless Haven/Book of Exalted Deeds combo was back breaking without Field of Ruin

Just found your channel a couple days ago, and just wanna say I love getting to hear about the theory behind the game. That said, it's crazy that nowadays JtMS has been outclassed so thoroughly he sees almost no play in any format 😵

Speaking of Future Sight and the cards that were "pre-printed" there, we're (okay, I'm) still waiting for Horizon Canopy to be printed. Amusingly, they've reprinted it a few times, but they still haven't printed it yet. Of that land cycle, only Graven Cairns got printed.

Great discussion on aiming the cannon of card designs. I found this very interesting!

I really like this discussion. Ive been contemplating making games (especially card games) for a while now for my own enjoyment, so knowing a process like this is very helpful! Two other interesting examples of Magic card types are Vehicles and Battles. Vehicles were like Planeswalkers- pushed to be strong early so they were competitively relevant. But Battles are a card type that I rarely see discussed now. It had the same hype Planeswalkers did, with a new Atraxa name dropping them before they were revealed, but they came out a little lackluster.

I will be fascinated to hear about how set development has changed for MtG with the new standard format (the change to 3 year standard and the annual banning period) I'm curious if/how cards/archetypes are evaluated differently now

It always amazes me that sorceries are rarely ever unbalanced, given how hard it is to design them 😔

"You can't patch a printed card game" Try telling that to Bandai.

3:48 Jace TMS wasn't the first mythic planeswalker. The other host had just mentioned mythic was introduced in Shards

This puts Pokémon’s gimmick-per-generation in a new light. They can make some new Pokémon super exciting/busted in the current generation but then not have it be an issue when the gimmick goes away

So many creatures have been beefed up so strongly that lightning bolt needs to be in standard again. Four lightning bolts in a deck are only so good when opponents have 12-24 incredible creatures in their deck.

No....One Red Mana SHOULD be 2 damage. Shock is fine...it does only 2 damage for one red Mana. Play With Fire is too strong, because it also let's you scry if you target an opponent. Strangle is too powerful because it does 3 damage for one red mana. Shock...annoying, but it's OK. Torch the Tower doing 3 if you sacrifice a token is fine (give and take, risk vs. reward). But when you suddenly say "not only is this shock but it ALSO helps you fix your draw" or "this is shock WITH extra damage", you suddenly make it so those cards are in every deck. It's like how Lightning Helix is stronger than Sacred Fire. OK, fine, but also, maybe a direct damage spell shouldn't also have lifelink without a heavier mana cost. Maybe we should stick to black kill spells having to require a sacrifice. I remember in the 2000s black kill spells saying "This costs a TON of mana, so make sure you don't waste it" or "Is killing that creature really worth sacrificing another of yours?": Ambition is risk/reward. "Go For the Throat" is basically 2 mana to kill 85% of the creatures in the game...that's messed up.