Alas I couldn’t be on the AMA yesterday, but I think for the most part it was very good. Charles and Eric answered all the questions pretty well, but someone forgot to ask about why Mana Flare even exists 😊!

Patches

It is very clear that they have listened to the Community and have decided to a) give an idea about cards that they are watching in their updates and b) that they are fixing the timings of updates so that they occur before pre-releases and then again before seasonal play initiatives. I think this is a very good move on both these accounts and expect to hear positive things in the end of March update.

The current watch list has Small Step, Giant Leap, Muna multi anchoring uniques, helping hand loops in Yzmir and Afanas power level on it.

They check both online stats as well as tournament results to look at the cards that are performing ‘too well’ as well as any Uniques that are standing out as overpowered.

The Suspended Cards

I guess the first thing to discuss is the suspended cards. It’s clear that they are working on things and that many of the suspensions will be freed from Suspended Prison in the update at the end of March. It’s possible that one or two might remaining in the naughty list and of the cards that were suspended I feel that the most likely to fall into that category is the Moonlight Jellyfish Uniques.

As to my personal choices for fixing the miscreants (Jellyfish excepted) I favour a few things, one of which Charles discussed.

• Loop Issues.

It’s clear (and has been for some time that looping something repeatedly or many times is a power level issue). I said this last autumn when the first (bad) infinite loop was discovered, but Charles was very blasé in response saying it wasn’t necessary though they’d look at it if there was an issue later. They then patched into the rules the 100 times statement. I assume that this was to make BGA not go into meltdown. Clearly this was not the right solution as most of the problems we are seeing are down to near infinite loops or abilities that can be over-used.

Last year I suggested that a restriction on six times around a loop was appropriate. Given Charles stated that they still wanted the affected Uniques to be top end, I feel that the number should actually be lower and more in the region of three or four times an ability can proc. If this is stated in the rules, then there is no need to patch the cards themselves.

Charles did bring up an interesting point in tracking this may be an issue, however I feel that it is a solvable one. BGA can easily track it, and in a face-to-face game if you are going to be looping something you will know that and can just have three cubes to track it on the card to make it clear. This will fix the Foundry Armorers, the strong Anchor Unique cards are well as any other number of things. It would also have some impacts on normal cards like Haven only being able to be used 3 times in a turn and Mage Dancer getting the boost only 3 times in a turn. I think that this is worth it though to clean everything up.

• Gericht

I think the broken Gericht, whilst he would be covered by the loop rule above still needs errata to say other character. Other than that, he’s fine.

• Haven

The Haven issue is partially fixed by the loop rule; however I would also change the Axiom version to give Axiom the common version of Haven without the resupply effect. This would bring the power level down enough but still keep the Treyst players happy.

• Ozma

I think the Ozma issue is also solvable fairly easily. She still needs to draw to solve her identity but make that a hand or reserve ability rather than an arrow effect. This makes it only 1 draw rather than two and more in the range of a similar card Haven Seringar. I believe that this change should be across the board as well as now with Arcolano Milk Bravos can get 2 boosts so much easier now.

• Waru and Mack

I personally agree with Charles that they over-nerfed him in a hurry to be safe, but I have no idea about future cards. I think the ability for future cards to bump him back up means he won’t always be bad. Heroes can be bad for a while (Just ask Atsadi and Gulrang about that) but I trust the design team to create cards that can bring him back up.

Set Sizes and Heroes

Charles mentioned that the size of set 3 will be equally sized set 2. I actually thought that the set 2 size was about right. Set 1 had 27 commons in it per faction. Set 2 had 15 commons per faction. I’m expecting that set 3 will have 15 per faction as well and set 4 something between 18 and 21 per faction. They have to be careful about making the yearly large set too large as it was very difficult to collect all the rares, but this may be easier with the Marketplace in place and PoD working.

It is clear that we will be seeing new heroes in set 4. They are open to having re-interpretations of hero cards down the line, but I don’t expect to see them until later. I foresee a solution like MtG has for Planeswalkers where they will get a new title – Basira the Might and Kaizaimon or Sierra the Tinkerer and Oddball for example.

I expect to see two new heroes per faction in the set 4 release. Since set 4 is going to be smaller than set 1, I think that two new heroes tow play per faction is about right and Equinox will need to keep a tight control on the different niches of heroes to ensure that there is enough design space for later. They will have to be careful of heroes bloat too, which is something that afflicted MtG and they then culled a number of Planeswalkers in the great purge.

Rotation was mentioned as a possibility for the future. I suspect that this won’t come into play at least until the third year of Altered and may possibly not be needed at all.

Multi Faction Play

The next question was quite an interesting one, asking whether there may be multi faction play. Charles stated that they wanted to stick to the factions for now as that is built into the game but might explore this later. There is scope I think for this down the line with ‘traitor’ heroes that move factions and ‘ally’ heroes that go out of their way to have built bridges with other factions.

Such a idea could have the hero allow a small number of cards from the secondary faction to be included in their deck as part or all of their power. This could either be by family (say 2 families or card allowed from the ally faction) or by card number (5 cards allowed in total from the ally faction). Note the numbers on these may not be correct, they are just examples. I don’t expect to see this for years to come, just as with the two missing factions though this will be something they might add down the line. Since it would be a specific hero power, I don’t even think there would need to be a rules change.

Unique Power Level

Charles restated that they know that there were some mistakes in set 1 with power level and that they are looking to address both that the low end was too low, and the high end broken ones were too high and that they were adjusting things. They want unique cards to feel good in a set, but I’m not sure that there are there yet in set 2. I have confidence that they will be able to cap the higher end ones, my worry is more around the lower ‘bad’ unique cards. I initially thought that they’d done better in Trial by Frost, but I’ve seen one to many bad ones now to think that they’ve completely solved this issue.

Other Formats

Charles was asked about singleton formats and Eric asked about 2v2 in competitive and they indicated that they were open to them, but probably more in the casual side events at main tournaments rather than main event formats or community run things.

Other Bits and Pieces

Cards could be reprinted in future sets with Unique versions that have abilities from sets that came out since they were originally printed. This would mean that you could ‘for example’ have a Sneezer Shroom in the future that has an exhaust ability on it from the unique algorithm.

Additionally, they said that these reprints could also have the Out of Faction card be in a different faction to the one it was originally printed in.

Finally, it was announced that Martengale won’t be alone for too much longer as the only 1 cost Lyra character in faction and that he will be getting a new friend in set 3.