Watchlist

While some cards might be more problematic than others, not all cards are problematic in the same ways or contexts. For this reason, we are establishing three categories for which cards might fall, depending on how potentially problematic they are.

Category 3

This category will contain all cards that are banned and restricted, proving to be too powerful or too impactful and limiting tournament deck diversity and meta health. There are no cards in this category at this time.

Category 2

This category contains cards that we consider very problematic and are heavily watched for potential future legality changes and category shifts. Currently, there are two cards in this category:

Sword of Avarice, when paired with Spirit Blade: Ascension has proven to be a very efficient strategy, allowing Lorraine players to draw a lot of cards in a single turn. With the card recursion that Crux has access to due to Crux Sight, the potential for "card momentum" is very high. Card momentum is a term we like to use to describe drawing too many usable cards within a single turn. When it's too high, it leads to drastically increased turn durations because the new cards were not part of the consideration the players have done with their hand/memory in a previous turn. Sword of Avarice's overall strength also limits design space for flicker effects like Spirit Blade: Ascension and Zephyr.

Reckless Conversion was a card meant to end the game if a Rai player has a lot of cards in their memory. However, it isn't a conclusive enough of a win condition where players can just always concede to it. Like Sword of Avarice, the card momentum is extremely high and leads to very long turn durations, where a player is 99% likely winning soon, but as a losing player, you can't concede unless you're 100% sure. This makes Arcane Rai an unfun champion to play against, and makes total match times unnecessarily long.

Despite the concerns we have for these two cards, we feel like it is not needed immediately for a ban, which is why they're in category 2. With the new tools to control advanced element strategies releasing in Fractured Crown, we will likely see our concerns diminished a little, but they will continue to be a hindrance in game design space.

Category 1

This category consists of cards that we don’t consider problematic in the current environment, but are unhealthy for future balance and game design space. This category currently has four cards:

First we'll talk about Creative Shock and Tactful Sergeant. These two cards have been too efficient in output and that can be used by too many decks. Right now, we feel that it is fine that an element has certain "always include" cards because there has only been one set released. However, we predict that Creative Shock will be used in too many fire decks and Tactful Sergeant will be used in too many attacking-class wind decks in the future, even as we release more and more sets.

Domains, by design, are extremely difficult to interact with. Because of this, they have added costs which make them less efficient than other card types. However, Varuck, Smoldering Spire is problematic because the additional Upkeep costs never need to be realized if all of the damage is done on the same turn that it's played. The damage and damage prevention layer of interaction in Grand Archive is becoming more integral in terms of design space and Varuck is too efficient in interacting with it.

Freezing Hail's efficiency has increased a lot due to the recent rule change (champions no longer wake up when leveling up). When more attacking classes get released, the average value of Freezing Hail will also increase. If this card's efficiency becomes too high, it will threaten the viability of attacking based classes in the future, which is a majority of the classes (Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Assassin).

That's all for this B&R update! The next update will be alongside the release Fractured Crown, August 25th, 2023.