set of 104 new cards promises to significantly shake up the anime-infused CCG’s gameplay. To find out a little more about the development of the set and the future of the game as a whole, I spoke with Game Producer and Executive Director at Cygames, Yuito Kimura. Read on to find out about how the team thinks the game will slow down, their strategy of turning Take Two into a competitive format, why cards like Owlcat exist, why Blood Moon may be OP and more. (Oh, and you should also check out my chat with Lead Game Designer Naoyuki Miyashita and Card Designer Yuichiro Sato , which is more of a class by class, card by card analysis of Tempest.)

An instant meme.

Khaiza's fanfare is "Put an Ultimate Carrot into your hand," while the Ultimate Carrot's text reads "Last Words: Put an Ultimate Carrot into your hand." Infinite value!

“ At least throughout this year we think it’s fine to keep it as is, but maybe further from there we might have to start thinking about introducing formats.

“ The kinds of skills that are required to be good in Take Two are very different to those required in ranked matches...

“ When it comes to new abilities, we’re thinking about roughly once every two packs – or sets.

“ Blood Moon – it’ll shake up the meaning of Vengeance. I personally think it’s a little bit too strong.

Shadowverse's playtesters still actually use physical cards as it allows for faster iteration.

About six months before the release is when we start selecting cards.We deal with mythologies and myths in Rage of Bahamut, so we have many characters and cards from Rage of Bahamut that have that theme in this Tempest of the Gods expansion.When we create new packs, we think about the abilities and the characters in each pack. For example, with Tempest of the Gods it’s based on mythology, so we have lots of godly cards and godly mechanics.It’s not really fun to look at just one kind of card, so we try to include something that’s, like, remotely related, or not even remotely related aesthetically to keep it fun.Definitely, and like with Ultimate Carrot in the last expansion, we try to have something that’s fun and get people talking. We always reserve a place for cards like that in each expansion.Something along those lines. We wanted to create a chef in the fantasy world. There’s actually a character in Rage of Bahamut who solves any problem with just his cooking skills.When it comes to players in Japan, we have a wide variety of people playing this game. We have young people, like kids, students, playing this game, and Shadowverse has turned into something like a communication tool for them. We have more casual players than hardcore core gamers in Japan compared to the Western player base, where the name Cygames is not even that well known. So we feel that the Western players, there are more people that are into card games, like, hardcore gamers.When it comes to Western players, we find they’re… more focused on achieving higher ranks. People in, for example, the Master rank, they want reasons for getting better and getting into matches. They want more rewards for doing so, whereas in Japan, it’s more important to provide reasons to continuously play and provide continuous fun elements. For example, we have the daily bonus function. That’s something any given game in Japan has. That’s a necessity, but that’s not really the case with the Western gaming market. There are those differences.We think it’s still okay, but obviously the more cards there are, the more likely the new players will be confused when they start playing the game, so when that gets to a certain point that’s when we need to start thinking about implementing formats.At least throughout this year we think it’s fine to keep it as is, but maybe further from there we might have to start thinking about introducing formats.It’s kind of hard to say, but we think it’s important to ensure that the main way of playing the game is what people like to do the most, so we’ll have to think from there.We have no plans for something like Tavern Brawl in Hearthstone, but we are considering making a tournament mode.The base idea was to make Take Two more competitive, and so, in order to do that we had to think about balancing out everything and making sure this format is viable. The changes we made, they aren’t significant, but they are important to make this something more competitive.That’s something that Miyashita would be better to answer, but we have changed the kind of cards that appear during the selection process, and you can now only get cards from the most recent three packs, while we do have some basic cards in there. More cards with higher rarity are likely to appear during the selection.With Take Two matches… it really comes down to deck building skills, and also playing skills as well. Being versatile when playing the cards. The kinds of skills that are required to be good in Take Two are very different to those required in ranked matches, where you prepare your deck beforehand. So what kind of decks are played, or made, is always different, and this is something that’s really hard to do with real life card games, but with Shadowverse, being a digital card game, it’s easy to hold tournaments with this format, and that’s the base idea of this tournament.Right now we’re thinking about doing a Take Two only tournament at first, but in the future we definitely want to do something for hardcore players of Shadowverse where it requires many different skills, whether it be a standard play or a Take Two play, so we are definitely looking at that for the future.Yes.The game will be a lot slower than now and it will take more turns to finish the game, so different cards will see more play compared to the current environment. When it comes to the moment when you actually manage to finish the game, the actual impact will be bigger, is what we’re expecting. And we have a couple of cards that utilise the class mechanics, like Necromancy and Vengeance, so it’ll be important to effectively use your class’ unique mechanics.[caption id="attachment_1728641" align="aligncenter" width="720"] New Shadowcraft legendary Minthe ["Fanfare: Your Necromancy effects cost 0 shadows until this follower leaves the area."] and Bloodcraft amulet Blood Moon ["Countdown (4) Vengeance is active for you even when your leader's defense is more than 10."][/caption]It was more the latter, we wanted to introduce something new, and matches that take a long time is not something we wanted from the start. It’ll be harder for new players to start playing if it takes too long to play. This is something that we had in mind from the very start – to make the game quite fast-paced in the beginning, and then later on introduce more slower cards and abilities.Not so much. The overall pace might be slower, but there will be some aggro decks that survive through it.That’s not something we’re actually expecting. If anything, we think it’ll be faster than we’re currently expecting. Firstly, we’re expecting things to be slower – we could see it not go as slow as we’re expecting right now, but we don’t think it’ll be any slower than we’re currently expecting, and if the reason why it becomes slow is because of a particular card, then we’ll make changes to the card. We think it’s important to pay attention to the winning rate of the cards and decks, so if the reason why the environment is slow is because there are several viable slow decks then we think that’s fine.When it comes to new abilities, we’re thinking about roughly once every two packs – or sets. So once a new ability is introduced, then with the following set, we expect to see more sophisticated play with the new ability, and then we’ll go on to release another new ability in the next set.Thank you very much. Theme-wise, Heavenly Aegis from Havencraft, is something that really fits well with the theme of Tempest of the Gods.But once you actually play those cards, you realise that they aren’t as super strong as you expected them to be.[caption id="attachment_1728656" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Havencraft legendary Heavenly Aegis ["Can't be damaged. Can't be targeted by spells and effects other than those that relate to attack or defense. (For example, this follower can't be destroyed or banished using spells and effects.)"] and Dragoncraft spell Lightning Blast ["Banish an enemy follower or amulet. Enhance (10): Banish all enemy followers and amulets."][/caption]Thank you.Definitely Blood Moon – it’ll shake up the meaning of Vengeance. I personally think it’s a little bit too strong. Another card is Captain Lecia from Swordcraft. She’s a fairly popular character in Rage of Bahamut and her ability is pretty strong, too. So yeah, those cards.Another card I’d like to mention is Deepwood Anomaly. When that card was revealed and I was looking at online comments in Japan, people were going crazy, so that’s another interesting card. If you’d like to hear more, I can keep going! (Laughs.)On the dev side, we know which one’s strong, but that’s not something I’d like to say here. We think that’s something for the players to explore, and since we’re the ones making this game we shouldn’t really say one particular card is stronger than another.When we are making new cards and playtesting with those cards, the testers always write their comments and those testers all have achievements in other card games, and when a particular card keeps winning, then at that point they start talking about why they win and whether any changes should be made. And that’s something that’s happening every day, on a day to day basis, so it’s not really about rating cards.…I’d like to not mention a particular name here, but there is a legendary card that people aren’t talking so much about right now. I think it’s pretty strong, but I also don’t want to say any names, in case it turns out to be not so strong! (Laughs.)Interested in Tempest of the Gods? See every card in the set here and read my interview with the design team here

Cam Shea is senior editor in IGN's Sydney office and spends too much time obsessing over CCGs. Tweet at him here