Late Developments – Removal Effects

Hello again, Hex Fans! Phil Cape here to share more stories from the design and development of Armies of Myth. Last time you heard from Matt Dunn, who the lead designer of the set, offering a thorough rundown of the spider mechanic from inception to completion. I was the lead developer, which is a different though complimentary role. In a lot of ways, my job is to reign in Matt’s wild creative designs and help fashion his thematic flights of fancy into nuts and bolts HEX gameplay. A big part of achieving that goal is creating a loose structure for him to design within. As Matt mentioned, one of our major goals was to introduce the four “new” races; Vennen, Necrotic, Elves and Coyotle. He also touched on our desire to introduce prismatic cards and champions. Today I’m going to discuss those prismatic elements, as well as how we evaluate what cards should be good in a given format – specifically, removal effects.

Combining two different shards has always been central to what is fun about our game. Each shard has its own strengths and weaknesses, and finding places where one shard can cover the deficiencies of the other, or where two shards best aspects line up to make a point of strength even more pronounced is one of the most satisfying experiences a player can have. Multi shard cards are a very explicit way to get players to combine the shards, and they can offer a hint as to what that pair might be up to. Initially, we intended for each of the ten available two shard pairs to get a mini-feature within Armies of Myth, but quickly realized that it made the set feel overloaded and directionless.

We then set out to find a simple way to divide the ten pairs into two groups of five, moving one group to the following set. Given a few simple constraints, that we wanted the new race pairs to be featured (Sapphire/Blood for Vennen and Wild/Ruby for Elves), as well as the notion of balance (each shard is featured exactly twice), we realized there were surprisingly few options available. A quick look at the shard pairs that were de-facto featured in Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny revealed that the best way to avoid overlap with the previous format was to use the set up you all have grown to know in Armies of Myth: Wild/Sapphire, Sapphire/Blood, Blood/Diamond, Diamond/Ruby and Ruby/Wild.

The costing and array of removal

I’m going to let you in on a little design secret: almost any card can be good or bad, depending on how we cost it. The job of a developer is less “figuring out what is good,” though there is some of that with new mechanics, but more “figuring out what is fun,” and then making sure that the fun stuff is the good stuff. Troop removal effects are one area in which it is easy to see this. Immortal Decree would see almost universal play if we costed it at 1. Burn would be unplayable at 6 cost. One fairly universal rule is that we prefer textured removal to straightforward removal. What do I mean by “textured?” A removal effect is textured if its effectiveness varies based on the target and board position. Burn has texture because it can only deal with troops that have 2 or less defense. Immortal Decree doesn’t care if it’s removing a lowly battle hopper or a terrifying walking calamity. It does both with equal effectiveness, and while there is a place for that sort of straightforward simplicity, it does not lead to the most interesting game play. At the end of the day, we want players to feel like their decisions matter. When an opponent removes your troop with Burn, at least you can tell yourself “if only I had played more troops with 3 defense, his burn wouldn’t have been able to kill my guys.” When they use an Immortal Decree, you can only hope they can’t play any more of them.

When I set out the initial set skeleton for Matt, there were a number of slots marked for removal effects. He went through and plugged in effects – lots of different ways to handle troops in ways that were appropriate for the shard. Blood and Ruby were targeted for the most of these effects, Wild would get the least. The key at low rarities is simplicity and variety. We need to make sure the effects are distinct enough from each other while still retaining a uniform feel for the shard itself. Additionally, we want to avoid retreading space that we just covered in a recent set. Because we put Pride’s Fall in Armies of Myth, we probably won’t put aggressively costed removal effects targeting troops with high DEF into the next set, for example.

Below is a good summary of the goals we had for removal effects in Armies of Myth.

• A smaller portion of the removal should be good at killing any size troop, and specifically we wanted fewer effects that kill large troops because of the ramp theme in Ruby/Wild.

• Ruby should have the most effects, with most of them clustered between 1 and 3 damage, leaving 4 defense and higher troops a vulnerability.

• Wild’s removal effects, though not very numerous, should be reliant on having large troops in some way.

• Sapphire’s removal effects should be more timing sensitive, and better at thwarting attackers than utility troops.

• Blood should have the best straightforward removal, and should have good removal effects for killing smaller troops. This was because we wanted something to compete with Kill in constructed formats.

• Diamond and Sapphire removal should be vulnerable to revert effects.

• Ruby and Blood removal should be most vulnerable to death triggers (troops that say “when this dies, XXX”)

I’m going to take a second and run through all the removal effects at common and uncommon, to help you see the array we were looking at when we began adjusting and setting relative power levels.

Blood Common: Parriphagy, Taint, Vampiric Kiss, Merciless Culler

Blood Uncommon: Rot Cast

Ruby Common: Skewer, Fiery Indignation, Boomsmith, Staggering Blast, Volley of Arrows

Ruby Uncommon: Scorch, Flaring Passions, Bombwright, Playing with Fire

Diamond Common: Etherealize, Pride’s Fall

Diamond Uncommon: Stinging Ambush, Inflict Doubt

Sapphire Common: Cripple, Throwback, Spider Nest, Suffocate, Entangling Webs

Sapphire Uncommon: Incubation Webs

Wild Common: Predatory Prey, Stinkhorn Soup, Vine Lash

Wild Uncommon: Storm Drummer

Looking at the cards above, I think we did a pretty good job of hitting our targets. Blood’s removal skews towards killing small troops, with Rot Cast standing out as the cream of the crop. Ruby had a ton of effects, even more than we initially intended. We made sure that all the repeated effects stayed at uncommon, because they can be annoying to face. Wild, with the exception of Vine Lash hating on flight troops, wanted big troops in play or in deck to be maximally effective. Sapphire ended up with more effects at common than even blood, but we made sure at least one was stinky enough to not skew the draft format. Diamond ended up with the fewest such effects at common, and we wanted to compensate by making a rare removal effect for them.

One day, someone came in with an idea for the Diamond rare removal. “Void target troop, its controller draws a card” was the initial pitch, but I didn’t believe that was textured enough. A card is generally the same or similar value for any opponent, and I wanted the drawback portion to be more board position and deck dependent. I threw out the idea of swapping the “draw a card” for “troops get +1/+1,” since that was an effect that was often worth a card or more, but sometimes did nothing. The variance in outcomes meant that the proper usage of the effect was highly dependent on board state, even if the action itself was indifferent to its targets characteristics. Players could profitably use it on an opponent’s only troop, while also sometimes turning it on themselves for a timely boost. Matt countered that while he liked what it was doing mechanically, it felt wrong for diamond removal to be so permanent. Such an effect would not interact with revert effects in the way we wanted, and thematically it was also falling flat. We dropped the conversation for the day, but on my drive home it hit me: The card should transform into a constant or artifact which granted the +1/+1 boost! I pitched the new version to Matt in the morning, calling it “Martyr.” We started it at 3 cost, but quickly moved it down to 2 when we found the game play fun and engaging. We almost changed it to 1 cost at the last minute, just to make sure the card landed in constructed, but it seems to be hitting its mark at its current cost.

Back to Prismatic

Each of the featured shard pairs has a distinct and relatively well-defined play pattern. One of the challenges I set out for Matt was to try to have as many cards as possible (especially at common) fit into the play patterns of two of the shard pairs. A relatively easy example of this is Spiritbound Spy. This little guy holds buffs extremely well, pairing with both necrotic’s shift powers as well as any other permanent buffs. Additionally, he provides two bodies for Blood/Diamond’s sacrificing subtheme, as well as an early, resilient attacker for Diamond/Ruby’s swarm theme. Because this design fit so many roles (he even plays well in one of the shard pair themes in the upcoming set) this was a design we chose to put at a relatively high power level. There are plenty more such examples throughout the low rarities in Armies of Myth. Abominate is good in spiders because you have great targets to buff – namely the unblockable spiders. Abominate is good in Blood/Diamond because you have more low value targets to sacrifice, plus different good buff targets like the aforementioned spy. Staggering Blast is good in Ruby/Diamond because the “can’t block” portion will often put you over the top on turn 4-6 after your aggressive start. In Ruby/Wild it can often clean up a board full of 2/1 troops before you start dropping your big troops, or it can help you go on the offensive in one big swing after your large troops stabilize the board. Volley of Arrows is good for the swarm approach of Diamond/Ruby, but also costs 5 and can trigger the “expensive cards matter” themes present in Ruby/Wild. Examples of this sort of cross-archetype flexibility abound.

Further, since Armies of Myth and the upcoming fourth set (Name Redacted) were developed in tandem, we were able to seed cards that fit into both an Armies of Myth archetype as well as a Set 4 Archetype. Don’t be surprised to see cards like Untamed Duskwing and Ember Tears get a boost in playability from the next set.

As for the actual prismatic cards, these cards should be very desirable and powerful for the archetypes they are supporting. We tried to make sure that each design matched the needs of the archetype. Pyresoul Summoner offers a way to continue creating troops when you’ve run out of cards in hand, often a weakness of aggressive swarm decks like the Ruby/Diamond. Dreamsmoke Mystic helps the Wild/Sapphire decks dig towards the cards they’ve prophecied, enhanced with Winter Moon, or just some of their more situational answers. Hatchery Cultivator stymies opponents ground assaults while helping you fill the opponent’s deck with future win conditions. He even works best with repeated egg creators, fitting flavorfully with the Vennen’s sadistic love of torture. Tempestuous Bladedancer is a big troop who can play offense and defense immediately, helping the Ruby/Wild decks come back from their generally less impressive early turns. And Grim Harvester provides a repeated sacrifice outlet while contributing to the “death by a thousand stings” feeling that the swarm of phantoms can sometimes provide. We made sure to equip each with good attack and defense values, plus keywords that made them attractive enough to be desirable.

All five of these cards were very important to defining the archetypes, and we are pleased with where they seem to have settled in, as powerful archetype definers in Sealed or Draft and fringe constructed playables. Thanks for tuning in, I hope this has given you some insight into why certain cards are chosen to be more powerful than others.

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