With the advent of the Houses of Morrowind expansion came the game changing addition of Tricolor Classes, or Houses. Previously in Legends, a player was restricted to building decks with cards from a maximum of two attributes plus neutral cards. These two attributes formed a deck’s class, which in turn defined its limitations, strengths, weaknesses and flavor. Houses of Morrowind was the first expansion to bend the core mechanics of the game and offer a different approach to deckbuilding: play with three attributes instead of only two. The implications of this seemingly subtle change were massive and have forever changed the landscape of card design and balance in Legends.

This new addition to Legends is both exciting and concerning. There is great power in widening the pool of cards available to a deck: creating powerful combos that didn’t exist before, weaving in synergy between cards that were previously unable to be played together, and gaining access to abilities and mechanics unavailable to some classes. This power was met with criticism by some in the community over concerns that Tricolor decks would become ubiquitous and too highly optimized.

But why is that? What is it about including three attributes as opposed to two that is so frightening to players concerned with balance? What did Direwolf Digital do to attempt to counter-balance this power? And is it enough?

The Color Pie – The Key to Balance

In most expandable card games, one of the primary designs for balance is the inclusion of the Color Pie. The term “color pie” originated, as most things in card games do, in Magic: The Gathering as a way to visualize and describe the denominations of cards and their specific mechanics, strengths and weaknesses. Each Color in MTG represents an ideological faction within the games’ lore which is mechanically represented as types of mana that are required to play certain cards. To break that down into simpler terms, if you want to play Red cards in your deck, you need Red mana. This is one of the core design tenets of MTG and how cards get their specific flavor and style of play.

It is also one of the key aspects to balance and making deckbuilding more interesting and diverse. Ideally, each color or faction in expandable card games comes with its own unique set of flavor, style of play, mechanics, strengths and weaknesses. Restricting deckbuilding by utilizing these factions actually serves to increase diversity. If all cards were available to all decks with no restrictions, deckbuilding would devolve into pure optimization and including the best cards from the entire card pool, and eventually every deck would begin to look strikingly similar. To prevent this kind of pure optimization and homogeneity, card games like MTG have deck building restrictions based on the Color Pie.

Legends has a “color pie” of its own in the form of attributes. Most decks in Legends are comprised of at least two attributes to form a Class. The Color Pie is what gives each attribute and class its own unique feel. As an example, Battlemage is comprised of Strength and Intelligence. Strength is a very aggressive attribute that has a lot of power, but lacks resilience. Intelligence is an attribute focused around spells with damaging effects and tricks that give an edge in combat. Combined, they form a class that can be very aggressive and powerful but also has a lot of burst potential and tricks to keep powerful creatures around and protect them. However, one of Battlemage’s weaknesses is that neither Strength nor Intelligence have Drain creatures in faction or ways to gain life. This means that Battlemage decks that want to play a slower, more control oriented style will need to be entirely proactive when dealing with their opponent’s threats because they have no way to regain health once it is gone.

This example demonstrates the importance of the Color Pie. Because some mechanics like Drain are native only to some attributes, classes like Battlemage have to adapt to a certain style and play around some weaknesses inherent to their class.

Class Cards and Identity

Another aspect of Legends card design that gives classes a unique style are multi-attribute cards, or Class Cards. These are cards that can only be played in one class due to their dual-color nature. These cards serve to further solidify a class’ identity and play style, often bolstering some mechanics that are unique to that particular combination of attributes.

Let’s use Battlemage for another example. One thing that both Strength and Intelligence have in common is their affinity for Items. One of the defining cards of Battlemage is its unique class card Sentinel Battlemace, a 4 cost item that gives +4/+0 and Ward. This card exemplifies mechanics that are unique to the Red/Blue combination: an item that maximizes power, offers burst potential and both strengthens and protects otherwise less resilient creatures.

Aside from combining aspects of its two attributes to create a unique feel, Sentinel Battlemace is also a card that is slightly pushed in terms of power level. This is something that all Class Cards tend to have in common. Since Class Cards can only be used in a single class, they are often designed to be slightly above the power curve of normal cards. Archer’s Gambit, another dual-color example, not only combines the effects of Lane Changing and Ping damage from Strength/Agility, but also offers a lot of utility and flexibility for a single card at a very respectable cost.

These two design aspects of Class Cards (the combination of defining characteristics of two attributes and the above curve power level) are centric to making Classes in Legends feel powerful and unique amongst their peers. Crusader feels like Crusader and plays differently from other classes largely because of the mechanical strengths and limitations of the Color Pie, but also due to the distinctive nature and power of its dual-color cards. They play a large role in making Classes feel special and strong in ways other Classes are not.

Tricolor Classes – The Best of All Worlds?

Up until Houses of Morrowind, cards were designed and balanced around the tenet that they would only ever be available in combination with one other single attribute. This new expansion broke that tenet and changed the landscape of deckbuilding by offering Tricolor decks. Instead of picking from the best of two attributes when building a deck, now you can pick from the best of three. More synergies and combos became available, mechanics absent in some Classes are now obtainable, and even cards locked out from certain colors were no longer forbidden.

On top of opening a Pandora’s box of powerful deckbuilding possibilities, Tricolor classes also got their own unique class cards. These Tricolor cards are among the most powerful cards the game has seen and blend together mechanics and flavors of all three attributes into one affordable package.

If all of this sounds incredibly strong, it’s because it is. In fact, it is so strong that there needed to be some kind of handicap or limitation placed on Tricolor decks or they would completely obliterate Classes from the meta. Direwolf Digital knew this and so they placed two limitations on Tricolor decks: firstly, you must include at least one copy of a Tricolor class card in your deck, but more importantly your Tricolor deck must contain at least 75 cards. The increased variance of a larger deck was intended to counterbalance the sheer power of synergy and optimization that Tricolor decks allowed.

Blending the Color Pie and Changing Fundamentals

While Tricolor decks offer a fresh take on deckbuilding with nearly endless possibility, and seemingly appropriate counter-balances were put in place to prevent their ubiquity and domination of the meta, it is my opinion that Tricolor decks break the fundamentals of Legends and are largely detrimental to the health of the game. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to lay out my reasoning why.

Firstly, Tricolor decks blend and muddy the lines of the Color Pie. As I mentioned above, one of the limitations of Battlemage is that it has no access to Drain creatures. Dagoth, however, does have access to Drain. At the cost of an increase to variance, you can craft a better, more optimized version of Battlemage without its inherent weaknesses. The variance increase from having a 75 card minimum deck size in the current card pool is almost nearly negated by the amount of card draw that becomes available with the inclusion of a third attribute, not to mention the draw available in neutral cards like Merchants Camel and Namira’s Shrine.

An oft forgotten side effect of this blending of the Color Pie is that the future card design and balance of Legends becomes much more difficult. It’s one thing to balance a card around synergies that exist between two color combinations, but adding three color combinations into the mix dramatically increases the difficulty and challenge of approaching card design.

Secondly, Tricolor decks’ strengths and weaknesses both exacerbate the problem of variance and increase the swingy nature of games they are involved in. The raw power of cards like Hand of Dagoth is intended to be counterbalanced by a 75 card minimum deck size. This does not change the relative power level of the card at all, however. All it does is increase the variance involved in drawing the card. This can lead to a meta filled with very binary decks and matchups where if the right overpowered card is drawn at the right time, the game can simply end on the spot for opponents who have no answer.

Lastly, Tricolor decks steal the identity and strengths of Classes away by taking their best cards. Dual-color cards, as discussed above, were designed to make Classes feel more unique and to be slightly above the power level curve. Tricolor decks, being essentially three classes in one, are allowed to use these dual-color Class Cards as well as their own Tricolor cards. Classes become a little less special when their unique tools, previously locked away from every other Class, are now available to multiple Classes. This relates to the blending of the color pie mentioned above, but it also means that Tricolor decks have access to all of the most powerful cards the game has to offer.

All of these points lead to a very possible future of Legends where balancing around Tricolor decks becomes especially difficult and the identity and uniqueness of Classes begin to dissipate. The downsides of Tricolor decks, a 75 card minimum deck size, increases the nature of variance in these decks but doesn’t lower their relative power level.

The future design of cards, especially new dual-color cards, is especially suspect and concerning. Before HoM, if a Class needed a bit of a power boost to bring it in line with the power level of other Classes, the developer could make a new Class card that is restricted to that particular deck. This would boost said class without increasing the power of other decks. Tricolor decks make this no longer an option as every new dual-color card released going forward will also have the side effect of boosting two other Tricolor Classes as well.

The Future of Balance – How to Prevent Tricolor Domination

Tricolor decks sound great and fun on paper. They are a creative deck builder’s dream, opening up a wide range of possibilities and potential. However, their design is shortsighted and potentially dangerous. Whether or not the increased variance of a 75 card minimum actually serves to prevent the omnipresence and over-optimization of Tricolor decks remains to be seen. The consensus seems to be that in their current form Tricolor decks are not overpowered or over-represented compared to their dual-color cousins.

However, to prevent a future where dual-color Classes lose their identity and become too weak to compete with Tricolor decks, my recommendation is that dual-color Class cards stay where they belong – in their respective Classes. Preventing Tricolor decks from utilizing dual-color cards not only slightly lowers their power level in a way that doesn’t simply increase variance, but it also opens up the design space for more Class cards in the future and better balancing between Classes.

Thank you for reading this overly long diatribe on Tricolor classes. I would love to hear your opinions on Tricolor and what it holds for the future of Legends in the comments.