Evening, Scrolldiers!

I’ve been encouraged to detail some of our thoughts about Wild, and how we mean to address feedback we’ve been getting from testers. This post is an attempt at that. Warning: Wall of text incoming! :)

To begin with, let’s list some design goals:

We want multi-resource decks to be viable in order to increase deck variety. Two resources should be more viable than three (in order to preserve some deck identity), and if multi or mono should be stronger, we’d like to err on the side of multiresource decks. We like having restrictions in decks so that each deck has identity and counter-play. We want decks to be not only fun to play, but also fun to play against.

The goals above hold true no matter what mechanical solution is chosen to achieve them. A difficult problem is that (1) is orthogonal to (2) and (3). Any solution that addresses the deck variety issue will per definition also enable decks with less identity, as well as decks that are boring to play against. Most feedback we’ve seen around Wild is not related to the mechanics of Wild, but the outcome. I think it’s very important to distinguish the two for the sake of discussion. The takeaway is this: No matter the solution, deck variety is going to create problems like overly removal-heavy decks or decks that can draw and ramp more than mono-resource decks have been able to.

In the long term, I believe deck variety is an exceptionally important goal, so I think (2) and (3) need to be addressed by supporting fun and strong deck archetypes, and designing scrolls that allow for counterplay against boring decks. Rebalancing existing scrolls is also a powerful tool.

With all of this in mind, let’s look at some of the strengths and weakness of the Wild system:

Pros:

Easy to use / simple interface. We’ve tried a number of systems, and none of them have come anywhere close to Wild in terms of usability. This is key for us - we don’t want to make the interface any more complicated than absolutely necessary.

Easy to understand. I know some of you may not agree with this. It’s true that Wild isn’t easy to explain in writing, but it is my feeling that people grasp it quickly once they encounter it in the game. Additionally, we don’t have to explain Wild to beginners, as it doesn’t show up in beginner decks at all.

Not just for splashing. Helps “true” multiresource decks significantly without being much more beneficial to splash decks.

Cons:

Lacks tempo in the first turns of the game. While this should possibly be one of the downsides of playing multi-resource, it’s my biggest gripe with Wild. It’s hard to play aggressive multi-resource decks.

Is less flexible than some other systems. The famous “colorless mana” system of a certain other game is one of the nicest multiresource systems in any game, but we don’t believe it’s a good fit for digital platforms.

Buffs cross-resource ramp scrolls. This isn’t really a problem in itself, but it does limit our design space somewhat; either we need to design plenty of cross-resource ramp to make choosing the right ones tricky, or be very careful about how we do design the few that we have.

To me, the potential benefits of Wild heavily outweigh the negatives. For this reason, I feel it’s worth exploring Wild further, and focusing on making the game as good as it can get with a given system. Choosing another system may slightly change the pros and cons, but as long as it addresses the core issue (1), it will also introduce problems for (2) and (3).

The effects of Wild on the current meta makes it worth taking a look at rebalancing scrolls and thinking about ways to make matches more fun. With this in mind, we’re intending to introduce a significant number of experimental balance changes to the test server, hopefully later this week. We’re primarily looking at making cross-resource ramp support tempo instead of late-game, changing how the most unfun of the removal scrolls and combos work, and buffing weak enchantments. More to come soon!

See you on the battlefield!

Måns