Re: Mass nonbasic hate in standard and pioneer pretty please with a cherry on topI have read the threads from my previous questions, and I now understand why most of the extreme nonbasic hate cards, stuff like blood moon, back to basics, or ruination, can feel oppressive against decks with 2 or even 1 color, which is obviously not the goal of such cards. I do want to ask now, as question of curiosity more than a specific request: what kinds of things make hate cards go too far? Whether it be blood moon or rest in peace or engineered plague; at what point does a hate piece cause too much collateral damage (like blood moon), or at what point is the punishment so severe that it can fully lock some decks out of the game (like Rest in Peace). Where is the sweet spot, how do you know you’ve found it, and what kinds of knobs do you turn to help get there? I know that’s way more than one question and might be better suited as an article, but I’d still be fascinated to hear about it.

It’s just yet another reason why play balance is so difficult. Not enough and it’s not effective. Too much and it has impacts you don’t want. Mostly it’s a lot of trial and error in playtesting, and then some finger crossing.

Any chance we could see chroma and devotion return in the same standard environment? I think itd make for a fun "back to basics" monocolor matters atmosphere. Chroma is nice because it works with cards in hand/library/graveyard.

I’m am skeptical we’re ever going to see chroma again. I think devotion has displaced it.

Has R&D given serious thought to having a mechanic run through multiple sets a la the block structure with the new single set structure? You've got stuff like kicker and cycling that are pretty flavor agnostic, not to mention mechanics that are a bit more open to flavoring to different worlds. Given that MDFCs weren't a strong enough mechanical through line, a named mechanic like that seems like a sort of back to basics strategy that we know used to work.

I would like to have some mechanics run between consecutive sets on different worlds, but it’s not an easy a thing to pull off as you might think.