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.

You said a while back that it’s hard to make nonbasic hate that punishes greedy decks without also punishing fairer ones. Why? Blood moon or ruination seem like they are inherently fair. The degree they hurt people is directly proportional to how greedy their land base is. If ruination is too extreme for your taste, from the ashes is an even less punishing card, effectively just being a mass field of ruin. How are these cards too punishing to fair land bases?

I’m not sure everyone would agree that Blood Moon is “fair”.

You've said that R+D thinks snow basics were a mistake. Is that because your deck can play any number of them? Or is it because they also lend themselves to the entirety of the basic land eco-system of stuff like being fetchable by prismatic vista, safe from wasteland/blood moon effects, etc.?

All of the above.

There seems to be a staunch lack of mass nonbasic hate in standard & pioneer. Targeted land removal like demolition field, field of ruin, or Boseiju are good for dealing with individually powerful lands; but they don’t meaningfully punish greedy mana bases. Domain has been a tier 1 standard deck since DMU came out, and it’s only ever gotten more options. 4 color omnath dominated standard when it was legal, and multicolor decks in general have access to tons of fixing just with the land-base. Modern at least has blood moon, but standard and pioneer don’t have any mass nonbasic hate. Is this intentional? If so, why?

Hating on greedy mana bases, but not messing up non-greedy mana bases is a challenge.

I’m curious what the reasoning was behind putting blood moon in the bonus sheet for WOE. It doesn’t seem likely that it will ever do enough to be worth running in limited and it got a day 1 ban in historic, so it feels like it’s just taking up a slot in the pack that could have been filled by something playable in limited. I get wanting to reprint a classic card with cool new art but personally I’d rather that be done as either a secret lair or a collector/set booster exclusive.

The bonus sheet has numerous audiences, many of which are players who want cards for constructed formats.

Is battle gonna be an evergreen card type that show up in each set, or smth happens once in a blood moon?

It’s not showing up every set.

For more red design space, could red take inspiration from blood moon and make one or more cards lose their rule text for some time?

Not super red. We wouldn’t make Blood Moon today, for instance.

Also on the subject of rules problems, the current problem with Rangeling likely comes from 305.7, where setting a land's subtype to a basic land type causes it to lose all other abilities and types. Rangeling's basic land types would try to overwrite each other in a way that the layer system can't resolve. This is probably fixable, though you'd have to keep in mind corner cases like a Blood Moon that has somehow become a land.

FYI

What are the chances of seeing blood moon in a future standard set?

Low.

Fun rules time! I have a Gemrazer mutated on top of a Gingerbrute. In response to an exile spell, I use Gingerbrute’s ability of “2, T, sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.” My friend argues that it no longer has this ability since it is not a Food. They say that the ability is granted by the subtype “Food”, like how the subtype “Forest” adds the ability “T: Add G.” If Blood Moon removes “Forest”, it removes “T: add G.” Are they right about Food, or can Gemgerbruterazer still sac itself?

The Food subtype doesn’t inherently have the sacrifice for life gain ability. We just lined up every Food to be able to do that. So yes, you can still sacrifice the Gingerbrute for life.