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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 12:26PM
#21
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Date Joined:
Dec 27, 2009
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For what it's worth I believe Brady or Jeremy or someone at one of those PAX panels said they are being more mindful of color balance now than they were in the beginning since walkers have the potential to be stupidly powerful.
Its more a matter of mechanics balance than color balance, IIRC, like if they had multiple walkers that shared colors in a setting, they would try to make sure that they don't have complimentary playstyles.
For example, if they were to print a mono-blue merfolk tribal walker, any other blue walkers in the same setting wouldn't compliment that playstyle by being control heavy hitters or the like.
Nah, I get what you're getting at. It's just a matter of the fact that if you have a black deck, you don't have access to Sorin LoI, Vraska, and Nicol Bolas without splashing colors. And if you have to splash, they don't count as walkers for that color. They have their own combinations of mana needed to play.
That's what I was getting at, but it's not just a matte of balancing them for gameplay.
Like Bay said, Elspeth and Venser are both white walkers in the same setting but with no obvious synergy.
But I think they've started being more mindful of walkers for 'balance' reasons (playing against SuperFriends is miserable) and partly because they know way too many people will bitch incessantly if the colors are imbalanced even if the walkers couldn't be played in the same decks.
If return to Ravnica had one of each   ,  ,  ,  walker respectively, crybabies would lose their **** for blue getting more than any other color despite the impracticality of playing those walkers together in the same deck.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 12:31PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Dec 12, 2008
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Still, from what you're saying it sounds like this is more functional as a predictor of mechanics than it is of characters or what colors they will be printed in. Right? So it doesn't make sense even now to say "Well, Chandra will go white because Color Balance!"
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 12:42PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jan 30, 2012
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I totally derped! But green gets lots of deathtouch. Still, hexproof, trample, double strike, and haste is a lot, and kinda broken, in the sense that "Ta-da! Your guys are all Akroma now!" is.
He hands out two green abilities and two red abilities. I don't see what's so crazy about that.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in an thread with GM_Champion" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against AzureShade when card design is on the line!
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 1:16PM
#24
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Date Joined:
Dec 27, 2009
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Still, from what you're saying it sounds like this is more functional as a predictor of mechanics than it is of characters or what colors they will be printed in. Right? So it doesn't make sense even now to say "Well, Chandra will go white because Color Balance!"
A little of column A, and a little of column B.
I will admit, some of this is theory crafting.
I distinctly remember someone at one of the major con panels saying that R&D are mindful of color balance in walkers now more than they were in the beginning, but they didn't elaborate in which way.
Naturally, they're not going to shift a character's color just to fit a quota since that's a big deal storywise, and the Planeswalkers are characters first and game assets second, but a lot of this comes back to how creative tells their stories, which is something we aren't aware of.
For each block, do they try to write a story that has 5-6 walkers in it, relatively balanced by color, or does that just sort of happen.
I imagine they have some degree of flexibility since the blocks have been getting more and more secondary plots to accomodate the inherently transient nature of the Planeswalkers.
Ex; Innistrad
Primary plot: Where the hell is Avacyn (Sorin)
Secondary plot: the hunt for Grizzlebrand (Liliana, Garruk)
Tertiary plot: the rest of you weirdos (Tibalt, Tamiyo)
Creative probably has some limits on what they can and can't do because of game balance.
We're unlikely to see Chandra, Tibalt and Koth have a three-way slugfest in a block expansion because it doesn't do the game a lot of good to have all three red walkers in the same game environment all at once like that.
Actually, this gives me alot of ammo for the Ask Brady thread.
BRB.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 2:56PM
#25
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2012
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Still, from what you're saying it sounds like this is more functional as a predictor of mechanics than it is of characters or what colors they will be printed in. Right? So it doesn't make sense even now to say "Well, Chandra will go white because Color Balance!"
Brady gave an extreme example in the Ask Brady thread where he said that if he came up with a story that required 5 Red Walkers in a block (or was it plane?), he'd have to change the story. So, while Chandra would not go White because of Color Balance, he might have to come up with a different character to use in the story instead of Chandra if he gets to that point.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 6:45PM
#26
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Date Joined:
Dec 12, 2008
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Yeah, all of that makes sense to me, but my point was more that there's no way of predicting the presence or colors of specific characters based on color balance. So, while we can say "Chandra will probably not be appearing in this block that has two 'walkers that use red already" we can't say "therefore Jace HAS to be here because we need another blue 'walker" because they could use Tezzeret, Jace, Kiora, Tamiyo, &c., or they could make up a new character, or they could have Tibalt get some blue tips from Nin (i.e. they could print an old character with a new color), or they could just tell blue to go jump in a lake (ahaha) for one block.
In other words, saying "We need more blue and green in this block, and Kiora is blue and green, which are Simic colors, so therefore she's totally going to be in this block," is not supported by the particular kind of balance that they're trying to strike here. Does that make sense? I'm trying to feel out the limitations of this knowledge.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 6:47PM
#27
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In other words, saying "We need more blue and green in this block, and Kiora is blue and green, which are Simic colors, so therefore she's totally going to be in this block," is not supported by the particular kind of balance that they're trying to strike here. Does that make sense? I'm trying to feel out the limitations of this knowledge.
Makes sense to me. Then again, I've been saying something similar for a while... though not related to my earlier complaint.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 7:14PM
#28
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Date Joined:
Dec 27, 2009
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Kiora not being in the block is supported by Brady straight telling us she shares none of Simic's worldview.
From what I've inferred, multicolored walkers have less weight on the "balance the walker colors" scales than monocolors do because they by their very nature can't be run in as many decks.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 7:35PM
#29
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Kiora not being in the block is supported by Brady straight telling us she shares none of Simic's worldview.
From what I've inferred, multicolored walkers have less weight on the "balance the walker colors" scales than monocolors do because they by their very nature can't be run in as many decks.
Which is why I get so upset about people counting them the same as mono-colored walkers in terms of working out "color balance"... which is what started a lot of this in the first place.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 11:31AM
#30
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Date Joined:
Dec 27, 2009
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To all the doubters, this was just pointed out in the FSS thread; The flavor text on the new Stomping Grounds  is attributed to Domri Rade. Spoiler:
Show
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