Hand of Bin-Shalla, Temple of Light, And Battle Fury Errata - Explanation

[Laddinfance]

        Arcane Wonders takes the highest pride in the product we have released.  Issuing errata or changing cards is something we do not take lightly.  Every decision about gameplay has hours upon hours of playtesting behind it.  So, it is for the continued health of the game that we issued errata on the Temple of Bim-Shalla and the Temple of Light.
   We have been watching these two cards closely for many months now.  The play environment they create, does not contribute to a healthy game.  Especially in conjunction these two cards create an incredibly powerful, fast, and simple combo that has found it’s way into a vast majority of spellbooks.  Our own playtesting has shown that, while beatable, this combination is still dominant and dangerous.  The Hand of Bim-Shalla in duplicates both allows for unintended aggression or defense, regardless of board location.  Having an unequipped, unenchanted Priestess swinging for seven or more dice was never the intention of the card.  The Temple of Light compounds this problem by providing an easy way to apply dazes and stuns as well as serious damage, for free.  Temple has constantly shown that it provided quick game turning plays without requiring further cost. 
   We never want to issue errata, and as I’ve said we do not take this lightly and have playtested many options.  We opted for what was least disruptive for the original intention of the card.  Hand of Bim-Shalla became unique, because this was the least disruptive edit to the card.  Even with this errata in place, Temple of Light still had possibility for large swings as it always has a one-sixth chance to stun, and a chance to daze.  These still make Temple of Light dangerous and disruptive to the tempo of the game.  Adding a cost to the attack was the most natural errata.  This way you still have opportunity for important stuns and dazes, but not for free.  Even if all you have is a Temple of Light and a Hand of Bim-shalla out, you can do a two die attack with a fifty percent chance to apply a status effect for two mana.  This is in line with how we originally intended this card, this also frees up our design so that we can add more temples in the future with less restriction.
   Battle Fury was a slightly different story.  Before Mage Wars released, we intended that bonus melee and ranged would not apply multiple times.  It happened that Battle Fury worked outside of our original design intent, and our errata corrects it.
   As always we are very reluctant to issue errata, but in this instance action was required. We are happy that out of almost 300 unique spells released, only three of them have required further attention.  This is less that one percent of spells printed. These spells will also be appearing in an upcoming release, with the revised wordings.
   Arcane Wonders appreciates our fans and values their feedback.  Thank you for your loyalty and support as we endeavor to bring you quality future products!

Aaron Brosman
Assistant Designer

[rcone002]

Thank you for your explanation of the errata, something at least a few vocal MW forum dwellers abhor. In the future, I suggest that you release your explanation at the same time as the changes, so as to avoid bad vibes. It's bad enough that a brilliant game like Mage Wars needs to errata three cards with really only one core set out and one expansion (ASIDE: small math issue - if there are "almost" 300 unique cards and you errata 3 of them, that is slightly more than 1%), but I think you could have shut a lot of the negativity down with a preemptive explanation.

As for the moves themselves, Battle Fury seems natural, even Hand seems fine making it unique because, well, I just think it was a pretty broken spell in combo with Temple of Light for its low cost (in mana and spellbook level). With the change in Hand to "unique" status, however, your argument for instituting an additional mana cost to ToL's activation seems unwarranted at best. With 2 temples in play, you're still only successfully getting a condition on the effects roll 50% of the time, which does not seem overpowered given ToL's high casting mana cost.

I was not at Origins this year so I can't speak to the tournament results or if the "competitive" metagame was being warped by this combo, but I can say that the combo was certainly not widespread at the small tournaments at Dice Tower Convention in Orlando recently (I saw one Hand/ToL build over four tournament days). Perhaps some further playtesting showed the potential for mass abuse and the errata was implemented to avoid the combo dominating at Gen Con, which promises to be a much larger, visible tournament?

Thank you again for releasing an explanation. I look forward to future sets and a deepening card pool with which to ferret out new strategies, as these errata have certainly introduced the need to get more creative for many mages. I just wish you had the strength of some actual tournament data to back up your decision about a year into this awesome game's hopefully long-lived existence.

[Fentum]

         These spells will also be appearing in an upcoming release, with the revised wordings.
   
Aaron Brosman
Assistant Designer

Thanks for the info. How does this statement interact with this next one? Will the three cards all come out in a single upcoming release, as per my suggestion? Or by Mage, as per other post by Thessial (John)?

Sorry for the poor quote structure but I am not a techie...

Quote from: Fentum on July 19, 2013, 04:46:07 PM
Is there some way in which loyal and stalwart existing owners of the game can get updated cards? I can see ALL SORTS of chaos occurring here, and I don't want marker pen on my cards...

That would be nice.

Quote from Thessial...

Greetings to all!

To answer the question, producing cards as a small single print run is beyond the budget. We are gamers after all and our salaries don't yet equal that of sports stars. However, we feel your pain. So here are our solutions to get accurate reprints out to you the dedicated many.

We have decided to make sure that reprints of the cards will appear in the next Expansion that has a Mage capable of benefiting from them. To be a little more clear, not Druid Vs. Necromancer, but an Expansion that we are looking at for the 2014 season. Now I have less patience than most and that just doesn't satisfy me fully. So...

We are going to post printable PDFs of the 3 modified cards in the Downloads section of our website later tonight. This will at least keep people from having to mark up their existing cards.

Hope this helps and thank you very much for supporting Mage Wars!

John


Quote from Fentum...


Hi John,

Thanks for the information. It is nice to have PDFs but I never use sleeves. I am still a bit worried as it seems as though the replacements may come out in dribs and drabs 'in the next expansion that has a Mage capable of benefitting from them'. Two things...

 Firstly, ALL mages can benefit from them.

Secondly, the issue isn't MAGE benefit, it is GAME OWNER benefit.

If you can't just send out replacement cards for free (I wonder how many games have actually been sold so far, and what would the actual cost be?) How about you put max copies of each errata card, 4 or 6, into the next expansion as a free add on? Or even just a couple of each? I know all about print costs and so on, but I also know that doing remarkable things for your customer base drives long term loyalty.

I love this game. I will keep playing it. It's all about the love, not the commerce.

[Laddinfance]

@Rcone - In the future it is absolutely our plan to have any errata accompanied by an explanation as well.  I've played many card and minis games, so I appreciate players need to see our logic.  I'm very sorry that the explanation and the announcement did not coincide this time. 

@Fentum - In any expansion we are limited in the number of individual cards we can print.  We want to provide the most new cards possible.  John is correct that we are planning revised wordings of these cards for a release next year.  We would have to cut cards from Druid vs Necro, to fit in these reprints.  Though we do have mages down the road who it makes far more sense would use these cards.  We decided to work them into a set where they would also fit thematically.  We're very sorry for the wait.

[Texan85]

I smell the holy-war(rior) coming:  PALADIN baby, yeah!

Yes, that was a good and thoughtful explination, than you.

Good point about the 3 in 300 ratio. Most tcgs aren't close.

[Moonglow]

Hi, I know that this is totally a thread necro, but was just curious about whether the approach of releasing new versions of the erattad spells in an expansion had ever happened?

I'd be really keen to purchase new versions of these through the BGG store or even direct from arcane wonders.  I've got 2 older base sets and a spell tomb or two.  I'd love to have the correct text on all my cards, but especially these major errata.

Thanks