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Will they be refunding the cards with wildcards?
Yes on Monstrous Rage (but it's uncommon, so no big excitement there).
Temporal Manipulation isn't on Arena yet; it's coming tomorrow as a Special Guest in Magic: The Gathering Foundations. So this is a pre-ban, and no one has any copies to refund
I can’t fathom why they Alchemy rebalance some cards like The One Ring but when it comes to Temporal Manipulation and Time Warp, they’re like “no we couldn’t possibly rebalance them by adding one line of text that exiles them as they resolve, or adding 1 more mana to the cost, it’s ban or nothing.”
Wtf are Alchemy rebalances FOR if not for this?
Some cards are too old and iconic to rebalance. I can't think of Time Warp without smiling as I remember Squee's old flavor text. That card is an old friend, too well-known to rebalance. Temporal Manipulation is only barely younger than Time Warp.
The One Ring or Nadu, on the other hand, are recent additions. Players don't have a decade of memories about them, and that makes them more malleable.
Could you pass on a big thank you to the team for getting these alchemy rebalances/ban out? It's been a while since alchemy has gotten some rebalancing and these changes are excellent!
Done! And thank you kindly
What was the flavour text?
[[Time Warp|TMP]]
"Let's do it again" - Squee, goblin cabin hand
i mean, why not make rage a 1R...maybe increase it to +3/+0 too...would balance it out pretty good
We thought about routes like that, but we didn't feel confident enough that was a card that any existing deck wanted.
Really, we felt like the problem was about having too high a density of "cheap pump spell" in Red (given the other cards in the meta). Since we want rebalancing to preserve the original design intent of the card, we can't really take a cheap pump spell and make it something else. So, while we prefer to rebalance rather than ban in Alchemy, this is a case where we felt like the ban was most appropriate
Rebalancing the cards in Alchemy does not in any way, shape or form change the cards in any other format, so I fail to see your point.
Maybe that's on me, and I would get it if you elaborate?
In my head, it starts like this:
Should we rebalance a Black Lotus?
- Clearly not. That card is way too classic, it does what it does, and making a balanced version of a Black Lotus is just contradictory at this point. The card has a well-defined identity, and a big part of that identity is its power.
Ok, so should we rebalance Counterspell or Lightning Bolt?
- Again, no. For most of the same reasons. The identity of these cards is well-defined, and its about the power level.
Ok how, about Unholy Heat?
- Well, spoilers, we rebalanced Unholy Heat a while ago, so clearly we think that was on the table. It hadn't had enough time to establish a firm identity around doing 6 damage, so we had the freedom to adjust it.
Is being iconic only tied to how old it is? Ragavan is young too, and it's just banned in Historic, not rebalanced.
Nadu and TOR have had significant impact on both the game and the discussions around it, and I imagine it's fair to say they're more iconic than the monkey despite being much more recent additions.
It's certainly a judgement call, and it's not just age (though age is a big factor).
We rebalanced Unholy Heat and we banned Ragavan, both from MH2. Why the difference? Because we felt like Unholy Heat's identity was being a powerful direct-damage spell, and we could rebalance it and preserve that. And Ragavan's identity was in being the most unholy terror of a monke that anyone's seen this side of a Kird Ape. And you can't rebalance him to make him "fair". Anything that's fair is no longer Ragavan.
With things as recent as Nadu, I think we still have room to rebalance now matter how big an impact the bird has made. 5 months is not enough time to set yourself up as "iconic", no matter how hard Nadu tried.
This is certainly a thing on which reasonable people will differ. It's a lot of close calls, and we debated a lot about Ragavan. As with all similar spaces, we're going to try things, we're going to learn, and we'll hopefully get better as we go.