Hey guys, long time no blog!

Lots of things have happened since the last post. And you guys deserve more information about what happened.

Based on the design chat that happened a long time ago, 7.2 was supposed to be 50 cards + player cards and to come out in Mid November. Now, it’s about 25-30 cards total and will be coming out Mid December. Here’s how we got from one reality to the other.

At Worlds, Scott had a good number of players talk to him about our release cycle and the concerns they individually had about us releasing too many cards too often. Some of the reasons I mentioned in my last post. He pulled me aside and got my input on that idea as well.

After Worlds, from what I understand the Advocates all got together and started discussing the idea of fewer cards coming out per season. This discussion dragged out way farther than expected, and made the Mid November date unrealistic.

Finally, the decision was made to drastically lower the number of cards released in a given year. The Advocates told the Design Team to pick out their best, most impactful 10 cards and those plus all the players cards that passed development and playtesting would make up 7.2.

We have a very agressive schedule for testing, but we are planning to be just as aggressive in cutting problematic cards. We don’t want to mess around since it’s not fair to try to shoehorn in big fixes in such a small time period.

Additionally, we are aware that an MPC event usually happens in early January. Because of that, we will be taking a two-pronged approach to making sure that all of the player base has access to key cards in their preparation. First, we want to spoil the major cards to you instead of a mix of cards. Second, we will be releasing a text spoiler when the proofing blackout begins on this set. While minor changes will likely happen, we felt that the players seeing the text earlier would be for the best this time around. It also could act as a dry run for if releasing these texts early truly does let us put out a cleaner PDF on the “release date”

Now, schedule wise the first round of cards is in testing as we speak. The second round, at the most, will introduce one new card. The other changes will be minor tweaks or outright cuts.

Since so much has changed, I’d like to do another designer chat. Let’s plan on doing on from noon-1 PM EST next Friday, November 5.