Lorcana’s Problematic Cards
Over my time playing Lorcana I’ve been brewing a pet theory for what makes a card problematic so that I can discuss and identify quirks in the balance and design of cards.
One of the most memorable parts of any game is when the designers make a misstep with the balance, creating something way above the typical power to cost budget and producing an experience that feels unfair, unfun or overly centralized. Arguably, these moments are inevitable in any sufficiently complex design system.
No game, from Magic The Gathering to League Of Legends, has been able to avoid these mistakes forever despite having a suite of the most experienced game designers on the planet. Yet a thread of common design patterns crops up when talking about problematic design and balance in TCGs when designers attempt to stretch the boundaries of the game’s ruleset to create novel new play experiences.
One of the core tenants of TCGs is resource management and exchange; you only have so many cards in hand, so much Ink or Mana to spend, so many game actions to take before you need to pass control of the game over to another player. Bending or breaking these rules has lead to many of TCG’s most problematic cards.
Card effects that have no cost, allowing you to become unchained from a resource system, very quickly escape the intended design space and are very hard to reign back in as the very control leavers designed to define power boundaries have been removed. Many of Magic’s worst culprits come from this design space, as the game is balanced almost entirely around the resource cost of cards and the limited amount of resources you can generate each turn.
Similarly, cards that let you circumvent the standard resource expenditure rules (playing more cards, taking more turns) can play out in a very similar way as they often fuel themselves, leading to a runaway chain of actions. Yu-Gi-Oh has taken this to absurd heights, with the original summoning restriction costs and actions-per-turn limitations being virtually meaningless in the modern era which has lead to turns taking longer and longer as little constrains players from taking more actions.
A slightly less intuitive design problem often comes from when transforming one resource into another has little to no cost. Games typically limit how quickly you can exchange resources, mana into card draw, readied characters into damage or card draw, mana into additional game actions and so on.
These cards might not be as explosive on their own — but as games are often designed around you needing to invest into one resource at the trade off of not having so much of another, if that restriction no longer applies then resource value engines can take over an entire game by giving you access to vast access of whatever resource is required to win.
With that context established, let’s look at some of the balance defining mechanics of Lorcana.
- Ink Availability per turn & Ink Costs [1]
- Exertion Costs and related drying conditions [2]
- Counterplay via Exertion [3]
- Resource exchange limitations (cost to draw cards, cost to gain additional actions such as a second ink for turn, consuming a card from hand to ‘ink’) [4]
- Once-Per-Turn restrictions on certain effects [5]
- Strength and Willpower [6]
- Damage is persistent [7]
It’s also important to note some mechanics not present in Lorcana, which cards are also balanced around;
- No instant speed interactions & removal
- No ability to ‘counter’ a card before it enters play
Generally effects, regardless of how strong, are balanced around one or more of these mechanics or the absence thereof.
Large amounts of questing power is often balanced by reduced strength and willpower [6], the exert cost meaning exert can’t be used to pay for other actions like singing or challenging [2], drying meaning the effect can’t be obtained immediately [2] (giving the opponent a chance to react without ‘instant speed’ cards) and arguably most importantly: the exert cost meaning that it becomes vulnerable to counterplay on the following turn [3].
Similarly expensive cards with powerful effects are balanced around the resource transformation mechanics of inking once per turn to unlock the ability to play them [1] and the cost of spending cards with otherwise useful effects to become ink or the ability to spend more cards for ink [4].
I propose that almost all problematic cards within Lorcana (be it balance problems, ‘unfun’ design or overly centralizing gameplay patterns) violate several of these balance mechanics at once.
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Further to that, they meet these major criteria;
- The card violates drying and exertion cost mechanics [2] by not needing to dry before a non-ETBᙾ ability comes into effect
- The card violates balancing that comes from introducing counterplay via exertion [3] by not needing to exert to gain it’s effect again or is otherwise difficult to interact with
ᙾETB or ‘Enter/Exit The Battlefield’ effects are often also known as on-play effects. These effects have pre-conditions triggered by the card entering play, such as ‘When you play this card, xxxx happens’ or ‘When this card enters or leaves play’.
Plus additionally one of these minor criteria;
- The card violates Ink cost restrictions [1] by situationally having no Ink cost, or grants the same to another card
- The card violates resource exchange restrictions [4] as it is free (or almost free) to exchange resources so
- The card is not constrained by a once-per-turn effect or it is straightforward to circumvent the restriction [5]
- The card violates the concept of damage persistence [7] as the concept of challenging a character building up persistent damage can no longer reasonably be considered to be applicable while this card is in play
Let us examine Lorcana’s most contentious cards through the lense of this mechanical litmus test.
Feels problematic — meets the criteria
Bucky is the only card so far in Lorcana’s history to have received an errata and passes our litmus test with ease; with the effect being active the moment it’s played, repeatable without exertion and the card being warded — satisfying both major criteria and a minor criteria.
Hiram, Pawpsicle and Fortisphere are the only cards to have been banned or seriously considered for a ban. While they violate several of our criteria (2, 3 and 4) there is a little room for argument there, which I feel lines up with them being very strong but not actually insufferable to play against. However them earning some of Lorcana’s only bans while meeting our criteria is pretty convincing.
Diablo3. oh boy. while this card did need to exert, that effectively never mattered in it’s play pattern and happily violated 2 and 3 on the spot, before going on to violate 1 with it’s shift cost, 4 with how it’s singing and discard mechanic played out, and violated 5 by drawing as often as you liked. The only rule this card didn’t seem to break was 7. No wonder I was glad to see it gone.
Prince John was diablo’s best buddy, violating 2, 3 & 5 and with the discard mechanic arguably violated 4 as well.
The Muses also meets criteria 2, 3 & 5 as they gave instant access to their ability while being very difficult to interact with — I’m seeing a pattern with the cards in the Emerald/Steel Diablo Discard list.
Cheshire Cat is another card that is extremely potent the moment it hits the board and can just sit upright (2,3). While it isn’t trivial to trigger it’s effect twice in one turn, it’s certainly doable within a normal line of play in a meta deck list and is the first card on our list to violate 7 — putting it into problematic territory.
Angel is steel’s new poster girl and tears through our list. Usable the turn it’s played (2), doesn’t need to exert and often has resist two (3) and then turns every card in your hand into a zero-cost fire the cannons (1, 4).
Feels fine —but meets the criteria
Willow is certainly a strong card, violating 1,2 and 3 which should put it onto my problematic cards list yet it doesn’t quite feel like it belongs there just yet — perhaps there is an additional criteria the other cards on this list meet that Willow doesn’t?
Dumbo sits in an interesting position, where it can avoid exerting and come into effect the turn it’s played (2,3) but that comes at a cost of having another evasive card and exerting it instead. It also enables fairly cheap resource exchange (exert and ink for cards) with a limited once-per-turn-per-character restriction. Given all these caveats to it meeting the criteria and it even being taken out of some amethyst lists, I feel like we’re still in a good place with our litmus test.
Maui Shark also sits in an interesting spot, the lore gain ability is a key part of it’s power budget which meets criteria 2,3 and 5 however the card recursion doesn’t meet 2, stumbles on 3 and the challenging requirement makes meeting criteria 5 questionable.
Potentially Problematic — but doesn’t meet the criteria
Belle3 actually does not violate too many rules (1 and arguably 4) but was a somewhat format warping card and likely contributed to Pawpsicle being banned.
Sisu doesn’t meet our instant optional value criteria (2) but can be difficult to interact with due to being a one-sided board wipe (3) and I couldn’t find an applicable minor criteria, so despite being very strong I feel like it sits outside our problematic definition.
Mim Elephant is strong and it’s effect doesn’t strictly need it to exert, but without meeting major criteria (2) I’m happy with leaving it in this spot.
All in all, these criteria seem to paint a pretty accurate picture of if a card is likely to be problematic in terms of design, capturing problematic cards of the past in the net without including many ‘fine’ cards. There’s certainly room to refine this litmus test though as there are some grey areas with actions and songs not being able to meet the criteria outright.
Expect a follow up exploration of the upcoming set to put these concepts to the test and perhaps even find some overlooked powerful cards.
