Bad Ban, No Donut

Multi-Mission Gear was banned this week, as a result of the oppressive effect of the Daring Escape combo deck.

They explain it all here.

What they got right: not banning Daring Escape. Going into depth about what their thought process was.

What they got wrong: the card they banned and the reason for it.

The Specialist Combo deck (one I have a version of and love) works by gradually creating an overwhelming advantage of resources over your opponent.You always have options and you can chain together multiple actions/upgrades for free, in order to slowly overwhelm your opponent.

And this happens for two reasons: 1) You get stuff for free and 2) There's nothing your opponent can do to stop it. The resources that players have to impact their opponent's actions is limited to sideboard cards at best or "well timed" (read: lucky) actions. That's not a bad thing, as I believe that getting to take your turn largely unimpeded is a strength of this game, the downside is that it does little to mitigate the two strengths of a specialists deck. That strength is not an issue so long as it takes time to get to where it's going.

The first point is why the deck is powerful but the second point is why combo decks that have alternative win conditions are and will always, inevitably, be broken. Maybe not at first, but eventually, someone will figure it out, because the opponent has a limited ability to shape what I do on a turn and nobody's cutting the fuel line. 

So long as Upgrades work the way they do, triggering whenever they re-equipped, this will be an issue. It's why they banned Swap Parts: it allowed for so many re-triggers it locked people out of the game so early (sometimes by turn 2!), which meant that aggressive decks didn't have a chance and control never got to step in.

At the time, I thought banning Swap Parts was bad and they should've banned I Still Function. I was wrong: Swap Parts was the thing that enabled the gamebreaking actions by fueling too many triggers, making the deck incredibly consistent. It was too much, too quickly.

So I understand not wanting to ban Sergeant Cog or Private Red Heat: they went for that effect that already and it didn't exactly work. But let's be clear: It worked just fine until an effect was given to the deck to quickly lock an opponent out of the game by turn two or three, in this case by just winning it outright, instead of taking infinite turns. 

I also get why they have decided to move to effects like Anticipation Engine instead. This will also work-until the cards come along to break it again, because of point #1: You get stuff for free.

Free is a very good price.

What this means to me is: as high as they are on alternative win conditions, they are going to need to be a lot more clever and a lot less "play this, you win", IF they want to keep combo as a deck style.

That's very different than Overwhelming Advantage, which can end the game but doesn't outright win it, since there are multiple scenarios where one might get that card to work and the opponent will have a chance to take another turn.

That doesn't happen with Daring Escape, and if it was a slow deck, people wouldn't blink an eye at.

But here's the issue: combo decks, by default, have to be as fast as they can be, because they are trying to win on an axis that nobody else is prepared for, and that often means that they themselves aren't as equipped to deal the standard win method. If they don't rush to the endgame, they frequently cannot win at all. Keeping the speed that they race to that endgame in check is important. It needs to be potentially fast enough to work before an Aggro deck can beat them, but not so fast that a Control deck can't step in a monkeywrench the whole thing.

Heck, one of the designers of the problematic deck replied to me at Reddit that the card that was the problem was Equipment Enthusiast, because of the sheer number of cards that EE gets you: "double digits" was what they said. That card draw is no longer the incremental advantage of Specialist decks, that's a turbo boost. And card draw is the most powerful thing you can do in a game like this.

So, what to do?

Errata the Upgrade cards.
This is a bad idea, for reasons they go into in the article. Adding to this: having upgrades re-trigger is something they've said they want to happen. It's fun and makes the game more interesting. I worry that it will become necessary because so long as one can get something for nothing, then broken things are likely to happen. I've seen this play out in Magic for over twenty five years. For now, however, it's OK.

Ban the Specialist Engines. 
That would certainly do it for a time and it's clearly worked in this situation. The lessons they learned from the Specialist Upgrades have been beneficial but it's still likely that if it isn't one of the other two cards (Multi-Tool or Field Communicator), Anticipation Engine or Brainstorm will be cards players break, because free is a good price. However, it's not inevitable just highly likely. The other downside is that Specialists no longer have an "identity" in the game (Melee characters want to flip a LOT more cards, Ranged characters want to have 'passive' attacks/defenses outside of combat, Specialists now...do what?). That is a pretty big issue.

Slow everything down.
This would mean banning Equipment Enthusiast, at least in this instance, and keeping a tight hold on any effect that let you draw and keep more than two cards for a card played. It tracks, because the last time they had to ban a card from an oppressive deck, Equipment Enthusiast was in that one too.

Drawing cards without any penalty for doing so will inevitably break a card game like this because, I repeat: drawing cards is the most powerful thing you can do in a card game.

Stop making "I win" cards.
No more Daring Escapes. This is a tough one, because the additional design space makes for a more interesting game-but this is a design that I don't think the Transformers TCG is currently equipped to handle. Maybe it won't ever be, but I have trouble believing that.

However, we know they like doing these cards, plus there's going to be players who love alternative win conditions, too. Having a little something for everyone helps games like this thrive.

So: If they want to keep making alternate win conditions AND they don't want to errata cards AND they want to prevent future issues from happening, then what is their best option?

I think the best move is the 'slow everything down' one, honestly. It allows for the most decks, while having the smallest downside. The Specialist deck would still exist, have multiple iterations, but could be beaten. Cards work as they are read. Strange win conditions can continue to be made and maybe even pull out victories from time to time.

But keeping the speed of the game down to prevent combo (or really, any) decks from locking people out by turn two or three is critical and if they don't do that, we'll be looking at bans again.

Which is what bothers me: They went for the smallest option, and while that seems like a good thing, I know that the next problem is lurking right around the corner because they didn't rein in the strongest action you do in these games. Combo decks might be the most likely ones to break the game, but card draw is good for every style of deck, threatening the health of the game.

Their argument against banning Equipment Enthusiast-

If we introduced that constraint on something as ubiquitous and fundamental as card draw, that would prevent us from making dozens, if not hundreds of future cards.

-is terrible, because it suggests that we either have zero card draw or double digit card draw. Which is completely silly, since we already have card draw (Pep Talk, Testify, Pocket Processor), filter card draw (Incoming Transmission, Inspiring Leadership, Repurpose) and card draw + cards (Swindled, Confidence, Secret Dealings) in the game.

So it looks like their argument is that there is no middle ground between getting two cards with zero drawback and ten cards with zero drawback? I don't buy that and no one should: there are clearly ways to have card draw in this game that would give decks a reasonable chance without allowing people to draw and keep 1/4th of their entire deck. 

And I think they should've taken that path, to keep us from having to have this discussion again, when the next cool alternative win condition appears.