Sabertooth Game Q&A

Sur le forum officiel, STG a révélé quelques informations sympathiques. Pour le moment en VO malheureusement

Q: Void is the best symbol in the game.

A: It is very true that Void in the initial release had very strong cards and was due to the characters we chose to put into the first set. Some of the characters had similar traits that manifested themselves in getting the void symbol. Each symbol has certain characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. The weakness will be hard to detect until there are more opposing cards of other symbols.

Also set I and II were created at the same time, so when cutting the set in half you would see the strength of void immediately but other symbols will start to shine.

There is also the carry over effect as new sets come out. People tend to try to strengthen their current decks before trying to make new ones. This has led to void continuing to be the base in which symbols are compared. Some groups are already noticing that Death and Evil carry some similar properties to Void and open up completely new powerful options.


Q: Some characters and cards are just better than others.


A: There can never be perfect balance in a game that is constantly adding new cards, rules, abilities every set! Many cards may never be tournament quality; some may change in value as more cards are released. Our goal then is to create cards that are fun and have interesting effects in the environment. Sometimes there will be a significant impact and other times there wont. Some cards that were thought to be ultra powerful and must haves will be proven to be ‘just good’ when more cards are released. For example “Power up” was a card that many thought was the end all of momentum gain, it is a very good card. However cards like “Hop” have shown that “Power up” was just one of many ways that we planned on gaining momentum.


Q: So all character cards will be the most powerful at some point?


A: No. Our goal is that like in football , anyone could win any given Sunday. Will there be some that don’t make the playoffs? Yes. Will there be some that may become dynasties? Yes. We generally aim for somewhere in the middle and see if the deck rises or falls over time.


Q: My deck “X” wins turn 2 every time! Don’t you guys playtest anything?


A: First off you deck doesn’t win everytime on turn 2. It just doesn’t. Can it and has it won on turn 2, sure. We do playtest cards and do look into abusing them in as many ways as possible. We have both internal and external playtesting that do a very good job. Do cards slip by in some unforeseen way? They do, and not only do we correct the situation in a timely manner we work hard to reduce mistakes in the future with what we learn. Play testing also doesn’t end after the set is printed. We constantly analyze your deck list as you give them to us, we take the very best and abusive of the lot and test them against a barrage of some awesome decks in the office. We have dozens so top quality decks that we test different aspects of submitted decks. Some submitted decks can lead to banning or errata and others lead to nothing, as we feel comfortable with how the deck performs vs. its peers.


Q: These cards are “broken” or too powerful, the next set better fix it.


A: Our lead times don’t allow us to respond to environment changes that quickly. Sets are created many months in advance so that not only do you get your product on time but also so we can design our card pool in larger blocks of cards. It may seem like on set corrects an imbalance from a previous set and often this is the case, but this is because it was designed like that in the first place. As always it is our job to keep the environment fresh and healthy, banning when needed. We don’t try to shape the environment around cards, making silver bullets and design changes to fix a particular card. This can be seen with the banning of turbo. There were several cards that reacted with badly in the current and future sets. Worse however, was the fact that is was starting to impact the types of cards we could make in future sets because turbo was in the environment.


Q: Card X is a problem and will always be problem.


A: For the short and medium term some cards may be hallmarks and power cards for a time but they will not be legal in our standard format forever. UFS will have 2 formats in the long term.

Standard format – This format will consist of the latest 2 blocks of cards. A block of cards is a years worth of releases. So for example when set 7 is released in 2008 it will represent the first set in the 3rd block, and the 1st block would then be retired.

Open format - will allow every printed card that is not banned or restricted to be played. This format will eventually have very brutal and powerful decks with no limits. So if you get on board early, your cards will always be good in this format.


Q: What things do you keep in mind when designing a card?


A: We can go into more detail in future Q&A’s but the essence of our card design is based on 3 factors.


1. Convey a theme or setting – This card may be a part of a series of cards that portray mechanic or them for a character. This is the coolness level of the card and where it fits into the texture of the other cards


2. Be interesting – Most cards have an ability beyond just speed, damage and control. We do this so that cards are always in some way different. It also avoids situations where one card is just better in all ways than another card.


3. Be useful – the immediate use may not be clear immediately or even in the timeframe of the current set in which the card is released, but the card should stimulate some thought on how it could be used.



Q: If we have more questions can we ask them?


A: Of course, Just bear in mind that we will be gone this week at GenCon so don’t expect too much posting until after the show. We hope to see you there where we will be holding impromptu Q&A’s all weekend and be previewing cards from the new organized play promotion pack.


Promo Cards


Promo cards will be accociated with a particular block. all the cards you have seen so far are block 1, when block 1 rotates out so will the promos.

There is one BIG exception. Character cards do not rotate out as normal. This allows us to keep characters in the enviornment that would normally drop out and that we do not have a replacement for.

Characters CAN been eventually removed however. Every so often we will run an event or events that could determine the fate of serveral versions of character cards. One event may have 10 cards that will be retired. The winner of the tournament will be able to pick which card to save from retirement! This injection of drama should make these special tournaments very interesting.


Divers

Citation :

StygianFan wrote:
May I ask 2 questions?

1) Are they any plans to release non-license specific promos i.e. Warrior's Heart?

2) Does the fact that so many of the SC characters are being released as promos <aside from the Sophitia/Siegfried BB, if I'm understanding correctly> mean that these chars won't ever get any of their signature moves and/or weapons?

Citation :

Jinxx de STG

1 yes there are 12 being printed with the october promos

2 no, it just means the SC are being previewed before thier release in sets down the line.