FFTCG Champions Format Part 2

The amount of backups and the amount of damage to lose were some of the first major changes we made. When it comes to backups we felt we needed to keep it as an odd number. fundamentally, backups help play cards that are oddly costed. Backups that cost 3 are often played off of one backup and a discard, cards that cost 7 are often played by discarding 2 cards and dulling three backups. so we wanted to keep the number odd. We thought about 9 backups, but that seemed a bit too high so we rested on 7. Damage was a similar debate. We considered 10 and while 10 isn't game breaking, 9 felt like the best choice. an extra 2 points of damage gives the game an extra couple turns of the game while allowing for interesting interactions with cards like Noctis Ultimecia and Cecil.

The tax was taken almost exactly from MTG. We tried with 1 and we found that the champions were played without consequence. When the card is not played from hand it's kinda like it costs two less. So if you play your champion 3 times, it costs the same as if you played it from hand 3 times. this makes the strong but not overpowered. Pushing the game to the limits, if you have 7 backups and your champion costs 11, you can still play the champion if you draw two backups that you don't want to play and have no other cards.

We designed the champion to return to the champion zone at the end phase because there are a lot the cards that reference this. Chaos walker of the wheel, zhuyu, Cid raines and Machina all do something when it is put in the break zone. Additionally, there are some pro active synergies that you could use with your champion. If you have some kind of recursion you could bring back your champion to your hand or to the field. When played from the hand your champion would cost the same their printed power and this gives more avenues to play your champion. Obviously, playing your champion over and over again was in fact our goal. So we settled on sending the champion to the champion Zone during the cleanup of the end phase. The weirdest interaction we have found was if the champion somehow ends up in the damage zone. As the way the rules were written when we played, the champion would leave the damage zone and return to the champion zone, effectively healing from a point of damage. We've had to add another rule that says that when a champion enters the damage zone, it goes to the champion zone and then you take a point of damage. Does this mean you can trigger two bursts off one point of damage? yep, but this scenario is so rare that you have to force it with ghido or leviathan. We didn't find it to be worthwhile.

The multiplayer rules were the hardest to get into place. There were two really big things that we thought about when it came to multiplayer. The first thing was discard and the second damage. With discard we had a couple issues. Does discard hit everyone? does discard only hit one person? We even considered discard only affecting the people to the left and right of you (2/3 opponents in a 4 player game). We found that many of the discard effects are balanced. We can showcase a lot of the ways discard works with Opus 7 Sephiroth. In standard, he cannot be played without discard a card for cp. Often times the player who plays him also discards two cards. if both players discards two cards sephiroth is simply a 3cp 8k body. Being slightly overstated is not by any means strong nor overpowered. if every player in a 4 player game discards 2 cards, a tempo 3 cp 8k body doesn't break the game. That being said, there are two other effects on that single card that do make him a problem card. His second effect is very powerful in standard, forcing unfair situations, but in champions he faces the challenge of multiple boards. In champions single target removal is less effective, but can still be useful. So that is where this effect lives. The third effect is another case. It is in fact a bit too strong. You can make all your opponents discard two cards by only discarding one card and dulling a single backup. This effect is very powerful. His third effect allows him to be a champion, but it also is an S ability. As I mentioned earlier with Locke, there are many Sephiroths in the game, but only 2 are particularly useful (as of Opus X). This means that if you want to use the shadow flare ability the deck has to be further diluted with cards named sephiroth with less useful impacts. In a singleton format, to make this card strong, the deck has be less useful. So when we look sephiroth as a whole, he is about as strong as he is in standard. There are argument for slightly above, and arguments for slightly below. Either way, He is not a problem card. We can apply a lot of the concepts found when analyzing this card to other discard cards and other global effects. On paper global effects seem too good. Effects like mill but in a singleton format, a dedicated mill deck isn't viable. While nerfing discard feels better, it doesn't serve a balanced game by hurting a mechanic that is core to a single element.

The other difficult portion was damage. This went through the most iterations out of any of our concepts. Damage is the thing that is least like MTG. This is for good reason. Final Fantasy has a lot incentives to attack. The Final Fantasy card game wants its players to play forwards out and have them fight each other. I like this idea. Sometimes, I feel like child smashing action figures together. In all my experiences of MTG that has not been the case. There has been a lot of non-interaction. There's been lots of stall until you have your game winning combo. Final Fantasy is not designed to work that way. There are no healing abilities and you can't simply wipe the board over and over again until you win. Even control decks have to interact with opponents. In commander the amount of life is doubled, this makes it so that aggro decks take an extra 2-3 turn to win the game. This gives control decks an extra 2-3 turns to stabilize and win the game. Final Fantasy doesn't have this issue (as much) the right board clear at the right time doesn't win you the game by shutting down the opponent's momentum. Board wipes cost more than just a card and 7 mana. They involve dealing several points of damage across 2-3 cards and 8 cp. In FF after a board wipe, the opponent has 1-2 forwards ready to play and draws only fuels them. You have to play forwards, you have to interact with your opponent. So the biggest question was how do we have this translate into multiplayer? We didn't want all the politics that went into MTG's commander format. We don't want to people to feel afraid of attack because they have to choose who to attack. So we decided that players did not take damage individually. With individual attacks, 27 points of damage to be dealt at a minimum to end a game, this can push a game to last a bit too long. With global damage, players can't team up to eliminate a single aggro player. Two control players who have stabilized at 8 points of damage must deal damage to each other if they want to defeat the aggro player at 6 points of damage. All this points to one concept- Play forwards, attack and interact. We had another idea when designing this part. We thought of inverted damage. We toyed with the idea that that unblocked forwards deal damage to their owner and deal 9 points of damage was a win condition. Yet this changed the game drastically, in ways we didn't original think of. We thought about a card like Opus 7 noctis. He is a very defensive card, promoting defensive strategies, especially at 5 points of damage. Yet, when your win condition is self damage, Noctis becomes an aggressive card. When he attacks he will always break something that is smaller, be by block or by damage. At higher points of damage he can swing and break multiple forwards. To be clear, that alone was not game-breaking. Aggressive noctis can still be played around. We didn't like the idea that noctis was no longer a defensive card. The identity of the card had changed and that's what we didn't like. We then looked at other cards and then we found some game breaking effects. EX Bahamut and fusoya become insanely powerful, (1-055C) Dark Knight becomes a game winning card. We considered changing all damage to be inverted and dealing a point of damage to each opponent. This changed the concept of an EX burst. The EX burst is a comeback mechanic that allows a defending player to recuperate. With inverted damage that no longer becomes the case. Cards like fusoya become really odd. Your opponent loses a forward but their burst gives them a card or break your forward. When you attack your forward triggers your own burst. It ceased to be a comeback mechanic and becomes an aggro tool. This lead us to our final conclusion. - All opponents take a point of damage, all opponents trigger their bursts.

The other thing we have trouble with isn't with the game itself but rather balancing our desires for the format. Sometimes we look at a card like the Legend Vivi and think to ourselves "if each opponent has 3 cards in hand, he shoots a forward for 13K!" and while we want to see the game pushed further and further with really cool interactions, we also feel the need to nerf these new mechanics so that it doesn't run away from us and become an unbalanced nightmare. We love the idea of viv shooting a forward for upwards of 19000 damage. We don't like the idea of sometimes counting your opponents' hand as a large collective hand. We don't have a way to break this off the top of our head but it reeks of game breaking potential that I shudder at the thought of trying to balance. If Vivi targets a forward, he counts that opponent's hand size. This makes Vivi, exactly as strong as in standard. It makes him fair, balanced, but unfortunately, it makes him boring. Sometimes we like these ideas. one of my personal favorite ideas came when Ynez came up to me and simply said "9th burst is the final meteor!" Confused, I asked her to elaborate and she explained that she wanted the ex burst of the final point of damage to resolve and give a losing player just a little bit more control on the outcome of the game. With this I thought "why not?!" and we ratified it as the final rule in the draft of the rules minutes before the first official m