The strangest things to me about the whole Nadu business is the line "only triggers twice each turn". Obviously someone realized that spamming these triggers was problematic. So why did they give it such a half assed limitation? Why wasn't it once each turn?
Yeah I caught that too when I first read the card: 'Oh they limited it to keep it from being broken' but any designer with any MTG experience would realize that the combo of being able to target your own things and each creature have 2 triggers would most likely be broken in a format as large as modern.
It's such a bizarre line of text on a version of a card that didn't get time for playtesting. There are a million cards in magic that trigger only once per turn, and there are a million cards in magic that trigger an unbound number of times. Why did we start at 2? If I didn't know from the article that feels like exactly the sort of tweak that would have been the result of playtesting, but its a really bizarre starting point in the dark.
I think they just missed that the twice each turn was on the creature's newly gained ability and not on Nadu itself. They intended to put it behind the quotation marks, I would guess.
Power level aside, “Twice per turn” in generally is just a really awkward line of text to put on a card, and led to tracking issues with Nadu. People already forget which permanents have triggered in a turn, now you have to remember how many times for each one Just do once per turn or unlimited.
The worst thing about Nadu’s design timeline is that the bad interaction with shuko not only already existed, but has been a tiered legacy combo deck frequently over the last two decades. You don’t have to play a game with the card to realize that it’s got good combo potential and might not be safe to release without testing. The card is so similar to cephalid illusionist that I assumed it was an intentional port of that deck into modern. I’m worried that we are getting close to just seeing the same mistake as cards already on the modern ban list for future mh sets because designers have stopped learning from the past mistakes. EDIT: from MaRo’s blog today - “Us missing the interaction with a component of the game we consider broken and have stopped doing (0 cost activations), but still lives on in older formats is the cause.” Apparently they don’t consider the card pool of older formats like modern when designing cards for **checks notes** a product explicitly designed for that format.
If I recall correctly, unbound, zero-mana activated abilities are one of the design mistakes Wizards has said they are aware of and actively avoid making again. I''ll try to find the source of that, probably a maro blog post but maybe not. Either way, it's definitely a red flag like you say. For what it's worth, I interpreted the Nadu article to say that this entire last minute redesign process really was last-minute, so it's hard to tell if we're looking at evidence of past mistakes being forgotten, or if we're looking at evidence of the time-to-redesign simply being too short.
@@Hitzel I understand that it’s really last minute, I just think had anyone with a little more awareness that shuko combos existed saw the card, they wouldn’t have let the change happen as is. No card should be going so last minute that others can’t even proof read it even if you’re somehow not going to playtest it.
@@GeoQuag Yeah and that's scary either way because it means these things aren't getting considered, or it means the time to act really was that short. I don't think either of those possibilities are good lol.
Even if you’re just plugged in to Modern and don’t have Cephalid Breakfast at top of mind, there are at least 3 equipments that attach for 0 in Modern that I can think of just off the top of my head.
@@christopherlundgren1700 yeah, it’s not that hard to find the combo but you don’t even have to realize there’s a combo if you are aware of the problems that have already been printed
1. I didn't even consider the tapped vs untapped choice, because I was still flabbergasted that they didn't test the printed version, and the version they DID test with was still a 3/4 flyer for 3. Idc that it's a legend, everyone knows the difference between 3 and 4 toughness is gigantic, especially outside of Commander. 2. They might need a specific step focused on 0 mana interactions with new cards. There should probably be a specific job called "broken card tester", whose sole purpose is to think of ways to break new card designs and show it to the team. They don't help at all with initial designs and maybe even the first few revisions so that they have a fresh perspective. 3. Michael Majors mentioned a lack of time to test the updated Nadu, which is yet another sign that WOTC is simply making way too many new cards to be able to properly test them and is why they've had to ban so many cards in the past few years, and many would argue they should have banned even more cards. *cough* One Ring *cough*
Agree with Patrick, also more icing on the cake is that, you know you are designing one of the top 1-3 cards in the set. This is a card designed to shake up metas, and move packs. This isnt a common thats going to be decent and draft and you're changing scry 1 to loot, or 2/2 to 1/3, .. this is the set headliner.
It's funny. Everyone who sees Nadu says "it would be so much less broken if only ___." But everyone fills in the blank with something different. I've heard about six different answers to that.
The final design has so many knobs that tweaking any one of them can make it less powerful. Toughness, cmc, number of times per turn, putting the trigger on each creature, abilities and spells vs only one of those, whose spells/abilities trigger it, tapped vs untapped, land on battlefield vs in hand, put in hand vs draw, legendary, and probably something else I’m forgetting. The knobs are set in such a weird way that it looks like design/playtest time was put into it
Hearing that the final version of Nadu didn't get playtested reminded me of how, late in development of Darksteel, the +1/-1 was added onto Skullclamp and then not tested because a "worse" version of a card that seemingly wasn't problematic in testing was deemed to be good enough to release.
Classic MtG design: "here's a random little puzzle piece, here's another random little puzzle piece... oh hey, those two puzzle pieces work well together" Modern MtG design: "here's the completed puzzle, enjoy."
I think with the amount of money behind the game at this point, more hands and eyes need to get on cards in the development phase. Or maybe get teams to corroborate every few weeks to do a little bit of extra investigation. Seems like the health of the game should be worth the investment.
It's absolutely not fine for Commander, at all. Even if you run it in the 99, with any method of targeting your own creatures each turn (En-kor anything), you just accelerate beyond what the table can answer anymore.
@@nathanwiens108 TBH I wouldn’t know, I am not into commander, I mentioned it because this became clear from the article that was published along with the B&R announcement. Namely, it was last minute changed to the current (evidently problematic for modern, as Patrick mentioned) version because the previous iteration was deemed an issue for commander. If they failed even at that, can they do anything right?
i don't believe the story about how they "accidentally" pushed Nadu too much. It feels very deliberate to me and that they fully knew what they were doing. Its just another way to sell packs and you can't tell me that a company and team of the size of WotC, with the experience they have making the game, would do this accidentally
I dunno, product is being released at an astoundingly quick rate and it wouldn't be surprising to hear the playtest/design teams don't have enough time to properly test anymore
I've been in companies where there are "purposeful" problems. Execs cut down on a "cost" in QA and the only downside is more broken cards that push more packs? I can see the South Park BP guy "Oh, we're _so_ sorry."
The strangest things to me about the whole Nadu business is the line "only triggers twice each turn". Obviously someone realized that spamming these triggers was problematic. So why did they give it such a half assed limitation? Why wasn't it once each turn?
Yeah, I loved LSV's description of it as "the fakest line of text ever on a Magic card".
Yeah I caught that too when I first read the card: 'Oh they limited it to keep it from being broken' but any designer with any MTG experience would realize that the combo of being able to target your own things and each creature have 2 triggers would most likely be broken in a format as large as modern.
It's such a bizarre line of text on a version of a card that didn't get time for playtesting. There are a million cards in magic that trigger only once per turn, and there are a million cards in magic that trigger an unbound number of times. Why did we start at 2? If I didn't know from the article that feels like exactly the sort of tweak that would have been the result of playtesting, but its a really bizarre starting point in the dark.
I think they just missed that the twice each turn was on the creature's newly gained ability and not on Nadu itself. They intended to put it behind the quotation marks, I would guess.
Power level aside, “Twice per turn” in generally is just a really awkward line of text to put on a card, and led to tracking issues with Nadu. People already forget which permanents have triggered in a turn, now you have to remember how many times for each one
Just do once per turn or unlimited.
It's crazy how they released the current version without testing it. The ole Skullclamperoo.
The worst thing about Nadu’s design timeline is that the bad interaction with shuko not only already existed, but has been a tiered legacy combo deck frequently over the last two decades. You don’t have to play a game with the card to realize that it’s got good combo potential and might not be safe to release without testing.
The card is so similar to cephalid illusionist that I assumed it was an intentional port of that deck into modern.
I’m worried that we are getting close to just seeing the same mistake as cards already on the modern ban list for future mh sets because designers have stopped learning from the past mistakes.
EDIT: from MaRo’s blog today - “Us missing the interaction with a component of the game we consider broken and have stopped doing (0 cost activations), but still lives on in older formats is the cause.” Apparently they don’t consider the card pool of older formats like modern when designing cards for **checks notes** a product explicitly designed for that format.
If I recall correctly, unbound, zero-mana activated abilities are one of the design mistakes Wizards has said they are aware of and actively avoid making again. I''ll try to find the source of that, probably a maro blog post but maybe not. Either way, it's definitely a red flag like you say.
For what it's worth, I interpreted the Nadu article to say that this entire last minute redesign process really was last-minute, so it's hard to tell if we're looking at evidence of past mistakes being forgotten, or if we're looking at evidence of the time-to-redesign simply being too short.
@@Hitzel I understand that it’s really last minute, I just think had anyone with a little more awareness that shuko combos existed saw the card, they wouldn’t have let the change happen as is. No card should be going so last minute that others can’t even proof read it even if you’re somehow not going to playtest it.
@@GeoQuag Yeah and that's scary either way because it means these things aren't getting considered, or it means the time to act really was that short. I don't think either of those possibilities are good lol.
Even if you’re just plugged in to Modern and don’t have Cephalid Breakfast at top of mind, there are at least 3 equipments that attach for 0 in Modern that I can think of just off the top of my head.
@@christopherlundgren1700 yeah, it’s not that hard to find the combo but you don’t even have to realize there’s a combo if you are aware of the problems that have already been printed
1. I didn't even consider the tapped vs untapped choice, because I was still flabbergasted that they didn't test the printed version, and the version they DID test with was still a 3/4 flyer for 3. Idc that it's a legend, everyone knows the difference between 3 and 4 toughness is gigantic, especially outside of Commander.
2. They might need a specific step focused on 0 mana interactions with new cards. There should probably be a specific job called "broken card tester", whose sole purpose is to think of ways to break new card designs and show it to the team. They don't help at all with initial designs and maybe even the first few revisions so that they have a fresh perspective.
3. Michael Majors mentioned a lack of time to test the updated Nadu, which is yet another sign that WOTC is simply making way too many new cards to be able to properly test them and is why they've had to ban so many cards in the past few years, and many would argue they should have banned even more cards. *cough* One Ring *cough*
Agree with Patrick, also more icing on the cake is that, you know you are designing one of the top 1-3 cards in the set. This is a card designed to shake up metas, and move packs. This isnt a common thats going to be decent and draft and you're changing scry 1 to loot, or 2/2 to 1/3, .. this is the set headliner.
It's funny. Everyone who sees Nadu says "it would be so much less broken if only ___."
But everyone fills in the blank with something different. I've heard about six different answers to that.
The final design has so many knobs that tweaking any one of them can make it less powerful. Toughness, cmc, number of times per turn, putting the trigger on each creature, abilities and spells vs only one of those, whose spells/abilities trigger it, tapped vs untapped, land on battlefield vs in hand, put in hand vs draw, legendary, and probably something else I’m forgetting. The knobs are set in such a weird way that it looks like design/playtest time was put into it
Yup, well said.
Hearing that the final version of Nadu didn't get playtested reminded me of how, late in development of Darksteel, the +1/-1 was added onto Skullclamp and then not tested because a "worse" version of a card that seemingly wasn't problematic in testing was deemed to be good enough to release.
Always great insight.
this is the biggest embarrassment to the design team in years
My guess is it's a development team whiff, not design
Classic MtG design: "here's a random little puzzle piece, here's another random little puzzle piece... oh hey, those two puzzle pieces work well together"
Modern MtG design: "here's the completed puzzle, enjoy."
I think with the amount of money behind the game at this point, more hands and eyes need to get on cards in the development phase. Or maybe get teams to corroborate every few weeks to do a little bit of extra investigation. Seems like the health of the game should be worth the investment.
What didn't go wrong with Nadu?
Can you guys use vertical bar | instead of lowercase Ls as separators in your titles please
Well, at least it ended up being fine for commander. And that is the only concern at WotC these days.
I won't lie it's definitely made Simic fun again for me in cEDH lol
It's absolutely not fine for Commander, at all. Even if you run it in the 99, with any method of targeting your own creatures each turn (En-kor anything), you just accelerate beyond what the table can answer anymore.
@@nathanwiens108 TBH I wouldn’t know, I am not into commander, I mentioned it because this became clear from the article that was published along with the B&R announcement. Namely, it was last minute changed to the current (evidently problematic for modern, as Patrick mentioned) version because the previous iteration was deemed an issue for commander. If they failed even at that, can they do anything right?
i don't believe the story about how they "accidentally" pushed Nadu too much. It feels very deliberate to me and that they fully knew what they were doing. Its just another way to sell packs and you can't tell me that a company and team of the size of WotC, with the experience they have making the game, would do this accidentally
I dunno, product is being released at an astoundingly quick rate and it wouldn't be surprising to hear the playtest/design teams don't have enough time to properly test anymore
I've been in companies where there are "purposeful" problems. Execs cut down on a "cost" in QA and the only downside is more broken cards that push more packs? I can see the South Park BP guy "Oh, we're _so_ sorry."