Join Tyler Stevens and the Elder Team for the next article previewing some exciting new details about the upcoming Israel’s Rebellion set!
I hope you all enjoyed the first article in this series, A Peek Behind the Curtain – Israel’s Rebellion, A Playtester’s Perspective – Part 1 – Land of Redemption. The next portion of this series will be even more behind the scenes, and you will hear from each member of the elder team!
We have 7 members on the elder team: Gabe Isbell, John Earley, Marcus Parker, Roy Cruz, Chris Fachman, Joe Schaefer, and myself; Tyler Stevens. I wanted to share with the community how the elder team is actively trying to make the game more accessible to players. We do this in many ways, but this article will be about the new set, Israel’s Rebellion, and will focus on how the elders are designing cards with you in mind!
So how do we accomplish making the game more accessible to players through card design? Well, we are looking at numerous aspects of the game with the majority of players in mind. I came up with 6 areas to discuss and asked each elder to take on one area and give their opinion and a card that represents that area. The 6 areas I asked about are simplicity vs complexity, limiting how much abilities we add to a card (this usually deals with power creep and how a card can slowly get tweaked over the course of months to turn into a crazy strong card), thematic Dominants, a new direction on territory class for both characters and Enhancements, why cards have certain identifiers but not necessarily a brigade that matches their identifier, and trying to take a balanced approach on cards instead of making too many one-sided effects. I believe that’s 6 areas, one for each elder, and then I can speak about the overall set a bit and give my thoughts as well! There are some AMAZING cards spoiled in this article, so sit back, enjoy the reading and make sure to thank the playtesters and elders involved!
Gabe Isbell (Simplicity vs Complexity)
Now, more than ever, we are trying to be conscious of making cards more complex than they need to be in order to function well. We want the game to be accessible to new players. One way we can help with that is to make cards simpler to understand.
Some people hear “simpler” and they instantly think “boring”. But simple doesn’t have to be boring. I’ll demonstrate an example today by sharing the development of an Israel’s Rebellion card with you.
There are all kinds of reasons a card can be complex. I picked the card Twenty Shekels because over the course of development it has several examples of ways it was more complicated than it needed to be.
This is what Twenty Shekels looked like after the cards were refined and released for “version 1” of our set list.
That has a lot going on! Let’s break it down:
1) A powerful restrict ability with a limited scope. This uses 2 keywords – restrict and exchange.
2) A built in cost (self-reserve) with a benefit (reveal a hand). That has two more keywords – reserve and reveal.
3) Then it acts on the previous benefit by giving you one of two choices. That has two more keywords – play or draw. Both of those require a bit of thought to make the choice and apply it correctly.
4) Add to all of that there is a limit and an additional condition that you have to go to the identifier line to understand.
Overall that’s a rather complicated card to work through, especially if you don’t have a PHD in Redemption terms! We did some refining and came up with this for “version 2” of our set list.
Here we see a few big steps towards a less complicated card! How about we take a step-by-step look:
1) The limited restrict is gone. In its place is a cost-based bounce ability. We’ve gone from two keywords to 1. The cost is pretty limiting but the bounce is broader than what we normally give an Artifact.
2) The built-in cost and benefit stayed the same. We still have 2 keywords there.
3) The action you take a result of that benefit is now static instead of a choice. That allowed us to remove a keyword, a limit and an identifier that was required to understand the ability. This area took the largest step towards simplicity and is now down to just 1 keyword.
Overall those are quite a few good steps in the right direction! But there was still more we could do to improve this card. Here’s where we landed for “version 3” of our set list.
The changes this round are much smaller than on previous versions. Lets break them down like we did before:
1) There’s obviously a card called Joseph’s House that probably has something to do with “sons of Jacob”. But what does that have to do with Joseph being sold into slavery (the Twenty Shekels story)? There isn’t a thematic tie and that was a steep cost to make this Artifact work. Well, it’s gone now.
2) Thus far we’ve chosen to limit most Artifact bounce to humans. We even like to limit cards to work with the specific testament era that’s associated with their story. That frees up design space for other cards in the future. With the loss of the cost, the targets for the bounce were refined a little too.
3) The cost, benefit and resulting ability all stayed the same this round.
Overall, Twenty Shekels is a much more refined card. It now has two abilities that aren’t too complicated to understand once you know some Redemption keywords. But maybe there’s a little more that we can do to refine it. This is what we ended up with in “version 4” of Israel’s Rebellion.
There was only one small change this round. The cost of reserving itself was deemed unnecessary and removed. The end result is a very powerful Artifact that will net you two strong abilities – a bounce and a hand reveal! What strategic reasons might you want to play a character after the hand reveal? Since that’s a forced ability will it backfire? I guess we will have to wait to see more of what the sons of Jacob are doing to understand completely!
Most of the cards in Israel’s Rebellion went through a similar process to help keep them simple, playable and impactful. The end product is a set that will be exciting for seasoned Redemption players and accessible for new players who want to step beyond the Israel’s Deliverance starter decks.
Roy Cruz/Tyler Stevens (Thematic Dominants)
For this portion of the article, Roy and I tackle thematic Dominants. I have heard a lot of excitement of Dominants being more thematic which makes them a little more difficult, or flat out less effective, when splashed into decks with other offenses. Roy and I chose Out of Their Hands to represent a Dominant that is thematic, strong, and will require some deck building and a certain theme to be in your deck if you want to use this Dominant.
Out of Their Hands is yet another Dominant with a focus on only being useful with the Sons of Jacob theme. We want to make Dominants a little more difficult to splash into a deck which enables deck diversity and allows players to focus on a theme, rather than just splash the strongest card type in the game and have all their Dominants work, regardless of their deck construction.
Out of Their Hands should remind you of another Dominant from years ago, but in a different alignment. This card easily could have been, “Look at opponent’s hand: Underdeck an evil card.” which would be insanely strong! This card can still be used in any offense, as all it takes is a rescuing Son of Jacob, but we wanted to at least make people work for this Dominant. Can you imagine a rescue with Jeremiah, and you play this card! You can even play The First Sacrifice, then this card and Jeremiah and good luck if you are the opponent and trying to block! Having a Son of Jacob rescuing ties this card to the theme scripturally, and thematically. The title is perfect for the ability too, which I love! Gabe found some awesome art as well and this card really came together quite nicely. A little tidbit of information for this card; Gabe and I each picked the same scripture and title for this card. The artwork, title, power level, and thematic standpoint really reinforce what Sons of Jacob are doing while providing a thematic and awesome Dominant!
Marcus Parker (Identifiers compared to their brigades)
The design team has been using a card’s identifiers and/or reference to help assign it brigades for more than a decade. As the list of identifiers grows, some cards qualify for more and more, making it harder to create a version of that card that makes use of all of its identifiers. This often leads to different versions of cards focusing on difference aspects, and getting brigades based on those focus aspects/identifiers, rather than all brigades for which they might qualify. Some notable examples of this include the Prophecies of Christ versions of David, Moses and Aaron – each represented one specific office from Scripture (David the king, Moses the prophet, and Aaron the priest) and thus only got that brigade for that print. Aaron gets a similar treatment in Israel’s Rebellion, focusing on the priest (now clay) and wilderness (white) aspects, and not having green brigade.
John Earley/Tyler Stevens (Limiting complexity, being honest with power creep)
I have heard this question time and time again (and I understand why), but the question is, “How could you guys miss this!?” The context of this question is usually in reference to a powerful card coming out that simply does too much, is too strong, or just has way too much going on. Our card will be will be using for this topic is Mount Sinai, a personal favorite of Tyler’s, which is probably why it’s being talked about! You will be able to see each version of Mount Sinai from beginning to end and you will see subtle changes to how strong this card became, and how it was reigned back when identified. For this portion of the article, I only had the special ability of the original versions, so you will have to read each special ability and the final version has the graphic, sorry! Let’s look at version 1, shall we?
Mount Sinai (v1.0)
SPECIAL ABILITY: If put in play, you may take an O.T. Artifact from deck. Each upkeep, you may look at the top 3 cards of an opponent’s deck: Topdeck them in any order.
The first version is pretty simple at first take. You get to take an O.T. Artifact from deck, which is a nod to Moses going up on Mount Sinai and receiving The Ten Commandments from God. Each upkeep, you get to look at the top 3 cards of opponent’s deck and topdeck them in any order. Pretty cool ability if you have some sort of deck discard, but nothing overly broken. This card fell a little short in playtesting though and it seemed the best part of the card was simply taking an O.T. Artifact when you Mount Sinai was put in play. If the opponent’s deck was protected, there was really nothing this card was doing, and that didn’t seem right for such an important card in the set. So, Tyler decided to pump it up a notch. Let’s see what he came up with.
Mount Sinai v2.0
IDENTIFIERS: Unity: Heroes (Wilderness), X = # of your wilderness Characters
SPECIAL ABILITY: If put in play, you may take an O.T. Artifact from deck. Each upkeep, you may reveal the top X cards of a deck: Take up to 1 good card you own, or reserve an evil card.
Tyler got a little crazy with this version. The top 3 of opponent’s deck just was not functioning well in playtesting, so we opened up the card a bit…ok we opened up the card a lot. To stay thematic and strong, this card gained an identifier of wilderness Characters (both Heroes and Evil Characters because Mount Sinai was a crucial focal point of all people in the wilderness), and you can look at the top X cards of a deck. Unity was put on the card because of being put into play and taking an O.T. Artifact was very good (good catch Joe!). Not only did this card go from 3 to X, it’s also went from opponent’s deck to any deck. But wait, there’s more! You can now take a good card you own or reserve an evil card from the revealed cards of either deck as well. This card can still grab an O.T. Artifact when put in play as well. At least the card is thematic, right? You can easily have 10 or more wilderness Characters down fairly quickly and you can look at their top 10 (for this example) and reserve any evil card. That is way too much! Let’s see what the team did to reign this back for the next version.
Mount Sinai v3.0
If put in play, take a wilderness Hero from deck. Each upkeep, you may look at the top 3 (or 5 if Moses is in play) cards of a deck: Reserve an evil card or take up to 1 good card you own.
Hmmm, we went from taking an O.T. Artifact to a Fortress being able to take a wilderness Hero? Not sure if that’s the right approach or change, but let’s discuss! This card lost the X identifier (thank goodness!), but now gained a thematic increase for having Moses in play. Not only does this card get a thematic tie in, but the X was way too strong! Now the increase goes from a 3 to a 5, which is much more manageable. The thing is, this card comes into play and can immediately get Moses, so the next turn you get to look at the top 5 cards of any deck, and either reserve an evil card, or take a good card you own. That’s not exactly a step in the right direction. We need to get to a healthy version that maintains the theme, has a strong power level, and does not immediately meet its own requirement. Remember, Israel’s Deliverance also has a fortress referencing the wilderness that puts an Exodus Hero in play, so we now had two Fortresses in the same theme that played Heroes, which was a main factor for this Fortress getting a slight tweak.
Mount Sinai Final version
I know, we lost the grabbing a Hero which is no fun, but with Mount Sinai grabbing a Hero in the original version and Wilderness in Sinai in Israel’s Deliverance grabbing an Exodus Hero, that theme quickly had Heroes and the two Fortresses didn’t feel unique. Tyler was a huge fan of the thematic tie in with Moses. We maintained all aspects of the card, it’s thematic, it’s strong, it’s versatile, and looks awesome! We went from a Fortress being able to grab an O.T. Artifact, then grabbing a type of Hero, having Unity, having an identifier with X, and simply doing too much overall. We now have, what we feel, is a flexible card that will work great in the wilderness theme!
Joe Schaefer (A Balanced Approach)
With the set Israel’s Rebellion there was intentional effort to take our observations and feedback on card balancing to guide us in the design process. One notable card that illustrates this process is an old favorite with Rain becomes dust:
Here is one of the early versions. If you look at the artifact side, it highlights one of the recurring issues with some of our more modern cards; that being one sided or “unbalanced” cards. We have seen more and more an abundance of cards that hurt the opponent but not the controller. Some great examples would be cards like Enosh, Obed, and Achim the original negate neutral characters and even cards like Lazarus. All of these cards only punish the opponent with no downsides for the player using them. For powerful effects like these the imbalance that they create is often responsible for NPE or negative play experience. While players like to have powerful, fun, and creative things to do, having powerful cards that only punish the opponent is something we are working to move away from for the most part in favor of a more balanced approach. So, let’s take a look what Rain Becomes Dust looks like now.
Taking a look at the card now there are 2 major changes you’ll notice. The first being that this version uses “a player” instead of “an opponent” and secondly this version mentions “because of an ability they control”. Rather than only punishing the opponent the card now will affect both players meaning more strategy will have to be used to fully utilize this card. Also, as a bit of a safety measure we added “because of an ability they control” to eliminate some problematic interactions that would also be unbalanced.
Overall, this card is still VERY powerful and does great justice to what the ever-popular previous version did while at the same time illustrating some of the ways that we are moving to make the game more balanced in the future.
Chris Fachman (A New Territory Class Approach)
Territory class has been a great addition to this game and has brought a lot of new ideas and dimensions to Redemption. Being able to activate useful abilities without having to be within battle creates a lot of strategies and ways to set up battles or territories better. This has also allowed a lot of great cards to be used in many different decks. Cards like Delivered have been included in as many decks as possible, which also meant characters of matching brigades were put in decks to basically only be able to play it. I use the example of Delivered because it is also a card that shows some of the issues with territory class cards. There are some territory cards that are so strong they are splashed into every deck and can create many NPE (negative player experience) moments. Territory class characters in particular have become very strong and splashable. There are several characters that negate a lot of things and can easily be splashed into many decks to completely stop their opponent from being able to do much of anything. Cards that negate all neutrals in particular are very strong as most Lost Souls and Artifacts have strong abilities that help create resources for that player. So, a player having those things shut down can be a huge detriment to the player who doesn’t get to use them.
This is why changes have been discussed and ultimately been made. The beginning of this was moving to the one territory class enhancement per turn rule. This helped limit the strength of these cards and has slowed down all the consistency that was available that created those game states that frustrated people and “didn’t allow them to play their own cards.” The second change that has been made has been the decision to step away from the ultimate consistency that has previously been available. Old school cards like A Soldier’s Prayer and Consider the Lilies not only got you a resource but were able to be retrieved again later in the game to be used over and over. So, territory class cards are not going to recycle themselves for an immediate return. Cards that fetch another card are either going to be very limited or delayed. Cards that used to take a card, might just topdeck now, or if it is a very limited search card maybe it will directly take it, but the broad “fetch a card” enhancement is not something that is considered “healthy” for the game. The last thing to be addressed are the characters. While characters like Cloud of Witnesses Moses are very strong, he at least “hurts” both players equally. Cards like Jesse and Obed are one sided and only hit the opponent. So, territory class characters that prevent or negate the opponent’s cards will be very few and far between and require more to pull off. Some of these characters will have unity, or the requirements to negate will be even harder to achieve. More than likely, they will actually hit both players equally. It is hard to create a NPE state when it hits everyone equally or it is harder to achieve.
The goal is to make territory class more equal and less consistent. While we are not opposed to having decks be consistent or even very strong, we want it to be a very intentional build and need the “correct” draw. Territory class has evolved from being fun, to being consistency pieces, to being abused to create an abusive game state. So, we are getting back to the basics. Fun and to a smaller degree, consistency (but not “pure” consistency), will be the focus from here on.
Tyler Stevens
I really hope you enjoyed reading this article! A little teaser of what’s in the third and final article in this series will be where the themes and timelines came from for this set and what their strategies and functions are, and why and how I came up with them! I added a good bit to this article and I think roughly 3,600 words is a pretty good length, right? I mean, do you all really need to hear more insight into the set and see another card? I doubt you want that. I don’t know, maybe I could share a personal favorite from a mini theme I incorporated. I’ll do a little dive into this mini theme next month, but I did want to share this. This design concept takes into account a lot of the aspects this article is about. I have had a lot of learning and developing to do during my time designing Israel’s Rebellion. One key area for me was learning how to make a card that is balanced, fun, thematic, strong, and simple while not being boring. That is a lot of areas to try and tackle for each card! One card that really represents this mindset is Unclean until Evening. This card has strong numbers for the ability, it gives the animal theme a very strong card, and if your animals are splashed in with some humans, it’s still good. The card is relatively simple, yet very strong, especially when played with the right theme!
Ok, that’s enough spoiling you all! Thank you all for reading this and I can’t wait to see everyone at Nationals this year!
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