Summary

Effective Date: Immediately, October 28th, 2024
Next B&R: November 25th, 2024

Summary: Three Visits is receiving an errata. Baby Gray Slime is also being added to Category 2. Proxia's Vault gets a new addition: Nullifying Mirror. Proxia's Vault policy update regarding the duration of proxy eligibility.

The Watchlist only contains cards that were either previously legal in the Standard format or are currently legal for Standard.

See the entire list of banned cards here.

Errata

The errata to Three Visits now requires that resting is an additional cost to activate the card. This was the original intended rules text of Three Visits, but we attempted to omit this text in favor of better aesthetics within the text box and not cluttered with so much card text. This iteration did receive testing, although (admittedly) not enough, and the current iteration of the card we've decided is unhealthy if left alone, such as with repeatable triggers of cards such as Razorgale Calling.

Why is the fix to make an errata to Three Visits?

Making an errata to cards is against our principles for clean game design. However, we knew we had to deal with the strength of Razorgale Calling and Three Visits synergy, and we came up with three options that each had its downside:

1. Make an errata to Three Visits. The downside is that game clarity is reduced and affects the product experience slightly. For example, an excited player could open Three Visits from a pack, start playing with it, and find out it works slightly differently than written.
2. Ban Three Visits. The downside is that it heavily hurts the product experience. For example, an excited player opens Three Visits from a pack, starts playing with it, and finds out that the most exciting card that they pulled from their box is banned and unusable.
3. Ban Razorgale Calling. The downside is that we are confirming the current version of Three Visits is fine, which limits design space for "activating X element cards" strategies in the future. Banning Razorgale Calling would also completely kill a whole new wind element archetype, that would still be possible with or without Three Visits.

At the end of the day, we had to pick what we felt was the least of the three evils. We are prioritizing product experience, and option 2 drastically hurts it too much, so this option was ruled out. When considering options 1 and 3, we must consider: Which card would we more likely design again in the future? Razorgale Calling or Three Visits? Would we design a card that cares about wind element activations again before we design a card that lets you activate itself three times with 0 cost? From this, the answer is clear that we would rather have designs more similar to Razorgale Calling be left open, ruling out option 3. So we picked option 1, to make an errata Three Visits. Although the overall decision to make an errata is against our design principles, ensuring players are happy sits at the top of our minds when making tough choices and we believe this decision was the best solution.

Proxia's Vault

Introducing Nullifying Mirror! This card is being temporarily added to Proxia's Vault; it is a card that will appear in the upcoming set, HVN, and once released in that set, it will be removed from Proxia's Vault. This card will allow decks to have more ways to interact with memory related mechanics.

Ruling Notes

1. You cannot respond to a player activating a card and paying its reserve cost revealed due to imbue. However, if Nullifying Mirror's ability has already resolved earlier in the turn, it will stop non-norm cards from becoming imbued.
2. Cards added to the target opponent's memory after Nullifying Mirror's ability has resolved are also affected by it.

About Proxia's Vault

As a reminder, Proxia's Vault is a new way we're addressing specific meta issues by releasing cards that players are allowed to proxy, even for use in competitive events. Proxia's Vault is being updated to allow cards to be proxied indefinitely as long as the card is in Proxia's Vault. The policy guide will be updated accordingly. Read about the Proxia's Vault policy here:

Watchlist

Category 3

This category will contain all cards that are banned and restricted, proving to be too powerful or too impactful and limiting tournament deck diversity and meta health. Currently, Sword of Avarice, Reckless Conversion, Crystal of Empowerment, Corhazi Outlook, and Erupting Rhapsody are banned.

Category 2

This category contains cards that we consider very problematic and are heavily watched for potential future legality changes and category shifts. This category currently has two cards.

The addition of Baby Gray Slime has come after reevaluating the card and its flexibility in deckbuilding. On its own, it has proven to not be restrictive enough in design, allowing too many decks to make use of the synergies with other slime cards that were not the intended recipient of this design.

Category 1

This category consists of cards that we don’t consider problematic in the current environment, but are unhealthy for future balance and game design space. This category currently has four cards.

That's all for this B&R update! The next update will be on November 25th, 2024 after the conclusion of Ascent Christchurch!