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The best way to go about this is have the having the implications of your decisions being non-obvious and far reaching as possible. And the best way to do that is to create a game where you yourself as the designer have no fucking clue how to play it. Follow strong design principals and don't...

That's not a product of perfect imbalance. That very same pattern happens in the exploration of basically any game of substance, including abstract strategy games that are symmetrical and have no hidden or random factors. The cause of this isn't some designed imbalance, it is opaqueness and...

I'd say that what you term exceptions are in truly great games and whether that comes about by a fluke or not it is what game design should aspire towards. Over time I've played many forgettable games and have grown less and less patient with the mediocre, I'm really not feeling the idea of...

Yeah, balance patches are a huge part about what keeps the meta moving in a lot of games and why using League of Legends as proof of concept of "perfect imbalance" is so ridiculous. A better description of the concept is something along the lines of: "Don't worry if your game is balanced...

Because I hate that video.

Again, there are thousands of games and game variants out there. If you solved the meta of ONE variant of ONE game you can just play one of the many, many other options. Constantly changing a specific game to keep people playing it is important to game producers who want to keep an income...

I see that as a failure. I want my product to stand up to repeated plays. I don't want to change it. Every time I change a card it is because I, as the designer, fucked it up. If I could plug my design goals into a machine that would remove human error and give me my ideal cube that I would...

No. They are based on a sound principal inherent to gameflow, but because Magic uses specific cards that interact in specific ways with each other these relationships mutate wildly. I think moving towards this is ideal. I also thinks its impossible. Further, I think that moving in this...

1) I think a well designed cube draft has enough moving parts that having total knowledge of "correct play" requires more mastery then one will acquire in their lifetime, so it is irrelevant. 2) I don't think avoiding solved metas is difficult. If you want to avoid a solved meta you have 100s of...

Things are always weird in the beginning of learning of complex game and doesn't necessarily reflect how great the design is. If your game is rock-paper-scissors at an early stage of learning the game, its not desirable, but it might be fine because players will get better and get past it. If...

1) Is a constantly changing meta desirable? I play games for their specific quality. I usually don't want them to be constantly changing. My constant tinkering with my cube design is not to "keep the meta fresh", but rather to improve the gameplay of the cube. My theoretical end goal is to...

We tried an experimental new version of the ULD with my friends cube. We did a Westchester draft, but included an extra "side" row that always got lands and wiped clean every 4 rounds. It might need some tuning, but the idea seems good. It's completely incompatible with booster drafts, but if...

Every game will have a "feeling things out" period where strategies arise to beat other strategies which are in turn defeated by other strategies, but none of that is predicated on "perfect imbalance" as a design goal. A lack of system knowledge handles that just fine. As knowledge mastery is...

It doesn't address the reality of the situation. The meta-shifts as described in the video are rarely cyclical without outside intervention, cyclical design creates very frustrating situations for players and most well designed games would be significantly less interesting if they had cyclical...

I like this part and think it is 100% true: However, I hate that video and think the creator is dead wrong about a lot of the ideas in it. I think those ideas poorly translate to cube design.

God, if you don't love Weatherlight you aren't even human. My friends and I are doing a Bring Your Own Boosters draft in the upcoming weeks and I have my sealed Weatherlight booster ready to go.

I think people are underestimating exactly what gaining 15 life means. Like Rasmus said, that's a whole lot of time you are buying. If your deck's card quality is better then your opponents, you probably can't lose are resolving it if they don't have a lethal engine on the table. Lots of...

I've gotten really spoiled by the game quality from my list. I played with a friends list and more then half my games were midrange grinds with few interesting decisions. But I had recurring nightmare, so eventually I drew it and won.

I don't know how well supported it is in this cube, but I've won a ton of games on the back of armadillo cloak. The shock and ground assault in the pack leads me to believe the removal quality is in the right place for aura decks to shine, so I'd just go with that and see where it takes me.

A rotisserie draft where the person who picks first in the first round picks last in the second round and vice versa.