Balance patches always come with some contention, especially in the rare case where a card is drastically changed from its core design. Players want a balanced and fun core game, but also want stability in the cards they have purchased, and we understand that.
With the refresh in our design thinking for 2026, we are going to take a slightly different approach to balance than we have in the past. We will at all costs try to preserve the core vision behind a card, the functionality and themes the card is trying to convey, but be a little more aggressive with fine tuning the card to make it work in a way that both ensures balance and keeps the core intent of the card. No card exists in a vacuum, so often our balance passes are going to include considerations for how we wanted the card to interact with other cards, power level, meta interactions, and player desires. So let’s talk about the tenets of our new design and balance ethos.
Tenet One: Minimal nerfs, even fewer full redesigns
We will try to reserve pure nerfs for the most extreme cases. We will power down a card when it has proven to be an insurmountable challenge in maintaining a balanced meta, or when it has a fundamental flaw such as creating an inescapable loop in game. Even when we power these cards down, we will attempt to do so to the lowest extent possible to maintain the card's viability as well as its design intent.
Tenet Two: Lateral Changes
When the opportunity presents itself, instead of purely numerical changes, we may choose to slightly shift the way a card functions to balance it. These changes are generally not going to be purely better or worse than the previous version, just a slightly different approach to the same core idea. The idea here is to solve a power level issue but perhaps open up new avenues for play in doing so, maintaining the value of the card and its interactions.
By means of example, let’s say we printed a card with an afterlife that in and of itself was perfectly fine, but when combined with all the afterlife recursion Death has at its disposal it proved problematic. Instead of doing a full redesign of the card or just making its numerical values too restrictive for it to remain a problem, we may instead decide to use the new mechanic seen on a number of Deception cards, where a card obliterates itself when it is sent to the void for an effect. This would both help prevent abuse from the afterlife reuse cards, while opening up some utility for when the card is pulled to your void by an everborn mill deck, all while maintaining the cards design intent.
Tenet Three: Boost cards when safe
With our recent smaller set sizes and regular releases through the Imporium, having filler cards no longer feels like something we want to do very often. In prior sets where you had 200+ cards, thematic filler cards such as vanilla creatures that filled a minor role such as having a tribal tag for things like delving made sense, and people were ok with opening a 3 mana 3/4 creature that didn’t do anything else because the number of cards in the game was much more limited and it could genuinely fill a role. We are past that point.
Whenever we see a perfectly reasonable card that is simply too underpowered to fill a role anywhere, we will attempt to boost it. The boosts may be small, an extra point of Strength or Health here or there, but our goal is to ultimately ensure that as many cards as possible have a use somewhere. We will not redesign these cards as mentioned above, but instead look for ways to make the card at the least serviceable.
This is not a promise of a flat power level for cards and there are still going to be niche cards printed here and there. Cards that are very clearly designed for a limited strategy (a lot of the Everborn are like this), build around cards with a very narrow focus that only gets utilized in one or two decks (Arrandion is for Arrandion decks), and meme cards to keep things fun for everyone (looking at you Crab Rave!). But overall if we print a card, we want people to play with it somewhere.
Tenet Four: Rarity considerations for design
It’s probably not popular to say, but rarity does matter when we think about design. This is not to say that all epics are better than rares are better than commons, but we do apply some design heuristics to our card which consider rarity. Design and balance considerations take these into account when we make our changes, and higher rarity cards often merit closer attention than commons.
- Commons - Bread and butter cards. These are generally the least flashy cards in the game but the ones you need to empower your other cards. Most strategies will revolve around some number of common cards, and while they will likely not be the crazy synergy game winners that other card rarities provide, our expectation is when you include them in your deck you are not unhappy to do so and their power level in the right scenarios still comes through. These are basic tribal units like Scorchblade or limited but powerful removal spells like Blightbomb.
- Rares - These are in many ways like commons, but often slightly more complex in their rule sets. They don’t necessarily have a higher power level than commons, but generally contain more rules text and are applicable to more in-game scenarios or have more interaction points. Swapping out Commons for Rares is not generally going to give you a better deck because of any power discrepancy. This is where you see more intricate creatures like Shadow of Lethenon or cards whose powerlevel has more variance based on the gamestate like Way of the Dreadwood.
- Epics - Epics are meant to be more powerful than rares and commons, but often more limited in their scope. Epics win games and help determine deck archetypes, but are less universally useful than something like a solid midrange creature can often be. Epics also contain the majority of cards that can be do-nothings in the wrong situations, but absolute beatings with the right set up. Epics rewards player skill in both set up and deck building. Good examples of epics being high set up, high reward cards are things like Candy Chain and Land of the Dead. This is also where you will find the best removal spells that are tribe limited like Horrible Discharge and Rebuild.
- Legends - Legends are where the rules start to bend. Players love their legends and want them to justifiably be at the top of the allowable power range. Here you will find creatures that are strictly better (or close to it) than others (Oddi vs. Raid Reveler), cards that close out the game in very short order if not dealt with (Tianlong), and cards are the most complex in their ability structure (Sern).
Legends also carry the 1 per deck rule with them, the only card that does. Since that increases your variance to draw them, it also allows us to allow for a slightly higher power level than their two-of counterparts.
The Legend slot will also always be the slot where certain dangerous abilities are limited to. Cards that could be toxic when paired with another copy of itself will be Legendary. Cards that have an exponential effect will be Legendary. And any card with a pregame effect to start in your hand will be Legendary.
Tenet Five: Results Matter
We weigh a lot of factors when issuing a balance change for a card. We are data driven and look at results first and foremost. If a card is far over or under-performing, it will catch our attention. We pay the same attention to deck archetypes, both the ones we planned for and the ones the community comes up with, and try to ensure that they feel like they are playing the way they should within a reasonable range of variance.
We consider the balance of the Gods against each other as well, though with Gods we accept that they are much more malleable than cards that get locked and generally accept some ebb and flow between releases, so long as the delta between the gods is not too extreme. We are never going to get to a flat power distribution between them, nor should anyone want that really because it makes for an exceptionally boring game that robs players of their agency.
We will consider rebalancing a card when its performance is too far off target in either direction, but always ensure the nature of the card, the goals of the design, and the overall health of the larger game.
Tenet Six: We know things you don’t
One of the biggest complaints we hear is why we did or did not change a specific card that is not meeting the above criteria, and simply put it is because we know more about future releases than you do. Sets and individual cards are not created the day before we release them, a ton of planning, designs, failed designs, playtesting, more playtesting, refinement, and even more playtesting goes into the cards before they are published and minted.
A card that seems overpowered today may seem quaint with a subsequent printing in a month. A card that has no apparent uses at release may be the core to an entire new strategy in the next set (looking at you Mayday).
With our new design philosophy, set releases do not exist in a vacuum. Cards were designed for Roots with the explicit plan that they would have interactions with cards from the next release and even the release afterwards. Design is considering set releases all the way into 2027 when we create cards, and we have to consider that when we rebalance cards as well.
On to the next balance patch
With the upcoming release of the first balance patch for Roots, we are also going to make sure that we tell you why we did what we did. Some of it may be very obvious, some less so. We may not be able to tell you everything (spoilers!), including why we didn’t do something, but we will at least give you an explanation as to why the cards changed and why we should think it for the better.
The goal as always is to have a balanced game that is fun and competitive, and we will always push for this goal.