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Ben Brode and Dean Ayala on Designing LoE Legendaries

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IGN have released a second article interviewing Senior Game Designer Ben Brode, and Associate Designer Dean Ayala. This time they discuss the design of the five Legendary cards in League of Explorers.


Sir Finley Mrrgglton, Brann Bronzebeard, Elise Starseeker, and Reno Jackson are the four Legendaries that make up the League of Explorers. Arch-Thief Rafaam is their adversary. All of the cards apart from Rafaam have made it into high level tournament play since their release, and it is fascinating to see the how the design process worked for each of them.

There is more specific discussion, and less about the general thought process, than last time. They do, however, reaffirm several design process concepts that they have mentioned before. The main thing that is reinforced is they try hard to create cards you can build a deck around, which makes sense, as that is what newer players in particular find exciting about Collectible Card Games.

One of the highlights for me is that all of the team rated Reno Jackson as 9 or 10 out of 10 in terms of power and then had to decide if they were comfortable with that. The fact that they were means that the slowing down of the meta was definitely deliberate. While that is no surprise to anyone, it's always nice to have these things confirmed.

As before, the interview is a fascinating insight into how things came together from the design team's perspective.
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      AAECAaoIFKjuA6bvA4b6A6SBBMORBMeyBOm2BOnQBJjUBLjZBJfvBKTvBNWyBODtBIqSBdWyBPuRBfSgBbzwBODtBArG+QPTgASVkgTblATgtQSWtwSywQTFzgS12QS22QQA
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