The problem with evergreens

Anyone who follows me on the Gods Unchained reddit knows my distaste for how the GU team handled the release of Genesis and it's evergreen promise that the cards are locked and will never go away. I liken it to the reserve list in Magic, which is a problem that many of the designers over there have acknowledged and are adamantly against. Having a no reprint promise limits what designers can do all for the sake of preserving early investor money at the cost of the games health which is ironically a factor that is a lot more important to the value of those investments.

The two decks I always go back to when talking about Genesis are Board Wipe Death, which I have seen called Card Draw Death as well, and Clone Magic. These decks hit a bunch of metrics that make me think that they are not only a problem now, but are destined to become a worse problem in the future.

• They are powerful decks with positive win rates, even if they fluctuate from the best deck in the format to just being a better than 50% one. BWD is better at control than most control decks, Clone Magic is faster and more consistent than most combo decks.
• They are almost impossible to powercreep out of the game because they cards in the lists are already more powerful than they should be.
• The key and core cards in the decks are all Genesis cards. New cards may come and go (Divine Coronet for instance) and card changes to new releases can help prevent the decks from getting to powerful a new toy (Again, Coronet) but you can never remove the deck from the format because the core of it is all Genesis cards that cannot be changed or removed from the game per the evergreen promise.
• The decks are incredibly unfun to play. I will grant you this is subjective but if you polled everyone who plays the game and asked them if they would rather play a game with a lot of choices and back and forth counterplay or one that is just you slamming cards from your hand and going face as fast as possible in hopes you win before you lose, I think I know what most would pick.

My contention is if the GU team wants evergreen decks / Narrow architypes to be a persistent presence in the game, the decks themselves should have close to a 50% win rate as possible, if not below it, because you really do not want the best deck in the game to be one of the hardest to collect, limited, and boring to play against. No one complains to much about something like Viking aggro even though it is ever present because it is a deck you can tech for, it is pretty close to middle of the road in power, and it is cheap to put together.

So how do we fix it?

Which brings me to my point. How do we fix problematic lists using reserve list cards from remaining a negative force on the whole game. With BWD list I do not think I have an answer, I am unsure what printing you could make that would be good against that deck yet not be powercrept so hard it would warp the rest of the format against it. That is a subject for another day.

With Clone Magic and its few minor variations, the one commonality they all truly have is the use of the Clear Mind hero Power. For those not in the know it is a 1 mana power that lets you Foretell 2 cards. Combined with Lost in the Depths removing much of the Magic players deck, this hero power is often the fuel that allows the magic player to consistently go off on turn 3-5, removing almost all variance from the deck which to me is a critical component to any CCG ever printed. Where as some other more fair combo decks have to play draw cards or hope to naturally draw into the combo pieces, like Anubians needing to draw into Land of the Dead turn 6/7, the magic deck for a minimal cost can almost guarantee it hits what it needs when it needs it.

For anyone who has been playing long enough you may remember a time when this hero power was only Foretell 1. At the release of Divine Order in 2021, over a year ago now, there was a large refresh of the hero power. This was partially to adjust power levels but also to enable the designers some defined space to play with when it came to what the domains would be good at doing. And they did not feel they got it right the first time out, as was evidenced by a bunch of subsequent changes. At least three times as a matter of fact. This tells us that the GU team is not only willing to change hero powers, but that they can use it as a control lever to balance decks that are problems.

I contend that it is safe and necessary to change Clear Mind to a weaker version of the power to prevent a deck like clone magic from maintaining too good a win rate and keeping it from being a drag on the game. Over the last 30 days or so it has maintained a 55% win rate, which is the 4th strongest archetype with only about 3% separating it from the top deck in the game right now. I know you may say that it is not the top deck and it is not so great a margin so what does it matter, it is not a problem, but the reality is that all the other decks above it can have cards in them reprinted in much higher numbers, are still actively available for purchase, or can be reprinted if need be. Losing to the decks above it also offer counterplay in the game experience to a much higher degree than Clone Magic which is very often solitaire. Control War is the highest ranked deck right now but outside of the cards that are problematic almost everywhere like Demogorgon and Pyramid Warden, the deck uses a lot more cards from the core set or from later expansions that do not have the evergreen promise.

The other reason I think it is safe to change the hero power is because virtually no other magic deck uses it, at least not by design. Card draw, Tempo/aggro, Burn face Magic and every other archetype the god supports almost universally use Magebolt, as the only reason people even want to use this hero power is to do ultimately unfair things.

So what is the change

My proposal is to either change it to Foresee 1, back to where it was, or to increase the cost to 2. I think it is fair to say in a deck that can turn one reduce it's library to 7 cards or so, this hero power is just shy of being an out and out tutor and it should not have constant access to such a powerful ability. Hero powers are typically worse than similar cards with cantrip effects (Brimstone is a bigger effect than Soul Burn, Recovering Sigil is a bigger effect than Heal, etc) and yet the closest card to this effect is seeing stone and the hero power let's you foretell more.

I personally lean towards upping the mana cost. I think one of the other reasons the power is so good at one mana is because of the implications it has on turn one. After you mulligan (which the deck also does exceptionally well since it is very often 15 cards x2, meaning you can usually guarantee you see 6 different cards by your opening hand) you always have an active play with this deck. Either you can dig for Lost in the Depths or the Shadow Scryer you need to target on turn 2, or play what you want from hand. I have played aggro decks that mulligan all day just to get a one drop to maintain tempo just to not find any, and then started the entire game so far behind they never caught up because of the simple act of wasting that first turn. Clone always has a turn one that does not even require them to use a mana pip. Upping the mana cost to 2 will prevent then from having access to this every turn which means they may have turns where they end with a mana they have to waste because there is not something always there to perfectly fill the void. If anything either change is an increase in variance, which as I mentioned earlier is critical for any card game.

Now just to be fair, I don't want people to think I am targeting Magic alone. I actually think the game is very much due for a closer look and balancing of all the hero powers, as clearly there are some that just do not get played because they are too weak or do not compliment the god well. Flourish, Neferu's Sacrifice, and Lysanders Honor all have very low rates of win and play and could use either a buff or a full overhaul. Likewise, the cards you can buy with favor probably need a look, as I think it would make a lot of sense to include gleamweaver and maybe a creature with ward in the mix. The game is ever changing and even though we have these cards that fall under this silly evergreen promise, it does not mean we cannot still thrive towards making the game a better one.

Would love to hear your comments below or on Reddit about this, and if you like my writing make sure to give me a like and a free tip down below so I know I should keep writing more.