Nice analysis. Lightning bolt has been changed to not allow targeting the same target twice, but I think it's still too powerful. With all creatures having first strike, the game becomes very dependent on board control and having allies down before your opponent does (Portal circumvents this which is why it's so broken). This mechanic makes DD more powerful than compared to Magic.
Personally I think the best thing that could happen to Shadow Era is dropping the whole First Strike mechanic, but I doubt that will happen...

Drafting is really fun and adds a unique element of strategy but a potential problem with Shadow Era for this format is how many hero classes there are and how many cards are limited to only specific classes. In Magic there are 5 colors plus a neutral color and you normally build a 1 or 2 color deck which gives you access to maybe 22-44% of the cards and only 50-60% of the cards need to match your color(s) since you get to choose your lands for the rest. With Shadow Era there are 9, soon to be 10 different classes. There are neutral cards and then there are also human/shadow cards, but you can't build a 2 hero deck so you would probably end up being able to select from about 20% of the cards with a human class and slightly less with a shadow class. Even if no players were drafting for the same class, considering the fact that they would still be drafting the neutral and human/shadow specific cards, and that you need 100% of the cards in your deck to be usable with your class and there might be a problem there.

Draft will be great!! Love this game!

This is a really good assessment of the balancing situation and great suggestions. I'd like to, however, repost here a minor point that I made elsewhere that a x/y is not equal to a y/x. In more cases, the aggressive ally would beat the defensive ally. Thus, for them to be equally balanced, the total stats of the defensive ally must be 0-2 points greater than the total stats of the aggressive ally.

I really like those balancing ideas! Seem to be quite fair in my eyes, and it would give us a great way of gauging the balance of certain allies. Though some exceptions may need to be made for exceptionally rare cards or something like that.

It's too early for that but i really want drafts. As in any game in every version some decks will dominate so draft allows for more variety in the games

I do want to add that rare cards should bump up a little in power level compared to the vanilla ladders, but still need to be tempered and not too powerful. Lightning strike, even at epic would be an auto include in any mage deck. It's an amazing control card and an amazing weenie rush or burn spell. Even at rare or epic it needs to be a little higher costed if it keeps its cuttent power.

This is very good news Kyle, I was thinking the beta testing was just for the Game interface and programing.

I do now see your Community-driven approach towards balancing out the game and think it's a cool experiment.

My concerns are lifting, I think you'll get a lot of experienced TCG players to learn from

I agree, however you are forgetting the community-driven approach that I like to use when developing games. We have more than 300 people playing the first beta now, and the new "Card Discussion" forum will allow feedback on specific cards for balance tuning and making sure the wording is clear. Changes can be made very quickly and tested out for a few days before maybe tweaking again. We are only at the very beginning of a long journey, and I believe that together we can make a great game that everyone will enjoy!

Yes, traditionally a draft would be 3 packs per person. In magic they have 15 card packs (i think thye include a land now in packs) so you have 42 playable cards per player. You build a 40 card deck (minimum) with about 17-20 lands so you use 23-20 of the 42 cards you draft to build your deck.

In wow they have 18 playable cards per pack (54 cards per player) and build a 30 card deck. Wow is like Shadow Era in that you do not add lands to your deck, you actually play at least 30 of the 54 cards you drafted.

I'll have to actually have to play shadow era to see how deck building and play goes before figuring out if drafting SE with three 15 card packs is feasable.

Great idea! So you'd pay $3 (or whatever the cost is in gold) and pass and pick, then duke it out with the other drafters? I'd love to do something like that!

Hrm, Watching the trailer again, it looks like your health is tracked by just adding and subtracting the number over the blood drop health symbols.

Kyle has said in the Bad Wolf thread that, "In the game "healing" always means you restore health up to your original maximum health."

So, the question still remains, is losing health dropping a card's Maximum Health or is it being treated the same as damage?

I think I'm gonna wait to play the game, from now on The way the cards are written cause more questions than they answer.

Thanks for the comments Paradox and Mahasuke!

1) This I'm pretty sure is a no as Ongoing cards have the keyword, "Ongoing," like the card Enrage. Kyle has stated that Engulfing Flames will set the target on fire and a cool particle effect will appear on the target as the reminder. So Engulfing flames does not need to stay in play as an ongoing card. This will be one of the things regular TCG players will have to get used to.

2) I agree and said as much But I also think it's good to be a little more clear in the text so new players will understand the card before deciding to play it in their deck.

3) Agreed, it's not not clear, but reading the literal text it says, "...loses 1 health per turn," where another card like Supernova says, "...takes 5 damage." So I have to believe they are in fact different. If they are not different than common game terms need to be defined and applied for clarity, because as they read now they are two very different effects.

4) Agreed.

1) Wouldn't the fact that the target is losing 1 health per turn make it an "ongoing effect"?

2) I believe the target would have to be someone that could lose health so either a hero or ally.

3) I can't say at this time if losing health is considered damage or not.

4) The per turn portion definitely needs clarification. It could be per the caster's turn or like you said each turn (which makes more sense since you can't stack the same card on the same target).

The only comment I would make regarding targeting is that the target has to, at the very least, have a health score. I can't recall any equipment cards being previewed thus far.. so I would question whether they have health scores or not. I honestly don't know.

Nevertheless I think that will go some length towards identifying potential targets. Beyond that, the software should make it even more clear, as you said.

Nice catch on the differentiation between health and damage. However the possibility also exists that the terms health and damage have been used interchangeably, in which case Kyle will have to consolidate those terms. On the flip side, you may have just invented a powerful new type of attack.

The definition of whose turn really does need to be clarified.