Who's your favorite hero? Not in Shadow Era, but in, well, anything. Think of the epic stories or books or whatever have you that prominently features a heroic struggle and think about how the hero in the story fights. Does (s)he start off at maximum power, blowing holes in row after row of enemy? Ehh, probably not. And if he does, you're a Superman fan and you should stop reading. You won't like where this is going.

So what can we take away from that to make Heroes in Shadow Era as engaging, central and dynamic as possible?

As it is, the heroes of Shadow Era are unbelievably broken. Let's look at Nishaven--one of the two heroes we've gotten to play with so far. He's a star! Or, more specifically, an exploding star. A Supernova, even. Whenever you want it. Sure, it's the same cost as Supernova, it does one less damage and doesn't affect heroes... but with the right deck, it won't matter. It's his ability to pull out the field sweep whenever he wants it that makes him game breaking. I put a deck list in Nishaven's Card Discussion thread for him:

Nishaven
A few ongoing spell-removers
Every burning card I can fit before reaching the minimum deck-size
(I originally included spell counters, forgetting that Kyle has no intention of putting them in--no spell counters is an understandable choice, and it does hurt this deck a little but I think my point will still stand)

Unless the opponent is fielding a better control deck, it's a reliable fifth turn lock. Every time the opponent fields an ally, you sweep it away with Nishaven, a burn card, or both. Use any remaining mana to burn your opponent's hero; as turns progress, you'll have more mana to burn the opposing hero faster, but the lock on the opponent's allies will remain. Because allies don't attack the turn they come out, nothing will get to swing at Nishaven after the fifth turn. Game over.

There is a reason why games include a cap on the number of identical cards with the same name in a deck. It's to prevent the same effect from being applied over and over and over. If an opponent couldn't deal with a given card's effect the first time, he won't be able to deal with it the second time, or the third time, or the twelfth time. Removing the card cap would turn the game into a one-card show. That's what I think heroes in Shadow Era might do.

There are a couple arguments for why heroes are this way. For one thing, they're heroes! They're SUPPOSED to be the toughest cards on the board. Aragorn didn't get killed in the first scene of Lord of the Rings because he's a hero--he gets out of scrapes others would die in because he's a hero, and that same heroic advantage should be reflected in a card bearing the moniker 'hero.' For another thing, every deck gets one, and they're ALL superpowered like this.

Here are my issues with these arguments. First, as to their being the toughest cards on the board, they are actually TOO tough. Because their powers are so useful in so many situations, decks will be constructed around the heroes. Story-wise, that makes sense to me--after all, it's the hero that's summoning these allies to battle, so in theory, the entire deck should be reflective of the hero that summoned them. I get that. But a good deck builder looks at the card the deck will be built around as a keystone. It holds the deck together--but at the same time, is supported by the rest of the deck. Said deck builder decides on a deck mechanic that maximizes the benefit of that keystone card or cards. In Magic, these keystones are usually creatures or spell combos. In Yu-Gi-Oh! they're usually a given monster that can dominate with the right supporting cast. The issue with Shadow Era is that the keystone almost HAS to be a hero. I mean, when a Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh! deck loses, what's the phrase you hear most often?--"I didn't get the deck's main combo off! I didn't draw the big cards in the deck." When these decks don't draw their keystone, the deck falls apart. It's the cardinal flaw in any deck in these games: the user is subject to luck. They might get mana-screwed or not draw the second piece needed to pull off some killer combo.

But in Shadow Era, you're guaranteed to get your keystone. In fact, you're guaranteed to have him/her for the whole game, because if it dies, you lose. I want to be clear: I recognize that this game is not MtG or YGO. I get that it's a different game entirely, with unique game mechanics and a talented creator, and I get that it's a slippery slope to expect the same strategies to work in one game that works in another. However, none of these exceptions mean we can't learn from the mistakes of other TCG's.

To anyone here who played Yu-Gi-Oh!, think back to when the Chaos decks romped through the scene. Before the two chaos cards came out, the scene was coated in many, many different decks sporting many, many different keystones. But suddenly, the best keystone came out (for those who never played, the chaos combo was fast, easy to pull off, and all but ended the game) and all the decks became the same. Every other deck used the same keystone in the same way, and the scene became rather boring. To MtG players, the closest thing I can think of was the Skull Clamp decks. Everyone used Skull Clamps, but in different ways--so at least it was fun to see what sort of wacky ways players could abuse a card that let you draw your entire deck in a turn. In both MtG and YGO's cases though, these keystone combos were ultimately and summarily banned.

The fear I have is that you're giving players a bunch of these broken keystones, but taking away the luck involved in pulling them off. Games, I feel, will become largely similar, regardless of the opponent you're playing, if the keystone combos are so guaranteed.

But we all love the idea of having a hero card. I haven't heard anyone say they should be made on par with the minions they summon. After all, if an orc killed Aragorn, the story would have been mercifully shorter...

So how can we limit the power of heroes, but still maintain their specialness? How can we give the players a keystone, AND keep luck of the draw and user error a pivotal part of the game? I've heard a couple of ideas: the first was upping the cost of these heroes' activated abilities, and the second was adding a limit to the number of times per game that they can be used. The first is an attempt to turn the heroes into late-game drops. That is, make them inert until the game has progressed to a certain point. Or, at the very least, make the player really have to pay out the nose to get their keystone going. I'm not sure this is really a fix. All it does is make the beginning of the game feel like chapters in a book when nothing really all that exciting happens. Remember the last Harry Potter book? Think about the three hundred or so pages in the middle where the characters wandered aimlessly through the forest. That.

The second idea is a really hard sell. For one thing, I think it's somewhat inelegant. Most TCG's avoid the "you only get to use this card's effect once per game" text because it's so limiting. Plus, it means that some heroes will be distinctly better than others. But really, the issue I have is that it's saying that a hero's impact on a game has to be limited to one turn, which I don't think fits in to the whole epic battle thing.

So here's what I'm proposing: let's put the luck and situational aspects back into the heroes without disincentivizing their abilities. Let Nishaven keep his sweeping effect, but don't let him pull it off fifth turn when he hasn't summoned an ally. Change his effect to something like: "(5) Activate this ability only when there are at least three allies on your side of the field. Deal 4 damage to all allies on both sides of the field." Change Majiya's effect to something like "(2) Activate this ability only when you have two or less cards in your hand at the start of your draw step. Draw an extra card this turn." Give them all situations when their effects are allowed to go off. Situations that the rest of the deck has to make happen. In short, make the keystone cards of Shadow Era NEED the deck they're placed in. Let them support and hold the deck together, but make their success or failure be dependent on the deck they're in.

Heroes are fun because of the struggle that leads up to the tough fight. We like Batman more than Superman (oh, that's right, I went there again. Suck it, Superman.) because Batman has a struggle before he kicks ass. Superman gets to come out swinging, Batman has to sneak around first and do some detective work. One needs support, the other doesn't.

/rant.