When so many “Mana Cheat” Cards cause problems. Why do they still make new?
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Because mana cheat is part of a card game with mana system. You build a deck to synergise around the mana cheat to gain advantage. You want play spiteful? Sure design a deck with only big spells. You want play morpher? Sure design a deck with only big minions. That’s the whole concept of card game. The issue arises when the deck is so fine tuned it cover the weakness of that limitation of deck building in the first place something the developer cannot expect all the time.
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Well I think in Hs they have finally learned their lesson and are much more cautious with mana discounting, look at the difference between galvaniser and mechwarper to see how far we’ve come.
Games designers do seem to have this curious fascination with game breaking cards though, when you look at the history of other card games it does make me wonder why on earth they ever included cards like innervate and prep where they have been reliably shown to break other games in the past.
In fact I was gobsmacked when I was playing Artifact that they had a card called Stars align , which was basically Dark Ritual (pay 1 mana , gain 3 mana), I mean REALLY!? this is Richard Garfield designing this, didn’t he noticed this sort of card had been removed from MtG for many years, for a flipping reason!
And yes Stars Align did cause problems and would probably have needed to have been changed (if the game didn’t die a horrible death first).
It depends on the power level of the format really, Dark Ritual as example is long gone as a staple and only sees any play in storm decks and other than that it is entirely useless cause a 3 or 4 mana threat you played ahead of schedule still just dies to 1 mana removal.
Mana cheat can absolutely work but only if there is efficient answers available.
Conditional “mana cheat” can be interesting. If you have the option of playing a Yeti, and playing a Yeti for one mana cheaper but only if you have a mech on the board otherwise it’s one mana more, the latter gives you deck building possibilities and encourages trying new things.
Take Shaman: Shaman’s hero power has, for the most part, been utterly panned as the least consistent hero power due to its random nature, and was often seen as trash. However, add Thing From Below and a few Dire Wolves and suddenly you start to think “can I make a deck based on totems thanks to this?” Which, when the card was released back in TGT, was a yes. Before Evens Shaman ever existed, a Totem-based Shaman was actually played, and it could not have happened without conditional synergy cards like Thing From Below or Thunderbluff Valiant.
Is it fun when an opponent plays a 0 mana Sea Giant? No. But building a deck trying to finangle a way to reliably bring out 0-3 mana Sea Giants is kinda fun, and special synergy cards help push that process along.
When “mana cheat” gets out of control is when cards that have little risk or are already good have an easily accessible or very powerful major upside. Mad Scientist was the poster child for this for a long time - it was a 2 mana card that could play a 3 mana secret, making it valuable even if the secret was played around (since it was “free”). Getting synergy off can be fun, but what constitutes too far is subject to opinion.
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Too be fair Innervate and Prep were balanced for the full release, nonexpansion version of the game.
The problem with Hearthstone was much like the old Dungeon & Dragons. The Base game was balance for itself but not balanced at all for additions. That’s why DMs had so much work and why GMless Hearthstone broke in half in 2 expansions.
Mana Cheat is fine. You just have to design it for the game you are playing. You can’t have cheap and easy mana cheats in a game where you are dumping tons of cards with tons of interactions in them.
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