So I've been doing some rebalancing on blue, we're adjusting his cars as well as working on a new deck that introduces a lot of the new cards that have been developed for blue, including many of its attachments such as the training sword.

The end result from self play tests is that the deck is now a lot more proactive and less turtley, but also surprisingly better at offense when it's able to. This person doesn't have to stall for as long in order to start taking swings at the opponent.

In fact I began to realize that basically this blue deck is doing what red wants to do but better.

Red's stated game plan is to be an aggressive color all about relentlessly attacking and dodging on coming threats. The reality is that it's great at dodging but not attacking.

Part of it is because it has no incentive to attack, and has no way to do it safely, that's what blue has.

First off, the introduction of attachments like the training sword and plastic katana give it great incentive to swing into opponents, training sword draws card every time you attack and another if you win the clash. And the plastic Katana gives shredder so you can at least swing into something to trade with it.

Second off is an observation I made earlier where there's a weird paradox where defense allows for more effective offense. Having blockers and spot removal to protect your balloons means you get to attack with them more liberally.

Blue has many blockers, even if it lost some in the rebalance it gained a new one cost blocker. It also has gadgets to deflate and / or stun attackers with. You can throw shuriken's at a rival balloon to stop the attack and bounce them off the board.

So what can be done about this?

• Red balloons maybe need to emphasize being resilient and hard to punish.
• Red likely needs to reward attacking more

Another thing to ask is, would it be time to reconsider red's mechanical identity?

so currently, the mechanics associated with red are:

• Strength+
  • which is kinda weak
• Speedy
  • though that became more prominent in blue and purple
• Breath card restoration
  • though options for it are limited
• Stamina line manipulation
  • Currently only altering the line, adding to it is purple's thing
• Action support
  • it's got the one action search, though it doesn't have a lot of actions worth using. unlike blue
  • currently only 2 balloons trigger from actions and one is seldom used.
• Favors spot dodging
  • Which it does well, but doesn't gain much advantage from it. just spends a card to avoid one attack
  • Has throw, which is good
• Wants to force interaction
  • Although blue stuns more than red
  • Red used to have balloons that can attack active rival balloons but I've soured on that mechanic
  • Has rage but so far it isn't tested

So right now red really doesn't have much going for it. the main things it's left with don't exactly help it with generating advantage, but it could also be a byproduct of how I'm going about it.

I've described red as a tempo color but it's arguably losing that identity now, granted Tempo was always a nebulous term in card games anyways.

Maybe red should be the Card Draw color, or at least the color that's good at cycling through it's deck, that already seems to be the natural direction I've been heading, where red cards tend to replace themselves and the red player being less vulnerable to topdecking compared to other colors.

I think that also fits into the "Body centric" nature of red. it's good at keeping it's hand full of options, can manipulate the stamina line to pack it with triggers, and restore breath to play more options. red is a color that likes to have cards replace themselves to keep up the momentum.

Red is probably the color to favor 2-3 cost balloons and expansions. It wants to play stuff and have leftover breath to dodge with.