Thanks for the reply. I'm assuming that cut cards can then get pushed back to the initial design team for potential inclusion in future sets, simply because cards may be interesting/exciting outside of 'present meta' breaking?
He said that Blizzad is a year ahead on card development. Is that a number off the top of his head, or has it been said before how far ahead they are?
We're not quite a year ahead yet, but that would be nice! That said, it's not just one group that works on a set. The first group (Initial Design Team) works on the set for some period of time before the second group comes in (Final Design) and both work on the set together for a couple weeks. At that point the first group moves off the set to start working on the next thing, while the final design team continues to playtest/iterate/change until fairly close to release. Not always that simple but that is the general idea. It's important to have an idea of what is going on in the meta prior to release. We had some cards early on in Kara that further supported things like Mid-Range Shaman but cut them for other cards as it became clear that archetype didn't need a ton more help to be fun/successful.
Iksar
Yep!
Iksar
We're not quite a year ahead yet, but that would be nice! That said, it's not just one group that works on a set. The first group (Initial Design Team) works on the set for some period of time before the second group comes in (Final Design) and both work on the set together for a couple weeks. At that point the first group moves off the set to start working on the next thing, while the final design team continues to playtest/iterate/change until fairly close to release. Not always that simple but that is the general idea. It's important to have an idea of what is going on in the meta prior to release. We had some cards early on in Kara that further supported things like Mid-Range Shaman but cut them for other cards as it became clear that archetype didn't need a ton more help to be fun/successful.