Design Diaries: Onyx Remastered:
Mishime Sensei - Chuda Shugenja Control

Unlike many of these other overhauls, we didn't feel there was anything innately wrong with Mishime Sensei. Generally we liked where the Sensei was, and what it did. However, overhauls were needed, so this Design Diary will touch not just on the Onyx changes, but also a few ROJ adjustments as well.

The main issue with regards to Onyx Chuda was that Personality base had been built with an entirely different gameplay style in mind to the way the deck developed in later expansions. Originally the plan was for the deck to hew towards Chi Death. This can be seen in cards like the original Ruri. One has to be careful with things like Open control and especially Chi death, as the latter in particular has traditionally been unpopular when it works well enough to be effective. It's a tough needle to thread, and sadly we simply weren't able to do it as well as we liked, and it was more or less abandoned once ROJ testing was well underway back in the day. So this inherent cognitive dissonance remained.

To address this, we kept the Chuda's control elements in check, but leaned hard away from the previous flirtations with Chi death. We also tried to give them a little more proactive power. We also wanted to lean a bit more into handing out the taint, and dominating and punishing those who fall under its malign influence. We added mechanics to Mishime Sensei that encouraged mass corruption, providing strong discounts on some of the new, more expensive maho actions of the new Chudas. Some Maho spells, likewise, saw an overhaul of their old abilities. We ended up with a more aggressive, more proactive and more focused deck of horrible Oni loving cult psychopaths that overall we feel plays much better than the previous decks.

There are several other Spider Clan Onyx changes, which will roll out tomorrow, ones that aren't necessarily those focused on the Chuda (though some are, couldn't put them all here), as well as the normal collection of retemplating issues and corrections.