Yesterday, the Modern plague was finally brought to an end by a long-awaited ban announcement that represented Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Since the Pro Tour, Nadu has completely dominated the Modern game. Thanks to the presence of cards like Shuko, which let you target your own creatures for zero mana, Nadu’s combo potential was enormous.
Interestingly, however, Nadu’s textbox wasn’t like this to begin with. In a recent article by Michael Majors, lead designer of MH3, he admits that Nadu was a complete design failure. As we’ll see, some last-minute changes were partially responsible for the map’s flawed nature. There’s a lot to discuss here, and it’s important to first take a look at Nadu’s original design.
Nadus Original Design
Nadu is an interesting case where, given what we know today, it seems a little outrageous that the card survived testing like it did. After all, when you think about it, it’s a little crazy that Nadu gives all of your creatures the strong card advantage ability and allows the ability to trigger more than once per creature. Well, as it turns out, Nadu’s original design didn’t reward you in the same way for targeting your own creatures.
- Mana value: 1GU
- Statistics: 3/4
- Flying. You can cast permanent spells as if they had lightning.
Whenever a permanent you control becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, reveal the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand.
Nadu apparently started out as shown above in the design process. There are some pretty big differences here. On one hand, being able to cast permanent spells at instant speed is a big deal, as is Nadu triggering when a permanent you control is targeted by an opposing spell or ability. On the other hand, however, this version of Nadu doesn’t give you a bonus when targeting your own creatures.
In the article, Michael Majors explained that the main concern with this iteration of Nadu was his role in Commander. This makes sense, especially since Prophet of Kruphix is on the banned list. With that in mind, this ability was deemed too concerning in a “series of last-minute reviews.” However, after the removal, there was a fear that the card would never find a place at all without further adjustments. This ultimately led to the new text of the card.
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Lack of playtesting and Commander focus
Unfortunately, Michael Majors and the last group of people who were shown the card “missed the interaction with mana-free abilities” that made Nadu so successful in Modern. Nadu’s new design wasn’t tested because the team was already too far along. This gives Nadu strong Skullclamp vibes (Skullclamp is another card that was changed at the last second, and the change ended up making the card much more broken than it would have been otherwise).
That alone is a big problem. But there’s more to the story. Nadu’s last text was actually the result of an attempt to “create a build-around geared toward the Commander game.” Unsurprisingly, this caused a lot of uproar in the community.
First of all, many players were frustrated that a card from MH3, a set that was clearly designed to be a direct set for Modern, was more focused on Commander than Modern from the start. Add to that the lack of playtesting that led to the buggy version in Modern that we ended up with, and it’s no wonder players were upset about the situation.
Some have pointed out that this situation could have been avoided if the card designed for Commander had simply been printed in one of the MH3 Commander precons, which were obviously created with Commander in mind. The problem is that the new design for Nadu proved problematic for Commander as well! Ultimately, Nadu’s insane combo potential coupled with the long, drawn-out turns it allows for was a nuisance for Modern and Commander players alike.
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Moving forward
As unfortunate as this massive design flaw was for the MTG community at large, it’s a good thing Wizards of the Coast addressed it, and we encourage such addresses in the future. Even in the face of flaws, nothing is more commendable than such communication.
To avoid something similar happening in the future, a few things are changing. As for the timing of bans, the general cadence of announcements is changing. The goal now is to align bans with the qualifying season for Regional Championships. In theory, this should help build consumer confidence while ensuring that an obviously broken map like Nadu doesn’t terrorize competitive events for an extended period of time.
Going forward, Wizards of the Coast is committed to giving all test groups plenty of time to make changes. Michael Majors even stated that he should be cautious in cases where he cannot draw clear conclusions, such as Nadu’s new text field.
Honestly, when performance improvements are in full swing, not every card needs to push the limits as far as possible. Hopefully, design flaws like Nadu’s will be kept to a minimum in the coming years.
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