Back in September 2024, the GU team called upon the players to submit ideas for new game modes (Formats), based solely on card bans.
Two Formats that resulted from this initiative were Underdog and Singleton. Me and @jfa also proposed a Format at the time, but it was not considered because it required more than just card bans. I guess we should've read the rules more carefully... 🤔
We called it 'Power Surge' and the rules were:
Mana wheel starts at 5
Ban all cards with 4 mana or less
High mana cost banned cards:
Replicating Ratification
Aurora Oblivion
Tendrils of Dread
Lost in the Crowd
Hortuk, Fallen Commander
Our objectives with this idea were to create a high power and fast game experience where we skip the early game and give a new life to high mana cards that see almost no play, like for example high mana Atlanteans or Guilds creatures. It would also make 9 mana creatures attractive again, prevent pretty much any annoying deck (LitD Coronet, Carvings, Vespids, etc.), and create faster matches that could end abruptly with a lot of damage dealt in each turn.
There was a technical reason why our Format couldn't be implemented at the time: there was no way to make the game start with a different mana setting without playing a card that would trigger that change. But this month the GU team surprised us all by introducing the format into the rotation.
Turns out they were able to find a technical solution for the mana requirement:
So everyone had a chance to try Power Surge for a week! We were very pleasantly surprised with the positive feedback we got from a lot of people. We didn't do any testing - just theory crafting - and we didn't know how unbalanced or fun the format would be when others were given the chance to compete within its rules.
Some of the earliest feedback we got was how Double Dealer was too disruptive and would win matches on its own if played on curve. So we did a quick poll and based on the result, the card was banned halfway through the week. Thankfully there was a wide consensus and no one complained about the sudden change.
There were also a few bugs out of our control that weren't fixed in time. Hopefully they won't be around the next time the Format is rotated in. The deckbuilder was not filtering out cards lower than 5 mana (although it was creating illegal decks), the deck rules auto-generated text was stating "cards can be used..." where it should be saying "can't ", players couldn't rank up with victories while playing this Format and some imported deck codes were invalid for no apparent reason.
As with every other Format, you can check up to 12h stats and deck lists at https://gumeta.web.app/
We let things roll and kept gathering feedback. Now that the week is almost over, we gathered all the data we could and have decided on the settings for the next time:
keep the initial spells ban
keep the Double Dealer ban
keep the Hortuk ban
ban Arrandion - mostly to avoid auto-win cards, but also to remove popular powerful cards and open up space for less used ones
ban Charm and Orfeo's Mask
keep Cadence of the Infinite Sands, but under watch
 |  |  |
|---|
To make Power Surge more balanced for next time, we also asked the devs if it would be possible to print high mana cards in the next set, with this Format in mind. Our proposals were:
high mana relic removals, maybe 1 neutral card? This would allow us to put Orfeo's Mask back in and offer a counter to War and Death's relics
high mana support for Light and Nature
high mana surgical (obliterate one or two cards) Void removals to help counter Death. Or maybe some other fancy punishing shenanigans instead of simply obliterate, since it will be a high mana cost card anyway.
high mana transform cards would also provide interesting counters
This was a very heartwarming experience. We hope our fellow players will keep enjoying the format with the planned changes!
I hope you also had fun playing Power Surge. Thanks for reading!
Card art was sourced from the official Gods Unchained image server at https://card.godsunchained.com/