Anyone who is a fan of Magic: The Gathering, card games, or design in general should read this interview by Shervin Ghazazani.

Any strategy or mode of play which makes the game not fun for some audience needs to be controlled but not necessarily by the designer. It is best when play communities solve their problems, because there really is no way of anticipating all communities’ problems with a game. For example, in StarCraft it is possible to find a lot of games that the community declares “No Rush”, because a significant part of the community likes more time for the game to develop. Similarly in Magic different communities will shun different decks or styles of play – adjusting the game to their taste. If the community can’t or won’t solve the problem the developer must step in and patch the game.

One thing that many designers miss is that just because a particular strategy or card is not degenerate among their expert friends doesn’t mean that it isn’t degenerate for other players. If the player who plays strategy X always wins in a playgroup it doesn’t matter to them that the game would have been fun if they played “properly”. This fact makes it hard to create enduring broad balance in a game.