Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1032: Turn Structure

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

In this podcast, I walk through all the phases and steps of a turn to talk about how design creates cards for each part of the turn.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. And you get Mark with his cold voice. Okay, so today I'm going to be talking all about the turn structure. So I'm going to go through the whole structure of the turn, but through the eyes of a magic designer. So I'm going to talk about sort of what we design for different parts of the turn, and talk a little bit about the history of how the turn structure got put together. So today is all about the turn structure. Dun-dun-dun.

Okay, so when magic began long ago, Richard made a... There was a turn structure from the very beginning. There was an order that things happen. there was a turn structure from the very beginning. There was an order that things happened. Then in 6th edition, where basically the rules majorly got rewritten, the turn structure got cleaned up a bit.

So what I want to talk about today, I mean, it's deviated a little bit since then, but basically the current turn structure, which is made up of five phases, and then some phases have steps that are part of the phase. So the five phases

of the turn are the beginning phase, the pre-combat main phase, the combat phase, the post-combat main phase, and the ending phase. And I'm going to be going through all the different parts, and then, like I said, it's through the eyes of a designer. What do we design when? Why is that part of the turn

important? Okay, so we're going to begin with the beginning phase, apropos enough. Okay, so the beginning phase has three steps. It has the untap step, it has the upkeep step, and it has the draw step. Okay, so the untap step is basically where everything untaps. One of the things that was built into the game from the very beginning by Richard was this idea of certain things have a once-per-turn utility. The most common example is just anything that taps, right? If I want to use an activated ability that requires a tap, I have to tap the creature. If I want to attack with the creature, usually, you know, to have vigilance, I have to tap the creature. You know, there's a bunch of different things that say, hey, I'm using a resource, and I don't get that resource until the beginning of my next turn.

And so the tap system was a way that Richard found to signify whether things have been used in a way that you could just use the orientation of the cards. Very cleverly done. So the untapped step from the very beginning was important. You know, you get your land back, you get creature, you know, everything untapped so you can use them again. Now, the untapped step gets used a few other places. Mostly it is when things that happened at the beginning of the turn can, well, I guess triggers at the beginning of the turn happen at the upkeep step. But there are things that happen during the upkeep step.

It's when phasing happens. It's when you check for day-night. Basically what happens is sometimes we want things to happen basically at the very beginning of your turn so that you have all of your turn to experience those things. Day-night came about because I think originally day-night happened at the end of the turn, and then there are shenanigans at being at the end of the turn, which I'll get to in a second, or before the podcast is over. So, untapped step usually, like I said, is mostly just for

untapping things. Triggers don't necessarily happen there, but there are certain things that are built into the system, like phasing. That's when things, you know, come back from phasing. I guess technically things leave and come back. We don't use a lot of, most of the phasing we use now are things that phase out then come back.

Rather than normal phasing goes on permanence and they're there one turn and out the next. We don't tend to do traditional creatures with phasing much anymore. Okay, next is the upkeep step. So the upkeep step, so when Richard first made magic, one of the ideas that he was very enamored with, and it's all throughout Alpha, is the idea that some permanents

come with an upkeep. Meaning, yeah, you pay for them up front, but there are continual costs that you have to pay. Maybe that cost is mana, maybe that cost is sacrificing a creature, but the idea essentially is that some creatures, usually because they were powerful, Maybe that cost is mana. Maybe that cost is sacrificing a creature. But the idea essentially is that some creatures, usually because they were powerful, came with an additional cost to it. I will say that R&D has soured on upkeep costs.

It's not that we never do it. We do it occasionally. And normally nowadays when we do it, they tend to be the kind of cost where maybe it's upside, you know maybe it's downside, but probably if you're putting your deck it's more upside than downside so we don't use the upkeep nearly as much as Richard I think intended us to use the upkeep, I think Richard thought

the upkeep of creatures would be a much bigger deal and there's a lot of nuance to it. I think in the end, there's so much going on that just having to track whether you're paying for something, it just, hey, charge for the creature, get the creature, then you got the creature. And so we don't use upkeep nearly as much as we had, you know, early day magic did. nearly as much as we had, you know, early day magic did. Now, this is where triggers, if you say the beginning of the turn,

this is where triggers, I believe, resolve. So if something happens at the beginning of the turn, it doesn't happen during untap. It happens, it triggers and goes off at the beginning of your upkeep step. And then is the draw step. So I think, so I believe the reason the order went in this direction was that Richard liked having a bunch of upkeep effects,

and then having the draw happen after the upkeep said, hey, this is a reminder that you've missed your upkeep, right? Like, one of the things about upkeep is you need a clean and clear way to know, how do you know when, if you've missed your upkeep, because things happen if you miss your upkeep, right? Like, one of the things about upkeep is you need a clean and clear way to know, how do you know when, if you've missed your upkeep, because things happen if you've missed your upkeep,

how do you know when that is? And the draw phase was a nice, clean sort of, well, clearly once you've done your draw step, you've passed your upkeep step. And I think the upkeep step was designed pre-draw step such that the draw step was a way to sort of show that you've passed the upkeep step. Now the trouble there is that there are things that we want to do every turn, but I

think we've started to realize that it's a little bit more fun if you get to make the decisions about what to do once you know what you've drawn for the turn. So we used, upkeep step used to get used a bit more kind of for like every turn this happens sort of stuff. Not just upkeep cost, but also like okay, every turn this is going to happen. And I think little over, you know, we've

been shifting time and wanting to happen usually post-draw rather than pre-draw. I will get to pre-combat main phase in a second. But you're starting to see more effects happen in pre-combat rather than happening at upkeep for things that are just once-a-turn effects. Obviously, anything that's an upkeep where you have to paint the creature or lose the creature, that still has to happen at upkeep. We just don't do that a lot anymore.

We don't do too much during draw step. Usually the things we put during draw step are things that interact with the draw. So, for example, if we're going to have you draw an extra card, sometimes we'll do that. When you draw a card, draw an extra card or something. But the draw step is, other than interacting with draw, we don't trigger on the draw step a lot.

Okay, so we get to pre-combat main phase. So pre-combat main phase, so before 6th edition rules, combat was a sub-step of the main phase. Combat wasn't, I think combat wasn't a phase before, it was a step. So the idea was in the middle, one of the things you't a phase before, it was a step. So the idea was in the middle, one of the things you could do during your main phase was start combat. But there were enough sort of parts to combat that what we realized

during the 6th edition rule change is, look, let's just make combat its own phase, right? There's a lot going on. Let's just make it its own thing, rather than a sub, you know, a step of a bigger phase. Now, one of the interesting questions when that decision was made was, okay, if combat's its own phase, you know, do we want to do main before or after it? And there was reasons to do both. The reason you want the main phase to happen before the combat phase

is you want things like haste, where I'm going to play a creature, and then I want to attack with it the turn I play it. Excuse me. It doesn't hurt to me. Or maybe you want to do something that's going to impact. Maybe I want to boost my team. Maybe I'm going to do something that's going to impact. Maybe I want to boost my team. Maybe I'm going to do something that I want to have happen before the combat happens. The reason you want the main phase to happen after

is you kind of want your mana open during the combat phase because you want to at least make your opponent think, maybe I have combat tricks. If I attack and I have mana open, my opponent, you know, so let's say, for example, I have a 3-3 and you have a 4-4, and I attack with my 3-3. Well, you know you can block with your 4-4,

so I'm sort of saying, hey, maybe I have something going on. But in order to sort of convince you that is true, I have to have mana open. But if the main phase was before the combat phase, I would have to cast whatever I needed to cast. And so it just lessens the shenanigans going on during combat, which is a lot of fun. A lot of fun in combat is what's going on, you know, trying to read my opponent, trying to figure out do they have something, don't they have something. Is it advantageous to try to make them play the thing

out of their hand? Would I rather have them do it here than later? So there's a lot of neat and interesting decisions that go on during combat. So instead of putting it before or putting it after, the decision was, well, let's just put it both. Let's let you have a main phase

both before and after combat. We then named them pre-combat main phase and post-combat main phase. I don't think we're in love with those names. You can tell we don't put them on cards a lot. That's one of the big signifiers, by the way, whether we really like a name, is how often we'll use it in text. The more something is like, we don't think people necessarily know this terminology, the more we're a little reluctant to put it in text, and it, I don't know, pre-combat main phase, I guess it explains what it is, but it doesn't roll off the tongue.

But anyway, so during 6th edition, the decision was, we're going to have combat in the middle of the main phase, but we'll have two, because we want combat to be its own phase, we'll just have two main phases. And the main phases work pretty similarly. So basically, a main phase is when you can cast everything else. So, instants were designed such that they could be cast at most times, whenever you have priority. But the, everything else, you know, you know, sorceries obviously are casted, but also creatures and artifacts and enchantments and planeswalkers and battles. It's when land gets played. The main phase is mostly when the majority of action is supposed to happen.

I think essentially the idea for Richard was, when he made it, was that I want most of the action to happen on your turn. I want sort of there's a point in time where you do your things. You know, instance existed because there were enough effects that Richard wanted. You know, he wanted combat tricks. He wanted counter spells. He wanted things that had some interactivity at other times. But he kind of realized that you only want so much.

I mean, you want some interactivity. But if every single thing could be cast at any moment, it really changes sort of how things function. The biggest of which is, if I never have to do anything on my turn, if everything was an instant, or could be cast at an instant speed, then I would never do things on my turn. I would wait until the very end of my opponent's turn, when they're done doing everything they're going to do and then cast it all then. And so I think a lot of the reasons

for the speeds of things is just Richard was trying to force people's hands to make them play things at a time where decisions had to be made, right? You know, if I want to cast something on my turn because I want to cast it, well, I'm giving up the idea to maybe make you think I have things in my hand, Instants or Counterspells or whatever. And that there's

some tension that Richard wanted that I think is good. Magic is not best if there's never tension and you just wait until the last moment to do everything. Now, the pre-combat main phase has become, I think as we look more to do effects that we do every turn, we're starting to realize we like letting you have full knowledge of what you're going to draw. Sagas is a good example of this, is when we try to figure out when to do sagas, if this was, you know, 15 years ago, sagas would probably be an upkeep trigger, right? You know, or a beginning of turn trigger, which would trigger an upkeep. But I think we liked the idea of, okay, before I do my saga, let me draw my card and see what happens.

And then basically, so the big question was whether it happened at the end of draw or beginning of the pre-comment main phase. I think beginning is just easier for people to grok, because when you say the end of, really what you do is you're triggering at something, and then it happens. Where at the beginning, it's the very first thing to trigger, so it goes first. Other things, like I did attractions at the

same time, I definitely think that the beginning of pre-combat main phase triggers are something we're seeing more of, and we sort of appreciate. Okay, now we get to the combat phase. So the combat phase has five steps. There's beginning of combat step, the declare attacker step, the declare blocker step, the combat damage step, and the end of combat step. Okay, so beginning of combat is important. We use

this a lot. If we have a trigger that we want to be combat oriented, like battle rattle, shaman, like beginning of combat, boost a creature or grant a creature an ability that's want to be combat-oriented, like Battle Rattle Shaman, like beginning of combat, boost a creature, or grant a creature an ability that's going to be combat-relevant. We like to do those at the beginning of combat just because it sort of triggers at the moment when it matters, when you're thinking about it. You know, we want your opponent...

Let's say a creature gets plus two, plus oh. We want your opponent to go, okay, this is the creature that's getting the bonus. Right now that we're thinking about combat, this is the creature that's getting the bonus. If it happened at the beginning of the turn, if enough stuff went on, maybe you'd forget what happened. So we'd like it to happen right then. Beginning a combat step is also where if you want to do things before the combat happens, before attackers are declared, the most likely thing that you want to have happen there is,

let's say you want to tap a creature. Let's say I want to tap your creature so you can't choose it to attack. That's the window when I would do it. A real common thing is, let me know when you declare attack. And basically what that's saying is, okay, we're going to the beginning combat step. And that's when you can interact with things. that's saying is, okay, we're going to the beginning combat step. And that's when you can interact with things.

The clear attacker step... Oh, well. The other thing about beginning of a combat step is when you can do things that you want to do to your own creatures that you're about to attack with them, but you might want to do something so you can clear them as

attackers. For example, sometimes there's defenders that you have to do something to make can declare them as attackers. For example, sometimes there's defenders that you have to do something to make them not be a defender. So that's kind of the window to do that. Declare attacker step is also a time when you might want to do things where, let's say, I'm granting menace or I'm granting flying or if I'm doing something in which it's going to affect how my opponent's going to block, I want to do that either beginning of combat or declaration of attack step.

I want to make sure that before you declare your blockers, anything that's relevant, and usually that has to do with evasion. If I want to grant my creature evasion of some kind, I want my opponent to know that ahead of time. Mostly also because, hey, maybe it makes certain things not legal. If I give my creature menace and they have one blocker, well, then I can't block it. If you wait too late to do stuff like that, it can prevent what happens. Declare blocker step is when you declare blocker. So you want to make sure you do things. If I want to block a flying creature, I have to jump my creature before I can declare it as blocking a flying creature.

So a lot of times if you want to do things, you might want to do them after declare blocking. Oh, sorry. You might want to do them before declare blocking if it's going to affect how you block. You will do them after declare blocking. Usually what you do after declare blocking is, we're going to get into combat. I want do them after declare blocking. Usually what you do after declare blocking is we're going to get into combat. I want to giant growth my guy. Now that we know

they're in combat, that's the window that I can do that in. Once blockers are declared, I then can do things that will interact with the combat in a way that, well, my opponent is committed to the combat. Combat damage step is when the actual damage happens. We don't do a lot of stuff during that. Oh, another trick that we do sometimes is if we want you to do things during combat, we can tell you only do it during combat, but one of our favorite ways of doing it that's a little less wordy is a target attacking creature or a target blocking creature, where we say, okay, you can only target an attacking or blocking thing.

Well, those are only true, you know, they have to be declared as an attacker or blocker. So by definition, that has to happen during combat. Combat damage step basically is when the damage happens. It's not too much to interact with there. When, oh, back when, so before 8th edition, we used to have a thing called damage on the stack. And the way damage worked was at the combat damage step, you would then put your damage on the stack. Like you would have put effects on the stack. And then once your damage was on the stack, you then had opportunity to do things. You could

then, for example, sacrifice the creature. The damage was already on the stack. Now I could sacrifice the creature and get some other use of it. The reason you might do that is, let's say I was going to get in combat and I knew my creature was going to die. Well, it allowed me to sort of double dip on my creature. That I both could do damage from that creature and sac it for an effect. 8th edition changed that. That's no longer true. But that's when that would happen. And then end of combat is we wanted to make sure there's an opportunity. Sometimes, you know, you want to do things like do extra damage or something.

Like you and your opponent got in a fight. The creature's damaged but hasn't died yet. Okay, here's a window where I can, you know, use an instant on it where my opponent can't use a sorcery yet on it. And so it's an opportunity to sort of finish things off in combat. We like combat. You know, we definitely build spells that are... Sometimes they call

combat out by name, sometimes they reference like attacker blockers, sometimes they don't, they're not necessarily defined as that, but the way they're most useful, you know, it's an instant that boosts creatures. Well, the time you most often, I mean, not that you can't

do that outside of combat, maybe I'm, you know, trying to kill your creature with direct damage or something, but those things are sort of built up to do that, and so combat is pretty cool. Then we get into post-combat main phase. Like I said, post-combat main phase really is just, you know, main phase part two. We don't do a lot that's specifically... We do more that calls out pre-combat main phase part two. We don't do a lot that's specifically... We do more that calls out pre-combat main phase than post-combat main phase. I'm sure we have.

I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure we have. Okay, and then we get into the final phase, the ending phase. So the ending phase has three steps to it. It has the end step. I'm sorry, it has two steps to it. It has the end step. I'm sorry, it has two steps to it. It has the end step and it has the cleanup step.

Okay, so the end step is basically your last opportunity to do instance during your turn. It's when end of turn things trigger. So if I say, for example, at end of turn something happens, this is where it's going to happen. The most common thing we do in the end step is we like to do things that kind of check the turn to see if something has happened. So at end of turn, if something, you know, and there's a couple ways we use that. Sometimes if we want to encourage you to do something, there's a reward for doing it. Also, flip wise, there could be a punishment for not doing it. Or sometimes we don't want you to do something and there's a reward for not having done it. Or there's a punishment for doing

it. More often than not, if we want you to do it, there's a reward for having done it. And we don't want you to do it, there's a punishment for doing it. We can flip-flop those a little bit. But also, sometimes there's just things where we want to make sure that things have happened and so end of turn sort of guarantees that the turn's gone by usually if they're combat related they can be end of combat or something normally if it's end of turn

there's something we're monitoring the whole turn for also I should the other big difference end of step cares about end of turn triggers. The cleanup step is going to sort of clean everything up. So until end of turn, that's when those things wear off. So at end of turn means I'm a trigger, and that means that I wait to the end step for it to happen. Until end of turn is a duration, and that means that it happens until the cleanup

step. So the cleanup step, for those unaware, when Richard first made magic, he was trying to figure out how to do damage on creatures in a way that was the simplest way to do it, right? Now, one of the ways you could do it, and the way that a lot of games do it, is you mark the damage. For example, with your life total, hey, you take damage and you have to keep track of it. But I think Richard just didn't want too many things

you had to keep track of. He felt like, life total, okay, I need to do, I need to have something that over time degrades because the game has to end. So he kind of knew he needed to do life totals. But he said, well, is there a way to not have to track the damage in each creature? Because you could do something in which each creature has

some amount of hit points or something, and then you keep track of it, kind of like we do with planeswalkers or battles. But that's a lot to do, and so what Richard decided was, well, what if creatures have toughness, and you have to take all that damage? In order for a three-toughness creature to die,

it has to take three damage for the turn. And the reason Richard didn't want it to be three damage in one effect was he wanted you to get in combat and then be able to use a lightning bolt. He wanted the idea that you can combine different things. He wanted you to

block with multiple creatures. So he liked the idea that multiple things could add up to do the damage. But then he wanted to make sure that there wasn't memory. So what he did was, at the end of the turn, there's the cleanup. So you take damage and you keep track of it

during the course of a turn. Oh, did I have enough damage to destroy it? But at the end of the turn, okay, we're going to wipe it clean so that in the future, you can just keep track of that turn. That the damage didn't persist across turns. And that was done just for simplicity of tracking what's going on.

And it also makes things play out a little differently. For example, things with a lot of toughness become a lot harder to kill when I can't just do two damage one turn and two damage the next turn, but I have to do all the damage in one turn. So it allowed some build up and allowed larger creatures to have a little more board impact. Anyway, but we needed to have a way to deal with that. And so that's why the very end of the turn is the cleanup step. It's also an opportunity where there's state-based triggers. There's certain things the game has to do

to make sure that things are working correctly. And so, it's a nice clean time that certain state-based actions can happen. And so, that is mostly the end of Turnstamp is just an opportunity to sort of

finally do things, to give people the chance to do their instance and things at the end of Turnstep is just an opportunity to sort of finally do things, to give people the chance to, you know, do their instance and things at the end, and just have certain triggers we like. I think, by the way, so the reason I wanted to talk through the turn structure today is one of the things that I think to become a magic designer, you have to be aware of what I call the tools in the toolbox. You have to understand how does color work? the tools in the toolbox. You have to understand how does color work? What can each color do? You really need to do the color wheel and

understand what tools you have available based on what color you have. You want to understand car types. You want to know what car types are capable of and what can instants do and enchantments and artifacts and creatures and really have a sense of what each car type has to offer you. You want to understand rarity. You want to know sort of, okay, well, what can I do with common and uncommon and rare and mythic rare? Another thing that you really need to understand, this is why I wanted to walk through today, is that knowing when and where you can do effects, knowing when you want things to happen, is important. Like, one of the big distinctions is the difference between when you

want something to be an instant or or be a sorcery and that not just for instance and sorceries but when we make activated abilities uh they default to being in you know instant basically but some of them we want you to only use as a sorcery or some of them we want you to have a tap on them so they only get used once per turn um You know, there's a lot of a lot of the nuance of magic design is understanding the tools available to making cards and then using them properly. And I spend a lot of time talking about color.

Obviously, the color wheel is probably in my mind, the most important part of the whole game. But it's why I've spent time talking about rarity, spent time talking about card types. And it just dawned on me that I hadn't talked about timing. I think understanding timing and knowing when you can do things and where you can do things is pretty important. And so that is why I talked about turn structure today. And so that is why I talked about term structure today. Hopefully this gave you insight in understanding sort of the dynamics of when and where and how we want to do things.

It is one of the things that's really interesting to me in general is, oh, the other thing that's fun. I'll just tell this story real quickly. I'm almost at work. One of the things that you do when you design cards is you sort of build in the structure that you want um but one of the interesting things about magic design is you will do things and then how the players use it doesn't always follow the way that you intend um so for example, I was making Tempest, and there was, I made a spell, I forget what the spell was called. But the idea of the spell was that I wanted you to be able to say, hey, this combat, no tricks. I'm going to cast a spell, and then for all of combat, nobody's allowed to cast a spell. I forget whether it was Incineroar or Sorcery, maybe you cast it in your main phase. all of combat, nobody's allowed to cast a spell.

I forget whether it was Incineroar Sorcery. Maybe you cast it during Main Phase. But anyway, it just said during this combat, no tricks. No one can cast anything during this combat. And the idea for me was, okay, if I attack with my 3-3 and you have a 2-2, I know I'm going to win that fight because you can't cast anything during it. It sort of said, hey, there's nothing I don't know

that's going to happen. But interestingly, my intent of it was, okay, now you can't cast Giant Crows. But because you couldn't do anything during combat, it also meant you couldn't activate things during combat. So, in early

Magic, Richard made something called Circles of Protection. They were in Alpha, and the way Circles of Protection worked, where they were enchantments, usually against a certain color, and then, whenever damage of that color would happen to you, you could spend one mana and prevent the damage to you. So,

early in the game, red mages had a lot of problems dealing with Circles of Protection red, because red can't destroy enchantments and it turned out that this spell if you cast it, they weren't allowed to activate their Circle Protection during combat, which is

when they would need to activate it to prevent themselves from creature damage. And so, what I had made as this sort of like, hey hands off in combat, ended up being this like quirky answer to circle protection. So, even though

I'm talking about now how you build things in, how the players always can find other uses for things. So, even when you build something in and say, I'm going to do a certain thing at a certain time, it's interesting to see how the players will find a way to do other things with it. Anyway, guys, I am now at work. Today is a play day. It's swimming to see how the players will find a way to do other things with it. Anyway, guys, I am now at work.

Today is a play day. It's swimming play day. A play day is when the entire department, I think I did a podcast on play days. The entire department sort of gets together and play an upcoming set. And so swimming is one of our upcoming sets. So we are playing swimming today. So I got to work a little bit early because it's a play day. But anyway,

I will check. If I have not done a podcast on play days, I will do one on play days. But I think I did. Anyway, guys, I'm at work, so we all know what that means. I mean, this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys all next time. Bye-bye.