Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1036: Mana Symbols

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

In this podcast, I talk all about the history of mana symbols, how we use them, how they were created, and more.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is all about mana symbols. So I'm going to talk about the history of various mana symbols and how we've used them and how they came about. And I don't know, just today's a history podcast. Okay, so we will start with the five basic mana symbols. White, blue, black, red, and green. So I did a whole podcast on the mana system, explaining why it's so important. There's a thing I call the Golden Trifecta, which is the three genius ideas that Richard Garfield came up

when he made Magic the Gathering. One is the idea of a trading card game, one is the color pie, and one is the mana system. So I'm not going to get into the mana system per se. If you want to understand why Richard made it that way, why it exists in the game, you want to go listen to that podcast. But I will say that Richard realized very early on that he needed a resource in the game. And so there were, I guess. And so, there were, I guess technically in Alpha,

there were the five colored mana symbols and there was the generic mana symbol. And the generic mana symbol, there's a bunch of them. It can be anywhere from zero up to, I don't know how high a number we've made. I think 16. But, so the idea was, Richard knew that he needed,

Richard, like, Richard understood the concept of there needed to be some cost to doing things he liked the idea that it was tied to land so it grew over time which was important but he also knew that he kind of wanted you know sort of the what the cost of the spell was to be

on the spell so the cost would say oh I and the other thing is the nice thing about the cost of the spell was to be on the spell. So the cost would say, oh, I... And the other thing is, the nice thing about the cost is the mana cost tells you the color of the card and it tells you sort of the relative strength. Because the higher the numbers, the more symbols there are, the greater it is.

Now, I don't know if when Richard originally decided... My guess is he might have experimented with generic not being a number, you know, like literally just that many symbols. But I think he quickly realized that if you start getting, you know, if the generic mana gets too big, then it won't work.

Oh, it's interesting to point out, by the way, in the early version of the playtesting, Richard actually put the colored mana first. Actually, sorry, the very earliest version that Richard did in alpha that I remember was, it would say something like blue three. And what blue three meant was you had to have at least one blue, but the total cost of the spell was three. You had to have at least one blue, but the total cost of the spell was three.

So blue three meant the same as what we would say two in a blue today. That tended to confuse people because you were kind of double counting stuff. The blue counted for one of the spells, and then it also counted for one of the three. So he then moved to the system where there was a symbol that just told you the generic cost right so you need this much of this color and with the colors he decided it was sort of important enough not to put a number on it

and there weren't going to be that many colored pips like he never sort of did blue symbol with a 2 in it and then generic symbol with a 2 in it I don't think he ever did that it was even in the earliest a two in it. I don't think he ever did that. It was even in the earliest days, even when it was under its old system, you know, if you had a creature that would have been like two green, green,

it would have been green, green, four. That's how it would have been written originally. Now, I think some of the symbols were pretty clear. And, you know, like, interesting questions when you look at the symbols. Like a four is for nature. It seems very clear. I think they... I know that... So, Chris Rush and Jesper Mirfors.

Chris Rush was in charge of graphic design. Jesper Mirfors was the art director. I know they worked together to get the early mana symbols. I think that the green was either a leaf or a tree. I mean, the idea of nature came pretty close. So that one came pretty fast. Likewise, the red one being a fire, if you just look at what red is,

that fact that it had fireball and that it's the element of fire and had phoenixes, that fire came pretty quickly. And I don't think they ever tried anything other than fire. Maybe they looked at lightning for a second but um and then blue being water kind of made sense you know once red was fire um blue is a little ephemeral but the fact that it had an elemental element like it's hard to show air um much like it's hard to show earth for red so fire and water definitely have very clear things.

You know, a drop of water is very representative of water. I don't think black necessarily was a hard symbol to make. I think the question when they made it is, well, a skull makes a lot of sense. Black harnesses the power of death. But is a skull too much? You know, I know, for example, in the early days when we used to do the pro tours,

when they did the symbols, they wouldn't go in Woburg order because they didn't want the center symbol being the skull. Just because for people who don't know it, it's just sort of the most intimidating symbol. So they would keep it in Woburg order, but they usually, like white would be in the middle, I think, so it must have gone red, green, white, blue, black. That way black was up on the side. I think the hardest one to make was white. You know, trying to understand what white represents, and the fact they ended up going with a sun says that they stretched a bit. I don't think there's an obvious thing there. It's the color of civilization

and gathering together and honor and virtue. Those are hard things to get a symbol for. Now, it happens to be the color of light versus black's darkness. That's where they got the sun from. Now, it happens to be the color of light versus black's darkness. That's where they got the sun from. Now, interestingly, all five of those mana symbols are basically, I mean, the only one that went through a revamp was in Ice Age. They sort of changed how the, I mean, it was always a sun since the early days, but they changed kind of how it looked.

All of them have been slightly altered, but the white one was the only one that went through a major change, and that was in Ice Age. In fact, a little trivia, we had a preview card that we put out for Ice Age, and the preview card got done early enough that it had the old mana symbol, and the one in the set had the new mana symbol,

so there actually is a card like in the name Prismatic something, in which there's two versions of the card with two different white mana symbols, because if you had the preview version of the card, it had a different mana symbol. Let me talk a little bit about the generic symbol, because the

colored mana symbols were locked, right? They were what they were. I mean, we tweaked them over the years. But the generic, I think in retrospect, I mean, the reason that generic is not spelled out is there are spells that want to have enough symbols that it would just be too hard. Part of me says, I kind of wonder in retrospect,

whether we want to do some system like of fives and ones. I do think the generic symbol being a symbol for everything you have to pay is a little clear. It takes up more real estate, which is why we didn't do it. But it's clear. It's definitely one of the things we need to teach beginners of the mana symbols that throws them the most. The other thing that was quirky, and I'll sort of get to the answer to this throws them the most. The other thing that was quirky, and I'll sort of get to the answer to this later in the podcast, but

we use the generic mana symbol to mean two different things in alpha. So if it's in a cost, it's a generic cost. You may pay anything for this cost. We also used it in things could tap for that. For the soul ring, tap for

one, or sorry, tap for that. For the soul ring, tap for one, or sorry, tap for two in a circle, right? Now, that didn't mean two generic mana because you can't put generic mana in your mana pool. It meant colorless mana. But at the time, colorless was not a cost. So like, well, if it's in the cost, it's a generic mana. And if it's in the text box, it's a colorless mana.

So that would prove confusing later on. So we'll get to that later on in the podcast. Anyway, so the colored mana symbols and the generic symbol really were the mana symbols for quite a while. It wasn't until Ravnica, and Ravnica is 2000. I became head designer in 2003. And Ravnica was the first full block I worked on. So let me say 2005 is my guess.

So Magic came out in 1993. So we're talking about 13 years before the first mana symbol shows up. So the first mana symbol to show up that isn't the basic mana symbols is the hybrid symbol. So this is what I'm responsible for. So basically, so Ravnica, we had started doing themes in Invasion. Invasion was the beginning of blocks having mechanical themes to them. In the early days, you just would have two mechanics. Were the two mechanics connected?

Eh, not necessarily. They were two mechanics. Eventually realized that blocks were a little more exciting if there was a mechanical through line to the block. And this sort of lines up with Bill Rose becoming the head designer. I was also a big advocate of it, but I had Bill's ear. designer. I was also a big advocate of it, but I had Bill's ear. And so Invasion did a multicolor theme. It's the very first theme we did. So in Ravnica, we were trying to go back

to sort of make more gold cards. But Invasion had happened. It was the first time we were repeating a theme. So I wanted to sort of say, okay, how can I make a gold block that's as different from Invasion as could be? Well, Invasion block was all about playing many, many colors. Remember the domain mechanic? It wanted you to play four and five colors. Play as many colors as you can. So I said, okay, what's the opposite of that? Play as few colors as you can. Well, in order to be a gold card, you have to have at least two colors. So I said, okay, it's all about playing two colors. And I said, okay.

And I also made the decision not to differentiate between ally and enemy, which at the time was something we did. And from there, Brady Donnerith came up with the idea of guilds. And anyway, Ravnica was born. So while I was playing around in the multicolor space, one of the things I realized was that traditional gold cards treated the colors as an and. If a spell is too generic, a red and a green, well that's a red spell

and a green spell. So you have to have red and you have to have green. But I realized that there was interesting space that overlapped the colors, and I was really tickled by the idea of or. What if the mana wasn't red and green, but red or green? Meaning you could play it in a red deck or you could play it in a green deck or you could play it in a red-green deck.

So one of the challenges, I mean, also another place this came from is when you are playing in limited, you know, you need to have the right mana to play. And so one of the things that has happened over the years is us realizing that the more colored mana we have, especially at low rarity, so the higher the as fan of colored pips, the easier it is to get sort of color hosed, right? Well, I have red spells in my hand, but just force and play. I can't play my red spells. So one of the things that we've done over time is we've made less use of the colored pips in number,

especially at low rarities and low mana value. For example, right now, in common, with a few exceptions, we don't tend to do spells that cost four or less, mana value of four or less, that have two colored pips in them. We almost never do it in common. There's a few exceptions like counterspells, but we almost never do it a common, like I said, with the exception of a few effects. And then we do it a little bit uncommon, and we do plenty at Rare and Mythic Rare. The reason, by the way, is in Constructed,

sometimes you play mono color, in which if I have two, you know, for example, let's say I have a creature that's white and white, which we do all the time that is very efficient for mono white deck, in fact, encourages you to play a mono white deck. So we want to have those cards exist for constructed

but in limited white, white, it's very, very hard to play mono color in limited unless we are manipulating the environment, either with like lots of hybrid like Shadowmoor or lots of generic things like some of the artifact blocks we've done like mirrored and stuff so it is hard to play mono color so because of that we really can't put white white like a mana value 2

creature with that's white white at common it just causes problems people will play with it but then it'll cause them to get manuscript limited and not be, or color, um, color, you know, color host unlimited. Um, now the reason I bring this up is multicolor has that same issue that if I have, you know, if I make a two drop card, that's a red and a green, it can cause issues. And so one of the things in multicolor sets is we tend not to do low-mana value multicolor cards. You'll notice normally at Common, they tend to cost at least four and sometimes more than that. Now, oftentimes, we give you another way to, like, for example, in Concept Arcade, which was a website, we had morph.

So a lot of our multicolor cards were morph so that if you don't have both colors, well, I can play it as a face down 2-2 until I get the second color. So it gave you some use for it. So one of the other things about hybrid mana, I mean, there's a bunch of things I was trying to solve. But one of the things is, it was very hard to make cheap multicolor cards. Not just in the fact that it's impossible to make a one mana value card. Like, you can't make a red and green one drop

with traditional colors, because you have to have a red mana symbol on it, you have to have a green mana symbol on it. And so I was trying to come up with something that said, well, you know, this doesn't punish. So let's say, for example, I made a spell that goes hybrid, hybrid. I was going to say red, green. That seems to be my colors today. So if I'm playing mono red, you know, that's not super easy to use, but possible.

If I'm playing mono green, it's not super easy to use, but possible. If I'm playing mono green, it's not super easy to use, but possible. But if I'm playing red green, it is very easy to cast, right? And so that's a really interesting thing for Constructed because it's a two drop that I'm not going to get in trouble with if I'm playing a red green deck. Anyway, there are a bunch of different reasons I like hybrid. The story at the time, and I also did a whole podcast on hybrid. So if you want sort of the history of hybrid,

where it got used, how it got used, there's a whole podcast on that. But anyway, I made it. I was really proud of hybrid. And I remember going and showing it off to the rest of R&D, and everybody was like, oh, okay. Like, nobody disliked it, but I didn't. Everybody was kind of like, ah, it's okay, sure.

You know, no one was excited. I was very excited by it. And I think the reason I was so excited was I'm really good at seeing potential, and I'm like, this is a great tool. And it turns out Hybrid Man has been an amazing tool. A lot of times there's ways we solve problems. Like, in Fate Reforged, we needed to make legendary creatures that you could play in a two-color deck

if drafting with Kanta Tarkir, but you could play in a two-color deck, an enemy color deck, if you were drafting with Dragons of Tarkir. Well, how do you make a card that can be played in both two- and three-color decks? And the answer was Hybrid. Companions is another example where we were only making so many companions because there's so much design space, but we wanted to maximize how many mono-colored decks could play them. Oh, well the answer is hybrid. It also

became a weird tool. Hybrid has some issues in Commander, but one of the ways we've definitely used it is if we want to make a card that has an off-color activation and make it so you can use it in the mono-color deck, but the card has two-color identity to it. So, for example, in Alpha, the first off-color activation was done by Richard on Sedge Troll. It was a red card that you could take Black Man to regenerate it.

If we want to do something like that, sometimes we do off-color just because it's a way to do a second color that you can play the first color. That's a trick we use all the time. But if we want to sort of infuse a second color into it, by making it hybrid,

let's say it's a red card with a red-green activation. Okay, well, a mono-red deck can play it no problem. Let's say something like Fire Breathing, plus one, plus one, plus one, plus oh. So you want to activate it a whole bunch

of times. In a mono-red deck, it's okay. I'm saying, in a mono-red deck, it's great. In a red and anything but green deck, well, it's okay. You can play, in my deck, it's great. In a red and anything but green deck, well, it's okay. You can play it. You don't, you know, half of your colors isn't going to go toward anything. But in a red-green deck, it's optimized. Every,

all your lands can play it. So anyway, we find a lot of interesting places to use it. And, because we can use the second symbol to be there, it also allows us to add color identity things without forcing you necessarily to be in that color. So for commanders, there's been some fun commander uses for that. Okay, but next thing up after hybrid, actually came right after hybrid.

So we take 13 years to make a new mana symbol, and then we make another one right away. So it's in Cold Snap. So Cold Snap was the third set. I put that in quotes, but you can't see me quoting. The third set in the Ice Age block. So we were trying to come up with a flavorful one-up set. And we realized that all our sets had three sets in them at the time. All blocks had three sets.

But Ice Age, which was kind of the first block that was kind of retrofitted to be a block, didn't. So we made the third Ice Age set. It was kind of retrofitted to be a block. Didn't. So we made the third Ice Age set. Now, one of the challenges of making a third Ice Age set was the mechanics of Ice Age tended to fall in one of two categories. It was a generally useful mechanic, and we had made it evergreen in magic. Or it wasn't that great of a mechanic, and we didn't want to bring it back.

One of the things they did do, though, is they did snow-covered basic lands. So there's snow-covered islands, snow-covered plains, etc. And there were cards that cared about snow-covered land. So we sort of extrapolated that to the next level, which was, what if things that were snow-covered that generated mana added a new quality to mana, which was snow. Snow is a super type. This is the only time we've done this, although there is a lot of potential here. It's space we have to be careful with because it gets very parasitic.

But the idea is if I have a snow permanent and it produces mana, its mana has the snow quality to it. And then we can make a mana symbol, which is snow mana. And snow mana says all I need is mana that has the quality of snow. So it's not looking for a color. It's looking for a quality. So that's a very different concept in mana. And like I said, it's not something we've done a lot with.

I mean, we've brought snow back a couple times. But it's not... It is an interesting space. It's an interesting but dangerous space. We have to be careful. But anyway, so the idea there is we used snow as a cost for the first time, and we made a little snowflake symbol.

We used it in mana costs. We used it in activations. And the thing about Cold Snap, we were trying to make Cold Snap a really interesting small set that drafted well by itself. So one of the ways we did that with this mechanic is you had to draft the snow-covered land. You can add any amount of normal basic land after the draft, but any snow-covered land, you had to draft during the draft. And that just made a dynamic of a resource for you to care about in a way that's a little bit different.

You're actually caring about what lands you have. So that was pretty neat. Okay. Chronologically, the next thing we did, well, this one was one we didn't do, but I'll bring it up real quickly. So in Planter Chaos, Planter Chaos had this theme of alternate reality. And we took the color pie and we redistributed things in the color pie. Looking back, I'm not sure we should have done that,

but we did do it. One of the things we looked at was magic. We had talked about doing a sixth color forever, but when doing the what if, we were redistributing abilities. The biggest problem

with adding a sixth color is it's just, there's no space for it. And so in the past, we've talked about it. It's like, where do you put it? We can't make up new abilities. I mean, Magic's done so many

cards that all the basic abilities have been done. But when you're redistributing things, you could fit into six. So we did experiment with having a sixth color. The problem we found out was for Constructed, so we gave you a basic land. I think it was called Cave.

It was City at one point, but I think cave was the final version but the problem was in constructed you had to have that basic land it was the only way to get it there's no other things I mean sorry something like city of brass that produces any color

I guess would produce it but it wasn't that easy to get purple mana and so in order to make the purple mana relevant we really had to juice like I think we made mana drain like if it's purple purple just like, just like Mana Drain from Legends,

but in purple. And Mana Drain's crazy powerful, for those who don't know. So it ended up, like, we had it so in balanced purple to make it playable that in Limited, where you weren't quite as restricted, they ended up being overpowered. And anyway, there was lots of balance issues, so we ended up not doing it. But anyway, purple, the purple mana symbol was considered. So not an example of something that happened, but something that was considered.

Okay, next up is two-bird mana. So I've been tickled pink by hybrid mana. In Ravnica, we just did a vertical cycle with them, a common, uncommon, and a rare. And we use them more, what I call for splash, which is here's a new thing you, and a rare. And we, I mean, we use them more what I call for splash, which is here's a new thing you've never seen before. And they played into the multicolor theme. But I really thought that they could be more than that. I thought that they could be the staple of the set.

So Shadmore took that idea and ran with it. One could argue a little too much with it. So almost half the cards in the set were hybrid. So much so that I think we had trouble. Like, hybrid space is only so big. And so I think we struggled a little bit. I think we made too much hybrid. But anyway, so we put hybrid in it.

And we were trying to sort of play around with other hybrid space. So we made six cards in Shadowborn, I think five in Eventide, that had what we call two-brid mana. So what two-brid mana is, is it's either two generic mana or a colored mana. So the idea is, let's say there was a spell that was two-bird white, two-bird white, two-bird white. What that meant was I could cast it for white, white, white. I could cast it for four white. I could cast it for, I'm sorry, I could cast it for

white, white, white. I could cast it for two white, white. I could cast it for white, white, white. I could cast it for two white, white. I could cast it for four white. Or I could cast it for six. Six to nerd. So the idea was that I don't have... I mean, I could put in a deck that's not even playing white, but it's way more efficient in a deck playing white. And the more white you play, the more efficient it is.

We even made one card. What's his name, the giant lord of scarecrows, Shadow King. Shadow King Reaper, I think is his name. And anyway, he was hybrid white, hybrid blue, hybrid black, hybrid red, hybrid green. So you

could play him for Wooburg, for white, blue, black, red, green, so you could play him for five mana, but if you didn't have all the colors, he starts getting more expensive. And you could cast him for tenoburg for white, blue, black, red, green. So you could play him for five mana, but if you didn't have all the colors, he starts getting more expensive. And you could cast him for ten generic, for example. Anyway, Tuber was interesting in that it was an alternate

means by which to have color and make things more efficient in color. Tuber came about, so, way back in... Well, actually, Mike Elliott made a set called Astral Ways that he made on his own before he joined Wizards. When he joined Wizards, Wizards bought the rights to it.

Slivers were in that set. That's the set that Slivers originally came from. And in that set, I think he had a mechanic he called Discordant if my memory's correct. And if a spell was Discordant, you were allowed to pay two generic mana for any colored mana. And so Tuberid was an offshoot of that idea. It was sort of taking that idea but putting it in sort of a hybrid form, if you will. I think Tuberid is very useful.

I'm actually kind of surprised how little, we have used it a little tiny bit. I'm surprised we haven't used it more. I know the symbol is a little wonky looking, but I do think it's pretty practical. So I do think Tuberid is something in the future at some point we should use. Anyway, that is Tuber.

Okay, next up is Phyrexian Man. This is New Phyrexia. So when New Phyrexia got handed off from design to development before vision design, Ken Nagel was in charge of design. Aaron Forsythe was in charge of development. Nagel had been trying to do this thing called Link, where you had like a left side of a creature and a right side of a creature, and they could come together

and you could make different creatures. I don't know if I had left side and right side. Maybe that was me doing it in Unstable. But anyway, the idea was you could take two creatures and put them together, and they joined their abilities together. And I think they joined their power and toughness, too. Anyway,

Link got pulled. The rules couldn't quite make it work. Got pulled at the beginning of development. So Aaron had to come up with a brand new thing for it. Interestingly, Aaron's first idea was a generic Phyrexian mana, and I'm the one that convinced him to make it colored. My idea was you only put it on effects that you

could do in artifacts. That's not what they did. They put on a few effects that were very color-specific that we wouldn't do on artifacts. There's the Counterspell and the Killspell. There's a few things that we wouldn't quite do, at least not at the cost they did it. So anyway, Phyrexian Mana was in New Phyrexia. It was...

We didn't quite understand it. It ended up being pretty broken. I think when they brought it back in Frexia All Will Be One and in March of the Machines, they treated it as if it was just paying a life. Like, maybe you pay mana every once in a blue moon if you can. Let's just act as if you're paying life

and cost it as such. And that worked out a little. And also, they kept it out of mana costs, mostly made it activation costs and such. Frex worked out a little. And also they kept it out of mana costs. Mostly made it activation costs and such. Phyrexian mana is very interesting because the idea of Phyrexian mana is here's mana and here's an alternate

cost that isn't mana. Two-Bred is kind of saying like Two-Bred mana was it's white but it could not be white. But it's still mana. Phyrexian mana says it's white or it could be to life. So the idea of a resource other than manna is very interesting. It's dangerous.

Like, for example, the reason Phyrexian manna is so dangerous is manna you have to build up over time. Life you start with. You start with all the life you're going to get. And so life as a resource is tricky from a balancing perspective because you have it. You don't have to earn it. It's not really a hoop. It's not like having life is something you have to earn. You just start the game with it.

So life as a payment is interesting because obviously you lose the game with no life. But it's definitely something you have to be very careful with because it is something that is easier to access to than other things. And so with Phyrexian Mana, even in Phyrexian Mana used in Phyrexian and Merchant of the Machine, you pay two life a lot of the time just because you have the life and you don't always

have the mana. So Phyrexian Mana showed up there and then obviously, like I said, when Phyrexian returned, we brought it back. I actually did a little bit more with it originally in Phyrexian mana showed up there, and then obviously, like I said, when Phyrexia returned, uh, we brought it back. I actually did a little bit more with it, uh, originally in Phyrexia, uh, and it got toned down some. Uh, the guy had a mechanic with it, um, because it, it is dangerous, and so they wanted to be careful.

So, it, and it is something very, very tied to the Phyrexian, so, um, we don't do that, I mean, every once in a while we make a mechanic that's tied to some flavor element, but this is a mana symbol tied to a particular flavor. Like, it's hard to put Phyrexian mana in a set that has no Phyrexians. I don't know. I mean, the Phyrexians have been locked

away, so I don't expect to see Phyrexian mana. I mean, we just got it for a couple sets, but I don't expect to see it soon. The last mana symbol, I mean, we just got it for a couple sets, but I don't expect to see it soon. The last mana symbol, I mean, maybe we'll make new ones, but the last one that we've made in the past is

Colorless Mana. So, this was Oath of the Gatewatch. So, we had returned to Zendikar, and we were doing, there was a giant battle between the Colorless Eldrazi and the denizens of Zendikar, and we were doing, there's a giant battle between the colorless Eldrazi and the denizens of Zendikar,

who I like to call the Zendikari. I don't know if that's actually ever their name. But we were trying, in each of the sets, we were trying to make sense of the different Eldrazi, and colorlessness was a big definitional thing of them, and Ethan realized that colorless mana a big definitional thing of them.

And Ethan realized that colorless mana as a cost was kind of cool. That it kind of had qualities of being a sixth color without any of the problems of the sixth color. Colorless mana is a part of the game. We make spells that make colorless mana. Not every set, but lots of sets. And in a set that cares about it, we can. So the idea is, and this is what forced us, so we finally had like for a long, long time,

you know, I don't know, 20, almost 20 years, we used one in a circle to mean generic mana in cost and colorless mana in results in the text box. But once we made it a cost, it couldn't be the same thing.

We couldn't say one in a circle, one in a circle, and then that one generic and one Cullis and it's the same symbol. So we finally had to make a Cullis mana symbol, which is the diamond. And we realized that was something we kind of, like when this came about, it forced our hand to do it,

but we kind of realized like we probably should, should, like, we should have done it, you know, in retrospect from the very beginning. It would make things a little easier to understand. Because the idea that this land taps and adds one, but I can't use that one, or sorry, I can use that one in the mana cost that says one. That's why I think we got away with it for so long. That's why I think we got away with it for so long. Anyway, so we liked the idea that colorless mana made sense for the Phyrexians.

They kind of predate colored mana anyway. And so it was a cool thing. It added this different resource. Because there were a lot of colorless things, we had more lands to tap for colorless. The one thing we did learn about colorless mana, because people ask me all the time, like, when's colorless things, we had more lands that tap for colorless. The one thing we did learn about colorless mana, because people ask me all the time, when's colorless mana come? It's not something we can

easily splash, because you have to have, like, not every set makes it easy to get colorless mana. Some do. You know, there's definitely times where it's either we have more things that aren't producing colorless mana, or every once in a while we have colored lands that also

produce colorless. You can produce colored or colorless. So, you know, there is it is one of those things that we've learned that it requires a lot more structure. Will we ever use colorless again? I do think so. Will we tie to Eldrazi?

Well, if Eldrazi return, yes, there's some chance we use Colossus. But I don't think Colossus is as tied to Eldrazi as Phyrexian mana is tied to Phyrexian, because the little symbol of Phyrexia is in the Phyrexian mana symbol, and it's referred to by everybody as Phyrexian mana. Colossus mana is not called Eldrazi mana.

That helps. I actually do think it'll show up in the set someday that's not Eldrazi related. Could also show, I mean, there's one Eldrazi still alive, so Eldrazi could show up again. Anyway, that was all the mana symbols. So let me talk a little bit about the future.

I mean, it's interesting to say that magic is 30 years old, and that, there's not, you know, there's white, blue, black, red, green. There's the generic mana symbol. There's the 10 hybrid symbols. There's snow mana. There's Phyrexian mana. There is colorless mana.

There's two-bride mana. And that's it, you know? I mean, it's not nothing. That's, I mean, because hybrid and two-brid and Phyrexian, there's different versions of them, different colors. They can spread out some.

But I mean, it's not that many. I mean, all said and done, it's not really that many mana symbols. And really, it falls down to like, you know, five or six kinds of mana and then there's extrapolation

of that kind of mana. Will we do more new types of mana in the future? I think we will. But I also think that it's something we have to be very careful with. Um, there's a couple of reasons. Let me walk through. One is, um, we have discovered that symbols are problematic, that symbols don't do a good

job of helping people learn. problematic. Symbols don't do a good job of helping people learn. In general, if you see a symbol and that symbol represents a concept, it's a lot harder to understand that concept than if we simply assign a word to that concept. And if you put too many symbols on your cards, it can overwhelm your players. We've done a lot of research on this. There's places where symbols work, like where you're getting a counter and the symbol represents the counter like energy. It actually works well. Oh it's an energy counter. This represents this counter. That makes a lot more sense to people. But the idea that this concept, this mechanic,

instead of us writing it out as a symbol is a little complicated for people. Now what we've found so far with mana symbols is most of the time we're able to incorporate the colored mana symbol. Hybrid, hey, I'm a red-green hybrid. Well, I'm both red and green. I'm Phyrexian red. Well, I'm a red mana symbol with the Phyrexian symbol on it. I'm a true red. Well, I'm a generic two and I'm a red hybrid symbol. I'm a true red? Well, I'm a generic 2 and I'm a red hybrid symbol. So the fact that most of our mana symbols make use of existing terminology, so in a vacuum you have some chance of understanding what's going on.

The one exception to that, I guess, is snow. Snow just is a different treatment. You have to know what it is. We don't use snow a lot, but that's why I think we're a little hesitant how often we do stuff like that i do think the two biggest um from a design standpoint um phyrexian mana and snow mana are the two that are playing in space that there's the most sort of design space to experiment with. Probably the biggest is snow mana in the sense that it's another resource. It's the kind of resource that we use as mana that's represented by mana.

The problem with that one is it's parasitic. It has the symbol issue of the symbol in a vacuum doesn't mean anything. And we just want to be careful how many traits and things we have. I do think one day we will play in that space again, but we have to be cautious with it. Phyrexian mana, the idea that it's mana or it's something else.

I mean, in some ways, two-bird plays in the same space. And one guy, a hybrid kind of stands in that space like, oh, it's red, but it could be green or two mana or two life. The question there is what are the resources and how do you use them? It needs to be a resource that we control. It just can't be a resource that you naturally have or naturally have too easy. It has to be something that has a real cost to it because the swapping mana for it gets out of control if it's too easy. It has to be something that has a real cost to it, because the swapping mana for it

gets out of control if it's too easy. So, once again, my guess is I mean, I think Magic has a long life ahead of it, so that's another place I see us playing around with it. Since I'm almost to work, I'll answer the one other question that

I get asked all the time. When is triple hybrid? When's that happening? We did play around a little bit. So we did mock up some mana symbols. They look really ugly, and it is hard to convey three things in a bubble. The second thing we found when we tested it was it's just not that far from generic mana. The more colors you get into something something the more it plays like generic and like it's not that easy to use it's

not that easy to read as a symbol and it's just not really far enough away to be sort of its own thing that we've for now i mean maybe we change mind, maybe we come up with a better way to do the symbol. For now, that's why we're not planning to do triple hybrid or quadruple hybrid. People also ask, by the way, about quintuple hybrid, which basically you must bend colored manna on me.

And also there's been talk about making a symbol that represents this can be any color. So the opposite of generic colors mana. This is all colors. And we've talked about that. Could City of Brass produce that? That is a little bit more

use, but we don't do that a lot. And so it's like, is it worth the symbol? And can we make a symbol that looks good? Anyway, there are symbols we've talked about. There are things. I do think there are mana symbols in the future. I do think we'll play more in the space. But as evidenced by today, we really haven't done that much with it,

which means it's space we have to be careful with. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the talk about mana symbols. But I am now at work. So we all know what that means. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. Hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I'll see you soon.