Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1057: Bends and Breaks

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

In this podcast, I talk all about mechanical bends and breaks in relation to the color pie.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Hotel Edition. So I'm at San Diego Comic-Con, and tomorrow's my panel. And I realize I have some podcasts to do, but I'm not driving to work. I'm at a convention, so I will do one here. Okay, so today's topic is bends and brakes. This was recommended by my, for my blog. So today I'm going to talk all about what are bends, what are breaks, why do we do bends,

why shouldn't we do breaks, why do breaks happen? I will talk all about it. Okay, so to start with, I guess the first thing before we get into Benton Breaks, let's do a little bit of a recap on what the color pie, like why the color pie exists to understand sort of the point of the color pie. I did do a whole podcast on the color pie, so this is a shortened version of it. If you enjoy this little snippet on the color pie, you can go listen to a longer version of it. on the color pie, you can go listen to a longer version of it. Essentially, the color pie exists because Richard Garfield had to solve a problem. So he was making a trading card game, and the key to a trading card game is you pick and choose what pieces you use. So Richard had a problem that he called the queen problem. So the idea is if you were playing chess and you could just pick your pieces, why wouldn't you pick one king and 15 queens? Why would

you ever play a rook or a knight or a pawn? Why would you pick like if there are stronger pieces, why wouldn't you always play the stronger pieces? And that was a real, like it was probably one of the biggest issues with a trading card game, which is how do I keep, you know, like, it was probably one of the biggest issues with a trading card game, which is, how do

I keep, you know, like, how do I keep people from just playing the absolute best? So Richard came up with two solutions, or a bunch of solutions, two major solutions. One was the mana system. So the idea of, there's cards that are strong early in the game, because you can

cast them, but later in the game they're weak. While there are cards that are good later in the game, because they're expensive, but they're strong early in the game because you can cast them, but later in the game they're weak. There are cards that are good later in the game because they're expensive, but they're useless early in the game. So the mana system sort of changed the relative power of cards over time. The other thing he did is he created the color wheel. So the idea of the color wheel, it said, if I take all the different abilities in the game and I chop them up and separate them and once again tie them into the mana system meaning that I can't choose to do everything the way the mana system works it's not really easy to play five colors you're you know encouraged to play one or two in most formats and so the idea was that well if I can't play all the colors and the abilities are chopped up and

divvied between the colors then I have to pick and choose things it just makes more cards get played and so the color pie in the you know its initial creation was done as a means to sort of help divide things and so it serves a really important function of part of the health of the game is you want to separate things out. You want, you know, if I'm playing, that there are built-in strengths and weaknesses with what I'm playing.

The colors have strengths and weaknesses. And that is pretty fundamental. It is core to the foundation of the game. And so when I talk about, you talk about the importance of the color pie, like it is serving a really important function. That it is, I mean, I'm not even using like hyperbole here. It is the foundation of the game. The mechanics come out of color.

The flavor comes out of color. Like it is the core identity, the core foundation that everything is built on top of. And so one of the things that's really important is that you want to have clear delineation. That it's not, I mean, the simplest way to think of it is, let's say all the colors could do everything. Well, you only ever need to play one color. Why play multiple colors? And, you know, the mana system makes it very easy to play one color. So, you know, it really erases a lot of what makes magic magic. So I, from the very early days, I was the big sort of protector of the color pie. I really saw its importance. And the other thing about it is

the Power Pie does a lot to give a lot of identity to magic. It's the most unique thing, I think, or one of the most unique things about magic. I talk about the Golden Trifecta. It's one of the three of the Golden Trifecta, the three genius ideas that Richard Garfield created when he made magic.

The other are the training card genre and the mana system. All of which, by the way, I did a three-part series on all those things. So I did them way, way back. They're in the early days of my podcast. But if you want to listen about them, I talk in great detail. Anyway, so what happens is we have a general list.

It sounds like we have literally a list. But we, over time, have allocated what colors can do what things. So I created a thing called a mechanical color pie, and then I updated it. I think the first one was in 97, and then I updated it in 21, I think. Anyway, basically what that does is it lists all the basic abilities,

or the vast, vast majority of basic abilities in the game, and then just says what color does them. So the terminology I use there is what we call primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary means I'm the main color that does it. Secondary means I do it, but I'm not the main color that does it. And tertiary means I sometimes do it.

What primary, secondary, tertiary can vary depending on what you're talking about you're talking about flying well flying is so important and a lot of cards do flying that being tertiary and flying might mean every you know um like red is tertiary and flying but there's dragons and phoenixes in most sets so like red has flying but that's because flying is so prominent that you know just having one or two cards is tertiary in the ability. I guess you could argue red is maybe secondary, maybe green is tertiary. But anyway, the idea is we have these abilities and they are sort of allocated to things. And the other thing that we do a lot of is we really want to separate them out. So a lot of the things we do is even if two colors do something similar,

we often will try to figure out ways to make them a little bit different. You know, for example, black and red both can do direct damage to creatures. But black does drain, meaning it gains life when it does the damage, where red just does straight direct damage. There's no other effect. And so the idea is the fact that black does drain and it does it a little bit weaker, it's secondary at it,

means it just feels a little bit different than when red does it. And so one of the things that we spend a lot of time on, so in the early days, I was sort of the one person that was constantly looking out for the color pie. Eventually, it just got too hard for one person to do because we make a lot of products.

And so that's when I made the Council of Colors, which is a whole team dedicated to making sure that the color pie is being adhered to. And the reason there's an entire group doing it, it's very important. I mean, many aspects are important to the mean, there are many aspects that are important to the game, but I do believe keeping the colors is...

I'll use my metaphor. If the game is a windshield, I believe that when you make brakes, you're... Well, sorry. I'm jumping ahead. Remind me. I will get back to the windshield metaphor. Let me define bends and brakes, and then I'll back to the windshield metaphor. Let me sort of define bends and breaks,

and then I'll get to the windshield metaphor. Because the windshield metaphor has to do with what breaks are. So I will get back to that metaphor. Okay, so the idea is we have things that colors do. So, you know, white can tap creatures. Blue can unsummon creatures. Every color has a list of things that it can do. But from time to time, we do something like, so the most common reason, so what a bend is,

is a bend is something that the color doesn't do normally, but might need to do for different reasons. I'll get into why in a second. But a color might need to do things. So Ben says, well, I don't normally do that, but I'm not fundamentally undermining a weakness of the color. Where a break, what a break says is a color isn't supposed to do this. That letting the color do this

is weakening the bonds between the colors. It is allowing you to have access to something that's supposed to be a weakness. And every colors have strengths. Every color has weaknesses. Okay, so why do we do bends? Why do bends even exist? Why do we just do things that are in the color?

Why do we stretch a little bit? And the answer for that is themes is probably the number one answer. So we have a lot of magic sets to make. How do we make set number 89 different than set number 90? And the answer is that we have themes and mechanics. And usually the mechanics are tied to the theme. So if the set is doing a theme, let's say the theme involves, like, the graveyard. Well, one of the things you'll find is certain colors will have better access to the theme than others. The very nature of the color pie is not all colors do the same thing. So let's say we're interacting with the graveyard.

Well, black, primary with the graveyard. Black is the color that has the most interaction with the graveyard. Green and white are next. Blue and red have a little tiny bit, but not much. Blue and red really don't have a lot to do with the graveyard. So if we did a graveyard set, well, black could do lots of things, and green and white could do some stuff, and blue and red can't do much. Well, that would be a problem.

So what we do is whenever we sort of play in certain themes, we start mapping out in certain themes, we start mapping out, you know, for example, let's say we're doing a graveyard set or, you know, so let's go back in time to like Odyssey, let's say. So Odyssey was the first block sort of built around a graveyard set. Weatherlight was a set that built around a graveyard. But we're working on Odyssey.

One of the questions we have is, okay, well, I kind of know what stuff black can do. Black can, you know, raise dead and reanimate and count the graveyard and remove things from the graveyard. Like, black can do all sorts of things. But what does red and blue do? Like, we can't have a theme and not have all the colors somehow touch upon the theme.

And so what we will do, you know, in the state of Odyssey is, we'll sort of say, okay, well, what do we want to let the colors do? Like, blue and red have to do something with the graveyard. And so the idea is where bends come about is saying, okay, what is something? And the way to think about a bend is it's a spectrum. On one side is sort of like a light bend. It is barely not in color.

And the other side, you have sort of a heavy bend. Like it's just, it's a hairs away from being a brick. And so the light side is, like I talked about how we differentiate colors doing subtle different things, right? Where white will tap creatures. Where blue has the twiddle effect. So it tends to tap or unt tap creatures. Well, blue has the twiddle effect, so it tends to tap or untap creatures.

But blue can tap creatures. If blue can tap or untap creatures, it can tap creatures. So, you know, it's not, the idea of blue, and we have stun and stuff, so, I mean, the idea is, you know, the light bends are when when it's something that like

it's not really far away from what it does but you know we or another good example is in um blue has looting which is you draw a card and discard a card red has um what do we call it red has discard then draw rummaging discard then draw. Rummaging. Discard than draw. Those are pretty close, but the reason we do them different is, A, make blue a little bit better at it, and B, just give red a little more flavor. Red's a little more reckless.

That, you know, it doesn't know... You know, blue is very careful. It sees what it gets before it decides what to get rid of. Red, a little more reckless than that. But let's say, for example, we're doing something... Like, it's not, if red dips its toe a little bit into doing the looting, it's not that far away. You know what I'm saying? Red can get cards for cards. And so a lot of the light end of the spectrum is, well, the cards do some, you know, the cards can do something in this vein. Maybe it's not exactly that. Maybe we differentiate a little bit. But it's not so far away. Then you start getting to

the middle ground, which is sort of like, well, it's not what the color does, but does it undermine it? Does it undermine its weakness? And so the middle ground of bends are sort of like, it doesn't under, you know, it doesn't, it's not something the color naturally does or not, you know, adjacent to what it naturally does, but it's not really undermining anything. It's just like, well, you know, I guess, I guess this color, if we need to to could do that. And then a severe bend is, it's really pushing up against being a break. And like I said, it's, the whole thing's a spectrum. So, you know, at some point you're a severe break

and then you become a break. A severe bend and then you become a break. And the dividing line between severe bend and break is a subtle one. You know, And one of the reasons that the Council of Color exists is you could show two different people

something and let's say they had to sort of say, is it a bend, is it a break, how much of a bend? Different people might think a little bit differently. One of the things that happens all the time in our meetings for the Council of Colors is we'll talk about, can this color do that? You know, and there's historical precedent,

and there's cards that sort of play in that area, and there's other effects that are near it. You know, there's a lot of discussions about what can and can't be done. And it's not black and white. There's a lot of effects where there's, you know, like, one of the things that goes back and forth right now is we talk a lot about

can green clone, for example? The sort of general rule is that green can clone its own things. But there's a lot of discussion of like where you know, where does it cross the line and when does it become too much of a blue thing, you know, and so

there's a lot of things we're trying to figure out you know sort of who who does what um but if you're going to make a magic set you're going to have themes you're going to be pushing in some direction often we're pushing in a new direction right we're trying to make a set we haven't made before so uh i mean there's some major themes like great fear that we keep coming back to, but usually there's smaller themes or larger, you know, Kamigawa Nyan Dynasty was about modernity versus tradition. So we approach enchantments and artifacts a little bit different, and there was a whole

theme of wanting to be in the middle of having both artifacts and enchantments. And so each set, even if it's playing in themes we've played before, just has nuance and things it cares about. So one of the things basically is if you're going to make a magic set, you know, part of what we're trying to do is make it novel and lean in the direction of what the set's about. And if the set is doing something we've never done before, even if it's a subtle thing, like a lot of times, it's not that some of the themes are we haven't done, but we haven't done them in conjunction with each other or how we handle we haven't done. There's a bunch of different ways to do a graveyard theme. You can do graveyard as a resource, meaning you spend it.

You can do graveyard as barometer, meaning you care about what's in it. It could be something where you're bringing things back from it. You know, there's different ways and nuances to graveyard. So anyway, you're making a set. You have themes. Usually some themes are new or somewhat new, or there's a combination of things you haven't done before, which means every set we are trying to make new cards that push in new directions.

means every set we are trying to make new cards that push in new directions um we the the reason we even have the terminology for bends and breaks is we do want some bends we do want you know like the idea of magic is we want to make new cards and we've made whatever 28 000 cards hey part of making new cards is you know maybe pushing pushing into different spaces or combining things in new ways. And so we do want bends. Like, bends are important. We want to make cards that you haven't seen before. And, you know, after 30 years, sometimes that can be a challenge. So, I mean, obviously there's a lot of small nuance changes.

You know what I'm saying? There's infinite ways to do a direct damage spell or something. But, you know, there just comes, you're trying to do cool spells, you're doing a top-down set, whatever. You're doing things in which you make a card, you're like, this is a cool card. And then sometimes we have to ask ourselves the question, oh, what color is this? That's a really common question. Sometimes you'll make an effect

and we'll actually ask the question, oh, we made this card today. What color is it? Or is it white? Or is it green? And like I said, the nuance of bends is it's a spectrum and not everything is,

not everybody sees everything in the same way. So there is subjectivity to bends. Now, breaks, in my mind, are less subjective. They're essentially the colors, you know, colors have weaknesses and when you start doing something that the color is just supposed to be bad at,

when you create workarounds. One of the classic examples is green's supposed to be bad at doing, of destroying creatures without its own creatures. So I remember we made, was it Hornet Sting? It was a green spell for one green mana that did one damage. Now, green's not supposed to, like, green's damage is supposed to come through creatures. It fights and stuff like that.

But anyway, we made the spell, and it was a weak spell. If you did it in red, no one would touch it, right? You know, R to do one damage. That's not a spell you would see people play. But in tournaments, people were playing it as a sideboard card, sometimes even main deck, because green so badly needed an answer to this that even this weak thing, you know, in the big picture of the game, wasn't weak in green because it solved the problem. That there was a green, like green was supposed to have a weakness, and this was solving green's weakness. And even

though it was on the weak side, you know, solving weakness is strong. Okay, now I get to my metaphor. So the foundation of the game is a windshield. And every break is a chip, or not a chip, maybe a break in the glass. Man, maybe it's a small break, maybe it's a chip, whatever. But the point is, every time you do that, you're making a small break in the glass. Maybe it's a small break, maybe it's a chip, whatever. But the point is,

every time you do that, you're making a small break in the glass. At some point, if there's enough of those small chips or small, you know, breaks, you'll actually break the dashboard.

Like, that's one of the big dangers of the color pie is, of breaks, is if you do too many breaks, you can fundamentally,

you know, destroy stuff. And, I mean, we're seeing some of that right now, for example. The fact that, at least in tabletop, the most played format commander uses all the cards, but green is the place where you can see it the most. Green is the place that we have had the most flux over time of coming to what we thought green was, meaning there's a lot of things in green that are breaks,

that just let green do things that fundamentally we now understand green shouldn't do. So green is very, very flexible in Commander. There's not a lot of weaknesses to green because we've made cards that undermine its weakness. So just an example where it causes problems. Now, there's another issue about bends, that the problem with bends can not just be, you know, you have bends, but you only want so many bends, right? That bends in large number start causing problems unto themselves. And the other thing is that just because a bend exists and it's a bend and not a break doesn't mean you're supposed to do it.

That being a bend doesn't give you carte blanche to do it. It's not like, oh, it's a bend. Okay, we can do it. That being a bend doesn't give you carte blanche to do it. It's not like, oh, it's a bend, okay, we can do it. The way bends work is, so we actually have a grading system on the console colors. Basically, there's four stages. There is you can do it. It's in pi. There is

it's a bend, but we think it's an acceptable bend. It's a bend, but we don't think it's an acceptable bend for this set. And then it's a break. So the last two, you're not supposed to do. Don't do breaks. Don't do bends that aren't meant for the set that it's in. And part of that means a couple things.

One is you don't want too many bends. Bends in large number start to sort of feel like breaks. And because of that, you want to sort of feel like breaks. And because of that, you want to sort of be judicious where you're using your bends. That's one of the big things. And normally what we've learned is the most important job of bends is helping fit the theme. So normally what happens is if there's a bend in the set, we're like, well, why is that bend there?

That's the first question we ask. And if the bend is, you know, it's there because it, you know, needs to accomplish something, oh, we're doing a graveyard theme and Red needs to do something with the graveyard. You know, those are the bends that we're the happiest with. We're like, okay, it's a bend, but it's a bend in service of a bigger goal in the set.

It's servicing something. The bends that we don't like are like, well, yeah, that color doesn't do that. And, you know, it doesn't, it's not necessarily a break that it does it, but why here? Why now? And if the answer is like, oh, I just have a cool card. Like, well, there'll come a day and a time

where that card and that bend will make sense to the set. It will service the set. But bends have to exist to service the set. Bends have to exist such that they're performing a purpose. Bends aren't free. You know, a bend is, you should avoid bends if you can. There's a time and place for bends. Every set has bends.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have bends. But you need to be judicious in how you use them. And that is something that we're always, the Council of Colors, when we review things, there's always a lot of discussion about what is it servicing? The other thing, and this is where having an internal format

gets you sometimes, sometimes what we realize is we can do something in small number, but that if you sort of do too much of it, it itself will cause the problem. Like, oh, if a deck has one card that does this thing, it's not a problem. So back when we had Standard,

we could sort of, I mean, we do have Standard, but back when Standard was sort of the most played tabletop format, you know, we could space things out. Like, oh, we don't want more than one of those. So if we do one now, okay, we shouldn't do another one for three, four years at least. So, like, you know, have far out of standard before it pops up again. But now in an eternal world, it is trickier because things will come together.

Now, commanders, single 10, 100 cards, so the volume you need is a little bit higher, but still nothing leaves the system, and so that's something we have to be careful of. So the other question, let me answer the question that I often get about breaks, is one of the things about, is when you do something that you haven't done before,

the novelty is high. People like to play under chaos in the sense that, oh, those colors didn't do those things. And like I said, the whole reason why we do bends is you want some novelty. You want some cards you haven't done before. But what you don't want to do is just, you know, you don't want to say, well, this was a problem for this color,

so I had to go to a second color. Oh, not a problem anymore. You want to have things that force you to go to other colors. That is fundamental to Richard's vision. That it's important to the game that a color is not totally self-sufficient. That if you're playing a monocolored deck, you will run into troubles and there's desires where you want to go to another color.

And that is important. Now, I guess I should ask a question. Breaks happen. Why do breaks happen? How are there breaks in the game? In early Magic, some of the answer was I didn't get everybody on the same page

early on I was sort of the I was the person constantly saying oh look we need to respect the color pie and there was people like ah whatever so early days there were some cards made like I like the flavor or whatever the idea of the purity of the color pie

was not necessarily fully adopted. But we did get to that point. The reason it happens now, the reason it breaks now is the way the console color works is usually twice during the life of a file, we will go in once in vision and once in set design, later in set design,

so that we can give notes and we can say, oh, you know, I don't, sorry, there's a third time. We do once in vision, once in set design. So that we can give notes and we can say, oh, you know, I don't, sorry, there's a third time. We do it once in vision, once in set design, and there's a thing called gate eight where we look at the cards.

If we see notes in gate eight of cards we think are causing severe bends or breaks, those will get called out then. So there's a third, although the problem is that's late enough

in the process that unless it's a really big problem, we don't tend to change things. So that's only enough in the process that unless it's a really big problem, we don't tend to change things. So that's only for catching major, major problems. So it's a third look, but not a... The other two looks, there's time to change things, easily change things.

So what happens is not everybody is necessarily as well-versed on the color pie as the council of colors, and even among us, there's discussion. There's a lot of nuance from what is and isn't acceptable. So it's very easy for someone in a set to be trying to solve a problem. And a very common way

is you sort of inch towards something. Like you make a card that clearly is fine. And then you make one little change and then another little change. And you make enough little changes that it just shifts just enough that it's something you wouldn't have made up front. But usually it's like, well, it's serving a purpose, it's in the set, I don't want to have to change it. Like, you sort of sometimes get to places where, you know, the boiling the frog thing, where you kind of, you know, had you made it in a vacuum at first, maybe you would have noticed.

But because, you know, the card was fine and you keep incrementing by small amounts, sometimes it's hard to notice that. And sometimes there's just disagreement, you know, and the console colors is, you know, eight people, like most of the designers aren't on the console colors. And so they're not as well versed on stuff. And so one of the things we do is we try to encourage them to come and talk to the, like, if you're working on a red card and, you know, oh, I'm not sure this is a red card. Hey, we have a person for you to talk to that can help you with that. We get the red counselor. But, you know, not everybody is well-versed. And a lot of times, like I said, you're just in the middle, you know, it's very easy when you're deep in the trenches trying to solve problems that it's hard sometimes to see the bird's eye view.

And so that's another reason why breaks get made. But, like I said, the, oh, the other thing that's interesting is the reason that the terminology even exists, the reason we talk about it, is it's important in, from a design standpoint, of having conversations about what things are doing and how they're existing. Like, the idea that this is a bend and an acceptable bend, or this is a bend and not acceptable bend, or this is a break, is shorthand we can use

that really conveys information. For example, if the color, you know, a color counselor goes to somebody and says, this is a break, the person in R&D usually goes, okay, I'll fix it. Let me figure out how to get it so that it's not a break. Every once in a blue moon, if it's pushing a new space, there may be a little bit of push. Are you sure? Are you sure we can't do this? But R&D does respect, like, we've come a far way. The early days where people would poo-poo me when I was like, guys, we can't do this um but you know rnd does respect like we've come a far way the early days where

people would poo poo me when i'm like guys we can't do that um oh real quick this story before we end the classic example is uh there's a card called desert twister um and it was fifth edition and they were just running out of rare green effects and so they wanted to put desert twister in and i was guys, green is not supposed to kill creatures. That's like the core of its weakness, is that without aid of creatures, it can't kill creatures. So the way to think of it is

if green has no creatures on the board, it shouldn't have spells to just kill creatures. And so I really tried to get Desert Twister from being put in the set. Now, given there weren't a lot of choices of what to put there, this is back in the early days, but it's one of those things where, like, I lost that fight.

You know, Desert Twister went in fifth edition, even though Green isn't supposed to do that. And so that really was... What I realized is there was a slippery slope, that once you do something, people see it, and they go, oh, we did that. I guess that's okay, you know? And it's very hard to communicate.

Well, we did that, but what we talk about is not being a precedent. That's the thing, that's a note we'll give in file sometimes is not a precedent, which means we're going to let it happen this time, but this is not an okay that more cards can be like it. And from time to time, we get in areas where we're like, okay, we got in a bind or it's late in the process and it's hard to change it.

But we don't want this card to mean, hey, open season, this is something you can do. And so sometimes we'll tag with not a pressing it. Anyway, so that, my friends, is 30 minutes on bends and breaks. So I hope this was informative and gave you some insight in sort of why we care about bends, why we care about breaks. It is a topic I care very much about, and it is something that is pretty important. As head designer, one of my jobs, essentially, is very big picture thinking. one of my jobs essentially is very big picture thinking.

A lot of people down river are like, I got to get this set out and I need a card that fits this goal and this set. But a lot of my job is sort of long-term health of the game and making sure that we, you know, save design space. You know, a lot of my job is thinking very big picture to make sure that we're doing things that are smart long-term. And the color pie and bends and breaks's stuff, that's part of it.

That is why I care so much. But anyway, guys, that is all I have. So I hope you guys enjoyed my hotel room podcast. But anyway, guys, I'm in my room, and I guess it's time for bed. So we all know what that means. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to sleep. So and it's i guess it's time for bed so we all know that means instead of talking magic it's time for me to sleep so i hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast and i will see you next time bye