Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1078: Designing for Limited

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Our new office is open, so I'm back to driving to work. In this podcast, I talk all about the ways we design for Limited. Due to traffic, this podcast is a full hour.

I'm pulling my driveway. You heard me! I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what this means. For starters, the new office is open and it's time for drive to work. So today is the very first day of our new offices being open. So I am, for the first time, driving to the new offices. So today, I thought I would talk about designing for limited. So when we make a set, obviously many different people will play with every set. There's lots of different uses for the set, but one of one of the ways to play with a set is in limited. And when we say by limited, there's two main formats we design for. One is sealed. Most pre-releases are done and sealed. Sealed meaning

you just open up, you get like the equivalent of six packs usually. You open it up, you can add any basic land you want, and you play. Or booster draft. Booster draft's where you get three boosters. You open it up one at a time. You choose a card from it. Usually you draft with seven other people, and then you pass a card to the left. You keep doing that until you draft all the cards from pack one. Pack two, you pass to the right. Do that until you draft all the cards from pack two. Pack three, back to the left. There are other ways to play limited.

There are other limited formats. But booster draft and sealed are the vast majority of play. In fact, booster draft is most of limited play. Sealed really is restricted to the pre-releases. It's a sanctionable format, and there are some stores that do a little bit of sealed, but it is mostly when people want to play limited formats at their local store, they booster draft. That's the most common way to play. But anyway, so today I'm going to talk about, we have to design for that. How do we design the set to make sure that it's fun in a sealed and booster draft? Um, those are slightly different things.

They overlap in certain ways and not in others. Um, so I'm going to talk about that. So that's my, my topic for today is I drive to the new office. Okay. So first things first is, um, we have what we call a set skeleton, which means there are so many slots in the set. There's so many common slots, so many uncommon slots, so many rare slots, so many mythic rare slots. And in the common or in each rarity, slots are assigned to color. So there's a certain number of monocolor slots.

There might be multicolor slots, depending on what the set is doing a certain number of monocolor slots. There might be multicolor slots, depending on what the set is doing. There's always monocolor slots. There are sometimes multicolored slots. Usually at the higher rarities, there's almost always these days multicolor slots. At lower rarities, like you will not see multicolor at common

unless there's a theme in the set that really leans toward multicolor. It's most common to see multicolored uncommon. We tend to like make, we call the gold signpost, the signpost. Well, I'll get into draft archetypes. We'll talk about the signpost when we get to draft archetypes. Okay, so the very first thing you need to do, so when we first build the file,

the very first playtest we do tends to be with all commons and a smattering of uncommons. And the reason for that is the lower rarities dictate limited. Yes, rares exist, mythic rares exist. You have to think about them, but they're not what defines limited. Limited is defined mostly by common and a little bit by uncommon. So a lot of, most of what we do at common is designed primarily for limited. Now I will say that the power level of something like a booster draft and the power level of what we call casual constructed, and what I mean by casual constructed is, hey, I just buy packs and then I make decks out of the packs I buy. The power level of casual constructed, where I'm not buying a lot of packs,

I'm just playing with what I own, is pretty similar to booster draft. So when we are designing things to make sense in booster draft, to be balanced in booster draft, we're also designing them for casual constructed. And I say this all the time. People never believe me. But casual constructed, I just play with what I own. Cards I own, I joke, is the format, is the most played Magic by far. By far, by far, by far, by far. That's how most people play. Most people are not in franchise.

They don't even know the existence of formats. Or if they do, very, very loosely. And the idea is that by building something for limited, we also do a good job of just making casual constructed work. So there are some secondary purposes to all the balancing that goes into limited. It also, it affects actually a lot of constructed, but not a lot of format constructed. Okay, so you start at common.

Common is the most important thing. Now, if you've ever seen a set skeleton, you will know that we have what we call a curve. And what that means is in each color, there is so many cards at a certain mana value. It depends on the color, and there's a little bit of variance from set to set. But for example, red and white will always have a one drop. Blue could have a one drop. Green could have a one drop. They sometimes do, but they don't always have a one drop. Or red and white pretty much always have a one drop. Why? Because the archetypes in red and white are a little more aggressive and need the one drop. So basically, in the set skeleton, each color has sort of a rough outline of where

things will be. If you've ever seen the outline, it'll also, like, slot three might say a two or three drop, stuff like that. It's not, it is somewhat prescriptive in that we wanted a curve, but not so much that there's not flexibility. So what I mean by a curve is, I should explain this. When you're playing a game of Magic, ideally what you want to have happen is on turn one, you can play a one drop. And on turn two, you can play a two drop. Now given, you don't always draw a land every turn. So like the first few turns, turn one, turn two,

sometimes turn three will be you have a land drop. But that's not always guaranteed. But essentially the idea is we want you to have a range of cards from low drops to high drops, so that no matter what goes on during the game, different things are happening. And ideally, to maximize what you're doing and limit, well, this is true of constructed, but mostly what you want to do is every turn you want to use your mana. You know, you want to play the most efficient thing you can with the mana available to you. So we build the curve in so that when you draft, better drafters, people that are more experienced, will actually draft with a curve in mind.

They'll actually go, oh, I need more two drops. I need more four drops. They'll think about where in the curve they're light and that they will start prioritizing that in the draft. Now, a lot of stuff we do, I should stress, is there is a high-end drafter that will draft many times. And our goal in making limited is we want to make sure that the people that are playing limited a lot are having a fun experience on all the different games they play. At the same time, some people are only going to drop the set once or twice. We want to make sure the first experience is fun. So there's the combinations of making sure it's accessible

and simple, or at least straightforward, but also having enough depth that replay is fun. So as I'm talking about different things we're building in, these serve different audiences. So as I'm talking about different things we're building in, these serve different audiences. A beginning player doesn't tend to have as tight a curve as a more advanced player. That's fine. As long as a beginning player is playing a beginning player, if they develop roughly at the same level, that's fine.

But as we build limited, we're building in the tools that are needed for all different levels of players. So basically, the set skeleton says we need a curve of creatures. Now, the curve is on the creatures, and it goes from one drop up to, it varies on color how high it gets, five or six. Green sometimes will have a seven drop. And the idea essentially is that you build those in, you build them by color,

and you want to make sure those exist. We also will have slots for spells. The spell slots are less mana value driven and more what they do. For example, if you look at our set skeleton, green common will have like sort of a giant growth slot, which means it's a card that you're going to use, usually an instant, usually cheap, and it's going to make your creature bigger in combat.

So it's a combat trick to help win in combat for green. Different colors have different things. There are some abilities that show up all the time. There are some abilities that we do some of the time. that show up all the time. There are some abilities that we do some of the time. And the skeleton sort of reflects the fact

that certain effects tend to show up in certain rarities. One of the things about magic, having made magic for a long time, and the reason there is a skeleton, is there are certain things that are pretty basic.

You know, we do a lot to make each magic set feel unique from each other magic set, but when you kind of peek under the hood, 80% of the structure is probably very similar as far as the curve of the creatures, what kind of effects you have. You know, blue common will have what we call a hard counter, which means a counterspell that counters anything,

and a soft counter, a counterspell that can sometimes, but not always, counter stuff. And maybe it's, you know, the soft counter might be restricting what it can counter. It might be your opponent can pay mana to get out of it. You know, the soft counter means you're not always going to counter something, or it's restrictive what it can counter. Where the hard counter is, look, I can counter whatever I want to counter. You know, black is going to have what we call a straight kill,

meaning a kill that just is going to kill anything. to have what we call a straight kill, meaning a kill that just is going to kill anything. Usually the way it works is because common is costed for limited. Common and uncommon are costed for limited. Rare and mythic rare are costed for constructed. That doesn't mean you can't have a constructed card at common or uncommon, or can't have stuff in limited at rare mythic rare but it means that the guiding for how you're going to cost it now sometimes a card can be aggressively costed for constructed and not be a big deal in limited because you have to build around it or factors that show up in

constructed might not show up in limited so sometimes we can cost very um very aggressive cards for constructed and put them at lower rarities because it fits in at a lower rarity, it works in limited, and it's not a problem. Other times, for example, with like Creature Kale, well, common Creature Kale in black tends to be a little more expensive just because we don't, for a limited purpose, we want to be careful not to make it too cheap. So there is a power level for limited and a power level for constructed.

Different formats have different power levels. But mostly when you're designing common, you're thinking about what's the power level for limited. That doesn't mean it can't overlap at times, but limited is your focus. And you want to make sure when you're making that you have all the different things that you need. That you have the different effects. Now, for example, and this is built into the skeleton, every color needs to deal with creatures. So how do they deal with creatures?

So for example, white is going to have a pacifism or arrest type card that's going to, an enchantment, an aura that keeps you from attacking, blocking, maybe activating. White's probably going to have some kind of oblivion ring variant

where while I'm in, you're not, you're exiled while this is in play. Sometimes that's on a creature, sometimes it's on an enchantment. White also sometimes will have a spell

that's a little more expensive, maybe destroy an attacking creature or a tapped creature. Usually it's kind of conditional. Usually your opponent has to sort of attack you before you can destroy creatures with that kind of spell. Blue is going to have lockdown,

so auras that keep things from untapping. It's going to have counter spells that come in. It will have what we call shrink, which minus N minus O, which helps you win in combat sometimes, usually it's an instant. So sometimes it'll help you win in a combat trick, or just it can be used as sort of damage

prevention. Black will have a straight up kill spell, and then usually a smaller kill spell that's conditional, like minus 2, minus 2, or something like that. It might have a drain. So black has the most creature kill, but usually two or three things in common.

Red will have direct damage. Normally, of its red direct damage spells, usually it'll have three in common, but only two will hit creatures normally. This is the default. Things can change set to set depending on the needs. Red also can have a little bit of creature boosting that can be used in combat

like red and white will both have combat tricks sometimes all the colors have some kind of combat tricks white, red, and green sometimes will boost the creature even black sometimes will boost the creature a little bit black might give you indestructible white and red could grant you First Strike. There's different tricks you can get. Green normally, besides the Giant Growth,

has either what we call a fight or a bite. Fight means that you make a creature get into combat with another creature right then and there. Bite means you're just doing damage from the creature. You're not getting damage back. But all of that is woven in. Also, not only do you need answers to creatures, but you need answers to other card types.

Usually, white and green are going to have some sort of answers to enchantments and artifacts. Red will have an answer to artifacts. Black these days occasionally has answers to enchantments. So we want to make sure that we understand the different things. Land's the one thing

in common. We do do land destruction, usually of non-basic lands, but at higher rarities. We don't tend to do that in common much. And sometimes the creature kills in black will also say planeswalker on them to help deal with planeswalkers.

Red is direct damage, so direct damage can kill planeswalkers straight up is direct damage, so direct damage can kill planeswalkers straight up. So anyway, you want to sort of have a balance to make sure that someone who's playing has axes the kind of spells they want. Now, the difference between common and uncommon is

common are all the basics. Common are all the things you need to sort of make it work. Uncommon, A, there's effects that are uncommon that don't exist at common. For example, we allow, there's just abilities that are a little more aggressive. Like, for example, blue and red

don't get to steal as much at common, especially blue. And sometimes we let it steal at uncommon. The really good stealing effects tend to be more at rare. But anyway, uncommon gives us access to more effects. And we start doing what we call build around cards at uncommon, meaning let's say I've drafted a whole bunch of times. Well, maybe if I get this card early, it just encourages me to do something that's a little off the beaten path. Before I get to that, let's talk about draft archetypes. Okay, so one of the things we do, every set usually has 10 draft archetypes. The default

draft archetypes are the two-color pairs. Sometimes there are three colors. Sometimes there are mono-color, though mono-color are very hard to pull off. And so basically the idea is, I'll just talk about two color pairs. That's our default. We want a strategy for each of the color pairs. What are you doing? Sometimes that archetype is built around a mechanic in the set. Sometimes it's built around maybe, we often have one or two typal archetypes where it's built around a creature type.

Now, there is a default for all, like red-white default is aggro, meaning if we're not, you know, if it's not somehow playing into something unique about the set, the default for red-white is an aggro deck. The default for white-blue is a control deck. Now, certain archetypes are more consistent than others. Green-blue, for example, is the classic. It always varies set to set. I guess the default for it is ramp, but it is definitely

something where it can vary a bit more so than others vary a bit. So one of the things you want to do for limited is you want to understand what your archetypes are. And then the idea is, once you know your archetypes, you go back to common, you look at all your monocolor cards, and the idea is every monocolor card should fit into at least two different archetypes. Now note, in two-color pairs, there are four different archetypes for each color. So the idea is each card doesn't need to be useful for all four types. Every once in a while they are. Sometimes, like if you make a mono black hill spell, well, you know what? All the black decks will play the mono black hill spell. But one of the things we try to do is be

aware of what the archetypes are, and then we make sure in mono color we want each card ideally to show up in two or more archetypes. Why do we do that? If you limit the cards, let's say I make a card that's only good for one archetype. That means no one will draft it but that archetype, which means if you're playing, let's say I'm playing black-green and we make a card in black just for the black-green. It only makes sense in the black-green deck. Well, that means that no one else is going to take it. No one's going to fight you over it. So if you're black-green, every time you drop the set, you're going to get that card. In a way that, A, makes repetition of play. Games play out too much the same. And it allows you a little bit too much security to know how to plan around. And so it both causes

play design imbalances. Our goal is we want all the different archetypes to be equal in power. Yes, that's not always how it plays out, only because balancing is very, very hard to do. So normally something ends up being a little bit stronger than else, but you want them as close as you can. And having cards that are isolated, only one person wants, we call it siloing. It silos, it means, it just, it creates imbalance because people know they're going to get it and it lessens variety. And one thing you want is you want variance in play.

That if someone's going to draft 40 times, and let's say they like playing the black green deck, it's very common for somebody to have an archetype they like and get really good at it and keep drafting that archetype because they've learned the nuances of that archetype. Well, if certain things get too repetitive, it just is not fun for them. Now on top of the archetype, oh, and as part of the archetypes at Uncommon, this was innovation from Eric Lauer, we do what we call the gold signposts. And what that means is it's a gold card, usually a creature, not always a creature, but usually a creature, defaults a creature, that really is loudly telling you what that color pair is up to. And it is something that's very useful. Now, the two-color card can be super focused.

Nobody, I mean, not nobody, sometimes people splash a third color, sometimes there's three colors. So sometimes you can fight over gold cards. But in a traditional thing where it's two color pairs and there's not a lot of gold cards, usually the gold cards are more directional. That it's okay that the red and white player is more likely to pick up the red and white card because if everybody else is playing two

color things, that's the one thing they can get. So we want that to be very directional and we want it to be we want to make sure the play value of that card pushes you in different directions and encourages, you know, it's something that really is something that won't promote the exact same kind of play, but sort of encourages a style of play, and then you can shake it up from game to game and try different things. is a style of play and then you can shake it up from game to game and try different things. The signposts on commons really want to be directional for new players that don't know what to do, but be a fun tool for more advanced players so it's not just doing the exact same thing every time. And there's a nuance to getting that that's tricky to do. Then in uncommon,

we'll have other build-arounds where cards that are going to encourage you to do something, that are going to encourage you to try something new. Spider Spawning is kind of the classic example of this. It was a card in Innistrad where you generated all these spider tokens, but you had to behave in a certain way to get those spider tokens. And it had flashbacks, so you could use it twice. And the idea is, oh, I'm going to try to do this thing. It's a little off the beat. We like to have some of those build around because it is fun.

It is fun for as people who draft more to have more things to explore. That we want more than just the 10 archetypes to do, but that we want the archetypes to be loud so beginning players can grab onto something, and we want some of the more subtler strategies to be there, but something you learn with time

so that advanced drafters, you know, have the chance to discover things and such. Now, one of the challenges is rare cards and mythic rare cards are designed for constructed more than limited, but one of the things we have to be careful of is what we call trap cards. So what a trap card is, is a card that encourages you to do something that the set does not allow you to do. So for example, let's say we made an uncommon card that encourage you to do something with auras, but there weren't enough auras in the deck to make that work. Meaning it's encouraging to do something and whenuras, but there weren't enough auras in the deck to make that work. Meaning, it's encouraging to do something, and when players see a card that encourages something,

the natural assumption is, well, you can do that. Why would there be a card? So, one of the things is we never do trap cards that are common or uncommon. We try hard not to do trap cards that are common and uncommon, and when we're doing rare and mythic rare, we really have to have a purpose for the card if it ends up being a trap card. Now, here's the challenge. There might be a card that's meant for standard or modern or pioneer or commander.

There might be a card that has a really specific purpose that is very fun for constructed and we think people will enjoy it, but is a trap in limited. Now, if you're a more experienced drafter, you'll learn that there are occasionally traps in Rare and Mythic Rare. It's hard for us to avoid. We usually will try to tweak things a little bit so there's some functionality in Limited. Yeah, so the two biggest problems that constructed causes us is traps and bombs. So traps means

they're cards that encourage you to do something with this that can't support. We need to be careful with traps. We put them in higher rarities. Bombs are, here are cards that are usually more made for constructed purposes, but are just you know, think game enders and limited.

We want some amount of bombs and limited. Bombs are good. The reason for that is you want some variants in limited. You want to make sure that players who are not as good players occasionally can win. Not the majority of the time. The better players should win more of the time. But you do want to have the opportunity

where somebody who's not as good a player draws the right cards in the right order and they can win the game. And bombs can help with that. The key to bombs is, the most dangerous thing is you only want so many bombs in your limited format. And so what we try to do very carefully is make sure that the bombs we do have serve some purpose and aren't what we call limited bombs, meaning there's no purpose other than to be a bomb unlimited. We try to be very careful about that. You don't want to put cards in.

And part of that is, you know, if the card is not aimed at a constructed format, either change the card or recast the card or, you know, limited bombs that don't have another purpose can be very frustrating. And so because we want to make sure that we limit our bombs, we more limit our bombs to things that have a larger place somewhere else. Other things in limited that you want to keep track of is, oh, mana fixing. So depending on what your set is doing, you want to make sure that you enable whatever you're asking for.

The more you push multicolor play, the more you have to put resources at common to do that. One of the challenges in general is, the goal of mana is, you want people to do the thing that you want them to do, but you don't want them playing a lot more colors than that. For example, let's say we're making a two-color set, or Ravnic or something. We want you to play two-color play. We understand that that will encourage some three-color play, but what we don't want you to do is play lots of four- and five-color play.

but what we don't want you to do is play lots of four and five color play. The reason for that is four color and five color play have the same variance problem. Meaning if I can just play four colors or five colors, the correct strategy most of the time is just take the best cards. And that means a repetition. Like, oh, if there's a really good five color... Now, sometimes we make strategies where there's a four- or five-color deck that leans hard into something. Oh, there's a mechanic, you know, domain or something, in which, okay, there's a specific reason why you'll want to be in more colors.

And when we tend to do that, we tend to make sure it's narrow enough that you're not just taking all the best cards from everywhere, that it's focusing in a certain direction. We do not do tons of four and five color archetypes. We do some, but not a lot. And the mana system has to work. The general rule of thumb is if you're going to have more than an average number of multicolor cards, meaning the set has some multicolor theme, you're going to want dual lands at common.

And each level, each rarity has certain strengths and stuff. Dual lands at common, for example, most likely are going to play tapped. Because limited is slower than constructed. Tapped dual lands are usually a problem in constructed, unless you're playing a very

control-oriented deck. So the idea is that we want to make sure that we want to make sure that we want to make sure that the land is providing you enough access so you're not frustrated in the colors. The other thing that we try to do is making sure that your land balance is correct

is a little more of an advanced player thing. So we want to make sure the resources are there such that if you don't know any better at low rarity, as a low-enfranchise player, meaning let's say you're playing sealed at a pre-release, we want to give you enough that you'll probably be okay. And then we want to give you enough in draft that you have the tools you need to draft what you need to draft, but not enable stuff that's beyond what we're trying to do. draft, but not enable stuff that's beyond what we're trying to do. Usually,

play design is the one that tends to pick what, like, even though we'll put them in at vision design, we'll normally talk with play design and say what you want. We've done enough sets that we know, for example, when we need basic

duels and stuff like that. The other thing is every once in a while, the mechanics of the set inspire a new kind of duel land. A good example for that was in Zendikar Rising, we were introducing modal double-faced cards, MDFCs, and we realized that there was this fun opportunity to do a modal double dual land, where on one side it's one land, it's another, that can play untapped.

Anyway, so when we find opportunities to do something new, we'll let Play Design know. So that doesn't happen tons. There's not that many mechanics that they get really cool new dual lands, but when they happen, we will discover that and envision and point it out, so make sure that Play Design is aware that we'd like to do that if possible. Because it doesn't happen a lot, Play Design tries to make sure that when we find those opportunities to take advantage of them. Another thing that will happen when you're trying to build for Limited is we do a lot of playtests. Normally our playtests start early on as sealed playtests because until you have sort of an environmental balance, draft doesn't help you a

lot. But usually in mid to late vision design, we start drafting. Usually you start drafting once you start paying attention to your archetypes. That's when you start to draft. Early vision playtests are more about just experiencing the new mechanics and getting a sense of what they are and how they feel and so um that is you know that that is why you play sealed early on that you that's the set's not ready to experience as a draft and it's not set up for draft but once you get to a point where you start playing with your archetypes, then it is. So then you start drafting. Let's see. So there's a little bit of traffic here. Normally I would be pulling into my office right now.

Let me see. I can talk more about building for limited. Another thing that you will think about is, let me talk a little bit about building your archetypes. There are defaults to your archetypes. So if nothing else happens, you kind of know where your archetypes are going to go, where they lean. So part of building for limited is you want to understand what your mechanics are doing for limited. Now, there are what I will call three kinds of mechanics as far as limited is concerned. First is what I will call a workhorse mechanic. What that means is it's something that just makes the limited tick.

It's a mechanic. A workhorse mechanic is not sexy. It's not going to sell the set. It's not something that's going to make anybody sit up. Usually workhorses are not splashy, but they do a good job of making things do what they want. Not every set has a workhorse mechanic. Most do. And the role of a workhorse mechanic is just to make limited games fun

and casual constructed games fun. It's not that workhorse mechanics can't show up in constructed. They can. I mean, constructed is more about power level, you know, rate and power level than it is about is it sexy, you know. But the workhorse mechanics are what you stick in. Workhorse mechanics tend to skew toward common because the main role of a workhorse mechanic is to make limited work. Now, it depends on the mechanic.

Sometimes you have a workhorse mechanic that has versions that become more fun or there's areas you can play with at higher rarities. Sometimes workhorse mechanics, we don't even do at higher rarities. There are definitely some mechanics like, look, this is not at all about constructor. This is just about limited. We don't think there's a lot of constructor stuff we can do. Okay, we'll make commons and uncommons, and maybe we don't make rares and mythic rares. Or maybe we're like, oh, here's a real cool thing we can do. You know,

it depends on the individual mechanic. The next mechanic is what I will call sort of a, it is a mechanic that we think will excite people. We think that will be for constructed, but it has ramifications in limited. And that's sort of a universal mechanic, right? It's something that serves limited and constructed both well. Usually there's something fun about it, maybe novel about it. You know, there's something that it's the kind of mechanic that people will sit and go, oh, that's a cool mechanic. you know there's something that it's the kind of mechanic that people will set up and go oh that's that's a cool mechanic um a lot of times workhorse mechanics are playing in the nuance of rules or

just doing something we've done infinite times you know it's another kicker variant not that people don't like kicker and kicker is fun but it's not no one's gonna sit up and go oh i do kicker variant we make lots of kicker variants um so the the universal kind of mechanic just means there's something about it that serves both purposes. It is good for limited. It's good for constructed. And not just good for constructed.

It's good as a tool to sell the set. There's something fun about it. But it still has a lot of the value of limited. And most mechanics actually fall in this middle category, the universal category, because most mechanics are something that have flexibility. The third category are what I call constructed mechanics, which is they don't, usually they don't work for limited because something about them

just begets enough, enough, well, there's two reasons. One is, either they're powerful enough that we don't have to stick them in uncommon or rare, common or uncommon, and so they end up functioning a little more like like bomb-y cards than they do sort of staple things. Sometimes the... You know, sometimes it'll work in constructed,

but it's not... I mean, it's like, it works in constructed, but it's not, I mean, it works in constructed, but it's just, it's hard to execute in limited. And then sometimes, there are mechanics that are more complex. Well, actually, complex is a separate thing. I'll talk about that in a second. So anyway, there's three types of mechanics.

There's workhorses that are mostly for limited. There's universal that are for both. There's constructed only that are mostly for constructed that we might dabble a little bit in limited, but we don't concern ourselves in limited. The other issue is complexity, which is a different vector. So a mechanic can have, can be anywhere from simple to complex. The reason that's important is rarity, complexity is, we use rarity to break up complexity so if something is very complicated we don't put it a common and if it's complicated

enough sometimes we might do not much at uncommon so there are mechanics that don't go a common now if you have a mechanic that doesn't go uncommon and common is all about how we set limited you'll notice that complexity is important when determining how to define limited because the commons that most define it have complexity caps on them. And so we have to be very careful. Every once in a while, we will push that a little bit, you know, mutate or something. We will, if something is the focal point of the set sometimes we'll push complexity a little bit but we want to be careful

and so the reason complexity plays in in a way that's interesting is complexity has to do with rarity and rarity has to do with building for limited and so sometimes if I have a cool new mechanic that's a little complex it'll show up in limited but it'll be kind of restricted

because without having the as fan. So as fan for those that somehow don't know this term stands for as fan. And what that means is when we're looking at something, we're trying to figure out how often that thing will show up. So let's say I say it has an as fan of two. That means in a random booster pack, if you open it up, cards with that quality will show up two out of the 15 cards in the pack, right? So that's what as fan of two means. As fan is important because when you're trying to make limited work, let me get into this. One of the challenges of a trading card game is we don't control what you get, right?

If you play Monopoly or Scrabble or whatever, you know, when you play Monopoly, every single piece is in every single Monopoly board. I don't have to worry about, ooh, did boardwalk show up this time? No, every board has boardwalk on it. Are there hotels this time? Nope, hotels show up all the time. You know, there's a consistency. So when you're making a trading card game, the challenge is you have to overcome that lack of consistency. How do we do that? Well, we do that through as-fan. And what that means is we don't control what you get, but by controlling how often something

happens, we roughly control. And once again, the idea of an as-fan is an average. An average is not what happens every time. Let's say, for example, we have a mechanic that has an as-fan is an average. An average is not what happens every time. Let's say, for example, we have a mechanic that has an as-fan of three, let's say. Okay, so that means in limited, in sealed, you're going to open up six booster packs. So you will get 18 of that card, right? Now, that mechanic is going to be spread over different colors. One of the reasons we will condense mechanics, meaning we'll put mechanics at least at lower rarities, mostly in a few colors, is to increase that ascent in those colors. I didn't get to that.

Well, I'll get to that in a second. So the idea is that the way we control how often you get something is through that. So sealed, if you have three per pack, you get 18. In draft, if you open up three packs, you'll get nine. Now, draft has a thing where the person that wants the thing will try to collect the thing. So

cards will navigate to the people that are more interested in them. So the way you think of draft is not that one person opens nine, but that the table as a whole opens 72. Nine times eight. And so the idea is by controlling the as fan, we control roughly what people get.

Not exactly, but roughly. Now, the other thing is color. Because we want to... If mechanics are in every color, it lessens the as-fan because, let's say for example, I have three cards in every color and I'm playing sealed and I open 18 cards. Well, let's say those 18 cards are spread across the five colors evenly. Well, I can only play two or three colors probably probably, in Sealed, so I don't have access to some number of those cards. So, if you're not careful with color, it gets spread too evenly. So, what we do for limited purposes is we focus our mechanics.

Not all of them, not all the time, but commonly, we will focus the mechanic. What that means is, at low rarities, especially at common, we will either just put it in one color or some colors, or we will do it more in those colors so that it shows up more. And the idea there is you want to make sure that the as-fan of the particular aspect is in the colors that are that archetype. For example, let's say we have a new combat mechanic and we really want red and white to show it off because red and white is really good at being aggro and being in combat so we say okay we might make that

mechanic, we might put an extra red common and extra white common just so the as-then in red and white is higher sometimes we do mechanics solely in colors for example like in a Ravnica set where we're doing factions, the mechanics only show up in the colors, Other times we will do like unsets, for example, like to spread it just because we're

doing something that's unique and fun and like, oh, hey, stickers are like fun. Well, I want everyone to have access to stickers. That's the big gimmick of what we're doing. The way that we handle that in something like Infinity or in sets that want to spread across more colors is the as-fan goes up. Well, yeah, everybody has access to stickers, but there's a lot more sticker cards so that the general as-fan for any one color is at the level we need at. So sometimes if a mechanic is super fun, we want everybody to have access. Usually when it's like, it's the big thing that we're doing, we're more likely to spread that out. And then if we do that, we can up the overall asset of it. Another thing to keep in mind as

we're building for limited is when you look at a mechanic, we have to figure out how many cards can you make of the mechanic and how many simple cards can you make of the mechanic? How many cards can you make a common and uncommon? And that's another thing that might limit us or let's say we make a mechanic and it just has only so much design we might try to limit what the card is doing in colors so that it's focused because we're like well we can't get a lot out of it but if we focus really hard in two colors we can get enough for a draft archetype. And so a lot of times where we allocate mechanics is us thinking about how to make the limited work. Now, for a constructive purpose,

the other reason that we limit things by colors is we want variety. We want sets to offer different things to different players. And so by chopping up what goes where color-wise, we also give different... Different decks have different things, and that's also fun. And that, oh also give different, different decks have different things, and that's also fun, and that oh, you know, you can have different

aspects. The set wants to sort of say to different people here's different things for you, and using color as a divider oftentimes. Like I said, if the mechanic is big enough and fun enough, we'll spread it across all the colors, but the reasons

we tend to focus colors is partly in limited purposes and partly in just having definition and different colors doing different things. Okay. It is funny. Normally when I sit in traffic, there are some topics I do that I have maybe 30 minutes at most. And when I get to 30 minutes, I'm like, what am I going to do? This one's a nuanced deep topic so I guess having traffic is beneficial for you so we've talked about complexity, we've talked about color

we've talked about mana value, card types so part of the design skeletons we want to make sure so there are percentages for things, for example creatures make up as a default 55% of the design skeletons, we want to make sure... So there are percentages for things. For example, creatures make up, as a default, 55% of the cards. What that means is creatures are so important to limited, and constructed to some extent, a bit, that we need them to show up at a certain amount.

And then, how many artifacts, how many enchantments, how many planeswalkers, you know, all that stuff is dependent on other factors. Planeswalkers right now are 1% and they're at mythic rare. So planeswalkers don't, I mean, planeswalkers are a surprise thing you have every once in a while, but

we don't build limited around them. Artifacts and enchantments are interesting in that there's a certain default that you want. We want some number of artifacts and enchantments are interesting in that um there's a certain default that you want we want some number of artifacts enchantments partly for flavor partly for utility um but it depends on the set what the set is doing and that sometimes there might be a theme in the set of artifacts or a theme of enchantments that will raise them up um normally by the way if you're oh so if you're building for limited you you have to care about Asphand.

So let's say I want to care about artifacts or I want to care about enchantments. The number one problem you will run into is if you don't have creatures, your Asphand can only be so high. Most people, when they build a limited deck, once again, roughly, will have 16 creatures and 7 spells, roughly. So that means is they only have 7 non-creatures even going into their deck. If our theme wants to be living someplace outside of creatures, that can be a little bit tenuous to make work. So another thing you've got to think about is, that's why in enchantment sets we often do enchantment creatures.

It's why in artifacts wement sets, we often do enchantment creatures. Uh, it's why in artifacts, we'll often do artifact creatures. Uh, it's why in a spell, a set that cares about instants and sorceries, maybe we have more token makers. Um, oh, as a general rule of thumb, by the way, uh, we consider a token maker to be a creature for purposes of creature count. So we do, like like percentages, 55%. If you are a spell that creates a creature, usually we count that as a creature. And if you are a wall

that cannot attack, that can never attack, we don't count you as a creature. If you can sometimes attack, we will sometimes count things as half creatures for purposes of Azthan. So like a wall that has an activated ability that can attack. So meaning it mostly can attack but sometimes can attack. That's a

half creature because it has the ability to attack. And so depending on your theme, that's when you have to start getting creative on where you're sticking your theme and how your theme exists. Another example, just use Theros, I guess.

We wanted enchantments to matter and we wanted auras to matter. Well, that's a hard cry. Auras are two, you get two for one with auras. It's a lot to ask someone to have a lot of auras in their deck. So we made Bestow, which was a mechanic that were creatures that could turn into auras. So you'll notice that when we have themes, you'll notice also in Kamigawa Nian Dynasty, we had artifact creatures that turned into equipment. That sometimes one of the things when you're building your set, part of thinking about limited and the this particular

effect crosses over into constructed if i can make if i can make artifacts work in you know artifact matters work in limited it's a lot easier to make it work in constructed so um when you're building the structure of your set the structure of your set is more geared around making sure that limited will work. Because constructed is more about individual cards, usually. And set design and play design can figure out whether or not a certain archetype in constructed is going to work based on does it have enough cards. And so that's about raising or lowering the rate of cards to make sure that they're playable in the deck that you want them played in. But for overall structure, for putting the set together, limited kind of guides how the general structure is. And so depending on how you build your themes, like I talked about a set skeleton, right?

Your set skeleton is giving you the default. But your set's going to do something maybe that we don't normally do. You're going to care about artifacts or enchantments or instants and sorceries or you're factioned or there's some top-down theme you're trying to capture that in order to bring that to life, there's something you're always doing. There's always something that's a little bit different. In Wilds of Eldraine, we had rolls which really made a, you know, auras work in a different way, and we could think about them differently. You know, there's going to be something to your set, what I'll call the heart of the design.

There's something about your set that is going to allow you to do something that traditionally you can't do. There are default sets, there are core sets, there are sets that aren't necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel. But most magic sets, hey, we make a lot of magic sets, we want each set to feel unique and different. So from a structural standpoint, something about the set is doing something a little bit different. It's making you care about things that you don't normally care about. Now, sometimes those things like landfall are like, well, you normally play land, but we're gonna make you care about it in a way you don't. So all of a sudden, when I play land, when I hold land, when I draw land, it just changes the dynamic of that. Other times we just have a brand new mechanic like mutate or

something where it's really different and you have to sort of wrap your brain around it and, you know, or companions or, you know, we sometimes do things that are really different. We introduce battles, right? That's a brand new car type. Well, how do they work? So every set is going to have some element of it that is pushing in novel space. Some sets more than others. And so the idea is the default is solely that. It's your default, right?

It's what you do. It's the starting point. right? It's what you do. It's the starting point. The reason that we have it is that, you know, when you're, you know, like, let's say you're building a house of cards, right? You need some foundation to start getting going. And so it gives you a good place to start. But the key to any vision design is we start with the default and then we quickly make changes. Oh, we're doing this thing, you know, like for example, we're in, we're in strict saving and we want spells to matter. So we're like, okay, how do we get more spells in your deck? Okay. A, we could, um, you know, we could, um, give you, uh, uh, instant sorcerers to make tokens.

B, we can make mechanics like lesson learned that just get extra spells in your deck. Yeah, and the other thing about it is, and this is a thing you're always thinking about, your set's going to do something that it hasn't done before. And so part of vision design is figuring out how does that affect the structure? How does that change the structure? Now, the rule of thumb is that you want like 80% of your structure to stay. No matter what I'm doing, if you change too much,

if too many things vary, it just gets disorienting. A good example will be, interestingly, Rise of the Eldrazi. I know that the enfranchised players really liked Rise of the Eldrazi, but what we found was it pushed things too far for the average player. They really got lost. Because one of the things that happens is, if I don't understand what's going on, I'm just going to default play. I'm just going to play the way I normally play.

And we want to make sure that that's viable for you. Not that you're going to, you know, fine, the better player will beat you, but we still want you to have fun and have a game experience. And Raza Adrazi has pushed so hard that you just, there were too many traps. There was things that you would always do that always worked in limited that weren't. And like I said, we get to change 20%. We can teach people that this thing in this format is a little bit different, but you can't go more than 20%. And Rises Eldrazi did. And so there's a balance you want to meet. I talk about lenticular design, where is I want to make sure that when we're doing things for advanced players, that we're not doing it at the cost of beginning players. And so the key to lenticular design is that you're doing things

that make sense to the common player um and even if they don't make sense i'm sorry i said it backwards you want to do things that make sense to the less enfranchised player that's the more casual player um even if there's other things you can do with that card, the experienced player understands. The card's just to have value and purpose that even if I don't get the larger thing that's going on.

Like one of the big traps you can fall into is I do something weird. Something's fundamentally different about the way magic works. And if you try to play magic like you normally do, it falls apart

and it just doesn't work. That is kind of what Raizel Drazi did for the beginning players. It just kind of abandoned them. And we have to be careful about that. Now, the trick is, there are a lot of things we can do where we can stick things in that have extra value

or mean something different to the modern franchise player. That's what lenticular design is. You're hiding the complicated stuff in simple things that have a simple purpose that work for their simple purpose. And that's a lot of in vision design when

you are making a new structure. That is the biggest, like the start of any vision design is what's your bullseye? What am I trying to do? What's the goal that I'm trying to direct toward? And then it's saying, okay, what, up to 20, you don't always have to change 20%,

but up to 20%, what do I want to change? And the idea is you have to pick and choose what you're going to change because the rest of it really has to stay the same. That if you vary too much from the norm, it's disorienting. So the skill of vision design is saying, okay, I don't get to change a lot. I just get to change a little bit.

But how can I change that little bit that will reinforce what makes this set different from other sets? And in limited, that's like... So let me explain what we call the Biosphere. So when you play Limited, we control the atmosphere you're playing, right? We know exactly the cards that you're going to play. We call it the Biosphere.

And we have a lot of control in the Biosphere. We don't have perfect control. It's randomized packs and stuff. But we have our ASVAMs to play, which and we generally know what you can or can't do. Like, we build our archetypes, and we build our build-around stuff. Like, we build all the things, and we know what is possible. Like, what can you do consistently, and what can you do sometimes if it works out for you? And we know sort of what the traps are and stuff like that. So the key, and this is fundamental,

is you want your limited experience. You want every magic set. I want a magic player to go, ooh, I'm experiencing something new. Now, sometimes we go back someplace. Sometimes it's like, well, we've done something that's really fun. We like that playground.

We want to go back and play that playground. So sometimes returns. But even then, even like Wilds of Eldraine, we went back to Eldraine. We still said, you know what? We think we can add a new element. So even when we go back, we look for new elements. But the fundamental idea is I don't get to change a lot. What am I changing that's going to make people think differently?

And the trick to it is we don't always know this early on, but there's a moment, what I call the aha moment in design. And what the aha moment is, is when you're doing something and you catch yourself functioning in a way that is not normal, but is fun. So my example, my classic aha moment is we were playing Zendikar. We were in early Zendikar design and we were trying to find a fun land mechanic. And we tried all sorts. We tried like 40 plus mechanics. Eventually we landed on landfall. So we're playing with landfall and we get into a game and it's late in the game. And I'm like, come on land, come on land,

come on land. Because if I drew a land, I'd get my landfall triggers and I was going late in the game and I'm like come on land come on land come on land because I would if I drew a land I'd get my landfall triggers and I was going to win the game and I had this moment where I stopped I'm like wait a minute it's late in the game and I'm not dreading drawing land normally late in the game the last thing you want is land you're man-flighted you don't need the land but here I am late in the game and like the game hinges on me drawing land and I'm like this is like this was an amazing moment it was a moment that you don't normally get

and that's what you're looking for when you build a new set is you want to find ways like there's nothing wrong with normal magic people love normal magic it's great to like attack with a creature and giant growth and win there's things you do every magic set that are just fun to do but part of that are just fun to do. But part of what we're trying to do as people building the set

is we're trying to give you something that is a novel experience, a new experience. And so the way it normally works, for example, is I think the way we do it is 3-4-3, roughly, is three of the ten archetypes are usually somewhat novel, leaning into mechanics unique to the set, or just doing something that most sets can't do. But four of them are what I call tweaked,

meaning they're archetypes that lean toward what you know, but there's something about the set that makes them play a little differently than normal. And then usually there's about three that are like, hey, it's, look, you know, it's just normal magic. It's the default archetype. And the idea is, the reason that we do stuff like that, you'll notice a recurring theme today is we are trying to make sure that there's enough comfort that the player who is intimidated, you know, that it feels like magic to them we want

like magic is a robust game system i could make a uh i could make a set that every card in the set is a legit magic card and the whole set would feel like you're not even playing magic that's how robust magic is i could make a set that just does not feel like magic that's not what people want that's not what people buy packs. That, you know, I talk a lot about resonance and familiarity. Like, there are essences to what make magic magic.

And that when we make new magic sets, our goal is not to walk away from what makes magic an awesome game. We want to make sure that every magic game has enough magicness to it. But, there's enough flexibility in the system. I mean, Richard Garfield made an amazing game system that we could just change somewhere like 10% to 20%. And all of a sudden, it just feels really different.

That, you know, you just add landfall to a set. And late game, you're wishing to draw land. And you just go, oh, wow. This is not, this is not what normally happens, but it's fun that, you know, that one of the neat things about magic is the exploration of magic, right? That, you know, the reason people play magic for a long time is it doesn't get boring, that there's always new things and there's new ways to think about things. But the trick is sort of the Escher stairwell of magic design. I often use the Escher stairwell for power balance, but it also can be

used for thinking about magic design in general. And what I mean by that is we want things to feel like magic. So every magic set has to feel like magic. In order for it to feel like magic, what that means is 80 plus percent of the set just has to feel like normal magic In order for it to feel like magic, what that means is 80 plus percent of the set just has to feel like normal magic. And so a lot of what we do, a lot of building sets, is making sure that just enough of the cars just feel like magic and play like magic. That's why we have a skeleton. That's why there's certain effects that always show up. That's why there's a curve. That's why all these things we do, that we want magic, that there's a continuity of magic. There's a way that magic plays that you want every magic game

to feel somewhat similar, right? There's a certain amount of familiarity you need. But the exciting thing about magic, the reason people keep coming back, the reason that the average person plays magic longer than the average game exists. Like right now, the average magic player plays over 10 years

and might be 11 or 12 at this point the average game lasts less than that meaning the average Magic player plays Magic longer than the average game exists now once again popular games can last longer but it's just my point is that people stick with Magic and the reason they stick with Magic is that it keeps reinventing itself it keeps giving you experiences that you haven't had before. So while some amount of the play of

Limited, for example, has to feel like Limited as you know it, there always has to be some novelty to it. There's something about it. And a core to that, and this is really how we have to think about Limited, is we're making the biosphere. What's unique about the biosphere? In the biosphere, what's going to happen that is cool and fun and neat? Now, we have to be careful. A lot of magic is played outside the biosphere. And so there's only so much sort of building within the biosphere we can have.

And so there's a lot we have to think about, about when and where. And this is the challenge. And to be honest, the fun part to me, or one of the fun parts, is I want to do a theme that is different. I then have to figure out how can I use what we normally do in a way that is different. For example, I'm making Pharos and enchantments matter more. So I have to say, okay, are there basic effects that I normally do that might not be an enchantment, but maybe in this set is an enchantment. Maybe my giant growth wants to be a

flash aura. So not only do I get my giant growth moment, but it sticks around, and now I have another enchantment that I can care about as an enchantment. Maybe I'm making Strixhaven, and I want to care about instant sorcery. So maybe I might take things that normally, maybe I would normally make an aura, but instead I make a sorcery that puts plus one plus one counters on something. So it functions similar to an aura in that it makes it bigger but it gets to be a spell. And that is the challenge of looking at your skeleton and saying how am I going to do the things I have to do in a way that leans in the direction of what this particular set is doing.

And that, I also should stress, that quality is not localized to just limited, but it's highlighted limited. That the biosphere is where the newness is the greatest. And that, by the way, a little side note here, one of the things we've learned is the longer you play magic, the greater the chance that you play limited. Why is that? Because limited has the greatest sense of novelty to it. That each time I play, I'm playing with different cards. And I'm playing with cards that maybe I've

never played with before. And so as you play more magic and you sort of crave novelty, you over time will often drift to the point where you are... Hold on one second. Is this the right place to go?

I am going to my new office and I... This is the fun of driving to my new office. Did I get off at the right place? So our new offices are called Southport. And did I do the right thing? I did! I got off the right exit. So, um, anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed. I'm, I'm, I'm almost to work here. Um, the, the point I'm trying to make today, you got, you got, you got an extra double length.

Uh, see, that's how you know I'm back in my car is when you actually get longer podcasts. When I'm at home, I always try to make them close to 30 minutes, but on the road, you get what the road asked for. So today you got extra long. So the main theme of what I'm trying to say about today about limited is that a lot of work goes in. There's a lot of nuance and structure, you know, building for limited. There's a lot of fine tuning that comes about a good, a good amount of we've learned over time. We've made a lot of fine-tuning that comes about. A good amount of it we've learned over time. We've made a lot of magic sets. So the stuff like having, there's a lot of known quantities,

there's a set skeleton, there's a lot of knowledge we've gained through experience. But the key to that is trying to use the tools that are available to you to both be familiar, both be something that it feels like magic, but have that sense of novelty and do something that creates those aha moments that really make people feel that that's the joy of magic. That is magic and it feels like magic.

But every once in a while, I do something that isn't quite magic. Or at least it's something new to magic. And that's the balance we need to get. So hopefully that you've learned today that there's a lot that goes into making limited work. There's a lot that goes into constructed work. That's its own thing. The big difference between constructed and limited is a lot of constructed, most of the heavy lifting of constructed happens later in the process, where a lot of the heavy lifting in limited happens later in the process where a lot of the heavy lifting

and limited happens early on the process i'm in charge of early on the process so um i have a lot more insight in the the tickings of limited just because my day-to-day i have to care a lot more about it for example in vision design we spend a lot of time on the commons and the uncommons to build the structure we do make rares they do exist um but we're more focused on the commons and the uncommons to build the structure. We do make rares, they do exist, but we're more focused on the commons and uncommons because we're more focused on the limited experience, because the constructed experience, until you know the power level, like, until things are balanced, you can't do anything with the constructed, and so early on it's more about the building of the larger structure, which has a lot more to do with limited. more about the building of the Larver structure,

which has a lot more to do with limited. So anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed hearing all about this. I'm literally pulling up to our building, our brand new Southport building for my very first day at work in the new building. So anyway, guys, we know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.