Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1098: Mana Cost

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

This podcast is dedicated to mana cost. I talk about its history as well as the design space it offers designers.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is mana cost. I'm going to talk about the origin of mana cost, how we use mana cost, how we design with mana cost in mind, everything you ever wanted to know about mana cost. And the challenge of today is, can I talk for 30 minutes about mana cost? I think I can. At least I plan to. Okay, so let's go back. Let's start from the very beginning. Where did mana cost come from? Why do we have mana cost? Oh, I guess let me start with this. What is mana cost? Somehow, if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know, I will tell you. So mana cost is the cost in the upper right hand corner of a card. On most cards, I guess. Future Sight cards did weird things

on the left. But the idea was there are mana symbols, and the mana symbols represent the cost you have to pay in order to cast the card. When Richard first made mana costs, he actually did them a little bit differently.

If you've ever seen a playtest card from before the game came out, let me explain how he did it. So let's say a spell costs three generic mana and two blue mana. The way that normally you would write the card nowadays is you would have first the generic mana cost, which would be the number in a circle, three. Then you would have a blue mana symbol and a second blue mana symbol. That says it costs three blue blue. Now, when Richard first started in the early playtests, the way that would have been written is five blue blue.

Five meaning the total cost you have to pay for the card, and blue blue are costs you have to pay for the card, and blue, blue are costs you have to pay as part of that. That confused people. I mean, I wasn't there for early alpha playtests, but my belief was that it just confused people. And so they ended up changing to the system we have now, where it lists the mana that you need. So it lists your generic mana, which is a number in a circle, and then at least each colored mana individually. The interesting thing, by the way, the reason that it worked that way is, Richard, when he was making the Trading Heart game, ran into a problem that we call

the Queen Problem. So the idea is, let's say you were making chess, and it was a collectible piece game, and so you could choose whatever pieces you wanted to play with. Well, why wouldn't you play with one king, because you need it for the win condition, and 15 queens? Like, why not just play all queens? Why would you play pawns or bishops or rooks?

Why would you do that? That was the problem that Richard had to solve in a trading card game. That if everything was of equal value, you would just play the strongest cards. And so Richard came up with a mana system. The idea being in which, as the game progresses, you get more mana from land mostly, and then you can cast larger and larger spells. So early in the game, you can cast small things, and small things are valuable to you. But later in the game, you can cast bigger and bigger things. So what matters changes during the course of the game. A one drop is very powerful on turn one, but kind of weak drawing on turn ten.

Likewise, a six drop creature might be very, it's not useful early on because you can't cast it. But later on, it could be the thing that wins the game for you. So that was put in. And in order to understand and make you know what it costs, he put the mana cost on the card. Why was the mana cost in the upper right-hand corner? That's an interesting question. I don't know. I think, well, here's my best guess. I think he liked the idea of the name being in the upper left-hand corner

because you read from left to right. And I think Richard assumed that you wanted to see what the card is, you know, what's the card called, and then get the information about what it costs to do that. And so he did it that way. Interestingly, what we've learned since then is the way people fan their cards, you tend to see the names but not the mana costs.

But when you're sitting in your hand trying to figure out what to do, it's the mana costs that matter more so than the names. That is why I mentioned the future site frame. When we did the future site frame, which was in the set future site, we did these frames that are from the future. We were trying to sort of make a different frame. And one of the things we've always talked about is would the mana symbols have worked better if the mana symbols, rather than being at the top of the card, ran down the left side of the card. That's what we do in future site.

So the idea is that you can fan your cards in the way that people normally fan them, and you can see your mana costs, which are kind of important to know. Anyway, inertia is inertia, and I doubt we're going to change the frames to that now, but that's what we were, in future site frames, that's what we were playing around with. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the mana symbols, because that was important. So Richard wanted to communicate what was going on.

I think he wanted to do it in a way that was the cleanest, clearest way possible. So he ended up using mana symbols. Now, interestingly, we have since learned, you know, having done this for a while, the generic mana symbol can be a little confusing in the sense of understanding that it represents not one mana, but a number of mana equal to the number in it. We've done a little bit of testing, and maybe Richard did this testing early on, I don't know. What we found is, if each mana symbol was its own symbol, meaning, let's go back to the three blue blue,

if it was mana symbol representing generic mana, second mana symbol representing generic, third mana symbol, then blue symbol, then second blue symbol. That would be the easiest way to process it. Having each mana be its own thing makes it easier to understand. The idea that one mana symbol is multiple mana tends to confuse people in the beginning. Okay, why don't we change that? Well, besides inertia.

Or why didn't Richard, maybe Richard figured this out, I don't know. Why didn't he do it that way? The answer was that the mana value, or sorry, the mana cost has to share itself. The same line the mana cost is on is where the name is. It's another thing that the future state frame was messing around with that. By going down the side, you weren't taking spots from the name. But anyway, because of that, the name of the card combined with the cost have to fit on the card, which means the longer the cost, and by longer I mean the more mana symbols in it, the shorter the name has to be. And we've definitely had cards where we had to replace

a colored mana symbol with another generic symbol, or up the number by one, because the name wouldn't fit otherwise. And so that is a very real cost. It's something we have to think about. The other thing that we did, or Richard did, that we have since learned, we probably do it a little bit differently, is the way we write mana costs

is generic mana first then all colored mana symbols. The way people talk about cards is they put the colored mana symbol first. So usually online if someone's discussing a card that costs three blue blue and they're not super enfranchised

meaning eventually you get used to the way we say it just because we say it enough but most people without prompting would say the cost as blue, blue three, meaning they put the colored mana first. I spent a lot of time trying to say, well, here's how we, you know, and what I've learned is it's how people naturally want to do it. I think if we had to do it over again, I would probably put the colored mana first, meaning instead of saying three, blue, blue, I think we would say blue, blue three. It is kind of how people naturally

want to talk about it. Once again, I don't know if Richard in Alpha did, like, nowadays we do a lot of testing, and you know, I think Richard just did what at the time felt most natural to him. And again, like I said, the mana cost, as we know it,

ended up very late in the process. So, it's possible that Richard didn't even play a long period of time with that version of it. So anyway, so there's a lot of little things we might do a little bit differently. I think reversing color and generic, if we had to do it over again, that's something we would consider. Okay, so now let's get into the meat of it, of today's topic, which is how is the mana cost interesting to us, the designers? What can we do with the mana cost? How do we use it? First, let me talk a little bit about what's called the mana curve. So the idea is, as Richard set out, different manas have value at different times in the game.

On the first turn, when you have one mana, a one drop is the most valuable. And essentially, the most valuable for you is you want to use your mana every turn. The way to play Magic in which you have the best chances of winning is where you're not leaving mana behind, you're optimizing your mana. So you want to set up your deck such that you have things you can do with every mana value. And it's possible at higher mana values that maybe you're playing more than one spell.

So there's some decks that we call weenie decks where nothing costs that much, but once you have three, four, five lands, you're casting multiple spells rather than just one spell. In order to replicate this, both in constructed and limited, but it's a little more about limited, we do what we call a mana curve. So if you've ever seen a design skeleton, when we list slots, we specifically list the mana value on the slot. Because our skeleton is a default, sometimes the slot will say two or three or

something. So it'll give you a range. But the idea is we want in any one color, let's say, look at common. You know, white, for example, will have one or two one drops. It'll have a couple two drops. It'll have some three drops. It'll have a four drop or two. It might have a five drop. Usually it doesn't have a six or seven drop. Maybe once in a while, maybe. And the idea is that we want to make it so that as you draft or as you build sealed, that you have access to enough different cards that you can make a curve. And in fact, when you get into sort of more advanced drafting, one of the things you pay attention to is your curve, meaning

oh, I'm low on two drops. I need to draft more two drops. And you start prioritizing two drops over other things. Mana curve is something we have to think about and so we definitely are always aware of how much something costs. And in fact, when we're designing for holes in files, usually there's some range we're designing to. And if we end up designing something that's different than that, because sometimes design requires a certain mana cost, we will then change another slot to get that in. Like, let's say I make a new card. We have a slot for a three drop, and I make a four drop, and I really can't make

my four drop a three drop. I'll take another four drop in the file and adjust it to make it the three drop. Let me talk a little bit, by the way, before I get into some of the design of it. We put mana costs at cards from the very beginning. So when I design a card, you know, when anybody designs a card, whether it be an exploratory design, vision design, set design, play design, you always have a mana cost with it. Early on in exploratory and vision, we're mostly trying to, like,

we want to get the spell to a point where we can play it and it won't be disruptive. So we do have a play designer on our team, especially vision design. And the idea mostly is, let's just get a mana cost that we think will let us play the card. Usually, by the way, in early playtesting, you want to cost everything at a point where it can be played. Meaning,

as you get later in the process, you start pushing different cards. Early in the process, you're a little bit aggressive with costing with everything, because you want everything to get sampled. You don't want to be too aggressive that it upsets games because if your playtest cards are just too good, you don't get enough data on the play of the cards because it's being warped by a broken card.

So we do want to get them costed enough that they're not causing problems. But it's not really until you get to late set design and play design that you're optimizing and sort of getting exactly what they're going to cost. A lot of that has to do with environment and with how enjoyable the card is and how much you want to push it relative to other cards in the set. So mana costs happen very early. You don't really design a card without a mana cost.

But early on, we're taking stabs at it. I've been making magic cards for a long time, so I'm not horrible at costing cards, but I'm not amazing at costing cards. My weakness probably is costing cards where there is a bunch of variables. Like, if I can compare it directly to something I understand, that's a tool we use for costing all the time,

is, hey, last time we did this card, what did we do it at? What did it cost? And you can look things up. And so I do that all the time when I'm costing cards on time is, hey, last time we did this card, what did we do it at? What did it cost? And you can look things up. And so I do that all the time when I'm costing cards on my own of just comparative against things that are similar. It's brand new mechanics or a combination of things we haven't done that get a little more complicated, that get trickier to do. The one classic story, I'll tell a little story on that, is when we were making Flashback originally in Odyssey, our thought process was, well, Flashback is you can cast the spell and then you can later cast it from your graveyard. Well, we want to make that, we want to make the, oh, sorry, I'm telling the wrong story.

This is not flashback this is buyback sorry buyback was in tempest so buyback is a spell that you pay extra mana and then you get to keep the card in your hand rather than discard it so when we originally made buyback we're like well it's kind of like drawing a card and drawing a card we tend to charge you two extra mana like when we make a cantrip and we we we uh add on draw a card, and drawing a card, we tend to charge you two extra mana. Like when we make a cantrip and we add on draw a card, normally that costs two extra mana. So we're like, okay, well,

buyback costs me two extra mana, because basically you're drawing a card. The problem with buyback is you're not just drawing a generic card, because some 40% of the time it might be land. You are drawing the exact same card, and that is much more valuable. So our first playtest was buyback.

Everything cost two, and it was crazy powerful. And we learned that you had to have much higher costs. And if you guys know buyback, although it was a long time ago, the buyback costs got much, much higher than two. I mean, there were a few very small effects of two, but three, four, five, six, they get much more up there. And a good example of how sometimes when you're costing things early on, that simple metrics don't always work exactly because you're playing in space you haven't played before.

Okay, so now I have a mana cost. How do I, what can I do to make care, how do I mechanically care about mana costs? Okay, so there are a couple of things in a mana cost you can care about. Number one, you can care about what's called mana value. Mana value is the total cost of the card. So let's use our three blue blue cost. That has a mana value of five. Three generic plus two blue is five total mana.

3 generic plus 2 blue is 5 total mana mana value is nice from a mechanics A, the game recognizes the mana value of a card and it is something that there's only so many it lets you subdivide cards into a way that's clean there are cards that cost 7 and more, they come up but they're infrequent, so mostly when I care about mana value, there's about six mana values I care about. And so the idea is that I can take something and I could,

for example, let's say I want to have a kill spell that just kills a small thing. Now, maybe I care about its power and toughness, or maybe I care about its mana value. You know, like if white wants a card that cares about a card with a larger mana value, or black I care about its mana value. You know, like if white wants a card that cares about a card with a larger mana value, or black a smaller mana value, or I want to counter a spell with a certain, like, mana value allows us to care, to chop up cards and care about them in a way

that is loosely power-based. A card that costs one or two is usually weaker than a card that costs three or four. On average, it's weaker. And so mana value is a way to care about mana cost in a way that's dividable into groups. You can particularly care about mana cost if you want. For example, you could make a card that says, whenever you cost a card that costs three blue blue something, the problem is how many cards in your deck are going to cost three blue blue. So while we are mechanically allowed to care about mana costs, it usually, the larger issue is,

is it something you care about in a way that is going to happen enough? Because when you're making spells, you definitely want things, like it's important that it happens with enough frequency that it can matter. And that is pretty key. Okay, so also we can care about what's in the mana cost. For example, I can care about colored mana symbols. Devotion, which is a card in Theros, cares about permanence on the battlefield. So it is looking at mana costs, but it's not looking at mana costs as you cast them, but it's looking at them sitting on the battlefield. And that counts colored mana, for example, devotion.

But you could, in theory, do devotion to other mana symbols. Oh, I didn't really get into other mana symbols, but I could do that now. So you can care about mana symbols, so you can care about what they are. Let me finish what you can care about, then I'll get to other mana symbols. For example, you could care about having a particular mana symbol. You can care about a blue mana symbol.

You could care about having a Frexian mana symbol, a Hydra mana symbol, a Snow mana symbol. You can care about a Kallus mana symbol. You can care about exactly a three in a circle, a two in a circle. You can care about a colorless mana symbol you can care about exactly a three in a circle a two in a circle you can care about those if you want we don't do that a lot just because once again

it's a little on the narrow side but you can care about that so you can care about whatever is in the mana cost let's get to mana symbols real quick sometimes what we do is we make different kinds of mana symbols that's one of the ways

to make symbols mana a little bit different. There are the five basic colors, white, blue, black, red, and green. There is colorless. So colorless, the idea of colorless mana existed since Alpha, like Sol Ring Tap for two colorless mana. But in early Magic, Richard just represented both the output of colorless mana and generic

mana with the same symbol. So, originally when you tapped a solar ring, it produced two in a circle. The problem was in Oath of the Gatewatch, we introduced colorless as a cost, in mana cost specifically. So, the idea was, oh, now in order

to pay this cost, I'm not paying a colored mana, I have to pay a colorless mana. And so we ended up making the little diamond symbol that now is used for that. And that's what the diamond symbol means. Okay. Also, we have made other kinds of mana. Hybrid mana is combining two different colors into one so you can pay either so white or blue hybrid or white blue hybrid means you can pay white mana or blue mana for it um the nice thing about hybrid mana is it allows us normally when

we make a set um one of the things about mana symbols is we want to be careful how many mana symbols we put in something. The more mana symbols you put, the harder it is to cast, especially on a mono-color card. So for example, if I have a spell that costs one white mana, that is an easier card to cast than two white mana. Normally the rule of thumb is when we make common cards, unless you cause five or more mana, we usually do not put two mana of the same color. I'm sorry, we don't normally do two colored mana symbols. So let's say, for example, we make a two drop that's white, white. We wouldn't do that at common. More likely it say that uncommon or rare. And the reason for that is that it's much easier to do in constructed where I can control my mana. I can make a deck that's all white, for example.

It's a lot easier to play a two drop in an all white, you know, a white, white two drop in an all white deck. But in limited, which common is more geared for, it's a lot harder to do that. So the general default rule we have is if you're four or less mana, we don't do double colored mana symbols. There are a couple exceptions. The exceptions being there are certain effects we don't want you to splash, Counterspell being the classic example.

So even though Counterspells might cost less than five mana, they still have two blue mana in them. The other biggest exception we make is multicolored cards. Multicolored cards definitionally have to have two different colors in them. But even so, we tend not to do cheaper things. I think for multicolored, we try to default at four, meaning if we're going to do multicolored cards at common, we usually try to make them four more mana. If make them less than four mana usually there's some alternative thing going on and i'll get into that in a second but um you know maybe there is a cycling cost or maybe there's more for something

that lets you have another use for the card at lower lower values you know like if i don't have um the right cost at a low amount i still can do something with the card if we don't have the right cost at a low amount, I still can do something with the card. If we don't do that, then usually it's four or more for multicolored cards. Okay. So the reason I bring all this... Hold on a second. Let me get some water. Okay. The reason I bring this up with the hybrid is we will...

The other exception is we will use more hybrid manas when we use them and the reason for that is the reason you want to be careful doing two colored mana symbols is it takes a little while before you get both of you know if i have blue blue where i get two blue cards so the odds on turn two if having two blue mana is tough for two white mana whatever hybrid mana is a little bit more forgiving because it allows you to have access to two colors. So the nice thing about hybrid mana is if I, let's say I use white blue hybrid, if I have white blue hybrid and I have white blue hybrid, white blue hybrid, I now can cast that with white mana or blue mana. So if I'm playing a white and blue deck,

or blue mana. So if I'm playing a white and blue deck, I can play cheap things much faster. So we are more willing to put hybrid mana at higher pips at lower rarities because if you're playing the right color combination, it's much easier to cast it. Interestingly, the thing, and the one thing that's cool about hybrid is, let's say, for example, I make a 1HH. H is the symbol we use to represent any kind of hybrid mana. For example, let's say I'm making a cycle and I'm writing out things. I would use, for the colored mana symbols, it's W for white, U for blue, B for black, R for red, G for green. The reason blue for black is B couldn't be black and blue. L is for black, R for red, G for green. The reason blue for black is B couldn't be black and blue. L is for land. We use it for frames. And then it's either U or A. And A was artifact.

So black ended up getting B and so blue ended up getting U. That's why. We later learned that in printing black is K and blue is B. Maybe we would have adopted that if we knew that at the time, but we didn't. Anyway, H is for hybrid. So let's say I want to make a cycle and I want them to cost three mana, two, which is hybrid. I would say, oh, it's a one HH cycle. So H is the symbol that we use for hybrid.

M is a symbol we use for colored mana. Let's say I was going to make a cycle and they were all four mana, one of which is colored. That would be my 3M cycle. We also use M sometimes to represent there's a cost we don't know yet. We'll use that. We used to use C for that, but now we use C for colorless. And we use Z when we want to represent multicolored,

although that's not in mana cost. That's more like in card codes. Anyway, so there's hybrid mana, and we can use hybrid mana. A riff on hybrid mana is two-brid mana, that in which it's a colored mana or two-generic mana. That was introduced in Shadowmoor. We don't use it a lot, but it's the kind of mechanic that people ask about. I do think we'll find more spots for it. We've used it on rare occasion. I think it's a fun mechanic. Also, there is Phyrexian mana. Phyrexian mana is a colored mana symbol that has a Phyrexian symbol or a Phi symbol from the Latin alphabet. What that means, the Phyrexian symbol means that you pay this colored mana or that you pay life, two life specifically.

And that showed up for the first time in New Phyrexia. Phyrexia all will be one. Used it again, although using it in mana costs proved to be kind of problematic. And the reason is you just have life. Life's a resource you start with. And so if you can trade life for mana, you normally will. Crafting your spells cheaper is very powerful. And so most of what we find with Phyrexian mana is people will always pay the life payment.

And so really all you're doing is just saying it costs life. I will get into additional costs in a second. Also, there is snow mana. That is a mana symbol. Snow first showed up in Ice Age originally, but snow mana itself didn't show up until Cold Snap, the Lost Ice Age set that we did. Lost is in quotes, but you can't see me air quoting it.

Lost Ice Age set that we did. Lost isn't in quotes, but you can't see me air quoting it. The idea of different mana symbols allows us to care about things in mana a little bit differently and change up costs and do different things. Also, there is X. X is a variable.

The idea of X is that you can spend however many mana you want. X specifically is generic. We've talked about doing colored X. We haven't done that, although there are some spells that specify that, even though there's no symbol for it.

And the idea of entwined X is just it allows us to do a variable, stuff like fireball. We have found that people are confused by variables, so we are careful how often we use X. I personally don't like using X at common. We sometimes do. We have on occasion, rare occasion, used Y as a variable.

There's a version of Fireball with Y. There's one or two other cards that use Y as a variable. We really have stopped doing that. There was one un-card called Ultimate Nightmare of Wizard of the Coast Customer Service that had Y and Z in it, but that was mostly us messing around. The only card with a Z variable. Okay, so now that we have mana symbols, what do we do with mana symbols? How do we use them mechanically? Well, there's a couple different ways to use them. First off, there is cost reduction. There could be something built into the spell that allows you to change the cost. For example, Affinity. Affinity from Artifacts was

the first version of it in Mirrodin. And the idea there is Affinity says for every of whatever you have Affinity for, Artifacts and such, it costs one less generic mana. We have stuff like Convoke, where you can tap creatures as a means to make it cheaper. We have like Delve, where you can exile cards from the graveyard. Cost reduction either means you have to have something to lower the cost, or you have to spend an alternative cost to lower the cost. Cost reduction can be pretty powerful because the mana cost is important.

Now, normally if we have cost reduction, the actual mana cost is a little bit more than normal to adjust for the fact that you can cost reduce it. Affinity for artifacts, delve, like the fact that a bunch of the things I mentioned went on to make very broken cards says that it's a dangerous area. Not that we don't do it or shouldn't do it,

but it is something we have to be very careful with. The other thing we can do is we can do additional cost. Additional cost, there's two different types of additional cost. Well, I mean, I'll divide them in two. First is mana. Additional cost with mana, basically you probably best know as kicker, where the idea is, oh, I can pay a certain amount,

but if I pay more, I can have an additional effect. My effect can get stronger. Maybe my creature comes with plus one, plus one counters. There's something about the spell that gets better if I pay more mana. about the spell that gets better if I pay more mana. And it's not always kicker.

We have other mechanics that do additional costs. Kicker's kind of the classic, and it's become a deciduous way to write it if it's not. Usually the rule of thumb is if we're just doing one of these days, we'll do kicker. But if we're doing a whole bunch of things that are connected and different, we'll name them and have its own mechanic. The other kind of additional cost is sometimes you have to do something in addition to paying mana. Maybe you have to discard a card. Maybe you have to pay life. Maybe you have to sack a creature.

And those will be written usually in the rules text, in the text box. We have talked about having something in the mana cost box that tells you that there's an additional cost. That says, you know, maybe there's an asterisk. Maybe there's something about it that highlights that, hey, look at the text box. This cost by itself is not the only cost. Likewise, we've talked about doing that for reduced costs.

I talked about stuff in which it reduces the cost if certain things are true. There also is the threshold system where once I meet something, there's a different cost for the card. Okay. There also is what we call alternative costs. That means

that there's a different cost you can cast. Adamant is a good example of this from Throne Eldraine, where it's like, well, I can cast it for its normal cost, but there's a different cost, and if I cast it for that cost, there's a rider for that. Usually, the alternative costs, either you're getting less,

like Prototype has an alternative cost, which is I can play it for the smaller version of it. Now, alternative costs and additional costs, like Prototype could be written such that the small cost is in the upper right-hand corner, and there's an additional cost to pay to get the bigger cost. But because of the aesthetic of Brothers War, we won the large generic cost in the upper right-hand corner,

and so we made an additional cost. I will say, with something like Adamant, when we actually made Adamant in Throne of Eldraine, for a while, we put two different mana costs in where the mana costs go, the mana cost bar. So, originally, it was like, it cost two and a white, or it cost white, white, white.

And if you paid the white, white, white cost, you got an advantage. That would morph into adamant, basically. But we did mess around with having more than one cost. So there are cars that essentially have more than one cost, because they have an additional cost, they have an alternate cost, they have a reduced cost. But thus far, even though I've tried, actually on multiple occasions I've tried, we haven't put multiple in the bar itself, in the actual

mana cost. Like I said, we have experimented with the idea of, should there be something the idea that got the most ground is we've talked about putting a pin line around the mana cost so it would sort of light up a little bit or maybe even the mana cost the actual box is lighter

but something about it that would draw your eye to it and the idea is what it's telling you is pay attention the mana cost itself is not telling you the whole story maybe there's an additional cost maybe there's a reduced cost maybe there's an alternate cost the mana cost itself is not telling you the whole story.

Maybe there's an additional cost. Maybe there's a reduced cost. Maybe there's an alternate cost. Maybe there's an additional cost to pay. There's something about this that this isn't telling you everything. One of the problems we run into is people tend to sort of put their cards in mana cost order and even though people want to fan to the left, they've learned to fan to the right if they want to see the mana cost and that sometimes

what the mana cost is lying to you a real common occurrence that happens is I have some sort of mana reduction that's going on and so I can you know the card says it costs four but secretly it really costs two because I can do this other thing to make it cost two but the upper right hand corner doesn't tell me it costs two and and so I can miss that. Prototype being a classic example where the value in the upper right-hand corner is not the cheapest way you can cast it, so you have to be aware of that. So anyway, I don't know if we'll ever do that. It keeps coming up from time to time.

There's a lot of moving pieces on a magic card and a lot of things to pay attention to, so we're a bit wary from an aesthetic standpoint to change too many things like that. But it is something that comes up. And every time there's a set with a major mechanic that does that, that the mana cost symbol is lying to you a little bit, we keep bringing it back up.

So one of these days, one of these days, I actually think eventually we'll do it. We haven't done it yet. But you hear me now, I think one day we'll bringing it back up. So one of these days, one of these days, I actually think eventually we'll do it. We haven't done it yet, but you hear me now, I think one day we'll do it. So anyway, the reason I'm just getting off my exit to work,

we had a little extra traffic today. So that's why you get a slightly longer podcast. Like I said, the advantage of me actually driving to work, a little extra content for you. So sort of wrap up the thought today on mana costs. Mana costs are a very important part of the card.

It's something that you have to care about intrinsically. And that it is a core, like the mana system is a core part of how the game works. And so, oh, the other thing that's really interesting, let me get into this is the mana cost gives us the designers a lot of control about when and where and how you play the spell um it allows us by making it lower or higher by adjusting the mana value

we control how easy or when you cast it. It gives us a lot of control, because obviously you can't cast it until you have that much mana. The amount of colored mana symbols in it adjusts how easy it is to cast certain spells. So if we're worried about splashing, for example, we can add extra colored mana symbol so you can't splash it. It allows us to branch out. It gives us tools like multicolor cards or things with built-in

additional costs that are interesting twists to the cards. So the Man of Valley does that. It allows us to make curves. It allows us to sort of care about them in conjunction with each other. It is a handhold that we can care about mechanically within certain realms.

I do think, it's funny as I walk through stuff like devotion we really haven't done all that much with caring about mana cost as an element of the card I do think we can do more with that I do like devotion one of the cool things about devotion which I enjoy quite a bit is it makes you think differently about cards in a fun way. That, oh, this creature has two colored mana symbols.

Normally that's a drawback. Normally it just makes it harder to cast. But, hey, in this situation, maybe I specifically want to do that. Maybe when I draft, I'll specifically take cards with more colored mana symbols in them. I told you the rule about the default in common. The one exception, or, I mean, we have exceptions. One of the exceptions is, in a set with devotion, we might put more

double pips at common because that means something, and it's in draft, it's interesting. So mana costs are a very important tool. They have a, there's a lot of adjustment we can do with them,. There's a lot of adjustment we can do with them. And there's a lot of control.

One thing that's really interesting, I'm not a play designer, but it's very fun that the play designers very much speak in terms of mana costs in a way where a lot of times what I'll do, let's say I want to cost a card, I'm not sure about it. Normally what I do is I'll look up old existing cards, but when I'm playing a new territory where it's something that I don't, something easy to compare it to,

I often will just go ask a play designer. One of the resources to me of play designers is they're good at costing cards. And it's really interesting to watch, like when we're trying to figure out, in meetings, for example, we normally have a play designer in the meeting. One of the things the play designer does is they're in charge of making sure the costing is correct for purposes of playtesting. And so it's really interesting.

I like watching, when we do a brand new effect, I like watching the play designer, like, they'll talk through what they're thinking about, about how to cost cards. And so, having done this for a long time, I've absorbed some of that, like I say. Normally, when I'm guessing mana values, I'll get within one, you know what I'm saying? So, that may not sound impressive, but that actually is impressive. I mean, a little thing, if you want to do something.

If you could take some cards you don't, like, get some magic cards that you just don't know really well, and then cover up the mana cost. And it's a fun little game. Can you identify the mana cost? Not remember it, so it's cards you don't inherently memorize,

but cards that you don't know. Can you get the mana value? You can also do this by looking up on a database or something. It's a lot harder than you think, costing cards. I'm not great at it, like I said. I can get one or something. It's a lot harder than you think costing cards. I'm not great at it, like I said. I can get in one or two.

Which, for purposes, I can cost things such that Envision usually don't cause problems. That's most of the costing I need to be able to do. I don't need to do exact costing because that's not part of the process I do. But anyway, so I hope today I just wanted you to get a little appreciation for

the value I mean the mana the mana cost is such a key part of the card a core part of the game and a super super

important tool to design that yes I did now did I talk could I talk 30 minutes I could talk 38 minutes

about it so the fact that I could even with traffic I could talk about it all the way to the fact that I could, even with traffic, I could talk about it all the way to work is a testament of the importance of the mana cost. For those who don't know, I have something called the Golden Trifecta, which are the three genius ideas that Richard Garfield created when making Magic.

One was the trading card game. One was the color pie. But the last was the mana system. And the mana cost is a core part of that. So an amazing, great thing. Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed me talking all about the mana cost. But anyway, I'm now actually at work. So although that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic.

So I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.