Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1104: Strictly Better

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

In this podcast, I define the R&D expression "strictly better," discuss its history, and talk about why it's a thing we have to care about.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about an expression that R&D uses known as strictly better. Also, a companion to that is strictly worse. So I'm going to explain what this term means. I'm going to talk about when and how we use it. I'm going to talk about why we even have the vocabulary. And I'll go into the history of sort of magic design and development and talk about how it's played a role. Okay, so let me start with defining the term. What does strictly better mean?

term. What does strictly better mean? So strictly better means if I have two cards and I am building a deck, limited, constructed, whatever, I'm building a deck um the, let's say there's card A and card B.

Card A, if it's strictly better than card B, means in every practical sense, card A does everything card B means, in every practical sense, card A does everything card B does, but more, better, more efficiently. Meaning that if I have a choice between putting card A or card B in my deck, I'm going to put card A in my deck basically every time. There's some caveats, I'll get to this in a second, But the real idea of Strictly Better is look, if you look at these two cards in every

practical sense, card A is just better in almost every way than card B. Now there's a bunch of different ways we can look at this. So I'm going to use Lightning Bolt as my example here for this segment. I'm going to talk about the different

ways that you can make something Strictly Better. And I'm going to talk about different ways that you can make something strictly better. And I'm going to compare spells to the Lightning Bolt to show you that. Okay, so more powerful at the same cost. So for example, Lightning Bolt costs red

to do three damage to any target. Strangle costs these are both instants spend one red mana to do three damage to any target. Strangle costs these are both instants spend 1 red mana to do 3 damage to any creature or planeswalker. Okay, so the idea is Lightning Bolt can deal damage to creatures or planeswalkers

but also to players. Strangle can't deal damage to players. So the idea is if I have a Strangle or Lightning Bolt to put in my deck, well I'm going to put Lightning Bolt Lightning Bolt is going to be better in almost every possible circumstance that the freedom to be able to hit players just makes the card stronger

there's no cost it's not like I'm paying a cost with Lightning Bolt over Strangle they both cost the same amount of mana and you can use them the same amount of mana and you can use them in the same amount of way. Another example might be more flexible at the same cost. Well I guess that's my... being more flexible, more powerful is sort of a... like another example might be same effect but it costs less. So lightning or what is it? Lightning Strike and Searing Spear

both are an instant that costs one inner red to do three damage to any target. Well, Lightning Bolt costs red to do damage to any target. The same effect, just Lightning Bolt is cheaper than Lightning Strike or Searing Spear. Um, you know,

instead of an instant, it could be a sorcery. So, Volcanic Hammer happens to also cost two mana, one and a red. But, it's a sorcery. Even if it costs one red, I think we decided that a sorcery that costs one red to three is still too good. But, you know, imagine Volcanic Hammer for a second just costs red, not one red. It also costs one red. But, let's say it just costs red.

Even that is strictly worse than Lightning Bolt, because Lightning Bolt is an instant. So a sorcery that deals three damage to any target is strictly worse than an instant, because an instant you have more options, more choices when you can use it. Other examples, there's a card called Shard Volley that allows you, for one red mana as an instant, to do three damage to any target, but it has an additional cost of sacrificing a land. Sonic Seizure has an additional cost of randomly discarding a card. So in each of these cases, Shock, Shard Volley, Lightning Strike, Steering Spear, Sonic Seizure, Volcanic Hammer, Strangle.

Each of these, Lightning Bolt is strictly better than it. strangle. Each of these lightning bolt is strictly better than it. For some reason, in some way, the card just does more than the other card. That is what strictly better means. Strictly better means that on some vector, in some way, you know, this card does everything, you know, card A and card B. Card A does everything card B does, but it does it better in some way. Okay, so let's talk to the larger picture. Why does this concept even need to exist? Why are there cards that are strictly better than other cards? Like, why do we need to do that? Okay, well, there's a couple different reasons, but let me first talk about power level. So, Lightning Bolt came out in Alpha, and I'll get back to Alpha in a second. There's a lot of the history Alpha. And I'll get back to Alpha in a second.

There's a lot of the history of Strictly Better goes back to Alpha. But the reason that you're going to want... Lighting Bolt, we made a card. It was just too good. It was better than we wanted. It was stronger than we needed it to be. I mean, early Magic, you know, Richard and his playtesters did as good a job as they could.

But Magic's a very complicated beast. It's hard to balance. And it's hard to balance without any experience balancing it. Nowadays, you know, when our play designers balance something, they have 30 years of precedent to look at to understand how to balance things. Alpha had no precedent. You know, they were just sort of figuring things out. And the other thing that's really important to understand

and we'll get into Alpha in a little bit, is what the game was when Richard first made it and what the game became are very different animals. And so there was more willingness in Alpha to have a wide variety of power levels. Like I said,

we'll get to that. But the point is sometimes Strictly Better slash Strictly Worse comes a wide variety of power levels. Like I said, we'll get to that. But the point is, sometimes strictly better slash strictly worse comes about because we've made a card too strong. Lightning Bolt was too good. So we made Shock. We understood that Shock was just a worse Lightning Bolt. We got it.

But we liked the effect. You know, we like... In fact, Lightning Strike is another example where, well, hey, we like three damage, uh lightning strike is another example where well hey we like three damage but we'll make it cost two shock is we like a one drop red direct damage spell but make it two damage not three in each of those cases it's like we like the essence of what lightning bolt does we like how it plays we like you know it it's doing something we want the game to do oh but that particular spell was too strong.

Okay, well, just because we didn't quite get it right the first time doesn't mean we can't improve upon that. Now, one of the things about Magic is a lot of the formats, or some of the formats rotate like standard, and some also don't use all the cards in Magic. You know, Legacy uses most of the cards in Magic. Modern uses less than that. Pioneer uses less than that. Standard uses less than that. That part of evolving Magic is we try to fix things as we go along. And as formats sort of cut off at

a certain point, you know, if Lightning bolt isn't within that window, then lightning bolt isn't in the format. And so one of the things we do is we're constantly trying to improve on stuff. So sometimes strictly better comes about or strictly worse because we're trying to fix something. It's too good. Now the opposite happens. Maybe we made an effect and it was just too weak. You know, creatures are kind of famously this, where if you look at Alpha, I don't even know if there's a creature that's unprintable from power level. There's some rules issues and whatever other issues, but I don't know if there's a creature in Alpha that is too powerful. And once again, just getting the right balance between power level, Alpha has spells that are clearly too powerful, artifacts, clearly too powerful. But none of his creatures were.

And that was just trying to understand the right balance for creatures. Creatures are tricky. They're reusable. And so, trying to get the right feel, they undershot it, but in Alpha. So, if we make a card, and it's a little on the weak side, well, we're like, you know what?

We can make a stronger card than that. The classic example of that is Grizzly Bears. I have a story later about Grizzly Bears I'll get into. But the idea is Alpha made a Grizzly Bear that says one and a green for a 2-2, vanilla. And it's a bear. But the idea is that Grizzly Bear is not at the curve. Green can do better at one in the green

than just a vanilla 2-2. So it's a card we've obsoleted many times that we've just made cards strictly better. Now, there's something nice and clean about Grizzly Bears. When we make core sets or some beginner products sometimes, we like Grizzly Bears. It's not strong enough in a vacuum to make it into

high-level constructed, but it's something people can enjoy and it's simple, you know. So there's a reason we keep making grizzly bears. But grizzly bears isn't, you know, it's not as grizzly bears. There's room above grizzly bears. So sometimes Strictly Betters, we just can make, we just can do better than we've done. Now, another big reason we do Strictly better gets into something I call the Escher staircase. So Escher was an artist who's known for drawing optical illusions. One of the things he'd draw is a staircase that always goes up, which clearly isn't possible. It's an optical illusion.

But one of the things we like to do with power level is we like people feeling like we are constantly involved, like the power level is going up. But the secret, we don't want the power level to go up. You know, power creeps are a real thing. So the way we accomplish the Escher stairwell is some things are better than they were the last set. And some things are worse. The idea is we have a pendulum. It swings. some effects, like, effects ebb and flow. At any one point in time, some of the effects we're doing are better than we've just done, and some are worse.

We do a combination of better and worse such that the overall power level is roughly the same, but in any one area, it can get better. And that allows us to get people excited. Like, oh, we made a card that is better than the card before, but not in a way where we're constantly, like not, Power Creep means that we just keep making, like, I won't name names, but there are definitely games where they put out set one and set two is just more powerful than set one and set three is just more powerful than set two. Magic could not last 30 years. You know, if we just constantly make everything stronger, the game would collapse. At some point, you just can't support that.

But part of Strictly Better is, hey, I made a card in a set, and, you know, later on, it's, you know, in the set still in standard, I improve upon that. I make something better. So that gets into another interesting thing is... So let me go back a little bit. I'm going to talk about early, as I explain why we do Strictly Better. I want to go back and talk about the history of Strictly Better, because there's a fun story there.

Okay, so if you go back to Alpha, 1993, Richard Garfield made the very first game of Magic. At Common Red, there was a card called Gray Ogre. So Gray Ogre costs two and a red. It's a 2-2 creature. Vanilla. It's an ogre. Okay.

It's a two and a red for a 2-2 creature. Like I said earlier, Grizzly Bears was in green. One and a green for a 2-2. So, you know, it demonstrated very early on that green, a little bit better at creatures. For two mana, it gets a 2-2. So, you know, it demonstrated very early on that green, a little bit better at creatures. For two mana, it gets its 2-2 for two mana. But red requires three mana to get

its 2-2. You know, it was informative. It showed you something. Okay, then in uncommon, he made Uthdintrol. So Uthdintrol, two and a red for a 2-2, except it has the ability for one red mana, regenerate. For those that may not remember,

regenerate, just because it's a while back. If a creature, well, the way it currently works is if you spend red mana, if that creature would die, instead it returns to the battlefield tapped, and it gets removed from combat and stuff like that.

But the idea essentially is it allows you to sort of save your creature. You kind of have to buff it ahead of time to save it. Way back when it first came out, when it died, you spent the mana when it died, but the rules changed and so now you like preemptively save it. Anyway,

regeneration is a powerful ability. In fact, the interesting thing about it is, let's say I have a gray ogre and I attack. You have a grizzly bear. I attack with my 2-2 and you have a 2-2. You can block and trade and both of them will die. Now, let's say I have an Ufthin troll and I attack.

As long as I have one red mana open, even if I don't spend it, just the fact that I can do it, that's what I'm saying is the power of something like an activated ability is, even if you don't use the activated ability, the threat of the activated ability itself is extra ability. Because if I have a red mana open and I attack, even if I have no intention of spending it, you don't know that I have the ability to spend it. And so you're not going to block most likely, unless you're at two life or something, unless it's going to cause you the game, unless you're chumping, you're not going to block my creature.

And so that's the difference between Grey Ogre and Uthdintrol is, hey, it can survive things that the Grey Ogre would never survive because you can regenerate it. And even if you don't regenerate it, the threat of regenerating itself is powerful and can dissuade your opponent from doing things like blocking it. Okay, then...

Oath and Troll was a troll, by the way. Okay, then at rare, Richard made Granite Gargoyle. So Granite Gargoyle is a gargoyle. Two and a red. Two, two. With flying and for one red mana you can pump its toughness.

Now let's forget flying for a second. The red ability the toughness pumping ability. A little weird in red I know. Once again, comparing Granite Gargoyle to Grey Ogre, if it just

had the toughness pumping ability, it's strictly better. But, it also is flying. Now, when you look at Uthdan Troll and Granite Gargoyle, Granite Gargoyle is not strictly better than Uthdan Troll. Uthdan Troll's regeneration, there's means, like, let's say my opponent

was going to use some sort of creature kill on my Uthdanrol. Uthentrol's regeneration. There's means, like, let's say my opponent was going to use some sort of creature kill on my Uthentrol. I can regenerate regardless of what the creature kill is. With the toughness pumping, if they're doing direct damage to it, I can save it by pumping it. But if they're, you know, casting murder

or something on it, I can't. So, Granite Gargoyle is not strictly better than Uthentrol. But, it is strictly So, Granite Gargoyle is not strictly better than Ufden Troll, but it is strictly better than Granite Gargoyle. I'm sorry, it is Granite Gargoyle. Than Grey Ogre. Now, it also is flying. Flying is a very powerful ability.

Now, it gets into an interesting question about that I didn't talk about was strictly better. So, in Alpha, for example, and elsewhere in Magic, there are a lot of cards that can kill flyers. Hurricane was in Alpha, did damage to players and flyers.

You know, we make a lot of, like, Plummet types, you know, one of Green's abilities is to destroy flying creatures, or do damage to flying creatures and such. So, there are spells, like Plummet, that can destroy a Granite Gargoyle, that can't destroy a Grey Ogre. So there are spells like Plummet that can destroy Granite Gargoyle that can't destroy Gray Ogre. So you could say, oh, maybe Gray Ogre isn't strictly worse,

you know, than Granite Gargoyle because there are cards that can kill Granite Gargoyle that can't kill Gray Ogre. And the answer to that is when we talk about strictly better, one of the important things is talking about sort of general case. Like, even with the difference between shock and lightning bolt. Let's say for example, you have a spell that whenever I deal damage to you, you deal damage, whenever I deal damage to you, you deal damage to me.

And let's say you were at three life and I am at three life. If I hit you with a lightning bolt, I would do three damage to you and then do three damage to me and we'd both lose. But if I hit you with a lightning bolt, I would do three damage to you and then do three damage to me and we'd both lose. But if I shock you, let's say you're at two life and I'm at three life.

If I shock you, I'll do two damage to you, enough to win the game. You'll do two damage to me. Oh, but I'm at three life. I survive. So there's the circumstances where shock will win me the game

and lightning bolt will draw the game. Oh, in that circumstance, Shock is better than Lightning Bolt. But the reality is, with all the cards Magic has made, you can always come up with situations where something is better, like situationally better. So what we mean by trickily better is, in most realistic cases, in most cases that are going to matter. For example, let's say I'm building

a deck. Even if I think you might have plummet in your deck, even if I suspect that to be true, having flying on my creature is so much more powerful than not having flying, let alone the toughness pumping, that I'm probably going to put it in my deck.

You know what I'm saying? That the existence of plummet doesn't really change my behavior. Because the fact of me getting it out and at that moment you having it versus the utility of having gray ogre, just, it's still not worth it. And so strictly better means that, look, it is better in most practical cases. Not that it never can be worse. Oh, the other thing that comes up is, so one of the differences between Granite Gargoyle and Gray Ogre is Granite Gargoyle is a gargoyle.

Gray Ogre is an ogre. We could make a card that says all ogres get plus one plus one. And in that world, maybe Gray Ogre, I mean, I still don't know if it's better, but at least Gray Ogre has something going for it that Granite Gargoyle does not. But one of the things we said is that's very narrow. Most of the time, creature type is flavor.

We don't make a lot of cards that typefully care, and so we don't consider creature type when talking about Strictly Better for Creatures. Oh, also, by the way, just to add insult to injury, Richard made one more card at Rare called Sedstroll. Sedstroll was two and a red, 2-2 creature, but it had two abilities. One is it said, if I control a swamp, I get plus one, plus one, and for a black mana, regenerate. Now, if I'm not playing with black,

if I'm playing red but not black, that card basically is Grey Ogre. I mean, your opponent doesn't always know what you have access to. Or sometimes I might be playing a red deck, but some of them have access to black mana. I'm playing a red-green deck, and I have Birds of Paradise or something.

That is possible. So it's not even strictly worse in a mono-red deck. Well, it might be strictly worse in a mono-red deck. But even in a mono-red deck, I could be playing artifact sources that produce black mana. So even in mono-red, it's not necessarily strictly worse. And in a deck with black, it's much better. It's a 3-3 instead of a 2-2. It can regenerate, stuff like that.

Okay, so let me talk, the reason I brought back Richard's stuff is, so Richard, from the get-go, from Alpha, there literally is a cycle in which each creature, I mean, you know, there's a common card, and then uncommon and rare

twice has trickily better creatures. Well, why? Why did Richard do that? He didn't have to do that. There's only 300 cards, or slightly less than 300 cards in Alpha. I think there are over 300 in Beta. Why did Richard do that? And I think it gets into the core of one of the important things

about trickly better. Now, I should stress, Richard did not realize what the game would become. No one could, I mean, nobody in his straight mind could understand the phenomenon that Magic would become. But in Richard's mind, hey, people are going to buy,

like, when Richard made the game, he didn't realize, like, people would be buying boxes and boxes of Magic cards. Right? Like, the idea is I would spend what I normally spend on a game. This is what I did when I first bought Alpha. You know, I spend, I don't remember how much it's been, $20, $30. Like, I would buy a game, right?

And in that world, players only have what they have. They have maybe 100 cards, maybe 150, you know. So, if the best you have is Grey Ogre, you play Grey Ogre. But the cool thing is, let's say I buy a booster pack, and I open it up, and I've been playing Grey Ogre, and I get an Uthdan Troll. Well, you know what? I'm swapping out my Grey Ogre for my Uthdan Troll. I now can upgrade my card. And that's another thing is part of a trading card game is this experience of finding the better thing of upgrading. And that one of the things that trading cards want to do is give you lots of options so that players, as they discover new things,

maybe I open up a new pack, maybe I play against my friend and they have a card I haven't seen before, maybe I'm looking online and I watch a video or whatever, I discover a card I didn't know and all of a sudden I go, that card is better than this card. So another reason that Strictly Better is really important is that you want the ability for players to find things where they can upgrade. That's important. Another big thing, which I think Richard understood, and it took the rest of R&D a little while to understand. I have some stories to share in a sec. I think Richard also realized that it's a fool's errand to try to never make strictly betters. That he understood that the essence of a trading card game is

you're going to make a lot of cards. And probably Richard did not imagine how many cards. We have over, I think, 27,000 cards right now. That's a lot of cards. And I think if we try to make every card not strictly better or strictly worse than an existing card, let alone for power level reasons, we just would make a lot more wordy cards, right?

That instead of doing the simplest version of something, we would have to add something on just to make sure it's not strictly worse. And that just adds complication, unnecessarily complication. It raises the barrier to entry. It makes the game a little less clean, a little less elegant, you know? Another big reason for Strictly Better is the nature of what the game is. We're going to keep making cards. For example, sometimes we're making a limited environment, we're making a common card,

and I realize that what we're doing, we've made a card already, usually at a higher rarity, that does what I'm doing but more. But I don't need but more. I'm just making a common, and I need it to work in a card already, usually at a higher rarity, that does what I'm doing but more. But I don't need but more. I'm just making a common and I need it to work in a limited environment because commons are normally more crafted for a limited environment or casual constructed. And I'm like, okay, I don't need

all that. And that's too much anyway for common. I just want the simplest version of it. So I make something that doesn't have everything the other card has. And that's okay because for the purpose of what it's being used for, which is limited, hey, people don't have option of that other card. And that's another big thing because there's different formats, because there's different ways of play. A card can have use and value even if it is strictly worse than another card in existence. I understand there's some formats like Commander where you've

access to most of the cards. Although even then, availability and just having the card is an issue. But beyond that, there's just formats, Limited being the big one, where like, hey, I got to play with what I got. Like there's a format Henry Stern and I invented long ago. We called it Mini-Master. Now most people call it Pack Wars, where you play out of a booster pack, right?

And one of the funs of that format is making do with what you got. And there's cards you might never play in a constructed format. You might never play in most limited formats, but in this format, you're kind of forced to play because you're literally playing out of the booster. You play every card in the booster. And it makes you realize cards that you might not consider playing, but you have to play. And how do you optimize it? Anyway, super fun format. Okay, so let me talk a little bit, play and how do you optimize it? Super fun format. Okay, so let me talk a little bit, because I'm close to work,

but one of the stories I want to tell is, I think Richard, when he made Alpha, truly understood Strictly Better. He made Strictly Better cards on purpose. Like, I find this vertical cycle in red, which I think of as a vertical cycle. I'm not 100% sure

he planned this vertical cycle, but I think of it as a vertical cycle, that Richard really was trying to demonstrate something important. And R&D didn't get the message right away. So I'm going to tell a story. This happened during Tempest. So we were designing Tempest.

So when we made Tempest, it was the first set that I led, I brought Mike Elliott on the design team. Mike Elliott had made his own set that Wizards later bought called Astral Ways. And in it were these creatures called the Slivers. So the way Slivers work, at least the way Slivers originally work, is they grant abilities to all Slivers.

Nowadays, Slivers grant abilities to all your Slivers, all Slivers you control. We sort of changed how Lords and stuff work, and we reflected that in slivers. Nowadays, slivers grant abilities to all your slivers, all slivers you control. We sort of changed how lords and stuff work and we reflected that in slivers. Anyway, so we were trying to make the green sliver. And the card we liked was one in the green, muscle slivers,

what the card ended up being called, one in the green for a 1-1 and it gave plus one, plus one to all slivers. So in reality, if this card is all by itself, it's a 2-2, and it gave plus 1, plus 1 to all slivers. So, in reality, if this card is all by itself, it's a 2-2, it's a sliver, it grants plus 1, plus 1 to itself.

So we made this card, and we're like, okay, this seems like a really cool green sliver. The green sliver is the one that makes slivers bigger. That felt very, like, green definitely got more creature for its its mana than the other colors

later on white was getting more at lower rarity at lower mana cost but anyway so we make this card and it was very

controversial in R&D and the reason was it was strictly better than grizzly bear why? well for one green

in a vacuum it was a 2-2 creature but let's say I'm not even playing slivers. Let's say I'm just playing four muscle slivers in my deck, my mono green deck. When I play the second muscle sliver, all of a sudden, my first muscle sliver goes from being a 2-2 to being a 3-3. So that's just better than grizzly bears.

Grizzly bears, my second grizzly bear doesn't make my first grizzly bear or my second grizzly bear better. But muscle sliver does. And so the idea is this card is just better. Forget playing a sliver deck. You're just playing mono green. Why wouldn't you play slivers over grizzly bears in mono green? It's better.

And there's this big idea of, like, are we supposed to do that? You know, grizzly bears is a fine card. Why are we making a card better than grizzly bears? And we went through a lot of the arguments, you know, like, we talked about, well, there's a downside. You're not just buffing your slivers, you're buffing their slivers. But they were like, but, if they have a sliver,

then their sliver's buffing you. So they have a winged sliver, yeah, you're making their winged sliver bigger, but they're making your muscle sliver fly. And then we said, well, how about the metallic sliver? So in the story, Volrath, who's a shapeshifter, is fascinated by the slivers. So he brings them to Wrath. And then to study them, he builds an artifact sliver.

This is what metallic sliver is. But because it's not a real sliver, it's artificial, it takes abilities from slivers, but doesn't grant them. So we're like, okay, you have a muscle sliver, and I have a metallic sliver is artificial, it takes abilities from slivers but doesn't grant them. So we're like, okay, you have a muscle sliver and I have a metallic sliver. Now my metallic sliver is better and I'm not granting you anything. Ha ha, there's the downside. But anyway, once again, we got into the idea of strictly better. But that's a very, very, very niche situation that in almost every case is going to be better. So it is strictly better.

And we really had this big conundrum, and eventually sort of what won out is the realization of, look, guys, we can't not make things strictly better. There is no way to make Muscle Sliver remotely the right card, you know, without making it better than Grizzly Bear. That was just the right design. And we eventually, obviously, we let it in. Muscle Sliver got printed.

But it really hammered home. I think as we started making more cards, we realized the challenge of never making a Strictly Better or Strictly Worse. That you're just, sometimes the simplest version is what you need to do, and that that simplest version might eclipse another card, that you really need it as a tool. Now, while Strictly Better exists, and we've embraced strictly better um the one thing that we've definitely um we tend to do is we don't often put strictly better in the same set i know richard did in alpha um but if we're

making something in a lower rarity we think about the higher rarity. So I have two classic examples of this, and then we'll wrap up. So in Magic 2010, we had two cards. There's a Sarah Angel, which is three white white for a 4-4 Flying Vigilance. Sarah Angel was an alpha, very popular card. And then they made a new card called Baneslayer Angel. So originally, Baneslayer Angel was three white, white, five, five, flying vigilance, lifelink, protection

from demons and dragons. So we're like, okay, at uncommon, I can get a Serra Angel, and then at, I guess it was Mythic Rare, I can get a Serra Angel for the same cost, except it's plus one, plus one, it's got lifelink,

and it's got two protections, although the protections are a little more, um, a little more flavor than real power. That just made Serra Angel, like, just made you feel bad about Serra Angel. Like, people love Serra Angel. Like, the reason we're putting Serra Angel in a, in a core set is we want people to be excited when they open Serra Angel.

But then to make a rare that's, like, on every vector just better than Serra Angel, we thought was kind of sad. So what we said is, well, okay, what if we change something? So the change we made is we changed Vigilance on Baneslayer Angel to First Strike. So it's still, the card is still

better. If you have Baneslayer Angel and Serra Angel, and you have a choice what to put in your deck, the vast, vast majority of the time, I'm sorry, Bane Slaughter Angel is not strictly better, but it is better. It is a better card. If you have the two to choose, you're most of the time

going to put, you're not going to choose Sarah Angel. Bane Slaughter Angel is going to beat out Sarah Angel. But, the fact that Sarah Angel has vigilance every once in a while, like, for example, you know, there's a card called Stasis that would lock things down. And the reason you want to play Sarah Angel in the Stasis deck is not tapping is important.

So the idea is most of the time you're playing Planeslayer Angel. But every once in a while, if the Vigilance really matters, you might think about Sarah Angel. And so that way it's there. One's better than the other, but it's not strictly better. The other example we had was we were making Return to Ravnica block. And we had realized from the first time in Ravnica that we needed to be a little better with mana.

Now, we had done Shocklands in the first Ravnica. We liked Shocklands. So Shocklands are dual lands. They have the basic land types. They come into play. You can choose to have them come and play tapped, or you can take two damage to have them come and play untapped. You can shock yourself.

I'd call it shock lands. We wanted to bring shock lands back, but we wanted to keep them at rare. But we knew we wanted common dual lands to help limited work. And basically what we said is, you know what, we could just have tap lands. We had done Invasion introduced the tap dual lands. They're just dual lands that come to play tapped. And we're like, these are fine. They're good for limited.

But the problem was when you compare them to shock lands, shock lands could do that. You can bring them to play tapped, but you can also pay two life in untapped, and they have the basic land types. It just, on every vector, seems so much better that it just seemed, it just seemed sad making. And so we said, okay, can we do, can we do something to the commons that just make them not better than the rares? The rares are better than them, but not strictly worse. So we ended up coming up with the gate subtype. We made them the gates. And then there's some

cards, a handful of cards, in the set, especially at lower rarities, although it's a little bit higher rarities, that just cares about gates and says, hey, I'm better if you have a gate. And all of a sudden, you know, when you're drafting, like, maybe you care a little bit about gates. Gates mean something.

And so it has a meaning. And once again, it's not that gates are better than shocklands. They're not. You're going to play a shockland most of the time, but I'm making a gate deck or I have a gate theme. All of a sudden, there are these decks that are going to care, so it's not strictly better. There's something about the guild gates that

means something to you. And that is kind of where we landed, in that R&D really has embraced the idea that strictly better, strictly worse, there's a reason it exists. There's a need for it to exist. It is, you know, we want, we're going to make better and worse things. You know, the pendulum's going to flow. We want players upgrading.

All the different reasons we do it, all still true. But we understand the feel bad if they're too close right next to each other. And so we try within the same set. And I'm not saying we never break this. Sometimes we do. But we try most of the time the same set. Not to do strictly betters exactly in the same set. We might do strictly betters next to each other in different sets or in standard something.

That we will do. But we really try not to do them in the same set most of the time. Anyway, guys, that is me talking about Strictly Better. So the reason I want to do a podcast on it is I think vocabulary, I'm a big advocate of the importance of vocabulary. I've definitely been one of the people that have both created a lot of words in R&D and then shared a lot of words with the public just to create a vocabulary that people can talk about when talking about design. And anyway, I thought there was some fun history here. So that's why I talked about it today. I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast, but I am, in fact, at work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Oh,

what does that mean? It means I'm at work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Anyway, guys, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.