Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1168: The Nadu Situation

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

We banned a card this week that stirred up a lot of talk. I then wrote a blog entry on it that stirred up additional talk. This podcast is me explaining the issue with the extra context that having thirty minutes to talk provides.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's podcast is something I don't normally do. I'm inspired by something happening this week. Now normally I tape ahead. So talking about something that happened this week is not timely. But I think this was important. And so I'm going to record the podcast and I'm going to jump the line and just speed it up and actually have a podcast about a topic this week. Like I said, it's not something I do very often. So the topic this week is Naadu.

So we made a card. It was too good. We banned it. None of my talk today is about the banning, you know, like whether we should ban or this or that. My talk today is about design.ning, like whether we should ban or this or that. My talk today is about design. So one of the offshoots, so Michael Majors, who's the lead set designer of Model Horizons 3,

wrote an article where he explained how NaDu happened. And my column today, or my podcast today, is about in response to the response to Michael's article. There's a bunch of things going on that just show mostly that I don't think people understand some of the nuance behind the scenes and there are people complaining about things. I want to explain it. I'm a firm, firm believer that education is the key that if you want people to have a better grasp, explain it to them.

So I want, there's some key fundamentals that I need to explain to you about how design works, because some of the responses I just think are coming from a place of not understanding things. And so I'm going to explain them today. That's what my ride to work will be, is explaining some things behind the scenes. So basically real quickly, when Michael explained kind of what he said, the short version of what he said is they had a card, it wasn't doing what they wanted it to do. They change it based on notes on those things. This change happened late in the process and they didn't catch something and the card ended up being broken.

Okay, so there's a couple different comments we're getting out of here. Let me hit the one that hits me to the bone the most is stop designing for commander. This has been a railing cry. So let me explain a little bit here, an important idea. Let me explain a little bit here, an important idea. When you make a magic set, every card you make, you want to have a target of who might play this card. That you don't make a card that like, we're evolved in now 30 years in, like when we make cards, but who's gonna play them?

Where are they gonna play them? Why are they gonna play? We think about their usage, that's important. We think about who is most likely to play them? Where are they going to play them? Why are they going to play them? We think about their usage. That's important. We think about who is most likely to play this card and we then analyze and think of like, okay, for this person, you know, this type of player, will this make sense? Will they like this card? Now common is usually earmarked for limited.

That doesn't mean you can't, common cards can't show up elsewhere, but their first priority is making sure limited works. So we shape them to limit it. So very much when you make a common card, the main idea is how will this play in limited? We do think a little bit beyond that. It might just be played in other formats. I mean we were conscious of that, but the guiding force in common is going to be how to play in limited. Uncommon somewhat guide by limited. We definitely think about limited Uncommon's have a lens where we're considering limited but uncommons also can take some function elsewhere I'm coming sometime, you know, we can make things that make sense to be rarely uncommon that have constructed functions Like I said common can be constructed, but that's only because the thing that we're doing to make I said, common can be constructed,

but that's only because the thing that we're doing that makes sense in limited also works in constructed. In general, common cards are very base effects. Common cards are the simplest versions of things. Now maybe we're doing a theme or we do some stuff we haven't done before, that's simple, but we haven't done before. But usually common is the stuff that we normally do,

just bending toward whatever the theme or themes of the set are Uncommon we bend a little more. There's a little more novelty. There's a little more build around especially limited build around but also just for casual When we make uncommon cards, we're definitely thinking about the more casual player and here's another thing that I should stress is And here's another thing that I should stress is when we think about the casual player, the casual player is a larger group. Commander is the larger casual format. And a lot of times when we're thinking about casual, we do specifically think about commander because commander A is played so much and B has some very specific needs that the nature

of how commander works makes certain things Highlighted or higher or lower based on the format So we do think about commander and so a lot of designing for commander is hey We're designing for a casual audience when you think about a casual audience You do think about commander not everything specifically commander, but you're very conscious of commander commander, not everything specifically commander, but you're very conscious of commander. Anyway, at uncommon, you are thinking about sort of limited and some amount of casual play. And maybe if certain cards pinpoint and make sense to constructed, once again, unlimited

is costed more for a limited than constructed, but sometimes the overlap works, meaning what it needs to cost in limited is what it costs in constructed. But unlimited is, I mean, uncommon is a little more, a meeting between, you know, constructed and limited. Although limited has the lion's share of like, if a card needs to work for limited and uncommon, it will be pointed toward limited. Then we get to rares and mythic rares. Rares and mythic rares are not,

I mean, we think about common, but they're not at all designed for, they're designed for constructed. And we tend to figure out which cards we think have constructed value, which cards we think we played in certain constructed formats. There's an entire team, the play design team,

that is in charge of game balance and they're looking and saying, okay, you know, where can we push things? A lot of that is what is fun, what we'll make for good gameplay, but where are the things that we think we can push? Another thing to remember, I guess one of my overarching things today is designing magic, especially for any sort of constructive play, is very, very complicated. There are a lot of cards out there, especially in larger formats.

We don't have the resources, we have the resources to do standard testing, we have the resources to do limited testing, we have a team that will do commander testing, and then depending on the product product like Modern Horizons actually brings some people in to do some modern testing, but larger formats have less time and the more cards you have in the format, this is this combinatorics at work, the more possible things you can interact with, the harder it is to test. You just can't test everything. And as I often explain, part of what we do is we're trying to make an environment

that if we know what the environment is gonna do, you'll solve it in a minute. So we have to make an environment that has potential and we push certain things in certain directions and we push themes and we make packets of cards to play together. We definitely try to push in certain directions, but we don't know what's gonna fall out.

We don't know what the public's gonna do. And hey, we just missed one interaction and we work two years ahead. So it's not like we know the interactions when we're making things. Standard is three years long. So we might have an idea of the first year of standard. We were making the third year of standard,

but the whole second year we're working on it. But you know, it's not hard for us not to see something because the scope of what we're doing, we're not making an environment where we know exactly what's going to happen. We're making an environment where we have some guesses. And so we do percentages. You know, play design is all about this has this percentage of happening, this has that percentage of happening.

But hey, the actual thing that actually happens will influence how how the environment gets shaped and we don't know that So the idea is we are trying to make some cards aimed at constructed All of the cards cannot be aimed at constructed the very nature of the way constructed works is Only the top certain tier of cards in any one format competitive I should have competitive format anyone competitive format where people are maximizing making the best possible deck there are 200 300 maybe maybe at the I mean maybe at the absolute most 400. There's only so many cards that can be seriously relevant

in the format any one time. That as soon as you make another card stronger, it pushes out cards. That you can't just make more cards relevant without, I mean, we try to make a very diverse environment. If you have three to 400 cards that are relevant in any way, that's a really diverse environment. That's our dream. Our dream is to get 300 400 cards. Most of the time it's less than that because the dominant cards are

the dominant cards and that trying to make a large balanced environment is tough, it's tricky. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of moving pieces and that and even if you make a balanced environment, you still have the problem of whether people recognize it's balanced versus not. Meaning if certain decks seem like the good decks and more people play the decks, it warps the environment and maybe in some clean way there is a better deck, but it's hard to tell. A lot of things that also happen is things can people can get influenced by certain things and so even even if there's the potential

for a balance how it plays out and how people communicate and what people copy and that also can sort of offset things so like it's not a perfect system as far as it's very very hard to make a truly balanced environment we constantly try and we often do but it is hard. We are going to make mistakes. Not because we're trying to make mistakes but okay. So the idea is we make some number of cards for constructed formats but all the cards can't be for constructed formats that at some point there's only so many shots we can take. And remember the goal as ideally we want to add some cards to the environment,

but we want cards in the environment to still be played. The goal is not to obsolete all the existing cards. I know there's a lot of complaint with modern and modern is extra tricky. Balancing modern just has lots of other complications. But the idea is we wanna make some number of cards that we think might have an impact. But the remaining of the cards

are just not gonna be for constructed. There's only so many cards we can make for constructed. So what do we do with the rest of those cards? We have rares and mythic rares that just aren't aimed at constructed. What do we do with them? Well, we wanna to find an audience for them. We need and now one of those audiences might be, hey, we can aim some stuff at a

format that's not top tier. That for example, when we make cards for standard, there's a lot of F and M play Friday Night Magic play that, hey, this isn't the top tier, but it's fun. People will enjoy it. So we definitely build decks that are meant for people that are sort of, you know, playing seriously, but a little, you know, one level down, meaning that, hey, this is just a fun theme. A lot of people who go to Friday Night Magic don't plan to win the majority of their games.

Maybe they will. They'll be happy if they do, but they know that they're going to lose a lot of their games. That's okay, there's better players at the store, but if you're going to go and you're going to lose some portion of your games, a decent portion of your games, you want to have fun. So we want to make sure they're fun decks, and those fun decks don't necessarily need to be top tier. They just need something that will win enough that the person who goes to Friday Night Magic will go, okay, I win some of the time. This deck's not embarrassing to play, and I win some. So we can make some of those cards. So we make some cards that are sort of not the top tier, but the next tier down. But some number of cards just aren't going to

be for competitive play. So who do we aim those cards at? We aim them at casual players. And there's a lot of different ways we can aim them. There's a lot of different thoughts. You know some of the cards might be weird Johnny cards or you know things that we will take cards and make them for different audience members but some number of them are casual. If they are casual cards we will run them by the casual play design team. That is their job to evaluate the casual cards. That's what they're there for, right? The competitive play design team is trying to make sure

they understand all the competitive things, the casual play does it, it's trying to understand the casual. There is a lens by which the casual play team can't not think of Commander. Commander is the 800 pound gorilla in tabletop. It is a format that it's the number one played in tabletop, number one played tabletop format. So if you're gonna look at casual cards,

you're gonna think about it. Our shorthand when we talk about building for casual these days is designing for Commander. That is us saying, hey, we're thinking about casual formats, the biggest of which is commander. Of course we need to think about casual formats. Every card needs to be for someone. So mostly what Michael was saying was, hey, we had a card. It didn't have aspirations to be a constructed card.

Because of that, we ran it by Casual Play Design, said to Casual Play Design, hey, how do we maximize making this card as fun as it can casually? How do we do that? And so they gave some notes. So Michael, being a good set design lead, doing due diligence, said,

okay, I have a card aimed for a casual audience. I ran this by the group that's the expert on casual play They gave me some notes I will listen to those notes and be aware that said that the set lead gets notes from other people They have to go to the council of colors will give notes about what makes sense color pie wise They'll go in and talk to the competitive play design team. They'll talk with the rules, with templating, with digital, with tournaments. Like a lot of people have a lot of say in a lot of things.

And so they are trying to do the best they can to accommodate all these different notes and make the set the best that they can be. So designing for commander, all that really means is, hey, there's a lot of people that play a certain way, we're thinking about those people. Some of the cards, because not all the cards can be for constructed, they just can't.

There's no way to do it. The constructed can't absorb that many cards. So there's a lot of things that are designed with other things in mind. Commander slash casual being a big part of it. Okay, why do you change things last minute? You shouldn't do that. Why do you not test things?

We do test things. We test things a lot. But the reality is the nature of making a magic set is iteration. You make changes, you get feedback on those changes, you make more changes. It's what we call an iterative loop, okay? We keep making iterative loops

until we can't make them anymore. At some point, as pencils downs, we stop. The idea that, and we are constantly playtesting, especially near the end of the process. So the idea is we try to make the decision, we try to, we hold the changes to the latest possible time so that we can make as much changes, which is as much feedback as possible. Like I said, you know, all our play testing combined, combined, is going to be the first

four seconds of, you know, the audience playing with it. You know, literally the first minute of Magic Player playing, it probably eclipses anything we ever do as far as play time. Because there's millions and millions of Magic players. You're going to play a lot more than we're, we're a handful of people. There's only so many times we can play test. So we want to play test and iterate as long as we can.

At some point, there's a cutoff. At some point, it's like we can't, we can't make this change anymore. Okay, well why don't make the cutoff two weeks earlier? Because is there value of playtesting for two weeks and not being able to make changes? Like once you can't make changes, I mean not that we don't do playtests because we are playtesting for the next set, but we want to make changes and then at some point, look there's the end of making changes. then at some point, look, there's the end of making changes. There's some point at which, okay,

this is the last day we can make a change. If we make a change on the last day we make a change, there's no play testing after that. If you move it two weeks earlier, the same thing is true. You just have two less weeks of working on it. It doesn't change the dynamics we're talking about at all. At any point, if you make a change before, and any change we're going to make,

we're going to play test if we have time to play test. But there's always some point that's the last day to make the changes. If you make changes on the last day to make the changes, there's no play test after that. And there's not a lot of real, like the idea of, well, let's have a time in which we don't make changes, but then we play test. Well, why are we play testing which we don't make changes, but then we play test

Well, why are we play testing if we can't make changes the whole point of play testing is so we can get feedback and affect things So there is the nature of trying to iterate doing iterative loops and working to build working right up as far as you can Means that something some things have to happen at the last minute Now you guys tend to hear about when things go wrong. Oh, we to happen at the last minute. Now you guys tend to hear about when things go wrong. Oh, we changed this the last minute. We didn't realize something. We didn't play test it and things went wrong. But there's lots and lots and lots of times that we did something. We made the change. It was better. It like, it is not as if the number one story is we made a change last minute and disaster happened.

That's actually a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the time. You hear about it, you know, like one of the things when I went to communications school, one of the things they talk about in media is how proportions of things influence how you feel about things. The news, for example, reports 90% of the news about crime is about large crime. Only 10% is about misdemeanors. But in actual crime, 90% are misdemeanors. Most crime are small things, not big things.

But because you listen to the news and what you hear about is the big things, you think of crime as being the big things. And the same thing is true here. Hey, we don't tell you stories of we changed it at the last minute and wow, it worked great. You don't hear a lot of those stories because, you know, it's more like, hey, it's the process of what we do things. We're constantly trying to make things as good as we can.

We constantly improve things right up to the very time when we're not allowed to improve things and most of the time, the vast, vast vast majority of the time it makes it a better product and so the idea of you know i think it's very easy it's sort of like oh this plane crash let's stop flying planes no no no planes do a lot of good planes people get a lot of places you know if the only news you ever hear about plane crashes it's not like planes are a bad deal but planes aren't a bad deal there's a lot of places, you know, if the only news you ever hear about plane crashes, it's not like planes are a bad deal, but planes aren't a bad deal. There's a lot of great things that happen because you can travel on a plane. You used to be if you wanted to go, you know, you had to get in a caravan for whatever, three months.

Now you hop on a plane, you're there in a couple hours. It's a great convenience. So the idea that somehow we don't want mistakes to happen. We do do a lot in our process to try to stop mistakes. Well, why are you changing serious things? We weren't. He thought he was changing a card that was a casual card that wasn't for constructed. The card wasn't tagged for constructed.

He was trying to make something that he thought would make it play better casually, and he missed an interaction with zero cost activations. I should note, it's something we don't even do anymore, right? It's something that we, because of things like this we've learned are dangerous, we've stopped doing. We don't do zero cost activations anymore. But one of the fun joys of eternal magic, or you know, just large format magic is, hey, it took us a while to learn that. So if you're playing

a larger format, there are cards that do this thing that we now know we shouldn't do, but they exist. And so we have to live with them. And so, and especially in modern, like I said, it's tough in standard but at least standard The number of cards you have to sort of think against is so much more manageable than something like modern or something like commander There's you know, it is so Michael was making a change He was conscious of all the things he was normally conscious of but but here's the thing that we've consciously chose to stop doing. We don't make zero-cost activations anymore, right?

So when you're sort of doing your mental math, that's not something Michael thinks about. It's not something we do. It's something in standard you don't even have to think about. We don't do it anymore. But this is modern, and so there are things that we don't do anymore That still exists and that's what makes modern a lot more complicated. There's a lot of things We've learned as best practices that we stopped doing But in any format that uses old things our mistakes live on and just remembering sort of

Mentally processing things that you don't normally think about can be hard. And that's the challenge there. The final thing that I just wanted to say, as the guy who probably writes the most articles and most podcasts about behind the scenes, I am well aware, I am well aware of the vitriol that can come when you explain something and then people who are mad about the thing that happened get mad at you explaining why it happened. And a lot of it is, a lot of it comes down to, what are you, stupid sort of comment? You know what I'm saying? Like how can this happen? And the reality is we work very hard. The people that work in R&D are very smart. What we are doing is very, very complicated.

We get it right the vast majority of the time. And we have a lot of systems set up to make sure that what we are doing is the best that we can do. But much like we iterate to make the set better, we constantly iterate to make design better. Design, you know, actually it's my 30th year working on the set, working on Magic. I've been through a lot. The way we make Magic set constantly changes. Not just the game, the way we make it constantly changes. We're constantly improving. But there's always room for improvement because what we do is, again,

I cannot stress this enough, very, very hard. Now, I think we do it well most of the time. I think we have a very talented group of people. And I think Magic is an amazing, amazing game. I mean, I'm a little biased here, but I think Magic is the best game, the best game ever made. I believe Magic is the best game the best game ever made. I believe magic is an amazing game

but it is a game of 27,000 plus moving pieces that all can interact with each other and while that makes for a very dynamic Exciting game that you literally can go and do something It is possible for you to build a deck and do something that no one has ever done. That is how crazy the combinatorics are. I tell the story, but I'll just repeat it. When Magic Online first came up, they wanted to do an ad.

And so they came to us and said, we wanna figure out how many different decks you can build. And I think, so the question was, how many decks could you build? I think we even limited them to 60, 60 card decks. How many unique 60 card decks can you build? And when Magic Online started, I don't remember exactly how many years

worth of magic were in it, but it was, I don't know, 10? I mean, it was, it was not what magic is now, of a tiny fraction of magic now. And the way combinatorics works, it just gets, it grows exponentially. Okay, so we figured, so they came to us, not me personally, but a lot of R&D are math people. And so, okay, can you tell us the number?

What is the number? We wanna say, here's all the different decks you can build. And we figured out, we being, or be proper, not me, not a math guy. We figured out that there were more possible magic decks in existence. And this is just 10 years worth of cards,

whatever it was when Magic Online started. So, but way less than we have now. How many different decks were there? And the number was greater than the number of atoms in the universe? That's how large a number it was. It was a number so big like like it was a crazy large number and I guarantee Whatever 20 some years later with all the you know We make a we made a lot of cards since then if that numbers even you know, we make a, we've made a lot of cards since then. If that number is even, you know, and like I said, of course exponentially, it's even crazy, crazy bigger than that. It's many, many galaxies or whatever. Um, so my

whole point of this is that we, I mean, one of the things that I've always a big fan of is I'm, I'm a big part of transparency. Like when I started writing about magic way back in the day, it just wasn't a thing anybody did. I mean, there were maybe one or two people that occasionally would like Dave Sartlin. There were a few people that occasionally would talk about magic design, not magic design, game design. And that one of the big things that has happened since magic, so like one of the big impacts

of magic, there's a lot of impacts of magic, but one is this idea that we can just talk about game design. Now, if you play a game, there's a good chance that the designers talk about their design process. And so I think it is the fact that Michael would write this article and explain what's going on. He was just honestly trying to let you know how did this happen. And wow, the just please be aware that the people who write these articles, myself included, are just human beings with human feelings that, you know, I mean, I've

done this for a long time and I've, I've grown a pretty thick skin just because I've been doing this forever. But even I was my thick skin, hey, people can be mean and it is not nice when people are mean. Look, Michael is trying to be honest and explain how things happen. And I get it, I get it's frustrating when things happen when a card ruins an environment or whatever. We don't like that either.

But the very nature of magic is balanced systems are really, really hard. We manage to do them a lot of the time. But the very nature of what we do, the nature of the combinatorics, the nature of the modularness of magic means, look, there's only so much we can catch. Things are going to fall through the cracks. And especially in older formats where our mistakes live on for all time, that's only exaggerated. So the key point here, the thing I'm trying to say is part of what we do is trying to

make magic cards so that all of you can have fun playing magic. In order to do that, we spend a huge amount of time and energy thinking about who are these cards for? How are they going to play them? Are there ways to make them better? Can we tweak this card? Can we make this card 1% better? And that is the entire process. Like basically, designed for us is this iterative loop where we're like, can we keep making it better? Can we make it better?

Can we make it better? Can we make it better? Can we make it better? And then at some point, they're like, pencils down, okay, we're done. That's what we got. And, at some level, the reason there's deadlines is we would keep going. Like you can keep making it better, incrementally better. Now at one point, is it worth the time and worth the resources?

But there's always ways to try and make it better. Now at one point is it worth the time and worth the resources but you know there's always ways to try and make it better. In our act of making things better, in trying to improve it, most of the time we do in fact improve it. We make it better. But mistakes can enter the system. We have processes to try to limit the mistakes. We have a lot of things set up and there's a lot of mistakes we've made in the past that we will not make again because we've changed our systems to help correct those mistakes. But the idea of making a system that makes mistakes impossible cannot be done. That there always will be things that we miss. There always will be things like and I understand when you play and you take something and you

put in your deck and it's obvious so quickly how problematic it is. How in the world can we miss that? And the reality is, look, we only have so much time for testing. We tend to put the main thrust of our testing on competitive play to make sure that things are balanced and we don't break anything There's a whole second team though that's doing casual play and they're making sure that things especially Commander and casual formats are playing as fun as they can But there's only so much we can test there's only something we can't give every card equal treatment as far as how much attention There's just not the time to do that

so we prioritize and pick and choose where we put our energy trying to increase the pot like lower any potential mistakes, but We're like everything can't have total screwed me that at some point somewhere We have to make changes and do things and in the process to make things better We're going to make changes right up to the line. Like I said most of those changes make it for a better game Magic would not be better if we just said instead of spending end time. Let's spend n minus two weeks on it It will be less good than if we you know, I'm like, ah My point is you can't prevent mistakes.

We can improve systems, we can lessen mistakes, we can try not to repeat mistakes. Like I guarantee, we will be much more conscious of zero activated abilities that will be on our brain just because when you mess up in an area, you're more conscious to think of it again. But so my point is that we can't do everything. That our attention will go to the things we think have the highest probability of causing problems. But we will think about every card, we will make notes on every card, we will incrementally

improve every card, we will do that right up until the line to try to make the best that we can. Mistakes will happen. Things will be. Like today, I'm not getting, there's a whole stuff about when and where and how should we ban things. That's a whole separate issue. But today, what I'm saying is from a design standpoint, which is what I talk about is we, our processes are set up to make magic the best it can be.

But that doesn't mean that there are things, no matter what system you set up, there'll be cracks. Things will fall through the cracks. Things will happen. There's no foolproof system where we don't make mistakes ever. We can lessen mistakes. We can not repeat the same mistakes. We can do things to help ourselves, and we do. We constantly innovate to do that.

And we should, when making cards, think about the ways people will play them. That we should design for commander in the sense that if a card's greatest possibility is being played in commander, we should stop and think, hey, how will this interact in commander? And I promise you, that mindset, that thinking makes cards better. Not just in commander, but in magic play as a whole. That just having teams that look at cards and say, hey, here's the lessons we've learned

about what makes for bad magic or unfun magic, let's try to repair those, that processes as a whole, put onto magic makes it a better game. And so I know it's so fun when you see a mistake or something goes badly to assume there's some great, great huge problem or process. And the reality is things slip through. We will learn from it. Trust me, when we make a mistake, we are well aware.

We do retrospectives. We spend a lot of time and energy. You know, we have whole meetings, card crafting stuff to talk about how do we do things better. So when we make a mistake, it is not as if we do not learn from the mistake or do not care about the mistake or do not grow from the mistake. But this idea that somehow if we make a mistake, we're just being negligent on our part or not trying or not caring. We spend so much time, so much time on all, we think about things that you guys probably never spend

two seconds thinking about. And we think about them so you don't have to think about them. So anyway, that is my feedback. My feedback of today is the system works the way it does to make magic the best it can. Yes, things can fall through the cracks. Yes, mistakes will happen.

Yes, we will learn from those. But the fact that mistakes happen is not a sign of some inherent flaw in the process. Okay, that my friends is my thoughts on NaDu. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed my topical podcast, and I wouldn't mind feedback if you want more topical podcasts. This was a little off the beaten track, but anyway my thoughts. So that is my thoughts for the day. I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.