Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1177: 2023–24 Mechanics Review

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

In this episode, I take all the sets I talked about in my "State of Design 2024" article (The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™ through Modern Horizons 3) and walk through every new mechanic with my personal thoughts on them and what we've learned about them.

I'm putting my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work Okay, so I have recorded this podcast a little bit after my state of design article went up and one of the feedback I got was why I gave a lot of Sort of talked through what people felt about things. I didn't do a lot of giving my opinion I just there's a lot of not a lot of. My word count got used up talking through all the things of what we'd learned. But people wanted a little more like crunchy. What do I feel?

So I thought I would do a whole podcast. So this, I'm gonna do something new. What I'm calling the mechanic review. So what I'm doing is I'm gonna take all the mechanics and themes of the sets of the last year. So starting with Lord of the Rings and going through Modern Rises 3, all the ones I talked about in my state of design. But I'm just going to talk about the specific, I mean the stuff that is in my bailiwick,

if you will. I'm not talking creative. I'm not talking card balancing. I'm talking like core design, like larger picture mechanical things. That other stuff, not my circus, not my monkey, other people are in charge of that. I will talk about things that I oversee

and just talk about larger picture things and give my opinion on how we did this last year, going a lot more into the nuts and balls because that's what people wanted. That's feedback I got and I have more space in my podcast to do this than I do in my column so I thought I'd be using my podcast so we're starting with lure the rings the first mechanic is the ring tempts you I think this mechanic did some stuff that was good one of the challenges of the set was

evasion. They're just not a lot of flying creatures and we needed a way to sort of feel like Lord of the Rings, be true to Lord of the Rings, yet have an evasion. And I think the Ring Tempest you did a good portion of that. There was a legendary matters theme and so I think this interacted with that. I think there's a lot of good synergies that the Ring Temps you worked with and I think it did a lot of Workhorse things while being this flavorful thing that said My two big notes on it one is I think four things is too much. I think we should have got it down to three things

One of the things about the way memory works is that it's easier to remember three things than four things. That three thing is really, like if I'm gonna go do something, I'm gonna go out to the store and grab something. If it's three things, I can remember it. If it's four things, I gotta write it down.

That's an important memories point. So anyway, I think we should have got it down to three things rather than four things I think that this would be easy to process It was there is a lot of complication mechanic. I do think that the set Adjusted for that meaning the stuff around it was wasn't nearly as complicated. It was sort of putting this mechanic the other big note we got on it was It was sort of putting this mechanic. The other big note we got on it was people wanted more. I mean, we try to draw back in the mechanic.

The flavor of the mechanic is having the ring is not a good thing or it tempts you with power. I don't know whether or not I, we did try having a drawback. I don't really think having a drawback is key. One of two things could be done. One is there could have been something very light that is for flavor. Maybe every time you corrupt the ring, you lose one life or something in which it's

has a little bit of flavor, but it's not actually causing too much problems. Or the other thing we could have done is maybe we named it slightly differently. Maybe lean into the power of the ring rather than the corruptness of the ring. But I do admit there's a little bit of a disconnect there that people sort of, it was a common thing people complained about. A mass, a mass orcs. I do like that we repositioned

a mass. The idea that we originally made a mass for War of the Spark where you amass zombies. It was baked into it that it was a black zombie. I like the idea that we can do different creature types. Probably with 2020 hindsight, Amass wanted to dictate color and creature type. I think at some point we're gonna like, oh, why does it always have to be black? You know. So I wish probably looking back that we just,

you amassed and you dictated the color and creature type that you amassed but um I do think amass is a fun mechanic I do think the idea that it's a mechanic that over time lets you combine things and make different armies is pretty cool um And we created a mass as a solution to a problem of war of the spark but as we learned in uh

to a problem of War of the Spark, but as we learned in Lord of the Rings, it does a good job of representing a large group in a way that solves a lot of the go wide with token problems that we can have. So anyway, it's a good answer. I think we will find places to use it. It's a flavorful answer and I'm glad we expanded it. Maybe we're supposed to expand it a little more. We'll see. Legendary Matters as a theme. I think we are overdoing legendary matters. I think we should focus a little more on specific types I Get here why it did it they wanted to care about the name things and the linking things and the name things is legendary but as we do universes beyond what we've realized is Universes beyond sets just need to have a decent number of legendary things. Why?

Cause you want to play the characters of the property. Um, and I think that legendary matters is just a little bit too broad. There's, there's too many of them. And so not that we can never do it. I do think it's a theme we could use judiciously, but we have to be careful. And we really should be looking at doing subsets rather than like other creature types that are unique to this property or something that really is some Good example of the property in a way that I think type of needs to be a little narrower And finally we brought historic back

I think historic is pretty flavorful The one core problem of historic is that cheap artifacts are so much easier to do than legendary things or sagas that the problem is historic becomes about playing cheap artifacts. That's my biggest knock against the mechanic. So I don't know in retrospect if we wanted to put some limits on the artifacts, but anyway, I do like the flavor of historic. I think it's a little mismatched. OK, wilds of Eldraine roles. So I thought roles were really interesting. It was a big innovation of the set.

I liked them. I like what they do. It so it's highly the larger enchantment theme for a second. I think we a little bit over indexing artifacts a little under index on enchantments. They both coexist. We have a lot more worlds that care about artifacts, a lot more themes that care about artifacts than we do about enchantments. I do think we need up, I do think that we could do a little less of artifact carrying, a little more of enchantment carrying. I'm glad that Wild of Eldraine did it. You know, we have some upcoming sets like Duskborn has enchantment theme.

So I do think that we can hit enchantments a bit more. I do think of the car types, it's one of the ones that we've interacted with the least. I'm glad that we're doing that. I think roles are a really interesting thing. The idea of making token enchantments, whether or not they're auras or creature tokens or whatever really helps with the theme like one of the challenges of enchantments in general is the nature of how they work especially

auras it's like it's hard to run auras in your deck it's just very hard to do so there's card disadvantage built into auras and they have to be pretty powerful usually the auras you run in your deck tend to be answers, not things that buff your own creatures. So I do like a lot of what rolls did and I think that rolls, I do think that rolls are something that we can use again. The challenges of rolls is you got to be careful how many rolls you do. I think six did make sense in the set that it was in. We actually turned in more. But we have to address the token issue. It was too hard and limited to have the token you needed. And with roles that are a little more specific, you really want the reminder.

So one of the solutions or challenges for us is if we want tokens to play a larger role, pun intended I guess, in the set set we have to make sure you have more access to them especially and whether that's double-faced technology or whatever there's a couple things we could do. We do need to figure out how to do that but I do think roles were an important step forward. I do think it's a new innovation. I do think order tokens are valuable. I think what you will see in the future is

more sets that do one roll token rather than a whole bunch, but I can imagine a set like this where roles play a major point and there's multiple roles Okay Adventures, I think adventures is an awesome mechanic. It's very flavorful It's been very influential. It's definitely a mechanic that's pushing boundaries of where we're doing other things. I like that we have like adventures when they first showed on the front of Eldraine. We're all creatures. I like we pushed off into other car types. I like that this set starts talking about cross-color adventures. I think that's a nice advancement.

And in general, I thought adventures did a good job of sort of filling the expectation. I mean, I think there are certain mechanics that are tied to worlds in a way it's hard to return to the world and not do them. I think it's hard to be an Eldraine and not do adventures, much like it's hard to be on Innistrad and not do a transforming double-face cards. I like how we did them.

I thought they weren't overdone. I thought that, you know, I thought adventures were done pretty well here. Food, food is challenging. I mean, food is a slam dunk flavor. The idea of artifact tokens, I think that treasure and food includes are all awesome. I think we've made some others that are good.

I think those three are great. The challenge with food is while the flavor is dead on, it can delay the game. So when you do food in volume, you can do it in small amount. You do need to make sure there's an archetype that's using the food in a way beyond just gaining life so that there is some impetus to not just stall gains. And so I think we I think we did that well in Wilds of Eldraine. Next up, Bargain. I thought Bargain was a really interesting answer. We were doing an enchantment theme and they said it had enough artifacts. The idea that you can use these extra things, they worked really well with rolls because rolls had had small incremental value and sometimes, especially once I have a creature that I can't

attack with anymore, it gives you a way to turn those into something in a way that's fun and allows you, bargain really allows you to take an artifact or enchantment theme and do some extra stuff with it. I think the flavor is good. So I was pretty happy with bargain. As a general rule, players don't like sacrificing things. As a, obviously more than franchise players are okay with it, but it is something we have to be careful with. I think here we had an environment where you had a lot of options

to sacrifice things that you just didn't feel that bad about sacrificing. So anyway, I think bargain is a useful tool. I think we'll use bargain again. Celebration. This is the one that cared about multiple things entering. This is one of those things. So one of the ongoing questions is when are we supposed to name mechanics? A lot of times we'll do themes that run through archetypes. This ran through the red, white archetype and it's like, okay, it really is an archetype theme. Um, it's going to show up in a handful of cards.

Do we name it? Do we not name it? Um, there's pros and cons there. If we name it, we run to the, there's so many mechanics in the set issue. If we don't name it, it's just like, what do people call it? There's communication issues. Um, there are always like in any one set, there are mechanics at different levels and there definitely are major mechanics that are a lot of cards, you know 15 20 cards

But there's also minor mechanics that show up in like four to five that are more for an archetype Do we name do we not name them? I don't mind naming them But then we run into this idea that it makes it feel like there's just more things in the set when you name something It has more weight to it. I Don't know whether we should have named celebration or not. I don't know if it was Advantages to have named it. It's on the bubble to me. I don't some things I'd like The real question is is it something we think will bring back? That's the biggest thing for me If it's something we think has value and we'll bring it back

Yeah Naming it makes sense and then it has some value would bring it back if we think it's something we think has value and we'll bring it back, yeah naming it makes sense and then it has some value we bring it back. If we think it's something that's really just for the limited environment that we're playing and we don't think it's something that's going to come back, I'm more inclined not to name it. I mean there's a, the reason for naming is you get some flavor and you get a little added flavor to it.

But I think we need to be careful watching people react to how many things, how many mechanics are in the set is a lot to do with our language. And so I do think we need to balance that. So anyway, that was on the bubble for me. I'm not 100% sure whether we should have it or not. We bring it back. Maybe it wasn't one of those mechanics that was very intuitive to people. It was, we talk about whether mechanics are sticky, like how easy it is is to understand and a lot of that has to do with how

How organic is it and how intuitive is it? I don't think celebration super intuitive. I think it plays well And I think the the things it's rewarding are interesting play patterns, but I don't know I'm still up in the air whether we should name it. Okay, lost cameras to Ixalan We brought back transforming double Double-Face cards. I think Transforming Double-Face cards are awesome. My larger meta note, and this is about Double-Face cards as a whole, both Transforming and modal, is there's logistics that come with it. We always have to keep in mind the logistics and that I think Double-Face cards are a sometimes

mechanic that every set could use them. There's a lot of mechanics that could turn into double-faced cards. Double-faced cards have a lot of value. You get two sides, you get two art, you can tell stories. There's things that double-faced cards do really well. I think we have to be judicious when and where we use them. I think the set was a fine place to use them. I think the mechanics that use them well. I do think that transforming, you know, transforming lands are a big part of this. So anyway, I think we should use it. I think it was used well here. But it's something we should be judicious with. Dinosaur Typal. I think Typal is

awesome. Typal is very popular. We were going back to Ixalan. Ixalan was originally a Typal set. So I think we needed a callback. I think dinosaurs were the right call. If we had done a secondary thing, probably it would have been pirates. Those are the two most louder things. Murfolk and vampires are fine, but we've had the worlds where we do vampires and Murfolk. I do think we had a right mix. And the nice thing about dinosaur Typal is it was showing up in sort of casual Friday Night Magic play

where it wasn't necessarily top-tier competitive but it was fun and a lot of people played with it and it was good enough that you could do that and so I think I think Dinosaur Typal was in a good spot. Maps, I like maps, I like artifact tokens, I think embedded mechanics and artifact tokens. So Explorer was embedded in Maps. So we can talk about Explorer. I like Explorer. Explorer's biggest problem is it's wordy.

And so there's not a lot else you can put on the card. I do generally like how Explorer plays. The wordiness of it makes me want to be infrequent in its use. And embedding it in artifact token. I maps are flavorful. I get it. Like I see where I see how we got there.

It is a it is a dangerous slope. We want to be careful with our tokens. How worried we are and embedding things in tokens, betting keywords and tokens. Not a huge fan of, especially if that embedded token is super wordy. So I like maps, I think maps were flavorful, I think maps played well. They worried me a little bit. Craft. So craft were transformable face cards where you exiled cards from the graveyard as a means to craft them. This was the one mechanic early in design before we knew we were returning to Ixalan. We were

leaning a little more into kind of the tropes space of underground worlds and the idea of of of mining things and then crafting them and you know there's there's some tropes space there that people are very familiar with. And this was the only mechanic that really remained of that. In general, I like Graveyard as Resource. I think it is interesting. I like the idea of this particular mechanic

made you care about different qualities of stuff in your graveyard, which I think is pretty cool. I do think Graveyard as Resource, there's a lot of meat there. And the more that we use graveyard mechanics, the more I think we're starting to come to the realization that most sets should have some element of a graveyard mechanic, sets just play better with graveyard mechanics. So I do like what craft was doing.

Descend, descend four, descend eight, fabulous descent. Pick a lane. I like the general idea. I like, once again, so this is Graveyard as Barometer, the idea that I care about what's in my graveyard. I will say that Craft and Descent, Graveyard as Barometer and Graveyard as Resource, I'm not super crazy with them together. I think there's some tension there.

The one thing that was nice is Descend did not care about all of your graveyard. That's the only reason they coexisted. You know, if, for example, we had a mechanical, I counted the number of cards, like threshold, counted the number of cards in your graveyard, and then something ate your graveyard, that's not great. This one at least, there's only certain qualities. You care about the, Descend cared about the perman permanency of graveyard so you can eat the spells. Um

I think descend there's too many different descends. I think in general if you're gonna have a number I don't mind if you change the number that maybe later said does a different number. Um I don't know. I I think the fact that there was three different incarnations was too much Maybe you can talk me into two I don't know, I think the fact that there was three different incarnations was too much. Maybe you can talk me into two. I think the problem, especially when it's a brand new mechanic, there's a lot of processing that goes into understanding what's going on and having different threshold levels and just, I think that was too much.

I think there's a lot of fun things going on in the set. I think the set was super fun. It played great and limited. I had a lot of fun things going on the set. I think the set was super fun. It played great and limited. I had a lot of fun. Cars were constructed. I do think though that we have to be careful when making mechanics that we make something that is a little more grockable and this splitting as much as it did. I mean I get how we got there.

I think there are a lot of fun things and this was fun and that was fun. Hey, if Descend is really fun, we'll bring it back. You know, pick and choose where you want, focus, let a different set do a different thing. So that's my take on Descend. Discover. Cascade is, it is a fun mechanic. People really love it,

and it's dangerous to balance as I'll get out. Discover was us trying to fix that, and we learned that when you play with fire, you get burned, you know, it's dangerous space. I flip into free thing, even if I restrict what I'm flipping into is dangerous space. Magic just has things like spells where the mana cost doesn't really reflect what the card is,

and so I like the general cascade discover space. I think there's something fun there. I want to make sure that we can find area there that we can play with because it is fun, but it is dangerous. And so we just have to be super careful. One of my jobs in making mechanics is I don't balance the mechanics. I just make the mechanics, but I have to make mechanics that are balanceable. And so I think this is a space we will keep fiddling with in the sense that it's just

very fun space, but it is dangerous space and we have to be careful. Okay. Murdered a car love manner, disguise. Morph is a super fun mechanic. I really like morph. I like face down things. Morph the problem with morph is it was just designed so long ago that it's base, you know, three man for a two two is just so meaningless in modern constructed, uh, that it's just

really hard to make morph matter in any sort of constructed way. Our attempt with this guys was to try to up it a little bit. I do recognize that we are over indexing on Ward. I don't know whether Ward two is correct on this versus Ward one. I like Ward on it. I do like the idea that the most fun part about your face down card mechanic is you turn it face up.

If it's all about I play face down and you just keep blowing it up and I never get to turn it face up. The fun part is the discovery. So the idea that it's a little harder to destroy than nothing thing. And I get to the point where I turn it into something. I think it's pretty cool.

I like that decision. Ward one versus Ward two, I'm not sure. I don't want to keep reinventing and changing it. So I'm more inclined to do disguise again rather than new named thing with Ward one. I don't think Ward keep reinventing and changing it. So I'm more inclined to do disguise again rather than new named thing with Ward one I don't think war two is that far off. I do like it. I do like face down mechanics I do think we want to go here. I do think morph Morph just I think more so a little outdated. So I I do like what disguise was doing. Um

suspect Okay. So one of the meta notes of Murder, Curl, and Manner is we overindexed on the murder mystery theme. And what I meant by that is, I think Ixalan did a better job of saying, hey, I'm underground tropes, but also I'm Ixalan. And it did a certain number of things that were just Ixalan, right?

That like some portion of the set was still Ixalan, even though it had this new theme. I think we were on Ravnica. We should have dedicated some of the portion to be more Ravnica in theme. I think we went too heavy on the Murder Mystery. I also think Murder Mystery is more plot oriented and setting oriented.

I think genre work that's best is setting and Murder Mystery isn't setting, so that's problematic. Suspect is one of those things where I think we overindexed. I think if I had to go back and pull some stuff out, I would pull suspect out. I know, I mean, I was there. I'm responsible for it existing. I liked the idea of the flavor of creatures became suspects and that meant something. And I do think suspect played fine.

I didn't really have an issue with how it played. I just think if you said to me, hey, you only get so many detective things, I think this is low on my list that I'd probably pull this. Next is investigate. I would keep investigate. Clues are great. I'm not a giant fan of tying artifact things to a keyword. Investigate was already there. We're doing a murder mystery thing. It's kind of hard not to use investigate. In general, moving forward, I don't think every time we use clues, we need to use investigate. I'm not, I don't want to like add cook to food or something. I think having the way to use the artifact tokens without having to have the flavor connective word is good.

I do think you'll see us use clue tokens without investigate but in the set about investigating. Yeah. Okay use investigate Slam dunk clues are great mechanic. Obviously using here cases Cases is us trying to solve a problem or solving a problem We've been trying to solve for years for years going back to like original Zenda car Um, I do like the general idea of here something goes on I'm gonna give you a task to do and then a reward for that task and I think we've been trying to do this kind of mechanic forever. I think cases messed up in the template I

think it wasn't as clean what was going on the idea that I have to meet the requirements to get the thing that could have been a bit cleaner. Although once again templating once again not templating, once again, not quite my area, but I recognize that that was an issue. We could be a little cleaner on it. Should we have called them cases? I think the mechanic has a little more flexibility and we limited ourselves in flavor how we can use it.

So not ideal there, I guess. Next is collect evidence. I like collect evidence a lot. It also suffers a little bit from the, we gave it a really murder mystery name and it's going to be very usable in a lot of places where maybe murder mystery doesn't make sense. Maybe collect evidence makes sense outside of murder mysteries. I mean, maybe you the player collecting evidence. I'm not sure. I like the mechanic. I think it plays well. I think graveyard is resource. Lots of value there. Detective Typeball.

This along with suspect are, I think Detective Typeball is just a mistake. Even if we chose to have detective as a creature type, not sure we should have. Caring about it was for sure a mistake. I in general like Typeball. I think we have to be very careful when we invent a brand new creature type and do typal.

I'm not saying we should never do it. I think we have something really exciting we should introduce it, but as a general rule of thumb, introducing typal at the same time you introduce the creature type, it makes it very hard to care. There's just not the volume there. That typo on themes that pre-exist are much, much better.

Once again, there are reasons to introduce new things and do typo. I'm not saying you should never do it. I'm just saying you have to be careful. This did not cross the line. So my saying is we sure shouldn't have detective typo. I'm not even sure we should have detective creature type. I'm not sure if it adds enough to... anyway, in general it was a mistake, especially the use of the Typeball. Maybe, as my gut is, maybe we shouldn't even have Detective as a Creature Type. Outlaws

of Thunder Junction, Commit a Crime. I'm a big fan of Commit a Crime. I really, really enjoy the idea of finding a new thing to care about, but it being something the game just does. There are not a lot of those. It is not committing a crime, found some really juicy space in an area that is not limitless. But I definitely liked it. I also think that crime is a pretty universal concept. If we want to come back elsewhere and care about crimes,

there are definitely lots of worlds that have crime on them. In fact, all worlds have crime on them, but lots of worlds where crime could matter thematically. But anyway, I really liked how it mattered. I like it as a clean definition. I know there's a little bit of disconnect. There's things that the individual card feels like a crime and it's not a crime.

That to me is an elephant in a boots, sort of a reverse elephant in a boots problem, which is, look, if we're gonna make a definition, there's thousands of magic cards. Yeah, one or two will not flavorfully fit this or we'll get excluded. But I think we fit the vast majority of them and I think that's good enough.

I think if you look at all the cards in magic and like 95% of the crimes are crimes, you've done a great job. So yes, things won't connect. I don't think that's a big deal. Outlaw. I like batches. I think batches have to be used judiciously. I think an overuse of batches can be a problem. So I do think we have to be careful when and where and how we use batches. I liked using batches here. Um, five is the upper end of what we should be doing. Um, I understood why they added pirate and set design. Um, it makes sense. I get, I get it. And, um, the one thing I'm hoping is with time,

the one question I guess is, was outlaw, we used a word that was very Western. Is that okay? Um, if we want to bring outlaw. We used a word that was very Western. Is that okay? If we want to bring outlaw back, can we does outlaw make sense in other places? The one thing I'm starting to learn about batches is I want to make batches that I can bring back. And I think the, not that I, the idea of an outlaw, we can bring back those criminals. Is the word outlaw quite the right word? You know, would criminal have been better? Maybe. I do think that outlaw is a little, not horrible. I do think if we had a world where people and called them outlaws, it's not like you wouldn't get it. But it is a little skewed. One of the notes this year is we have to be a little bit careful on when we name things,

how much future abilities or use them and be careful with names. Spree originally was like called Bonanza and I got them to change it. So we'll get a spree in a second. Anyway, I do like outlaw, I do like batching. We gotta be careful where, did this cross the line as was it worth the batch?

I think so. But this is, will we use sort of criminality again? Will other worlds want to? I think we do. The tricky part is on those worlds, will these types be the right types? Hopefully. Okay, desert matters.

I like having, we have to be careful when and how we do card subtypes in general, land subtypes. The thing that's slippery slope in land subtypes is everything is something and it's fun to care about things. I generally liked how Deserts played out in the set. I think that land sub themes help sort of flavor out the world and give some texturing to limited in a way that I think is really good. So I liked how desert matters was used here.

I'm still in my mind trying to figure out when land subtypes should be and not. The reason the slippery slope is the more you make ones that just care about what they are, it feels weird when other ones don't. And so I'm trying to understand that. I do think if we had Magic to start all over again, I would do more flavor subtypes

like we do with creature types that I might make that more relevant of something we do in general. The thing about creatures is subtypes exists for flavor when other car types, they only exist if they mechanically matter, meaning we can't just do flavorful things. Anyway, that if I had magic over I might rethink that a little bit and how we do

that. Okay, plot. I like plot. I think plot is a very fun mechanic. I think it does a lot of cool things. I think it makes you play in ways that are different. I do think plots one of those mechanics, we have to be careful how much plot we make. I think that there's a lot of interesting design space and I really liked how we explored the design space in a way I thought was a lot of fun. There's a lot of cool things you can do with it.

Plot can be a little frustrating, it's open information. Hidden information is nice in that people don't have to worry about it. Plot you do have to worry about. There's also a little bit of talk about should plot have been faced down? The problem with plot being faced down is we had to unify the cost like we do with Fortel.

I think plot works better where you don't do that, where you're sort of upfront paying the cost. So I think plot works better face up because of the utility of how it has to work. I do think the fact that it is face up means you have to be careful how much plot you do within, like you don't want a deck to have too many plot cards in it. And there's a lot of things that make you want to play

a lot of them. So there's some utility in how it plays that I generally like the mechanic. There's some stuff I how it plays that I generally like the mechanic. There's some stuff I have to think about there. There's some talk about the flavor plot match shouldn't have been faced down. Are my plots hidden? I'm like, eh. At least in the area we're talking of villains, like villains monologuing telling you their

plans is pretty famous. I don't know. I don't mind it faced up, but that was a note I got a saddle This was us trying to solve the mount issue. I want to ride a horse How did it represent me riding a horse or is fantasy one run the dragon or whatever? I like saddles Amster. I like tying it to vehicles, I think that vehicles are the closest analog like Riding a horse and driving a car aren't that different.

You know, you're riding horses a lot like riding a vehicle. So I like the similarity, it makes it easier to learn and understand. I think saddle will become deciduous, meaning I think we'll use it where it makes sense to use it. I think it's a similarity vehicle, makes it a lot easier to learn and understand. I hope the word saddle is okay. I mean most of the

time when you're riding something you know you're getting on it so there's something to ride but saddle definitely I think saddle is gonna be okay but it definitely I I question a little bit. Spree I think Spree is a great mechanic I think there's a lot of fun stuff with Spree. I really like the technology, a little plus sign in the Manakost. I've been trying forever to get some sort of signifier that the Manakost is not telling you the whole truth. I haven't quite won that fight yet but I like the fact that Spree at least did that. That shows that it's helpful to remind you that there's more stuff on the card. I think it's a super useful mechanic.

We like to do a lot of modal effects. The idea of being able to do modal effects where you can do different size effects is very useful. I think we'll see Spree again. I'm glad I got it changed from Bonanza so we can use it without causing a problem. But yes, in general, I like Spree. I think I was very happy with Outlaws of Thunder. I think the mechanics suite at Outlaws of Thunder Junction was quite good.

And a lot of that stuff I think we will use again. The last set to talk about very quickly, I'm driving up to work here. I have traffic today, that's why we have a few extra minutes, but it's good. I had a lot of content. Modern Horizons 3, I'm not gonna get it, and we brought like infinite mechanics.

I'm not gonna go all the mechanics. I'm not gonna talk about all the mechanics, I'm just gonna talk about the three big mechanics, the major ones. Double-Face cards, I do like how we use Double-Face cards, I think it was fun to do another cycle of Planeswalkers, like creatures that turn into Planeswalkers, people have been asking that forever, I imagine we will do more of them one day,

they're very popular. I liked the modal Double-Face card stuff, I think one day. They're very popular. I liked the modal double-faced card stuff. I think the land modal cards are very popular. I did get the note, there's a lot more we can do. It was kind of sad that we used them in a set and then didn't maximize how we use them. There's lots of cool ways. There's lots of cool mechanics that have to use modal

or have to use double-faced cards that the only way to put them in a modernized set is there. I do get the note that we should try to, next time we do a modernized set, if we have double-faced cards, we should make more use of what they can do. We were very, a little bit pigeonholed this time. I agree on that general note.

Energy, I think in general, we should be using energy more, that energy should be our go-to for, hey, I have a mechanic that wants limited use, let's just use energy. I think we should be willing to use energy in a deciduous way where, hey, and this one set on this one card, it's just about uses three times.

But in the larger ecosystem, it ties into energy. I really like us expanding on energy. I think energy is a cool mechanic. It's definitely something that's very, you know, it was something that you, the more of it we have, the more we can do. And the more that we have, the more we should lean into it. So energy is something I think we should make use of more

now that we have it. And now like energy's problem was, there wasn't enough of it in the larger system. Like it was hard for like a commander deck to build an energy deck. And so I think that it's something things that are the things that are sort of parasitic when you first make them, if you really like them, you have to make more of them. And we have to sort of commit on those kinds of things so we can get volume. And I think we're starting to do that with energy. I think that is good. Finally, colorless Eldrazi. I mean, I've talked a lot. Devoid in general, I wish wasn't a keyword, but a super type that carried a little

bit of flavor weight. I think there's something I I do like colorless I would like to get colorless off of Eldrazi. I mean this said it was Eldrazi because I have the whole flavor but I do think there's a lot of fun work in colorless. I really want to make people think that colorless isn't equated solely with Eldrazi. I would like to find other places to do colorless things. We had like strict saving days. I mean we we found a few places but I would like to use that a little more. I do think that one of the balances in Modern Horizon Sets is having enough themes that we can do stuff to build around,

but having enough one-ofs that we can explore kind of the the playground that is Modern Horizon Sets. I think we are as fan of individual stuff was kind of low because we pushed it to higher rarities Part of that was to make a good living environment So there's a general balance that I understand why we had to do it But I do know some of the fun of modern horizons is more of the one of stuff. So Anyway, it's a challenge from future if we make other modern horizon sets, trying to have that balance between the one-ofs and the themes that drive through.

But I do think we did a lot of fun things. And in general, the mechanics, I think, were well done. Anyway, guys, that is my thought of the mechanics and themes of the 2023-2024 Magic Year. Hopefully, for those of you that felt that my column my standard design column was a little bit light on some of the stuff I hope having almost almost 40 minutes of it helps you feel some of that void. Anyway guys I'm now at work so I don't know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work so

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