Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1185: Foundations Design with Bryan Hawley

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

In this podcast, I sit down with Foundations's Lead Set Designer Bryan Hawley to talk about the design of the set's product suite.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for other drives to work. I would say at home edition, but technically this is at the office edition. So interesting. All of my podcasts up before the pandemic, I was in my car, I was actually driving my car.

And then during the pandemic, I started recording with people, cause I was at home. People liked those. So now either I'm driving in my car or I'm at home recording an interview. But I'm with Brian Holly. We're gonna talk about foundations today.

So it turned out that just the easiest time for us to do it was at work. So this is the first time a thousand plus podcasts in, I'm actually at work recording something. So anyway, welcome Brian. Thank you, hello. So we're gonna talk foundations. So where to begin?

How do foundations happen? How did it become nothing into something? Great, I feel like I should probably introduce myself. Oh sure. I'm Brian Hawley, I'm the game design director for Magic, so I kind of oversee the designers and managers and that group. Also for this purpose, I was the set design lead

for Magic Foundations. Okay, so you're the lead. So let's talk a little bit about it. Like this, Magic has a long history of making introductory products for players. We've done all sorts of starter products. Obviously we've done core sets. This is something a little different.

So I wanted to get into the, like, how did we get here? This is definitely us trying something different than we have before. Yeah, so Foundations is born from an idea that we've had for years, longer than I've worked here, you know, 11-some odd years before. Just the concept of an evergreen core set

is something that we've wanted to do for a long time. We... Yeah, we used to call it the ultimate core set. That was our name wanted to do for a long time. We used to call it the ultimate core set. That was our name for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I ultimate base set. I think we called it actually. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't hear that term until last week. Okay. So the one of the things that we've been thinking about a lot with Magic is that over the last few years, we've expanded the number of different products that we make, but we've definitely seen, heard, and felt that that growth is getting pretty close to capped with our current player base, which has been growing. But the place that we really feel is kind of the future of Magic and growing Magic is just by growing the number of people that love and want to play Magic.

So we, as you mentioned, we've gone through a bunch of different eras of learn to play materials, how to get into magic, philosophy. And we've learned things from each of them. So they're shared history with foundations and the course that's up old with starter 1999 and going back even further than that, even as far as alpha. and going back even further than that, even as far as alpha.

The decision to make foundations was definitely pretty opportunistic. We had a slot in our calendar, we've been wanting to do this for a long time, and it was getting to the point where we were like, okay, we really need to start making something soon. We're like, hey, we've wanted to do this for a long time. Let's just do it. Go all in.

So from there, there are four main products that make up the foundation suite. There's the beginner box, which is our entry into just the best way to enter Magic ever, and hopefully the best way to enter any card game ever. Sure. But a tutorial, teaching you how to play. Yes, very much like what do we want the experience to be

for someone who is interested in learning Magic and has never played before. Real quick, just to explain something important that we know that you, the audience don't know. When we do the market research, the number one problem we have with new players is they are intimidated. Magic is, over 30 years has 27,000 some cards.

The rules are very, it's as thick as a phone book for those who remember what a phone book is. So I mean, there's a lot of intimidation. The idea that I'm learning this game that has so much history to it, it's very intimidating to people, so. Yep. And that knowledge has been baked in for a really long time.

In a lot of ways, it is something that we, in some of our previous attempts, leaned too far into. One of the things that is different about Foundations from some of the eras of Core Sets is that it is really trying to make learning magic as fun as possible. Just the experience of sitting down and learning to play magic is an experience we just want to be very fun. Which does, which is, you know,

we still care a lot about it being simple, accessible, like something you can, you know, get into and get a feel without needing to know all of magic's history and mechanics and rules. But the big thing for a long time is, like, without needing to know all of Magic's history and mechanics and rules. But the big thing for a long time is, like, when I look back in the early days of doing all the starter products was, can we make this as easy as possible for people to learn? And for a long time that was our North Star, making it as easy as possible.

And we've just learned that's not, there's things more important than is it easy? Yep. Yeah. And like, we need to balance that for sure But one kind of challenge that that like just trying to make it as easy as possible Introduced is that at some point you have to to learn the rest. Yes and having that Be like a kind of large cliff. Yes You know cruising along like okay. I feel like I get it. I feel like I'm kind of getting it Oh, no, what is this? like I get it. I feel like I'm kind of getting it. Oh, no, what is this?

So we really wanted that kind of, like, that entryway and that kind of pathway into getting into Magic to be smooth, which does mean that we're introducing some concepts earlier than we did in previous efforts in this space. And we're trying to get people to a basic understanding of the core rhythm of a game of Magic as quickly as possible. What is the point of the game is something that our previous Learn to Play offerings usually didn't have. So one of the things that...

The Beginner Box was the very first thing we started on, because we knew that we wanted this whole product suite to be really cohesive within itself, something where it can kind of create an ecosystem that lets people get into Magic and explore for a while, and then kind of path out of it in whatever direction and at whatever pace they want to. So we started with the beginner box.

And that was built on the foundation of Jumpstart. Like that was a really important piece of technology in Magic. So once again, welcome to explain. For those that don't know, Jumpstart is a product. We've made a couple versions of them. A pack of Jumpstart is kind of like half a seal deck, sort of, 20 cards I believe.

It is 20 cards. 20 cards. And the idea is you could take any two half Jumpstart decks, put them together and make a 40car deck that you can play. And that, we've done a couple of those, they've been very successful, and the thing we like about jumpstart is, one of the big barriers is learning to build a deck.

Well, put two things together is about as simple a deck building as we can make. Yeah. But it still lets you kind of experiment with combining things, which is really like core to the experience of Magic, and is really, for many people, what the game is about. It's like, how do I combine these different things

to make something that's me? Right, and you get to make a decision. I mean, it's not zero decisions, but you get to make a decision, and then you get to play off that. Okay, so how did we use Jumpstart technology to do this? At the beginning, it was really unclear how we were going to,

because we knew that we loved Jumpstart for teaching and for just early magic play before people kind of have all the context necessary to start building their decks. When someone asks them, hey, what do you like doing in Magic? It's like, what are the options? And Jumpstart is a really good way

to get a bunch of options in front of people without it being overwhelming. So a few months later of tinkering, talking, experimenting with different structures, we really latched onto the idea of kind of a, like, almost board game version of Jumpstart, where there are these ten packets that are not randomized, everything in the box is the same each time, and two of them are used in the tutorial sequence, so that, you know, paths you

through, kind of introduces the really core concepts of the game, kind of introduces you to the cycle of a turn, and kind of like teaches you the basics of the rules. And then from there, you have more content that you can explore. Like if you liked the cats deck from the tutorial experience, then you can grab, you wanna be cats and dragons?

Go for it. If you're like, eh, maybe not cats. And it's like, ah, I want to be elves and goblins. Great, they're yours. So, once we kind of latched onto that kind of general structure, it then continued, especially the first time we make any new product type, it isn't so much harder than making it the second, third,

fourth time. So there was way more testing, way more design time, way more iteration and bad ideas and poor designs that we had to scrap and start over, then it was something we already knew how to do. But once we had that kind of general basic idea, it was time to spin up the rest of the design, starting on the main set, which we knew we wanted to connect

to the themes of the beginner box and the starter collection, which needed to connect to both. Okay, so the idea is I buy the beginner box. I'm a brand new Magic player, I've never played before, I buy the beginner box. Inside there are ten half decks, cats and vampires play against each other. So you start with a half deck, and you play what we say tutorial, what it means is they're in a certain order, you have a booklet that literally says, okay, draw seven cards, and it walks you through your first game. Then if you want to play another, you want to shuffle and play with a little half deck, you can.

But then there are other half decks you can combine two half decks and I can play for a little while. The five half decks I can play a little bit and I can explore. Okay, so now that I've done that, now I'm ready to go beyond the beginner box. Okay, what is next? So there are two different places that you can go. If you just want more jump start, I still don't really want to build decks. I just like doing this and I just want to keep,

I just want to add more content and just expand what I can play with. There is a full jump start expansion. The foundation's jump start release. And that's a full jumpstart expansion. The foundations jumpstart release. And that's a full sized jumpstart, the same as original jumpstart, jumpstart 2022. And it has all the jumpstart content you could want. And just for the audience real quick, there's rarities.

So there are jumpstart boosters that are more common and then there are ones that are mythic rare, meaning there's some things that are simple, but you can't stumble across a little more complex things. Most of them are single color, but I think some of the mythic rare might be more than one color. Are they all still single color?

If I recall correctly, there are some that are five color. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's been a while. Reggie Volk was the design lead for Jumpstart. So I don't have the encyclopedic number. That is one path. You can go down to Jumpstart. What is the other path? The other path is kind of the, you just want to expand your collection. You just want more stuff to have more magic cards, to build more decks, explore more things. And down that path, the Starter Collection is a product that is...

It draws some inspiration from Deckbuilder's Toolkits of old, but unlike Deckbuilder's Toolkits, it is a fully curated and designed collection. It has hundreds of cards, really 400-ish if you include the basic lands that come with it. But it's just a single product. It's a single product. Beginner Box is trying to be the best way to learn magic and a lot of gameplay time and content for your

dollar. Starter Collection is trying to really quickly turbocharge if you just want cards and want like high utility magic cards that you can use and start building decks with and just like want to kind of you know jump right in. It is trying to be, it has tons of cards, tons of rares and mythics for its price point. And the cards in there provide a really good kind of spread of different things, different ways you can build your decks. They all work with the

jumpstart packets that were in the beginner box so there's ways to explore and build different decks out of them. If you like the catch deck there's more catch cards here. Now is it the same cards? If I buy one version of the box you buy the other, are they the same cards in it? Same cards. Okay, so just identical. Yeah. If I recall correctly, there are play boosters in that product. Okay, and those will be randomized? Those will be randomized. But the selection of cards is fully fixed. It is, as I said, like a designed and curated kind of cornucopia of cards. Okay, so I either take my 10 jumpstart packets from the beginner box and I buy more jumpstart or I buy the starter box and start building decks using that.

Okay, so what's next after that? Next is the foundation's main set. So foundations, in addition to having these two new product types and being a full jumpstart release is a fully sized large booster set with all the rares and mythics and commons and uncommons that you would expect. Play boosters, collector boosters, all of it. So one of the things that core sets of old tried to do, they were kind of trying to be both for someone's first ten games of magic and for people that are, you know,

have been around the block, know all the cards, and the foundations main set is very much trying to be the second step in someone's journey and not the first. It's like the beginner box is someone's journey and not the first. It's like the beginner box is someone's first step into Magic. Like we've really blown out the tutorial and kind of introductory experience for someone to get through their first 10, 20, 30 games of Magic. And you can do that entirely within the beginner box. The foundation's main set is trying to be still really approachable, really clean, but it's trying to do it in a way that is more focused on being kind of resonant and timeless than it is about being as simple as possible. So one of the tenets that we identified pretty early on

of like, this is a design pillar that we really need to be true about the set is to build an introductory experience that's optimized for new players, but it really keeps it fun for the veterans who are teaching them. The foundation's main set is really trying to do that. So it's a mix of new cards and reprints. But what's the percentage? How much is new? It's roughly 50-50. Roughly half and half. It varies a little bit by rarity.

But when we went into the product, we didn't have any specific goal of how many new cards and how many reprints. We just came in with the idea, if the perfect card already exists, use that one. If it doesn't, make a new one. And as we went through the process, 50-50 wound up feeling feeling about right. All right. Like there are a lot of just really cool, clean, timeless cards that, you know, older players will remember with nostalgia, but newer players will love for the same reasons that the older players loved them for in the first place. Okay, so something important we haven't brought up yet is we have committed to this product. What did we say to? At least 2029. 2029.

Okay, so that's five years. Yep. Like we're saying that this is going to be a standard legal set for five years. How did that come about? So one of the things that we, another kind of challenge that we identified from previous core sets is that when they're just kind of part of the normal in and out churn of Magic, it is really difficult for an experienced player to wholeheartedly recommend them to a new player. Because when somebody's getting into Magic, you don't know how deep they're going to go,

you don't know if they're going to go all in and start building standard decks and playing with you at FNM next month, next year, five years from now. So the recommendation of oh, you should really start here does come with some kind of caveats and addendums of like, but those cards are gonna rotate from standard in six months so then you're gonna need more and that's awkward. And the other thing is that when there's a new core set each year, different players entering the game at different times kind of have, they don't have the same touch points. Like

one thing that, it's not necessary but it is valuable if players kind of have a shared language of like these are the cards that everyone knows and if a large majority of Magic players are coming in through the same place and like you know learning from you know the foundations beginner box, foundations cards, you know having kind of that shared experience just helps people connect with you know like when somebody is like oh yeah I found this card like oh I know what that card is that card's cool and but like it really came from a place of wanting these cards to be just very easy to say,

like, yep, you should just start here. It doesn't really matter if you don't go super deep this year. They'll still be relevant in a couple of years. Don't worry about it. That was something that we just... And there's another fact. One of the notes that we've gotten from players is there's a lot going on. That they're just keeping up with magic.

There's a lot moving. And that when the course of like every year was different, it just required mental space of like, okay, what's the core set now? And what we're saying is, well, what if the core set didn't change? What if like, okay, this is just what the core set is. You can learn what the core set is and just move on, and every year you learn if like relearn what it is. Just, we are looking for opportunities to sort of

lessen how much attention you have to pay to different things. And this was one thing that we were doing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it definitely comes from kind of the same philosophy of lengthening standards from two years to three. Just like, your cards should be relevant for longer and if you're not on top of what's coming out every week, every month, that should be okay.

And Foundations, we hope, helps with that a lot. It definitely introduces a lot of the strong core staple effects that will define standard for years to come. And new sets will introduce different versions of those over time and things will change, but the, that kind of like foundation of standard will just stay more stable. See, when we went into it,

we weren't really sure how to describe how long foundations was gonna be legal, because we kind of knew that we wanted it to be legal forever asterisk. We knew that forever is too much. We knew that that was not, you know. Stop promising things forever. It's never gonna be actually forever.

But we definitely wanted to convey this is gonna be legal for a really long time. So the kind of positioning that we landed on for it is it'll be legal through at least 2029. But if it continues to do its job, it could be longer. It could be much longer. Like if it continues to be fun, if it continues like providing a really good welcoming place for players to enter Magic. Yeah, like we could expand that.

Like we will definitely give the public at least two years heads up before the set rotates. So, you know, stay tuned in 2026 2027 ish for the future of foundations. But yeah, for now, we know that it will be legal and standard for at least five years. Okay, so are there when the compare I mean, in some ways, this is our new take on a core set. How else is it different from the core sets of old? A lot of it is the design aesthetic.

We've already talked a little bit about how core sets really tried to simplify magic to the point where it kind of felt dumbed down. Like, experienced players didn't usually have as much fun with presets as they did with other things. Jumpstart has a really beautiful design aesthetic where, I mean, Jumpstart is a lot of different things. And one of them is kind of a, it is a focus on creative cohesion with synergies, but the pieces kind of mix and match interchangeably, very fluidly. It's also kind of lighthearted and approachable. So we definitely borrowed from that design aesthetic with the main set.

Like one lens that we viewed a lot of cards through is it's not necessarily like how long does it take to read this card, that does matter. In a lot of cases it's what do you need to know about the game system to understand why this card is cool. Because like you know we've all seen cards that take up most of the text box and are pretty easy reads and other cards that are like two relatively short lines it's like what does that what am I supposed to do with that? Yeah and it's important to have a little bit of that like getting the gears turning

and like, oh, what can I do with this card? And oh, that might combine with this. And like, that is a really appealing part of Magic, but especially some of the really abstract themes, mechanics, lines of text are still things that we left by the wayside. But we were really focusing on that just, like, you know, core tenet of optimize it for new players, but keep it fun for everyone. Yeah, the thing that I found most interesting was, I think old school, a lot of our thought process was, let's shield the player, the new player.

Oh, if we tell them all the things that are in the game, it might scare them off, there's a lot going on. And kind of the new philosophy is, no, a lot of those things are what make people want to play the game. I'll use a good example, legendary creatures. It used to be, we didn't put legendary creatures in the base set mostly because,

well, it's just a new thing to learn. You gotta learn what the legend rule is. Like it just was extra baggage. But now it's sort of like, well, one of the cool things about magic is the characters, right? And you want, you know, and, I mean, this set has planeswalkers, it has legendary creatures.

Like we're like, you know, a big part of magic is the characters and that's the one that draws you in. And we don't want to shy away from the characters. And that, the take right now really is sort of, I thought was interesting is, okay, what do people like about magic? When we look at magic,

what the people who love magic, why? What about magic is it? And the idea is let's get those things in front of people's faces sooner. Let's not hide it from them. Let's say in fact, here's a really funny story. So we did a test where we we took a lot of things out of magic and we were teaching people and then we do market research because that's how we do it.

And one of the market research we got back is when we asked him if they play more. Yes or no, why would they if they wouldn't play anymore? Why wouldn't they play? And a bunch of people said, oh, it's too boring. And we're like, oh no, like, what do we do? That magic is too boring. Like if anything, magic's not boring, maybe it's complicated and there's a lot of moving pieces.

But that's what made us realize we were doing something wrong. Like we showed people magic and their takeaway was, eh, that's kind of boring. There's not much going on. And I'm like, wow, that's that, you know, so, I think a lot of the philosophy changes are around that, of being dynamic and being,

showing what makes magic shine. Yeah, now like, you know, we definitely assume that, you know, the new player magic is pretty smart. Yeah. Like, they can get it, if they want to get it, they will. So, just making them want to keep going and want to learn, want to climb that hill to figure out what's at the top is really what we're trying to go for here.

Yeah, there's a truism in game design, which is one of the ways to tell that your game is a good game is at the end of the first game, your players want to play the second game, right? Like I just finished playing the game, like, ooh, that's fun, players want to play the second game, right? Like I just finished playing the game like, oh, that's fun. I want to play again. And I think that's what we were trying to tap into. Like, how do we let you see the specialness that is magic right away?

That not hiding from you, not wait for it. Like right away, how do you get to what makes magic shine and what makes magic exciting? And hey, you know what? If they finish the first game and they want to play the second game but they don't know everything oh that's okay they're excited about second game and don't hey you eventually pick things up yep for sure the the other thing that is kind of different about foundations and we kind of touched on this one describing the beginner box is it's it's really not just trying to teach you the rules of playing the game of Magic.

It is really trying to teach you what is Magic about. Because Magic is really much more than just one game that you play. And a lot of our starter kits and things like that, you learn the rules. You'll get through your first five games and kind of understand that. But then a lot of players, and this also came from our market research, kind of like, okay, what do I do next? What am I supposed to do now? But that is also different for different people. We have psychographics, we have player segmentation. We have a lot of different ways of thinking about that, but different people like different things about magic.

Some people really like the mix and match self-expression. Some people really like the social element. Some people are gonna be really drawn to zombies and sacrificing things, while others will be drawn towards life gain or dragons or whatever. Especially that kind of early ecosystem that we've designed and created

is really trying to show people that kind of like, magic is more than just these turns within a game. It is like, choose your cards, put them together, figure out what you like and do more of that. You know, upgrade and iterate based over time, kind of, you know, find what you like about magic and to do more of that. And we're trying to not make assumptions

about what people are going to like and instead kind of show them the range. And even, for example, when I'm saying, what's the next step? You're like, well, there's one or two steps steps like like you can kind of pick the product that suits you And there might be some people that go from beginner box to just jump into the main set because that's what they want to do And the most interesting you and I have been talking about this before before before this interview and one thing she said to me the really stuck with me is

One of the one of the tricks of old magic is we would teach you how to play and then that was it. We'd like a bit, okay, go jump in the pool. Like we would just abandon you. And so it was kind of like, right, we had this very simple thing and then the gap to what was normal magic was huge. And Foundations does a really good job of saying,

no, no, no, there's a whole pathway. Like here's the very first thing you do, but here's the second, here's the third, here's the fourth. And it's kind of a playground in the sense that you can pick and choose what resources you want. We're giving you a bunch of resources. Hey, go where you're excited and we'll try to give you the tools

so that however you wanna sort of get excited and learn, that's what you can do. Yep. And one thing that I will call out, the amount of resources, just like design resources, testing resources that we put behind foundations is so much larger than any previous introductory expansion we've ever made has been.

Core sets tended to be on a slightly shorter timeline than the expert level expansions surrounding them. Core sets tended to be on a slightly shorter timeline than the expert level expansions surrounding them. This one was on a slightly compressed timeline, especially when you factor in that we were designing three things simultaneously and they needed to speak to each other. But the amount of design effort,

the amount of external testing that we did, like graphic design resources and analytics and data resources, like all of the things that we poured into this product, it was very much the whole company was so excited about this product. There are very few things that Magic players love more than introducing someone new to the game that they can play with. And this is a company full of those.

So as soon as people heard this is what we're doing, like we're going all in, we're doing so much more than we've ever done before, the amount of excitement and enthusiasm around the whole studio was enormous. Yeah, and so the reason for doing today's podcast, I mean, A, I know you guys like to hear behind the scenes of how things get put together, but also just to let you guys know,

look, most people listening to this podcast are more than franchise players. This is a really good tool. If you have somebody that you think would like the game of magic, but you didn't quite know how to get them there, this is, like I said, a very robust suite of products to help all of you introduce people to magic. And so if you have somebody you really like, right, the beginner box is the first place to start. And then depending on

what you know of them, whether they go to the starter collection or jumpstart or just jump into the main set, those are all resources resources and you can figure out with the person you're teaching Hey, what where they what what excites them and let them go where they're excited To talk a little bit more just about kind of like the main set because kind of like yes all the way out Yeah, what's the yeah the grand division? Yes, we get here. Yeah the so the the main set the way out. What's the grand vision and how did we get here? So the the main set expands on and continues some of the themes from the beginner box, the starter collection, and from a design standpoint we

really focused on just like what are the really classic timeless strategies of magic? What are the things that never never get old people just always love doing? and Identifying those, you know, like some amount of like creature type matters like we knew we had to have some of You know just the kind of Strategies that are kind of fundamentally centered around some of the core kind of strategies that are kind of fundamentally centered around some of the core resources and game actions of Magic. And just to point out, there's some deciduous mechanics, like there's some stuff we put

in the set that aren't in every Magic set, but we put them in this Magic set. Do you want to walk through what it looks like? Yeah, absolutely. What did we put in? So we, yes, that's a really good call out, because another thing that CoreSets previously did is they basically only used Evergreen mechanics and they might have like one mechanic. And Foundations really kind of just does what it wants

with that regard. The mechanics are all very, I would describe them as much as like labels for strategies you should be able to see, as they are kind of like mechanics. Like all of the, you know, not all, many of the just fan favorite and design favorite mechanics over time are all here. So, you know, things like flashback. There are some mechanics that by kind of the nature of the mechanic really help teach you things.

Like raid in particular. Yeah. It's just such a beautiful mechanic for that. Oh, sure, sure. It both teaches you that attacking is good, which is something that many new players kind of are paralyzed by. Like, oh, what if my creature dies? And Raid's like, well, if your creature dies,

you still get paid. Yeah. And it also, in just a really subtle and organic way, introduces the second main phase, which is something that historically, a lot of new players overlook and experienced players use yeah kind of makes it almost makes for the sort of we're playing slightly different games I'm using these elements

of the rule system that you don't know about yeah and trying to kind of weave those in and get people to kind of realize them and they're like oh that's how that works that's cool is. Um, it's really helpful there. Okay. What are the mechanics? Uh, so we've got morbid, which, you know, one of the themes in the set was just sacrificing creatures, um, and things dying. Morbid is a really good clean way to introduce that

theme and having that word that you can attach to it makes it much easier to like identify that this is a strategy you should pursue and kind of then you're gonna start looking for the things that may not have that word on it but point you in that same direction. Yeah. Threshold is in the set and is in a similar vein like it just kind of points out like oh the graveyard is a resource. A resource. Yeah. It's something where like filling your graveyard can be really powerful. It's something where filling your graveyard can be really powerful.

It's not something that you just put cards in and never look at them again. Flashback does a little bit of that too, but all of the usual card types, like you mentioned, planeswalkers, equipment, all of it. We have prowess, which has kind of oscillated between yes evergreen mechanics right now it isn't quite evergreen anymore but yeah but again we wanted to make sure that there were kind of like clear and clean ways to end up like oh there's a bunch of

blue and red creatures that have the word prowess on them. So like, that looks like a strategy I should pursue. And then you start noticing the other cards that may not have that mechanic, but go in that theme and it'll... you'll investigate that over time. One thing that was particularly troublesome, even towards the tail end of design was whether we wanted scrying at surveil or both. Sure.

Because surveil is a really good mechanic for incidentally filling your graveyard. Right. Like again, one of the things that we focused on a lot is it's clear why you would want to do this thing. Yeah. it's clear why you would want to do this thing. And one thing that is really powerful, but is often a little baffling until you understand why it's powerful, is Self-Mill. If something says, when I enter the battlefield,

mill four cards. That's a pretty powerful ability. But to someone who doesn't know all the context of, oh, I have Threshold and I can build a flashback card and I'm never gonna run out of cards in my deck, fine. It reads like downside. Like it reads like something that you don't want to do. So having mechanics like drawing and discarding

or surveil is a really organic way to introduce people to that gradually, like very, very naturally. So what was the answer of scry and surveil? We went surveil. And surveil, okay. For a good while, we did have both scry and surveil, and we had many, many debates about is that too weird?

Yeah. Like, these two mechanics are really similar to each other. Yeah. One of, they're slightly different. One of them is more powerful, but it reads less powerful. It did, I mean, as a word person, it digs in me. Like I, I so wish in retrospective, it's like scry the library, scry the graveyard.

Something in which we could use the same terminology. Yep. So I, we have to wrap up here, but I do want to point out to all of you who we did a lot in this set to make it, there is a lot of fun, I mean, there's draft built in. I think draft wasn't the priority versus some other goals that we were talking about today,

but there is a fun, robust draft environment. Yes. Yep, yeah, like any Magic Set, like, you know, just being a really fun draft environment is kind of table stakes. Yes. You just kind of need to have that if you want to be a good Magic Set.

Yes. So, like, we definitely have draft, we have the draft archetypes. Yeah. But the, you know, we expect people will be drafting this intensively for a few months. And using it as an entry point to Magic and collecting and expanding what they have for many years.

Yeah, and you said made a good point is that part of making a good entry level product is making sure that people teaching it are having as much fun as the people learning. And that was like, like you said, the reason that there is a little bit more complexity going on here is we wanted to show off a lot of depth of what magic can be. We wanted to make sure it was a dynamic thing. So this is definitely for it. For those of you out there that are like, maybe I'm going to take a pass.

I would check out the set. The set has a lot of cool things going on. And look, you're going to, these are gonna be in standard for five years. So. They're not going anywhere. And there's definitely some cards. Yeah, we're not getting into details right here, but there's things to check out, things that really will have an impact

and will mean something. So I would, this is a set you wanna at least pay attention to because it is something that will influence stuff. But anyway, guys, I'm realizing we are almost out of time here. So I want to thank Brian for being with us today. Thank you. But the rest of you, I'm not sure what what's my out when I'm here. And when I'm at home I'm like I got to my desk. I got to the

conference room. We all know what that means. I don't know if you know what that means. What that means is I'm done with my drive to work. So anyway guys, thanks for joining us. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you all next time. Bye bye.