Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1193: Designing for Mythic Rare

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

On this podcast, I talk about how we design cards for the mythic rare rarity.

I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work Okay So to the origin today's podcast has a cute little story behind it so I was on my blog the other day and somebody was asking me about How we design for different rarities and I said, oh I did a podcast series on this so I made a link to designing for Commons So I made a link to designing for commons and then made a link to designing for uncommons. And then I made a link for designing for rares.

And then I went to make a link to designing for mythic rares, only to discover I never made it. So this is a series that I somehow didn't finish. So I will finish it today, many years later, as is my way, I guess, sometimes. I just didn't realize I didn't do it Okay, so the idea for each of these podcasts is I'm approaching The idea is each rarity has certain rules and certain function

And so today I'm going to talk about how do we design mythic rares? What's the goal of mythic rares? Why do we have mythic rares? I even will throw in some history of mythic rares Just for a little added flavor Okay, so let's start with that the history of mythic rares. So alpha comes out in 1993 other mythic rares. They're not So when Richard first made magic there were three rarities Alpha had common uncommon and rare. In fact, there wasn't even a land rarity yet. Lands were literally on the common, uncommon, and rare sheets. Later, lands would get on their own sheets,

and technically, I mean, we call lands common, but for those that really technically on the coalition, that lands are slightly different. Anyway, so, we made Magic for many years. And then, so Magic was the very first trading card game, but there were others. Other people made trading card games. It was a popular category. And one of the things that we asked ourselves is, hey, now that, you know, however, it was

many years later, you know, now that we've, now that there's many people making trading card games, you know, we were the first one, but let's look at everybody else and say, hey, are they doing things we're not doing that we might want to consider doing? And one of the things we realized in doing the research of every other trading card game outside of Wizards was all of them did more than three rarities. One of the cool things about trading cards is the very concept that you can have layered rarities. And they had rarities that exceeded a single booster pack. What I mean by that is if you open a single booster pack, you are guaranteed to get a whole bunch

of commons and to get a number of uncommons and get a rare. But usually they have a rarity And so we decided after doing some research, I mean, the other thing that happened is what we called rare was a wide range of things. I think on one end we is like a one in 40 something and the other end was one in 121. That was Ice Age, for example, had 121 rares. So what we really wanted to do was to get a little bit of a sense of what we were doing. in 40 something and the other end was one in 121. That was Ice Age for example had 121 rares. So what we realized is what we were calling rare was a really wide range of things. We said okay what if we just chop that up? What if we take the lower half and call that rare and the higher half and call it mythic rare. So the way it works on a sheet is so when alpha was made, again the correlation real quickly here, the way it works on a sheet is, so when alpha was made, getting to

collation real quickly here, the way that we do rarity most of the time is that there are slots for rarity. These slots are common slots, these slots are uncommon slots, these slots are rare slots. And the way we do that is, normally we have a sheet dedicated, or more than one sheet, dedicated to that rarity. So the idea is, oh we have these common sheets, sheet or more than one sheet, dedicated to that rarity. So the idea is, oh, we have these common sheets, we put them in the hopper, and then the common sheets drop from the,

the common slots drop from the common sheets. When Magic first started, there were three sheets, a common and uncommon and a rare. As time has gone on and we've gotten more sophisticated, there's now more sheets per rarity than one. Only because if we only have one sheet, it's a lot easier to understand, especially in common and uncommon, the runs, right? Like in common, if there's only one sheet, once you see one card, you know what comes after it. So we do multiple sheets, especially at low rarities to mix it up a little bit to make it a little more

surprise for you. So it's not as easy to track what's going on and to make it a little more of a, you know, to add some more randomization to the booster AKA. Anyway, then we made the very first small set, Arabian Nights, and the Arabian Nights wasn't big enough to have three sheets. So we did a combined sheet. The uncommon sheet had what we call U1s, meaning things only appeared once in the uncommon sheet, and then it had like U3s and U4s. And we called the U1s rares.

So we did do something with smaller amounts. So anyway, we had the technology of sort of combining things on sheets. So the idea of MythicR rare was on the rare sheet. Most of what happens is mythic rares and rares go on the same sheet, the rare sheet. Oh, by the way, from a rule standpoint, cause I had a only unsets care about rarity mechanically. But we did make the ruling and on that mythic rare and rare are both rare cards.

I noticed they had the word rare in them. So rare be gone that destroys rares does destroy mythic rares as well as rares. Anyway, so there's a rare sheet. On the rare sheet, usually every rare will appear two times on the sheet and every mythic rare will appear one time on the sheet. Once again, we often do more than one sheet.

Our sheets are usually 11 by 11 or 10 by 11. There's other sizes. So anyway, on the sheet, there's normally something like 121 or 110 and then we have to chop them up and then put them in their slots. So Mythic Rare, we decided we wanted to do Mythic Rare. Other people were doing it. We'd gotten some notes. We did, we do a lot of market research

that the collectors felt that there, it was a little too easy to collect. Now, none of this is getting into booster fun, which is booster fun sort of has variant versions of things. And then those can become even rarer. But once again, we're talking about how rare something is that has a unique card mechanic on it Booster fun usually is just taking existing cards and giving a new frame to them or new art to them or something

But it's not changing what they are Anyway, we made mythic rare. So mythic rares there's two rares to every one mythic rare So there's a two to one ratio and in the drop ratio, I think it's roughly every eight packs. Originally it was every eight packs, I think it's slightly more common than that. But anyway, there's a slot that's a rare slash Mythic Rare slot. Most of the time it's a rare, something like seven out of eight. Once again, when we started it was one out of eight, I think we've gotten a little better now.

And then, so you don't get a Mythic Rare every time. You get a Mythic Rare some of the time. Okay, so now we get into the nuts and bolts of making Mythics, designing Mythics. So first and foremost, you need to understand when you're making your rarity, what is the rarity for? Why do we have Mythic Rares? Commons are the backbone of the set.

Commons are what make limited work. Commons are what communicate larger themes. Commons do a lot of structural things. Mythic rares are the opposite end of the spectrum. You don't even get a mythic. You get, I don't know, nine or 10 commons every pack. You don't get a Mythic Rare every pack. So the Mythic Rare is not about communication,

it's not about structure. Mythic Rare is about excitement. The idea is every once in a while, not every pack, but every once in a while, you're gonna open a pack, it's gonna have a Mythic Rare in it. And the idea of the Mythic Rare is to what I call sell the dream. That we want to make Mythic Rare something that's just very exciting to open.

That the emotional response of opening one is a big part of what Mythic Rares are. That we want to say, hey, there's something that's really exciting, you don't get all the time, but it's the potential it's the possibility and now we want to make rares exciting so rares are also made to be exciting obviously you get one rare per pack so it's not it's not that we don't want rares to be exciting we do but mythic rares are like a step above that for example when we make after every set we have what we call the Mythic Rare Wall, where we put the Mythic Rare up on a wall at the office.

And for like a week or two weeks, people just come by and comment on them. There's like sticky notes you can leave, and the idea is we just as a team, and we also do what's called a rare poll. Now in the rare poll, both the rares and the mythic rares, to everybody in the company who wants to participate, it's sent out, you get to grade everything, and then the teams can look at the grades. And a lot of people grading who work at Wizards

haven't yet seen the set. This is the first time they've seen the set. So we get a lot of first impressions. But anyway, the idea of mythic rares, so before we get into how we design, just understand what mythic rares are for. Mythic rares are there to beic rares are there to be the sizzle, there to be the excitement. That you want people to want to open a mythic rare and when they

open mythic or rare it's an exciting moment. One of the things that's fun about opening booster packs is they're randomized, right? That they're not, you know, you don't know what you're opening and there's there's an excitement opening. We want it to be exciting. And there's multiple aspects of it. Obviously the commons and uncommons and rares, you know, all add to this. But the cherry on top of the sundae, metaphorically, is the mythic rares. So when making mythic rares, one of the questions we have to ask ourselves, and the way I like to say it is, is there a dream? Is there,

when you look at a card, can you imagine something happening that is just grandiose? It's not that it'll happen every game, as much as it can happen. There's the potential to happen. That it's something that you just, like, you look at the card and I think the players call it magical Christmas land. The idea is, in card in its best possible version, if everything goes right, I want something to happen that is just, it's going to be a memorable moment. Okay, so now let's talk about sort of what fits that slot. What is that? So first and foremost, planeswalkers.

We introduce planeswalkers, oh, sorry. I was talking about the history. Let me finish my history lesson real quickly of mythic rares, then I'll get into planeswalkers. So mythic rares first got introduced in Shards of Alara. And I remember when we made it, we decided we needed to have an expansion symbol for it. So the way it works is common is black, uncommon is silver, rare is gold.

So we sort of nothing, I mean, that kind of matches sort of, I mean, I guess it's black, not bronze, but sort of matches like the, you know, metals of the Olympics. So we wanted something that was really exciting. And we actually did a whole bunch of searching for different things. It needed to be a color that's not associated with magic. So we didn't want to use any of the five basic colors. I think we looked at, we had used purple on the time spiral sheet. So purple had already kind of filled the role.

So we ended up with sort of a fire orange that sort of had a, I mean we tried a bunch of different things, but that was the thing that worked. So anyway, we added that, I forgot to mention that part. Okay, now we get to Planeswalkers. Planeswalkers got introduced in Lorwyn. So they got introduced before Mythic Rares. In fact, Lorwyn, after Lorwyn was, what was it after Lorwyn? After Lorwyn was Sharjah Lara.

So it was the year before, so one year before. So Planeswalkers, a little trivia question. The very first Planeswalkers were rare, only because Mythic Rare didn't exist. And the idea of Planeswalkers was, you the player are a Planeswalker. Planeswalkers are the, they're the mages in magic that fight, that the game is built around. And the idea is if you're a Planeswalker are the key, they're the mages in magic that fight, that the game is built

around. And the idea is if you're a Planeswalker, you can walk between worlds and you can collect magical spells from across the multiverse. And the idea is as we do different sets, it's like you explore the multiverse and now, now I'm in Duskmourn, I'm in Bloomboro, I'm seeing all these different worlds and I can collect things from those worlds and learn the magic of those worlds and such. We decided, originally we were gonna do it during Future Sight, on the Future Boat Sheet,

during the previous block, not L'Orwen, but Time Spiral block, we did this big story called The M mending where we Planes walkers used to be kind of power level gods was a little hard to tell stories about we depowered them a little bit And then we decided that we should give them cards if you want people to sort of really care about it So we made a brand new car type called planes walkers We I combined elements Richard had Garfield had made a mechanic called, what do you call them? For original Ravnica, they represented buildings. He didn't call them buildings, structures. I think he called them structures. I took some of the, he made it was an attackable permanent. So I took

that idea. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to make planeswalkers work one of the early versions ended up being what we would later turn into sagas where like turn one he does this turn two he does that turn three does that and then he would flip around and go to one but the problem is the planeswalkers didn't have agency and so we ended we moved away from that but anyway we ended up with the system where you get loyalty the planeswalker starts with a certain amount of loyalty and then has different abilities. So usually the way a planeswalker works is the default planeswalker has three abilities. We do a frame for four abilities and we have done double face cards where they can transform, so even more than that. The idea essentially is that the first ability is what we call a plus ability.

This is the default, there's exceptions to this. The plus ability is something that, the idea, the flavor is that the planes, you're asking the planeswalkers to do something that they like to do. And so it raises the loyalty. They're more likely to stick around. The flavor is that you're summoning the planeswalker and as long as it suits them, they'll stick around. So the idea of loyalty is, are you asking them to do things they want to do or ask them to do things they don't want to do? The more you ask them things they don't want

to do, the more likely they're going to go away. The more you ask them to do things you like, the more their loyalty builds. So the first ability usually is a plus ability. Normally it's a small plus ability traditionally. The idea you're getting one, maybe two loyalty. And then that's the way that you built up loyalty. And usually that affects a smaller faction. Then there's a second ability, usually a small minus ability. That effect is a little bit bigger than the first ability.

But you lose loyalty rather than gain loyalty. And so the idea is it's something that we want you to do, but we want to limit kind of how many times you can do it. Usually that ability is doable as soon as you play the planeswalker. So it is a ability you can do right now, but it sends you down a different path rather than building up your planeswalker,

you're building down your planeswalker. How many times you can do that ability versus how often you need to build up is one of the big knobs for adjusting planeswalkers. Sometimes they can do the niggability once. Sometimes they can't even do it. You have to build up a little bit. Sometimes they can do it a lot because you know you come with a bunch of loyalty and it's minus one so you can do it a bunch of turns. It depends on what you're trying to build up. The last ability is what we call the ultimate. Usually it's a high minus loyalty number and the idea is we're going to let you do something pretty grandiose. We don't tend to write you win the game, but we do tend to write something that if you make

it happen, your chances of winning the game go way up. If you reach your ultimate, once again, it's not a guarantee you'll win the game. People have gotten their ultimate in loss, but it greatly, greatly increases. I don't know the numbers exactly, but getting to your ultimate is like, you know, you have an 80% chance to win or something. Like you have a very good chance of winning if you get your ultimate. Now when we first introduced Planeswalkers, we didn't do this, but in War of the Spark, we introduced this. We can have static abilities on Planeswalkers. The static ability takes up space. So if you have a three sort of loyalty Planeswalker or three

ability Planeswalker, you'd have one static ability, then usually you'd have one static ability then usually you'd have one plus and the ultimate or you might the static ability might be the way you get loyalty and then you have a small minus and a big minus depending on the static ability can do a bunch of different roles. We also have the ability because we have a frame for four abilities you can have a static ability and three abilities. Normally it depends I mean we used to do how many planes walk we've done has varied over time right now we're doing 1% there was a point in time where we did 3 to 5% it varies and it's

something that's kind of in flux. Planeswalkers barring shenanigans like War of the Spark or like we had a one where we did vertical chandras my barring shenanigans like War of the Spark or like we had one where we did vertical chandras, barring sort of shenanigans, normally planeswalkers are at mythic rare, especially in the world of which there's one. Every car type is exciting and we want you to do things, but because we do so few planeswalkers and because they're kind of iconic to our brand, if you will, we want to make them exciting. We want you to open up a planeswalker and inherently be excited. Like one of the things you used to kind of learn is if you're playing limited, you open

planeswalker, you should really seriously consider playing that planeswalker. You know, not always. Sometimes they're a little more niche II for limited but in general A planes walk or something that is pretty powerful and it is pretty sexy and it's the one car type that we really Mostly only do with a few exceptions at mythic rare The other thing we didn't do with mythic rare is We will have characters in the story, not every character. Usually legendary creatures usually are rare, mythic rare. We sometimes do uncommons. We had a trend

for a while where we were doing the signposts of uncommon as legendary and we've kind of learned like we should do that infrequently. We were doing a little more than we should. In general we sort of came to the realization talking with the casual play design team that we are making more legendary creatures than we need to. And so in magic in universe sets, we in inside the building called MIP sets,

those we're gonna try to go down on. The universe is beyond the very nature of what we are doing is hey Here's a popular property. We know people really really like from my property name characters So the universe is beyond so we'll do a decent amount a legendary creature Just because it's the nature of what universe is beyond is but we're trying in magic in universe. That's to do less Anyway, the idea is most of the time The legendary creatures are rare mythic rare Anyway, the idea is most of the time the Legendary Creatures are Rare or Mythic Rare, we save

kind of the most important ones for Mythic Rare. Either it's one of the main characters, maybe the main antagonist, or maybe there's just a really splashy creature that we think we can do something really fun with. The idea when you're doing a Legendary Creature at Mythic Rare is we are always very conscious, I mean we're conscious at Rare as well, but we're more conscious at Mythic Rare is we are always very conscious. I mean we're conscious at Rare as well, but we're more conscious at Mythic Rare about running through the casual play design team and saying, hey, are we maximizing this to be a potential commander? We want to make sure, I mean, we also do that with some Rare legends, so it's not just in

Mythic Rare. We do that with, we take a look at all the Legendary Creatures, but not every Legendary Creature is necessarily built with Commander in mind, especially in universes beyond where we make a lot more of them. But especially in Mythic Rare, we want the Mythic Rare to be exciting, so we wanna make sure they're doing, like, the key to a Mythic Rare, especially a

Legendary Creature, is you want to be doing something novel, or you wanna be doing something novel or you want to be doing something in a way we haven't done before. Sometimes it's what we call turning the dial to 11. So that's a spinal tap. This is spinal tap reference. In it, it's a mock, so you've never seen this is spinal tap. Amazing film.

Go see it. Rob Reiner's, I think, first film as a director. In it, it's a mockumentary, so it's a fake documentary about this band called Spinal Tap. Anyway, there's a great scene where they're talking to one of the members of the band, and he's talking about how he has his amp, I think, to turn up the sound. And his, instead of just going to 10, like every other amp, goes to 11. So he has a little extra something. You know, that's what I refer to as going to 11.

The idea is that when you're making a legendary creature, or any card really in Mythic Rare, there's a certain amount of novelty and or sort of wow-ness. Novelty is I'm doing something that we haven't done before or I'm combining things I haven't combined before. I'm just doing something that you haven't been able to do before. The wow-ness is sometimes I'm doing something you've seen before but in a scale you've never seen before or you know one of the things we like to do sometimes at Mythic Rare is just push boundaries. Yeah, we've done an effect X, but what is X to 11? What is us taking that ability and really pushing it beyond something that's really

jaw-dropping? So, when making legendary creatures at Mythic, they serve a story role. So you really want to sort of get across what the character is. And once again, remember, you want to have a dream. That if I have this legendary creature out and I'm able to get him on the battlefield and I'm able to do his thing, like there's just this... The idea in a sense, so real quickly, a concept that I've talked about before, I did a podcast on, I did an article on it called Narrative

Equity. The idea of Narrative Equity is that storytelling has value to people. That there's something that the idea that I do something and I do think is so memorable that I then tell people about it is worth a lot to people. Stories are worth a lot to people. And the idea of narrative equity is when you're a designer, one of the things you want to be thinking about is am I making something that will make stories? Now when you're doing commons there's things you want to happen on a frequency to set the larger tone of the set but

something that happens all the time kind of can't be like hey every time I play this format this happens every time. Well maybe you tell the story about how it always happens and there's not really a story forming thing. Maybe it does a good job of setting tone or you know or or tone or maybe setting up the sort of feel that you have. It's neat that when I play this format, this always happens. It's fine and that's why comments are there. But for narrative equity, what I'm talking about is,

I want something that happens that's grandiose. I want something to happen that, hey, it is not something that normally happens. It's not something that, that's where I say you have a dream. For example, the story that I've told before, okay, if you listen to my podcast, I've told the story before. There's a lot of magic stories that I repeat. I know that.

I had to show off a card called Chameleon Colossus at Worlds. It was for the upcoming set. No one had seen it, so I played in this multiplayer game and each one of us in this multiplayer game, we each were playing a different game with different people. We had one card that no one had seen and the goal was, hey, play it during your game and try to be splashy if you can. So anyway, it was a card that doubles its own power and I ended up doing something like two thousand and some damage and I gained fifty five thousand life and it just was this giant moment. And like that's what I'm saying is that card has potential to do that.

That's the only time I ever have used the card to that crazy an extent. I mean it was partly because I was in a multiplayer game and someone had a group hug deck and there was a lot of access to mana and anyway, it's just this exciting thing happened. That's kind of the dream I'm talking about that I want to make something that you the player want to make happen. Not that it'll always happen, um, but that there's the dream of it happening and that that idea is when that happens, that's going to become a story that I get to tell. And maybe there's one particular time because once again, I played community classes many times and fun, exciting things have happened, but one will be the pinnacle moment, you know,

and that's kind of what you remember. But that's kind of the idea from the Mythic Rare is you want to build into it this potential for greatness, this potential that people can and so a lot of times we like very big effects on our Mythic Rares. There can be hoops. The hoop might just be large cost but the hoop might also be okay I need to get this in plane maybe it's even cheap but then I have to accomplish something. The other thing about Mythic Rares is we basically as you go up in rarity we allow a little bit more wordiness and a little bit more complexity.

That doesn't mean Mythic Rares have to be wordy. Doesn't mean Mythic Rares have to be complex. They don't. There's a lot of very exciting things that are simple and straightforward. What I'm saying though is if you need the complexity or if you need the wordiness to do something grandiose Mythic Rare is where you're able to do that. Mythic Rare is the place where you're allowed to have the wordiest cars where you can have the most complex cars and once again it's not an obligation to do that it's the freedom that if you need it to do what you're doing that's the

place you have the most freedom to use it. Now we do all different types of card types and mythic rare. We do make instant sorceries, we make artifacts, we make enchantments, we even make lands and battles I guess. But the idea is that when you're making a mythic rare, the idea is there has to be that dream built in and usually if it's a permanent, there's something really exciting that that permanent can do. Normally if it's a permanent, it could be expensive and just do it right away. Most of the instances in the sorceries that tend to be Mythic Rare are expensive. The Mythic Rares are, there's something, like, if you can cast this, something

exciting is going to happen. Usually it means the Mythic Rare is a little more expensive. One of the things that we're careful of is, so, how good a card is versus its mana cost is what we refer to as rate, how powerful it is. As you go up in rarity, we get a little more rate. The more rare a card is, the more we're allowed to push things a little bit. One of the big reasons there is the power level of limited is very different than the power level of a limited is very different than the power level of constructed and so commons and uncommons are set at limited they're about limited we're rare and mythic rares are more about constructed and so

you're sort of saying things for constructed so because mythic rares are there's the least amount of them it's the place that we get the most we get the most adventuresome with rate raresres and mythic rares aren't too far apart on rate. It's just a lot of times we have to do things in whole amounts of mana. And so, how much we can sort of push that mana varies a little bit. We do try in general, if the sole thing

that's exciting about a card is rate, we try to put most of those at rare. Meaning, mythic rare has, and the reason for that is A, we want a lot of good construction cards that are rare not just all mythic rare and B, rate is not something that most people can read easily. Meaning that if a card oh you know if this card costs three mana it'd be good but if it costs two mana it'd be great. A lot of people can't, like the two versus the three, they can't tell the difference between that. That only the really top

tier players, now obviously if a card is good it'll get played and I mean there's some amount of if a card is good the community will figure out it's good as a whole and then people will realize that. But we want to be careful because the idea of a mythic rare is to be exciting and so if the only thing about the card is the rate, that that is exciting, that won't be exciting to a lot of people. So we have to be very careful there. And that usually, and once again, we have powerful mythic rares, but the idea is more that it's combined with something that that really is cool

now as I explained in my designing rares rares are more for build arounds more for When we're trying to make more of an what we call a niche design meaning Oh, this is a weird Johnny build around and you know most players are go I don't know what to do with this, but John is gonna get excited Johnny. Jenny will get excited. Okay. That's more of a rare Mythic rare we try to make the card such that most players will be excited by it. It's doing something that most players can sort of get excited in and that the things that are a little more narrow tend to be rare. That doesn't mean there can't be some hoops to jump through.

There can be building constraints into a mythic rare, but it should be something that everyone's like, I really want to do that. And the hoops we're asking to jump through usually are things that are more generally decks in general can, I mean, you have to do it, but most decks can do it. Where rares are more like, Hey, it's a narrow build around that's really pushing in a certain direction. You're making a very weird deck. That's much more of a rare thing that we'll do rather than a mythic rare. Mythic rare wants to, as much as we can, we want all mythic rares to be exciting to as many players as possible.

Not every mythic rare is exciting to every player. We got that. And we do, much like any card, there is a target. There is somebody that we're aiming at. Usually there's like a primary target and a secondary target in mythic but on some level the tertiary targets everybody like we we want as many people to be as excited by mythic rare is because once again the the goal of a mythic rare is to produce excitement upon finding it and seeing it and it's the kind of thing that we know

people want to play with because because it's so exciting We are careful we don't do a lot of lands at mythic rare In general we most our utility things we put it uncommon and uncommon we put it rare Like dual lands for example, usually are rare. I mean, there are common limited dual lands, but like dual lands more aimed at constructed, those tend to sit in rare, not mythic rare, they tend to be at rare. Rare is more where we put utility things.

And like I said, the key to designing mythic rare, the tricky part about it is, when you're designing for rares and even uncomment in certain extent, you get to be very specific in the audience for the card. Right? Oh, this card is aimed at this player. Let's maximize it for this player.

Other players cannot play that card. There's a lot of more focused individual design. Interestingly, commons and mythic Rare actually share the sense of there has to be a little bit more universal. That in Common, if a card is too niche, it messes up limited. Because if only one drafter wants it, that drafter will always have it. It makes their draft monotonous and it tends to make it too strong. So at Common and at Mythic Rare, interestingly, at the extremes, we want to be more general meaning we want many people to want And use this card

Mythic rare is that at the excitement level meaning rares excite people but rares can get more narrow Rares can be well I excite this player not every player this player mythic rares want to excite sort of generally excite everybody and so a lot of designing mythic rares want to excite sort of generally excite everybody. And so a lot of designing mythic rares, like I said, is figuring out is there some effects that we haven't done before that will be very exciting? Is there an effect we have done before but we can push and do in a different context? Is there a way to sort of do a tweak on it that's just very interesting? You know, and a lot of what we do at Mythic Rare is every time we make a set we do what's called the God Book study, which is we show the cards to the audience

and do market research and they say what their favorite cards are. So we have a list of what the favorite cards are for every set. Through market research we also have digital data, there's data we can get off the internet, there's a lot of places to get data. We know the cards that people like. So another thing when you're designing that the graver cards is I Mean sometimes they're brand new exciting new things you've never seen before but sometimes it's like oh We've done something we know players like we have data the players like it

Let's do the more grandiose version of that and so sometimes building mythix is just taking things we know play into what people really enjoy and finding like the You know the version that goes to 11 essentially. Anyway guys, that is, I apologize for the giant gap in time between designing for rares and designing for mythic rares. But I finally, I did it. So now that the series is done, until we invent a new, we're not inventing a new rarity.

I'm joking, that was a joke. Okay anyway guys I'm now at work so I don't know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic. Okay guys I will see you next time. Bye bye.