Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1212: Drawbacks

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

I talk about the history of drawback mechanics, what they are, how we design them, and how they've changed over the years.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so today the topic is drawbacks. What are drawbacks? I'm going to talk about what they are. I'm going to talk about the history of drawbacks. I'm going to talk about the lessons we've learned about drawbacks. Today is everything you ever wanted to know about drawbacks. Okay, so I guess let me start by what is a drawback? to know about drawbacks. Okay, so I guess let me start by what is a drawback? Tactically speaking, a drawback is something that is mostly something that

would be considered negative. You're paying a cost or have to do something. It's something that normally is something you don't want to be doing, but because of this effect on the card, you often, not always, but often get a savings of mana. And so usually the idea is when we make a card and we take the mana cost of the card and compare it against the stats of the creature and the effects of the creature or the effects of the spell, you know, when you take what you pay for it and all the things you get for it, if the cost is cheaper than the effect because there's something negative associated, that is considered

a drawback. And drawbacks go all the way back to the very beginning. Richard, in fact, Alpha probably overindexed on drawbacks. The earliest drawbacks, for example, is there were a lot of upkeep drawbacks. And when upkeep drawback is, is I get a creature or I get something, usually an Alpha was a creature. And then every upkeep in order to keep it around,

I have to do something. With force of nature, I had to pay mana with Lord of the pit I had to sacrifice a creature and if I didn't do that there's a consequence the force of nature and Lord of the pit would damage me kind of they would attack me with the flavor they had to be satisfied or else you know there was a drawback for it. Now there's different, the idea inherently in the drawback is that there's something you have to work around. For those that have listened to many of my podcasts, I often talk about game design

is purposely building an obstacle, right? The part of the fun of a game is that you want to mentally challenge yourself. So the game designer gives you want to mentally challenge yourself. So the game designer gives you something to do, a goal. They give you rules by which to do it and they make it hard to do the goal. You can't just do the goal. Usually there's some challenge to the goal because there's a mental challenge to it. And a big element is putting obstacles in your way. I need you to do thing X but you, you know,

and that a lot of game design is throwing an obstacle. So the idea of drawbacks is very in the heart of what game design is. Hey, I'm gonna give you a cool card, but I'm gonna give you a drawback. There's something about it that is going to make you have trouble with it, or have to deal with it or whatever.

Now I will say in the early days when you look back at Alpha, they, one of the things about early magic is they underestimated the power of non-creatures and they overestimated the power of creatures. Creatures are the one thing in the game or the most common thing in the game that does repeatable damage. Every turn I have a creature I can attack with it every turn. And I think that they, just when they were originally gauging power level, they just gave a little too much credence to that.

And so one of the things about a lot of the downsides in early magic is they were, the downside was way bigger than was warranted Here's a decent creature, but to attack with it. You have to sacrifice multiple lands Well, that is a giant giant cost and like how big is the creature? How much is it worth it and a lot of the drawbacks in early magic really really were not worth it They really were oh, you know, there are some, I mean, people did play Lord of the Pid and stuff,

although, which gets us to the next point. In general, players have found not to be a giant fan of drawbacks. And the major reason is that a lot of drawbacks, in order to understand why they're exciting, you have to understand what we call the rate of the card. So what the rate means is if you took the mana cost of the card and then you compare it against what you're getting from the card, that is the rate. The better the rate, the better the deal. The way to think of it is,

I'll just do a simple one, one in the green for a 2-2 that's not higher rate that's grizzly bear. We can do a lot better. One green for a 3-3 oh that's a better rate for the same cost I'm getting more out of it and the rate takes into account not just power toughness but abilities and such. As a general rule of thumb, early magic that has drawbacks didn't have particularly good rate. And in general, one of the reasons that a lot of times drawbacks are put on cards

is the idea that, oh, look at the bargain you're getting. You wouldn't normally get this creature for this cost, but you are. And the problem there is Most players are not good at rate. I mean most players cannot look at a card and go Oh, normally this would cost more man. I'm saving something Now there's exceptions to that Clearly there's things we can do where you kind of get it's better than it should be

The easiest way to do that is make it comparable to a really famous creature. Oh, well I know they make this creature and that's better than that creature. That's the easiest way to do it. But the rule is anyway, players are not good at determining rate mostly and so they don't really, whenever you do drawbacks,

it's hard for them to understand that. Now there's some tricks to that, which we'll get into today. Really, the point of today's story is not that drawbacks have gone anywhere. Drawbacks were with magic when they started. Drawbacks are with us today. But the kind of drawbacks, how we use drawbacks.

So for example, for a while we used to do drawback mechanics For example echo is a classic drawback mechanic. Echo is mechanics versus Saga So basically you would pay it you pay its mana cost and then the second turn it was in play You had to pay the echo cost which in Saga was the mana cost We've since changed echo so we can variable what the second cost is. But anyway, you would pay the cost of the creature and then on the next turn, you would pay the cost again. Now again, you were getting more than you should.

The rate was really good, but you had to get that and having to pay it twice, you know, it just felt like down, it just all felt like downside. It's hard to see the upside, but you can really feel the downside. So in general, we also made a mechanic called vanishing. Well, it's fading originally, and then we brought it back as vanishing. And the idea of those two mechanics is either creature that creature that once again is way better than it should be for its rate but I only get it for so many turns and what we've discovered is those kind of mechanics which are really dependent upon understanding the value of what you're getting don't go over well.

don't go over well. Now, there is a subclass of drawback mechanics that do go over well, and that is flavor-based drawbacks. So there are two drawbacks that we still do that are evergreen. They're two evergreen drawback mechanics. And like I said, players don't like drawback mechanics, so why are they still in the game?

And the answer is they're both very flavorful. So one is defender. Defender just says you can't attack. Well, that's purely a drawback. Attacking is good. Nothing you'll attack, just a drawback. We tend to put it on walls or on creatures that have a big flavor.

Now, often these days, when we put defender on the creature, not always, but a lot of times we will give you a means by which you can lose the defender. Oh, well, it has defender, but if you pay a certain amount of mana or if a certain thing happens, so we oftentimes give you a way out. The second one we use is the legendary super type.

So if you play a card with a legendary super type, there's a built-in drawback. You cannot play, well, if you play a second with a legendary soup type, there's a built-in drawback. You cannot play a... Well, if you play a second copy of exactly that creature, not the same creature, but with a different... Like, if you play the same creature on a different card with a different design, that's fine. But if you play the exact same creature with the exact same design, then you then have to sacrifice one of the two creatures.

And, so why is Defender and Legendary? Why are they still with the game? They are very flavorful. There's a lot of flavor there. Now legendary, I will admit is a minimal drawback and, um, it's not even that we get a lots of rate off things. I mean, sometimes we get a little bit, but it's not a lot. The differential isn't so high that we get to drop a whole manna. Sometimes you can save like half a manna if the allows half a mana like it's already off by one or off by a half

But Another example from alpha was Lord of the pit was much more popular than say force of nature or the force nature But but Lord of the pit the idea that Lord of the pit ate things was really flavorful for Lord of the pit So now we get into the next lesson about drawback mechanics is That one of the fun things about drawback mechanics is the very obstacle thing that I'm talking about in game design, which is Can you? Win the drawback mechanic can be something that you can work around when the drawback mechanic can be something that you can work around. Like sometimes, yeah, it's technically a drawback mechanic,

but in the right place, it could not be a drawback mechanic. And the idea there is, so let's say I have a card that says, in order to use this ability, I have to discard a card. Oh, sorry, let me explain this. When we talk about drawbacks, I didn't really get into the types of drawbacks. So I talked a lot about upkeep. I talked about stuff like defender,

which is a static ability that's just a negative. There are also costs that are negative. So another common drawback is, hey, you get this thing a little cheaper than normal normal but there's additional costs. Maybe you're paying life, maybe you're discarding a card, maybe you're sacrificing a permanent. And the idea there is that the drawback is that there's some extra cost associated with it. The reason I bring that up is my example here for working around a drawback. Let's say I had a mechanic that said in order to activate this I have to

discard a card. For example in Odyssey block there was a cycle of creatures where to activate them you had to discard a car. Patrol hound, you sacrifice the car to give it first strike. So it was like a two, two. But now normally that's a negative. Like getting first strike is not so valuable that discarding a card is like the ability you're getting for what you're discarding isn't quite great. So why do people play the card?

Because in the same set was a mechanic called threshold. Threshold said if you get seven cards in your graveyard, cards you have on the battlefield level up essentially. They get better. So one of the things that was very valuable was having the ability to get cards in your graveyard. So all of a sudden this creature to let you discard a card to give it a minimal ability took on a new was having the ability to get cards in your graveyard. So all of a sudden this creature to let you discard a card to give it a minimal ability took on a new meaning. Yeah, in a vacuum,

it's probably not something you're gonna do too much. But combined with other things going on like threshold, now it becomes much more interesting. It's like, oh, I can choose when threshold happens. So if I'm at six cards in my graveyard and I attack with my creatures and you are aware that I have this card, that I can discard a card whenever I want to,

that's just a cost I can pay, you have to go, oh, they could be at threshold. Or even if I'm five cards or four cards, if I have cards in my hand, the threat that I can get to threshold is there and they have to act accordingly. So one of the things that's really interesting about drawbacks is that they are obstacles in your way, but sometimes if you design, if you build your deck around them or play around them, you can turn downsides into upsides. And that's a lot of the exciting part about downsides is, is there a way to do something with it?

Now that is why, for example, the upkeep drawbacks aren't very popular. So upkeep drawbacks, every turn I have to pay some costs, usually pay mana. There's not a lot of way to work around that. That's not a particularly, it's not one of those drawbacks that you can work around, but the idea of zone changing or discarding a car, some of those can be more interesting, that there's ways to do that. Another common one is we used to do, or maybe still occasionally do, green creatures that bounce themselves, or there's a really, we do in white a lot, when the creature enters, we have to bounce another creature and that's

supposed to be a negative like the cost of this creature is a creature plus bouncing a creature but hey what if the creature you bounce hasn't entered the battlefield effect what if the creature you bounce has has counters on it to get used up and if you play it again you can refresh the counters or what if it has minus one minus one counters and by doing this you get it off, you can refresh the counters. Or what if it has minus one, minus one counters and by doing this, you get it off it or as an enchantment you don't like, you can get it off it. So the idea of bouncing while it is a cost can in the right circumstances be an upside.

And so that's a big lesson we learned is that players in general frown upon drawbacks with the exception that if it's really flavorful they're a little more forgiving of it. And they're most excited if the drawback, um, is something that occasionally they can build around that, that they can, that the drawback doesn't always have to be a drawback, that there are ways to make it not a drawback. Um,

so there's a suite of cards that we make. Uh, what we, we tend to refer to as Johnny-Jenny cards, where what we do is we make a very weird drawback. So for example, a real popular one is Doomsday. So Doomsday is a spell that says, okay, when you cast Doomsday, you put your library, you put your graveyard in your library, you then go through your library, you pick out five cards, you exile every other card, and then you shuffle the remaining five cards. So the idea of Doomsday is, I have a stocked library. I know exactly what I'm getting. I don't quite know the order, it's shuffled.

But at the end of those five turns, I'm going to no longer have cards in my library. And by the nature of the game, I will lose the game if I can't draw a card. So it's a really good example where there's a big drawback. You know, I'm going to lose the game in five turns. But there is upside. And the idea is, can I build around this card in such a way that it is beneficial to me. A slightly more example is, there's a card where you lose the game, or sorry, you win the game,

it's not drop-back, I guess. What's another good example of this? Sometimes we'll make cards where like, every turn you have to mill cards into your graveyard, for example. And the idea there is eventually I'm going to deck myself. So it is a drawback that eventually will cause me problems. But in the short term, I'm putting cards in my graveyard. If I have thresholds or other things that care about the graveyard, that can be beneficial.

So we definitely like to make drawbacks. I mean, there's a couple of different drawbacks we make. One is where it is a basic ability that we know there's ways to make use of it. Oh, you have to bounce to another creature. Okay, that is, you know, I mean, some of the time I wanna get my three three flyer. And so I bounce the creature and like, okay, I mean, some of the time I want to get my 3-3 flyer. And so I bounce the creature and like, okay, I'm just bouncing creature.

I'm honestly paying the cost, but that's okay. I need a 3-3 flyer and I'll pay the cost. Sometimes you're like, okay, not only am I bouncing something, but I'm bouncing something that I want to put back in my hand. I want to replay the entrance effect. I want to reset the counters. Whatever I'm trying to do where I feel like upside. Like I've done that

and There are sometimes where there's just total synergies where you feel very clever And that's a lot of the fun of game design is we want the player to feel clever we want the player to feel like the game tested them and they they bested the game and Then there's stuff like the Johnny and Jenny build the rounds where it's a bigger ask. Oh, here's a classic example. There's a card, Brian Tinsman made the card.

It's called the one with nothing. So it costs one black man. I think it's a sorcery, might be an instant. And it says discard your hand. That's not additional cost. That's just the effect of the spell. And you're like, why would I want to discard your hand. That's not additional cost, that's just the effect of the spell. And you're like, why would I want to discard my hand? But it turns out there's ways and means

and there's decks that have used it because in the right deck with the right thing, maybe that means something. And so there's some fun there. Now, let's get into the most common usage of drawback. Like I said, we've moved away from drawback that's hard to get around pretty much. We don't do a lot of mana drawbacks anymore. The ones that we are most interested in, number one is the other big thing. So let me talk about front loading the drawback. So there was a cycle of dual lands in Ice Age called

the Pain Lands. The Pain Lands you tap for colors and whenever you tap for color and each one had two different colors you could tap for it you lost one life. And the idea there is that is there's interesting drawbacks there in the sense that, oh, I get a dual land, but there's a cost associated with the dual land, essentially which is colored mana damages me. So the idea is a lot of the time I can use it as a color when I need to, but when I really need the color, okay, it comes at a cost. That is interesting. Like I said, the drawbacks that we design most likes

is the player has to make an interesting decision that truly is strategic and is fun for them. But when I was doing Ravnica and I made the Shocklands, one of the things, the idea behind them originally was we had made cards called tap lands in invasion where the dual lands enter tapped. That's the cost. Yeah, you get two colors of mana, but you don't get to use it for the first turn. That's the cost you're paying.

And I said wouldn't it be cool if we had dual lands that you could choose between them being tap lands and them being pain lands. But one of the problem with pain lands is that there's a lot of, you have to keep track of it, right? That every turn I tap it, I remember, oh, tapping it is doing damage to me. And it's easy to forget that, especially when it's in your land row

and you're very concentrated in capturing your spell. It's very easy to forget. And just from a tournament standpoint, because it's easy to forget, it's easy for players to purposely forget. And so it's not ideal. In general, we have to be careful about incremental costs because it's easy to overlook them. So when I was making shock lands, I said, okay, rather than make you pay the pain over time, let me just figure out roughly how much life do you pay with pain lands and the answer I got to is about two. You know, about twice we'll tap it for color. So I just front loaded that. I said okay, if you take the

pain land option just up front and you're paying it right away. From then on you have to remember you just tap it, don't worry about it. So one of the things we've learned with time is we do like to front load the drawback, Meaning the idea of a drawback that has memory associated with it. You have to remember every turn Now I'm not saying we don't do drawbacks that happen turn after turn, but when we do they have to be very memorable For example something like bitter blossom is every turn I lose a life and I get a I get a token a 1-1 flying fairy Okay, that's a big deal, a one-one flying fairy. Okay, that's a big deal. Getting the one-one flying fairy is a big deal.

So I tend to remember to do it and I know when I get the fairy, I lose the light. So it's a lot harder to forget to do the bitter blossom. So when we do something that's repeatable, we wanna make sure that it is more in your face and you're aware of what's going on. And we do a lot less of that. We tend to front-load drawbacks So that's one big lesson is we like to front-load them. So we are more of a fan of cost drawbacks than we are of

recurring a recurring cost drawbacks The other thing is When there is a negative we like to be sort of loud about it. One of the things we learned, so there's a card in Arabian Nights called Juzamjin. So Juzamjin was four mana for a five, five. Now back in the day in Arabian Nights, first expansion, that was a great deal. Creatures were very under cost in the early days. So four mana for a five, five. Now we would just give you that in the right circumstances. That wasn't something back then.

So the downside, it came with a downside, was every turn you lost a life. The problem there is there's nothing to remind me of a life loss, like Bitter Blossom leaves, you're making something. And you know, when I make it, I have to lose something. Juzan Jin, I have to remember every turn, there's an upkeep cost, he loses a life. And it's very easy, he might have done damage rather than life loss, but whatever, you're

paying one life a turn essentially. It was very easy to forget or forget in quotes that cost. And so the idea is we have been much more careful about that, that when we're doing a drawback, if the drawback is recurring, we want it to be a lot louder. The other thing that we like about drawbacks that we've learned is, like I said, part of game design is you want to make interesting choices for them. So some of the times we give them things you could build around that, it's fun. Another thing we tend to do is we give restrictions that lead to better game play.

A classic example of that is the rise of the only once per turn drawback on activations. So once per turn was so powerful that Richard Garfield baked it into the game. Tapping, which was, I mean, the tap symbol didn't happen right away, but tapping was in alpha. And the idea essentially is hey

my permanent mostly my creature or my artifact Has an ability you can use but it's so powerful that if you use it for that ability That's what you're using it for you can't both attack with the creature and use that ability you have a choice between the two Or also if I use the ability and I tap it I now can't use it again because it's only a once per turn. The problem there is there are things like enchantments that didn't have a tap symbol. Sometimes we wanted to restrict you on that so what we started realizing is there's a lot of strategic depth to once per turn. Richard understood it he baked it into the game. We've done it in more places

than the tap symbol works. Because while the tap symbol is cool, the tap symbol doesn't work everywhere. And sometimes we want to do things like, hey, this is an activatability of a creature that we only want you to use once, but we still want you to attack with the creature. For example, Root Wall is a good example of that. Root Wall is a creature that kind of has a built-in giant growth. You can pay mana, you can give it a boost, but we only want you to give it a boost once per turn. But you have to limit that to once per turn because the reason we want to give you the

boost is so you can attack with it. So a tap symbol doesn't work there. And so one of the things we've learned with drawbacks is that there's a lot of times what we want with the drawback is we want to do something that leads to interesting gameplay that puts a restriction on you, the player, in a way that is dynamic. And that the difference is, for example, let's take, you know, I don't remember the name of the serpent, but there's a serpent like it's a giant serpent.

You have to sack three lands, three islands every time you attack is That's just not sustainable in a way. That's fun or interesting That I have to build up my mana and I'm not saying we can't ever do effects for you sac your your your lands We can and we shouldn't we do but it really has to be something in which the payment makes sense And the idea of here's this giant creature And you've just destroy your board in order to attack Just means I can't really use that until very late in the game when I'm done developing my mana And so it's just not particularly useful. It's not a very interesting drawback

Where something like once per turn? Okay, I got to choose when and where and how I'm using it And other times we'll do drive. I mean, the reason for example, that I think Defender beyond the flavor aspect of it is that there's a lot of interesting designs that come from, like for example, a common thing we'll do on defenders is I'm a creature and I have an ability, but we don't, we want you to be more about the ability than we want you to be about attacking or blocking. We like the idea that creature removal can answer it, but the idea is I'm a defender with an effect means yeah, I'm a creature, but we don't even count,

like when we do set skeletons, we don't even count a defender that you can't erase the defender, that is just a defender. We don't even count that as a creature. Let's say I have a defender that taps to gain you life or draw your card or something like that that we treat it as if it's a non creature because it doesn't have the ability that is core to creatures to continually do damage to the opponent so when we're doing our set scales and we don't even

count that as a creature but it's a neat dynamic and it's cool that the answer to this threat is creature removal, which in limited we know you'll have. And so, it's a good example where the dynamic of that mechanic allows us to make things that we can't normally make. And we can make things that are dynamic. The big balance, by the way, is players do not like drawback mechanics, and that whenever we put a drawback mechanic on something, it sours the card a little bit.

For example, one of the downsides of only once per turn is, well, what if, like, the player gets to read it and then go, this would be more fun if I wasn't limited by once per turn. And like I said, part of the dynamic is to remember that the game designer is throwing obstacles in your way. It doesn't mean the player doesn't get frustrated by the obstacles or doesn't wish the obstacle wasn't there.

So there is a balance. We as game designers are allowed to do things that you, the players, don't particularly like at times, as long as the end result of it is at least a dynamic gameplay. Yeah, it's a pain. Yeah, you got to work around it. But you know, like I said, a lot of the lessons of drawbacks has been how to use them and when to use them.

You know, the lesson over time is look, they're not popular in a vacuum drawbacks are not popular, but we can do some really interesting things with them number one we can use drawbacks to make really interesting cards you know like for example there's a card called demonic consultation it showed up in Ice Age I believe so the way it works is it costs one black mana I think it's an instant you exile the top six cards your library you name a card you then the top six cards to your library, you name a card, you then exile the top six cards

to your library, then you keep exiling cards till you get to the card that you named. And then that goes in your hand. So the idea is it's a tutor, an instant tutor for one black mana. But the side effect of it is you're gonna lose some of them out of your deck. If you're lucky, you lose six cards.

You could lose your entire library. And originally, people wouldn't play with it because it seemed just too dangerous. But then some really good players figured out, oh, yeah, there's like a 3% chance I lose the game, but the 97% chance where I don't lose the game, I win the game. And this was during Black Summer when Necropotence was very powerful. They sort of realized that Necropotence was so powerful that having eight Necropotence was more powerful than having four Necropotence. And this card that people originally weren't playing because it just seemed too dangerous

ended up becoming an important card in tournaments. And so there's something there that's fun, like when we can make cards that seem on their surface, maybe not to be worth it. Or, you know, the idea of making things in which players have to learn that the cost is something worth paying. Some of that can be very fun. We can make cards where you have to learn how to build around it. That can be very fun. And we can make cards that the drawback is something that that properly balances the card. That's another big thing for drawbacks is sometimes and the reason we do once per turn type stuff is hey we can give you something that's fun and exciting but in order to give it to you we have to put a drawback to make it affordable to make it something that we can do.

That there's some effects that we couldn't do without the drawback. And the effect itself is exciting. So sometimes players put up with drawbacks because they want the effect and they're sad that there's the drawback, but they want the effect. And so that's another big thing when we're doing drawbacks. And that's been sort of the meta lesson over time is you don't want to do drawbacks just for the sake of doing drawbacks. You don't want to do drawbacks just for the sake of doing drawbacks. You don't want to do drawbacks that are just make the card inherently bad. And you want to make sure that when you're doing a drawback, there's a reason for doing the drawback.

And like early Magic, I think, had drawbacks almost for the sake of drawbacks. In which it just made the card kind of laughably bad. And nowadays when we do drawbacks, it's kind of like, hey, sit up and listen. What are we doing? We don't tend to make drawbacks that are solely for the sake of that. I mean, we do want a mix of cards and not every drawback will end up working out.

And when we make cards, we think that maybe it'll work out that don't. So I mean, there is the idea of power level. There's a lot of subtlety to it. And so there are things we make that we thought might work that end up not working. So I'm not saying every drawback is good. I'm not saying every card with a drawback you should play.

There's ones you shouldn't, but we're much closer to getting closer to the line. We just don't make things that are like, the drawback is remote, you know, there's no way in the world you should play this card. The drawback is hideous. We don't really do that anymore. But we've learned that drawbacks

are a very interesting design tool that do lead to fun obstacles and do allow us to make cards the otherwise couldn't make. And that is why we do drawbacks. That's why drawbacks are important. And that is my history lesson today. Early on, we had a finer footing on what made good drawbacks, what made bad drawbacks. And we had to learn when and where, and what are the spike cards,

what are the Johnny Janney cards, and how do you make Timmy Tammie the very flavorful stuff. So there's ways to make drawbacks for everybody. It's just a matter of understanding how best to do it. Anyway guys, I'm now at work. So that was my talk today on drawbacks. But since I'm at work, we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work.

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