Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1230: Johnny and Jenny

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

This podcast is part two of a three-part series walking through the three psychographics. Today, I explore the psychological analysis of Johnny and Jenny. ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work Okay, so today is the second in my psychographic series. I did a podcast on Timmy and Tammy So today we get to Johnny and Jenny The reason I put them second is this is the second Psychographic that I named Last time I told the story of I, we were trying to make some big creature and I was arguing, I explained, I said, Oh, imagine there's a player named Timmy and this is why he would like this card.
Starting point is 00:00:35 Well, I was in a similar situation where we were making something that was a weird build around card. And I said, you know, there's another player, Johnny and what Johnny likes. And I started explaining this new psychographic. So the core of Johnny and Jenny is the idea of self expression that one of the things about games is that games allows you a chance to let other people know something about you. And that is a really important aspect of Johnny's and Jenny's. Now most games do not give you a lot of freedom to make expressions.
Starting point is 00:01:16 Now maybe you make some expressions in how you play. Maybe every time you play Monopoly you play the race car. I mean there's there's little tiny ways to get a little bit of personality, but most games don't have the adaptability that magic does. Um, so one of the things that's really neat about magic is you get to build your own deck and there's a lot of personification that goes into that. There's a lot of, you know, you have so much ability when you build a deck to say something about who you are as a person.
Starting point is 00:01:44 And that is kind of the core essence To Johnny and Jenny that they're like, okay I want to play magic but the reason I play magic the thing that brings me the greatest joy is That I can imbue my personality into my deck into my play style into my game Such that other people get to see me. Now I am a Johnny. So this is a site graphic that I understood very well. I will share some stories today about my Johnny tendencies as I talk through the Johnny's.
Starting point is 00:02:20 Okay, so once again I wrote an article called Timmy, Johnny and Spike back in like 2002, which was the first time I introduced the idea of the psychographics outside of R&D. I talked about it with the public. And then I did an article like 10-ish years later where I did Timmy, Johnny, Spike Revisited. And then in that article, I'm using this today, I made some subclassifications of each of them. Note, these aren't the only subclassifications. I just was trying to demonstrate that even if you are a Timmy Tammy or Johnny Jenny or
Starting point is 00:02:54 Spike, there's a lot of different kinds of things that you can be. Self-expression, there's a lot of different modes to self-expression. So a lot of what I go through today is talking about sort of the different kinds of things. So we're going to start with the combo player. And once again, just like the power gamer is kind of the Timmy Tammy stereotype, the combo player is kind of the Johnny Jenny stereotype. I mean, it exists, but not every Johnny Jenny is this the idea of a combo player is so magic at its core is a modular game what I mean by that is there's lots of
Starting point is 00:03:33 different pieces we have I think right now like 29,000 plus pieces and that one of the one of the ways to express yourself is through deck building itself and that I think the combo player is like, look, I went and found really good interactions. That the sort of the cleverness that I'm on is that I'm making decks and I'm showing you how clever I am. That I found ways to mix and match certain things. And the other thing I will stress is one of the things about Johnny and Jenny is it's not about figuring out what the best thing is because you learn from other people. That's more spike. It is you want to show that you found something.
Starting point is 00:04:16 So if a certain combination is popular, well, that's not what Johnny and Jenny want to be doing that normally one of the attributes you'll notice on Johnny and Jenny is when they come to the table, they want to do something that people didn't necessarily expect. That there's not a lot of excitement for everybody's doing this. So I did this. No, no, no. Everybody's doing it like Johnny and Jenny's definitely are more. I brought the thing no one expected to bring.
Starting point is 00:04:43 I brought the thing, you know, and that a lot of the Johnny and Jenny sensibilities is, I found things. So the combo player is probably the most power-centric, probably the closest to Spike of the four subcategories, in that the combo player really wants to show their ability to make cool and effective things, find cards that go together, find decks, but they want to find it on their own regard. That you know, the combo player is like, Hey, look what I did.
Starting point is 00:05:18 I was able to win. But more importantly was I was able to win through my own invention through my own creation through my own discoveries that everybody else went left and I went right but and one of the things about the combo players in general is the idea of there's a lot of a lot of the fun of magic is understanding the nature of the different cards and that Johnny and Jenny's are really into finding the offbeat thing. Now I always state before each of these, everybody likes to win.
Starting point is 00:05:54 Every psychographic enjoys winning, but it is not the BL end all. Spike is the one player often who winning is sort of the point of what they're doing. That's not true for Johnny and Jenny. Johnny and Jenny want the most important thing for Johnny and Jenny is to get the reaction out of the other players showing what they've done. You know, like for example, in a combo player who's built like a really neat deck that does cool interactions, a lot of what you want is to hear the other player, other players, player players, like, oh, that's a, that's a cool deck. That was really neat. So for example, um, back in my day, uh, before I came to wizards, one of the things I really enjoyed doing was I liked building very quirky decks.
Starting point is 00:06:42 And a lot of the fun for me was watching other people play my decks. In fact, a very common thing to do was people would borrow my decks and play them. You know, I used to go down to Costa Mesa on Saturdays and people would borrow my decks and play them because I just had weird decks that did weird things. I'm not actually quite a combo player. There was definitely, for example, the combo player in me is, there was a period in time in Magic where creatures just weren't very good. There were a whole bunch of things like the Abyss. There were just cards that were really anti-creature in a very strong way that a lot of people
Starting point is 00:07:24 played. And so there's this period of time, so this was in 94, and that it was really rare to see a lot of creatures. So of course, the Johnny sensibility in me was, I'm gonna make a deck that can win, but with a lot of creatures. I was gonna make a creature deck can win but with a lot of creatures. I was gonna make a creature deck
Starting point is 00:07:45 So long time listeners might know I played in one world championship the 94 world championship I did not I did not become world champion case. You didn't know it But I play I made a blue green weenie deck Which had like scripts fights and flying men and then Men, and then I had Giant Crows and Unstable Mutations, I had Berserk. Basically the idea was I had this deck where I was just playing little tiny things, but out of nowhere I could do a lot of damage.
Starting point is 00:08:16 In fact, the deck could capably win on turn one, that didn't happen very often, but often the deck could win turn two, turn three, turn four, it won pretty surprisingly. It won faster than you would think it could win if you hadn't played against it. Once again, this is early Magic, so I had access to Lotus. I mean, I had some very powerful things because it was early Magic where there was one format. Anyway, that is kind of the combo.
Starting point is 00:08:41 Like, that sensibility of me was I was trying to win I was trying to make something that I thought was Was powerful But I was trying to like I was inspired by doing something different than everybody else had done I wanted to win with a strategy that wasn't the dominant strategy I want to take the conventional wisdom which was you couldn't play creature decks and turn it on its ear. That is a very combo player sort of sensibility.
Starting point is 00:09:10 The idea that, look, I'm playing seriously, but, now the one other thing I will stress about Johnny and Jenny in general is that winning isn't the most important thing, like I said, it's about sort of showing what they can do. So even when you build something to win, more important to you than winning is sort of the recognition of your peers of what you're doing. Now if your peers are people who want to win too, winning is part of that. But anyway, so combo players are very much about sort of showing the craft of deck building,
Starting point is 00:09:43 but in a way that demonstrates that they understand how to win. But even then, once again, the winning is not the most important thing. Okay, next, the offbeat designers. This is the category I would put me in, and I'll give some examples. So the idea of the offbeat designer
Starting point is 00:10:03 is the combo player Mostly is trying to be quirky but win The offbeat designer is I am doing something So for example, one of the things I used to do is I would pick a weird win condition The classic one I've talked about this before is I had a deck that said, okay I want to win by casting the card tunnel. Tunnel, for those that may not remember, is a card from Alpha, a red card that says destroy
Starting point is 00:10:30 target wall. So that was my goal. I want to win the game by casting tunnel. Well, how in the world would you do that? So for example, I would play lots of walls to protect myself. Eventually I would make one of the walls really tough. There are a couple different cards that would raise up toughness. I then would put a thing called creature bond on it, which is when the creature dies you lose life equal to its
Starting point is 00:10:56 toughness. And then I would give it to my opponent so that they would have it. And then I could tunnel it and they would lose the game. Usually I try to get the toughness higher than their life total. And the thing about the offbeat designs is it wasn't that I expected to win a lot because the thing I was trying to do was a crazy thing. The idea that if I did it once, if I one time beat a game with tunnel,
Starting point is 00:11:21 I'm like, I won the game casting tunnel, I you know, for the, I won the game casting tunnel. I did that. And so a lot of the offbeat designers is trying to create challenges for yourself that you're trying to do something. Um, and like I said, because the, it's more fun to do things more offbeat winning. I mean, you want to win with the deck because the guy, it's, it's, that's the kind of thing to prove that you did it. Right. Hey, I want to win with the deck because the guy that is it's that's the kind of thing to prove that you did it right hey I managed to win with tunnel but if it took me ten games to win with tunnel that's okay I could
Starting point is 00:11:54 lose a lot of games because the thing I was trying to accomplish was so sort of out there that it like I understood that it wasn't something I was gonna win easily with. And I, like one of the things that was a lot of joy to me was I loved finding just weird win conditions. I loved alternate win conditions. You know, I loved, I just loved quirky and weird cards. Like a lot of, a lot of the fun for me was just finding
Starting point is 00:12:28 odd ways to sort of do things. But the key I will say to the offbeat designer is there's a goal. They're trying to do something. You know, the combo player is a little more like I'm trying to do my own thing and carve my own path, but I'm I am trying to make strong decks. The off-beat designers are a little more like, well, I'm trying to do something weird. The weirder it is, the more I understand that,
Starting point is 00:12:53 hey, I'm not gonna win as much as something else. So in some ways, the combo players are a little more spikiness to them. And the off-beat designers are just more about, I wanna demonstrate that I'm capable of something. I want to be creative. And I had all sorts of decks.
Starting point is 00:13:12 I had a deck where I would only beat you with your own cards. I had a deck where the way I won was giving you a giant creature with a giant drawback and all I'm going to do is give it to you and let the giant drawback win me the game. I'm not even going to attack you. I'm just going to give you one of my creatures and you will lose because you have one of my creatures. I had a very early deck where the idea is I only attack you with land. And that was at a point where that kind of deck, decks where you attacked with
Starting point is 00:13:47 lands weren't really a big thing at the time. And they went on to be a little bit bigger than when I first did them. But anyway, I just found a lot of weird and quirky things. And I really enjoyed, one of my favorite things was I loved decks that just had a lot of variety to them so that they were a lot of fun to play. One of the reasons that people used to borrow decks from me wasn't just because they were weird, they were, but I made very fun decks. Interestingly, I did an article in the duelist many years ago where I talked about building two decks to play against one another.
Starting point is 00:14:23 That was a common thing. This is long before duel decks were a thing. I would like to make decks that were quirky, but they were designed so they were really fun against one another. Meaning that each one had some answers to the other deck, but not total answers, but some answers. So there was a lot of back and forth.
Starting point is 00:14:41 And I used to name my, I would give them a literal name. Like this is Bob, this is Joanne. So anyway, when I first came to work at, or first came to interview at Wizards, I had been working, I had been doing freelance. Everybody knew who I was. So mostly no one interviewed me, except I had one interview with Joel Mick.
Starting point is 00:15:00 Joel Mick was the head designer when I first got to Wizards, would later go on and become the brand manager of Magic. So Joel wanted to play me in a game. And I had a deck, what was my deck's name? Edgar, I think was the deck's name. And so I made a deck where the idea of the deck was I put all the cards in it that I thought were really good value cards, that it's not obvious it's
Starting point is 00:15:25 not obvious that you're winning and so it was one of these decks where you would lose and you didn't understand why you lost it just really mean messing around like card advantage and stuff like that so I remember I played Edgar against Joel and I beat him and Joel Joel was very. So I mean, probably Joel would beat me more than I would beat him. But anyway, I managed to beat Joel and I did it with a deck that he couldn't quite understand. So he was very impressed by my deck.
Starting point is 00:15:52 So I mean, I don't think I had to beat Joel to get hired, but it didn't hurt. But anyway, that is a very offbeat designer kind of thing. Next, the deck artists. So the deck artists are like I Want to think of my deck construction as itself a piece of art I mean, yeah, I'm trying to win. I wasn't trying to win but it's more about for example The invitational the magic in a tational used to think do this thing called the auction of the people.
Starting point is 00:16:26 And what the auction of the people was is we'd pick a theme and then players would build decks and then we would pick 16 or I think 17, we picked 17 decks so there was one that didn't get drafted. We would pick 17 decks and then the players at the Magic Invitational would draft the decks through a system where you would bid starting life and starting hand. So for example, one year we did creature types. And for example, like we had a clam deck with one mox pearl. We had a dwarf deck, the decks were all 60 cards, but the dwarf deck was 40 cards.
Starting point is 00:16:58 That there was high concept of what was going on. It wasn't just they were playing with the creature types, because obviously the decks were revolving around that creature type, but that it was sort of people like, I'm not, I'm going above and beyond. I'm trying to demonstrate something. I'm trying to do flair in my deck building. And the idea for a deck artist might be,
Starting point is 00:17:20 I'm making a deck dedicated to the Wizard of Oz. I'm making a deck dedicated to the Wizard of Oz. I'm making a deck dedicated to The 70s like you would sort of pick some theme Or maybe for example, you're like I'm gonna take this creature type that no one ever plays because it is a weird creature type But I'm going to make a slug deck You know, I'm going to find some way to do something that is unexpected. And the idea with the deck artists is the individual choices are super important.
Starting point is 00:17:50 Even to the point of which version of the card, which, you know, I'm making a Tin Man and I wanna play the Shatter where the thing being shattered looks like the Tin Man. Go look up your Shatters. That, you know, there are things, a lot of the choices that can be made about where and how to do them.
Starting point is 00:18:10 That's the deck artist. The deck artist, so the combo players, like I'm gonna win in a way no one expects, but I'm gonna win or try to win. The offbeat designers, I'm gonna win in a weird way that people don't expect. I'm doing something that people don't expect. The deck artist is more about the style of it. It's, it's, I mean, once again, not that they're not trying to win and
Starting point is 00:18:30 you can overlap different categories here. The pure deck artist is like, I'm just showing off. I've made a creation and when you play me, you see my creation. Um, now there can be combinations of these different things. You know, sometimes maybe I'm I'm making a wizard of Oz deck But it has a weird wind condition, you know like you can mix and match this but the idea of a pure deck artist is that The deck itself is a piece of art and I'm trying to get people to appreciate the art artistry of what I'm doing and that
Starting point is 00:19:02 It's the kind of thing where You're just making a lot of individual cool choices that are just super flavorful. Like I remember when we saw the Clam Deck with a single Mox Pearl. And it's not, once again, it's not even that the Clam Deck was particularly white, Clams were mostly blue.
Starting point is 00:19:19 The Mox Pearl was in that more for style than anything. I mean, not the Mox has ever hurt, but it was there more for style. And that's a lot about the deck artists is it's all about style. It's looking me and admire me as an artist, as someone who used the magic tools as as paint and look at what look at my canvas and what I've created. The last category is what I call the Uber Johnnie's or Uber Jenny's. The idea there is they I call the Uber Johnnies or Uber Jennies. The idea there is they're up for the challenge. And what they want to do is do something that no one...
Starting point is 00:19:55 All Johnnies have a little bit... Johnnies and Jennies have the sensibility of trying to fight common wisdom or, you know, definitely the combo players are like, well, like I've talked about when I built my weenie deck no one's playing creatures I'm playing creatures you know that that's a very combo Johnny sort of sensibility but that sense of it runs through all the Johnny's and Jenny's the idea of I'm going to fight against like conventional wisdom so the uber Johnny's are the ones that want the true challenge in some, me building the tunnel deck has a little bit of Uber Johnny into it, right? I'm going to make tunnel a good card.
Starting point is 00:20:30 A lot of what the Uber Johnnies like is I'm going to take something that nobody wins with. I'm going to take something that people think is a bad card, and I'm going to win with the bad card. I'm going to take the thing that people think is useless and show it has use. And the Uber Johnnies very much, once again, like I said, this is another example where they don't have to win a lot. Just the act of winning even once can make their point. Now, a lot of the Uber Johnnies enjoy trying to do the best that you know, because they're trying to prove something that there's a little bit of spikiness
Starting point is 00:21:07 into the Uber Johnnies of, I will take the bad thing. People think that, for example, there was a card that Brian Tinsman made called One With Nothing, I think it was Scourge. One With Nothing costs a single black mana, you discard your hand, that's all it does. Black mana, discard your hand. And there were definitely Uber Johnnies mana, you discard your hand. That's all it does. Block mana, discard your hand. Um, and,
Starting point is 00:21:25 and there were definitely Uber Johnnies with some spiked sensibilities to them. Uh, they're like, I'm going to make this card playable. And actually one with nothing got played in sideboards at a pro tour at a pro tour. So that is, that is interesting. So anyway, the Uber Johnnies are just, they want to, they sort of want to show what they're capable of and that they, the thing they enjoy most is the challenge. I mean, I think that's true of all Johnnies and Johnnies is there's an element of challenge to what they're doing, but what their challenge is can vary.
Starting point is 00:21:59 It really depends on what your goal is. And like I said, some Johnnies, like the way they're expressing themselves is they want to prove something, which is a very spike sensibility, but they want to do it in an unorthodox way. So that's where you kind of get the Johnny spikes out there and they exist. Sorry. Okay. So that is the psychic grab. So So next let me talk a little bit about designing cards for them. We will start with the combo player. So one of the things about the way we make Magic,
Starting point is 00:22:31 like I said, Magic is a very modular game. So one of the things that we try to do is we like to make a lot of what we call open-ended cards. What an open-ended card is, is I know this card interacts with something that is prevalent in the game, and I don't quite know what people will do with it, but I make it open. Like for example, let's say I say pick a creature type and then do something. I don't know what creature type. I mean, I have some idea of the more powerful ones, but like for example, um, uh, it's a morphon. Um, when we were making modern horizons one, one of my goals was, we said, what are decks people want to make but they can't make?
Starting point is 00:23:09 What are part of Modern Horizons was, can we fill in the gaps? And one of the things I said is, one of the number one requests I get is, I like creature type X. Could you make me a legendary creature that is, I want a commander so I can play that creature type. And I said, well, rather, I mean, you know, obviously one by one we make them. So, you know, every once in a while, oh, we've never made a spider one.
Starting point is 00:23:34 Here's a spider one. But I said, could I make something that until we make their exact one, that at least will fill in. And so Moriphan, the idea was I want to make a typo commander that plays for any type you choose the type But the idea is it's the commander that if you don't have a commander for the creature type you love This will serve as that purpose and that really a
Starting point is 00:24:00 Lot of trying to open-ended cards is saying hey, I know there's people that like playing with this area Well, let me you know, I'm gonna make it for example I made a card many years ago that did damage to the opponent every time you shuffled your deck And then all of a sudden you're like, okay, I need to make a deck where there's lots of shuffling You know a lot of the combo pieces is, I'm gonna make cards that tie into things that I know we do, you know, on a regular basis. And some of the fun ones are,
Starting point is 00:24:32 hey, we do this all the time, but we don't often make cards that care about this. All of a sudden you care about shuffling your deck. I can win the game if I shuffle enough. Okay, how do I do that? Well, I've fetch lands, I have land fetching, I have, you know, you can start thinking about how do I shuffle my deck? So a lot of what you want to do for the combo players is just make those open-ended cards
Starting point is 00:24:53 Make and the the real important part of this is you're not trying to make something that's obvious with something else That does not make the Johnny Jenny happy We do make combinations where this card and that card are in the same set and they go together. And that's great and there's people that enjoy that. It's not really the Johnny and Jenny sensibility, right? They don't want to be spoon fed anything. So a lot of making cards that make the combo player happy
Starting point is 00:25:15 is very open-ended cards. But the fun thing is to try to make open-ended cards that are unique, you know? There are a lot of cards that, like I can make a card that just interacts with all your creatures, but we make infinite of those cards, that's less exciting.
Starting point is 00:25:29 Now maybe I make a card that interacts with creatures that have exactly a toughness of two. Okay, that's a little more, you know. The, what the combo players want is something that is broad in execution, so they have a lot of options, but narrow enough in scope that there's some challenge to it
Starting point is 00:25:46 the offbeat designers, so the offbeat designers Really what you want to do there is? We like to make we call Johnny rares and what Johnny rares are is it's something that Does something very exciting? But that it requires you to jump through a hoop. And the idea of those cards is, I don't know, like, there's a card in, original Innisroud called Seance.
Starting point is 00:26:12 And what Seance does is it brings things back from the dead, except it doesn't give them haste, and they go away at the end of turn. So you can't attack with them. So, okay, the challenge here is, I can bring creatures back from the graveyard for the turn, but I, you know, unless I'm building in waste attack, the deck could do that. You could have ways to grant things haste. That's one of the ways you can build the deck. Or maybe it's like, Oh, maybe I just want, you know, enters effects that are
Starting point is 00:26:37 effective or maybe death trigger. Like I need to solve that puzzle. The idea with Uber sort of Uber, not Uber with Johnny designs is that you want to give a challenge and say, hey, hey, Magic players out there that enjoy a challenge, we can make cards that sort of throw the gauntlet down. A classic way to do that, and this is a very offbeat designer thing, is alternate win conditions. This is a very offbeat designer thing. Okay, well you win the game if you do think X, Y, or Z. Now sometimes during Odyssey block we made a cycle of alt-win conditions. The most famous of that is the blue one called Battle of Wits, where you win the game if you play Battle of Wits on your next
Starting point is 00:27:23 upkeep if you have 200 or more cards in your library. So basically the idea there is you have to play with a really, really big library, way bigger than normal. I'm gonna normally play a 60 card deck. Well, this has to be like 250 cards. You have to guarantee when you get to the card, you still have 200 cards in your library. And that ended up being something that, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:42 some of the spikes were able to play with. But the idea of alternate win cards is, And that ended up being something that you know, some of the spikes were able to play with so But the idea of alternate win cards is here's a way to win. That's just a little bit different You know and that crowd likes milling they like poison they like individual alt win cards There's a lot of different ways that we can do things The challenge for making uber Johnny car, not uber Johnny. Sorry the challenge for making The challenge for making Offbeat Designer cards is you want to build into the card a fun challenge that isn't necessarily how you solve that challenge. And that part of the card is, well, what do I do with this? Oh, when you enter, this thing removes your entire library from the game.
Starting point is 00:28:24 Okay, well, I'll lose. Okay, it's a really really good card but I automatically lose, how do I not lose? You know, you have to figure that out. The deck artist is interesting, that is on some level that's as much the creative team as it is the design team. I mean a lot of what you want to do is just make a lot of different kinds of things. On some level, themes help deck artists. Just making your sets about very exacting themes and then making cards that really only fit in that deck. That tends to work really well for the deck artist because you're just making things that
Starting point is 00:28:58 are very specific. And a lot of kind of what the biggest way to make the deck artist happy really is just do lots of different things and push in a lot of different directions. In general, we do that. We like to do what we call, you know, push the pendulum. We like to pick themes that are resonant, but are very different than other themes we've done. And then one of the things that we always try to do whenever we're doing a theme is I think it's important to make cards that only can be made in that deck theme, that only can be made in that set. Normally we would not make this card, but in this set with that theme,
Starting point is 00:29:32 hey, we can finally do that. So I love making cards that don't fit anywhere except in the set where they go. And I love to prioritize making those cards because A, we only have so much design space, so let's use up all the design space, but B, it really gives a special feel to that set because you're asking people to do something that they've never done before.
Starting point is 00:29:51 That also plays into the, that can play into the offbeat designers and the deck artists and the uber johnnies but the idea really is lean into your themes and do things that are very unique. Finally, for the uber johnnies, I mean we're always going to have bad cards in the sense that we're going to make cards and some of them don't end up working out. So a lot of the uber johnnies is just make bold ideas of things and push in boundaries and that some of them just aren't going to pan out. And that those are the ones that uber johnnies, like on some level you don't have to make,
Starting point is 00:30:22 I mean you want to push boundaries and make things. Some of the more aggressive ones will be what the combo players are playing or maybe even the spikes are playing, but some of those will miss. We don't make a lot of one with nothings anymore. There's a period of time where we kind of went out of our way to make cards that were specifically bad.
Starting point is 00:30:40 We make less of those these days only because there are plenty of cards that end up not being good Like we don't go our way. I mean we make them every once in a blue moon But we we don't have to make horribly bad cards We make cards that we are honestly trying to do something and it kind of misses and then it ends up not being a good card So we we make bad cards in the system already We don't have to go out of our way to just make bad cards But a lot of what we like to do for the uber johnys and the offbeat designers, I mean, on some level, there's certain Johnny sensibilities
Starting point is 00:31:10 when you design cards that the different Johnnys will use. And it just depends kind of on how successful the card is. If I make a card and I push it and I make a weird thing, but there's a way to build around it like Battle of Wits. Okay, hey, look, some spikes will play that combo Johnny's, you know, that there's a lot of people who will play that, but how much you play from a Johnny perspective is what are you trying to do? Am I trying to show that I can take powerful cards and win with them, but powerful cards people don't expect,
Starting point is 00:31:36 and I'm the person making groundbreaking things where people really, I put the stake in the ground and look, this is a good card, none you recognize? Yeah, Johnny can do that. There are also Johnny's that are like, I'm going to make something that purposely is horrible just to show that I can do something with it. Yeah, there's Johnny's and Jenny's that do that.
Starting point is 00:31:52 So a lot of what we want to do to make the Johnny's and Jenny's happy is have a broad spectrum of things. Only so many will be the good cards. Only so many will be the focus cards. Only so many will be the tournament cards. But that will be the focus cards only so many will be the tournament cards but that means is this whole swath of other cards and that one of the nice things about the psychic graphics is That look only so many cars can be for spike only so many cars will be top tier cards that are played in a format and we need to make other cards because
Starting point is 00:32:20 You know 20% maybe if we're ever, you know, 10 to 20% if we're happy are something played maybe in a tournament. And so there are other formats and other places we want people to play. And so part of making these other cards is we want the Timmy's and Tanny's and Johnny's and Jenny's of the world to also have cards that they get to play and have fun with because not every card, like a card doesn't just have to be a powerhouse winner to get played. There's other cards you can make and other reasons for that. Anyway, my old point today about John and Jenny is, look, the John and Jenny idea is
Starting point is 00:32:52 I am showing you something about me and when I build a deck, as much as I want to win with the deck, as much as I want to play the game and all that I do, I really am looking for the response from all of you to see what I've done That I want some acknowledgement of who I am, you know And then that I should stress that's a very important thing in general people want to be seen People want to be understood people want to be appreciated And the Johnny Johnny is just saying like hey Magic is a place for me to do that and me to showcase who I am and I will stress there are Johnny and Jenny sensibilities
Starting point is 00:33:29 in everybody that's one of my through lines here there's a little Tommy and sorry there's a little Timmy and Tammy and everybody there's a little spike in everybody so no matter who you are no matter why you build your decks a little part of you likes when someone else goes wow that, that's a cool deck. So anyway guys, that is my talk on Johnny and Jenny. So I have one more of these coming. We'll talk about Spike. Anyways, I hope you're enjoying this podcast series, but I'm now at work. So we all know that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye.

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