Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1236: Mel

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

This is part two of a two-part series on the aesthetic profiles. This time, I talk about Mel, the player who aesthetically appreciates mechanics.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today I did a series of podcasts where I talked about the psychographics, Timmy, Tammy, Jenny, Jenny and Spike. And then I decided to do a two part podcast on the aesthetic profiles, Vorthos and Mel. Well, I did one on Vorthos already, so it's time to talk Mel. So, as I explained in my Vorthos podcast, the idea of the psychographics are about psychologically, why do you want to play? What do you get out

of it? The aesthetic profiles are, what is it about the game that you appreciate? And early on, I used to think that Vorthos and Mel were opposites, but they're not. It's possible that you can appreciate both the creative elements and the mechanical elements, that those don't contradict one another. Often people care about one more than the other, that makes sense. But so real quickly, something I didn't explain in the Vorthos podcast is where Vorthos came from, where did that name came from? I did not name Vorthos came from. Where did that name came from? I did not name Vorthos.

Vorthos actually, there's an article by Matt Cavada called Savor the Flavor that was talking about, his article was all about the creative team and all the work they did. And so he was trying to explain what he did and explain that there are people that really enjoy this. So he named them, he called them Vorthos. That's where the name Vorthos came from. Mel, I named Mel in response to Vorthos. I

originally called him Melvin, but in trying to be more gender neutral in the names, I just shortened to Mel because Mel can be short for numerous things. So the idea is Mel appreciates the artistry, the aesthetics of the mechanical components of the game. So what exactly does that mean? Well, I will run them through today. So kind of like I did in the podcast for Vorthos, I'm going to walk through the various elements of a card going from top to bottom, that Mel really enjoys. And the idea essentially we want to realize today is

there are a lot of rules, a lot of structure, a lot of aesthetic choices made mechanically. And that's the stuff that Mel really enjoys. And like you'll see today, there's a lot of different factors. Mel could appreciate any one of these factors. They don't have to appreciate them all. Much like a Vorth might be really into the art or really into the world building or really into flavor texts.

I mean, maybe they're into all of them, but you know, they could appreciate one thing more than the other. Same with Mel. Okay, so we're going to start in the upper right-hand corner, the Manicost. There's a lot that goes into a mana cost. So for regular listeners know that I believe that Richard Garfield made three great genius creations when he made Magic. One was the concept of a trading card game. One was the color pie.

And the third was the mana system. One of the classic challenges when Richard first came up with the idea of a trading card game is what he called the Queen Problem, which is, let's say I'm playing chess and I can just pick my own pieces. Why wouldn't I pick one king, because that's the winning condition, and 15 queens? Why would I play a rook or a knight or a pawn? Why would I pick pieces that aren't as powerful as the queen? The queen's very powerful. It can do what all the other pieces can do. And the answer he came up with, partly was the color pie, which we'll get to in a second. But part was, well, if there's

a resource system and the resource system's required to play the cards, then you can have a wide range of cards. A one drop is super valuable and powerful on turn one, but not very useful on turn six Six drop or a larger card is useful late in the game But not very useful early on because you can't cast it So the idea is that cards have different values over time and that way when I'm making my deck I can't put the most powerful things in because the more powerful things are expensive I can't play them too late in the game so I need to have things that are valuable early in the game. So mana cost there's a lot of detail that goes into mana cost. For

starters we have what we refer to in R&D as rate. What rate means is sort of the power level of the card with its mana costs contrasted against the rest of the card. Meaning, if I had a card that costs one and a green, that card could be strong or weak, depending on what do you get for one and a green. If I get just a vanilla two, two, not particularly strong. If I get a four, four, that's quite strong. And so the idea is we,

a lot of setting the mana cost is setting the rate now one of the things today I will stress is while I design cards there are a lot of component elements of the cards that I am NOT the expert in I usually have a play designer on my team to help with costing it's not that I can't do general costing I can I can look and see what we've done before but I'm not the expert at. I can look and see what we've done before. But I'm not the expert at costing. I'm okay at it, just because I've done it for a long time. I can get in the ballpark, usually by looking at other cards. But actually knowing properly

what something should cost, it can be tricky, especially if what you're trying to cost, there's not a lot of precedent to work against. If I'm doing the vanilla creature, I can look at all the vanilla creatures and I can figure it out. But if I'm doing a brand new ability that's unlike abilities we've done before, it gets a lot trickier to figure that out. It's much more complex. So there's a big issue of sort of just what the mana value is. One of the elements of that, by the way, is colored mana versus generic mana versus colorless mana. I will get to colorless in a second. So most costs are colored mana

and maybe some amount of generic mana. The more colored mana in your cost, the harder it is to cast it outside of one color. So if we make a card cost green, green, green, in a mono green deck, hey, you can play that in turn three, most likely, so we have three lands, but in most other decks, it's hard to play.

They play in a two-color deck where green is one of your two colors, it's very hard to play that. So there's a lot of tools. The lower the mana value of the card, the more impactful it is that there's multiple colored pips, but colored pips are something else we get to play around with. And then there are other types of symbols. I'd mentioned colorless colorless is It's not a color per se but it acts in some ways You have to have lands that produce colorless and so it requires you have certain lands in your deck There's hybrid mana hybrid mana is sort of access or rather than and so a hybrid card a cost a hybrid cost

Let's say I have red and green hybrid mana, that means, oh, I can go in a red deck or a green deck or a red and green deck. And the way you design those cards are very different because in a red or green hybrid card, a mono-red deck has to be able to play it as a mono-green. So it has to be an ability that red can do and that green can do. So you're playing in overlap space. There's two-brid mana which we just used in Tarkir Dragonstorm where you have two colorless and a color and you can do either or. That's also or but it just functions very differently because the spell gets more expensive as you don't have the colored mana to pay for it. So for example

don't have the colored mana to pay for it. So for example, in Tarkir, we have three color cards. And the interesting thing is, you can play those in decks that don't have all three colors, it just gets more expensive. With all three colors, you could play it on turn three, assuming you have all three colors. But let's say I'm running two of the three colors well,

then I can play it for four mana. Or if I don't draw my second color, I can play it for five mana. And I can technically even play those cards in a deck that had none of those colors for six mana. But once again, the way we build the rate is so well, it's nothing special at six mana. It's pretty powerful at three mana. So it matters having the colors. And we've done other types of mana. We've done Phrexian mana, we've done snow mana, there is some room to play around with mana cost. Like mana cost, you would think there's not much going on there, it's a couple symbols,

but the reality is there's a lot, it's a very complex system. Like I said, just costing things correctly is an area that I, who've worked on the game for almost 30 years, am still not good at. And I'm not bad at it, but I'm not, I need to go to experts that are better at it. That is a very, it's a very highly skilled thing. Okay, let's end. Oh, the one other important thing of the mana cost is it dictates color. So I said that Richard made three genius ideas, one of which was the mana system, but one

of which was the color pie. Another way to make sure that people aren't putting all the best cards in the same deck is, well, different effects go in different colors. The more colors you play, the riskier your mana base is. One color, I know I'll be able to play it. Two colors, probably I can, and as you get higher, it requires more support to be able to do it. The other thing that the mana cost does is if

I have a red mana pip in my cost or a blue or black or whatever that dictates the color of the spell. So if I if it requires blue mana to cast I'm a blue spell. If it's blue and green well my multi color spell is green and blue. The color pie is very important. It is't area where I'm an expert unlike mana costing. Making sure that cards do what they should do in the colors. We have an entire council of colors. I've done podcasts on them. And there's a whole team that makes sure

that what we're doing is matching what the color wheel, the color pie should be doing. And there's a, I believe firmly that the color pie is the, the underpinning of magic. It is a foundation that, that mechanics and creative and everything is built on. So it's very important that we're very consistent with that. And it gives the game a really important ethos and a feel that wouldn't have otherwise. So just knowing what you can do, I did an article and then I redid it four years later called the Mechanical Color Pie.

So it's up on the site and I go through most of the mechanics, the basic mechanics and say, who does this and is it primary or secondary or tertiary and just sort of walk through who does what. But if you're going to design magic cards, it's really important. You need to understand the mana system. You need to understand the color pie. Those are each very complex systems. Okay and we haven't even left the mana cost yet. So now let's go down to the type line. So the type line is the

card type line. So on the card type line we have the card types, we have the super types, we have the sub types. And so when you get to card types, you start getting to different types of cards. Well, it turns out there are rules about different types of cards, that there are things that we do just take instance and sorceries. We treat instance and sorceries slightly differently because they function differently. So for example, there are certain effects that we do an instant a Counterspell is a good example, right a counter spell won't work as a sorcery So that has to be an instant but there's other effects like discard that we primarily do as a sorcery and not as an instant Why we want people to have an opportunity to play their cards discard an instant means, you know

Right after they draw you can make them discard before they could play it cards. Discard an instant means, you know, right after they draw it, you can make them discard before they could play it, if it's not an instant itself. And so just understanding how we make effects and you know, there's a cost differential between being instant and being a sorcery. So that is the interplay between the card types and the mana costs. So just understanding sort of what the card types are and what they do and how they function.

And there's some little things like, for example, in Enchantments, we don't use tap symbols, barring some shenanigans in FutureSight. So the idea is, if I want to have an activation that only want you to activate once, it doesn't tap. We can say only activate once, for example, but if we were doing that on a creature it would have a tap symbol most likely. There's exceptions like the root wall ability that sort of giant grows it for the turn. That can't be a tap because you want to attack with it. So knowing when you can use a tap symbol and when you can't.

Knowing sort of what the rules are for each car type and how car types function. of what the rules are for each car type and how car types function. You know, artifacts sometimes have generic costs and understanding how to cost generic things against the colors. You know, there's a lot of nuance there and there's a lot of rules based into understanding what car types are. And even understanding rates, the rate of creatures, like it's a little bit different than how we do the rate of spells for example That that how we think about is different creatures for example power toughness and that has we'll get to power toughness in a sec Subtypes belong to a card type with the sole exception that instance of sorcery share subtypes, so

subtypes. So subtypes, we've decided that we didn't want creature types having baggage. They used to have rules baggage back in the day while like you couldn't attack. We've removed that, but there are other subtypes that can have some mechanical baggage. Every car type has a subtype. Most car types have multiple subtypes.

And like I said, some of those subtypes do come with a little bit of rules baggage. And there's just a lot in, you know, for example, I can understand artifacts, but also that means understanding equipment, understanding vehicles, you know, understanding artifact creatures. And there also is mixing and matching. The artifact creatures started in alpha but like eventually we did enchantment creatures and check our artifact enchantment or artifact lands enchantment lands you know like you start mixing and matching things that and the only um car type that we don't

tend to mix and match is planeswalker we tend to keep that by itself but other than that we do mix and match things. Although once again, there's a lot of rules about when we can mix lands and you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot that goes into figuring out what goes on, but knowing what the car types are, knowing what the subtypes are, they're knowing what the super types are. Super types also can carry rules baggage. And just understanding what they mean. For example, a lot of people think basic, which goes on the five core lands, Plains, Islands, Swamp, Mountain, Forest. A lot of people think that the basic enables you to play more than four,

but that's actually not what the basic supertype does. So that there's a lot of nuance and understanding and knowing when and where and how to use the various super types. Also on that same car type line is the rarity symbol, the expansion symbol and the rarity symbol. And so there's a lot that goes into understanding sort of how cars fit within expansions. There are themes. Earlier I talked about the color pie. There are what we call bends where things that the color doesn't normally do it, but it's not so outside what it does that it's not allowable. But bends are careful. We only do bends in certain circumstances with certain themes.

And so understanding sort of what expansions call for and what they need is another big set of rules to understand. And then we get into rarity. The main rarities are common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare. Well, what do we do at a common? What do we do at uncommon? What do we do at rare? What do we do at mythic rare? Each of those rarities has their own set of rules. For example, there's base effects and those base effects, I'll give a good example of why it can get complicated. Threaden is the ability, it's in red. I get a Steel Creature for a turn, grant it haste, and then I give it back at end of turn.

Threaden for a long time was a common effect. But when we changed around things for play boosters, we had to lose a certain number of slots to common. So that meant we had to take some effects and slide them up. So now, threading is an uncommon effect, not a common effect. So just knowing what can go where, there's a certain amount of complexity we allow at each rarity. Understanding that.

You know, there is, and there are just certain sort of meta rules. For example, we don't tend to do two for ones at common. Few exceptions to that. Like you can do one damage to everything, but they're just understanding the nuance between them and like the difference between what a rare is and what a mythic rare is. Mythic rare has a certain dream necessary so that people can imagine great things happening. So there is, and there's gray area, there's definite effects that could be rare or mythic rare or uncommon or rare. And understanding in any one set, one of the things we'll do, for example, sometimes is if a set has certain themes or certain needs,

we can pull down things a little bit. For example, Kaladesh was doing an invention theme. So we wanted a few more quirky artifacts, the kind that normally we would do at rare, but we pulled more of those down to uncommon. Now we were careful to make sure the complexity matched for uncommon, but it's still we did effects that normally we'd more often do at rare. And it's knowing when and where and how to do that is super important. Okay. Then we get to the meat of it, the rules text box. There's a lot that goes into rules text.

For starters, there's certain evergreen mechanics. That means the mechanics that we use almost all the time. Evergreen mechanics don't always have reminder text. We like to, some of them like flying. We don't put reminder text on because enough people understand that we don't feel a need for reminder text. Other things like menace, we include it where we can. Knowing what is evergreen and what is not,

it is something that changes over time. The only, I think it's only three mechanics that started in magic that are still evergreen, which is flying, first strike and trample. Protection is deciduous, I'll get to that in a second. So the idea is just understanding what tools you have access to. Each set will have additional things and we started doing cameo mechanics, but knowing that cameo mechanics don't show up usually at common or uncommon, rare or mythic rare.

And how do we use cameo mechanics? Once again, a lot of complexity there. So not only are there evergreen mechanics that are in most sets, there's deciduous mechanics. A deciduous mechanic is a mechanic that we feel is useful enough that every set has access to it, but all the deciduous mechanics do not show up every set.

Hybrid man is a good example of deciduous mechanic. Flashback, kicker, landfall, cycling, these are base effects that we know are just good, Flashback, kicker, landfall, cycling. These are base effects that we know are just good, time-tested, deep design space, flexible things that can be very useful. And that deciduous means we have access to them. But once again, you wanna be careful

how many things you access. For anyone set this vocabulary issue, so you wanna make sure you're not overwhelming the player. And sometimes we bring back mechanics. And so when do you want to bring back mechanic? You know, if I want something to show up a common uncommon, I want a certain amount of density or as fan of that mechanic. As fan stands for as fan.

It's a metric we use to talk about how much of a certain subset is in a set. Understanding as fan, like there's a lot of tools that if you really wanna get the nitty gritty of how R&D functions, you need to understand that. As fan, for example, is a big tool. There's collation of what cards go next to each other on the sheet. There is power of statting and trying to figure out

the balance of cards and there's tiering where certain cards are pushed for certain are anticipated to possibly be useful in certain formats but we don't know exactly what's going to happen so just because we choose a card doesn't mean it's going to show up it means we think there's potential and there's half cards and full cards then as we get into actually the rule sets itself, there's templating. Once again, this is another area where I'm not an expert in. I have some knowledge having done it for a long time, but we have an editor that works with us and we have to make sure that, you know, how we template things, what order things

go in. Other things that we have to concern ourselves, for example, there are line breaks. So the flash ability, flash goes on, It goes first and goes on its own line. So when you add flash to a card as a line to the card, and so you have to understand you work with your editor because you have to fit your text on your card. Also, we'd like to have flavor text and we try to have a certain number of cards that have room for flavor text. So space is always an issue on rules text. And so we have to work and make sure we understand that.

There's reminder text, understanding, you know, so now we start getting into the rules, right? The cards have to work within the rules. So we need to work with the rules team to make sure that we understand that. And part of design is understanding there's a lot of inherent elements to rules. Like a classic example is layers.

Layers have to do with when things get applied to a card. And there's different qualities to a card, and they go in different layers. And if you try to care about something in a way that contradicts the order of layers, you get in trouble. The classic example is if I want to say all blue creatures gain flying, I can can because that works in the

correct order for layers. If I want to say all flying creatures become blue, I can't. It works against. So part of making magic cards is understanding what you can and can't do. Now again, we push boundaries. There's a rules manager who's the expert on the rules. We can check with them. Are we, are what what we doing does it work within the rules or if it doesn't work within the rules can the rules be adapted to make it work how much work is that. Another big factor when we're doing rules is there are people downstream of us like the editors like the rules manager also play design are we making something that's balanceable are we making a mechanic that has the knobs? Knobs are different inputs.

Do we have the knobs necessary that they can adjust and balance it? Are we playing in dangerous space? And how much are we playing in new space? There's only so much that Play Design, they've only have so much time. The newer something is, meaning the more something makes use of resources

we've already used, the easier it is to develop. Because you can, you know, play designers learn from make, like, if you want to do a kicker-like mechanic, well, we've done a lot of kicker cards and a lot of kicker-like mechanics. We have a pretty good sense of what that's like. But if you want to do something brand new, like the first time we did energy, it was a resource system we'd never done before. Well, that requires a lot of understanding.

And so one of the things you have to balance is how much you're doing that's pushing boundaries versus not pushing boundaries from a balance standpoint. Also, the other big factor going on is you're making a set. You're trying to create synergies. You're trying to create mechanics. So I guess I said this out of order. You're making mechanics, synergies. You're trying to create mechanics. So I guess I said those out of order. You're making mechanics, then you're making themes, then you're making synergies,

that you're doing all these things so the thing holds together. And so another big element of making cards is that you want to make sure that what the card is doing is synergistic with itself. Not that, not just that it works, but there's cool interactions that can happen. A lot of the one of the things that the males really appreciate is the idea that how the card works has like the more you understand the nature of how it works the more you can do. Miescher's Factory for example was a really cool card that came out in antiquities and there was a way for example that you could because it was a way, for example, that you could, cause it was a land that could turn into a creature,

but it also had the ability to tap to make another Ametris factory bigger, or to make a Ametris factory bigger. So for example, there's a trick you learned. So you could spend one man and turn into a two, two, but then after declaring it as a blocker, you could tap itself to give itself plus one plus one. So it was a way for you with Amitra's factory to block a two two.

Now at the time when you tapped, you didn't do damage because it's back then. But the idea was you could block a two two without dying. Nowadays you could block a two two, I guess, and kill a two two. But anyway, there's a lot of nuance in mechanics that go into it. And there's a lot of artistry in trying to make mechanics that allow fun flexibility and play. There's a lot of modularity we build in. We want things to be open-ended so that we allow people to find interesting combinations.

We don't design all the combinations. I mean, we're aware sometimes of combos, but what you want to do is design cards so they enable people to find interesting combinations with it. Now there's almost 29,000 cards in existence. There's a lot to, especially in formats where you have access to most of the cards. But there's a lot into designing such that it enables you to do cool things with it. And there's just a lot of inventive designs. Yes, there's things we do that we do all the time. And hey's just a lot of inventive designs. Yes, there's things we do that we do all the time and hey I can do a tweak on something that you know or maybe I do an effect you've never seen before or maybe I combine two

effects that we've done individually but we've never combined those effects. There's a lot of artistry to the act of designing the car itself. And another thing that's going on is we are trying to create a fun play environment. So we're trying to make sure that not only are we doing something that's fun to read and fun to think about, but actually fun to play when you're playing it. We are trying to capture flavor. We want to make sure that what we are doing, you know, industry is a good example where we had different monster factions. What was really important to me that the monster factions felt like the monsters.

For example, we put zombies in blue and black. Well, I wanted the zombies to play like zombies from horror movies. So it was all about, well, they're slow, but they build up and they have giant armies of zombies. And that the threat of a zombie army isn't that there's, any one zombie is not a threat.

A whole horde of zombies is a threat. And the idea is even if you can defeat a single zombie or a bunch of zombie, at some point you get overwhelmed. And so we wanna create a play pattern that match that. So it's not just a matter of does something work within the rules or is it understandable? There's also a does it play well is it fun is it enabling cool things and does it communicate the flavor you're trying to communicate one of the ways things are

fun is hey if I'm playing zombies and my zombies feel like zombies that is really cool and there's a lot we do a lot of top-down stuff and you know we want to make sure that our designs are really shining through, that you're getting, you know, when you play with the cards that the the play pattern of the cards itself is both fun and evocative and it hints out the flavor we're trying to get to. Then below the text box is the power and toughness box. That's just for creatures. On planeswalkers we do have a loyalty box

and then there are also loyalties. So there's a bunch of different elements that can be on the card depending on what the card is. The idea there is that's yet another tool. Creatures, I talked about knobs earlier. Power toughness is a really nice knob because when you have a creature at bare minimum you have the mana cost of the creature, you have the power of the creature and the toughness. You have three knobs. Now often there's activation,

sometimes there's more knobs, but that is pretty cool and that is something you get to play around with. And there's a lot of nuance. Power toughness is something that we use to show flavor. You know, power higher than tough, like red tends to air and power higher than toughness. White tends to air and toughness higher than power. And you know, different colors have different things. And I can show you vanilla creatures and you know, they're more likely to be certain colors than other colors. And that's just literally cost and power and toughness. And even if I obscure the colored mana,

you can get a sense of what things are just because there's a lot that goes into it. And the meta thing I'm trying to explain here is there are a lot of tools for design, a lot of tools. Mana costs, color pie, templating, rules. There's rules for card types, for rarities, there's just a lot of moving pieces going on and like we have made many many many magic sets and one of the reasons we do that is we have a very robust set of tools. That is what the Mels enjoy, is appreciating the use of the tools.

Usually the fun thing for a Mel, and once again, much like a Vorthos might care more about the arch or whatever, Mel's my focus. I've seen Mel's that are really into understanding rate. I've seen Mel's that are really into understanding sort of color pie, understanding rules, tax templating. There's so many different aspects to, to learn about because there are a lot of different key elements to making a magic set or a magic card or magic mechanic. And that that is something that we spend a lot of time. Like I said, I've, I've written countless articles.

I've recorded countless podcasts, just talking about one singular facet, just the color pie alone. I did an article a couple years ago where I linked to every article or podcast I did on the color pie. And there was like 60, 80, I don't know, there's a lot. And that's just the color pie. I've spent endless time just talking about the color pie. I've done podcasts on the mana system. I've done like there is so much different things that go into making magic on the mechanical side of things. And that that is what the males really enjoy. The males really get into appreciating all that work. And a lot of that comes from I and other people spend a lot of time explaining our processes

and walking through what we're doing. And you know, there's something much like you can pick up a magic card and just really geek out at the art of the card or the flavor of the card. You can geek out at how the card is constructed. There's a lot of artistry and craftsmanship that goes into making just the mechanical side of magic. And that is what the Mels really, really enjoy. And the thing that's important is, you know, we spend a lot of time and energy, much like

the creative team, spend a lot of time and energy because there are a lot of people that really enjoy the nuance of it and there's a lot of people that enjoy the end product without necessarily understanding the artistry of it. I think every player, for example, is a little Vorthos and a little Mel at bare minimum. Like, when you see a Magic Heart for the first time, they're just component pieces of it you enjoy. Some of which are creative, some of which are mechanical. And so, everybody has some appreciation.

I think the more mellow you are, the more appreciation. And the more you strive to understand it, the more that you want to understand, oh, what are the rules about templating? How do the rules work? How does ColorPie work? How does costing work? All that is something that really dig into.

And there's a lot of people online that really love to ask me questions because they're trying to understand it. And it's a lot of people online that really love to ask me questions because they're trying to understand it and it's a complex system. I mean, it's a system so complex that I've been working on this for 30 years and I'm not an expert in lots of them. I'm not an expert in costing, in templating, in rules.

Yeah, I'm good at color pie. I'm pretty good at a lot of design aesthetics. I'm very good at that. But, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot going on. So anyway, that is what Mel cares about. So guys, I'm now at work. So we don't 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.