Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1239: Top 20 Worst Mechanics, Part 3

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

This podcast is part three of three on my series about the 20 worst mechanics of all time, based on my talk at last year's MagicCon: Las Vegas.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work Okay, so the last two podcasts I've been Sharing I did up in Las Vegas Magic on Las Vegas 2024 I did a talk. I'm the talk was on the top 20 worst mechanics of all time And so I've done two podcasts so far and I've covered 15 of the 20, but there are five remaining. So today I will talk about the last five. And the whole idea behind this talk was talking about like

not only why there were bad mechanics, but like what about the made them bad? What was the problem? What lessons did we learn? So a lot of the idea of talking about bad mechanics is not just, I mean, it's fun to sort of look back at bad mechanics, but also it's kind of, what did we learn from them?

Why did we make the mistake? How did it happen? So that is a lot of impetus behind this talk. Okay, so we're up to number five, which is radiance from original Ravnica, it's the Boros mechanic. So now the when I made Ravnica, the idea for Ravnica, the original concept was we were going to do a multicolor block and the we'd already done a multicolor block. The very first block we'd ever done that was like a themed block was Invasion, which was multicolor.

And so we were going back and for the first time ever, we were repeating a block theme. Now, multicolor gold is very popular, so I had some confidence in it. But we were trying very hard to make it not what we had done before. So Invasion really had this flavor of just play as many mechanics, sorry, play as many colors as possible. Like domain was a mechanic in it and it definitely was sort of like, how many colors can you play? So I, the whole idea was to go in the exact opposite direction. I said, what's the fewest number of colors you could play, but still be multicolored? And the answer is two. That's the fewest you can play. Play one, you're not multicolored. So what happened was so at this time interestingly I had just become a head designer. I became head designer in December of 2003. It was in the middle

of the Champions of Kamigawa block. So the first thing I did is I finished out that block but that block wasn't sort of I mean that was Bill's vision bills Bill Rose was the previous head designer so I my first set really where I sort of set the vision for the set was Ravnica and Interestingly when they made me head designer Bill really wanted me to also run the creative team so for two years I ran the creative team and during those two years we made Ravnica So that's my pride and joy that I ran the creative team when we made Ravnica.

Anyway, I said to the creative team, I want to do a set in which we do two colors and I want to do all 10 two colors. I want to do all the pairs. Before that time we treated ally and enemy very differently, but anyway, so I said I want to do two color and I want to care about all ten things. That inspired Brady Donnermuth, who led the creative team at the time, to come up with the idea of guilds. He's like, imagine there's a city and there's different guilds and each of the two color

combinations gets represented by a group. So Ravnica was the very first sort of, I mean, I guess there were faction sets before, but kind of a structurally faction in a way we're like, okay, we're gonna give each faction its own keyword. That's one of the things I wanted to give each faction an identity. We also came up with this idea, which at the time was a little radical,

that all 10 gills wouldn't be in the first set. That we had a large set and two small sets. We were gonna have four, then three, then three. And that idea at the time was very, very radical. There were a bunch of people at Wizards that thought I was, they're like, what are you talking about? So it's a multicolor set and just has four of the 10,

what, what are you doing? Two ally, two ten what what are you doing to ally to enemy what are you doing that seems weird but part of part of doing that that I knew was I really wanted to give each guild a really clean identity and so what we did is we I worked with the creative team to figure out like okay who are they what role do they play so the Boros we decided were they mixed white and red and so we liked the idea that they served a higher calling but they definitely had an attitude of well do we need to do you know like well there's an emotional quality to it and red white is the colors of of a vigilantante is in the time. So I like the idea that they were they ended up being the police force But the idea is you know, they they were it was an impetuous police force

They they did they need to do you know, but they they clearly wanted peace. They clearly wanted You know, they it was so the idea was that it was kind of part army part police force They had a lot of trappings of an army were a fantasy set. So while they functioned somewhat like a police force They also had a lot of them Soldiery qualities to them. So we were trying to find We're trying to find a mechanic for them So the first mechanic that I think got pitched for them was actually convoke. Richard Garfield originally convinced convoke for the Boros.

I felt like the idea of Selesnya, which is green white, was this commune idea, the idea that everybody's kind of equal and they work together and that the strength of Selesnya was their numbers, that they had strength in numbers. And I thought Convoque just philosophically made more sense in Selesnya. So I moved over the mechanic to Selesnya. So we were looking for a borrows mechanic and Mike Elliott originally pits Radiance. And the idea of radiance is imagine if you had spells that could affect your whole team But the idea the original idea of radiance was When you target a creature with radiance you copy it for any other creature that shares the color or creature type

That was the original radiance and So we played with it a bit and we found that there's just a lot going on. So we ended up pulling off the creature type out of it. And so then the idea is you would target a creature and then it would be copied any other creature that shared a color with it. And I think by the way, this is Bactrian Tempest. So I don't think it was just your creatures. I think it was all creatures that share that color, I believe. But anyway, the problem we ran into with, and this is why it ended up on my list, is

let's say I have a red creature, a white creature, and a red white creature on the battlefield. And I have a spell that boosts it. If I target the white creature, it boosts the white creature and the red white creature. If I target the red creature, it boosts the white creature and the red white creature If I target the red creature boost the red creature and the red white creature If I target the red white creature and targets the red white the white and the red creature So there's a lot going on there's a lot of different it ended up being a mechanic that was kind of just hard to track and One of the important things when you make a mechanic is you want to make sure?

One of the key elements make a mechanic is you want to make sure, one of the key elements to a mechanic is you want the players playing it to sort of, I'll call it absorb it. Like they understand what's going on and they understand, you know, and that a lot of radiance was kind of like, I'm casting this and like, oh, okay, what happens? You know, it was really hard to track, especially when you got a whole bunch of things on the board and some were multicolcolored and we had hybrid. Like it just became this thing of, you know, for example, one of the things you want is you want the players to be able to do math, meaning, okay, I can see your creatures, I

can see my creatures. Okay, I want to predict what might happen and then I can run through the possibilities in my head to figure out combat. And just your opponent having one radiant spell, just is like, okay, there's like 18 things that can happen Okay, well if I do you like if they target this creature with that and this and that I block with this net But I can target this creature and then these colors and it just was a little too much The other thing I think in retrospect is I think the guild mechanics that were the best Where they really hit the ethos of what it was,

kind of why I moved Convoque over to Selesnya. I think Raiden's in the end, while it did fit the sort of army flavor, and it definitely showed them working together, it didn't quite have, it didn't write, the Boros, once again, they have white, there is a together quality to them, but it didn't, I mean, I guess it had a little bit of chaos in the, you didn't know what was going to happen.

I mean, it was pre, it wasn't unknown. You're not flipping coins or anything, but, um, so the other thing in retrospect, looking at it was, I just don't, it didn't do the best of job of capturing, um, the borough. So like it flavorfully wasn't as a slam dunk as it I really wanted to be and from a play standpoint it's not that it played bad necessarily but it was confusing and hard to track and you know the reason it got on my list was it's just um I mean when you think back to Ravnica like if I say name all the mechanics of the guilds it's a hard one to name just because I get it it didn't really have the impact you wanted to.

So anyway, that's how it got on my list. Okay, number four, recover. So this is in cold snap. So cold snap was the set. We originally we had three that year. Some years we had three sets a block, we had a block and we had a core set. And some years we just had three sets, we had a block and we had a core set and some years we just had three sets. And at some point, the magic brand said maybe we should even that out, maybe we should have the same number of sets every year. So they came to us and they said, oh, you know, there's a slot, you want to make a summer set. And we were like, well, we have a lot going on that. We don't think we need to.

And they came back with it, so we didn't do it. And like six months later, they're like, you know what? We really need one. And so we had to scramble to put something together. And this was in between Ravnica and Time Spiral. Okay, so we ended up coming up with this idea. So in TV, there's a thing that's known as the lost episode, where the idea is, hey, we were filming the show,

and for some reason we made the show, but didn't realize where it was, but we find a copy of it. Like it wasn't one we had, and no one knows it, because it wasn't in rotation, it wasn't on TV. Like it exists though. And lost episodes are kind of fun. There are a lot of especially of older shows. They discover a lost episode So we thought it can be fun to discover a lost set

And it turned out that ice age like Mirage was our first modern set with like three sets ice age We had made ice age and then we made alliances But alliances was made to be an ice age set like after the fact. Like the designers that made it didn't intend that way and most of the connective tissue, and there's not a lot, was done by us in development after the fact. But there never was a third set for Ice Age. Like, oh, what have we found? The lost Ice Age set. So we called it Cold Snap. And one of the challenges of making it was that when we went back and looked at the Ice Age mechanics, a few of them we liked a lot so much they just become evergreen parts of the game, things like cantrips.

But some stuff like it didn't age well, it was an early set and there wasn't a lot to work with that wasn't already evergreen. Like the stuff that was really good we made evergreen. And the stuff we didn't like, like, uh, you know. And so we were really stretching to try to figure out how to take what was there and make something new and cool out of it. You know, and we, we, we did some, we redid snow a bit and did more with snow. But one of the things that they did, because they were really scrambling is we were looking

at cards, individual cards. And so recover was based off, I'm blanking the name, there's a ghoul and the idea in the ghoul is if you have so many creatures on top of you it like pops out of the graveyard and they thought it'd be cool what if we what if we sort of play into that space. That's a popular card from Ice Age. The problem was during Tempest Block, we decided that having the order of the graveyard matter was just not a good idea. There weren't a lot of cards that cared, and it just made players like, one of the things you want to do, especially when we have mechanics that care about the graveyard or get used in the graveyard is you want to be able to sort of sort through your graveyard.

But in a world where graveyard order matters, you can't, you have to save the same. And so we made a decision during Tempest block. We said, you know what? We don't want to care about that anymore. We think the game is better if players don't have to, you know, keep their graveyard in a specific order. So we stopped doing it. So when they were talking about cold snap,

and this is many, many years later, they said, okay, we're gonna make this mechanic that's gonna care about graveyard order. Ooh, it's a throwback to Ice Age. And I was the head designer this time. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. We're not bringing back graveyard order matters. And so what I did was, the way Recover works is,

it goes to your graveyard, and then when a card would be put on top of it, you can pay mana to get it back. Because originally the way it worked was that just you had so many things on top of it, it popped out. And I was just like, look, we can't, I can't with good conscience

bring back Graveyard Order Matters. And so I made a version of the mechanic that came as close as to what they were trying to do that did it without Graveyard Ordering Mattered. And so what ended up was kind of a compromise. It was like, well, you want to have this flavor and this feel and make this connection to this old card. I don't want to have graveyard order back.

And so it was kind of a compromise. But the reality is, I think once like I really, I mean, I think I was correct to put my foot down and say we're not making graveyard order matter again. But I think in retrospect, what that meant is we probably should, we should have got a new mechanic. Like the idea that we're just keeping the old mechanic and that was a mistake. I mean, I understand why I redid the mechanic because I was trying to, my goal of not having the graveyard order matter was good. But I think the correct answer

was not changing the existing mechanic, technically so it didn't break that rule. It's like other options or other choices. And so when I look back at Recover a lot of my thought process is just because we make a mechanic doesn't need we need to print a mechanic you know we should we try a lot of mechanics and what we need to do is say hey there's problems with this you know let's let's look elsewhere and I wish we had done that with Recover.

Okay which brings us to number three Swe sweep from Saviors of Kamagawa. So Saviors of Kamagawa, so champions of Kamagawa, the whole idea of the block was that Bill Rose wanted to do a top-down block. We had done individual sets like Arabian Nights and then there was top-down, but we hadn't really... He liked the idea that the whole block was about flavor first. And so we picked a flavor which was Japanese mythology, and the whole set was built around that. And so what happened was the world was built first, and then the mechanics were built second. So anyway, that was Shin's Kamigawa, but Traders had like a ninja theme. So he had to save his Kamigawa, which is the third set.

Brian Tinsman led this one. And what Brian realized was, wow, like one of the reasons we ended up moving away from blocks is we had what we call the third block problem, which was, okay, we did something in the first block. We did it, then we did it more in the second block. Okay, third step, we're doing it even more. And people are like, okay, we're tired of this thing.

Like we enjoyed it maybe the first time, and maybe we enjoyed it a little bit in the second block. Okay, so we're doing it even more. And people are like, Okay, we're tired of this thing. Like we enjoyed it maybe the first time. And maybe we enjoyed a little bit in the second. But by the third, like, okay, we want something new. So Brian said, Okay, I got to I'm going to deliver a new theme. Yeah, there'll be elements of what you knew from comic. I mean, it is still the world and some of the mechanics will carry through the block. But I want to do a new thing. So the thing he decided to care about, I think they nicknamed it wisdom, but what it really meant was hand size matters. We're gonna make a whole bunch of cards that want you to have a larger hand,

that care about the size of your hand. And in order to do that, they were looking at different ways to, hey, how do I get cards in my hand? And so they had a number of cards. They weren't even that many. I think there's only four sweep cards in existence. They had a number of cards that you could return, I think, any number of lands to your hand. And the idea is it's a resource. And how do I pay it? I return land. So there's a bunch of things here.

One is messing with land. You have to be very careful with, because if you give bad incentives to people, they will take those bad incentives. One of the truism of game design is you want to make sure the players have to go through the fun part of the game. You want to design your strategy such that to do what you like what the game is telling you to do, what the strategic thing to do is, makes you do the fun part of the game. You wanna design your strategy such that to do what the game is telling you to do,

what the strategic thing to do is, makes you do the fun part. And messing with your land, especially hurting yourself, like getting rid of land is not particularly fun. And it leads to a lot of bad gameplay, right? It leads to a lot of, oh, well I did the thing the game told me

and now I have a horrible game experience because I have no mana and I can't do anything. So first and foremost, sweep as a mechanic. I just, I'm not a huge fan of if I don't know what I'm doing. Like we definitely make some mechanics. We've made some mechanics. We're like, well, if a skilled player plays this

and really understands the nature of what's going on, you gotta be careful about the resources that you're using. Yeah, there's something interesting there's nothing mechanics not in a vacuum. The problem is, you shouldn't have to be an expert at magic to not to not have the mechanic make a horrible time. And so sweep has that sweep for starters has that problem. Then I'm not sure why we named it. I'm not sure why there's only four of them. It's weird Normally like our our minimum for naming things is normally five and even then often it was just like a cycle We leave it. We don't actually name it and so So, I mean there's a lot going on the sweep sweep is just chock full of like

Um, I don't think we should have made them in the first place. I don't think we should have named them um, anyway, it's just it's just a mechanic that I don't think we should have made them in the first place. I don't think we should have named them Anyway, it's just it's just a mechanic that On many many levels, I just should never became a mechanic. That's why sweep is number three number two Gotcha from unhinged. Oh gotcha. Okay, so The unsets are trying to play in space that we can't play in normal so one of the things that I was really interested in and this started in include is the idea of physicality and Verbality or you know talking and moving Normal magic they're just how you like what you're doing while you play doesn't really matter the game matters

But the the attitude around the game doesn't matter And one of the things I was really interested in is You know, can we sort of mess with like while I'm playing the game that there are a bunch in fact Brian Tinsman made a game called curses Which is a party game and there's other games like this But the idea of a game like that is you get restrictions things you can't do and then you got to play the game Well, you have these restrictions. Okay, I got to keep my arm behind my back. Okay, I can't say a word that has

The letter E in it like what there's just restrictions and there's a lot of fun and games that I played and was like, okay, I gotta play the game I'm playing, but also I have this other constraint I gotta keep in mind. And I thought that'd be interesting. I enjoy it in other games, and part of what I like to do in Unsets is, hey, where's there fun in games that Magic doesn't normally do? Could we bring that into magic? And so the idea of gotcha is the card it goes on spells and then it says hey if you do this certain thing if your opponent does this certain thing you can say gotcha and you can return this card to your hand. Some of the gotcha cards if you say a certain word one of them says if you save a number if you touch your face if you flick your cards

If you have there's just different things that that you like things that you could do while playing magic And so the idea that the idea behind it and there was a good intent it was Was I remember playing gameplay curses and saying okay, okay? I got to do what I'm gonna do But I I have to remember that I can't say the letter E or whatever, and it just makes you do, there's a lot of mental ability you have to do. A couple things.

So one thing I realized in retrospect is one of the reasons that is fun in the games that it's fun in is if I look at something like Curses, the base game of Curses is very simple. Most of the fun of the game is, well, you're trying to do the simple thing, and by the way, we're going to throw complex things you have to track while doing the simple thing. But a key part of that is the base game is very simple because the distractions are mostly what the game is.

Okay, do the simple thing, but can you do it well hop in on one leg. You know that that is what adds in. So the idea is a lot of the mental strain of that game The the cognitive load is built into the things you're trying to do that the extra things the core part of the game is simple But magic magic is not a simple game So I what I did is I added on to what was already a complex game a game We were paying a lot of attention where there's a lot of just mental load and saying what if I add on that another? layer of mental load And I think what happened was like we would play test it

when we played and the thing that we just didn't take into account is magic designers Probably like I am so in I spend my days playing magic and doing magic and thinking magic. Um, I More than most people can shorthand magic because I play magic for a long long long time I played a lot a lot of magic. I played it You know I and so it's a lot easier for me to say okay I'm gonna put this part of magic on autoplay because I've done it a lot and now I'm doing this other thing I'm adding on top and that we the designers enjoyed it right that we had fun like okay like because

we were we were really getting into it and we had the cognitive load and the experience that we were able to do it. So we did a play test. The guy named Rob was in the play test, someone who I used to work with at Wizards. And after the play test he goes, holy moly, that is hard to do. He goes, so why won't people just clam up?

So like if I say a word something happens, well I'll just stop talking. You know how I keep from saying the word? And what he said is, look look I'm gonna do the simplest thing because I want to win the game and I don't want to I don't want you get your card back and so if I say something okay I'll just stop talking and so the correct answer was how do I handle the mental load just not do the thing shut down don't do it don't participate and I said, no, this is a fun, you know,

this is a fun variant to people trying to have fun and the nature of playing is people having a good time. So they'll embrace it in the spirit of what it's intended. They'll understand like, okay. And what I missed at the time, this was a really important lesson to me, was players will do what the game instructs them to do. And if the easiest way to deal with something is clam up, you will clam up. And that rather than go, well, I know if talking could risk the game

and maybe I lose, but it's kind of fun and I'll do it. There are people that would do that. And we, the play-tefters did that because we were really in the spirit of, but once again, you can't design your game so only players are kind of in the right mindset will play it correctly players will try to win that system going to try to win you have to accept that that players will try to win your game so and exactly what Robin said I poo-pooed it right I mean that

actually the worst part is somebody gave me the exact piece information I needed I ignored it so a lot of a lot a lot of lessons from Gotcha. One is listen to your playtefters. The second is, you know, understand what it is you're laying in the game, what's the correct way to play it, how will people handle it, and we just overwhelm people. There's just too much going on. People could not handle it. And that's one of my meta lessons that I keep coming back to that unsets is one of the fun things of unset is layering brand new things in because unsets can care about things that normal magic can't but in doing that I think I the lesson and this is a lesson I carry all the way through to infinity is

It can get overwhelming. There's a lot of complexity in that when you add in other elements that are already unfamiliar You need to have this extra layer of simplicity to them. So anyway, oh, gotcha. I don't get to make a lot of unsets. So when I went with a major mechanic of an unset, it just falls this flat. Number two in my all time worst list. Oh, that is a nice through the heart so that really sucks. Okay number two gotcha. Number one bands with others. So it's interesting the first three radiance recoverance sweep are all during my time as head designer though okay that's a long period of time. Gotcha I led the set. So these are the first the first four today I had a lot of hand in. I finally get to one I had no hand in. This completely relates to me.

So okay so bands with others is a mechanic that shows up in legends. But before we get to bands with others, let's talk about bands a little bit because bands with others is a banding variant which is its own issue. Okay so banding first showed up in Alpha in the very first magic set and the idea of banding the general flavor banding is my guy teams up with other guys I'm a I'm good at working with other people and the general philosophy behind it was a good general philosophy I mean I see where Richard was coming from. Like I get the idea of my creature worked with other creatures. But the problem with banding is, and in the actual talk, I actually read from the rule book on banding, and it is incomplete. So the real quick version of banding, and I did a whole podcast, you want

to hear about that, I did an entire podcast on on banding if you want to go into depth the short version of it is When I attack I can make a band all but one of the creatures in the band must have banding and then That unit attacks. It's kind of like a singular creature My opponent can block or not block it if If they do block it, all damage assigned to that block of creatures is assigned by me, the person who controls the block of creatures. On defense, it's the same thing except only one of the creatures needs to have banding, meaning I can band with a whole bunch of creatures as long as there's a lot of complexity to banding. The story I always tell as I was judging at the 94 world championships, or not 94, 95 world championships.

And the number one question I got from the, these are the best magic players in the world was about banding. And it was clear that I would say 90% of them didn't really understand banding. And these are the best players in the world. Banding, there's a lot of interest in the banding, how it interacts with things is weird,

it kept changing how it interacts. Does it work with trample? Does it not work with trample? I mean, so there's a lot of moving pieces. It was complicated, definitionally, like I said, it just had a lot of things going. The fact it worked differently on attack and defense The it was way way too defensive also

It's a check it shut down boards and made like the idea behind it was oh I mean I can attack a situation is right I can't but because you had to have so many banders to attack in a band It it ended up being not that good aggressively and very good defensively. So I mean it gummed up the board Okay. So anyway, we have a mechanic that people do not understand. I'm not saying it's not flavorful, but people don't understand. It's a confusing mechanic. So now comes Legends. And Legend says, using banding is complicated. I... we can be more complicated. So the idea with bands with others is a creature with bands with others has banding

But only with other creatures with bands with the same thing it bands with. So let's say I had a creature that has bands with bears. Oh, can it band with bears? No, it can only band with other creature creatures that have bands with bears and It can only band with other creatures that have bands with bears. And it doesn't matter that the things are bears, they have to have bands with bears. And so essentially what they did is they took something that was already insanely complicated. I mean, the reason we removed it from magic wasn't that it wasn't flavorful, wasn't that it didn't have its fans, it's just the vast, vast majority of people did not understand it. So now here comes a tweak on that

that's even more complicated and more non-intuitive than banding. And I think at some point we eroded it a little bit so it worked slightly closer to how people thought it worked. But anyway, the reason it's a good example of the idea of one of the things Magic has to do is we build. We build on the past. And like, you know, if I can see farther, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants, right? That you, that one of the great things, the reason Magic 32 years in is such an amazing game is we tried a lot of things.

32 years in, it's such an amazing game is, we tried a lot of things. Some things failed miserably, some succeeded. The things that succeeded, we tried again, and we built upon that, and we learned from it. And there's a lot of evolution of design. But one of the lessons of Bands with Others is build on your successes. It's fine to tweak things, to build on things, to change

things, but work off things that are... I mean, obviously there are some exceptions here. Sometimes you find thing that wasn't working and find a way to make it work. You know, the devotion to chroma, for example. But what I'm saying here... really, this is not that example. This is, I have an idea. I'm building on something that's already flawed and then I had a flawed idea on a previous flawed concept So hey, yes, we should build on things We should expand things the technology and magic should it's okay to adopt adapt things that came before us But adapt firm things adapt things or if you find something bad

The key is not to keep it as it is then add more on to it it's change the parts that don't work and bands with others is just in some level I if I for example if I if I give every magic player a quiz on banding I'm not kidding I think 2% of the magic populous would would be able to maybe less than 2% and also it's an old mechanic. So I'll pleasure just never even played with it In fact 2% way high it's under 1% less than 1% of the magic playing pop and then Probably thinking it like it's probably like point point one or two a tiny tiny percentage of magic players really understand banding and Then and then we like now now let me do a poll

on a book you want to understand bands with others. I mean, I feel like there's four people and probably most of them are former rules managers. It just, anyway, that is why bands with others is on my top of my list. Okay guys, that is, I've run through a quick recap on all 20 number 20 stickers number 19 Megamorph number 18 companion number 17 haunt number 16 annihilator number 15 devoid

14 partner 13 miracle 12 forecast 11 initiative 10 cleave 9 the unmemorable 8 epic 7 Faithful hour 6 day night 5 radiance 4, four recover, three sweep, two gotcha, and one dance with others. That, my friends, is the 20 worst mechanics of all time as of me in Las Vegas in 2024. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my talk transformed into podcast form. And anyway, I'm now at work.

So we all know that means this is 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 guys next time. Bye bye.