Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1252: Why We Name Mechanics

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

In this podcast, I answer a question from my blog about how we decide when to name and not name mechanics.

I'm pulling out the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to let the drive go work Okay, so today's topic comes from my blog Basically, the question was why do some mechanics get names and some mechanics not get names? What exactly like what what? Criteria gets us to give names to mechanics And so that my friends is what we'll be talking about for the next 30 some minutes. Um, Okay, so before I get into sort of a criteria, let's talk a little bit about the history of naming mechanics So alpha comes out back in 1993 and Richard decided that some mechanics just should have names.

It should be flying. It should be trample. And in Alpha, those mechanics that had names, they were not on the card. It was actually like the rules explained how they work, but they weren't written on the card. A card with flying just said flying on it. You needed to look in the rule book to understand what flying meant. And it soon became clear that some things like flying were kind of intuitive. Maybe people could figure that out. But like trample is a good example where even though trample has some flavor behind it, the idea that you could just see the word trample and any chance of guessing exactly how it worked is the super low. And so they started with the idea of reminder text. We got to start telling you how things work.

So we'll give you a new name and then we'll give you a reminder text. But since we're writing reminder text, the text for the card is already there. And the real question was when is it worth naming it? When is it worth giving a name? And I think early on, we underestimated the value of names. As I've also talked about, early magic, we do blocks, and there would be two named mechanics for the whole year, for the whole block.

Flanking and phasing, buyback and shadow, echo and cycling. Like it was just, and when we would do small sets, we would introduce new things, but we wouldn't name them. They'd be mechanics that were unnamed. And part of it was like, part of it was like our mindset of, oh, we're only introducing so many named mechanics. And I don't know why that was the thing we felt we had to be stingy on.

But eventually we got to be stingy on. But eventually we got to a set called Mercadian Masks. So Mercadian Masks, the lead designer for that set was Mike Elliott. And he made a bunch of mechanics. There was Rebels, there was Mercenaries, there were Spell Shapers. But none of them were given an actual name. Most of them were tied to creature types. And clearly if you look at the cards, there's an ongoing theme.

I mean, there's mechanics there. Rebels searches creatures for one more than the card that's searching for it. Mercenaries search for creatures out of your library, one less than what it is. Spell shapers allow you to discard a card to generate an effect, sort of turning the card in your hand into an effect. And the response we got when Mechania Mask comes out was, well, why don't you guys do any mechanics? Like, there was this high equation between us naming something and it being a new thing.

And I actually had a lot of, I remember at that time I would have conversations with people, you know, I'd be at events and something, and I'd be like, well, is the rebels not a mechanic? Is spell shapers not a mechanic? And a lot of people were like, well, no. It doesn't have a name. And it really sort of hammered home the value of names. That names, let's talk a little bit about why. Why do we even have names?

What are the purposes of names? Names do a couple things. One, they help create vocabulary, which I think, I mean, as a word person, that's super important. If I want to talk about something, it is just so helpful if there's a name for it. For example, after Mercatian Masks, we said, okay, we're going to have a rule that we're just going to make sure that every set has some new name things. Now, it would take us time to get to the realization that we just can name more things.

But we at least said, OK, we're not going to set with no name things in it. But even Invasion, which is the set right after Mercadion Masks, one of the new mechanics in it was what we now refer to as Domain. In design, we called it the very mechanic, because it was what we now refer to as domain. In design, we called it the very mechanic, because it was based off mechanic very, very Reich made. Very Reich is one of the original play testers.

That's the very first person to ever play Magic with Richard. He made a set called Spectral Chaos. Richard had a lot of his play testers design sets. Spectral Chaos didn't exactly get made, but elements of it got absorbed into Invasion. Anyway, one of the things that was in Invasion was Mechanic for Barry that we internally called the Barry Mechanic. And now we refer to it as Domain. Domain, there's scalable effects that count the number of basic land types you have.

So it kind of encourages you to play more basic lands, more different basic lands. But even then, even the year after recreated masks, where we learned the lesson that if you don't name a mechanic, people don't think of it as a mechanic, we still put on mechanics that were clearly, domain was clearly a mechanic, it was on a lot of cards, like it was not a nothing thing. But we still didn't choose to name it. And I think part of that is just like, it really took us a while to warm up to the, the power of names. So anyway, let's finish go through. So number one, it introduces vocabulary.

And what I mean by that is let's say people want to talk about it. Um, one of the big lessons, uh, as a, someone who really studies words is words have a lot of power. That if you don't name something, it's hard to talk about something. So the mere act of taking a concept and giving a name to it just increases the ability of people to talk about it, to discuss it, to think of it as a thing. And that was a lot of the lesson Rikiniaster took us a while to really come to heart, which is part of naming things is it gives an identity to something. It gives it, it allows everybody to talk about it in the

same way. There's a shared language and language is very, very important. There's a lot of concepts that it's not until like one of the things that you'll notice that I did. I was really a bit on lingo, you know what I'm saying? That I wanted to take things and name them and say, okay, a creature that has no text, we're going to call that a vanilla creature and a creature that has just keywords but no other vanilla text. That's a French vanilla creature.

And then it only has the ability to matter for the first turn. It's a virtual vanilla creature. Why was I adding all that vocabulary? Because it allowed us in R&D to talk about it, to discuss it. That once you have a concept of French vanilla, it's language that people now share and use. Once you have the concept of virtual vanilla. So I've been a giant fan of just creating a lot of lingo. And the reason for that lingo is so that A R&D can can discuss it and B I can talk about it with all of you and there's a language for the audience to talk about it Then I want you to talk about the new mechanics. And so

That's a big part just the idea of language and labeling The second thing you can do is it can add flavor a lot of times mechanics can be, I mean, some mechanics are very flavorful, but some mechanics are a little oblique, and that by giving it a name, it helps give it some flavor to what it represents. Another thing that it does is it allows us to then reference

it, mechanically reference it. So for those that don't know, there are two types of mechanics. There are keyword mechanics. Those are mechanics that have a proper name, and that word represents an exact line of text. Instead of writing this particular line of text out many, many times, or well, it's in the reminder text, but we are able to use text that shortens that. That's a keyword mechanic. An ability word is we have a line of text that shortens that that's a keyword mechanic An ability word is we have a line of text that works by itself It doesn't need a label, but as I'm explaining today

There's value in having the word the vocabulary word so we put it in italics before the text an ability word If you wiped it from the card wouldn't change anything the text is the text it's just I mean flavor words are slightly different things, but it's more saying, hey, this is a thing. The other thing about ability words is they don't have to be exact. Let's say, for example, we have something where it has the same input but different outputs. You might want to do ability words because you can't do keywords because it's not exact. But anyway, ability words we can't mechanically reference. If I, like domain for example, even if we finally started labeling it, it's not, it's an ability word, not a keyword mechanic.

So when I put domain on something something I then can't refer to cards that have domain but a card with a mechanic, a card with kicker, a card with landfall, I can refer to it. I can say whenever you a creature with landfall enters the battlefield or enters blah, something happened, the guy can reference it. So in other words, another reason to keyword things is it allows you to reference it. Another value for keywording things is it allows you to reference it. Another value for keywording something is it can save us some space. How?

Don't we have to write the text out in the reminder text? We do. But one of the differences is reminder text does not have to be what we call technical text. And what that means is when we write magic text, we have to, for example, we have digital magic. Our text has to go into a parser, meaning that a computer has to understand the text. And it's not just digital.

Our rule system needs to have what we call parsable text, meaning that the rules have to 100% of the time understand if something works. It can't work most of the time. It can't work 100% of the time understand if something works. It can't work most of the time. It can't work 99% of the time. It can't work 99.9% of the time. It has to always work. And there's a lot of mechanics that end up like in silver boarder cards or acorn cards because they don't technically work all the time.

That doesn't mean that humans can't understand it. Doesn't mean players can't understand it. There's a lot of really fun uncards that like players get. It's just, it doesn't technically, it's not possible in the rules to a hundred percent. And so when you make reminder attacks you can be more vernacular. You can more, all you have to do is describe it since the players get the gist of what happens. Also you All you have to do is describe it since the players get the gist of what happens. Also, you don't have to worry about a lot of small technical things. In a parsable text, you have to explain everything. That there's no additional information.

But when they have reminder text, you get to write the official parsable text in the rules, the comp rules, comprehensive rules. But it doesn't have to be in the reminder text. So sometimes, for example, there's small things that we have to care about because they matter for that 0.1%. But they aren't going to come up in normal gameplay. So we don't bother putting in the reminder text. So when you keyword something and you get reminder text, the reminder text sometimes will be shorter than the parsable text if we didn't

put a keyword on it. So it can, in places, save us space. Also, and part of this is vocabulary, we really want people, when we're showing you a new set, we want people to be excited, right? And that seeing vocabulary words, like I said, it reads as new things. If I give you a mechanic, even if I give you a mechanic that we've done before, but now I put a word on it,

and we do that from time to time. Flurry in Tarker is a good example. We do second spell matters all the time. That's not a new thing. But we decided to name it in, sorry, Tarker Dragonstorm. And by naming it, they just created some excitement, sorry, Tarkin Dragonstorm. And by naming it, it just created some excitement, even though it's not a new theme.

We've done the theme before. It's just a named version of it. There is some impact on this naming thing. Now, we don't name everything, and that's kind of the goal of today's thing is, so real quick, let me finish my little history lesson is, after McKinney Mast, we had a rule that said, okay, you must name something. And then as time went on, we started going from you must name something to you should name most things. And kind of what happens

is the interesting thing is we kind of have an informal rule about how many named keywords we want And it can vary Usually these days the smallest number of named keywords we would have is Three and know when I'm saying named keywords. I am counting bringing back keywords as a main keyword We started doing what we call cameos real quick Cameos are for a long time when we bring back a mechanic that wasn't a main mechanic of the set. Oh we're gonna have one car that is essentially what is landfall. When a land enters it's going to trigger. For a long time we said you know what okay it's not a set with landfall we shouldn't name one car to landfall because maybe it implies there's more

landfall cars and so we wouldn't name it. But then the people are like, it's landfall. Why are you calling it landfall? So eventually we got to the philosophy. After we watched in the commander decks, we started doing a lot of cameoing commander decks and it just went over really well. And we're like, you know, if we're going to do things and we don't cameo at low rarities, usually it's rare mythic rare. And usually it's from a subset of mechanics that people tend to know well. is usually it's rare, mythic, rare. And usually it's from a subset of mechanics that people tend to know well.

Kicker, cycling, landfall, flashback, because some of our greatest hits. We made a lot of them deciduous. And we're like, OK, we can cam it. We do occasionally came here with something that's not quote unquote deciduous, in the sense that, oh, here's a fun mechanic. When we pick something that is not deciduous,

we want to make sure that its reminder text is very clean and simple, meaning we tend not to cameo like mutate is not the kind of mechanic we're going to cameo. It's a very complex mechanic. It requires a lot to understand it. And so it is not something we'll just go, well, we'll just throw one in. The reminder text, you know, it's a very complex mechanic. So Anyway, uh, so the fewest we wanted to set these days is three and the most we tend to do is I'll say six There might be one or two rare examples where we go over six. So though Three to six is rough. Like roughly we want a certain number of words

to introduce now that's not Mostly it is counting returning mechanics that play a major role. So if we bring back Kicker and Kicker is on 20 cards, yeah Kicker is one of our three to six mechanics for the set. If we have one card at rare that has Kicker and it's the only one that does it, that's just a cameo. We don't count that as sort of one of our name mechanics for the set. So roughly we usually have about three to six. So sometimes the reason we don't name things, it's just a matter of we kind of hit a limit and we're like, well, we don't want an over button.

Sometimes you have too much language that can get in the way. So we find there's a sweet spot. Two was too small. The early days of Magic just, domain should have had a name on it, stuff like that. Things that are a major player in the set. Okay, so what gets a name and what doesn't get a name? A couple things. First, novelty.

Meaning, is this something brand new we're doing? Like one of the reasons you give names is to get attention to something. Things that have names get more eyeballs on it, get more discussion. So if we're doing something that we want eyeballs on, if there's something that's more novel, like one of the things when we talk about our three to six name mechanics, usually we want something that we refer to as splash, right? We want something that we'll preview and people go, oh my goodness. And usually splash is something newer. It's usually something where you haven't seen this before.

Sometimes it's something you have seen but done in a new way, or sometimes it's splash because we have a new frame treatment, or there's something about it that draws your eye. It might be the nature of the mechanic in the vacuum. It might be treatments of the, you know. Like sometimes, for example, we'll do something we've done before, but we'll come up with a new frame and just it feels fresh in a way that's just

different than what we've done before. So if we want things to get attention to then we name them. Usually if there are a certain volume we name them. Like if something shows up on five cards, we could name them. We've done some name mechanics on five cards. We don't feel obligated to name it We do it on 20 cards. Okay, that's a pretty major mechanic of set. Yeah, we're probably going to name that so the volume matters Also sort of the complexity matter like like I said, there's some there are some cards that having it be Keyworded is helpful to us There are some cards that having it be keyworded is helpful to us. Because it allows that like we're doing something on the complex side. Okay, we don't really want to write, we don't want to write parsable text.

It's complex. We want to write understandable text and then in the comp rules we'll write parsable text. And sometimes the parsable text won't even fit on the card. There's a lot of like narrow end cases that to get to 100% for rules we have to explain but we don't want to explain that on the card. Giving a keyword allows us to do that. Another thing is are other cards mechanically referencing this card? For example, when we introduce a new subtype one of the internal rules we do subtypes are we tend not to introduce subtypes unless a card cares mechanically about the subtype. So when we made curses in original Innistrad, we actually made I think two cards that interacted with curses.

We had a witch that died and you gave a curse to your library and gave a curse to your partner. I think that's Innistrad. Anyway, we made two cards that cared about curses, so that it mattered that it had a name on it, because there's things that mechanically care about it. So if there's things that mechanically care, that's also something that we will have to name it. And the other thing sometimes is just, is there a flavor point? Is there a story point?

Sometimes we're like, oh, we want to reference something. And so we'll name it because we want it to be something that the story then can bring up and make reference to. So let's talk about what doesn't get named. Because obviously, the high profile shows up on a lot of cards, yeah, that stuff gets named. But a very common thing we don't name is we're making an archetype.

So it's a two-color archetype. And we want to give it a theme in limited. So what we're doing is we're giving mechanics. Doesn't tend to show on high rarities. It's not on a lot of cards. It's kind of on just enough cards that we can give enough glue to that archetype to make that archetype have a mechanical cohesion to it.

Sometimes that's something. There are certain effects we go to all the time. Second spell, I mentioned earlier. That's a very common one. There's just certain effects. Cast casting a non-creature spell is one we go to sometimes. Caring about artifacts or enchantments. There's just different common wells that we go to.

And if we're doing something that is a theme we've done before that we don't think is super novel, it's just it's. So once again, we have splash mechanics. We also have what we call workhorse mechanics and what a workhorse mechanic means is look There's nothing special about it's not gonna excite anybody But it leaves a good gameplay that it just enables good gameplay and that magic sense need workhorse mechanics If the worst work mechanic is big enough then yeah, yeah, we will name it But sometimes if it's small enough, it's not on a lot of cars and it's

mostly just kind of giving definition to an archetype, that's when we start, we start questioning, okay, do we mean like, uh, uh, Bloomberg is a good example where we had a bunch of different mechanics and when we handed it over, a lot of those mechanics, a lot of the archetypal mechanics were there, but we didn't name it. And it's just a matter of, hey, does the name help? And for the sake of Bloomberg, I think one of the reasons they named it like Forage and stuff is, oh, we want to give a little more animal feel to it. Some of these mechanics in a vacuum don't necessarily capture the animaless of it. By giving

it a name, you sort of, oh, see, get it? They're foraging for their food, you know? Then it starts giving some, it takes a mechanic that maybe doesn't quite, like the connection to the flavor is light, and by giving it the word, you add that in. So part of it is just a matter of where is it enhanced to name them and where it is not. And like I said, it is very common when we're building archetypes to have just a linking. We want to care about power four. Whatever it is that's the common thing to care about,

it's just a matter of when do we call forth and when do we want to pay attention to that. Now, I would say most of those mechanics that we go to, most of our sort of go-to limited referencing type things like second spell, like power four, most of those at some point we haven't had given a name to. Second spell is flurry, Power 4 is Ferocious. There comes a point where we do a set and we do it in large enough volume that we decide to name it. We still have not got to the point. So let me talk a little bit about vocabulary overrun. So one of the things you say is, okay, once we name things, second spell is now Flurry. Why doesn't everything

that ever refers to a second spell just say flurry on it? And the answer is, part of giving definition to magic is there's only so many things that magic, like there's only so many effects that magic does. If we want to talk about tying into something, yeah, maybe we're doing a brand new thing that the set's doing, maybe we can tie into that. But most of the time, the vast majority of your archetypes

are mechanically tying something that just happens in most Magic games. Only because there's only so many new things, like in any one set, maybe we introduce one new thing. You maybe, oh, okay, normally you don't care about this, but not in this set you care about this. Okay, we can do that, but usually there's like one new thing we introduce that's a new element you're not used to.

So most of the archetypes have to be, hey, hey just normal magic does this I want to care about attacking Well, no magic you attack. I want to care about having big creatures. Well, no magic is big creatures I want to care about casting certain spells Well, you know not my creatures don't most have some not good spells are I want to care about creatures I think you care about something that matters So over time we're gonna name everything because there'll just be a point where oh, it's enough volume. We care about something that matters. So over time, we're gonna name everything. Cause there'll just be a point where, oh, it's enough volume, we care about it.

We're just raising the bar in this one set. So the idea is everything has a name to it, pretty much. 30 years in, everything has a name. So if every time we made a mechanic where we'd ever named it, it just would be an overrun of vocabulary. And the thing to remember is, when somebody new comes to the game, I talk a lot about barrier to entry.

What barrier to entry means, how hard is it to go from nothing to playing? That is the hardest jump in Magic. I know nothing, I now know enough that I can play a game of Magic. That is a pretty big leap. And there's a couple of things we know that make that leap harder, one of which is vocabulary. Now, obviously, the more intuitive it is, flying has very, very little resistance when you're learning how to play. Because flying, you learn what flying does, you go, oh, that's just what I expect flying to do. OK, I get it.

But something like vigilance is a good example. So vigilance is the ability that you don't have to attack. We spent lots and lots of time trying to come up with a word that implied that. And what we finally learned is, well, it isn't a thing. It's a game action. Not like flying, actual flying up in the air. OK, there's birds in real life that fly. That's a thing, like it's a game action. Not like flying, actual flying up in the air. Okay, there's birds in real life that fly.

That's a thing. And even though it's a game action means the kind of invasion, it mimics something in real life. In real life, things can fly, you know, if a bird flies, I can't stop a bird, it's up in the air. So the idea of flying is invasion, even though it's something that's game specific has relevance outside the game But vigilance the idea I don't tap to attack. What does that mean? Like what is what's the flavor that I tap to attack me? Obviously I'm using it

But there's no great parallel and so the point is there was no word We came up with other words when I there's no word that I could show you to a new magic plane you go oh I guess that doesn't means it doesn't tap when it attacks because that concept is that you have to learn that in the game of magic things tap and when you attack you have to tap your creature to show you're using it like you have to learn that and so there's no it's very hard to create so vigilance no matter what we do you're going to learn the word vigilance it's a thing you have to learn because that word is not going to mean anything to you. And they're like, flying is the best example of very little resistance.

The second you see flying, it's the kind of mechanic review and you had to guess what it did. There's a decent chance you would just guess what it did correctly. Then there's stuff like trample where I might get the gist of what's going on. I'm not going to get the details, but I might get the general gist. First Strike, you know, okay, the name First Strike, maybe I can figure out what that does. It does describe what's going on. And so anyway, the idea is when you come to play a game of magic, there's a lot going on.

I have to learn rules. I've learned a whole bunch of rules. And part of learning those rules is the vocabulary. Another big part is symbols. Symbols are harder than words because symbols don't mean anything in the vacuum. Words at least mean something. Meaning if I read a word and I know what that word means, I at least feel like, oh, I know something about it. I know what flying is. Okay, maybe I don't know exactly exactly what mechanic does, but at least I understand what it's representing. Where a symbol usually is a lot harder. That's why you'll notice we're very careful on our symbols. We have the five mana symbols. We have a color

symbol. We have generic symbol. We have tap symbol. Every once in a while, we make an energy symbol. We do and every once in a while, we make an energy symbol. We do symbols every once in a while, but we're very careful. Symbols are even more, have even more resistance to them than words. But the idea essentially is we want to be careful. While we have, finally, the reason we eventually started with cameos in naming things rather than not naming them was there was creating some conflict. We do make cards that reference things.

Like, we'll make cards that care about Kicker. Oh, when you kick a card. Well, if we make a card that's like Kicker but we don't call it Kicker, it doesn't work. And so part of it just was some consolidation. And the rare and mythic cards on some level are more for the franchise player. I talked about, if you ever listen, I did a whole podcast on New World Order. One of the concepts behind New World Order is that commons are, when you open up a magic pack, the vast majority of the cards you see are

commons. So if you're a beginning player and you haven't opened that much, you really are mostly exposed to commons. You see some on commons if you're a beginning player and you haven't opened that much, you really are mostly exposed to comments. You see some uncommons, you see a few rares, maybe a couple of mythic rares, but you're not going to see those in the volume, you'll see the comments. So a lot of what we try to do is make sure that the comments, and to some level the uncommons, carry the weight for the beginners. And the idea is, look, the developers only see so many rares and mythic rares, and so we can more air that to the franchise player. So because rares and mythic rares are more from franchise player, we decided to do the cameos and just name them. It makes

the franchise player much happier if the card is landfall that says landfall on it. So that is why cameos started then getting names again, where it didn't for a while. And the other thing about deciduous is, as we start using, I mean, there's a balance. One of the things that also we go back and forth on is, how many evergreen words should we have? What is evergreen?

What's not? What's deciduous? And it's not if there's an exact sign. It's not like we go, we get eight evergreen keywords and that is it. You know, oh, if we want to add a ninth one, we got to remove one. It's not exactly that. But there's sort of kind of a feel to it. There's a big cost to adding an evergreen mechanic. And we from time to time go through and go, you know what, are we really using this mechanic? And we'll pull stuff out of evergreen. We don't think it's being useful enough.

And so hopefully today, I'm almost at work here, a lot of what I'm trying to say is that words have power. Words have usage. Words can accomplish a lot. There's a lot you can do with words. But there is a cost that comes with words. And that is it is something that someone who doesn't know it have to learn.

And so we want to have a balance between using new words and not, or reusing words and not. And that, like I said, it just comes down a lot to, we know that too little is a problem, getting math. We know too much can be a problem. These are to overwhelm people. So my example there is in time spiral, we decided to bring back a lot of mechanics.

And then in future site, even more so. And the little statistic I want to give is I counted up the number of mechanics in future site. Then I counted up the number of mechanics in FutureSight. Then I counted up the number of mechanics in existence before FutureSight. And I believe the number of mechanics in existence before FutureSight is merely like within five of the number of mechanics in FutureSight. And FutureSight really taught us the lesson of, look, you can overwhelm people. Times Row block in general, for those that haven't heard the story, there's a lot of metrics we pay attention to.

And one of the metrics we watch is sanction play and sales. Those are the two things we look at. And normally, up before TimesPyro, if sanction play was good, sales were good. Sanction Play was good, sales were good. So if Sanction Play was up, sales were up. Then TimeSpiral came out, and Sanction Play was up, but sales were down. And we're like, what is going on? This has never happened before. And that's when we discovered what we call the invisibles, which is there are a lot of

players that we can't measure. The players we can measure are the more enfranchised players. They're playing in Sanction Play. They're playing on digital. They're playing in places we can't measure. The players we can measure are the more enfranchised players. They're playing in sanctioned play, they're playing on digital, they're playing in places we can see. But it turns out that time spiral block had the exact problem we're talking about. It overwhelmed the newer player. The less enfranchised got overwhelmed. There was too much vocabulary. They could not handle it. So they just stopped buying it. And it was a really interesting lesson for us of

understanding that complexity comes at a cost likewise in Lorwin We were messing around with having This was on me. Lorwin had a species typo. It cared about goblins and elves and merfolk and such. And then Morningtide had class. It cared about wizards and soldiers and the the matrix that you would attract playing

Lorwyn Morningtide limited of this card enhances wizards and this card enhances elves. So my elf gets this bonus and my goblin wizards get bonus, but my elf wizard gets that bonus. It gets both bonuses. It just wasn't too much. And it led to the creation of the New World Order. Matt Place and I sort of were watching people not at the employee pre-release for Morning Tide just not able to handle what was going on. So Morning Tide, Future of Sightlifes, there is cases of us where we go too high, where

there's too much. There is a point where you overextend people and they cause problems. But Mercatian Math shows there is a point where you're not... There are extremes both of which cause problems. And so a lot of what we try to do now is say names are useful, names have purpose, let's be careful when and where we use names and we're definitely more we will err nowadays to using a name versus not using a name if we're unsure we're more likely to use a name than not interestingly even though I use the exact opposite example of Bloomberg more often than not

we will handle stuff with vision with extra vocabulary saying to them we're going to label this so you can see it on the cards but you might decide to unlabel it maybe you go ah this is mundane enough you know it's an archetype but it's kind of mundane enough it's not sexy it's not adding flavor you know maybe we don't need maybe we don't need to to keyword this or name it that that was the keyword. So anyway guys, that hopefully answers the question of why and how we name mechanics. I hope that was of value to you. But anyway, I'm literally parking in the parking lot.

So we all know what that means. 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 all next time. Bye-bye.