Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1267: State of Design 2025

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Every year, I write a "State of Design" column where I talk about how I feel the last year of Magic design went. This year's column starts with Bloomburrow and goes through Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™. With six sets to talk about, I ended up having a pretty lengthy article, so I made a supplementary podcast where I walk through every new mechanic to give my thoughts on how they went.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay. So very recently, I posted my state of design, 2025. It's actually my 20th state of design. So when I became head designer back in 2003, but it's very end, 2003. So it wasn't until a couple years later that the first set that I worked on that I oversaw as head designer came out. And what I started doing is every year, I go through the year, and I look at all the sets of that year. As we make more things now, it's mostly just randomized boosters. And I talk through how I felt the year when. I get feedback from everybody. I sort of talk about the main complaints we heard.

And I talk about what I think the good and bad of each of the sets that we did, the main sets that we did. But because there are so many sets to talk about, I have less time to discuss each thing. And while I give a lot of opportunity to sort of express how people felt about it, there's less chance for me, just as the designer, as head designer, to sort of talk through lessons and how we felt about different mechanics and such. And so, what I did last year is I did a state of design podcast where I supplemented my state of design article.

So that is what I'm doing today. my state of design, 2025 additional. So the idea is I'm not going to explain the stuff I'm explaining the article. That I'm explaining in the article. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through all the new mechanics that came out in the last year and sort of explain, from a design standpoint, what we think of them. That is what I'm doing today. Hopefully, that sounds like fun.

Okay, so we're going to start with Bloomberg, because that's where we started in the state of design. So I will start with Offspring. So Offspring is an additional cost you can pay. It goes on creatures, and then you get to make a one-one copy of the creature. Obviously, it's flavored as, you know, little baby animals. That's the animal set. The idea of making little baby animals to go with the animals was too cute not to do. The Austin Mechanic was pretty popular.

The real lesson from a design standpoint is it is hard to use. not because the core mechanics at all are a problem. This wasn't a challenge rules-wise. We could make token copies, making things one-one is fine. The interesting, there were two challenges to this side. Here's the biggest one. In order to do offspring, that means each creature gets a unique token. And so there is a commitment and art commitment to doing that.

That we have to say, okay, we're going to do a mechanic that dictates token, and then we have to make sure we one-for-one do the tokens. We did it before within BOM. It's a big ask. It is one of the things that you guys don't get to see so much is behind the scenes, every set has an allocation of money. Like, there's a budget, and then we have so much what I'll call discretionary money, right?

Like every set gets to do something that's unique for that set. And offspring chewed up a lot of this budget, which was we needed a lot of art. We needed to use it for art so we can have a very. the tokens. I'm not unhappy we did. I think it was a good use of the money. But it does mean that Offspring as a mechanic is not that easy to just throw in a set. It comes with the real cost. It's kind of like double-faced cards or there's just certain mechanics that like come with an additional cost. And as people who make the set, we have to be very aware

of that. The other thing, the other interesting side effect of offspring is because of the flavor, because it's a little tiny baby animals, we actually had to pull a sacrifice theme out of the set because the best thing to do with the sacrifice theme is sacrifice your small tokens. What are your small tokens? Well, a lot of them are these one-one offspring tokens. And the idea of, oh, the whole strategy is sacrificing baby animals

like just, it didn't work, right? It really fought the whole flavor we were going at for the world. So the other thing about offspring is it has some, you know, it's very flavorful. Um, but it, it does dictate some stuff around it. Um, the other thing, by the way, is, it is, it was very flavorful in where we used it. Um, not that the concept of offspring can't show up other places, but the idea that there's some uniqueness and unique little things. Like, it worked well in a faction set with animals because we can make a lot of little baby animals. That was very cute. Um, so my, my note in offspring is one of, I generally liked the mechanic. I think it played well. I think we, there's a lot of fun design space with it. Um, um, But it's a little bit harder to use than you might think at first blush. Next, gift. So gift is an interesting mechanic.

Gift is often what we think of as a drawback mechanic, right? Well, I get to do something. I don't normally get to do, but there's a drawback. And the drawback with gift is, I have to give something to my opponent. Interesting. The most interesting thing about gift was that the place it ended up seeing the most play was in Commander. I mean, you play didn't limit it, obviously. And the reason it was interesting in Commander is

giving somebody a gift isn't inherently downside in Commander. That Commander is very much about politics. And the idea that I do something for you means, oh, I might get a reward later, or I put you, you know, like, it really helps with the politics of Commander. And so GIF, something that in normal two players, kind of a downside, isn't necessarily a downside. So the real interesting story of GIFT for us is,

because, you know, when we make our standard sets, obviously we're making things to play in standard, but we want to be aware of other formats, especially Commander, as it's the number one played tabletop format. And so the idea, like, GIFT was a really interesting lesson of us is you have to view things through the lens of the different formats. And GIFT was really interesting. So I'm hoping that we can find more things like GIFT,

where they have a lot of flavor, like GIFT was very flavorful. It worked fine. in two-player, and obviously limited. There's plenty of gift-giving. But, like I said, it got a chance to shine somewhere else, and that's fun to find, especially in commanding, like I said, because so many people play it. Next up is Valiant.

So Valiant was kind of a fixed heroic. Heroic first showed up in Theros. Heroic basically said, if I'm the target of a spell, something. Vali just sort of broadened it out instead of a spell or ability. I think that

we were worried about abilities being able to be too easy. But the reality was heroic ended up being a little bit hard. Having to actually target with an actual spell is difficult. I mean, obviously, Theros had an aura theme that helped it. But

anyway, I like to think that Valiant is, I mean, I love the word heroic, and not the heroic in a vacuum doesn't have some uses. But I think Valiant is a slightly easier to use and design around heroic. So I do think we'll use Valiant

again. It is much like offspring has some structural challenges. Valiant is like helpful structurally. I mean, it does want you to be targeting things. So it does ask something on the stat. But

a lot of magic sets want to be doing that. And the idea that you can then do it with abilities as well as spells means just the weight that you have to have doesn't need to quite as high. So I do think we'll see Valiant again. expend Expend was a mechanic

that cared about you casting a certain level of mana like a certain mana value spell and I do think the idea like we care a lot about color or we don't care a lot about color we can care about color we can care about card type

I think manna value is something that we're spending more time and energy it's something inherent to the cards it's something you can track and the industry thing about manna value is you can gate it by time to a certain extent. Like if I care about casting something with a man of value of four, well, that's just not happening early.

I have to get to, you know, four mana before I can do that. And even with a, you know, Landau or El or something, okay, we're trying to turn three at best. So I do think we'll do more with man and value. I think expend with playing an interesting space that we'll do more with. Forage. So Forage was using graveyard, it's a graveyard resource mechanic, where you can forge and you get an extra.

Excel and cards for your graveyard. The interesting thing was, or you could sacrifice a food. The idea that it's a mechanic that involved food in the mechanic, which we, I mean, we have a mechanic investigate that makes clues, but the idea that a mechanic baked into it allows you to use one of our core tokens was really interesting. Obviously, we named it's forage.

I mean, it is, I don't think forage is, like, generally useful. I think Valentin Expand, both have much more general use to them than Forage. So I think Forage is a little bit narrower. But I like the general thought process of tying in. Like, we've learned more and more that the sets having a sort of token, whether it be treasure or food or clues or whatever. There's a lot of rewards you can get from that. There's a lot of cool things that you can build in. It helps you do a lot of, like, archetypal work.

So having something that actually ties directly into that, I think is neat. I think it's something we will probably mess around with again. And it was super flavorful. Okay. Once again, I'm just doing the new mechanics. Yes, stuff like threshold was in Bloomberg, but I'm just doing new mechanics.

Okay, Dusk Mourne. Okay, this first thing is not a mechanic, but I'll mention it quickly. Enchantment matters. I look back. So one of the things that's happened over time is artifacts and enchantments both exist that they go back to the beginning of magic

every set has them we've just done a lot more artifact sets than we've done enchantment sets and I think that's because the flavor of artifacts is just easier. Artifacts are things you know they're tangible things and so it's a little bit easier like oh it's a it's a world

where there's technology or something that I can make actual tangible things out of I think enchantments are definitely something that we need to be tapping into more. I think enchantments have just as much weight as artifacts. Yet the imbalance between artifact sets

and enchantment sets is pretty high. So I do, I'm happy that we did Enchantment Matters in Dusk-Morne. I think the idea of modern horror having tone matter was really good because that's when Chamon's does best

is non-tangible things. So like moods and tones and things that sort of have a a sense to them without actually being tangible. And I think horror films do that pretty well. So I was very happy we used it. I think it did a pretty good job. Rooms.

So Rooms was our big swing. So basically, when we make mechanics, there is a spectrum that we talk about. At one end is what we'll call Splashy. And the other hand is what we call Workhorse. Splashy means when you see it, you're like, whoa, what's that? And Workhorse is, okay.

okay, no one's getting excited by this, but it does good work and it makes us at work. Mechanics tend to start more on the splashy side if they do something you've never seen before, and they start more on the Workhorse side, if it's just, well, yeah, yeah, it's a new kind of kicker. It's not technically a kicker, but you've seen kicker. So, like, offspring, while cute, wasn't particularly novel from a mechanical standpoint. You've seen squad, like we've done things like it. And while it's very flavorful, which is why I think people liked it, it wasn't going, wow, I can't believe you did that.

It was more like, oh, gee, that's cute. Rooms are about as splashy as you got. Usually splashy these days involve frame changes or just involving some element that we've just never involved before. You know, rooms definitely took something we've dipped our toe into. You know, we've done two-and-one cards and other places, flip cards, adventures, and such. but it's a really novel thing

the idea of unlocking them the idea that I play half the other one sits and I still have access to it rooms ended up being very novel very splashy I'm happy we did them we spent a lot a lot of time on them

I do think rooms have a decent amount of design space left but they really they're not easy to design when I say they're design space left that's not equivalent to easy to design things can have a lot of design

space and be harder design or have a lot of design space to ease design. Or I guess if you don't have a lot of design space, it's harder design that you don't have a lot of design space. But rooms do have a lot of flexibility. They're flavorful. I mean, other worlds have rooms. I mean, you kind of want something where an interior means something. But I do think I really liked it. It went over well with players. I think they're pretty exciting. I think the second time we use them will still actually be somewhat splashy. They're pretty high on the splash meter. So I was generally happy. I think there are definitely some lessons we learned in

how to make good rooms. One of the big lessons is the idea of having a cheap room in an expensive room where you have some sort of play pattern that you follow ended up being a little better for us. We can make some rooms where there's both cheap or both expensive, but the sweets spot of room design was, one's a little cheaper than the other, so you tend to play one before you play the other, and that we could set up sequential stuff, which is

fun. Next, Eerie. So, Eerie is whatever enchantment or room is unlocked. Very narrow. Not that not, I mean, I think it had a role in the set. You know, when enchantment matters is something,

you want a mechanic that really cares about that. The idea of tying in rooms to it. I mean, The biggest danger of something like that is it really locks it here. It is hard for us to make Erie. Like, in order to make Erie in another set, I have to have rooms in the set. I have to have Enchantment Matters be a core thing. And on some level, the word Erie needs to mean something.

So probably it needs a little bit of horror. So I think Erie was much more what we call Workhorse. You know, it was, it got the job done. It made you care. it's a little I mean because we had rooms maybe it didn't need to be any splashier it's a little light on the splashy side

and the interesting question of adding rooms into it like one of the things you always look at is how specific do you get and this one said okay I'm building the set I need this tool I'm just going to make a very very

prescriptive tool which means it works here and it's not going to work many other places I think we get to do a little bit of that but we've got to be careful with it Manifest Red This is my either big favorite of this in Rooms

I think are my two big big successes Manifest Red is us doing something that we don't do all that often which is sort of take an old mechanic and retool it We'd made Manifest and Fate were Forged I think conceptually

It was really neat idea It was designed as like proto-morph And the idea is I can turn any card In my deck into a morph card And then certain cards can turn up like creatures and such. And it played nice with morph and stuff like that.

The problem was the dream of what happened just wasn't happening enough. And so I like the idea that Manifest Red sort of says, okay, we're going to take what's fun about Manifest and we're going to add another component to it to just make it happen more. Like, this is a fun mechanic

where the fun part just doesn't happen enough. And so I like the idea that we went in and we did it. I think Manifist Red, But I was pretty happy with how Manifist Red plays. As I noted last year, I think, in retrospect, I wish Murders of Carlyle of Manor hadn't done, they did their version of Manifest, and I just don't think we needed two manifest versions, and I think this is the better Manifest version, A, because it ties into the old one in a cleaner way,

and B, this set needed it way more than I believe Murders of Carlinner needed it. So I kind of wish we had just done this and not done that. The last mechanic is survival, beginning of your main phase, second main phase, if this is untapped or no, tapped. This is tapped or untapped. I think you're trying to get the things tapped. Or maybe you want them untapped or try to me. Or maybe if it's untapped.

I think it's triggered if it's untapped. But anyway, this is the mechanic. The facts that I probably remember exactly what it does is kind of a sign that I think that one of my notes and I said this in my article is I think Dustborn had just a little bit too much in it a little bit too stuffed.

I'm not, survival is the one that I'm least sure was holding its weight. I think if I had to do it over again, I would question, maybe we write that on a couple cards. I don't know if we need a whole mechanic for survival. I get what's going on. I understand the need to represent the idea. of survivors and stuff and

but it is definitely the weakest of the mechanics and if I was going to pull something it is what I would pull. Foundations had no new mechanics so I will skip that. Either drift, start your engines. So this is interesting.

I think the idea of speed is a very interesting concept and the idea that I slowly build up over time. I like that it's very organic to the gameplay, meaning combat is a core part of what it is and so it's not asking you to step away from the game like sometimes we make mini-game sort of things where it's like stop playing your game and do this other

thing this doesn't do that this is like well continue to win the game but why you're doing that you now have a goal uh and i do like that it incentivizes you to attack in places that maybe you wouldn't i like that there's a little bit of aggression i like um much like morbid it creates this environment where sometimes someone attacks in what seems like a bad attack in a normal magic when someone leads into a bad attack you know, they're, look, they have a giant growth

or they're bluffing, you know, they're at least trying to bluff a giant growth. But with morbid or with start your engines, sometimes it's like, oh, maybe they're just trying to do this thing, you know, maybe they want me to kill it with morbid or maybe they just want to get through.

Like, it really makes you reevaluate what's going on and think about things. Anyway, I do that the naming of Structure Engines is very specific. I don't know. Like, one of the interesting questions is how often do we want to do mechanics that are kind of consults us out of a game piece? I know you can do Stringengines. The game piece reminder is pretty light.

You know, it's not like the ring or something. But the question is sort of how often can we sort of have you play the mini game, if you will? I think the answer is not zero because there's design space. there and there's some interesting things. And so I generally like where start your engines. I like how it played. I know it did a lot more unlimited than it constructed.

Yeah, I don't know. It adds some fun texture. I like what it did for limited especially. I do think we could mess around with speed without necessarily messing around with start your engines per se.

I think that those two components don't have to be tied together. So there's something here that's salvageable, but, yeah, it didn't quite succeed as much as I hoped, but I do think there's something cool about it. Saddle, technically Saddle first showed up in Outlaws Thunder Junction. It was created here and then used in Outlaws'L Thunder Junction. I generally like what Saddle does. I like this solution to mounts, which really is. is let's just make a crew varied sort of that works on creatures.

And I do like how we played. I like the design space. Definitely something we'll come back to. Exhaust. I like the idea we finally named once per game actions. I like the word exhaust. That the exhaust made a lot of sense in a racing set, but also makes that outside a racing set so that naming is really good.

And I just generally, I think once per game effects are really powerful. I think we'll use them again. Tarkere Dragon Storm, Behold. I mean, we've used Behold before. We finally named it. So I have to have this thing or be on the battlefield in my hand. Behold is really nice when we have something that's more expensive dragons being a great example. It's neat in that it allows you to do them without necessarily having to have the thing in play, which I like that.

And so I like the word Behold. I think we'll find other places to use Behold. So I definitely think Beholds has a good chance becoming deciduous. Endur. So, Endur is a variant of Fabricate from Kaladesh. Endur N means you get N plus one plus one counters on this creature. A creature gets endure. Or you can make an NN creature.

So the idea is, Endur 2, I get 2 plus 1 plus 1 counters or I get a 2-2. I think this fix. One of the problems with Fabricate was it was really hard to design. that the band where it's the right creature and that I have an honest choice between the plus one plus counters and the creature the individual creatures were so valuable that it was hard to get people

to pull the plus one plus counters on and additional creatures come up with the board and stuff and so this was a nice answer to sort of make the two a little closer to each other and avoid a lot of the board stuff so I think this is a nice clean fix for Fabricate my gut is we will use in Durr again Flurry is us finally naming second spell.

We do it all the time. I don't know how often we'll actually call it Flurry. I think we will when there's like a faction mechanic or something. I don't think we're going to do it on a regular basis just because it adds words that don't add a lot of value to me. I'm glad we finally named it just because I think it's worthy of being a faction mechanic and it kind of need to be named to do that. Harmonize.

So harmonize is a flashback variant with the added value of you can tap a creature to use its, I think it's power, power toughness, to reduce the spell, the flashback cost. So the idea essentially is, we were looking for a flashback variant that you want to play in a deck full of large creatures,

which was a daunting challenge. I think Harmonized did a good job of being that. I generally like a harmonized played. It is one of those mechanics that is, it solves a very specific problem, and I don't know how many sets will have that specific problem. But I do like the idea of a flashback variant that's more conscious about creatures.

So I do like that. I mean, what we've learned is flashback is really cool. We tend to do flashback variants. I mean, we do flashback, but we also do flashback variants. And so just finding different ways to do flashback is neat. And I like the tie to creatures. I think it actually plays really nice. Mobilize.

I really liked mobileize. So mobilize. Mobilize N. You make N plus one plus one on the counters that are like red warriors. And then at end your turn, I think you suck. sacrifice them. And they go away. I think you second place them. The idea there is that you get sort of, and they have haste. So you have temporary attackers. In fact, I think they, I think they have to attack. When you attack, you make these one-one creatures that have haste and are

have to attack. And they join attacking. So I like the value. I like the idea of tokens that mean something, but they're not just things sitting on the board. They kind of have this free attack value. Often you're scared of attacking with your 1-1 just because you want them to die. Here's like, where they're going to go away anyway, and you're forced to attack with them. So I like the idea of sort of taking what can be fun and just kind of

forcing it, which I think is kind of neat. We tried a lot of things with mobilized. Originally, they had menace, the tokens, and in the end, we found the simplest version of it was clean. We will use mobilize again. It's a very nice mechanic. It's a good agro mechanic, so I did like that.

Renew was a new ability word we use on cards in the graveyard that you could spend from the graveyard you can exile the card for the graveyard to generate an effect, usually not the same effect as a spell for that flashback, but generate an additional effect. There is some question whether we were supposed

to do harmonize and renew in the same set. They're both playing, I mean, they're different, but our graveyard's a little more, normally we have less things, you know, we have one mechanic of kids about the graveyard if we're not a really heavy graveyard set, which this ended up maybe being because we had two things

I think Renew is like Flurry. We do that all the time. Maybe it makes sense to name it in a place where we want to point attention to it. But like Flurry, I just don't think we're going to use Renew most of the time. But it's in our back pocket. If we need a word, now we have a word for it. Okay. And we finally get to Final Fantasy.

Let's start with Saga Creatures. Big hit. I think this was a... One of the things that Universe is Beyond sets are trying to do. do is they want to capture the flavor of what they're doing. And so I think the idea of creatures that come to your aid, but there's a limited amount of time you get them, was just the perfect answer. And, I mean, saga creatures are definitely in our bag of tricks now, and we, you know,

or our toolbox, whatever metaphor I want to use, we will definitely make use of them again. I think they were, they were very well received, people liked them, and it's interesting. we did vanishing slash fading many years ago and that never really went well people didn't like it it felt too negative to them but it's interesting that we make a make a you know make a saga out of it and grant you small abilities along the way and people like it so it's a good example of presentation matters like drawback mechanics can be fun but wow people really want the flavor reason of why their drawback mechanics. And so part of our job is to find those.

The tiered is a mechanic kind of like Outlaws of Thunder Junction had Spree. The difference between Spree and Tiered is tiered. You can only choose one. Where spree you can choose as many as you want. But the idea

is it's got a kicker. You can choose which kicker you want. Each kicker can have its own cost. In some way it's funny. Tierd and spree are playing in the same space. I guess from a design standpoint, maybe the correct answer for us was maybe we should have come up with terminology

that connected them so that we could use them. I'm not a fan of making them learn two vocabulary words when they're so close to each other. Now, I will say these are ability words. Or are they ability words? Maybe they're not ability words. I guess it's a key word.

But anyway, they're pretty straightforward what they do. But I do like, mechanically, I like it a lot. I like the idea of kicker with choice. Choice is a great mechanic. Kickers is a great mechanic. Well, combining them obviously really good.

The other thing we did is job select. So job select, we've done things like this before. The idea is it's equipment that makes its own token. In this case, it made a 1-1 hero. So I like equipment that attaches. One of the problems with equipment in general, is it eats up non-creature slots, but if you can use a mechanic like this

or for Mirrodin or a living weapon, you can use something in which the equipment gets to go in a creature slot, it just makes it a lot easier for people to play them, and they just get played more. I don't know whether at some point we'll make a generic version of this. We keep making very...

For Mirrodin, it very much says, hey, I'm a rebel on Mirrodin. So that's not something you can use in a lot of places. I assume one day we'll make the generic version. I don't think Jobs Select is also doing Final Fantasy, so eventually we'll get to do the generic versions, my guess. This is the larger concept is basically deciduous. We can make equipment that makes its own creature to put it on. I do think you will see that many times.

It's been pretty good. The other interesting thing, I'm almost, I'm at work, but I will quickly finish up here. The one other interesting thing we did is we made more tall. tokens in Final Fantasy that are their own win condition. The chokobos have landfall built into them. The wizards, say whenever you catch a non-creature spell, it does one damage to the opponent. The idea that a lot of spells can just make this thing, and this thing tells you your

wind condition, is a really interesting design. A lot of times when we make tokens, the tokens tend to be as simple as they can be, and you know, they're vanilla or they have, like, you know, keyboard ability, and, you know, you usually winning with him, like, well, I overwhelm you. Like, it becomes about attacking. Where the neat thing about chocobos and wizards, dark wizards, black wizards, is they sort of create a style of play for you, which is really interesting. And as you get more of them, it just leans you into wanting to build a certain deck,

which is very neat. The challenges with it is you get a lot more color restrictions. Like, one of the biggest problems with black mages is they have the word black men. in them. You kind of put them on black cards, but this ability is way more red than it is black. Black doesn't tend to do damage. It more does life loss. Now, we bleed that a little bit. You know, there's some aesthetics there. So I do think that having tokens that have more text on them, while there's plenty of good that comes from, and it does a lot of neat structural things, it does come at the cost of they're a little bit harder to use, and they

have other restrictions like Color Pie things we have to worry about. So anyway, I'm now at work. So hopefully, like I said, the whole reason to do this podcast was just to give you more thoughts on the mechanics or how we think about them, what we liked, what we didn't like. I know as we get more stuff for me to write about, you know, I'm already, like I have a 3,000 word count and I think my state of design article was over 5,000 words. So I was like way over, I was way over what I was supposed to be, to begin with. So I do like writing state of designs. I do think that the podcast gives me more chance to talk nuanced and talk about mechanics. So I think I will continue this tradition.

So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this state of design 2025 supplemental podcasts. But I am at work, so we all know what that means. That means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.