Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1271: Structuring Sets

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

In this podcast, I talk about a key component of design: set structure.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic, essentially I like to think of the job of myself and my team is we take a blank piece of paper and we end up with blueprints for the proverbial house that we are building. How do we do that? How do we go from nothing to something? So today is all about structure. And sort of, sort of, of process. How do we get there? How do we make something out of nothing? That is today's topic. So a topic near and dear to my heart, I think the more time I spent on magic, the more time I focused on the beginning end of the process. I do find it the most fascinating. There's something where the act of creation where you make something that does not exist. That is very fascinating to me. Okay. So the very first thing you do whenever we start. So we have what we call

arc planning. Arc planning works ahead and tries to sort of do a loose planning ahead. Normally these days when we pick a world, we have an idea of what world it takes place on. It might be a new world, but we have some sense of what is the location we're going to be, whether it's a return or a new world. and we usually have some light a light theme that might not necessarily be a mechanical theme for example like Dusk Morn was the idea of modern horror okay that's a theme it's not necessarily like back in the day

there was a period of time where I was the arc planning team I was the one person that did this work and I used to come at it I used to come at often from a mechanic stands, sometimes from flavor, but often from mechanical. But these days, we're much more likely to get a large picture, you know, it's Bloomberg is, you know, it's animal world. How do we capture that, you know, and that a lot of, the idea, you know, in days gone by, once upon a time, we might do things like it is artifacts. It's the artifact set. It's the multicolored set. But

we've gotten a lot more complex than that. And now we're tend to do larger themes and things. And so normally when we begin, like I said, we know two things, mostly when we begin. We have a general theme, and then we have a world. Now, like I said, if it's a return world, then we have a lot of knowledge and information about that world. If it's a new world, one of two things that are true. Either it's a new world based on something. It's based on some top-down things, some real-word mythology, some genre. It's based on something where we have something to build on, or sometimes the creative team just comes up with a really cool concept for a world.

Ixelan was a good example, where, you know, and they're probably inspired by something. You know, Axelan was inspired by Meso-American culture and stuff. So there's something, I mean, there's something that inspires the world in the first place. But sometimes it's more thematic, sometimes the creative team has come up with something that itself is inspired by something, but has its own. look and feel to it. So the idea essentially when we start is, and this is what we want to do in exploratory design, is understand what is it? What are we trying to do?

Sometimes that's very crisp and clear. You know, when we were making Xelon, we understood, okay, we're bringing Gothic horror. Like, it's top-down Gothic whore. We knew exactly the look and feel we were getting. We still have to figure out what that means in gameplay. Other times, like when we were looking on original Dominaria, we were Like, the world was a known world, but the problem was because so many things had been there and had so many different identities trying to understand what's a cohesive singular identity. You know, so different sets have different goals.

But in the end, the main thing we're trying to do is the goal of vision design in general is we want to make what I call a bull's eye, right? We want everybody aiming at the same target. We want everybody going in the same direction. That one of the things that can happen in design, if you don't know, where you're going or what you're doing, people can work at odds with one another. People can sort of work at, you know, you want everybody working in the same direction,

working the same goal. So the first thing we need to do is really understand what our set is about. And when I say what is our set about, I don't mean thematically because that is kind of given to us. Although sometimes, sometimes like Dominaria,

like we're going back to Dominaria. Okay, what exactly does that mean? Sometimes we've got to figure out our theme. Sometimes the theme is sort of, like it varies. where our starting point is. But like I said, the thing we tend to start with is we usually have a world, and we usually have, and the world might be not very spelled out. So some new worlds, you know, we're still figuring that out. And then we have a general theme. What that theme is

needs to be solidified. Okay, so we have a theme, we have a world, let me start it with. So normally what that means is an exploratory, we want to understand okay, if we are pursuing this theme, what does that mean? What are the things that fall within the theme? What are the expectations of the theme? You know, if we're doing the thing, what exactly do players expect to see? And also, like, if it's a universe is beyond set, the theme is, you know, there's an existing world and existing property that we're doing. And it's sort of the same thing, essentially, which is, okay, if I told the players we were

doing this theme, or doing this property for Universes Beyond, what's the expectation? What do people expect of it? What do people want to see? And the main thing about exploratory is just understanding the breadth of what you're doing. Okay, I'm doing Gothic Horror World. Well, what do people expect to see? And the other big thing that I always think about is the emotional impact, the emotional resonance. What is the core emotion I want the player's to feel. What is this set about? Is it about being scared? Is it about being excited? Is about, you know, what exactly, what are we, you the player playing the game? What do we want you to feel? And so a lot of the early discovery is just understanding the parameters of what's

available to you. And then, once you have an idea of different themes, we'll spend some time exploring the mechanical, like, okay, I want to feel afraid. Well, what does that mean? How do we, you what can we do? Like, oh, one of the things that helps fear might be the unknown. Okay, where can we play in space and the unknown? Like, a lot of early exploration is kind of mapping out what could be, what's possible, what's in the scope of what you're trying to do. And then is, okay, I want to do thing X.

What mechanics do we have available? And then the big thing in exploratory and early vision is, There's two answers when we say, how do we do something? One is, oh, we've done it. We have the tool. We could bring back this mechanic. We could do this mechanical theme. Like, sometimes it's just a matter of going, oh, magic has done that.

We've been making magic for over 30 years. We've made a lot of mechanics. And you know what? We've tackled this problem before. We have a nice, clean answer. But another thing we always want to explore is, okay, let's say we don't want the answer we already have, or maybe we don't have an answer. Maybe we haven't solved this problem before.

How do we do it? And a lot of fun design comes about because we're like, well, here's the goal of what we're trying to do. How do we capture that? And a lot of times what we do is we start by going down the known path and seeing where that would lead us. And then that makes us understand what is the unknown path. And in Exploratory, a lot of what we're trying to do is figure out the unknown path, just so we can try things we haven't tried. If we know we have a mechanic, well, we know we can fall back on that mechanic. So Explorator is like, well, we know that exists.

So Exploratory isn't worried about it. Okay, so finally we get to vision. So let's talk about, because most of the structuring happens in vision. Exploratory, once again, is more about exploring and understanding. The way I like to sometimes metaphorically talk about exploratory is I'm finding my paints. You know, I'm collecting my tools. Like, I'm going to do something, and I got to figure out what tools are paints do I have to accomplish this task. If I'm painting a picture, what paints do I have?

If I'm building something, what tools do I have? Like, I'm trying to sort of figure out what's available. Okay, so finally you get to vision. An early vision is a little bit of a continuation of exploratory. You're just sort of understanding things. But in the end, what you want to do, and this is where your structure starts, is there's something core to your theme, core to your emotional resonance, something that is the thing that you want to sort of start with. And this is a really important understanding of building structure, which is you have a set to make. The second you add anything to your set, it limits what else can go in your set.

That each thing in your set dictates the other things around it. And so there's only one time that you have carte blanche. And that is when you're doing your very first thing. Because the very first thing, I mean, maybe it doesn't fit. I mean, there's that. Sometimes there's mechanics that, even with all the other things, open space in the world that doesn't fit or doesn't work. But most mechanics, if you have an open set, if you can do anything you want, most mechanics you can make work. Even the

greedy, greedy mechanics, because you have an open set, you can build around it. So that's the first thing you want to figure out is you want to figure out your core mechanic. And what I mean by that is what is the mechanic that is going to structurally define what you're doing. On some level you want to start with what I call the greediest mechanic, which means it's the mechanic that is going to take the most space. Or, if not the most space,

at least demand the most about the structure. Now, usually it's nice if that core mechanic ties into your core theme. You know, for example, you know,

you want to early on say, what is this about? For example, early in Kandatark here, we realized the block was about this evolution, this time travel story. It's the present. It's the past. It's the alternative present. It's the alternative timeline. Well, we wanted a mechanic that could do that. That's how we ended up getting morph into the set. You know, you want to figure out what it is that you're trying to do. That is the challenging thing. Because, like I said, the first mechanic is the only mechanic that has the freedom to kind of live in the space it needs to live.

And so you want to pick that first mechanic very carefully. Like I said, the two biggest things that tend to be first are either things that are smack dab the center of what you're doing. Like, oh, for example, in original Zendakar, we really wanted land to matter. And after a lot of exploration, we figured out that landfall was the thing. So landfall really became the center of that set. We want landfall to shine.

What do we need to do to make landfall shine? What does it mean if landfall's in the set? And so you want to pick your first thing. The other thing sometimes we do is if we have a really cool idea, but we know that the idea itself is complicated or has a lot of structural needs. Sometimes we start with that. Now, most of the time, those two things are the same thing.

Meaning most of the time, if I'm doing something complex, I want to do it toward the thing that I think is most of what the set is about. Mutate is a good example from Ikoria. We were doing monsters, and the idea of evolution of monsters was really big. The idea that you sort of, you sort of could make monsters. And so Mutate both was very core to what our theme was and was very complicated. It was a very greedy mechanic. It required a lot around it to make work.

So that's the first thing you do. You have to figure out your core mechanic. And then the first thing you do with your core mechanic is, let's fill up the space. What do I think it needs to do? Where does it want to be? Now, a very common thing we do with the core mechanic early on is we put it everywhere. Not because it will end up everywhere, but because we really want to explore what it's capable of. So it's a very, very common when we start, I will put it in all five colors.

I will try to put it in as many rarities as I can. If it's really complex, maybe it doesn't go a common. But the idea is I really want to see it live and breathe. So when we make our set, we tend to start with the commons. And the reason you start with the commons is when somebody plays your set in either limited or in sort of casual constructed, your commons define the experience.

Your commons define what's possible. And if you're trying to do something, you want to make sure that that lives and breathes in the commons so that the theme of your set, the theme of what you're doing, is coming out. And so you really want to work through your comments to understand that. The other big thing to understand is you can't really balance environment until you have cards close to where they need to be. And that's not going to happen until set design.

So I'm not worrying about environmental balance. My team isn't responsible for that. And so we'll do light things. We have a play designer on the team. we'll balance the cards. I mean, we'll try to get into ballpark, so we're not wasting playtests where a broken thing is what the playtest is about. But we're not balancing the environment. We're not really worrying about the environment yet. You need to get much farther along before you have the capability to do that. So that isn't what vision really does.

What we are trying to do is understand the structure, as we're talking about today. So, okay, I put in the core mechanic of the set. And usually, like I say, I spread it everywhere I can, mostly because I'm trying to understand it. And that a lot of what playtesting is. So I talk about this all the time, but it's important to understand for structure. So design is what we call an iterative structure. It's an iterative design process. What that means is we try something.

We play test it. We get feedback from the play test. We adapt our file to the feedback, and then we have a new file we can play. And you just do that many, many, many times. That is how you learn. You know, essentially, you can't make a game without playing in the game. There's only something we would call theory crafting, where you think it through. And you can do some theory crafting.

We're making magic a long time. There's lessons we've learned. There's some extrapolable, you know, things that you. But in the end, it's not until you actually put it on paper and play it, put it on cards, and play it, that you understand it. And there's a lot of the things that I thought would work that didn't work. Or I was dubious would work and did work, you know. when you actually get it in play and get to see it, that's when you start to learn things.

Okay, we will take a little bit of time playing with the core thing and trying to understand it. Now, normally what happens, and I do this even before the first playtest, is I say, okay, the core set is living in this space. That defines what else can be in the set.

For example, if my core mechanic goes on creatures, well, one of the things I'm missing is a mechanic that goes on spells. If my core mechanic lives on spells, maybe I'm missing a mechanic that goes on creatures. If my core mechanic is all about expensive cards when I'm missing something

to go on cheap, you know, like there's a lot of things that a set needs. And so part of what I'm doing is saying, okay, my core mechanic is filling in this space. What is left? What would complement it? Now, one of the things I talk a lot about is synergy.

You want to make sure that your component pieces click together. I want to make sure that that my mechanics have relevance to one another, meaning once I pick a core mechanic, that is going to dictate the other things in the set because I want to create synergy. I don't want to pick a mechanic and then pick a second mechanic

that has no interaction with my first mechanic. And so normally before we go to the first playtest, I'll stick in usually two mechanics, sometimes three. The idea essentially, as you, what's happening here is you make your core mechanic, you stick it in, you understand,

you know, you play with a little bit to understand where, it's at. Now, you might do individual playtests before you get to, like, sealed playtest, where you're just playing with it in pre-constructed decks. But the reason I like getting to sealed relatively quickly is I just want to see how it lives and breathes in common. And that part of making a file is you really start to understand where things are and where they're not. Like, you see the holes in the file. Like, when you literally have to put it in a file, you see the holes in the file. And the holes in the file tell you

a lot about what you need next. And that's a big part of the structure is each part of the structure is putting in something that complements what's already there. So I put in my core mechanics, and I'm looking for my secondary mechanic. My secondary mechanic has a couple goals. One, I

still want to play into the major theme. Usually one mechanic alone is not hitting the theme as strong as we need. I just use Innestrade as an example. Okay, how do I make it feel like a horror film? Like, you know, like, you know, Gothic horror. Well, we early on realized we needed monsters. Okay, monsters make a lot of sense. We could do typal things. We ended up making an ally typal theme where every ally combination, either as a

monster or humans. Also, we realized that we wanted death to matter. So we worked around with morbid having something where your opponent's doing things, but why are they doing them? Maybe they just want them to die for the sake of dying and it just changes things up. We also were trying to figure out, and this probably, I guess I should have started here, probably the core of what ended up being for Indistrade was double-faced cards. We'd wanted to solve werewolves. We came up with double-faced cards, borrowed from something we had done in dual masters, another game we make.

But once we realized we had the double-faced cards, that's a good example of, let me explain sort of how we do our core. I'll use that an example. So double-faced cards were interesting, and A, they were asking something from us, that we don't normally do. Now, we know that dual masters had printed double-face cards. So, like, I understood that

there were facilities with the capability to do that. Like, printers could do that. But we had not done it for magic. What does it mean for magic? There's a lot we had to understand. And so the reason that was my first mechanic was that it was asking a lot of the set.

And not just of the structure of the set, but also of, like, I had to go to the process, printer, the people that do printing and say to them, I want to do this mechanic. What does that mean? How do we do it? Are there limitations of what the printers can do? Like I understand how we could use it, like what were the limitations? Because I had to build that into the set. Likewise, we had to go to frames and say, okay, we're trying to do something that's going to require a brand new frame. I had to go to rules and say, we're doing something that's going to require a brand new

set of rules. I had to go to, you know, digital. I had to go to organize play. I had to go to to editing. It was a mechanic so grandiose in scope because we'd never done it before. Now, the thing I liked about it and the reason with my core mechanic was it played in the idea of dark transformation, which was core to what we wanted,

and it was splashy, and it did something that I knew would draw attention to itself. The splashy thing does not need to be the complicated thing. Sometimes we do splashy things that are easy for us to do, but are splashing to the opposite. And Splashy usually has more to do with something you haven't seen before.

You know, it's grandiose in what it's doing. But in this particular case, it was asking a lot. And it was asking a lot of the structure as well. For example, the cards couldn't go on the same sheet. So we needed a separate set of sheets. That changed the math of how many cards we had. Like, it had such a wide ramification on how to make the set that I needed to do it early. but then once I did that

then I'm like okay what's my secondary theme well we really liked the type of monster thing so that also was figured out very early but one of the things we realized was that they didn't sit too much on top of each other the one exception is werewolves kind of lived in that space meaning we want a werewolf to matter

but then again you know we had to solve a bunch of problems like one of the things we realized was we only got so many double-faced cards If we wanted all our werewolves to be double-faced cards, it limited the volume of our werewolves. That's why we ended up putting some wolves in the set. If you notice that werewolves are tagged with wolves so that we could flesh out and have more cards if we need to them because we were locked on the number of werewolves we could have. And that's the idea why you want to figure out your first thing because it starts dictating the second thing.

Okay, we want to do typal monster. Okay. And there was a lot of ramifications of that. I had to go to the creative team. For example, originally, the monsters weren't necessarily in ally colors. You know, I think a lot of the monsters were showing up in black. And I had to go to the creative team and said, okay, we're going to do vampires in black and we're going to do zombies in black, but not werewolves. We're going to do werewolves that are green and red.

And they had to figure out how werewolves got into red, you know. And so a lot of that early stuff, it's ramifications that when we're building the structure, not only does it affect the structure itself, but it can affect things around it. So I picked my primary mechanic and then I put my secondary mechanic. My secondary mechanic, like I said, usually plays into the larger theme because usually a major theme is more than one mechanic. Not always, but normally it is. Then the real question is, is there space, like we, when we're making the set, are creating lists of themes and possibilities. That's one of the reasons exploratory explores so much so that I have lists of possibilities. So, for example, with Inestrade, I knew I wanted double-faced cards.

I knew I wanted Monster Typle. And I also was very excited by having death matters. And the reason that Morbid ended up fitting in was that Morbid could also go on spells. Typle wasn't, I mean, there could be a few cards that cared about typo. Mostly typo went on the creatures. And the double-faced cards, at least in Inestrade, were on creatures. So both of those things were on creatures. So that says, oh, the space I have opened is, I have.

have some non-creature space. And so that's the idea. You get your core mechanic. You get your secondary mechanic. Maybe you get your tertiary mechanic. And the idea is you're filling in what isn't there. Then you make a file. And early on, a lot of your file is just reprints.

It's just, let's fill it out so we can play it. You know, a lot of early playtesting, it's not that you're defining everything. Is you're trying to understand the scope. You're trying to do your proof of concept. So you'll play. you'll find is, okay, I'm playing, I'm looking at my core mechanic. Is it playing well? Do I like the space it's in? You know, what are the cards where it's shining? What are the cards where it's not? That's one of the reasons you put it on a lot of cards early on so that you can sample

what is working and what is not working. And sometimes your mechanic is just shining everywhere and maybe it ends up having a large footprint. Sometimes it just is not accomplishing what you need to accomplish. Now, maybe it doesn't work. You know, sometimes you try it your core mechanic and playtesting shows, you need a new core mechanic. Just because you pick one doesn't mean that's that. Now, because we do a lot of advanced work and explore it and early vision, usually the time we pick a core mechanic, I have some faith in it. That doesn't mean it can't fail, it can.

But usually I know enough to pick something that should overall succeed, maybe not all the component pieces of it. Because one of the things we do in early design is stress test things to make sure that they're viable. So normally when I stick something in as the main structural element, I have some faith in it. But still, playtesting will show where it shines and where it doesn't. So what happens there is, when you playtest the mechanics, we get the feedback. We try to figure out, now one of the questions is, is the core mechanic in the right place?

If it's not, and this is what's important, the core mechanic has priority. The secondary mechanic has priority everything but the primary mechanic. The tertiary mechanic is every, except for the secondary and primary. You have to prioritize what matters. Now, your priorities can change as you play the set. Maybe, for example, I play Mechanic 1, 2, and 3, and I realize that, oh, my goodness, 3 is the thing. Maybe I shift things around. Maybe 3 becomes 2.

Maybe 3 becomes 1. Maybe I figure out, like, if something really is the thing that's hitting or I find it's expandable, you know, you want things to fill the space they need to fill. and that the reason you have to prioritize your mechanics is so you understand what gets to live and breathe where it needs to. Because sometimes what happens is you'll play with your set. You'll realize your primary mechanic isn't in the right place or the thing that's shining you want to do more of. You want to have the freedom for that to move and grow. And so early on, your primary mechanic is going to take a little bit of time to find its footing.

That's the first thing you want to do. You want to find the space of your primary mechanic, your core mechanic. Once you get that, once you figure that out, then it's adjusting the secondary tertiary mechanics. Maybe there's a fourth mechanic. I mean, at some point, you add things in. Usually a little bit later in the process, you add in cycles. Sometimes cycles can be added in early as they're very core to what you're doing.

Like, you know, like I know we figured out very early with the Marvel sets, for example, that we like sagas representing storylines. And so one of the things we did early on is, you know, maybe pick out like, oh, we're going to have a cycle of sagas, stuff like that. So if the cycles are very core with the experience you're getting, sometimes those come early. And sometimes certain types of things, like let's say you're doing multicolor, those tend to go in cycles. And so it's dependent upon what you're doing and how much you need to cycle things. So sometimes cycle stuff can come in early. Sometimes they come in later.

But what you're doing is you're finding the footing. First on your primary mechanic, then on your secondary mechanic, then on your tertiary mechanic, then on your quadinary mechanic. And like I said, as a mechanic lives a breeze and you adapt to it, it's going to change things around it. Sometimes, for example, your primary mechanic is not where it needs to be, and as you change it, it makes you kick out your secondary mechanic. Like sometimes, like, oh, I'm going to put the primary mechanic here, and then the second mechanic will live where that doesn't.

But then the prime mechanic has to move to a different place. And like, oh, now the second mechanic is getting in the way of the primary mechanic. Well, primary mechanic wins in that case. And so mostly what you're doing is you are fine-tuning each mechanic. And then as you have more confidence in that, then you're fine-tuning the thing on top of it. You fine-tuned the first mechanic, then the second mechanic, then the third mechanic. And then the other thing that starts happening is you have to start doing what I call the Synergy Pass, which is you start having to understand what elements, like,

Not only are your mechanics living in the space that your first mechanic is not, they also have to lean in the direction towards Synergy. So I did a whole podcast on Synergy. The idea of Synergy is that you want your cards to be greater than the sum of their parts. That when Card A meets Card B, oh, cool things happen. Magic is a game of cognatorics, which means, you know, trading card games like mix and match. I can play with any cards I want. Well, it's really cool if Card A and Card B interact with each other in a fun.

way. Maybe they do something that is bigger than each cart individually, that stuff like that you want to create. So a lot of making your structure and figuring out your other mechanics is not just figuring out where they go in the set and how they function in the set, but figuring out how to maximize their synergy, that you want to have really high synergy between the component pieces. Another thing that becomes very important, and this is the big draft thing, is you want to make sure that all your different archetypes overlap. You want to make sure that that if I have a card in the set, I need more than one archetype fighting for it. If only the red-green archetype likes a red card, then it will always get it.

That means the red-green experience gets diminished because every time you play, you always have access to this one thing. But if two different archetypes or three different archetypes are interested in it, then you don't always get it. You're fighting over it. And that makes for a dynamic draft environment. So, and then the big thing that happens is, and this is where play testing becomes important is you really want to find what I call your shining examples, meaning I do a mechanic, I try a lot of different things, and then I figure out where the mechanic is its best.

And then what I want to do is make sure, so at some point, later on the process, I start divvying up where things go. Early on, I'm just testing things. I put mechanics everywhere, but eventually what happens is, okay, I want to start giving definition. ignition to the set. And in order to do that, I need to start sort of limiting where things go. Okay, I have this mechanic. You know what? I really want this mechanic tied to this element. Okay, I may be tied to this faction. Maybe I tie it to this creative element. Like, I want to limit where it goes just so the second have some identity. If every color does the same thing, it feels a little less special. And that might be divvying up how the

mechanic is used. Sometime if you have a really big mechanic, like when we had heroic, for example, in original, what is it, original, I'm blinking on the name of the set. Why don't know what I'm going to my name set? The Greek mythology set. It'll come to me a second. Theros. When we were making original Theros, we had heroic. And what we realized about heroic was there were a bunch of different payoffs we could do. One of the fun payoffs was, plus one plus one counters. But what we realized was if every single color did plus one counters, it just made them feel pretty samey. And so what we did instead is we said, you know what, okay, green is going to be the color of plus one plus one counters. Green is about sort of as you

as you target your creatures, they get bigger. And it gave an identity to green and then, you know, and then, um, so sometimes your mechanics big enough you can space it out and do different things in different colors. Sometimes you just put it in certain colors. Often in faction sets, we'll tie mechanics to factions and say, oh, well, this is the demure mechanics. It just goes in blue and black. So you just want to figure out your definition of where things need to go so that you can, you know, you want your set to have a feel and you want different archetypes to have a feel. And so a lot of that is just, it's definitional in figuring out how to do that. And that, I mean, the reason that happens later in the process is you need to kind of figure out where things are living, what things are doing.

As you figure that out, you can start narrowing things down to whether they make the most sense. And then a lot of the later part of vision design is trying to figure out, here are all the different things we're trying to do, and you want to divvy up the set to let different parts of the set do different things. You know, here are the tools, go back to Innestrade. You know, double-faced cards were something that, you know, we could put in a lot of different colors and we do different things with. But in red and green, mostly they're the werewolves. But in other colors, you know, in black, we could make it about vampires and change into a bat and do other fun things. But, you know, it lived and breathed, and so because werewolves for that, it ate up a little more space of that.

Like, a little bit more of double-faced ended up going to werewolves and red and green so that we could do the werewolf thing with it. And what that meant is, oh, we had a little more space like, you know, black ended up taking a little bit more for morbid. You know, black and green ended up being the morbid color. Like, different things, as you start evolving your set, you start realizing different. parts what they want and start moving toward things. And you know, in the case of Indistrar, for example, your ally

archetypes ended up being typal. This is about vampires. This is about werewolves. This is about zombies. And then your enemy color started getting into other themes where you can start creating a morbid other things. And so

a lot of what happens is as you start defining your set and you start looking at what your mechanical component is, you then can start picking and choosing where it makes sense. Now, more of that work gets done to set design. Usually when you hand off revision design, we have a rough idea of where we think things want to be and what they're filling.

But the exact colors can change. Set design can move that stuff around depending on whether things are working. A lot of, once you get into set design, they're going to start making sort of more real cards, having more balanced costs, more building the environment. And the building of the environment will make things shift. But anyway, that is the core essence of how we structure set.

So I hope that was interesting to you. But I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. What does it mean? It means it's time to stop talking magic and start making magic. So I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.