Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1289: Lessons Learned – Murders at Karlov Manor

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

This podcast is another in my "Lessons Learned" series where I talk about sets I led or co-led and walk through all the design lessons I learned. This time, I discuss Murders at Karlov Manor.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in my lessons learned series. This is where I take a set that I led or co-led, and I walk through the lessons that I learned, some positive, some negative. I learn. Every set I do you learn from, and so I walk through. I use this series to sort of be a retrospect of to see what exactly I've learned about that particular set, things I learned along the way. So today's set, I'm up to Murders at Karloff Manor, a.k.a. Polo.

So in our alphabet codes with sports were up to P. Okay, so the set came on in February of 2024, had 286 cards, 81 commons, 100 uncommon, 100 uncommon, 70 rars, 20 mythics, 15 basic lands.

The set was co-led, our vision design, was co-led by me and Mark Gottlieb. The set, the team include Annie Sardellis, Ethan Fleischer, Eric Lauer, Doug Byer, Dan Musser, Chris Mooney, Daniel Jew, and Michelle Roberson. And then the set design was co-led by Gottlieb and Andrew Brown. So Gottlieb kind of led the middle portion. He led the end of vision and beginning of set design, essentially. And then also on the development team was Eric Lauer, Yanni Skolnik, Jadine Klemperin, Daniel Holt, Eric Engelhard, Chris Kvarek, Kvartek, Jeremy Geist, Cameron Williams, and Aaron Sorrells. Okay, so there are many lessons to be learned from murders at Cardle of Manor.

It is not, I mean, we've had war sets, but in recent magic, in the last three or four years, other than aftermath. This is probably one of the lower points as far as the audience reaction to it. For starters, just as a perfect example, the name had many problems. So let's just start there. For example,

Karlov Manor is a manor on Ravnika, but Markov Manor, which sounds pretty close, is a manor on Inashrod. And Markov Manor is more famous in Innisra of Manor, than Karlov Manor. And in alliterative, murders at Markov Manor, it just sounds so great. So for starters, everybody, not everybody, but many people call the set by the wrong name. Not a good sign. And second, one of the things you have to think about when naming a set is the word murders is a problem.

If you put the word murders into your description of your video, there are certain algorithms that won't find it because it's one of those words that the algorithms purposely avoid. So a lot of people who were talking about murders of Carlyleaf Manor couldn't even reference the name of the set. Not a good thing. So, I mean, just on the start, just the name alone. The name alone had problems with it.

and maybe that was endemic of a larger parts of the set. So the idea of the set for the very beginning was, and we had talked about this, when Michael Ryan and I had originally pitched the Weatherlight saga, the second set on Mercadia, we had pitched a whole block on Mercadia, was going to be a murder mystery. And the idea is, so for those they don't know,

the Weatherlight story, on Mercadia Stark gets killed. That actually, Michael and I planned this. That part of the story stayed, but our whole murder mystery thing didn't happen and the idea was Stark would die and like, who killed Stark? And then the solution to the puzzle was

originally I think Tom Garth killed Stark, but not actually Tom Garth. It's Volath disguised and Tom Garth. That was the original when we originally pitched it. Later on, they changed a lot. Michael and I were let go from the story and they changed it so

it was Takara rather than Tangarth. Now Takara, as Volathe did kill Stark and that does show up. There's a card that references it and so, but anyway the idea of doing a murder

mystery was something that we had had way back when and we talked about the idea of this, the murder mystery genre. There's a lot of fun tropes there. So the idea was, let's do a murder mystery set. That was the idea. And we would build a puzzle into it. That was the idea.

And I was very excited. We have a bunch of people, or Gottlieves specifically, who are good puzzle makers. And so I like making puzzles, Matt Tebeck likes making puzzles. So we knew we had a team that could make a real fun set of puzzles, which we did, by the way, but I'll get into that. That was the impetus. Okay, so this is lessons. So the first lesson we learned, or one of the lessons, maybe get a better name was a lesson, was I think that genres can make for good magic sets.

I think Inestrade, for example, use the Gothic horror in great ways. The biggest problem with the murder mystery is it is less of an environmental thing than it is a plot and character thing. That a lot of the tropes are about types of detectives. And I think what we found was it didn't do enough of environmental setting.

Like, the environment of detectives can be in a lot of different places. Maybe the classics like Victorian England if you get into, like, chill out. But, so what we found is we could sort of, it didn't be getting an environment well. That was our first big problem. In fact, when we originally were making it, the original plan was we were making a brand new murder mystery world.

But what we learned was because, like, the victim and the criminal and, like, because you want names, like, it's so much more impactful if I say so-and-so died, and you've heard of them, and so-and-so was the murderer, and you've heard of them, you know, that you wanted to feel like it's not just, we made a brand-new world that you've never know with characters you've never met before,

and, oh, this character will kill that character. It's not as impactful. And so we made a decision, okay, well, what if instead of going to a world, like a brand-new world, we'd go into an existing world? And pretty much what we needed was we needed a city. Like, in order to get the tropes we wanted to get, we needed a city.

There's only a couple sets that really have a traditional city in this sense. Ravnik, obviously, Nukapena, Kaladash. Those were the three sets that had sort of a city. And we talked a lot about Nukapena. Nukapena is nice because the tone is good. It's a darker tone. The problem we have with Nukapena, we had a couple problems with Nukapena. One was a...

we had done it hadn't gone over that well. It hadn't been that long since we'd done it. It just returning to it so soon didn't feel right. And because the set didn't quite capture the attention the way we hoped, the

characters weren't quite as well known. So, you know, the murder victim, the murderer. And if one of the murders is just one of, like, the demon mobsters, it, like, part of the fun of a murder mystery is, the murder is not someone who you would ever suspect. Not like, I clearly see him murdering them.

And the other big problem was you need, like, there has to be a law. Like the whole idea of, I'm a criminally solved this, and they bring them to justice. But there has to be justice. And New Capena didn't really have a sense of justice. And so, just for a lot of little reasons, New Capena did not make sense. I know a lot of people, it's one of the big, well, you should have done, New Compendent. There was a lot of nuance and things that did not work with it. why we did in Nukipenna.

Cowadesh, the tone was wrong. And so anyway, Ravnika ended up being what we chose. The other interesting lesson is, so we were experimenting around with what I call backdrop sets. Lost Caverns of Ixlan was also a background set. Now, interestingly, both Lost Caverns of Ixlan and Murder to Carlyffe Manor started as brand-new world.

Originally, it's going to be Underground World. for Lost Caverns and there's a murder mystery world for murders. But, in each case, we realized that it was better served by using a utilized world. Instead of going underground in an unknown world, how about a world

going underground and having adventures underground somatically fit the world? Made sense. Journey to the center of the earth falls in a lot of similar tropes spaces that we had been playing in the past with on Ixelon. So Ixelon made a lot of sense for that set. And like I said, we needed

a city with a lot of familiar characters. Ravnika very much was a city, very much had a lot of recognizable characters. And like I said, Nukapena had some shortcomings that didn't make Nukapena a good fit. So we decided to do Ravnika. In retrospect, was that right? Even though I know the audience, some of the audience

really thought Nucopena was right, it doesn't actually change some of the problems we have Nucopena. And it doesn't change the fact that Nucopena I think Newcompanone needs some time. One of the things that happens is when you make a set, how quickly you go back to that environment has a lot to do with how much people like the environment. If it's a really beloved environment,

it's the first time you've been there. Okay, you can revisit in five to seven years, maybe. Maybe a little longer depending on circumstance. But, like, that's the quickest you can go. Maybe it's five to seven years. But if you go someplace and people didn't really like the set, If it wasn't a super popular set, it needs a little more time to breathe. Now, one of the things we've learned about a lot of our environments is with time,

they warm to people because people sort of get used to cards and, you know, like, Kamagawa was not well liked originally, but with time, it definitely grew sort of an appreciation. Lorwyn, similarly. So it's not that we'll never go back to Newcompanic, but I think Newcompanic, but I think Newcompanic needs more time. It is just not someplace we could go back to super fast. And that didn't change.

even in hindsight when I have gone a new compendant knowing what I know not know would I have stayed on Ravnica that is an interesting

question I don't know I do agree that a brand new murder mystery like on some level you've learned lessons like my big lesson

really is that murder mystery world in a vacuum isn't enough that I think having a murder mystery I do agree

you want a murder mystery on a known world because there's stakes and stuff. And Ravnika wasn't even necessarily a bad world to do it on. The problem was we leaned too heavily into murder mystery. Murder mystery is like half a set. Not, I mean, we ended up making it like 75% of the set. I think that's too much. I think we're going back to a world. It's a return.

And as part of that return, there's a murder mystery, I think could work. Now, Ravnika has a lot of baggage, meaning that the core Ravnik experiences guilds, and guilds eats up all the space. It is hard to put another theme into guilds. Now, it's an interesting question. If you wanted to do a murder mystery but have guilds, is that possible?

You would have to weave any mechanics into the guilds and be guild mechanics, so I'm not saying it's impossible, but it'd be a challenge. Could we be on Ravnika, not be guilds? I think that is possible. Waltha Spark did do it, although Wartha Spark did it right after a guild

set, so I'm not sure. Maybe once we deliver on what you're expecting, we have some time we can play around. So, I do know that we, in order for murder mystery to work, I think murder mystery had to be a smaller portion on the set. I think it could be a big part of the plot of the set. I think murder mystery does great things for plot. I just think it doesn't do enough for environment. And so we really need, we need the world itself to be more the environment. So for example, let's say we were going to go to Ravenna. I'm not, I'm not even against the idea of it being Ravenica, I think what we needed to have done is figure out some companion piece to marry it to. Kind of like what Eldrain, Eldrin originally was going to be Camelot World, and we're like,

look, there's just not enough Camelot to do Camelot World. But you know what? If we match it with fairy tales, they blend together, and that's enough to fill a whole set. This wasn't a similar place. I think Murder Mystery was like Camelot, in the sense that it didn't fill the whole set. Camelot's more environment than murder mysteries, I think. Okay, so there's that. So too much of the set was filled with... So let's walk through all the stuff the set was. First, we did disguise.

So disguise was us redoing Morph. So Morph was in the rules team way back when was trying to solve... Richard made a card called Camouflage and a card called Illusionary Mask, both in Alpha. And they had you turn your cards face down. but what that meant was really fuzzy. So the rule said, well, what if we define what a face-down card is? What if it's a tutu?

Okay, when you're face-down, you're a tutu. And then it said, okay, once you define yourself as a vanilla tutu with no name, okay, we've defined what you are. And then they said, hey, maybe we can make a mechanic out of that. So they came up with the idea of Morp. The real quick version of the story is they pitched it, I think, to Bill, and Bill wasn't interested. They pitched it to Mike, and Mike wasn't interested. And they pitched it to me, and I was interested.

I tweaked it a little bit. Originally, I think it was two-manifur 1-1. I pitched it for three-man-for-for-2-2. But anyway, I liked it. I then went to design some cards with it. I built a deck with it, and then I started playing with R&D, and R&D sort of came around to, oh, this is pretty cool. End up going in Onslaught.

It was actually a very popular mechanic. The biggest problem is three-man-2-2-2 in its day, at the time of Onslaught, was much more of a creature. It was still a little on the weak side, but it was closer to what creatures were at. We've just made creatures better over the years. Creatures kind of started lower than they needed to be, and we spent years ramping them up.

So a three-man-a-two-two was not quite what we... We needed a little bit better. So we experimented with some other things. We tried... For a while, we tried a three-two rather than a two-two, but it was a little bit too aggressive. We had tried two men for a tutu in concept arc here. We've experimented a lot with it.

The idea we final settled on is what if it's a two-two, but it has Ward 2, meaning it's hard for you to destroy it. There is a thing that we started doing during Constantark here that Eric instituted, which said that if you have a morph creature and you are able to destroy a two-two, another morph creature, and live, you had to at least five men to un-morph. We kept that. But anyway, we added in the Ward 2, and the nice thing about it is it made it very hard to destroy the face-down creature.

It just meant more of the time you've got to turn it face-up. And the turning of face-up is the fun part of the creature. That is the most of the mechanic. That's one of the most fun of morph. So, disguise was us revamping morph. The one thing we did do,

I didn't write this done, we manifest was something we had done when we had done morph in concerticular block. We redid a manifest variant in Carly Love Manor. a Murdo's a Carl of Manor. I don't think we needed it.

With full knowledge of what was coming, I believe that Manifest Red in Duskmoren was a much better use of it. So I wish we hadn't used it here. It's only on like five cards. I'm not sure it's worth the complexity, the added vocabulary. I do like disguise. I think Morph is a cool mechanic. I think disguise is a cleaner version of it.

It gets a slightly better word and just makes it more playable for present day. I do think we'll see disguise again. I think if you're doing a mystery world, having things that you don't know what they are is pretty cool. So I like disguise here a lot. Suspect. Suspect is a quantity that you put on a creature.

The creature then gets menace and can't block. And so the idea is when you suspect that's something, it's kind of shady and people are a little afraid of it, but it no longer serves some function. So the neat thing about it is you can put it on your creatures to give them menace essentially, but then they can't block. Or you can put it on your bonus creature so they can't block.

but then it gets menace. And so I do generally like suspect. My bigger issue of suspect isn't that I don't in a vacuum like suspect. It's just if our volume is too high, it's probably on the shopping block for me. Let's walk through the other mechanics. So I'll get out to suspect.

So we didn't investigate. Investigate comes from Shadows Over Innestrade, where we were trying to create a mechanic that made half a card. And so we ended up making a token called a clue token, and that for two men you could sack it and trade it in for a clue. Or I'm not sure you sack it, but you must sack it.

Oh, you don't tap it. You should, anyway. So the Investigate was very popular. Clues just make a slam dunk in a murder mystery set. So bringing back popular mechanic that slam dunk flavor,

I mean, we knew we were doing from the very second we said we're going to do a murder mystery. Then collect evidence. Collect evidence comes with a number. And then it basically, is if you remove that number of man of value of cards from the graveyard, that or more,

you sort of, you get to do the collect evidence. I like collect evidence a lot. There is a fine note if Collect Evidence had a name. Like, I do think there will be other worlds we want to use Collect Evidence. I admit Collect Evidence is a little more murder mystery than

probably necessary. I guess another lesson here is and we normally do do this. we normally kind of gauge how useful mechanic is and what likelihood we'd bring it back. And then the more likely to bring it back, the more generic in its name, the less likely, the more specific the name can be. I wonder if collect evidence wanted to be a little more neutral. I do like collect evidence a lot.

So anyway, we have disguised, we have suspect, we investigate, we have collect evidence. Oh, we also have cases. Cases, ever since, I think, original Zendikar, we've been trying to do what we call quests, which is, I send you the player on a quest, and then there's a reward. if you do the quest. And we spent forever trying to figure out how to do that. Cases is the best version we ever did. It's a spell.

It enters. It does something. You get it right away. It then says, if you do the following, you can sack it, and then gives you a second reward. Now, cases, I think there were five cases. There's not a lot of cases in that, five or ten. So, anyway, we disguise, suspect, investigate cases, and collect evidence.

And whatever the new manifest is called. That already said we could get rid of. I think when I look at this, I'm like, I like disguise, I like investigate, I like collect evidence. I think that's what I keep. Not that I dislike suspect, not to suspect even played badly. I just think our,

the amount of... Oh, the other thing that we did is we did Detective Typle. I'm not even against introducing Detective as a creature type. I think the mistake was to make it mechanically matter. The problem...

There's two problems for that. One is, you have to be very careful when you typele on things introduced in the same you introduce it in. Not that we should never do it, there's times you want to do it, and it's okay to do it occasion. But there's a lot of things in the... Not a lot.

There's things in the past that probably would be detective, but we don't tend to rot a cards in the past all that often. So it just made, like, dog a detective. Why is that not a detective? But I have cards that care about detective. I wanted to care about dog a detective. So I think Detective Typle was a mistake. I don't mind the detective creature type.

I think I'm fine with that. And when I say Detective Typo, maybe you have one card, but we had way too many cards that cared about Detective. It just created a situation where there wasn't enough detectives and then that made people want to use old cards and say detective on them and it just caused the mess. So I would take detective typo, I take out the manifest variant and I think I take I suspect, once again, suspect it's just because

I like this guy's investigating collect evidence more. Maybe collect evidence you give a little less of a murder mystery name to. I'm not sure. Probably one a slightly more neutral name. And I probably would keep cases. They just don't eat up that much space. So what goes in its place? That's a fine question.

Well, one of the lessons we learned from Lost Caberns of Ixelon is when we decided to make an Xelon, we actually put a lot more Xelon into it. Now, part of that was it was the second ever returned Xelon where this was the fourth return to Ravnika. We felt like, okay, the players have some pent-up desire for the world of, Ixelan, in a way, they don't have pen of desire for Ravnika. Just because, you know, this was a three, three, three. This was the tenth set in Raffnika, where Ixelon, it was the third set in Xlan, right? That's a very different animal. But we ended up putting a lot more Ixlan into caverns of Xelan.

There was dinosaur typo. There were pirates and murfolk and vampires, and there was just explore, and there was just elements that were in the original. Now, Lost Caverns has a lot of new stuff. There's a lot of underground stuff. Like, it's not just returned to Ixelon. In fact, it's much more underground world that happens to be an X-Lon than a return to X-Lon. But I think there's more X-Lon in it.

I think that did a lot to help it. I think this set, if it had more Ravnika in it, and not just murder mystery Ravnika, Ravnika. Now, I'm not saying we needed to put the guilds in. I think that would take up too much space. But I do think we could have had more of a hint of the guilds. I think we could have found things that, I think what we wanted to do was find some cool Ravnika thing that we always wanted to do in Ravnika,

but we didn't have space because the guilds crowded out. One of the side effects of guilds is they're very greedy in set structure space. And so I think there's cool things that we could have done in the city. And that's kind of what I would have looked at is let's look for more, some other fun thing that could have been Ravnika that married well with detectives and add that extra layer into it. and then make sure that layer was more Ravnika-e. They bring more Ravnika into it. We did a little, like 10% of the set was Ravnika.

I think that needed to be closer to 50%, or 40-50%. I mean, I think that 40-50% could have a new element in it, but something that very much baguette what was going on. I'm not 100% sure what it needed to be, but I think that if we had mixed it and said, we'd turn down the dial detective, we turn up some secondary element, we turn up the Ravnikah,

I think that would have made the set feel a little bit better. And in doing that, we take out suspect, we take out detective typo, we take out the manifest variant, and I think we clean things up a little bit and we get it a little...

Then the detective stuff becomes a component of it, an element of it, a flavor of it, but I needed it to be a little more icingy, a little less cakey, if that makes sense. Everything just turning into a detective, I mean, a lot of people like to call it a hat set

because everyone was wearing a detective hat. And part of that came from having so many detectives. Like, how do you know this thing's a detective? Well, I better do things that Trophy tell you his detective. Well, a hat. I'll put a hat on. And stuff like that is just, it carries a magnifying glass. It just got a little, a little much.

And I think when you turn it down, it allows you to sort of highlight the things that were the most fun, the red herring and stuff like that, and download some stuff that just wasn't a little on the sillier side. The other big lesson of the set was it was our first play booster. So what had gone on was Magic had its normal draft booster for many, many years, and then we decided to add set boosters to the mix. And we made set boosters to be more fun to open.

The problem was the majority of players don't play limited. They just open packs. Well, why not get the packs that are more fun to open? And little by little, set packs were eclipsing draft packs. in a way where people and sometimes whole countries weren't buying draft packs and then people were like

well I want to draft but I don't have any draft I guess we'll just draft with set packs and set packs were not made to draft with and it just made for a really unfund drafting experience and people are like wow drafting really got a lot of worse no no it didn't

so what we realized is drafting is really important to magic we needed to save drafting so what we did essentially is we took set boosters and made them draftable is really what we functionally did we had to make a few changes to make them draftable and they changed enough that we stopped calling them set boosters or draft boosters and called them play boosters

and the idea was a play booster is hopefully the fun of a set booster but with the draftability of a draft booster and there were a lot of I mean anytime we do something as radical as that it will take us a little time to find our bearings I think for example

one of the things that we learned is that because the rare show up set boosters have multiple rarers show up in a way that didn't really happen in draft booters you got one rare there's a few exceptions where you get a second rare in a draft booster but few and far between whereas in a set booster

I forget exactly what it is but on a regularity you got you had a chance to get a second rare or mythic rare and sometimes more than one you know more than two you get three or four like you get a bunch So what it meant is that I think we didn't quite understand the impact

I mean we knew it was going to happen we made some changes I think we learned that we didn't make enough changes that it was a little swingier than we wanted and a lot of that had to do not with changing like you're going to get the rare as you're going to get the key ended up being

okay we need to do better about giving you tools at common and uncommon especially common and so we changed kind of we really got rid of a lot of like early magic we would put what we call discriminators like cards that aren't really good and limited but you have to learn that like we don't have space for that we also change we dropped down to 80 commons went up to 100 uncommonds it used to be 100 commons and 81 or 8881 uncommonds so we sort of swap those so there's a lot of things we

did and some of which worked well but there's a lot of lessons learned like, and I don't think this is a knock against us as much as we did something for the first time. Okay, something. I mean, and I think we guessed a lot of things correctly. I think we did a lot. I mean, I do think that the play booster was fun, but we learned how to optimize it more. And now, you know, a couple years in, we've learned a much more how to optimize a playboifter. It also took a little bit of getting used to the play booster.

I mean, inherently the problem was, if you like set up, boosters, well, they're not quite set boosters. And he's like draft boosters, well, they're not quite draft boosters. That they were a mix of the two. And so people who really adored one of them was kind of mad that compromises had to be made. But behind the scenes, the reality was not kind of collect boosters. Those are their own thing. The market really wanted one booster.

And if we made them choose two boosters, they were going to pick one. And it was clear they were going to pick set booster. And they picked set booster, what that meant would be the death of draft. We did not want the death of draft. Drafting is very important. And so that's why we opted into the Play Booster. I know there are a little bit of growing pains along the way, but for any fans of Limited, we did it to save Limited.

I do think that limited, the Play Boosters impact things a little less. I agree that there's a little bit more. Rairs play a bigger role just because more show up. You know, the ass fans higher. But I do think we've done a lot to accommodate that. And I think, honestly, our limited environments have been very really good. And I think we've got a pretty good handle on how playbushes work.

The last thing to talk about I'll have two things with that real quick. But the last big thing to talk about is the puzzle. I'm a bit torn. So the data we got on the puzzle was the people that interacted with the puzzle really enjoyed the puzzle.

but not a lot of people interacted with the puzzles or very briefly interacted with the puzzles and so we spent a lot of work and did a lot of energy for something that was really really appreciated but by a small group of people and there's an interesting philosophical question of how often are we supposed to do that like you know if we can do something that is really impactful

for a small number of players but really impactful should we do that And I don't regret doing the puzzles. Obviously, I worked on the puzzle, so I have some stake in them. I do understand what ROI? What's the ROI stand for? It stands for, it talks about, is it worth the investment you put into it? Return on investment.

ROI is return on investment. So the idea essentially is how much energy do we put into it, how much time, how much did it impact things? And the answer is a lot. We put puzzles into the art, into the flavor text, into the pre-release kits. Like, we put it everywhere.

And there's an interesting question about was the return on our investment, did the amount of enjoyment it bring to the players make it worth the amount of energy we put into it? And by a pure mathematical ROI, the answer

it was not. Meaning, we put a of energy and not a lot of people, not enough people enjoyed it. But, but, but, but, but, I don't think everything is supposed to be decided by an ROI. Like, I do think that part of what makes magic magic magic is that we try things and that I think an important part of magic success is that we experiment and we push boundaries and that sometimes those experiments pay off in spades. in time spiral I came up the idea of doing a bonus sheet little did I know that would become like a major a major tool that we would use in many many different places

but maybe it wouldn't have been maybe it would have been a colossal failure maybe the ROI of it wouldn't have panned out you know what I'm saying like maybe so the thing is it's very easy to look at something in retrospect and say well knowing everything we know that wasn't worth the amount of energy put into it but I do things

the kind of, two things. One is, I think we have to experiment and try things and that sometimes the experiments don't pan out. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push boundaries. In fact, Gottlie told me, the puzzle we did for Murder to Call of Manor is the largest corporate puzzle of its kind

ever, ever done anywhere. That the idea of something that baked into a product had never been done before on the scale that we were doing it. So we did something monumental that had never been done before. And I can't, it's cool that magic was part of that. And so I don't regret doing it. I even think if I had it to do again, I would do it again. I mean, there are a few things we did that caused a lot of pain points in making the puzzles that maybe one or two of those we could have tweaked slightly. I'm not saying we could have optimized the puzzle making. But I would have done the puzzle again. I think it was a

were the experiment. Like I said, and I also, the other thing is, I think from time to time, you want to do things where you take the extra length just to make a subsection of your audience just over their head. Like, this was amazing. And we do that in a lot of different places. It's definitely a philosophy that Magicon does, of just trying to make sure that we give a sliver of people this amazing experience, even if it's not for everybody.

And I do think magic the sets need to do that. So I do get that the puzzle didn't quite pan out exactly as we'd hoped it would. I think we'd hoped more people would be involved in it. But I don't regret us doing it. And I think that there are some interesting things. I do think that in the future we can do other puzzle elements. I think they'll be smaller. I think they'll be more consolidated.

But there's a lot learned there. And for example, doing the puzzles. from Murder's Carly of Manor, inspired Gottlieb at MagiCon for Murder to Carl of Manor, the Magikon that was the Murder's Carl of Manica Magicon, Mark made a bunch of puzzles. And those puzzles at Magicon went over, great, because the number of people you need to do it at Magikon to make it worth the investment is small, like it's different. And so Mark now makes puzzles at Magicons. And if you go to Magicon, there's always a puzzle there that Mark is designed.

And those exist because Mark was making puzzles because he even. just trying to reinforce murder to curl of manner. So, like, and what we found is there is a place for puzzles where people can enjoy it, and it makes sense to do it, and we're doing those in Magicon. So if you're coming to Magicon, you can do one of Merck's puzzles. So anyway, I don't regret the puzzles. The one last thing, we did a thing called Clue Edition,

which was its own separate game that was themed to Clue. Reggie Volk was the designer of it. I think it was a very fun. It was kind of like a magic game that had clue elements to it where you were trying to solve a mystery by you're playing the game of magic and things you did in the magic.

I think it was a very fun variant. The biggest mistake we made with that product is we put randomized cards in it. And so I think when you're buying a game like that, well, I think there's a place for randomize. I'm not against. randomized product in the right place for the right reason. I just don't think it made sense

in the clue. And there was something very fun there, and it was a fun game, and I think the people that really have played the very and have enjoyed it. But I think our execution had a little room for improvement. A big part is, I think the randomized material in it

for that product was a mistake. But anyway, that my friend is murders at Carole of Matter. Lessons learned. Like I said, I mean, big picture the set made more mistakes than the average set. Again, I'm never mad at us trying things. I much prefer we try something new and we make mistakes and learn from it

than we just make the same old mistakes or something. I mean, we learned about, like, anyway, I'll rehash all the lessons, but we learned a lot from it. I think it's a set that, you know, when things don't go as well as you want, if you really can take good, valuable lessons away from them, and help make future things better, I think that's the best you can hope for from a set that doesn't quite go the way you hope.

And I think Murder's of Carls of Manor taught us a lot. There's so many things we're doing differently based on things we've done at Murders and Call of Manor. So it was very an educational set. So anyway, guys, that is my lessons learned for Murder of the Carle of Manor. I hope you guys enjoyed it, but I'm now at work. So we all know what that means,

that means instead of making magic, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.