Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #426: Fights I Lost

Episode Date: April 14, 2017

I often talk about the many fights in R&D that I managed to win. Well, I didn't win them all, and this podcast talks about a bunch of the fights I lost.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is an interesting one. So one of the things I find when I talk to people is they believe that I have the ability to do whatever I want, that I have ultimate authoritative power, and I can just change things at my whim. I want, that I have ultimate authoritative power, and I can just change things at my whim. And the reality is that what I do is a collaborative effort, that I work with a lot of different people, and that if I have something I want to do, that doesn't necessarily mean I get to do it.

So today's podcast are about fights I've had, about magic things, where I lost. These are fights where I want to do something different and I lost the fight that I didn't get the thing I wanted to do. And so I'm going to walk through, I'm going to sort of give, explain sort of the setup for how it got there and then kind of why I've lost the fight. Now some of these doesn't mean that I've forever lost the fight because I'm a stubborn man, but most of these are things that I've lost. forever to loss the fight, because I'm a stubborn man, but most of these are things that I've lost.

Some of these I have tried on multiple titles, I'll talk about them, but multiple times to change them. But anyway, I just thought it would be a fun topic to talk about fights that I have lost. Okay, so we're going to begin with a pretty minor one, but one that has dug me all the day. but one that has dug me all the day. So way back when, back when I first got to Wizards, back in 1995, we used to, when we were doing creature types, we were very, we got very detailed.

Like let's say we had a falcon. We'd say falcon, creature type falcon. And then you have pigeon. It's like, creature type pigeon. And at some point we'd say, you know what? Wouldn't it be better if things that were of a similar type had just a singular creature type word so that we could then make you care about those things? So, for example, instead of having pigeon and all the different birds, what if just there were birds?

What if all birds were birds? That it wasn't falcon, it wasn't all these individual things. And that way we could make a lore of birds or something that cared about birds. Although the first bird lore we made was particularly good. But we've made others that were better. So the idea is, we said, look, let's start consolidating our creature types of things that are across the board and so we look mostly we're looking at animals where like you know we would we would name a

bunch of different things so let's just consolidate them so for birds we said okay instead of doing all the different kinds of birds let's just do bird everybody like sounds good and then we were looking at um all the different sort of, you know, lion and panther. And it's like, what if we just, it's cat. They're all in the cat family. They're a cat. Everybody's on board. And then we got to all the different kinds of dog.

Because there's a bunch of different kinds of dogs. And we're like, okay, what if we call that dog, creature type dog? And then Bill said, no, no, no, no. Bill was very fond of Dungeon Dragons. And Dungeon Dragons, no, no, no, no. Bill was very fond of Dungeons and Dragons, and Dungeons and Dragons, there are the hellhounds. And so Bill said, what if we called them hounds rather than dogs? And I said, okay, but the problem is, you know, hound is a kind of dog. I understand sometimes people, you know, the word hound sometimes can be synonymous with dog. I get that.

But it's also, there's such a thing as a hound. Like, if you look at a dog that's a different kind of dog than a hound and say, like, now they're making poodles in Magic, but let's say you saw a poodle and say, hey, look at that pretty hound. You're like, no, that's a poodle. It's not a hound. So I decided to fight for it. I go, how about dog? That's the generic term. We have cat, dog. We have cats and we have dogs. But Bill really, really liked hound. And so this got into a large

argument. And I think what Bill did is just pleaded to people's love of Dungeons and Dragons and Hellhounds and such. And so I got outnumbered. I got outnumbered by people that wanted Hound versus Dog. And I tried and I really, you know, I made the plea of

you know, Dog is a more generic term. It matches Cat, which we've chosen. You know, hound. While at times it's synonymous with dog in general, is a specific kind of dog. And it's weird to have another kind of dog and call it a hound when it's clearly not a hound.

But I lost. I lost that argument. And then, I don't know, maybe five or six years later, it came up again. And I'm like, okay, let's rally the cause of the dog. Let's rally dog again. And I said, okay, come on, guys. Now is the time to right the wrong. Let's call this dog.

And people are like, eh, we call it hound. Why change it? It's not worth the bother of changing it. And so I lost again. And then yet a third time, about, I don't know, five years ago, it got raised again. And this time I had a few more people. Like the person who raised it wasn't even me. Somebody else brought it up.

But I said, okay, I will champion the fight. And so we had a meeting. We have a, we call it card crafting, where we go, and so we actually got into a card crafting meeting. And I was like, okay, look, look, it's a changeover of people.

It's new people. I don't think Bill was even at the meeting. So I was like, okay, the, you know, the hound people aren't necessarily here. There's a new,

we can start afresh. So I made an elegant plea for dog. Others made elegant pleas for dog. I wasn't even alone this time. And so we went around and we talked and we voted. And in the end, hound outnumbered dog. Not by as much. Like it wasn't like before where I was completely outnumbered.

But it was like 60-40. It was like just a little bit more wanted hound than dog. And changing requires, like, we tend not to change things unless there's pretty much a majority that want to change it, that there's, you know, a push toward changing it. So the idea that we lost by a little bit and we were the change, we were the thing trying to change from the status quo, meant that we went down in defeat yet again.

So that is what, and I've not given up the fight. I do believe dog is the correct thing. I believe that hound is. In fact, I've made fun of it. In Unhinged, there's a card called Bingo. B-I-N-G-O, technically, actually. And in the flavor text, because the idea was you play the card like a bingo card. There's a board on it and you can sort of give it an advantage if you get a bingo.

And then we named it bingo and then named it a dog. Make it a dog like the song Bingo. And so the flavor text was there was a farmer. He had a hound because I was making fun of the hound thing. But anyway, it keeps coming up at work. There are other people who know that I like dog who are in the dog camp. So there are other dog fans there. But anyway, maybe one day.

Maybe one day it's a fight that I will win. But I have thrice thus far have not won it. So that is one of my fights that I have not won. Okay, while we're talking creature types, let me talk about my other creature type fights that I have sadly lost. So this one goes back to Mirage. So once again, kind of in the early days of me being here, we were making Mirage and we were making a card that made lots of 1-1 tokens in green.

And I thought, for some reason, I just was really tickled by the idea of what if they were squirrels? Like what is something, so one of the things I've always believed is each color has a sense of humor. And so one of the things I've always believed is each color has a sense of humor. Now, some people have more obvious senses of humor. Like reds is very red like slapstick and just like, you know, red likes the low hanging kind of like it's just funny, you know. Where, you know, blue likes sophisticated wordplay, white likes formula kind of jokes. But anyway, green to me, what green finds funny is the idea that people sort of misunderstand nature. So for example, the idea that something that people see as innocuous can be dangerous, green finds funny. So the idea, for example, of a person being overwhelmed by squirrels is funny to Green.

Because Green inherently understands that nature is nature and that no one thing truly is harmless. So the idea that you would think of a squirrel as harmless and then watch, you know, the idea of sort of attacking squirrels, Green finds, I think, hilarious. I mean, it's funny to Green. You know, it is, hilarious is the wrong word. Overusing the words. But green finds it entertaining. It's interesting.

It's funny to green. So there's a card called Waiting in the Weeds. And so I got everybody to sign off on that. It made squirrel tokens. Now, if anyone who, I've told the story, the art part of the story many times, which is the art comes back.

In the art description, we had said not to show the creature. You see their eyes in the darkness. But the artist actually drew these cat creatures. We didn't specify they were squirrels. And I had to change the card. But I really got it in my hand that the squirrels would be fun. And so,

every chance I got, I would try to get some squirrels and magic. So Urza's Legacy, I did the card concepting, meaning I was the one who figured out what the cards represented and then wrote. I ended up basically writing the art description, although, I mean, I would write it, run it by the art director,

and they would tweak it a little bit. But I figured out sort of what, the card concept means what exactly are we seeing? What is the card representing? And it also says mechanically, you know, what does the card represent flavorfully to match what it is mechanically? And so, for example, there's a card there called, what was that card? Plus seven, plus seven. I'm blanking on the name of it. anyway I decided the thing I had always disliked about giant growth effects was it was never clear

early giant growth would like show something in isolation and like well maybe it's big but who knows you're seeing it in isolation so I decided

that I wanted to show something so I said okay let's show a squirrel towering over a forest because clearly a squirrel is not supposed to be that big and you show a squirrel towering over a forest. Because clearly a squirrel is not supposed to be that big. And you see a squirrel in contrast to a forest, you're like, wow, that's a really big squirrel. Squirrels aren't that big.

And then I found other opportunities to sort of find places where we could put squirrels. Then in Odyssey Block, I was in charge of the creative, I was in charge of creature types and names and flavor tags for Odyssey. And so I decided, we talked about wanting to not do our traditional, we didn't do elves or goblins or merfolk, we decided to do some different stuff. And that would bite us in the butt later when Onslaught happened the year after. But anyway, we didn't know that at the time. And anyway, so I decided like, hey, let's do some squirrels.

So I put a whole bunch of squirrels in the game. There was Squirrel Nest and Squirrel Wrangler and Squirrel, there were a bunch of squirrels. And one of the cards I made was Deranged Hermit, which was really good. And so what happened was a bunch of the squirrel cards happened to be on good cards. And so there were some decks that made use of the cards. And, you know, if you're going to pick a signifier to name the deck after, why not the thing that's most entertaining to you? So the squirrel cards got a lot of attention. And the brand team at the time were like, you know,

we're badass fantasy. Squirrels aren't that. And so there's a lot of pushback at the time were like, you know, we're badass fantasy. Squirrels aren't that. And so there's a lot of pushback at the time in that, you know, we were highlighting the wrong aspects of the game. The game is not about little dinky squirrels attacking you. It's about, you know, big kick-ass monsters and stuff attacking you. And so it was sort of decreed that we should... I mean, Deranged Hermit, I realize, was not in Urza's saga. It was not in Odyssey.

Durange Hermit was in Urza's Legacy, the set that I did the card concepting for. And we had got the feedback then, sorry, we'd got the feedback then, because the squirrels were getting some high profile. So they talked about wanting to be more badass. So when I made the squirrels in Odyssey, the direction I gave was like,

let's make more badass squirrels. And like, there's a picture of a squirrel instead of a nut. It has an eyeball, right? A little one. But anyway, I think the decision came down that we wanted to be a little more serious and that was a little too silly.

And so we were told, let's really pull back on the squirrels. And so for many years, we really didn't put squirrels in Blackboard. I mean, I put them in Silver Border products because they're funny. And I've tried to, I'm trying to come back to that. Okay, I get it. We overdid the squirrels. We put them in the wrong kind of cards. But you know what? We do silly things from time to time. And we do, we definitely do cutesy things. What if, hey, you know, we could do squirrels.

Let's just not do, you know, don't make the top tournament card squirrel. But we could do the occasional squirrels. You know, we did some market research. The audiences like squirrels. In fact, we did one thing once where we tested creature types, and I think squirrels came in fourth. I think it was dragons, angels, goblins, squirrels. And that market research, I think, is what spooked, one of the things that spooked the creative team to go, well, we don't want squirrels. That's not supposed to be a thing people care about.

And so there was a line drawn in the sand about no squirrels in Blackboard. I guess we do them in Superboard. In Blackboard or Magic. Or at least in regular standard legal sets. I think we occasionally do a squirrel reference in supplemental sets. And I have tried many times

to overturn the squirrel ban and saying, you know, there's a time and place to do squirrels and I'm not saying our top tier turn the car to have squirrel on it. But you know what? We do a lot of cute, silly things. And so I've tried on several occasions to come back and sort of reverse the squirrel

ban. I have failed. I even, even one of the brand team, a guy named Mark Purvis, who is a big fan of squirrels. So I've even got the brand team say, you know, it's okay. You know, we don't want the squirrels on the main cards,

but, you know, on the big tournament cards. But, you know, occasional squirrels, okay. But the creative team really feels like it just, like it's popular enough and enough off message that making a squirrel just sort of makes people focus on the squirrel. And that's not what they want. And so I get it. I get it. There's integrity you want.

Our brand, we're more serious than that. But I just keep fighting for the occasional squirrel. And it's a fight I've lost many times. In fact, I have rallied against the squirrel ban on numerous occasions, and I've not won. So that's another fight that I have lost. Okay, next. Okay, so this one goes back to Onslaught. So we were making the morph mechanic.

And so for those who don't know morph, morph is you have creatures that you can play face down. When you play them face down, they're a 2-2 colorless creature. And then they have a morph cost, and you pay the morph cost. You can turn them face up to turn them into what they are. So the idea is kind of it's hidden when it's face down. Everything's just a 2-2

and you don't quite know what it could turn into. It's a fun mechanic. So the fight I had on this one was at some point people got it in their head that if I have a 2-2 and you reveal it, that they didn't want to respond to you to bolt it.

So the people said, what if we just don't put it on the stack? What if we just do it and you can't respond to it? Morph just isn't something that uses the stack. And my issue with it is, it's like everything uses the stack. And I'm like, I think it gets confusing when something that seems like it would use the stack doesn't use the stack.

So I really fought hard to have it use the stack. Now, I understand that means that in response to you, you know, morphing it, you can bolt it. I get that. And I feel like if I giant growth something, like, if I have a 2-2 and I giant growth it, you can bolt it in response. That's just part of how magic functions. You know, and the reality is if they have a bolt, they probably could have bolted it before, you know. The fact that, you know, the fact that in response they can bolt. I mean, I get it. I understand. But my big issue was

sort of the continuity of I find when one of the things I've learned in general about teaching people is the more consistent you are in how things work, the easy it is for people to understand. The reason that English is such a hard language to learn, for example, is

we have so many exceptions. Like I studied Spanish when I was in school and Spanish is so much so many exceptions. Like, I studied Spanish when I was in school, and Spanish is so much more orderly. I mean, not that there aren't exceptions and stuff, but not as many. Like, you know, if you understand sort of how the language is structured, like verbs is a good sentence in Spanish.

And like, it pretty much, there's a rule of how it works, and it, you know, 99% of the time follows the rule. Where English, like major English words, words you use constantly are just like, nope, we don't follows the rule where English like major English words words you use constantly are just like nope we don't follow the rule at all um and it just becomes hard to understand and so my argument with morph was I get the desire to want to not have it on the stack because that way I get a surprise you can't respond to it um I just found that like I'd rather we cost things appropriately, you know, but make it something

by which, you know, it just works within the system and it works, like, a lot of people who understand, once you understand the stack, it's, like, really weird that you don't use it. And so, anyway, I tried to stop it during onslaught.

I made a valiant, but the thing in the end that got people was when we had been playing with it in playtesting, people sort of assumed you couldn't bolt it, and then when it came out to the rules that you could bolt it, it was late in the process. So one of the reasons for making it not work with the stack was we had done a lot of testing assuming that's not how it worked, and it was kind of late in the process. So one of the reasons for making it not work with the stack was we had done a lot of testing assuming that's not

how it worked. And it was kind of late in the process to make that change and it required a lot of recosting. But when we brought it back, when we brought back

Morph in Concept Arc here, the issue came up again. And it got raised that, you know, this really is one of those things that people don't quite get because it doesn't follow

how everything else works. And I said, you know, I understand if we change it, the power level of the old cards would get affected, but, look, that's you know, Onslaught is pre-modern so there's not a lot of people playing modern. It's mostly a casual or

maybe Commander or a Legacy thing. I said, we can balance the new cards for this. You know, it was early enough that we could do that. And so I made a big plea in another card crafting meeting. But once again, it is hard. Like R&D tends to be like, in order to change something, we need kind of like Congress. You want to change the Constitution. You need like three-fourths of the people to say, yeah, let's do that. A good chunk of people have to say, yeah, let's do that. A good chunk of people have to say, yeah, it's a good idea for us to change what we've done.

And R&D is kind of similar in that if you really want to change something, I mean, you already have people, you know, three-fourths have to really believe, no, this is the right thing to do to sort of change something that we've previously sort of set up and established. And so while there were people that did want to put it on the stack, there are enough people that are like, look, if I had to start, a lot of people said in that meeting, if we had to start all over again, I would have it on the stack. But since Morph has existed and we did it, you know, in two different blocks before Khazatark here,

being the original Onslaught block and we brought it back to Time Spiral block, look, this is just the way it is. It's the way that older players understand it. Changing it now seems wrong, and so we didn't change it. So I lost the morph on the stack fight. Okay, another one is one of the things that's always bugged me is about multicolor cards, is that if you look at a white card and you say to somebody, what color are those cards? They'll say white because the card is white. Same with red or black or blue or green. They know what color it is. The problem with multicolored

cards is, especially at the time, back in the day, multicolored cards were completely gold. So if you saw it and saw gold, you had to look to the mana cost usually. That's the only thing on the card that told you what color it was. And so I suggested a radical idea. So I got permission to work with the

whoever does frames. My idea was imagine if a white and blue card was half white, half blue. Imagine if a red and green card was half white, half blue. Imagine if a red and green card was half red, half green. And so I got them mocked up. I showed them around. And the general feeling I got was,

oh, no, players like gold. I'm like, I know they like gold. It's not that they, so my argument was, it's not that they like gold. What they like, I know they like gold. It's not that they, so my argument was, it's not that they like gold. What they like is multicolor cards. Multicolor cards have always been gold, so they have an association. But I think it's the multicoloredness

that they like, not the, literally the gold on the card. And people are like, well, but gold's cool. People like gold. Gold's a valuable thing. There is some equity to gold. And I'm like, okay, yes, we've built up equity. We have built up equity for gold. But it's just not functional.

And in the end, it was decided that we, that's when we changed the pin lines on the cards. So there's a little line that goes around the cards that normally is also the color. So a red card would have a red frame with a red pin line. So we made the decision to change the pin lines on gold cards so that if you are a red-green card, half your pin line is red and half your pin line is green. So that there's a little more of a visual indicator on the card that the card is red and green. And I tried,iantly. The frames I thought would do,

like, the frames were what I wanted, which was you could at a glance look at the card and just really know what the card was. And I fought, I fought valiantly. I had some support. Some of these fights, I did not have a lot of support. Some of them I had a decent amount of support. This one, I would say I had not nearly enough to make it happen,

but enough where there were other people fighting the fight, not just myself. So by the way, the frames that we did not use, so years later I ended up making Hybrid. And I remembered these frames and I said, you know what, okay, how about we use them for hybrid, because hybrid also has the issue of its two colors, and so they said, okay, yeah, that seems like a good idea, so if you want to know the frames I'm talking about, we've used them for hybrid, hybrid frames, those are the frames I was trying to get for multicolor,

and if I had my way, I mean, now we obviously can't make this fight, this is one of those fights I've lost, and I've made decisions past that where I can't go back. Those are now the hybrid frames, so I can't now make them the multicolor frame. But if I had magic to do all over, I would have those be the multicolor frames, just because it's clear. What I would have done is, if you were three or more colors, then I would have put gold on you. Then gold would signify three or more, because there's no pretty way to show three colors or four colors or five colors on a card. And that I would have used gold to be significant of

multi-color, more than two. That's me stressing the word multi. But anyway, that was another fight that I lost. Okay. So here's a fun one that I lost. So Aaron and I were making a card for some set. so here's a fun one that I lost so Aaron and I were making a card

for some set, Door to Nothingness I'm guessing that's going to be fifth on is my guess so the card that we made was destroy target creature or player and it required a whole bunch of mana, I think it was I mean, really

what the card was, was it was meant to kill players. But we were tickled pink by the idea that just, like, the way we worded it at the time was, target player loses the game. And I was like, I just, I want to make a more novel piece of text that seemed

fun to me. And so I said, okay, destroy target creature or player just tickled me to no end. And so I said, okay, destroy a target creature or player just to no end. But what happened was we got to the, the rules manager at the time was Mark Gottlieb. And he's like, look, I get it. It's funny. It's funny.

But we don't destroy players. That's not how the game works. We, you know, we make them lose the game. We destroy creatures. And I'm like, but, my argument was, let's say we show this to a player who has never seen this before. What would they think happens if you destroy a target player?

I think they would guess correctly that the player loses the game. Like, I don't think they would be, like, sometimes there's rules that cause confusion because of sort of the nuance of the rule system. And then there's things that cause problems because people sort of the nuance of the rule system. And then there's things that cause problem

because people won't understand it. And I'm all for stopping stuff that causes confusion and just, like, I don't mind, I don't mind stopping things

that, like, will confuse people. I don't want to do things that will confuse people. But things that cause sort of, like, like, like, one of the things

I talk about, one of the things I talk about one of the reasons that the rules manager and the head designer I always joke that the rules manager is my arch enemy which is not very true

but and the reason I joke about it is my job as head designer is to do things we've never done before is to find ways to do things

because there's only so many things you can do in magic so one of my jobs is to find something we've done before and find a new way to do it and the rules manager's job is to find something we've done before and find a new way to do it.

And the rules manager's job is to take everything and put it in the way that we do it. Like, oh, you want to do this brand new thing? Well, here's a way we've previously done it. Let's do it like that. And so I'm trying to constantly do things we haven't done. You know, do things that we've approached but in a way we haven't done. And they're trying to find ways to make it how we've done. And so the fight we always get into is I'm trying to do something new and different that

has a novelty quality to it, and they're like, no, no, no, there's a way we've done this before, we should use these old words, and then it becomes not as exciting because part of what I'm doing is making the excitement. And this was a good case where, like, I felt like the rules could support it, I didn't think it would confuse anybody, and I thought it was entertaining. I felt like the rules could support it. I didn't think it would confuse anybody. And I thought it was entertaining.

Essentially, in the end, what came back was, it was one card. And Gottlieb's argument was, like, if we're going to change something because it's a brand new mechanic or it's a major feature, like, there's times and places for us to sort of rewrite things. And he was, he goes, I'm not against doing that.

He goes, but there has to be a payoff. There has to be a big enough payoff. And one card, you know, one rare card that people make people chuckle for two seconds, not worth it. That was his thing. And I fought with him, and I said that, you know, if you could destroy players, if that was a thing, we'd find other places to make use of that. I think it was kind of fun. It was flavorful.

But anyway, I was... I did not win that fight. I think I did take that fight. I mean, Godley made the call, and then I asked him if I could sort of talk to other people. I didn't want to go over his head. Like, look, I get what you're saying.

Do you mind if... And so he and I had this discussion. I'm not sure whether it was... I'm not sure if card crafting existed at the time. But we talked in a larger group about this larger issue. And people backed out, I'll even say. You know, yeah, this doesn't seem like it's worth it to cause the aggravation it would cause. So no, sorry, no Destroy Target player.

Okay, I'm almost at Rachel's Skull. So I'll do one more. So there was a card called Akroma. So Akroma is the Onslaught story. This guy named Ixalan that had the ability to make things, like anything he could imagine, he could bring it to reality. He was a reality sculptor, as they called him.

Anyway, so he made this angel named Akroma. And Akroma was a really important part of the story. So somebody made the Akroma. I don't remember who it was, whether it was Bill or Mike or someone made it. And what they did is they just gave it every creature ability they could think of that made any sense.

So it was like, she's an angel, so she flies. Of course, she has vigilance. A lot of angels have vigilance. And she has first strike, and she has trample, and she has haste, which is the only white thing that ever had haste, without needing a red thing around. But anyway, it's what we call a kitchen sink design, which is just, it just has everything on it.

And there is entertainment value to that. It's not that I dislike kitchen sink cards. They're fun and players like them. We don't do them very often, but I mean, it's kind of fun to just go, it's got everything, you know, that is fun. But my issue was, this was a cornerstone of the story, you know, she, nothing about her, like, it did make a splashy card out of it,

but it didn't really reinforce her story at all. Like, she was an artificially made creature, you know, she really had this sort of need for vengeance, like, there's a lot of sort of elements of her character that I thought the card did not cover. So I fought really hard to stop this design of Akroma because what I wanted Akroma to be was something that was,

like, that captured who she was as a character. I felt like you made a really cool card and then just put it on a, like, this is one of our story characters that we want people to know about. Like, what I'd done with Phage was, Phage was another character from the same storyline where Phage and Cormorant would have a giant fight

and then merge into a Corona. Along with another third person. So Phage was, her touch was deadly. So I made a card that had Death Touch, although previously being called Death Touch. And then, when it did damage to a player, it killed them.

Damage to a player was instant death, which we had never done before. So it was kind of like a... In fact, I designed the card earlier as a super basilisk and then realized it would be a perfect fit for Phage. So I was so happy with my Phage. I was like, oh, Phage has this cool, splashy mechanic, and it is exactly the character.

And I felt that a Chroma wasn't that. And the counter-argument was, look, it's one of our characters. We want people to care about it. I think she might have even been in the packaging. We're like, we want her to care about it. We just want an awesome, cool card. This is an awesome, cool card. And so I got overruled.

Now, the funny thing is, years later, we did this thing. This is prior to head-to-head existing. But on the website, we did a giant head-to-head. I've been trying to have them do the head-to-head where things fight each other every day, and you vote every day forever. And I just never got traction on doing it. Mostly because they wanted to automate it, and it required writing a script. Like, right now, I purposely do it every day. But it requires me doing it. And they didn't want somebody to have to automate it and it required writing a script like right now I purposely do it every day

but it requires me doing it and they didn't want somebody to have to do it every day but anyway we did do one of them which was we did we had 64 legendary characters and then we had a head to head and Akroma won the whole

thing and a part of her winning the thing, one of the sort of the rewards is we had an A Chroma week, and then in Time Spiral, we repeated A Chroma on the time-shifted sheet. And then on the second time-shifted sheet, in Planar Chaos, we made an alt version of her,

a red version of her. And then in Future Sight, we made her memorial that sort of hid to that, you know, she had died. So we sort of had an Akroma thing that ran through it. So obviously,

in retrospect, I was wrong on this one. Players loved Akroma so much that, I mean, not just loved Akroma in the moment. She was popular

in, in, in, uh, Onslaught, which she was, or, Onslaught,

Onslaught or Legion. I think she was, I think she was in Onslaught and Phage was in Legion. But anyway, Onslaught, or... I think she was in Onslaught, and Phaedra was in Legions. But anyway, Onslaught Black. But anyway, that's one of those fights that I lost, that I look back on, and I go, okay. Like, a lot of the fights I've had, I mean, maybe I just brought up the fights where I feel I'm inherently correct.

I have time for one more real quick fight that I lost. Because I... A little bit of traffic and this one I wrote a whole article about Zach Hill and I he was the one who wrote Development Team at the time did a

did a point counterpoint on which is targeted draw so one of the things I believe is I believe that one of the cool things about magic is when you use cards in ways that aren't really what they're intended to do that you feel very clever.

So I really like targeting things. And I especially like targeting things that you normally would like. Like one of the cool things about lightning bolts or direct damage is we say target creature or player with the idea that, well, you're pretty much going to pick your opponent's creature or your opponent. But every once in a while you figure out a reason why you want to do yourself.

You want to shock or bolt your own thing. And you feel really clever when you do that. And so I felt the same way about draw. Normally you want the card. But if we say target, then, you know, if you want to mill your opponent out or something, there's different reasons why you might want to give them cards.

And so I made sure early on that whenever we would draw, it was targeted. And that came to bite us in the butt a few times, like Brain Geyser, not Brain Geyser, Stroke of Genius. And there was people who were convinced that it was confusing that it said target player draws a card. Why not just say you draw a card? And so we decided in R&D to make that the default, confusing that it said target player draws a card why not just say you draw a card and so it was decided in r&d to make that the default that if we're going to make a card drawing card that i mean there's if there's a reason to make a target they weren't against in the set like let's say you had a set without a morph theme maybe you make the card drug and that set targeted but the idea was

the default was um was not targeted and i really i, I felt like it went fundamentally against kind of what makes Magic cool. And that, plus, for multiplayer play, sometimes you want to, for political reasons, sort of help a teammate. And like, there's just cool things

about draw being targeted. And I fought, and I fought, and I fought, and I lost that fight. I mean, basically, in the end, what it said was, draw by default should be not targeted especially in

sets aimed at you know lower level players and in a set that needs it if there's a reason for it to be targeted it can be

but it should be targeted because there's a specific reason not just a generic reason and if you want to hear I did a long plea on it it's the only ever although Sam and I talked about doing another one.

But I did a thing called Point Counterpoint where I wrote one side and Zach Hill was doing the developer column at the time, latest developments, and he did the other one. And anyway, if you want to sort of see, like, it's a good example of an issue that you might think, like, wow, how much could there be to this issue? And I wrote 3,000 words on it, and Zach wrote 3,000 words on the opposite side of it, and, you know,

it's actually a pretty deep thing. But it was yet another fight that I lost. So, hopefully today, one of my goals of today is to talk about how that, you know, I don't, because I'm in front of the people, you know, I'm in front of people,

I'm the sort of the face, if you will, that people assume, I don't know, the ultimate power that I'm in charge of everything. There's a lot of things that I am not in charge of and I don't do. And even the things I do do, I need buy-off that, you know, it's a group collaborative effort. So I don't just get to do things in a vacuum. I can make suggestions or try things, but in the end I need other people to sort of buy into it. Anyway, today we're just talking about how, hey, there's

some fights that I lost. Now I will say dog versus hound, I still believe dog is right. Targeted draw, I still believe targeted draw is right. Morph on the stack, I still believe morph on the stack is right. A chroma, I believe I was wrong. That was me being wrong. Squirrels, I still believe Targeted Draw is right. Morph on the Stack, I still believe Morph on the Stack is right. Akroma, I believe I was wrong. That was me being wrong. Squirrels, I still believe is correct. Multicolor Frames,

I would have done that if we started over, but I lost that fight. I'm not going to win that fight. Destroy Targeted Player, I think they're probably right. Probably that's not something for Black Border Magic. Maybe if someone lets me make a third unset, I would do Destroy Targeted Player.

Anyone who has the right to help me do that is listening to the show. But anyway, so guys, that is sort of I get to hear some fights, get to hear some times that I lost the fight. I talk a lot about the fights that I win. I do a whole podcast on the fights that I won, so I feel you get at least one podcast where like, and I lost

this time, and I lost that time, and I lost that. It's a podcast of me losing. But anyway, I'm now at Rachel's school, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of making magic, sorry, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.