Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #436: Great Designer Search 1, Part 1

Episode Date: May 19, 2017

This is part one of a two-part series where I examine the first Great Designer Search in detail. I walk through all the tests to get in and then all the challenges given to the contestants.

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, a while back, many years ago, I had Ethan Fleischer as my carpool guest, and we talked all about the great designer search. So today I'm going to go more in detail about the very first great designer search. I'll be covering a little bit of ground I talked with Ethan, but mostly I'm going to talk about sort of all the processes, the steps that we went through. So a little more tactical this time. Last time was kind of an Ethan but mostly I'm going to talk about sort of all the processes the steps that we went through so a little more tactical this time last time was kind of an overview and I'm going to talk about the tests people had to take to get in and then the challenges while they were in and just really hit sort of the highlights of all the different things that went into the great the first great designer search so this happened back in fall of

2006 so what happened was my boss at the time was Randy Buehler of Pro Tour Hall fame. And he said that we had done a lot of, one of the ways that we often get developers is we hire interns off and off the Pro Tour. And then if they work out, they'll turn into full-time jobs. In fact, I believe almost every developer we have started as an intern. And Randy said to me, you know, we've never had a design intern, so I've allocated some money for a design intern. And then he said, look, this is your intern to use as a design intern. You can place the design however you want, an intern however you want.

So I went home to think about it. So one of the problems is, the Pro Tour has been a really good place for developers to find people with that skill set. That to be a good pro player, you have to be able to analyze cards and build decks and break things and figure out metagames and stuff. But those skills don't necessarily apply

to being a good designer. And so the question to me was, okay, I thought it was awesome to have a design intern, but how do I find one? And I was at home, you know, we put the kids to bed. My wife and I were watching TV, and I think we were watching Project Runway. And I realized that there was a whole genre of reality shows. Project Runway, The Apprentice, Face Off, The Great Baking Show, Last Comic Standing. The idea was that there's some skill you were testing. There was a whole bunch of people that were good at that thing.

And then each week you would have a challenge. And then the person that did the worst would have kicked out and you would continue on. And the idea was you were trying to find the best, you know, whatever it is you were trying to find. And so I came back to Randy and I said, okay, I have an idea. What if I run a reality show? What if, in order to, you know, we, I do something where people can enter and the winner, the prize for the winner is an internship, a six month design internship. Because every, you know, a lot of people really want to work in R&D and a lot of people would

love to be designers. I said, I think this would be very exciting. So we had to work it out. We talked to, you know,D and a lot of people would love to be designers. I said, I think this would be very exciting. So we had to work it out. We talked to, you know, HR and all the stuff. So what our HR department said is, okay, understand that this is actually a job interview. So you have to follow all the rules of actual job interviews. And there are three requirements that you had to meet. This is the three requirements.

One is it was actually a job and it was a job in the United States. So you had to be able This is the three requirements. One is, it was actually a job, and it was a job in the United States. So you had to be able to work in the United States. Either that meant you had to be a citizen in the United States or actively already have a green card. Why already have a green card? Because this is a temporary position, and it is near impossible to get a green card for a non-permanent position.

And it takes a long time to get a green card. We non-permanent position. And it takes a long time to get a green card. We had budgeted it for a certain year. Anyway, for a number of sadly logistical reasons, we were not able to hire people who couldn't work in the country. I know there's a lot of great designers out there. I know there's a lot of awesome people who'll be great designers that aren't American. Sadly, because this was for a job in America, one of the requirements is you had to work or be able to work in America. Number two is you had to be an adult.

And by America standards, that means 18. You had to be 18 years old. And number three, the job was in Renton, Washington. You had to relocate. You had to be willing to relocate. So those were the three requirements. You had to be able to work in the United States. You had to be 18. You had to be willing to moveate. So those were the three requirements. You had to be able to work in the United States. You had to be 18.

You had to be willing to move to Renton or to Seattle. And if you met those criteria, you could enter. And as we expected, a lot of people entered. Thousands of people entered. You know, it was exciting. And so the way it was set up was there were three judges, or actually there were four judges. There was me, there was Devin Lowe, who was the head developer at the time, and Aaron Forsythe, who was, I think, working with me on design at the time.

And then it's kind of modeling after the judges in American Idol. I wanted to have one judge that was kind of harsh, that was kind of, well, blunt, I guess is better. Someone who was just to the point and told you what was wrong and didn't mince words. And I decided it wasn't fair to either me or Aaron or Devin to be the bad guy, if you will. So we ended up making Gleemax. I actually have never admitted this. I wrote Gleemax.

And Gleemax was designed to just be blunt. Because sometimes when you're looking for feedback, what you really want is someone just telling you exactly what they mean, exactly what's wrong. And so I try to write GleamX very short and very blunt. Also, I'm a comedy writer. I try to give GleamX a little humor, but just try to be super blunt. Okay, and then I think Brady, Brady Donovan was a guest judge.

We had one test, we'll talk about it, that had to do with, brought in creative elements. Brady was a guest judge for that um okay so how did you become a great designer how do you even get in in the door so the first thing we made you do is we like started to enter to say i'm interested in this we wanted to have a barrier big enough that it would discourage everybody who wasn't serious because the reality was we we had a grade everything we had to look at everything that people turned in. And we knew a lot of people would want the job,

but not everybody would necessarily want to put the work in for the job. And so the first test really was to create a barrier to say, hey, are you serious about this? So we created an essay test that had 10 questions that each question had to be answered

between 250 and I think 300 words. So it was A, there was a bunch of work. You had to write over 3,000 words. They were hard questions, so we got a chance to see what you thought and understand your reasoning. And it also, if you wrote long or short, you know, if you didn't follow the instructions, well, that's important. Are you following the instructions? And so what happened was, here are the 10 questions. I'm going to go

through the 10 questions. So first question was, introduce yourself. So the first question was, I wanted to get a sense of to know, who are you? Why do you want this job? What are you doing? And then, now you only had 250 to 300 words. And so you had to sort of sell yourself in a condensed way. You know, that's an important skill. The reason we made the questions limited, A, I guess we had to read them, but B, part of design is figuring out how to get a lot into a little space. You know, you only have so much rules text to do your card. And so conservation of idea is really important. So we wanted to be crisp and clear in answering the questions. The other big thing is I wanted to get a little sense of personality and a little sense of background. This was your chance to sort personality and a little sense of background.

This was your chance to sort of say a little bit about yourself. A common mistake that people fell into, and I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again, because if you ever interview with Wizards and Ghosts, a fine piece of advice. A lot of people spent a good chunk of time talking about why they would like the job rather than why we would like to hire them. It's not that we don't want you to be passionate about magic. We do. But there's ways to demonstrate how you've been involved in magic without spending time and energy telling us how much you love the job. We want people passionate about magic. That is important. But you loving the job, most people who come to work for wizards, who are magic players, are very excited at the job.

The idea to work on magic is a really exciting thing. And so what we really want to hear from you, you being excited to work on magic and really this being your dream opportunity, it's not new to us. I mean, it's nice to see a passion. That part is good. But spend more energy talking about why we would want to hire you, not why you would want to work for us. Okay, question number two.

Name three positive things about Manuskru. So this test was, this question was trying to say, okay, not everything is always viewed, you know, like, do you understand the structure of the game? There's a reason Manuskru exists. Explain the things that are positive about it. One is you could talk about how it's the byproduct of a very important part of the game. You know, that the mana system is super important.

You could talk about how it creates some suspenseful moments. Sometimes you don't have land when you need it, and you're not able to play what you want, but you eventually are able to come back. So it sort of puts you at a disadvantage early on, but it allows you to have these dramatic games where you come from behind. You could talk about how it lets a player who's a lesser player have a chance at winning. That a better player can get a little mana screwed and give the lesser player a chance. You know, it's not like playing chess where you're always going to lose to the better player. If they're

significantly better than you, you're always going to lose to them. That doesn't happen in Magic. You could talk about how it is a great scapegoat. How if you lose the game, it's something to blame that allows you to protect your ego a little bit and say, well, it's not my fault I lost. Anyway, there are a lot of different reasons. Once again, one of the themes you'll see through these questions is I was more interested in you defending your answer than your answer and some i mean the answer mattered i'm kind of curious what you said but also even if you picked an answer that was not the answer i would give did you defend it did you give good reasons if you did then i was much more

excited in your answers okay next name a popular existing mechanic and how you'd make it better so the idea of this question was look we're all about incremental change that's what design is about do things improve upon them so what I wanted to say is hey could you take something we've done and I wanted them to take something that was a success not something we've done poorly obviously things went poorly we can do better take something that, and explain to me why, while we did it well, we could have done it better.

Because incrementally, if you can make something that is good 1% better, that is awesome. If you can take something that's already a good thing and just find a little tiny way to do it. So this question was really making people look at the nooks and crannies. Obviously, it was a popular mechanic. Probably there was something pretty successful about it if it was popular. But there was always room for improvement.

Find something, figure out, you know. And we also wanted you to sort of take a look at things and, you know, look for faults where a lot of people maybe wouldn't look for faults. Just like the man of screw was like, look for positives. Maybe we would look for positives. Okay, next. From a design standpoint, what is the best thing about Champions of Kamigawa? And the next question was,

from a design standpoint, what was the worst thing about Ravnica? And the idea was, Champions did not go over really well. It was not a well-received set. Ravnica was a very well-received set. So what we wanted to do is say, okay, let's look for the negative,

or sorry, the positive in a set received negatively and the positive in a set received negatively and the negative in a set received positively. Because the idea is, no matter how good or bad a set is received, there are good things about it and there are bad things about it. So we're talking about Shamsa Kamigawa. It played really well in limited. It actually had a very good limited game. There were mechanics in the block that worked really well.

Ninjutsu was a very good mechanic um you know i i think that the uh there was something interesting in splice although it was a little too parasitic but there's something very interesting there um bushido was a fine mechanic although probably should have named it something we could repeat it with um you know there were a lot of things going on i I mean, flip cards, while had their issues, were very innovative. You know, there were definitely—the cycle of dragons was really well done, and it taught us the idea of death triggers as, here's a powerful thing that makes you want to attack, but if your opponent gets rid of it, then there's a reward.

You know, there are a lot of different elements that you can point to. In Ravnica, for example, where did it fail? Well, not all the mechanics were great. Both the Boris mechanic and the Orzhov mechanic both had a lot, really could have been much better. Menethilim did not work. You know, there were a lot of smaller choices. Like, the set was very siloed.

There wasn't as much interconnection between. And when you drafted, there was more desire to sort of cross between guilds. But, you know, we did very little to do any cross-pollination. I mean, there were some themes we cross-pollinated. But, you know, the key is what was positive. Like, everything has good and bad. but the key is what was positive. Everything has good and bad, so we were trying to get you, the person, to kind of figure out where things hang and where you thought were positive and where were negative.

Once again, by the way, I cared more about your defense. If you thought something was wonderful that I didn't think was wonderful in Kamigawa, but you really explained what you saw in it that was wonderful, that was great. If you really disliked something around here, it's something that I didn't think was wonderful in Kamigawa, but you really explained what you saw in it that was wonderful, that was great. If you really disliked something from Ravnica, something that I liked, but you explained why you didn't like it and you explained yourself, that was fine.

Once again, the key wasn't to agree with us. The key was to defend and explain and be able to view and see things. I got a lot of, by the way, really interesting suggestions that were things I had not thought of. It made me see elements of Kamigawa in a better light than I did. It made me more critical of parts of Ravnica.

Okay, which of the three psychic graphics should the most cards be for? Which for the fewest? Okay, so this was, so the psychic graphics are Timmy or Tammy, Johnny or Jenny, and Spike. So the question is, which one do we make the most cards for? Now, once again, I didn't care if you got the right answer. I cared if you explained properly. A lot of this was you showing that you understand what the psychographics were and how they worked.

And trying to understand a little bit about our design process. What kind of cards we made. Okay, the technically correct answer, as some people say, the best kind, is we make the most cards for Spike. Now, a lot of people go, what? Why is that? Because we do a lot of work for Limited. In fact, more cards are designed for Limited than Constructed,

because Constructed has a cap of how many cards we can design for. There's only so many cards that can be relevant and constructed. A lot more cards can be relevant and limited and, you know, draft and seal is a big part of Magic play. So we spend a lot of time, especially on draft, and the cards that are sort of geared toward that format, that's a more spiky thing. And so we spend a lot of cards, a lot of our commons and uncommons, we spend a lot of energy sort of optimizing the cards for Spike. I'm not saying we don't make Timmy commons and uncommons, Johnny uncommons and uncommons,

but we spend more time on Spike for that regard. Which should we make the fewest for? The answer would be Johnny. The reason for that is that Johnny doesn't, Johnny or Jenny, they don't need a lot to really get them going. That if you make one cool card that does neat things,

that can keep them busy for days, for weeks. Just, you know, like you just make a cool card, you know, that just, like Battle for Witch is a great example of a really good Johnny card. Ended up being a Spike card too, but it's just like, okay, you've got to build a giant deck. Well, how are you going to do that? And how do you maximize?

And what do you do? And what does it mean? And how do you, you know, and that the Johnny's just Well, how are you going to do that? How do you maximize? And what do you do? And what does it mean? And how do you, you know? And that the Johnny's just like, ooh, how can I do this? What can I do? And, you know, there's lots and lots of possibilities and ways to do something. So you just need less cards to make Johnny, Jenny happy. Okay, next question.

You must eliminate a card type. Which one would you eliminate? So remember, this was, I think this was during Time Spiral. So this was before Lorwyn. So there was no Planeswalkers yet. So this only had six, there were six creature types at the time. But it's after sixth edition, so there's no interrupts or mana sources. So the six cards at the time, obviously, were artifacts, creatures, enchantments,

instants, land, and sorceries. So which would you get rid of? There were answers for any of them. creatures, enchantments, instants, land, and sorceries. So which would you get rid of? There are answers for any of them. I think the two easiest, or the two answers I would give most likely answers. One is instant. You can get rid of instants by making instant a super type. I've talked about this before.

So get rid of flash and get rid of the instant card type. Now you have instant sorceries, which are what instants are. And then you get instant creature. Any permanent with instant means it's a permanent with Flash. And then instant as a super type just means you can play this card at any time. So that's how you get rid of instants. Now, that's a little cheaty. You're technically getting rid of instants, but not getting rid of the card, essentially.

The more... Okay, that's a cheating answer, although I accept that as a fine answer, is enchantments. Artifacts and enchantments overlap a lot between each other, and if you needed to get rid of a card type, you really could get rid of enchantments, and artifacts

could really accomplish the things enchantments do, especially if you allowed yourselves to make colored artifacts. Maybe that could fill in the gap. The reason I would get rid of artifacts, I'm sorry, enchantments instead of artifacts, is from a flavor standpoint, artifacts are a lot more easy to do top-down

and just more, you know, enchantments are trickier to sort of concept, where artifacts are much easier to concept. And players get more excited by, you know, physical things. So I would do that. Now, if you want to get rid of the land, you could try to come up with some mana system that somehow doesn't require us

to use the land. If you want to get rid of sorceries, you could do something where everything is an instant, but there's maybe inherent restrictions or something. If you want to get rid of artifacts, you just take the enchantment artifact argument

and push toward enchantments rather than artifacts. If you want to get rid of creatures, that's the tough one. There's people that try, and they're like, oh, you just make a lot of token creatures, and there's sorceries and instants and things that make token creatures, but it's not cards that make the creatures.

Anyway, any answer was acceptable if you made good defense. Some were easier answers to defend than others. The creatures is a hard one to defend. But if you defended it, that's what I was looking for. Okay, next. You have a time machine. You go back in time and you're able to have Richard Garfield make one change to magic. I wrote a whole article and did an entire podcast about this.

So there's lots and lots of things that if we had to do all over again, I would do a little bit differently. The interesting thing is the supertype is a big one. You know, I think the way we do subtypes, I would change a little bit

if we started over. I mean, you can listen to my podcast. There's a whole bunch of different things. One of the new ones, by the way, this wouldn't have been an answer at the time

because Planeswalkers didn't exist, but I would start the game with Planeswalkers if I had to start it all over again. Just, if for nothing else, to have Lightning Bolt say,

deal three damage to target creature, player, or Planeswalker. That would make things so much... The wonkiness of the rules to sort of fit planeswalkers into existing rules text is wonky,

and I guess I'd change that if I go back in time. Although, once again, for this test, that was no legit answer because planeswalkers didn't exist yet. Or maybe if you were very...

If you really could see the future, I would add planeswalkers, this card that doesn't exist yet. Okay, if you were forced to move counterspelling out of blue, what color would you move it into? Once again, you could pick any color.

I think the order that I think is how easy it is to defend. White is the easiest to defend. White is the color of defensiveness and protection and delaying. So, I mean, this is a pretty easy defense of saying, you know, what if the defensive nature of white just was what were, you know, counter spells were thought of as being a defensive thing. White could easily do it. Second easiest

from a philosophical standpoint is probably black, because black is the one that's willing to sort of, the same rationale of white as discard, it could be white as counter spells, that it's willing to sort of mess with the mind. I'm not really interested in mechanically putting in black because discard and counterspells are kind of

better if they're not in the same color, to give different colors sort of similar kinds of answers but a different flavor. But black mechanically, I mean, from a color pie standpoint, is probably the second easiest to defend. Next, I think, would be red. Red already has

a little bit of, like, I'm sneaky and I do things you don't expect and I can change the targets of things. And then green to me is kind of the hardest. I could see green protecting its creatures. That makes sense. Just like green sort of grants hexproof to things, to creatures. Green just, and we've done a little bit with green countering activations. So I mean, there's a defense of green being

the anti-magic color. You know, I can philosophically see it. I mean, there's a philosophical defense in all the colors. Just because, you know, if you sort of change what you pretend, you know, what counter spells represent. Are you defensive? Are you anti-magic?

Are you being, you know, are you being tricky? You know, depending on how you flavor it, you can really move to different colors. Okay, but next is, what is the current, what is current magic design doing wrong, and how could you do it right? So this was a chance for you to be critical, and one of the things that's important in magic design is you have to be critical of other designers' work, and of your own work. And so. And so this question on the test was really sort of saying, hey, look, you know, we want you to be critical. We want you, and it forced the person to stand up a little bit and say, hey, I think I'm

right, you know, I think you're wrong in the place where I'm right. And really sort of own that and defend that. And this was a really interesting question. Actually, one of the most illuminating questions. Okay, so what happened was, I don't remember how many people. Lots and lots and lots of people. Thousands of people turned this in. So for the first essay, the first pass, what we did is

we skimmed the essays. We made sure that people answered all the questions that they answered correctly. They were in the proper word count and just did a real, like, did they give an answer? You know, did they actually answer the question? We didn't go too deep yet.

We will reread these later and go in more depth. But the first was sort of like, did you kind of do the homework assigned to you and just give a basic answer? We weren't looking for deepness yet. And if you did that, if you kind of followed the rules and proved you were willing to do the work and just gave a halfway coherent answer, we advance you to part two. So part two, there are three tests to get into the Greatest Design of Search.

Part one was multiple choice. I'm sorry, part one was essay question. Part two was a multiple choice test. So the multiple choice test was 35 questions. The Greatest Design of answer to would have 50. And the idea was, the way we did it is we wanted 100 people to be able to move to test number three. So the way it worked is we looked at how many people got right.

And then whatever answer got 100 in, we then let everybody else in at a level where 100 would get in. I think 128 got in past this test. So it turned out you needed to get 30 of the 35 right, which is pretty good. You can miss five questions and still get in. You had to miss six to not get in. If you got 30 out of 35 right, you advanced to the next section.

And the idea of the multiple choice test was we needed some kind of objective way to get a whole bunch of people down to, you know, thousands of people down to 100. And we needed to do it in a way that was easy for us to grade. You know, we needed something

that would be quick and efficient. And so what happened was, I think Devin and I wrote this test. We did a lot of going into magic terminology, a lot of stuff that I talked about in my column and other stuff we talked about on the website. And the idea being, if you didn't know what the term meant, we'll go look it up. We gave you 24 hours to take the test. It was an open book. I mean, we told you you couldn't share answers, but you could do whatever research you wanted. You could look up whatever you

needed. And a lot of it was, hey, do you get how we work? Do you get the basic elements of magic? And we tested a lot of different design principles and technology. Do you understand the terminology? Okay, so I have some questions to run you through. But I decided not to do

all of them, just because not all of them relate well. And also I decided that I would do a sampling. So we're going to have a sampling of the questions, not all the questions. I did put the entire test up online. I think you can take it, and then I have all the answers explained. All the answers. I mean, I'm going to explain some of them today. But if you want to take the full test.

Okay, so first, the first two questions I'm going to ask you, there's a card you have to look at called Mighty Giant. I didn't tell you the casting test. Okay, so first, the first two questions I'm going to ask you, there's a card you have to look at called Mighty Giant. I didn't tell you the casting cost. So Mighty Giant is a 5-5 creature. Whenever a card name attacks, card name means Mighty Giant. So whenever Mighty Giant attacks, three target creatures can't block this turn. So question number one, what color is that? Is it A, white? B, blue? C, black? D, red, or E, green? It is red! Okay, how do we tell it's red? Well, it's a giant, for starters.

Flavor-wise, giants go in a few colors, red being one of them. But what does it do? It has an attack trigger that keeps things from blocking. What color most often keeps things from blocking? Red. Red is the color that keeps things from blocking. You know, green can make you block something, and blue can make things unblockable, but red is the color that makes things not be able to block. So it's red. Question number

two. Is this card most likely A, common, B, uncommon, or C, rare? And the answer is uncommon. The reason is it's a 5-5 that attacks and keeps three people from blocking. 5-5 is pretty big. Usually at red common, you know,

we don't get two, 5-5 is rare at common and red and if we do give you something like a 5 power, usually it's vanilla or French vanilla.

It wouldn't have an ability on it other than a keyword. And this is not like one creature can't block. Three creatures can't block. That's a pretty big deal. But is it rare worthy? Is this the kind of thing we do at rare?

No, this is a card that really matters in limited, where you have a lot of creatures blocking. So this is a card meant for limited. It's not simple enough to be common. It's not splashy enough to be rare. But uncommon is kind of where we put the workhorses that, like, you don't want too many in limited, but are good for limited. So this is an uncommon. Okay, next, let me give you a different card. Touch Me Not. So this is a beast, it's an 8-8, and it has Ridden Out, Shroud, and Death Touch. So can't be the target, dispels their abilities, and whenever this deals combat damage to a creature, combat damage, sorry, to a creature, it destroys it.

So, what color is this? A, white, B, blue, C, black, D, red, G, green. And the answer is green. Why is that? Because Shroud, which is the precursor to Hexproof, is a blue and green ability, and Death Touch is a black and green

ability. So, if you're a mono-colored card, you would be green because green is the color that overlaps the two abilities. What commonality is this? Common, uncommon, or rare? Well, it's an 8-8 Shroud Death Touch creature. That's a rare.

I mean, green gets the biggest common creatures and everyone's in a blue moon will make... It's made like an 8-4, you know, 7-7, 8-4. But those would be vanilla, maybe with trample. It wouldn't be, wouldn't have multiple abilities on it. And in general, is it splashy? Yeah, it's pretty splashy. It's big.

You can't kill it. It kills everything it touches. Although I have a later question that talks about how that's repetitive. But I, because I'm zooming through questions, I don't ask all the questions. Okay. Next card you need to know. Card loving guy. He's a creature, but we didn't ask all the questions. Okay. Next card you need to know. Card-loving guy. He's a creature, but we didn't tell you he's creature type.

3-3, first strike, and he has what's called curiosity. When he deals combat damage to a player, he draws a card. A card-loving guy draws a card. Okay. Is this A, white-black, B, blue-black, C, black-green, D, red-green, E, red-white? So is it white-black, blue-black, black, green, red, green, or red, white? It is red, green. So this was one of the more missed questions on the task.

So let's look at this. It's First Reich and Curiosity. Okay, First Reich is primary in white and red. Happens to be tertiary in black, meaning on nights occasionally we give it, but very infrequently. Tertiary and black, meaning on nights occasionally we give it, but very infrequently. And then it is, curiosity is primary, I think, in blue and secondary in green. Okay, so if you look at that, also when we do multicolor cards, one of the things about tertiary is we don't use them as color refining on multicolor cards.

That either we use a primary or secondary ability. So that means for First Strike, white and red are the colors we're looking at. And for Curiosity, it's blue and green. Okay, so that means we need some combination. So let's look at white and black. Well, white could have First Strike and black, black doesn't have either. I mean, I understand Tertiary has First Strike, but

on a gold card, black would not be the thing defending First Strike, representing First Strike. So that doesn't work. Okay, blue-black. Well, blue is curiosity. Black, and this is what people threw at them, is because they went back and said, hey, black knight is first right.

But once again, it's tertiary. We don't use it very often. It's only used on smaller knights, and it's not something we'll use as a defining thing on a multicolor card. Black-green. Well, green is curiosity. Black doesn't have any of them. Red-green. Well, red is first right. Green is curiosity. Ding, ding, ding.

D is the correct answer. And then red, white. Red and white both are first strike. Neither are curiosity. So red, white is the correct answer. Okay, next card. See how you like it. Sorcery. Target creature an opponent controls that dealt damage to you, deals damage to itself equal to its toughness. There's a bunch of... Well, let me answer this question. There's a bunch of mistakes with the card I asked later,

but that's not what I'm asking today. So what color would this be? As a card that deals damage to a creature that's damaged you, it damages itself equal to its toughness. Is it white, blue, black, red, or green? It is white!

White is the color. White has played in this space before. White is the one that sort of will do damage to itself. Red, by the way, also occasionally will do that, but white more often does it. And black has also done it. I'm giving away their expression. But white is number one. White also punishes you for hurting it. You know, you mess with me, I mess with you. So the trigger is white and the fact that it harms itself is something white has done. So which colors are most appropriate?

White and blue, blue and green, black and red, red and white, or green and black? I kind of gave this one away. So blue and green. And the reason is both red and black can do to have creatures damage themselves. The trigger is not really a... It's not something red or black care the most about but blue and green do not do damage to creatures

so right off the bat I mean green will do damage to there's a small subset of things green will damage but mostly green and blue do not do damage to just any creature so they are the choice

for that one okay so number 16 which of the following is usually not a reason for keywording a new mechanic so by the way

this is one of the most missed questions number A it makes it easier for players to talk about the mechanic B it opens up design space

C it lessens text on the card D it helps market the set It makes it easier for players to talk about the mechanic. B, it opens up design space. C, it lessens text on the card. D, it helps market the set. Or E, it helps ease understanding of other cards that have the same mechanic. So which of those is usually not a reason? And the answer is it lessens text on the card. It's true of a lot of people. And the reason for that is whenever whenever we have new mechanic, we put reminder text to tell you what it does. So it really does not. Now a lot of people don't think of reminder text as being text,

but for a new player, it definitely is text. New players are gonna read all of the card because they need to understand what's going on. So they read reminder text. I understand experienced players learn to skip reminder text because they often don't need it. Um, but that doesn't mean it's not text. It is text. Beginners have to read it. So it doesn't normally lessen text. The one place that lessens text is on high rarity cards, rare mythic rares. When we have a cool card and we don't have space to fit in the reminder text,

we'll occasionally leave it off on rare mythic cards. So occasionally it does lessen text. So this reason is not never a reason, but it's not most of the time a reason. Okay, so it makes it easier for players to talk about the mechanic. That is true. That just having a word helps facilitate discussion. It opens up design space. Yes, now you can refer to it. Now you can have cards that do things because it happens or talk about things that have that quality. It helps market the set. It does. People ask all the time, what are the new mechanics? Having a named mechanic helps sell the set. And it helps ease understanding of other cards that share that mechanic.

Yes, that's a big thing for understanding that keywords do is once you learn a keyword, it makes it easier for other cards to share the same ability because you just see, oh, I've learned the keyword. Oh, this has the keyword. Okay. Question number 20. Which of the following is not an example of a linear mechanic? A, slivers.

B, buyback. C, affinity. D, threshold. E, amplify. So this required your A to go look up mechanics if you didn't happen to know the mechanics. But once again, open book test. You can go do that.

So you got to understand what linear means. What's a linear mechanic? This is a magic term, something I've defined in my column. You got to look it up. And what linear means is linear is a mechanic that encourages you to play more mechanics like it. So slivers, well, slivers help slivers. So slivers are definitely linear.

If you put one sliver in your deck, you want more slivers. Affinity, well, affinity rewards you for having a certain kind of thing in play. Well, once your deck is doing that, hey, you kind of want to have more things that have affinity. Like affinity for artifacts, well, you want a deck full of artifacts. Well, if you're going to play one affinity for artifacts card, you probably want to play more.

Threshold's very similar. If I'm being rewarded for having a bunch of cards in my graveyard and probably I'm doing things to enable that, hey, I want more cards to do that. Amplify cares about a particular creature type. Well, once your deck's full of a certain creature type, well, you want to cards to do that. Amplify cares about a particular creature type. Well, once you care about a particular creature type, once your deck's full

of a certain creature type, well, you want to play more cards that care about that creature type. So B, buyback. You can play one buyback card and having one buyback doesn't really encourage

you to play more buyback spells. In fact, because they're kind of mana intensive, you can't often play multiple buybacks and buy them back on the same turn.

So buyback actually a little bit disencourages you from playing a deck full of buyback cards. So buyback actually a little bit disencourages you from playing a deck full of buyback cards. So buyback is the nonlinear term. This is another example where I was testing vocabulary, and it didn't matter if you knew the vocabulary. Look it up, study it, learn it,

and then show to me that you understand what it means. Okay, question number 21. Which of the following statements about the magic colors is incorrect? A. White believes the good of the group outweighs the good of the individual. B. Blue believes that everyone is born a blank slate to be shaped by its environment. C. Black believes that power should be in the hands of those that can take it. D. Red believes that emotions are more important than intellect. E. Green believes that it's up to the individual to change the world. Okay, so this was me just understanding

some color pie philosophy. Color pie philosophy is very important. We do a lot of designing with colors. We do a lot of top-down design. You having a very intimate knowledge of the color pie is very important. Okay, so, white believes the good of the group outweighs the good of the individual. Absolutely. White's all about the good of the group. I said the good of the group,

over the good of the individual. B, blue believes that everything is born of blank slate to be shaped by its environment. Absolutely. Tabula rasa, that's a blue concept. Blue believes, you know, nature versus nurture,

it's on the nurture side. C, black believes the power should be in the hands of those who can take it. Yes, black does believe that. Black believes might makes right. That, you know, you deserve whatever power that you can take. D, red believes that emotions are more important than intellect.

Absolutely. The red-blue conflict is emotion versus intellect. And red is squarely on the side of emotion. E, green believes that it's up to the individual to change the world. No, that is the wrong answer. Green does believe in natural change, but greens vary against artificial change. Green is about destiny,

but green also is very much about the group. It's the web of life that things interconnect. So a lot of small things about this aren't quite green. So this is the incorrect. Everything else is square in the colors and this one is not. Okay. Which of the following is true of modern color pie? White is not allowed to sack creatures. Blue is not allowed to draw

multiple cards at instant speed. Black is not allowed to gain life. Red is not allowed to destroy enchantments. Or green is not allowed to destroy creatures. D. Red is not allowed to destroy enchantments. White can sac creatures, but usually it sacs itself to help its team. At the time, we did not have a lot of instant

blue card drawing, but we occasionally did do it. Black gained life. Drain life, for example, is a black life-gaining spell. Usually when black gains life, someone else is losing it, but black can gain life, usually draining it out of somebody else. And green can destroy creatures. It does destroy all creatures, and there's a lot of creatures it can't destroy,

but it is allowed to destroy flying creatures and artifact creatures. So there is a subset of creatures that it is allowed to destroy. Which of the following types of spells are more often done at instant speed? A. Creature removal. B. Discard. C. Land searching. D. Land destruction. E. Returning creatures from graveyard to hand.

The answer is creature removal. Creature removal is often done at instant speed. It's not always done at instant speed, but it often is. Discard is almost always done at sorcery speed, just very, very infrequent instant speed. Land searching, likewise, is almost always done at sorcery speed. Land destruction, almost always done at sorcery speed.

And returning creatures from the graveyard is almost done at sorcery speed. So, just kind of looking at the spells and saying, hey, you know, graveyard is almost done at sorcery speed. So, just kind of looking at the spells and saying, hey, you know, creature destruction is done at both, but it's slightly done more instant than sorcery, and all the rest are mostly sorceries. Okay, if we had chosen

buyback as a mechanic to bring back for a guild, which guild would be the most likely guild? A, Boros, B, Izzet, C, Orzhov, D, Rakdos, E, Simic. So the idea here is, do you understand the factions of the guilds? We. Boros. B. Izzet. C. Orzhov. D. Rakdos. E. Simic. So the idea here is, do you understand the factions of the guilds? We just did something. Did you get it? Did you get to how the factions worked?

The answer here is the Izzet. The Izzet are all about spells. They're spell-based. And buyback is a spell mechanic. The Boros is about aggression. A buyback is a very slow mechanic, a slow control mechanic. It does not make sense at all for the Boros. Orzhov definitely has a little more of a bleeder deck going. There are ways you could use buyback is a very slow mechanic a slow control mechanic it's not makes sense at all for the boros orzog definitely has a little more of a bleeder deck going um there are ways you could use buyback in orzog but it not it's not it doesn't play quite as you know it it's more about permanence

that's sort of slowly taking advantage of we of nicking you down uh ractos is once again more about sort of getting rid of the cards in your hand, right? Absolutely, you have Hellbent first time around. So the idea of saving spells and sort of being reactionary and waiting up, not particularly Raktos. And Simic, Simic's more about sort of shaping and changing permanence than it is about spells. It's more about sort of we, the scientists, are making weird things. They're the biologists, Izzet are're the biologists where is it are more the... So anyway, it makes more sense than is it.

That just mechanic space that is a place closest to that. So the final question I'm going to ask you for today, Mom, is to work. Which of the following is not true? A. Timmy by definition is a less experienced player. B. Johnny wants to express something. C. There are cards specifically designed for Spike. D. Timmy wants to experience something. E. Johnny can be happy

winning less than half his games. Or F. Spike wants to prove something. Well, Johnny wants to express something. Once again, I use Tammy and Jenny did not exist back then when I wrote this test. Timmy and Tammy want to experience something. Johnny and Jenny want to express something.

Spike wants to prove something. That's the definition. So those are all true. John is happy winning less than half his game. Well, if Johnny's trying to do something weird, and the weird thing, like, Johnny and Jenny don't necessarily need to win more. They need to prove, not prove, they need to

do the fun thing they're trying to do. They could build a weird deck that does a weird thing and it might only win one in ten times, but it won! It did its thing. That can make them happy. They're the one that's least centric. Not that they don't like to win, but they could be trying to do something where winning isn't the highest priority to them.

And cards designed for Spike. We design cards for Spike all the time! I said earlier today that we design more cards for Spike probably than anybody. So the answer was A. Timmy by definition is a less experienced player. No. Are more inexperienced players Timmy? Yes. But Timmy by definition is not.

Just because a lot of inexperienced players might be Timmy does not mean that Timmy's are all inexperienced. There are very experienced Timmy's. There are people who have been playing Magic since its beginning that are very Timmyish. Timmy does not define itselfperienced. There are very experienced Timmy's. There are people who have been playing Magic since its beginning that are very Timmyish. Timmy does not define itself by how long you play or how experienced you are.

You can be a very experienced, very good Magic player and be a Timmy. Okay, guys. Well, I got through the second test. So we're not quite there yet. So we'll have another podcast where I continue talking all about the first grade designer search. But hopefully, guys, I hope you enjoyed the deep dive.

And I'm now at my work because Rachel's on spring break. So anyway, I hope you guys, well, you know what that means? It means I'm at my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.