Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #463: Cycles

Episode Date: August 18, 2017

In this podcast, I talk about one of the most important tools for a Magic designer.

I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to run the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm talking about one of the basic tools of design, the cycle. Okay, so first I'm going to define what a cycle is for those that possibly don't know, I assume most of you know. So a cycle is a grouping of cards that are connected in some way. There are a couple different ways we do them. So, well, there's, first off, okay, there's a couple different ways we can group cycles. The most common way to group cycle is by color, which means we'll do something where every color gets an effect.

You know, so, well, cycles come into two categories. They either can be what we call tight cycles or loose cycles. A tight cycle means that most of the spells are the same, that usually there's just one tiny difference. For example, let's say we have a creature cycle, like the guild mages from any of the Ravnica's, they cost a certain amount of mana. Like a tight cycle means they cost two mana and are two twos,

and then they have a structure that is very similar. With the guild mages, they each activated twice, once in each color of the colors that they were. So tight cycle means that all the cards in the cycle are pretty similar to each other with usually one or two changes. Where a loose cycle is okay they have one thing in common like for example sometimes we'll do it where there's a mechanic but then the effects are all just different. And usually in a tight cycle,

oftentimes the mana costs are tied together. Where in a loose cycle, not necessarily. You know, sometimes loose cycles, for example, when we do multicolor sets sometimes, we'll have like really loose cycles. We want to represent all the colors, but it's what it does is kind of super loose. Like, oh this is a creature cycle, so they all have a creature, but what the creature is, or the cost, or the size, none of that's the same. So that's kind of more of a loose cycle. Now you can then take them and you can run them through colors. That's the most common way to do them. So a normal cycle that runs through colors would have, you know, a white, a blue, a black, a red, a green.

have you know a white a blue a black a red a green normally when you do cycles they are in the same rarity um but not always uh an example where um we sometimes will uh play with rarity is sometimes we'll do things between common and rare i'm sorry uncommon and rare usually when we split cycles where we have something in which um we're something, but some of the cards make more sense of rare than others. Every once in a blue moon, we'll split between rare and mythic rare. But usually, usually cycles when they're in colors are within the same rarity. Another thing we can do is, we can do within color, but for example, we can have artifacts in which five different artifacts all represent a different color. A common thing to do is a cycle in which each one has an activation in the color.

Like in Mirrodin, we had artifact creatures that you could cast for generic mana, but then they had an activated ability that was a colored activation. And so the idea is, well, you can play it, but if you're in color, it's got more extra abilities for you. And that was cycled. So sometimes the coloring cycle will be within colors. Sometimes it's external to them relating to colors. Another common cycle we do is what we call the vertical cycle, where we use rarity. Usually in a vertical cycle, there's a common and uncommon, and either a rare or mythic rare. Every once in a blue moon, we do a common, uncommon, rare a rare or mythic rare. Every once in a blue moon we do common, uncommon, rare, and a mythic rare. But usually vertical cycles have three and not four. Also sometimes the way we'll do cycles is we'll sit in one color and we'll make references to

other colors. We'll mess around with that sometimes when we're something that's focused in a color. There's like the Tainted Lands in Torment when it was the black set. And so we had four lands, each of which was black and one of the other colors. So that's, for example, a way you can do a four card cycle. How else can we do cycles?

Sometimes we'll do cycles where they're thematically connected um usually to a character sometimes for example in um back when we do core sets we might have a character that was like we had five planeswalkers or something and then we'd have certain cards that connect to that planeswalker um and that sometimes we did that as a vertical cycle, but sometimes it's just like, oh, there's a certain number of cards that all go together and every planeswalker had the same similar pairing. So it's kind of a cycle that matches.

In Future Sight, I did a cycle of cycles where I did a dual land cycle in which each dual land from the cycle represented a different cycle. We don't do that. That was more, we don't do stuff that quirky all the time. In general, cycles, though, are multiple cards that are connected together. Sometimes, by the way, the cycle is more tied together with flavor, and sometimes the cycle is more tied together by mechanics.

Often it's both. Usually if we have a cycle, especially if it's a tight cycle we will do something with the art and or naming to sort of convey the fact that they're connected to each other and sometimes with loose cycles it is something where, well

it is easy sometimes for you not to see loose cycles. Like we pay a lot of attention to tight cycles as far as putting focus on them. But we do a little bit less with loose cycles. Because the loose cycles, usually loose cycles are there more for structure than they are for sort of a presentation. And then that's an important thing to understand. That cycles are an interesting tool.

Sometimes you do them because they're structural. And I'm going to get into this. And sometimes you do them because they're structural, and I'm going to get into this. And sometimes you do them because they're splashy. So we'll get into all that of sort of how to use them. So the reason I bring today, one of the things I get from time to time is somebody who like, here's a challenge for you, Mark. Why don't you make a set without any cycles?

And my response to that usually is, it's kind of like saying to a carpenter, hey, let's see if you can build a house without a hammer. And it's like, is it possible? It probably is possible. Would it make the job infinitely harder and probably result in less quality? Yeah, it would. Because cycles do a lot of important work. And so today, I'm going to explain why cycles are so important. And this is some of the work that they do. Okay, so first, let's talk about sort of cycles at different rarities have different functions. So I'm going to start with common and talk about why we put cycles in a common. And then I'll move up the rarity. Okay, so a cycle at common is usually about setting the tone of the set, that I want to do something. So for example, let's say I have a mechanic that's a key component

of what the set is doing, and I want to sort of convey to you, the player of the set, that this mechanic is key to what's going on. Well, one of the big problems we have to do that is what I always refer to as as-fanned or as-fanned, which is how often something shows up. What percentage does it show up? Because basically, in order for me to guarantee that this thing is a thing, that this whatever I'm doing matters. Like I often talk about how when you build a set, normally it's magic as, you know, like most of magic is just, hey, this is what magic is and that it's normal magic.

But then you always layer onto it one thing usually that makes a difference, one point of focus that just sort of says, oh, I'm about this thing. Sometimes that's more than one. Most sets tend to have a focal point at least. And whatever that focal point is, sometimes it's a mechanic, sometimes it's a tone, but whatever that is,

we need something in common to really hammer home what's going on. And that part of that is numbers. That a lot of design, especially for limited or casual constructed, is a numbers game. Okay, I am doing something.

So let's take Kaladesh as an example. A big part of what's going to define Kaladesh was energy. That was really the backbone, really the thing that says, why is this set different than other sets? Now, there are other things going on. There's an artifact theme. I'm not saying that's the only thing, but it was an important theme.

And so what we need to do is we need to sort of represent how we're doing that. And like I said, Kaladesh is a good example where it's not just, Kaladesh wasn't just about energy. Energy was one portion of it. We also were playing around with artifacts that mattered. There was, you know, there was a lot of sort of world presentation. So at Common, the reason you're using your cycles is you're trying to sort of show off the world in a way that everybody gets to see. Now, when you build something, usually there's two different elements going on. One is something that says, look, this is

important enough, it's spread everywhere. And other things are like, I'm focusing this. Not every color is going to do this, certain colors are going to do this. Now, if I'm trying to focus on this is a thing that just everybody's doing, it's a thing of the world. Landfall in Zendikar

Double-Faced Cards in Innistrad just the basic guild structure in Ravnica Theros was messing around with Bestow in Enchantment Matters whatever it is, there's some major theme Kaladish is messing around with energy every set there's something it's trying to do.

You know, we were playing with insanity in Shadows Over Innistrad. You know, everything, there's something. There's some theme we're trying to do. So the first thing we want to do is you want to build that. So one of the things when you build a set is you build the skeleton, the design skeleton. And what that says is hey how many cards do I have in each color and then what are they representing and normally what you're going to want to do is at common you want to take your themes that matter and usually you want to spread

them out so that people see the theme so a good example is I'm doing landfall in Zendikar. Okay, lands matter. I want to make sure lands matter. Landfall mechanic is the big way to do this, not the only way. So what I want to do is, okay, how can I convey that lands matter? Well, first off, I have a mechanic named Landfall. So I'm going to put in all the colors. And so what I would do is I might say, okay, and normally the other thing in common is, so this is another important thing about cycles is,

I want to convey something, but I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible. So for example, let's take landfall as an example in Zendikar. Okay, I want to do a cycle of creatures, and I want to keep it simple. Okay, so what I can do is I can have the same effect for all five. So the reason the cycle is nice is it allows me to establish something, to lay a base, but then by making them very similar, making a pretty tight cycle, I help make the set simpler. I make common simpler because once you see one of them,

and normally what we'll do in a cycle is we'll connect them creatively so you get their cycle. So once I see, you know, if I see a guild mage in one guild, I kind of understand what I see in the other guild. When I see a common creature that gets plus two, plus two with landfall, I'm like, okay, I get it. These little tiny creatures, they're landfall plus two, plus two. You know, Kaladesh had energy and we're like, okay,

we're going to introduce things that sort of come in and give you energy and then give you a little means to use the energy. That I'm kind of training you. That cycles in some ways are the connective tissue that both takes a theme and raises it to the volume you need so that people understand that theme. And it helps simplify things so that you're not making things too complicated um and those are the major roles that you're doing i mean another thing is when you're trying to design a set um in a lot of ways you use your cycles to be connective things to also just sort of be uh the glue that holds a lot of the structure together. And early on, one of the first things you tend to do when you're putting a set together

is try to figure out what your cycles are. It's very, very common that one of the first things we do once we sort of piece together the elements of what we want is building out our cycles. Like, okay, I know I want landfall. I know I want a cycle of landfall creatures. Let's figure out how these creatures are going to work. The reason you tend to build your sets first is twofold. One is they tend to

be a lot of the things that you start to build around. And second, they sort of help cement things. So cycles, once again, one of my truisms about design is you start with the things that are hardest to do first because you want to give the most freedom to the things that need it. Cycles are something in which you want the cleanest possible cycles. That cycles are going to represent what your theme is about and going to sort of help simplify everything. What that means is you need a lot of space to make your cycles. So usually you tend to make cycles first. That cycle, I mean, sometimes they come in later. But you want to figure out sort of where do they go. Now, cycles, once again, remember,

they aren't always just through the colors. Another very common place we do cycles are in lands. Lands are, usually the rule is, if lands produce color of any kind, normally they're cycled. I mean, other than like five color production. Normally, if I tap for one color, or I tap for two colors, or I tap for three colors, there's a cycle of me. So normally, when you're talking at common,

if you have lands at common, every once in a while we'll do colorless lands, but you often have to say, oh, do we have a common of lands? Do we have a cycle of lands at common? The reason you have a cycle of lands is either you have mana issues, you're doing a multicolor set or something, or there's some theme that the lands are helping you with.

Like in Zenkar, the lands were the theme, so you actually wanted to have some lands at common. And in that case, usually, lands tend to be a tight cycle, especially when they're color related, because, like, here's the white one, here's the blue one, and such. Another place you'll cycle at common are in artifacts. It depends. If your set is about artifacts, you might have a bunch of cycles because you're trying to sort of convey that.

Usually in an artifact set, not only are you cycling artifacts, but you're cycling them through colors to sort of give some definition so that the artifacts just can't be played by anybody at any time, that they're sort of pushed in certain directions. Also what you might do sometimes, if it's not an artifact set, is use the artifacts to help sort of play up your theme, depending what your theme is.

Sometimes, for example, you want to make sure that people have access to something, so sometimes you'll cycle some things out, either tied to color, because you're thematically doing something that makes sense in artifacts, or you just want a certain thing that people can have access to. And sometimes you'll do a cycle that is sort of just conveying the elements.

Note that a cycle, once again, five is the most common cycle in magic. We do fives. But as I already talked about, sometimes there's three, sometimes there's fours. Often in artifacts, for example, sometimes we'll have a thematic thing where there's a small, medium, and large sometimes thats. Often an artifact, for example, sometimes will have a thematic thing where there's a small, medium, and large sometimes that come. We've done that. Where it's sort of, it's playing thematically into something, you know, that they're connected maybe creatively, but they're not, you know, you can cycle anything that you can make a connective element to. The key to a cycle is that the things are connected to each other in a flavorful way and in a mechanical way.

And how much flavor and how much mechanics can vary quite a bit. The other thing that's important at Common is flavor. Sometimes what you... For example, sometimes what you want... I'll take Zendikar again. We also wove the Allies into Common, is we wanted to understand the allies and get a flavor of the allies so we put allies in a cycle at common to map them out so you can see them um now once again not every mechanic is pushed through all the colors you have to kind of

figure out where what is your set doing and where do things lie um but common common is about structure cycles in common are about structure. Cycles in common are about sort of defining things. So let's get to uncommon. What are cycles doing in uncommon? Okay, so one of the things about rarities, and I've done all sorts of sets on rarities, is rarities are very much tied to formats. Commons, because you get so many of them, really are the backbone of what limited is. And a lot of what we make a common, first and foremost, is about making limited work. And also, when I say making limited work, I also mean making casual constructed work. There's a lot of players, the way they play Magic is they buy a few packs,

they open them up, and they play with what they have. That's a lot like limited. So a lot of our work on limited also goes toward casual constructed. Okay, so that means uncommon. Uncommon have two purposes. One is it is also tied with limited, but it's a thing that shows up a little less in limited. So what we do in uncommon for limited is we try to make things that help define a draft, meaning that we make things that we don't want you to have too much of, but we want you to have a little bit of. And what that's really good for is directional

stuff. Is things that sort of... I mean, the other thing, the lesson we have, the difference between common and uncommon, has to do with complexity. It's a place where we can do stuff that's a little more complex for limited. And the other thing is, if you don't buy a lot of booster packs, I've talked about this, the focal point of excitement, when you open a booster pack, what are you excited by? And what happens is, you tend to be focused on the thing that is newest to you, that's available. So the first booster pack I open,

in some ways, the commons, just because of the volume of them, there's more commons than anything else. And then once you're used to the commons, you open up packs, you're just getting repeats of commons, then the uncommons become valuable to you. Those are the new things.

And then the rares become valuable. And then the mythic rares. It depends on how many booster packs you buy. So the uncommon for the sort of casual buyer who's not buying a lot of packs, the uncommons are the focal point of the pack because there's three of them. You know? Not that they don't care about rares. Obviously they care about rares.

There's focus on the rares. But there's a lot more excitement by the uncommons than in someone who's more focused on the rares. Someone who buys more packs. uncommons than in someone who's more focused on the rare, someone who buys more packs. So part of doing the uncommon is a chance for us to do a couple things. One is we could do structural stuff for limited. We can build stuff that we want to sort of be an element of limited, but we want to be limited at a lower quantity. Sometimes for example, Zendikar seems to be my go-to today.

We wanted there to be quests. So at Common, we made very simple quests, and you could experience quests happening. But we liked the idea of having some more complicated quests, things that you might actually build around a little bit. And when you're drafting, then if you take this quest early, maybe you take some cards

to help you accomplish this quest. So it was sort of a theme in the set because quests were a theme, but it sort of did the uncommon version of it is this is something we can only get too much of. It requires a little bit of building around, but we like the idea if you get a little bit of it, it can influence how you do your draft. So sometimes the cycles in uncommon are about sort of being limited relevant or casual constructed relevant in a way where we want you to have a little bit less of it. The other thing is sometimes when we're trying to sort of get ass fan up is we want to expose you to certain things. Some things are complicated enough that we don't want you to be exposed to it

in large volumes but we want it to be there. So sort of another way we use r want you to be exposed to it in large volumes, but we want it to be there. So sort of another way we use rarity is to say, these are things I want people to have access to. Think of it as spices. Let's say you're cooking. And I'm going to set up some spices for you to cook with. And I know some spices, it's okay for you to use a decent amount of. It's going to make the food taste good. But some of the spices, wow, wow, wow, it's going to overpower your food really quickly. So, you know, imagine, for example, on the spice rack,

some things I put in giant bottles, some things I put in little tiny bottles, and there's not much there. I don't want you to have a lot of it. It's kind of how we do rarities, is we sort of put the things we want you to have a lot of, that we're okay with you using a lot of, at common, just define things and give flavor, and the things we want to accent, and limited at least, we put in uncommon. Usually the stuff we put at rare is not so much for common. Sorry, not so much for limited. That's more for constructed. Sometimes, sometimes, we'll get there.

There's some bomb things. But uncommon really is a thing where we want it to show up. Usually the idea of any one uncommon tends to show up in a draft. At least one will show up in a draft. Not always, but on average it's close to one in a draft. Or actually one to two drafts. There's eight packs. Eight packs have three.

So there's 24. 24 times three is 75. No, no, it's about one per. So it's about any one uncommon in a normal large set shows up about once per draft. Once again, that's average. Sometimes it'll be more than one. Sometimes it'll be zero.

But on average, you have 75 uncommons that you basically open up in a draft, assuming you're drafting all the same set. And there's 80 uncommon, so it's pretty close. The other thing that we're doing with cycles and uncommon is a splash thing, is a flavor thing. Sometimes we want to be conveying something. So, for example, were the defeats uncommon or are they rare? I'm trying to remember. The defeats we just did in Hour of Devastation. Now, I'm not sure. I think the kind of thing that we might want to do at Uncommon to demonstrate this is happening. The reason, I know the defeats started at Uncommon. If they got moved to rare, it might be because we were pushing them for constructed,

and so we wanted them to be at rare. But a lot of times at uncommon, if there's story points or there's things in which we're using a cycle to convey something, that we want to sort of make sure you understand that. Lands, by the way, lands at common usually are supporting mana, but they can go at uncommon if the needs of mana aren't so severe. Like, multicolor usually requires common dual lands

to make multicolor work, but if it's something where there's do-color play, but it's not quite as strong as, say, a Ravnica, sometimes uncommon is where we'll stick that stuff. Okay, let's talk about rare. So rare is a lot more about splash value. It's a lot more about notice this. So when we do a cycle at rare, the most, well, there's a couple ways we do it. The most common way is we're trying to make a splashy cycle that is something that's supposed

to draw attention to itself. That the reason there's five of them is that we want hey, look at this cool thing. Sometimes it's taking the mechanic and sort of doing the most loudest version of the mechanic. Sometimes it is taking an element of the set that's complex but fun and putting it there because it's complex enough either that we don't want too much complexity in common or we um it's something that we think is too strong for limited sometimes we make fun splashy cycles that just are problematic

and limited so we push them to rare to get them out of limited. Sometimes that's why we'll put them in rare. Sometimes we also will do flavor-based things. Like a common thing we did in Ravnica, for example, is the guild leaders. And we're talking rare and mythic rare are similar in that. I mean, mythic rare tends to be more splashy than even Rare. Rare sometimes is us trying to do something that we want to do that's the complex version of it. It's not always necessarily splashy. Sometimes it's serving other functions.

Where if you're putting it Mythic Rare, it's kind of by definition has to be splashy. Now sometimes at Rare and or Mythic Rare, we're trying to hit story points. So like I said, with Ravnica, for example, we had the guild leaders, and then we had like the guild champions, I think we called them, where we're trying to play up the guilds. And so we are using the Mythic Rares and the Rares to sort of play up elements. Hey, look, here's the leader of the guild, or here's a certain element of the guild. And so usually what we do at Rare and Mythic Rare is about sort of high-profile stuff.

Usually it's flashy. Sometimes it has to do with complexity, especially at Rare. But it's trying to show things off. Okay, so now I talk about why we use cycles at certain Rares. So let me talk about another really important thing about cycles, which is that it shows contrast. So for example, a very common thing that we will do in magic is we will faction, or we will try to create different feels and different colors. And part of what we get to do

when we do cycles is that we are sort of showing that different colors or different factions, you know, we get to show the contrast. And that a lot of the times, the reasons you do a cycle is I want, so for example, let's take the guilds as the easiest thing. There's certain qualities to the guilds I want to have. And so cycles got to play that off. It's like, well, every guild has a leader and a champion and a gate and have lands that represent where they are. And they have a guild mage. And they also sometimes will do mechanic stuff

like charm, that everybody gets certain things. And that part of creating a definition for guilds, part of making the guilds feel like a structure, is that there's some similarity between them. And that similarity can really range from heavy, like something like a guild mage, which is super tight, you know, they're two mana, both of which are hybrid mana, and it's a 2-2, they've got two activations, and the first one is one color, and the second one is the second color, where it's really tight. Or sometimes, like, the guild leaders were like, well...

In fact, we did, like, an original round, we had the guild leaders and the guild champions. One of which was a loose cycle, which is all based on flavor. Hey, creative team, tell us who the leaders are, we'll design cards top-down and beat them. And then the guild champions were cards in which were actually pretty tight. They were all cards that rewarded you for playing multicolor cards. So they would trigger once for one color and trigger another time for the other color, meaning if a card was both colors, it triggered twice. And so what we did is we built two cycles in which one was very tight and one was very loose.

But we had flavors there. And so the contrast, like the reason that the cycles can be very valuable when you're doing something like factioning is it can be a means by which you can sort of make them feel connected to each other. Now of everything I said today, there's a lot of rules that can be stretched and broken. Like, for example, cycles don't even need

to show up all in the same set. For example, in Mirrodin, original Mirrodin, you know, we did the Cauldre cycle, where we had the Sword of Cauldre, and the Shield of Cauldre, and the Helm cauldra and the helm of cauldra in which once you got all three together, they did something together.

Oh, that's another cycle I didn't talk about. Sometimes we do flavor cycles where if you get all three together, usually the three, that something happens. Sometimes if you get these three together, you can get a fourth card. Or if you get these three together, you can get a fourth card. Or if you get these three together, it generates a larger effect. Like the cauldron, if you got the sword, shield, and helm together, it made an artifact creature. It made a cauldron thing, and then it put them all to it

and made this giant creature you had to fight. Sometimes cycles, like I said, will spread them up where they're not all in one rarity, will spread them out. Sometimes, like in Odyssey, we did an all-to-win cycle, which they were spread throughout the block, that the blue and red one were in Odyssey, and the black one was in Torment, and the white-green one was in Judgment. The reason we did that, for example, is Judgment was the black set, I'm sorry, Torment was the black set, Judgment was the green-white set, so we liked the idea of the black set. I'm sorry, Torment was the black set. Judgment was the green and white set.

So we liked the idea of the black set got the black part of the cycle, the green and white got the green and white part of the cycle, and so we put the blue and red in the first one.

So that like, everybody got their cycle in the place where it mattered thematically. Now we don't do a lot of color weighted stuff anymore. And then for those that don't know,

the Mega Mega cycle, we once did a cycle of lands that were color-based. We started in Mirage with Teferi's Isle. And what we did is every year, in fact, so the first one was in the first set of Mirage block. The second one was in the second set of the Tempest block. The third one was in the third set of the Urza's Saga block. The fourth was in the second set of the Mirrodin block. The second one was in the second set of the Tempest block. The third one was in the third set of the Urza Saga block. The fourth was in the second set of the Mirrodin block.

I'm sorry, Mercadian Mass block. And the last was in the first set of the Invasion block. And so we took this cycle and spread it out over five years. We ran it first, second, third, second, first. And it ran through all the five colors.

It was a land cycle, but we've done stuff like that. The thing that's interesting to me is the kind of cool thing about cycles is that they have such a wide range of utility. It's kind of why I use the hammer example is they are the very first thing we tend to do. They're the thing that ties the set together. They're the thing that sort of loudly communicates messages they're the things that can loudly communicate flavor um but sometimes we use them and they don't draw any

attention to themselves sometimes there are sort of loose cycles that are just connected the connective tissue that ties the set together. So the cycles are sort of my goal today is to sort of show that they serve a lot of different purpose. And they are an interesting tool. And the other thing to keep in mind is one of the things about design in general is that there is rhythms to things. For example, when I used to put together my stand-up comedy routine,

there's a whole rhythm of threes that's really important in comedy. You know, in my writing days, when I was trying to write scripts, for example, there was a rhythm, you know, you had so long for each segment based on how much, you know, TV sort of, you have commercials you go to, so there's acts and there's sort of a rhythm that lock in to sort of how long each section is. And in magic, that rhythm is usually tied around the number five because magic's main division is in fives the second number you tend to run into is three because magic so I mean I guess ironically rarities we've added in a fourth rarity but in a

lot of ways rare and mythic rare from a structural standpoint have a lot of similarities. So the primary rhythm is five, secondary is three. We also, I mean, it's funny, a lot of the rhythm of three is something that elements have changed over time. Like once upon a time, there were three rarities and three sets in a block

and stuff like that. Now we're still in a world in which there's three large sets a year and there's three sheets because mythic, rare Rare and Rarity go in the same sheet. There's three different kind of slots. I guess there's four sheets. You want to come with a land sheet. But anyway, when you are building a set, if you're building your own magic set, or here's a better thing.

This is interesting for anybody. One of the things I find very interesting, if you want to understand what makes magic tick if you want to understand sort of the architecture of magic go look at a set and see if you can find all the cycles it's a really good exercise because what you will find is certain cycles are screaming from the rooftops. They're very loud. You know, I'm the blah, blah cycle, and my name is connected, and the art's connected, and whatever. Sometimes the cycles are just really loud. But as you start digging in, what you will find is there are a lot of cycles that are much more quiet, that are doing good work, but not calling

attention to themselves. And I think sometimes when people sort of go look at sets, they'll be surprised by how many cycles there are. That cycles do a lot of the work of tying things together. Now, the one, the funny thing that I started with is all, is people who are like, somehow see, I don't know, cycles as like cheating or something. I was odd with that one, only because it's kind of like, well, a hammer is the easiest way to drive nails into wood.

You know, are you taking the easy way out? I'm like, okay. The goal of design is not to, the goal of design is to make an awesome design. It is not to challenge yourself to see if you can somehow do things with restrictions put on you that aren't necessary restrictions. Now, I like restrictions, and I think restrictions will lead to interesting places, but you want to be careful where and how you put the restrictions. What you don't want to do with restrictions is add restrictions to yourself that keep

you from being able to explore the things you're trying to explore. you from being able to explore the things you're trying to explore. And the reason that cycles are such a valuable tool is that it is if, so, I'm almost to work. Let me answer this question. What would happen if we made a set without cycles? Like, why are cycles

important? So, first off, you would have a really hard time conveying your message. Your themes would get a lot, so you for starters would have trouble conveying the message. I'm not saying it's impossible to convey, but it would be a little bit harder because there would be less focus toward things. Your comments or your set in general would be harder to play. There will be less sort of visual cues and reminders to help people. That you'd have to have more different things to have to learn. That you're taking away the scaffolding where people can sort of latch on.

The other thing is, it would be a lot harder to point focus at things. That why would one card matter more than another card? That the cycles do the thing where they sort of, there's something bigger than a single card. And that's tricky to do.

So you would also lose a sense of focus and you would lose a sense of sort of pointing things out. Like one of the things right now is if we want something to matter, we can be very, we can make a very tight,

loud cycle, and it's very hard to miss. But if you take the cycles out, it becomes much more complicated to sort of make a strong driven message. That's a harder thing to do. Also, you would have to abandon factions. It would be very disconcerting to do factions in which you weren't cycling things because the factions, the aesthetics, I didn't even want to talk about this.

Another important part of cycling in general is the aesthetics. It is trying to make a set feel balanced, to feel like it's in the right mix of things. And that one of the tools to sort of do that, to keep the aesthetic clean and simple, is the cycles. And then if you took the cycles out, subconsciously, magic would feel more off-kilter. It would feel, you know, you would have less familiarity with it,

and it would feel more weighted in certain directions. Like, imagine we made a faction, but we didn't use cycles. Just not all factions would be the same. And so you would get this weird sense that, like, developmentally, for example, it would cause a problem where you lead into certain things, and certain things are just you're more drawn to. Now that's already,

that's already something we worry about in general, but the lack of cycles would just exacerbate the problem and make even more issues. So like design wise, it wouldn't quite feel as well. The aesthetics would feel off. It would make it harder to balance. You know, you would raise the complexity level, you know, it's one of these things where if we took it out, wow, it, I'll

even father it, it wouldn't feel like magic. That one of the things that is kind of a cornerstone of the magic feel, if you will, like one of the things that you'll notice about magic is even every set, even though we'll have a completely different theme, we're going to completely different place there's a certain element of it that feels like magic there's a certain um quality to it that grants it sort of a magicness and that one of the big things not the only thing by far but one of the big things that really does that is cycles and that if we just made a set without cycles, it would be very disconcerting.

It would be one of those things where you would kind of be unhappy without quite realizing why you're so unhappy. That things would just feel a little off, and you wouldn't quite understand quite why it feels so off. And that one of the things that cycles do is not only are they very on the surface,

not only are they something that really sort of pointedly makes you aware of things, it also beneath the surface makes it feel like magic, makes it sort of plays up the five factions or plays up the colors, plays up sort of the difference between the colors and the connective tissue between the colors. It does a lot of things. I mean, it also... We'd have trouble with color balancing. We'd have trouble with sort of connective stuff for draft.

Like, there's all these things we do that if you took them out, it just would feel off. It just wouldn't feel like magic. And maybe you wouldn't understand. Maybe you wouldn't know why it felt so off, but it would feel very off. And so, anyway, any magic design fans out there, if you haven't understand. Maybe you wouldn't know why it felt so off, but it would feel very off. And so anyway, any Magic Design fans out there,

if you haven't done this yet, and you should have done this, but if you haven't done it yet, go do this. Go take a set. Look at a set. Find all the cycles. Find all the cycles. And what you'll find is the tight cycles are obvious,

and there's loose cycles that are a little trickier to find. Anyway, I'm now at work. So I hope you guys enjoyed today. Cycles are a really important part of magic. And so I... Anyway, sometimes you want to talk about architecture. And sometimes you talk about the hammer. So today was all about the hammer.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it. But I'm now parked in my parking space. Or not my parking space. A parking space. So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Thanks, guys.

Bye-bye.