Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #524: GDS3 Trial 3

Episode Date: March 30, 2018

I finally get around to the third and final set in original Ravnica block, Dissension. This is part one of three, where I share many card-by-card design stories from the set.

I'm pulling up a driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so in some previous podcasts, I talked about the first trial from The Greatest Designer Search 3, the second trial from The Greatest Designer Search 3, which only leaves the third trial. So basically what happened was the first trial was an essay test, the second trial was a multiple choice test, and the third trial is a design test. So today I'm going to talk about the design test, and really I'm going to talk a little bit about how I would tackle this design test, and in doing so I'm going to teach you a little bit about how we tackle design in general. Because this design test was meant to be something that is, we wanted to test a bunch of skills.

So I'll talk about what the test, actually, let me start by talking about what the test is, and then I'll go a little bit into how we made it and what we're looking for. Then I will talk about how I would tackle it if I was taking the test. Okay, so for trial number three, the design test, you will need to design 10 cards that meet the following criteria. One, all the cards will be two color and each of the 10 two color combinations listed below need to be represented. Two, each of the following card types, creature, enchantment, instant, planeswalker, and sorcery needs to be represented twice and never on the same color. And then, just some technical stuff.

I said the order that the cards needed to be submitted. So this is the way that we do it. This is the way that we do it when we make cards. So it's name. Normally, name is bolded. But because we make them turn it into plain text, it will not be bolded. But normally, I'm sure when I show you guys the cards, they'll be bolded. Then mana cost is on the next line.

Then card type and subtype is on the next line. Then power toughness is on the next line. If it's a planeswalker, it's loyalty instead. And if it's neither of those, it's just the line's not there. Then the last line is rules text. So I gave some examples just to show examples. So these are awesome examples.

Oh, by the way, after the name in parentheses, you put the rarity. So my example was lab experiment, common, one green blue creature, bird, elephant, mutant, three three flying trample.

And then I had that should hurt, uncommon, 3, black, red, sorcery, card name deals 3 damage to target creature. That creature's controller discards 2 cards. And then I talk about the abbreviations, so W is white, U is blue, B is black,

R is red, G is green, and the number is for generic mana. And then I put the order of the colors, and then how they were written. So, like, just so, you know, white-blue is not blue-white, it's white-blue. So it's white-blue, blue-black, black-red, red-green, green-white, white-black, blue-black, black-green, red-white, green-white. black, blue, black, black, green, red, white, green, white. And they had until 1159 Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, February 4th, which happened to be the Super Bowl day, to submit them. Good luck.

So they then sent me lots of questions. And so I did a bunch. I wrote two follow-up FAQs. I'm not going to cover all of it. Some of it was technical. But some things that I said that were important for you guys to understand the design test. One was the designs were for an undefined standard legal set. We said, don't design for other formats.

You're not making commander cards or conspiracy cards or uncards. You're making cards for an unspecified standard legal set. They were told not to make new keywords or ability words. They could write things out, so if they had a new mechanic, essentially.

It's not that they couldn't show off the new mechanic, we just didn't want them to make the mechanics, to label them and give them names. And we said they could use evergreen mechanics, that's stuff like flying, first-rate case, for example, or use deciduous mechanics, things like hybrid, double-faced, flip cards and such. They were not allowed to use old block keywords. So they could use evergreen and deciduous, but no, you couldn't use cycling or, I don't know, pick your old flashback or whatever.

The cards were being graded in a vacuum, meaning that they didn't have to have a relevance to one another. You weren't designing 10 cards that were in conjunction. You weren't designing a cycle or you were designing something that was just 10 individual cards and you were grading individually how they relate to each other was not part of the test.

They didn't get any text to explain their designs. Often when we do the challenges, you'll see when we do the shows, we will give the contestants some space to explain what they're doing. For this, I wanted the cards to explain. I didn't want them to explain it. I wanted, I wanted the cards to explain it. So there actually was no text for, um, for the cards. Uh, you had cards had to speak for themselves. Uh, and then, uh, for creative elements, they could add whatever they wanted. I said you had to name the card, uh, and you had to cost the card, but you weren't going to be, um, you weren't going to be graded basically on your names or your costing. If you had a bad name or your cost was wrong,

that wasn't going to really ding you much. So, you know, we have people who name cards and cost cards. So having a good designer that makes good cards, if you don't happen to be good at costing or naming, that's okay. We have people that can do that. Okay, so let me talk about why this design test was the way it was. Also, I want to point out the previous two design tests I designed, but this design test actually was designed by Eric Lauer. He had looked at the previous design testing and came up with this idea and I thought it was pretty cool. So what we like for in a design test is something that's open-ended enough

that you give the players some ability to design something that they want to design. We allowed them to use pre-existing designs as long as it was solely their design. So sometimes you want people to show off some cool stuff they've already done, or let them have a little bit of freedom to do something they just want to do. stuff they've already done, or let them have a little bit of freedom to do something they just want to do. But then, we also wanted to sort of see how they designed the constraints. Because what this test does is, it really forces some constraints on you, and unless you've designed a lot of magic cards, the chance that you've designed exactly what this

test is asking for is almost non-existent. I mean, someone like me who's designed thousands and thousands of cars, maybe I can pull it off. But what we want to do is we want to see how you, like, we want to see both sort of what we call open-ended.

You can design anything you want, what you design. And we want to see people who, okay, you're being forced to design certain constraints, how do you design? Those are all important skills. In general, the key to this test was, the essay test tells me how you think, and the

written test tells me sort of how knowledgeable are you about basic magic things. But neither of those things tells me the most important thing about this, which is, are you any good at making, designing magic cards? Because you know what I'm hiring? Is a designer of magic cards. That's what I need. And because so many people applied, we needed some ways to get it down to a reasonable number. The reason I grade the test, well here's how it works, is 94 people, so 3,056 people, 7,800 people said

they were interested, signed up for the Greatest Honor Search 3. Of those 7,800, 3,056 actually turned in their essay test and qualified themselves to take the multiple choice test. Then, in the multiple choice test, 94 people scored 73 or better

on the multiple choice test, allowing people scored 73 or better on the multiple choice test, allowing them that right to the design test. That was a very high standard. I think the problem is that I am the bottleneck, for those that don't know. One of the things that I've learned about the previous test is it is very hard to judge designs and that I wanted to make sure that I was happy with all the designs. And so I do the first pass. And the reason we're limited to 100 is just about how many I can do.

And because I was the one that did the first pass in the first two, I felt like I wanted to do it here, that a lot of this is trying to find the right person. And so what I discovered from previously doing this, because my third time grading, is I will find some superstars and I'll find some people that, while they're knowledgeable in magic, aren't particularly good at designing cards. to a smaller group, usually in the teens or low 20s, and then I let all of R&D look at the, sorry, select members of R&D, not all of R&D, select members of R&D, the judges,

Mark Gottlieb, who's going to be the manager for the person we hire, Aaron Forsythe, some people that sort of are personally invested in this will read and then help me pick the final eight.

Okay, so let's talk about how we take this test. How would you take this test? So one other thing that's important when doing any design is understanding where the constraints of the design come from. Where do you get yourself in trouble? Because what you don't want to do is paint yourself into a corner. And this, like I said, this design test has what we call a grid issue. And what that means is you have to figure out what goes where and you need to figure it all out, I would say, before you even start designing. So basically what it means is once, for example, once let's say I choose to make my red-white card a creature. Now, I've made my red creature and my white creature.

That means all of the red cards and all of the white cards, other than red-white, now can't be a creature. I've eliminated a creature from red-blue, black-red, or blue-red, black-red, and red- black red, and red green. I've eliminated that. And from white, white blue, white black, and green white are now also eliminated. I've eliminated it from all those colors. And what that means is, as you start to choose things, you're going to start narrowing out where you can put stuff. And so the first thing you want to do is you literally want to map this out.

So what that means is early on, you can make any decision you want. I mean, you can only make two color cards. But once you make one, that first card is going to start determining things. Now you have a little bit of, like once you design one card, that does determine some stuff. But let's say you have a couple cards. As long as the cards don't overlap in card type, you can do multiples without a problem. If they overlap in card type, you can't overlap in color. So the first thing I would do is figure out, is there a couple cards that I want to showcase? Either something I really want to make that I think I could do cool, or a card that I already made that I'm really proud of.

I need a starting point. And the starting point should be something that I either have designed or I want to design. So let's say, for example, I'll just use white-blue. I have a white-blue creature. Oh, it's an awesome white-blue creature. So what I would do is make a little, literally make a grid.

I wrote a column about this, and I, in a little, literally make a grid. I wrote a column about this and I, in the column, literally make a grid. And so the way it works is on one side I would write the 10 card combinations and then on top I would write the card types. And then it's like a little, you check things. And so the idea is once you check something, you then X everything out both vertically and horizontally where it makes sense. So for example, let's say white-blue, I make a creature. So I check off creature, and since it's a creature, I mean, we did allow you to make people ask that they could have things be more than one car type. They can, but because it's so restrictive, it really does paint

you in a corner to do it that way. It is possible. There are a bunch of tricks to this. The one big trick is you have access to artifacts, and artifacts can be colored. So one of the things is there's a grid you can make without having to use artifacts at all, but if you ever want to get fancy and do anything, then you need to start messing around with either, and there's a couple ways to do it, using double-faced cards or using artifacts. But anyway, you need to map it out. So let's say I have a white-blue creature. That means, and let's assume for right now I'm not making multiple card types per card. That means that my white-blue card is not an enchantment, instant, planeswalker, sorcery, and I check off all the other blue or white cards.

And those can't be creatures. I X off creature. And what happens as you introduce a few cards in the system, you very quickly determine sort of where you need to be for stuff. And then what happens is, the reason I would do this first is, okay, white-blue is going to be a creature. Blue-black is going to be an enchantment. And you map out that.

Now, once you're done with that, the next thing you have to do is you need to map out the rarities. Because remember, you only get two rarities per card. Now, technically speaking, you could have four rarities of one rarity and two of all the rest. I would recommend to go 3-3-2-2,

meaning all of your rarities have three different ones of two of them and two different ones of the other. Probably what I would do, because two of the cards have to be Planeswalkers, and really the Planeswalkers need to be Mythic Rare, I would do three Mythic Rares just so you could show off that you could design a Mythic Rare that wasn't a Planeswalker. So I would have three Mythic Rares, and then it's up to you. The commons are the hardest to design. Rares are going to be the easiest to design. So if you're trying to make things easy on yourself,

I would do three mythics, three rares, two uncommons, two commons. If you're trying to show off a little bit and say, oh, I know commons are hard. Look at me. I made three awesome commons. Then you could do three commons, for example. A lot of it might also be

make the card you want to make and you might end up moving rarities around just to match the cards you've made just making sure that you're in the right grouping the reason I like to start this by the way the reason I like to start my design by sort of mapping everything out is as I often say, I believe,

sorry, restrictions bring creativity. I think kind of knowing what you're aiming for will help you a bit. Then I say, okay, you know, I have to now make a blue-black uncommon enchantment. Okay, there's a bunch of things I know about that when you tell me it's a blue-black uncommon enchantment. There's certain abilities that can go there.

There's certain restrictions. It starts to formulate my world. Okay, so now you've got the grid done. You've figured out exactly where you're going. And like I said, the grid has a little bit of flexibility. Not so much in the card types, but in the rarities. And, okay, now it's time to

design. So what I would do, I mean, you can start wherever you want. I mentioned white, blue. So let's say white, blue creature, you can start wherever you want. I mentioned white-blue. So let's say white-blue creature. Let's say it's a common creature. In my article, I think I had a white-blue common instant. Actually, fine, because I did the research on this. Let's say you're making a white-blue common instant. I actually did the research on this from my article. So the first thing I would do is go look at everything we have done in those color combinations in that rarity. So for example, if you look up blue, white, common, you will find

there are seven cards, five of which are traditional multicolor, two of which are hybrid. Hybrid was not off limits. We said that you could do deciduous mechanics. Hybrid is a deciduous mechanic. So a bunch of people asked if they could do hybrid. I said you could. Oh, by the way, for those that love our notation system, so once again, WUBRG is white, blue, black, blue, red, green.

It's W-U-B-R-G. And if you want to do multicolor, oh, this is for card codes. Multicolor, you just combine them. For hybrid, the way we write a hybrid symbol is parentheses, lowercase letter, backslash, second lowercase letter, end parentheses.

So a white-blue hybrid symbol will be parentheses, lowercase white white, backslash, lowercase, blue, end parentheses. It's a little bulkier, but it's what we found the best way to sort of show it off. The reason we do lowercase is just it stands out a little more being different. But anyway, that is how we write a hybrid symbol. So I said to people they were allowed to write hybrid symbols. I personally would have avoided hybrid. So one of the things I also said on my FAQs is I want people to prove themselves by designing cool cards, not by showing that they can mess with the constraints of the test. There seemed to be a lot of desire from the questions I got

from people to push the boundaries of the test. And you can, and if you do something unique, maybe you even could stand out doing it. But the problem is a lot of people are going to push in the exact same place. And the problem I have there is when you add extra restrictions to yourself without a reason to add them. Some restrictions are good. I think restrictions, like I said, bring creativity. But you want to be careful on a test like this not to put too many additional restrictions on yourself. For example, if I start saying,

oh, I've got to start making hybrid cards, wow, that way lowers the ability to make something new and different. Now, if you pull it off, if you make a really inventive hybrid card, okay, that is a feather in your cap, but you are definitely raising the bar of challenge for yourself. And I know some people are like, I want to prove how difficult I can do things. The thing there is, if you pull it off, okay, you've demonstrated something, but you're making your job harder for yourself. And some people want to do that. Some people, I mean, if you're really,

really talented at designing magic cards, maybe you can pull that off. Um, but I, I would stick to just making nice, clean designs. Um, okay. So I look up and figure out what we've done before. So I look at white, blue, common, instant. I also look at uncommon. Um, look at, look at the rarities next to you. I mean, obviously, if you're doing uncommon or rare, look above and below you. But I think you want to see what we've done before. And the major reason is, what you don't want to do

is design a magic card we've made before. Because one of the things about magic is, magic has a 25-year history. One of the things I'm looking for is, you know, are you aware of what we have and haven't done before?

If you design a card that's an amazing, awesome card, but we've done it before, that's actually a strike against you. That is, oh, you didn't really

check to make sure you knew what we had and hadn't done. And a big part of magic design is understanding history and understanding

where we've been before. Now, if you're actually making magic cards, you have other people that will help catch that for you. There are a lot of magic cards in existence, and it's easy to sort of make something not realizing we've done it before. But if you're doing a test, when you're trying to show off, and you only get 10 cards, having one of your cards be a card we've already made, not to your benefit. Getting dinged on the design test when you only have 10 cards is not ideal.

So the other thing that looking up the cards does for you is it sort of says what space we've played in to give you some ideas for space we could play in that we haven't been to. ideas for space we could play in that we haven't been to. And then a lot of what I'm looking for as a person judging this test is I want good, playable, functional cards that demonstrate a bunch of things. Okay, number one, do you understand the color pie? I mean, and the multiple choice test has hit on this a lot. Do you know what the colors can do?

Because if you make a white-blue card, and I'm like, oh, that's really more of a blue-black card, that's problematic. I want to make sure that you understand the color pie, and you understand sort of where things go. I want to make sure you understand rarities. I want to make sure you understand car types. And a lot of that, you know, there's an article I wrote already.

I mean, I wrote by the time you've heard this. Right after I did the third trial, the next week actually, I did an article on rarity. And rarity is a tricky thing. I've done actually a podcast on rarity. But one of the things is just knowing what's a common car, what's an uncommon car, what's a rare, what's a mythic rare. That's important. Also, just knowing general rules, like making an enchantment that taps is wrong. Knowing how the card types work is important.

And then, the other thing I'm very interested in is one of the tricks of multicolor design, and one of the reasons Eric picked this is you have to sort of understand both colors and have them come together in a way that feels like a singular cohesive card. And one of the biggest traps I find with multicolor designs is people who either don't design something that's a multicolor card or design something in which the components of it aren't really synergistic. It doesn't feel like a singular card. It feels like two cards stapled together.

And so the reason we gave you the design test involves gold cards is gold cards are hard. They're not easy to do. They're actually a little bit more difficult than normal magic cards. Another thing I'm looking for is just a sheer amount of elegance. You know, are you making something that, you know, what I want you to do is make something that looks cool and is a clean version of it. And I want something that plays well. I told the players that they were, I told the people they were allowed to get a playtester.

They had to vow them to secrecy, but they could have one playtester they could playtest with so they could playtest their cards. So we'll get to playtesting in a second, because playtesting is important. Okay, so first thing I do is I go through, understand what's preexisted, and then probably what I would do if I was doing the test is I would make a bunch of cards. I wouldn't make just one card. I would actually make a bunch of cards within the category. Let's say I'm making a common blue-white instant.

I would actually spend a little time and come up with a bunch of different ones. Rather than see what's the first thing I could come up with, I would make a couple. And the reason I would make a bunch of them, actually more than a couple, I'd make a bunch of them. I would make five, six at least. And the reason I would make a bunch of them is, one, it's sort of just sometimes, you know, you're at your best when you're sort of getting in the flow of things. So sometimes your first card isn't always your best, especially with younger designers, newer designers. It can take a little bit of time to warm up. And the other thing that happens is, as you design cards, you'll start to sort of get a feel for what you're doing

and that it'll help future cards. And then what you want to do is, remember, you only need to sort of get a feel for what you're doing and that it'll help future cards. And then what you want to do is, remember, you only need to turn one in. So the thing is, make a bunch and sort of look at them and get a sense of where, what do you like. Also, sometimes what will happen is you'll realize you like part of one card, part of another. And sometimes you could sort of blend them together. A big warning, though, for a design test is you don't want to over design. What I mean by that is a really common mistake made by newer designers is they put too much on a card. I remember I talked about elegance not too long ago where it does thing A, B, C, D, and E and like whoa whoa whoa whoa A would have been interesting. Maybe you can do B. You

didn't need C. You didn't need D. I'm not even sure you needed B, but you know, maybe, maybe you could do B. And that a lot of what you want to do is design to get a sense of where there's interesting things. And then, you know, I would design a bunch of cards and look at them and figure out what you want. Now, what'll happen when you design cards is sometimes you will actually do things like, I designed a common, but oh, oh, now that I've designed it, it's an uncommon or it's a rare. One of the things I do in when I do design homework is I always start by having the team make commons. And the funny thing is I fill up a lot of uncommons in design space

with them, and mythic sometimes, with them making commons. That people tend to stretch a lot when making commons. Or sometimes just making a card and like, oh, this is cool, but, oh, this really isn't a common card. And so, because we gave you a little flexibility

in the rarity, you know, if you decide that you really want this card to be uncommon instead of common, I mean, you have a little bit of give in the rarity, plus you can move things around if you haven't designed all the cards yet. Okay, once I design the card that I like, now we get to playtesting. Now we get to playtesting. Probably what I would do, by the way, is depending on, you might want to design a bunch of cards first and then make some decks where, you know, maybe they're three-color decks, for example. So, for example, if I make a three-color deck and play against another three-color deck, each three-color deck gives you access to, I think, three-color?

Let me think about this. So let's say you have blue, white, and black. You get a blue-white card, you get a white-black card. Oh, I was going to say, you get a blue-white card, a blue-black card, you get a white-black card, and that is it. So you get three. So if you do a three-color, you get to try three of your things. And so if you and your playtester each have three,

you can test six at a time. And so between, you can make four decks that hits all of them. In fact, you can make two three-color decks and two two-color. Oh, no, no, no. I think you need to make another three-color deck. But anyway, you can definitely playtest and get a sense of them. The reason playtesting is so important is sometimes cards that you think will do one thing, when you actually play them, do not. Now, one of the things that's interesting is with time and experience, you start to shorthand and recognize some of these things. I mean, I still playtest cards because even, you know, 22 plus years in, sometimes playing cards will surprise you.

But the good thing is I've gotten a pretty good eye of seeing things that are going to, like, there's a lot of little red flags that'll go off when certain cards try certain things that I've tried before that I know won't work. So I will not have time to play, myself, to play this all 94 of these design tests. But I luckily have a lot of playtests under my belt, so I know what different cards playtest, having looked at them, just having done this for a long time. I recommend all you

playtest your cards. I mean, I playtest my cards, so you want to playtest them. Then, the other thing that I did, which was something that I was testing another skill, there's a lot of skills that we're testing on this test, is I asked them to put their cards from their best work to the least best work. Because I was testing another skill, there's a lot of skills that we're testing on this test, is I asked them to put their cards from their best work to their least best work.

Because I was interested to see how good a judge they were of their own work. Because that is another really important skill. Because you don't turn in everything you do. When I say you have homework and you have to design something, you turn in, you know, you can turn in more than one, I mean, in a real design, you can turn in more than one

card for a slot. But let's say you made 20 cards. You don't want to turn 20 cards in. Turn your best few cards in. And so a lot of design is you designing something and then figuring out what is your best work. So understanding what your best work is from your weakest work is pretty important. And so one of the things you're definitely being graded on in the design test is, do you have a good sense of where your strengths and weaknesses lie?

When a card is, you know, when a card is doing something good and when a card is kind of like, okay, it's good enough. And one of the things about design tests like this is it is hard sometimes to design the best possible card in the corner. Now, good design requires you to do as good a job as possible. And one of the things that I like is some of my best designs did come about from, wow, okay, I have some crazy constraints to meet. I got to meet them. And then figuring how to meet those constraints. Now, in actual design, sometimes our constraints are even more constraining. You know, right now, I gave you color and car type and rarity.

And you're like, oh, but how else could I be constrained? I'm like, there's all sorts of things. You know, sometimes we have to change the card, but the art is committed to. Sometimes we have to change the card, but the name is committed to. We've already locked down the collector numbers, and you have to find a new name within the collector number,

you know, that works there. Sometimes we're dealing with things from other sets. Like, a very common thing is, well, first you have to deal with cards from your own set. Then you have to deal with cards from other sets that surround you. And there's all sorts of constraints. Designing magic is a lot about fitting to the constraints that you are given.

That's why this design test is about that. So real quickly, I think I've explained this, but GDS 1, we were looking for more individual card designers. GDS 2, we were looking more for sort of vision blue sky designers, meaning people that could piece together a whole

world. For GDS 3, we're back to looking similar to what we wanted in GDS 1. We're just looking for really strong, solid card we want in GDS one. We're just looking for really strong, solid car designers. Um, so GDS three, while we're using the templating of GDS two for like how many, uh, finalists we have and how often the challenges happen. Um, we are using GDS one as the kind of the challenge, you know, the kind of challenges we want to do. So, basically, we have we have it's a combination, the test is a combination between

one and two. But I'm actually recording this podcast. They turned them in last night. I'm on the way to work. In fact, the very first thing I'll do when I get to work is print them up so I can see them all, so I can start grading them, because I got a lot to grade. I think other tips. The other thing that I would

do is, because you're trying to show off, I would do a few other things. A few more constraints. I would be careful to make sure that I'm not repeating the same ability in the same colors. Meaning, if one of my red spells was direct damage, I would kind of avoid making the other three direct damage. I would kind of avoid making the other three direct damage. I would want to... A lot of what I'm trying to... I think a lot of what you're trying to show in the design test is versatility and diversity of abilities.

You're trying to show variety. So I would make a concerted effort to, if I use a certain ability within a certain color, to try to avoid that. Now, there's some basic abilities like card drawing and stuff that, you know, there's some basic abilities like card drawing and stuff that, you know, there is some difference between card drawing and card filtering and, you know. I think you have a little bit of room on abilities that are really big and fundamental

to get tweaks on them, you know. But, in general, now the interesting thing is, so what happened was, we sent an email to the 94 finalists, the people that may or not finalists, uh, 94 people for trial three. Um, and then they were allowed to write me questions and I ended up, like I said, I wrote two FAQs answering their questions cause there were a lot of questions I had. Um, and then, uh, all weekend, all week long, people could write to me on email or on my social media and ask me questions. So, I have a little idea what I'm coming into today, just from all the questions I got asked.

A lot of people seem like they're pushing the boundaries of the test. Like I said, it's not... if you do it elegantly and beautifully it's in general and I know a lot of people who are trying to show off I'm not sure I said this already but the GDS is a long shot even if you are an amazing amazing magic designer

and you make us awesome awesome cards it's hard to do a position in which 7,800 people express interest an amazing, amazing magic designer and you would make us awesome, awesome cards. It's hard to do a position in which 7,800 people express interest and be able... For example, I don't have the capacity just to see everybody. If all 3,000 people who did their essay test, for example,

turned in a design test... I think in my article I said if all 7,800 people who expressed interest in doing the GDS had done a design test, it would take me three years at the rate I grade them to grade them. And I mean, I wouldn't be doing lots of magic in the meantime.

It would, you know, so... And I... I... Anyway. I know there's lots of really talented people out there, and I can't see everybody's things, so I'm eager to see the 94 that got to take the test how they did.

One of the things that I've learned, like, for example, the essay test, not the essay test, the multiple choice test, it's getting harder and harder to pass it. Partly because more and more people are applying and I still can only grade 100 papers. So part of it is just there's more people applying. But another part of it is, is I think that people become more adept at magic design.

Part of that is attributed to me, I guess, in that I do, I create a lot of content on magic design. You know, I write articles. I specifically write nuts and bolts articles about it. I talk about a lot of design principles. I do podcasts like this all the time. And that if you are into making magic cards, there's a lot of content to make magic cards. And that the first Great Design designer search was 2004 and the next

one was 2010 2011 so we're talking seven years since the last one that's a long time magic's grown a lot um i've written seven more years of articles done a whole bunch more of podcasts in fact i don't think seven years ago i was even doing podcasts so um there's just a lot of content and what i've discovered is um there's a and lot of content and what I discovered is, um, there's a, and the other thing that for those who don't know, if you like designing magic cards, um, there are a bunch of different websites. Like there's a website called Goblin Artisans. Um, I know, uh, there's, uh, Reddit has card creation forums. There's a bunch of places where if you want to make magic cards and you want other people to see them and comment on them, that you can do that.

I don't go to those places because I'm not allowed to look at unsolicited material. But if you enjoy making magic cards, there is an entire community. It's one of the reasons I make the nuts and bolts articles every year. There's an entire magic community that likes to do card design. And it's a lot of fun. And I don't get to do GDS all that often, and the reality is, most people, the route to R&D is not going to be the GDS. It's just, I mean, it's fun, and I like the fact that anybody, well, with the constraints,

the caveat of being a job in the U.S., I have to restrict it a bit, sadly. But basically, the idea is, you know, anybody who qualifies has a chance to try out, and that's kind of cool. It's neat that, you know, sort of to talk about ratatouille, anybody can be a chef, is that, you know, the GDS is fun because I'm plucking somebody from somewhere. You know, someone like Ken Nagel or Ethan Fleischer that now designs Magic Cards as their full-time job. When they joined the GDS, that's not what they were doing. They had other careers doing other things.

I think Ken was designing tanks, and Ethan was working in a bookstore and doing graphic design. I love the fact that we can take people that are from some other walk of life and bring them into magic and find new blood and new talent. So I love the GDS for that. But I do recognize that there are way too many talented people that I sadly... One of these days we'll figure out a better way to narrow people down. It's not that local choice test is our favorite way to do it. It's just the only efficient way we found to do it.

We had some ideas for this one. It required technology we did not have. And I actually, the third GDS got pushed back by a bit of time of us kind of waiting on some new technology that we thought maybe would happen. And fundamentally we realized it just wasn't going to happen in time. But I'm hoping and I'm pretty sure, I mean, unless the GDS 3 blows up in my face I'm pretty sure we will do a GDS 4 one day. It has proven to be a very effective means to find people.

So I'm actually kind of excited. The thing that's interesting is it has proven to be a very effective means to find people. I'm actually kind of excited. The thing that's interesting is for those that have never graded design tests, it's a lot of work. And the thing about it is you really have to think about the designs and understand what the designs are and how it requires some work to great design. So I'm excited to do it, but I also know that there's a lot of nuance into it. And a lot of people spend a lot of time.

Like I said, they were given, if you, the 94 that made it to trial three, Tuesday morning found out, and then Sunday at midnight. So they had the rest of the day Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So a little under six days, five and a half days, let's call it, to design for this. And I know there were people that spent lots of hours every day for the six days. So anyway, I'm very eager to see. So the plan, by the way, is for... The funny thing is by the time you guys hear this,

the GDS is well underway. I'm not quite sure how I want to turn the GDS 3 into podcast material. So I'll kind of get inspired along the way. In the past, for those that know GDS 1 and GDS 2, I often would find ways to sort of turn it into materials for articles. So I'm sure I will do that if I have space to do that as well. The only weird thing about my articles and about my podcast is

back in the time I was doing GDS 1 and GDS 2, there was a much tighter time frame between me turning my articles in and them going up. I now work a month ahead because my articles get translated and we need the time for the translation. So I write farther ahead. And for the podcast, I don't know, just the nature of how I do the podcast, I record ahead about six weeks, I think. So today is February 5th.

You won't ever wonder the lag time. I just said yesterday was the Super Bowl. So today's February 5th. I'm driving to work for the very first time. I just said yesterday it was the Super Bowl. So today's February 5th. I'm driving to work for the very first time. I haven't seen the design test yet. This is me heading in. The funny thing is

at some point you probably will have heard me, I assume in writing or something, I'll talk about the design test at some point. If I have interesting things to say about the design test, I can do another podcast.

I don't know inherently that I have 30 minutes worth of material on them. Maybe I do. One of the things that always fascinates me is, what are the most common mistakes that everybody makes? Meaning, what are the common mistakes? What are the things that a lot of people did? I have some guesses

from the questions of where people... Like, one of the things that I know is going to happen is people seem enamored with double-faced cards. And I know that there's a lot of design space

to double-faced cards and there's cool things you can do with double-faced cards. But it definitely is a resource that we have to be careful with. You know, we don't do... Double-faced cards are the kind of things

that every set could have a double-faced card. But for a lot of logistical reasons, we don't do... Double-faced cards are the kind of things that every set could have a double-faced card, but for a lot of logistical reasons, we don't do double-faced cards all that often. So, like, I want to be... We'll see. I have this idea that everybody's going to be doing double-faced cards, and double-faced cards offer up some interesting challenges

or allow you to do some interesting things with the design challenge that, I mean, we'll see if somebody pulls that off. The reason it's interesting is if I have a blue creature that turns into a green enchantment, I now can't have another blue creature or another green enchantment, but I've done this weird thing where my restrictions line up differently. And so, you know, you can get yourself in a bind. One of the things about differentiating between front and back is splitting car types apart. The grid can work, but it gets more complicated. So, anyway, I'm eager to see what people do. But anyway, that is the third trial.

So, I hope you guys liked hearing about it and a little discussion of where it came from and why we did it that way and what we're looking for and how I would do it. But I'm now at work. 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. I'll see you guys next time.