Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #549: Parts of a Card

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

I go through a Magic card and talk about what impact design has on each part of the card.

Okay, I'm pulling out the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about the card space, parts of the card. So I'm going to go through all the elements of a card and talk about what each part means to design. There's a lot of different parts to the card. And so I thought I would just sort of go, start upper left right-hand corner and go all the way down through the card and talk a little bit about elements of the card

and history of the card. So this is a different kind of a podcast. So we're going to start upper left. So we start with the name, the title. So that is something that... Design usually comes up with a name for the card, what we call the design name. Sometimes we seriously try to get a real name,

and sometimes we goof around and just give silly names. The more top-down the set is, the more the set is about capturing a certain flavor, the more often we try to get real names in design. So for example, something like Indusrod, we were, a lot of our designs were based off names and things. And so, you know, we would make a card called Evil Twin and then design it. So it needed to be called Evil Twin. We designed an Evil Twin. designed it, so it needs to be called Evil Twin. We designed an Evil Twin. And so it depends a lot on

what kind of set it is. Sometimes, you know, like, there's a lot of classic funny names, like Scragnoff is a card that I made way, way back when. It was a green creature that couldn't be countered and couldn't be targeted. It had protection from blue. And I think it was called Greased Weasel,

like, in design, just because it was so hard to... You couldn't get your hands on it it was hard to stop so like I said the title is important usually the creative team well the creative team is in charge of the title they always are the names and flavor text

but design will at times sometimes we make a real honest attempt to make the names the names can stick and then in stuff like Unsets where you're kind of designing the whole package, there's often times where like, oh, no, no, no, like this name is important to the larger concept

that we're going to. And so design does some naming, but it is not our ultimate responsibility. And now as far as names, one of the things about names is you can care about names as a whole entity, meaning one card can care about another card by naming that card. We are not allowed in Black Border to care about components of names. Silver Border does that. Silver Border can say how many

letters are in the name or is it two words? Silver Border can care, but Black Border can't. You can't care about the quality of the name. And the reason for that is the way the rules work in Black Border and for tournaments is that you assume it's the English version for all rules. And so it'd be very weird to have a card that cared about the letters in the name, but if you're playing in a language other than English, those weren't actually the letters. It's kind of weird. So we don't do that in Blackboarder. We can say a card named, meaning we specifically can reference, like, you know, we can do things in which, oh, if you have this particular card in play, there's a mechanical connection. So we can do that.

Okay. Next, right next to the title, is the mana cost. So the mana cost is usually various mana symbols. There's obviously the five magic colors. There's a color symbol. There's the generic symbol, the number in the bubble. And then there's other. There's hybrid mana. There's Phyrexian mana, there's snow

mana, there's two-brid mana, which is like hybrid but with two or a color there's a bunch of different things we've made over the years we've definitely messed around a little bit with trying to with mana costs, usually

when we're messing with mana costs that's happening in the rules text like there's a mana cost and then the rules text says hey there's an extra there's an alternative cost or an additional cost or usually that um so um design has a decent input on obviously the mana cost. Usually, though, in design itself, or vision design, we are trying to sort of get a general sense of what we think of the card. So we tend to cost things in design to be, like, playable, but not, you know, what we call,

we rate the cards ABCs. They tend to be about Bs. Like, everything's playable, but nothing stands out. Because in vision design, we just want to play all the cards and figure out what the fun cards were. And then in set design, they'll start pushing cards and making cards better and worse. And the idea is they want to push the cards that are more fun to play.

And so part of early playtesting is doing that. We can care about the mana cost in a couple ways, design-wise. A, we can care about converted mana cost, which is the combined total. So, for example, if something costs six generic mana, two and two green mana, that is eight mana total, six and two is eight mana total. The converted mana cost is eight. We try to avoid referring to converted mana cost at common. We do occasionally.

We also can refer to the mana cost specifically. If we want to, we can talk about something that costs a particular amount of mana or uses a certain color of mana. We can make cost cost less. So mechanically, we can do a lot to interact with the mana cost. We can affect the mana cost. We can affect the mana cost. We can care about what the mana cost is. We can change the mana cost. So there's a lot of mechanical manipulation we can do with the mana cost.

Okay, next we have the art. So the art box, once upon a time, the art box was completely off limits to design. I mean, unsets obviously did make use of the art box, once upon a time, the art box was completely off limits to design. I mean, unsets obviously did make use of the art box. If you'll notice stuff like Falling Apart from Unhinged or the Bloom Gun Game, we've actually done stuff in Silver Border where there's components, Toglidite, there's components in the art which are a means for you to help remember things that you've done. The falling apart loses arms and legs, and he functionally matters whether he has arms or legs. The toglodite gets turned on and off.

The balloon gun game, you're working up a way to do something. Bingo, you're trying to get a bingo on him. So Silverborder's done that. Only recently have we started messing a little bit around in that space for example Sagas from Dominaria, there's a track that

runs through the art, the idea is you kind of can use that track I mean, a lot of people the card tells you to put counters on it so a lot of people just put counters on it, but also some people I know sort of track what chapter it's at. Since it's chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, you can also do that. I think the future of Magic is going to have us using that art box as a mechanical aid more than we currently have been.

Just looking at what we've done with Unsets, I feel like there's some space there that, as we broaden what Magic does, I do think there's some space there that, as we broaden what Magic does, I do think there's some chance. Once again, the art box is, the art team is in charge of that, and the creative team concepts it and figures out what it represents and what it looks like. Normally, the art box doesn't have a lot of relevance to design as far as mechanics. Once again, in Silver Border, we have made a few cards that care about what's in the art. We had a card

that had Art Rampage and Unhinged. There's a few cards that actually care about the art in Silver Border. In Black Border, we never care about the art, meaning what's in it. The one exception is, there's a few things like flying. We try to make sure the creature appears to be flying in the art if it flies. There's a little bit of using the art as a memory tool, but it doesn't have any mechanical relevance.

Okay, next we get to the creature, sorry, to the type line. So the first thing you get is you can have super types, types, and subtypes. So the super types are things like basic, legendary, snow, world. It's things that modify the type. And super types are allowed to have rules baggage. So legendary carries with it saying, oh, well you can only have one of these in play at a time, and what happens if multiple get in play? All that sort of rules baggage lives with that super type.

Legendary means something, and when you put it on a card, it grants an ability. Then you have the card type. It grants an ability. Then you have the card type. So the card type is either artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land, sorcery, planeswalker, sorcery, or tribal. Those are the eight. I know tribal feels like a super type. I'm not quite sure why. For rules reasons, it's not.

But it acts a lot like a supertype in that it always modifies something, and it has rules baggage, so I'm not 100% sure why. The rules people tell me it has to be, so I will trust them. So card types obviously carry rules baggage, and we care about them. We can mechanically care about any supertype subtypes. We can reference them in rules. We can care about whether something is legendary or something is a creature or something is a goblin. Subtypes don't carry rules baggage, although they can be referenced in cards.

So a creature being a goblin doesn't inherently make it different, but other cards can care about being a goblin and affect it. All card types can have subtypes. Creatures have the most because normally creatures... One of the rules of creatures is all creatures have a subtype. They have a creature type. So it's something we do in all creatures. Artifacts and lands and spells, Incident Sorceries and Enchantments, they all can.

There are subtypes for every, every card type has subtypes. Incident Sorcery are the only ones that can share a subtype. Without using tribal technology, the tribal keyword, you can't have a subtype appear on two different types.

So, for example, if Goblin is a creature subtype, it can't be a land subtype. If something is a tribal card, that allows you to carry over that. There's rules about tribal. So you can't have a tribal sorcery goblin, but you can't have a sorcery goblin. So supertypes, types, and subtypes very much mechanically have relevance. It's the decision of

R&D about what those are like the names and the flavor text, the creative team, um, is ultimate word. I mean, we, we, um, oh, I'm sorry. So the creative team also has, um, is in charge of the subtype, um, except when it's mechanically relevant, uh, relevant. Design can make a note and say this is a goblin card that needs to be a goblin. Mechanically it cares that it's a goblin, so we need for it to be a goblin. Other than when we care about it, it's left up to the creative team to determine subtypes. We don't...

If design doesn't specifically care for mechanical reason, then it's left to the creative team to figure out the subtype. Okay, so next to that, we have the expansion symbol. So the expansion symbol has a couple functions. First off, it tells you what expansion it's from. So the idea is, if I don't know, I can look and see. Now, as we'll get, I'll get to later, there's codes at the bottom of the card that also happen to tell you. For a long time, the only means to know where a card came from,

if you didn't happen to know just by the name of the card, was the expansion symbol. The expansion symbol has to be a visual that sort of ties into the set. As we've moved along, it's gotten trickier and trickier to make expansion symbols. Early on, we did like, it's a Roman column, you know. We were able to do very simple things, but as we've slowly eaten up a lot of the simple

iconography, our expansion symbols have gotten a little bit more complex. The other thing that expansion symbols do is they tell the rarity of the card. And they do that based on the color that they are. Um, common is traditionally black, although we've swapped into white on a couple occasions. Um, uncommon is silver.

Rare is gold. And mythic rare is a sort of orangey color. Um, we, uh, also have done some other, uh time-shifted sheet on Time Spiral had a purple rarity symbol. Lands are given a black symbol and treated like they're common, although technically speaking, the land rarity is a little bit different

than the common rarity. So the expansion symbol is not something that we can mechanic. Well, once upon a time, we could. There were sets early on, like Arabian Nights had City in a Bottle that could destroy all Arabian Nights cards, and Antiquities had Golgothian Silex that could destroy all Antiquities cards. Homelands had Apocalypse Chime that could destroy all Homelands cards.

Sorry, Homelands had Apocalypse Chime. It doesn't destroy Apocalypse cards. It destroys Homelands cards. But the problem we ran into is, like I said, there's a meta rule that says any card is the equivalent version, and we have reprinted cards, and so we didn't want you to...

Silver Border looks at what specific card you have in play. Black Border does not. It assumes that all cards with the same names are the same. It treats them the same. And we didn't have to make people, when they sign up for a tournament, go, well, this is the version of the card I'm playing. You do it in Silver Border, it matters, but

it doesn't in Black Border. So we stopped caring about expansion symbols. Once again, Silver Border can. There are some Silver Border cards that care. Symbol status and stuff like that. Home bottling kit. But the the Black Butter no longer cares. We can't reference it. We can't say things from this expansion.

That's not something we can do anymore. Okay, so next we get to the rules text. So the rules text is broken into two pieces, basically. There's the rules text, and then there's not a line, and then there's the flavor text. So let's start with the rules text is broken into two pieces, basically. There's the rules text, and then there's now a line, and then there's the flavor text. So let's start with the rules text. Rules text is under the designs in charge. I mean, editing is the final word.

Editing works with the rules manager. They're in charge of templating and stuff. Obviously, design has a lot to say over the rules. That's the thing we make. So, um, that is our responsibility, what the card says and what it does and the functionality. Um, obviously design can care about the rules text. That is the crux of what the card is. So, um, clearly we can, we can care about that.

Um, so there's a bunch of different ways we can use the rules text. So first off, we can just plain write something out in normal text and just say what the card does. If we ever want to remind you of something, that's where we use reminder text. A reminder text is italicized text

inside of parentheses that usually happens after the sentence that introduces the word that might not be a known word. New keywords and anything that's new in a set will define. Anything that's a new vocabulary word, we tend to put reminder text. In core sets, we often put reminder text for the evergreen abilities that you're assumed to know in advanced and standard product.

But in core sets, which are a little more geared toward beginners, we'll explain some stuff. The difference between rules text and reminder text is rules text has syntax it has to follow. There's a template it has to follow. Word choices have mechanical meaning, whether something says when or whenever or if. Like, all that means something. There's templates and that words carry sort of mechanical meaning in the context of templates.

So, it's very careful how we word things. Now, templating will change over time. We have a thing called Oracle where we update old wordings. of things. Now, templating will change over time. We have a thing called Oracle where we update old wordings. But rules text is very sort of, I call it magic-ese. There's a language to it. Reminder text does not have that stringeness to it. Is that a word? Did I make up a word? We're not as strict

about it, meaning that we can use more layman terms in reminder text that we're not beholden to the technicality that we are in normal rules text so a lot of times when using reminder text we will be a little looser meaning a little more easier to understand and less

technical and we've started leaning more and more that direction with reminder text to try to make sure that people understand what you know. If we're real technical and people don't get it, that's not doing anybody any favor. So we're starting to lean a little bit more in reminder text to sort of make it more vernacular. Another thing about rules text is we can have keywords. So what a keyword is,

is a keyword takes a concept that is always the same concept, the same set of words, and replaces it with a single or a word or phrase. Usually it's one or two words of the keyword. So the idea is instead of having to say, I can only be blocked by creatures that share this ability or have this other ability called Reach, I can just say flying. That's what flying means. Flying means, and instead of having to write it all out, I mean, I understand on Corset sometimes we write in reminder text, it's just a shorthand. And we also use keywords when we do new things in sets.

A lot of times we will use keywords out of them. Keywords can come in different forms. Uh, there's a normal keyword word. There's keyword actions that work as verbs. Um, you know, keywords have, can we use in a bunch of different, uh, ways. Um, some of which are evergreen, meaning we use them all the time. Some of which are not, uh, deciduous means we have access to them, but we don't use them all the time. And then there's stuff that we use on occasion.

Another thing that we use sometimes are what are called ability words. So ability words are the text stands on its own. The text is the text. You don't need anything else. But in order to sort of get people to recognize that we've made something, that it is multiple cards do this thing, and from a larger set sense, it's a mechanic. It's just not a keyword mechanic.

So what we do is we, in italics, we name it in italics and then put m dash and then say the text. So something like threshold is an ability word. It's something in which you don't need the word, but we want the word as a means to sort of remind you and give vocabulary to what's going on. The idea being once you see this word once, and you learn what it means, the second time you see it,

you don't have to read all the text. You're like, oh, I got it. It's this. So the tricky thing between keywords and ability words is we are allowed to mechanically reference keywords. So for example, I can care about something having flying. But I can't care about something, I can't mechanically reference ability words. I can't care about something that has threshold.

So mechanically speaking, whether something's a keyword or not, the reason things are ability words, A, usually it could just be written out. B, the other thing that happens sometimes is keywords need to be exact. It needs, you're replacing these words with that word or words. So if a lot of times we have abilities where there's variance between them, they're similar and there's something about them that's the same, but there's some variance. They end up becoming ability words. So you go, hey, we're doing this thing, but we're not, it's not a kind of thing where it's exactly replacing things because that's what a keyword

needs to be to be a keyword. Okay. So also that can be in the rules text. We have activated abilities, which means usually there's a cost associated with it, then there's a colon, and that means that you sometimes, most activated abilities can be used whenever you could, whenever you have priority, but some activated abilities

will tell you that you can only use it a certain time, or only so many times, it'll limit you. The other thing is we can reference activated abilities. We can reference activated costs. There are other things that can go on. There's static abilities that just sort of grant something. There's triggered abilities that when a certain event happens, they happen.

There's a lot of tools and stuff that we get to do within rules text. All of which, obviously, other than ability words, we can reference. Okay, next we get to flavor text. So we just, as of Dominaria, we've added a little bar. An early version of the bar appeared back in Portal. added a little bar. An early version of the bar appeared back in Portal. So flavor text appears in italics,

and it is flavor. It is telling you something about the world or the thing pictured in the card or what the spell is. Usually we use flavor text as a means to world build. Sometimes the art

is also telling part of the story and often when it's doing that, the flavor text will reinforce the story. Sometimes the flavor text is just doing environmental work, sort of building up the world. Sometimes the flavor text is explaining something about the creature that you're playing. Mechanically, the one time we kind of

we can't mechanically care about flavor text. You can't reference what's in flavor text. Silver border can and does, but black border does not. The one thing where design kind of cares about the flavor text sometimes is sometimes we're trying to do something and all the components aren't quite clicking together

quite cleanly, and sometimes we use reminder text as a way to sort of explain the concept so that people get the holistic view of the card. Because what we found is that people go, oh, I get it, it's this. It's just the card's easier to remember. And so sometimes when the pieces aren't quite clicking, the reminder text is the thing to help sort of get it over the hump,

to sort of, like, get it, this is what, here's the card concept. Usually we don't like to rely on that. Obviously, if you're relying on the flavor text to sort of make sure people get it. This is what, here's the card concept. Um, usually we don't like to rely on that. Obviously if you're relying on the flavor text to sort of make sure people get it, something has gone a little off the tracks, but we, we do use it in time to help people understand that. Um, and that, that is an important thing to remember. Okay. Also in the rules text box, kind of, in the lower right-hand corner, is the power and toughness. And on a Planeswalker thing, there are loyalty abilities and there is loyalty count. I'll get to Planeswalkers in a second. So the power toughness is, power obviously is how much damage the creature does when it deals damage.

And toughness is how much damage it takes to destroy the creature. It's always power slash toughness. Back in Portal, we did a little sword and a shield to represent which was which. But we don't do that on normal cards or non-portal cards. We are allowed to reference power and toughness. We can change power and toughness. That is 100% sort of design

gets to set it and design gets to care about it and it's something that we set and something that we can interact with. And it is something... One of the things that we've missed around the past is Level Up was a

car design where something changed over time. And we divided up the text box and we gave them multiple power toughness boxes. So, all the stuff I'm talking about today, we've done variants on it where things work a little bit different. You know, sagas work a little bit different,

and planeswalkers work a little bit different, and there's just exceptions that work a little bit different. Planeswalkers, by the way, on their rules text box, have loyalty, so they have what are essentially activated abilities, but they're called loyalty abilities, and then there's a number with a plus or minus, and it tells you how much loyalty it takes. Either it gains you loyalty or it loses you loyalty. Plus one means if you use this activated ability, you go up in loyalty. Minus one would mean you go

down in loyalty. Usually, the more powerful the attack, the larger the minus. Traditionally, there's three abilities on a Planeswalker. Usually, the first one is a positive ability. Second one is a small positive ability. Second one is a small negative ability. And third one is a large negative ability, what we call the ultimate, which is something that usually is a pretty big effect, but you have to work your way to get there. And if you manage to get it to go off,

it doesn't automatically win you the game, but gives you a big leg up. Also, where the power toughness goes on a Planeswalker is a little box that has a number. That is the loyalty counter. That is how much loyalty the creature has. You use loyalty when determining costs that you're paying. If something is negative

loyalty, you have to have the loyalty to pay it, for example. Okay. Next, we get to the bottom of the card. So there's a bunch of things that go on the bottom of the card. One is there's an artist credit. That says who the artist is who illustrated the art. Traditionally, it's one person, but we've had two people on occasion. I don't know if we've ever had three. I know we've had two people on numerous occasions. The art, it used to say something in English and they would translate it, but now it's just a pen. And the reason for that is that just makes us not have to translate it. And so now

there's a pen that signifies, it's like a paintbrush, I guess. It's not a pen, I guess it's a paintbrush. And it signifies that's who the artist is. We always give credit to the artist who does the art on the card. Also, the bottom of the card is the legal text. So the legal text tells you, usually it says the copyright, Wizard of the Coast, and just has whatever text we need from a legal standpoint. I don't know all the rules of what we do and don't need. I just know it usually has a copyright and has a date

and just says that, you know, we made it and it's ours. It's our intellectual property. And then right next to the legal text is the collector number. So one of the interesting things, when I talked about the rarity symbol, I talked about how the expansion symbol

has a color coding for rarity, and the collector number, a lot of people might think that those things go all the way back to the beginning, to alpha, but they don't. Neither of them, when the game started, there was an expansion symbol, but it didn't have a rarity color,

and there was no collector number. Everything else I'm talking about, I mean, obviously Planeswalkers didn't exist, but everything else I'm talking about, name, Manakoft, art, rules text, flavor text, power toughness, legal text, all that stuff existed the whole time.

The two things that are new, I mean, I think they started in Urza's Legacy, I believe, so new's a relative Urza's Legacy, I believe. So new is a relative term. But the ones that didn't go all the way back to the beginning are the color coding of the rarity and the collector number. The collector number will give you a number slash another number. The second number is how many cards are in the set. And the first number is, of those cards, what card it is. And the first number is, of those cards, what card it is.

The way a collector's number works is we go alphabetically in English. First colorless, well, true colorless, not artifacts, but colorless spells that are not artifacts. So we have colorless, like Karn, for example, and Dominaria went first. Then we have white, then blue, then black, then red, then green. What we refer to as WUBRG order. W-U-B-R-G, because those are the letters we use for the card codes for the colors. U is blue, by the way. Then we have the colored cards. Then we have the artifacts.

Then we have the lands, I believe, is the order. And so the reason for the collector number is so you can know how many cards you don't have yet. And you can collect them, and some people put them in order. I mean, you're free to put them in any order you like, but some people like to put them in the collector order number. The one other thing that has been on the collector number, or sorry, on the legal text, is for unglued and unhinged, but not unstable. We put a word on that line. There was a hidden message in unglued and unstable. And if you put them into collector number order, well, actually,

the first one was collector number order, and the second one required you to put the cards in alphabetical order. So the order was different. But it would give you a little message. And the message on both of them were like, here's some cards we weren't able to include and had a whole bunch of joke names of cards that were funny names that we didn't end up making cards with.

So, okay, the one other thing on the card is the code reading part of the card. So this is something that's relatively new. So, uh, Oh, something else I forgot real quickly. There is a frame to the card. The card has a frame that, that is around the background of the whole card. Um, and there is, uh, a pin line that goes there. Basically, the card frame tells you what color the card is, and there are different frames for artifact, for land, and for colorless, and for multicolored,

and for hybrid. So there's a whole bunch of frames. Most of the frame tells you the color of your card. If it's a multicolored card, it's gold, but the pin line, or traditional multicolor, and the pin line, if it's a two-color card, will have two cards with a pin line. Also, the text box we'll sometimes use to do that. Oh, another thing that can happen, by the way, in the text box, I forgot about it, was we can have watermarks. Those are symbols, for example, in Ravnica on cards that are the guild cards. We put the guild symbol on it.

Other factioning, we'll do the faction symbol. Watermarks, much like other parts of the card, cannot be referenced mechanically in Black Border. Silver Border, for example, Unstable just made a couple cards, Watermarket and Stamp of Approval, that allow you to affect watermarks. But normally you can't affect them the same reason as with other things is there are versions of the card that some have a watermark and the others don't we want all the cards with the same name to be treated the same so we can't reference watermarks um the frames have there's a lot of stuff that can change in the frames based

upon what we're doing there's a default obviously, but sometimes if we want to remember what's going on, enchantments, for example, in Theros had a particular frame. Miracles in Absinthe Restored had a particular frame. Sagas in Dominaria have a particular frame. And so if we believe there is a mechanical reason that the frame is helpful

to you, we will do things in the frame to help give you tools to remember stuff. Anyway, so that's the frame. Now we get down to the bottom. So the Magic card has changed three basic times. Well, there's been three basic versions so far. There's been

tiny tweaks, but three bigger changes. First was what started in Alpha. Then in 8th edition, we changed, and we cleaned some stuff up. then in 8th edition we changed and we the we cleaned some stuff up we changed the font

we just made I don't know, did a bunch of cosmetic changes one of the biggest is just making the cards easier to read the original font and the white on dark making the cards easier to read the original font and the white on dark was kind of hard to read so

we just sort of changed a bunch of things to make it a little easier to use the art box got a smidgen bigger and a few other things so then in was it Magic Magic 2010 I, is the next Oh, wasn't that the change?

We had one more change where we added in the card reader. This part I'm going to talk about in a second. Mostly what changed is the bottom. There's now a black section at the bottom where there's white text on it. So this is what I'm talking about, the card reading. So there's always a three-letter card code. So basically

there's the card code for the card that it is. So it tells you the rarity, the color, or technically the frame, but you guys will take it as the color, and the number. So it's kind of like the card codes I talked about. So UW01 means blue, uncommon white first card. Then there's a set code. Actually, I might be swapping the order. A set code is a three-card code that we use

to determine what the set is. Like Dominaria, I believe, was DOM. And so this information, the reason it's on the card, A, it's an alternative way to learn things like, I think the collector number, is the collector number on there? I mean, it has the card code. The reason it is there is we need, because of advanced collation technology, we need the printer to be able to know individually what each card is so that it can make smart decisions about where to put the card.

So in order to do that, we mark the card so the cards know exactly. Like once upon a time, we printed, we cut, it didn't matter what the cards were, the printer didn't care. But now with computerized stuff and a lot of extra stuff we can do, since we need the computer, the printer, to track

what each individual card is so that it can care about where it puts the things. And that is a lot of times people are asking about, can we do old frames for promo versions and this and that? And one thing I try to explain to people

is that thing in the bottom is now crucial to how we print. Not everything we print necessarily needs the card code, I guess, technically. But a lot of things do, and standard legal sets for sure do. In fact, anything that shows up in a booster pack, I think, needs to have it. Maybe individual promos, I'm not 100% sure they do necessarily. Although remember, we print promo cards on the same sheets we print other things.

So it might need it just so it knows it's a promo card to separate it out. things, so it might need it just so it knows it's the promo card to separate it out. And I think that always has the black with the white, because that's the way the computer reads it. But anyway, that coding doesn't have any mechanically have no impact on that.

So once again, the things that we mechanically can care about, names in that we can reference again, the things that we mechanically can care about, names in that we can reference the whole name, mana costs we can care about, cards, super type, type, and subtype we can care about. We can care about rules text. We can care about activations. We can care about power and toughness.

Things we can't mechanically care about. We can't care about qualities of the name. We can't care about ability words in the rules text. We can't mechanically care about the expansion symbol. We can't care about the rarity. We can't care about watermarks in the rules text. We can't care about flavor text. We can't care about collector number or anything having to do with any of the, we can't care about the artist mechanically. Now, one of the things you'll notice is all the things I say we can't care about, almost all of them Silver Border does care about. One of the nice things about Silver Border is that it lets us care about qualities that we can't normally care about. One of the nice things about Silver Border is that it lets us care about

qualities that we can't normally care about. So you want to care about how many letters are in a name or how many words are in a name or what rarity something is or what expansion symbol something is or what the artist is or what the collector number is. All that stuff. Silver Border can and has cared about it

and will continue to care about it. But anyway, those are all the different components of the cards. The one point I should make is we are more and more willing to sort of mess around with card elements for mechanical purposes. So a lot of things I'm talking about today are the default. I mean, Saigas are a perfect example where that's just a different, I mean, yeah, it kind of has a rules text box and it kind of has an art text box, but they're not where they normally are.

And the rules text box has a component to it that helps you track it. So like there definitely is, we're playing around. And I think as you, one of the things I would say about the Silver Border sets is that on some level, they're precursors of things we might mess around with in the future so as I describe the card frame be aware, if I do the same podcast

in 10 years maybe there'll just be some component differences in how we handle certain things or maybe there's a new card type or something like Planeswalker is a relatively new card, I mean it goes back to Lorwyn but it has elements that are very different than some other card frames. Each other frame has its own thing. And I didn't even get into

the texturing. There's a lot of graphic design elements that go on. I talked a little about the pin lines. We try to use the frames where we can to make mechanical differences where we can and explain things when it's relevant. So stuff like enchantments matter in Thero.

So, you know, enchantments had a special treatment. Stuff like that we try to do where it means something. But anyway, that is all about the pieces of the card and what mechanically does and doesn't matter. Hope you guys found that interesting. But I'm now parked. So we all know what that means. It means at the end of my card and what mechanically does and doesn't matter. Hope you guys found that interesting. But I'm now parked. So we all know what that means.

It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.