Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #572: Bad Cards

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

I revisit two of my old articles ("When Cards Go Bad" and the follow-up "When Cards Go Bad Revisited") to talk about why R and D makes bad cards.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, guys. From time to time, I like to use my podcast to look back at a column that I did that I thought was a very influential column and talk all about it. So today's is based on a column called When Cards Go Bad. And real quickly, a little history in this column. It's actually an interesting column. So when the website started, the website started in January of 2002. And one of the things that we did was we used to do a thing called question of the day, where we'd have people sending questions. And then every day, a different person in Wizards, often R&D, but throughout Wizards, we would get a question and then find the most appropriate person to answer the question.

So the idea was you could ask something, and then if it was about printing, we'd go to the printing people. If it was about sales, we'd go to sales. Whatever it was, we'd go to the correct people. So the question was something about bad cards, and I made the statement that bad cards had to exist. So someone sent me this long letter about how, how dare I say bad cards had to exist. And so I decided to write a whole article about it. Why, why bad cards exist.

And what was interesting was it was the first time I'd really sort of done kind of a behind the scenes, let me explain why we do what we do. And the response to it was really positive. And I think it really was the thing that helped me set my tone for my column. So anyway, I consider this to be my first sort of really influential, very, you know, the column that kind of put the stake in the map of what making magic my column was all about. Okay, so why do we make bad cards? It's a very interesting question, and it's broader than just magic. The real question is why in any game are, why is there a discrepancy?

Why aren't all things of equal power? Why are the things that are just worse than other things? So I'm going to explain that today in my podcast. Okay, so I said there were seven reasons. I'm going to walk through all seven reasons and talk in a little depth, since I have a whole podcast, about each of those reasons. So reason number one, all the cards cannot be good. So one of the things people often say is, well, why don't you just make all the cards good? is, well, why don't you just make all the cards good? So here's the problem.

We make roughly 600 cards a year. Standard is two years long. So at its crux, at its high point, Standard has 1,200-some cards in it. Here's the problem. Let's say we have a diverse metagame. And let's say every deck in the metagame is not playing four of, but playing one of. What can we realistically even, and even that, both of those premises are kind of already a little pie in the sky. But let's imagine, what's the most unique decks we can have in an environment?

You know, maybe 10 complete. And when I mean unique, they don't even overlap. They have cards that nobody else uses. Nobody else. I mean, once again, I'm giving some things that aren't true. But let's imagine we had a metagame where you had 10 decks that were no overlap of cards. And let's assume that there wasn't even, it was singleton. Just because for some reason the deck just works perfectly with singleton of cards. And let's assume that there wasn't even, it was singleton. Just because for some reason the deck just works perfectly with singleton of cards.

Okay, let's assume all that. Let's assume all that. None of which is remotely true. But let's assume that it's ten unique decks. There's no overlap in the decks. And nobody uses repeat cards. Okay? All that is a huge, huge give to start with.

But let's assume that is true. Okay, so in a deck, in a 60-card deck, about 40% or 24% of your deck is land. Okay? So that means you have 36 non-land cards in your deck. And I said, let's assume that there are 10 decks and that there's no more than one of each card and the cards don't overlap between decks. If that is true, that is 360 cards. That would be amazing if everything I said could actually be true. That is 360 cards.

Okay, remember I said there's 1,200? That's like perfect scenario where there's all these decks and they're all viable and there's no forums and they don't overlap and there's no four ofs and they don't overlap and you're like all things that probably never will happen. But even with all that even with that many different decks and one ofs in the decks and no overlap of the decks, there's still

360 cards out of 1,200. What I'm saying is in like the perfect storm of a world where somehow all these things are true, at best, at best, a fourth of the cards are maybe tournament viable? Maybe? Now, there are a lot of different formats. I'll get to that in a second. And what's good in what format? It's possible to make cards that are good in different formats.

But even then, even if we take every possible format and go, well, this is good for this format, this is good for that format, there's just no way in the world you can get 1,200 cards to all be good in some format. So the first reason sort of why are there bad cards is kind of by the nature of what we're doing, there have to be bad cards. And then, I mean, I'll get to this later on, but the fact that power is relative means that if I make a card stronger than an existing card, well, just the existing card now isn't turned viable, and this one is. So the first thing is why are there bad cards is literally by the numbers, by the

metrics of how things work, there can't not be bad cards. And then that's the most important thing to understand is not every game has the volume of cards that Magic does. There are other reasons why there are bad cards in other games. But usually, one of the things in general in any game is you want variety. That you want a lot of things going on. And the problem is when you create variety, not all effects are equal. Some effects

are just better than other effects. You know, in magic, in the simplest terms, you know, like, if I minus one, minus one to a creature is not as strong as killing a creature. Now, we have cost to balance, obviously, to talk about how strong something is.

But, especially in a game where there aren't costs, magic has costs to differentiate the stronger from weaker abilities. You want to have a lot of things happen in the game. You don't want the game to get repetitive. So the game designer puts a lot of different options in just for variety's sake so different things happen. So the idea is if you have a lot of things, um, you just, not everything can be good. You know, there's a lot of pressure in your game to have a lot of variety. We have a pressure because we keep putting out new cards. Um, so we want to make sure that there's a lot of different variety out there, but the

mere nature of variety, like all effects aren't equal. They're different effects. And at some point, just certain effects are better and more efficient, and they become the good cards. So the first big question of why are there bad cards is the nature of games is you want to have a lot of different effects for variety to make it fun, and anytime you have a variety of different effects, they're not all going to be equal. There's no way to make like the idea of balance everything perfectly so every effect is exactly

equal is not even doable. I mean for no other reason than Magic's mana cost system has to go in full increments of mana. You know a lot of times we want to cost a card like well really this is three and a half in a green except we can't charge three and a half

other than unhinged. So either it's three in a and a half in a green, except we can't charge three and a half other than unhinged. So it either is three in a green or four in a green, so we have to pick. So, you know, even the very nature of how we cost things, we don't have the, you know, the minute fine detail to even, you know. Cards are just going to be different power levels, and depending on where you're playing them, different ones will be better than others. Okay, number two. Different cards appeal to different players. I talk about this all the time, but just to

reinforce, Magic in many ways is not a single game, but rather a rule set that allows people to play various games. And the tools and the rule sets are shared, but Commander is a very different game than Pauper, which

is a different game than Vintage, which is a different game than Booster Draft. And every Booster Draft with a different product is a different game. You know, so the magic has a lot of ways you can play it. And one of our challenges is we need to make the game for all the players. So if people play a certain format, hey, if the format's popular enough, especially, we want to make sure that we give them things to do. You know, oh, well, we want to make sure there are cards that are good for Commander or Brawl. You know, we just put out Core 2019 and we wanted to make sure there were some legacy, maybe some vintage cards.

Obviously, we make things for Modern. We make things for standard. We make things for a butcher draft. We make things for sealed. You know, there's lots and lots of different ways to play Magic. So one of the big things is, why is the card bad? Might be, well, the card isn't for you. It is good for the person it's for, you know, that there's different people that want different things. The other thing, by the way, is not everybody wants competitive turn-level magic. Meaning, sometimes we make effects because they're fun.

People enjoy doing them. And that the card might be bad if you're not prioritizing that. I mean, that's a lot of it, which is, what do you prioritize? Well, I'm playing tournament magic. I want to win. Okay, well, a lot of cards are off- off limits for you because they're not strong enough. But you might be, I want to hang with my friends and play commander and have fun. So I'm looking for big, splashy effects. So for me, the really boring but efficient things

are bad for me, where the big, splashy, crazy effect that's not powerful in the sense of its cost-effect ratio, but it does the thing I want to do. So for me, it's good. So that's the next big thing, is the idea of good and bad. Different people want different things, so there's no... A lot of times, what is bad for you is made for somebody else. So a lot of what we try to do is we try to make cards for a lot of different players, knowing that some players will not like what other players want,

so for them it's a bad card. A very common thing, for example, is we do what's called the rare poll, where we make cards and we take the rarest and mythic rares and ask everybody in the building who plays Magic what they think of it to get a sense of how exciting they are. One of the types of cards that notoriously scores low in the rare poll are Johnny cards.

Johnny Jenny cards. Cards that are sort of weird build-arounds that can do cool things, but you have to kind of build around them that can do cool things, but you have to kind of build around them. And so a lot of people look at those cards and go, I don't know what to do with that. They rate it low. Now the people who the card is for rate it really highly.

Like, oh, that's really fun. That's really, ooh, what can I do with that? And one of the things we've learned to do is we need to identify the Johnny cards because they never rate well. You know what I'm saying? And one of the things we've learned to do is we need to identify the Johnny cards because they never rate well. You know what I'm saying? Like, they're the kind of card that the audience they're for really, really enjoys them. But the people they're not for, they don't know what to do with them and they tend to rate it low.

So in the God book, in the polls, we tend to be careful for those type of effects because we understand they tend to rank low. And not to just kick them out because we're like, oh, well, this is who it's for. Yeah, yeah, to the majority of people, it looks like a bad card. But for the people we've made it for, it's the reason they play Magic. So that's important. So, I mean, keep in mind that a lot of times a bad card is a bad card for you, but not necessarily a bad card for everyone because what people want and what they play the game for just varies. And this by the way is a good life lesson in general which is if you can't appreciate

something that doesn't mean it's not worthy of appreciation it just means it might not be the thing that you care about um and one of the things i always do is when you see a magic card or anything really in life but and you it doesn't appeal to you it's nice sometimes to go oh well who would that appeal to and that once you recognize that we make magic cards for a lot of different players understand that the card that isn't for you is for somebody and you know we are making that card for somebody else. Another big factor that plays into this is limited is a very big part of magic. And when I say limited, I mean sealed, draft, just I don't bring cards to the event and

then I'm giving cards and do something with them. There's a bunch of different ways to do that. Limited is a really big part of magic. There are a lot of magic players that it's their favorite way to play. There's a bunch that it's the only way they play. And so there are a lot of cards we put in sets, especially at lower rarities, that are designed to make a really good limited experience. And so sometimes there's bad cards in there. I mean, bad, you know, in quotes, bad for standard or bad for modern or whatever other thing you're looking at, but really are made to just make a really dynamic, limited environment.

That's something we get. So a lot of times the bad card is, well, it's bad for you because the reason we put it in there doesn't apply to you. Number three, diversity of card power is key to discovery. Three, diversity of card power is key to discovery. Okay, this is another thing. Part of the reason that we have a wide range of power levels is we want everybody, when they play Magic, to be constantly learning. That one of the fun things about playing a game is getting better, is learning things.

And what we've learned is is if we took all our cards and priced them such that you had to be a really advanced player to understand the nuance of whether that's good or not, it'd be very hard for lower level players to improve. That one of the reasons we have cards that are worse is like we like having a few cards in every deck that people can quickly learn to go oh that's not a good card um and in order to have that learning path in order to make sure that people can understand oh oh wait a minute i thought this was good but it's not you need to have a wide range of card levels of card powers um because like, we want to have cards that are so nuanced that the average player, the PTQ player thinks they're good

and the pro player goes, oh, it's only good situationally and that in these kind of decks it's a bad card and only in that kind of deck is it a good card. That's a very nuanced thing and we want some of those. We definitely do. But if every card was that nuanced, you would have a hard time when you're learning the game of getting better because we want you to be able to recognize things and understand that. And like I said, I mean, one of the ongoing themes of today is we are making magic for a lot of different people,

and that a lot of different people are obviously different from you. So one of the things I've discovered, and this is just true, if you're going to be a game designer, this is a truism of game design. People come at games from their own experience, and they tend to give you feedback based on their own experience. Now, it's valuable feedback. There are players like them. They feel the way they do and you want to listen to that and sometimes very valid criticism that you have to take into account. Sometimes though what they are saying is you've made this component for somebody that's not me and that's not worth my time. I

don't like it. Make all the components for me, please. And then as a game designer, you have to go, okay, are they getting enough things? Like one of the things, for example, is we want Magic to be a fun game for people who are really competitive. And we spend a lot of energy and time doing that. We spend a lot of time on the cards, you know, grading them and, you know, doing a lot of nuanced work the cards, grading them, and doing a lot of nuanced work to make sure that there are cool and interesting strategies and some that aren't obvious

at first blush. So we do a lot for the advanced player, but not everything is for that player. And so when you are making a game and getting feedback from your audience, one of the things you have to realize is each component, who is it made for, And is the audience of that component happy with the component? If they're not, that's an issue.

If I try to make a really fun Johnny and Jenny card and they don't like it and it's not fun to build around, that's a problem. But if I make one and tournament players, you know, spikes are saying to me, why are you making this? I'm like, well, it's not for you. This is not a tournament card. This is a fun, goofy card. And there's people that are going to have a lot of fun building decks around it. Is it going to win standard? Probably not.

But it doesn't need to. That audience isn't about necessarily winning standard. And so we make cards like that because we make people happy. And so just understanding your audience and who particular things are for are important. Okay, number four, power levels are relative. So this is an important one. So let me ask you, and so Ancestral Recall is a card that says spend one blue mana. It's an instant.

You draw three cards or target player draws three cards. Is that a powerful card? And the answer is conditional. Now, a lot of people go, well, of course it's a powerful card. Well, it is a powerful card because in the game of Magic, it is at a higher power level than most other cards. But if I put out a new card that said one blue mana draw four cards,

then that card is not powerful. That card is weak compared to the draw four that we make cards constantly. Like another classic example is Terror is a card that was in alpha. And it said destroy target non-black, non-artifact creature. And then Shatter was a card. So Terror costs one in a black.

Shatter is a card in alpha. Costs one in red. So it's destroy target artifact. Now, if you were playing limited with alpha, not the most fun experience I have to tell you, but let's say you were doing that, what would you pick? If you were drafting, would you

pick tear over shatter? Almost 100% of the time you would do that. Because in that environment, tear just destroys a lot more things than shatter. But, I made a set called

Mirrodin. And in Mirrodin, Mirrodin was the first artifact block. And there were just a lot more artifact creatures. Now, I put tear and shatter again in that same block, on purpose.

And the reason was, tear, normally the non-artifact part of tear is pretty irrelevant. There's only a couple artifact creatures in most sets. Like, go back to Alpha, there were a few artifact creatures, but just a handful.

Where in Mirrodin, like, half the creatures were artifacts. And not only were a lot of the creatures artifacts, but there were a lot of just power artifacts. It was an artifact block. So all of a sudden, tear were a lot of the creatures artifacts but there were a lot of just power artifacts with an artifact block so all of a sudden tear gets a lot weaker

because half the creatures it can't kill meanwhile shatter can kill those half the creatures and destroy a lot of other really powerful cards that are problematic including their artifact lands that you know your shatter could become a stone rain sometimes and so it could become really efficient so in that environment you might, your shatter could become a stone rain sometimes. And so it could become really efficient.

So in that environment, you might take shatter over tear. You still took tear plenty. But the point was, shatter got significantly better because of the environment. And that is kind of my point, which is, whether something is good or bad is not just in a vacuum. I mean, there are things that are generally better and generally worse. There are cards that if I put in an environment, odds are the card is good

and odds are the card is bad. But, once again, depending on the environment, things can change. For example, the card Demystify, which costs a single white mana and destroys target enchantment, you rarely main deck that unlimited. You rarely put, I mean, you sometimes sideboard it in, but you rarely play that main deck.

But if we put that card in Theros, where there's enchantment creatures and a lot of powerful enchantments, and the environment very much revolves around enchantments, wow, enchantment removal, maybe you do want to play it standard. So, like, the key a lot of times also is why is this card good or bad might be dependent you know like for example sometimes what we'd like to do is bring back a card that was a little bit weaker but in where we bring it back it's stronger like oh well you played this card before and your memory of the card was this was not often played limited but we brought it back in an environment where you very much would want to play it in limited.

So we definitely play around with that. And another thing that happens, Fate Warforged is a good example of this. Fate Warforged was designed to be drafted with Khans of Tarkir and then drafted with Dragons of Tarkir. So it was made such that certain cards in the set were better when played with Khans and the set were better when played with cons, and certain cards were better when played with dragons.

And so it's a good example of, I'm playing the same set in Limited, and in one circumstance, I'd want to play certain cards, and in another, I'd want to play different cards. So sometimes, why is that card bad? Well, A, it's conditional, or maybe when it first comes out, it's a bad card. But when the next set after comes out, due to some synergy, that bad card becomes a good card. And that's important in that a lot of times when cards are bad, it's not necessarily they're bad. It might just be situational.

Maybe it's, we're going to be doing something in the next set which which will make this card have more value, but right now it doesn't. So we're having some fun of giving you something that will go up in value. Okay, number five. Diversity of power level rewards the more skilled player. Okay, let me take a quick drink here. Okay, this one, this article first came out, I got a lot of feedback on the article. And this is one of the ones that people had a little harder time with. So let me explain. Okay. So let's say we were able to put everything at the same power level. Now, my caveat there is the mere act of trying to make everything the same power level

still work at differentials. But meaning that even if we try to make everything the same power level, certain cards would thrive in the situation they're in and be better. That is, as I explained for rule number one, you really can't make every card good. But let's imagine, like we do,

like in design, we tend to try to aim every card to be playable. As you'll see in a second, we don't, in real limited, we have a diversity. But let's imagine every card was playable. We made every card playable in limited. That we could do. So what happens is, let's say you're doing a draft. And let's say every card is playable.

So what happens is, let's say you're doing a draft, and let's say every card is playable. And we have a really good drafter, a pro player, and we have somebody that's just okay at drafting. So scenario one is all the power levels the same. Scenario number two is there's a breadth of power levels. Some cards are really good, some cards are really bad, and there's a range from really bad all the way to really good at every level. It's a range. Okay, version one, pro player and mediocre player draft. Okay, now we're going to look at the decks. What is the differential in strength between the two decks? Now, the pro player understands synergy, understands sort of what archetype they're drafting, and so they maximize taking the cards that place into their archetype.

But, even the mediocre player just has all playable cards. They're not forced to play with anything that isn't playable. So, yes, their deck is a little bit weaker than the pro player's deck, because the pro player probably takes advantage of some synergies or some archetypal

knowledge to build. But they're not playing anything in their deck that shouldn't be played because every card is at a playable level. So the differential in their decks is there's some differential, but it's pretty small. Now let's take a normal thing where there's a wide range. Well, the pro player knows what to take. He has a really good deck. The mediocre player doesn't. So there's some cards that the mediocre player thinks might be good that in reality aren't good, but the mediocre player doesn't know that, so they take them. Now let's look at the decks. What's the differential

between the decks? Much wider. In fact, there are some cards in the mediocre player's deck that the pro player would never even put in their deck. That there are bad cards in the deck. And that, what that means is, one of the ways to allow better players to do better is that being able to tell the good cards from the bad card becomes a skill that helps you win. Because it just means that your deck overall is of a higher quality. Now once again, the way magic works, anybody can win any match, you know, any game. There are good cards, and there are probably some bombs

that even the lower level drafter recognizes are really good. You know, they open up a dragon. I'm going to put the dragon in my deck. And you know what? If they get the dragon out, that might win the game. It might be a really good card. But they're also not maximizing, and then they're also playing

some cards that probably shouldn't be in the deck so the idea of having a different variety of power level of cards means that the the better player has an advantage because having bad cards means they know not to take them but lesser players may not. So that's another important part of bad cards is it helps make the game more skillful. And that one of the things we like is, I mean, magic has some variance built into it, as I just explained. You know, you shuffle your deck, you get cards in random order, you have to deal with mana. And even a bad player who draws and is able to cast their best card hey has a chance you know magic has some variance built into it but one of the things we like to do is we like to help the more strategic player the better player

have some advantage um and so one of the reasons we make bad cards, or when I say bad cards, A, Bs and Cs like in Limited, for example, is we want the better player to have the ability. I mean, part of it also is how do you get better at playing Limited, for example, is learning what cards are good and in what decks. decks. And that part of making the game fun, the same thing that makes the game skillful for the better players, makes the game fun for the less players, is along the way you learn. Oh, I think this card is good. I put it in my deck. I play it. It's not good. Oh. So next time I draft, I go, oh, I played that before. I thought it was good. But now that I played it, it's not good. And it allows you to have experience, like, in some ways, having bad cards that you get tricked in playing because you just don't know any better and then play with them and learn they're bad educates you.

One of the things in general you like about a game is you want someone to want to play again and you want their second game to be impacted by their first game. A good game is you play game one, you learn things. Now when you play game two, you apply the things you learned from game one, you learn things. Now when you play game two, you apply the things you learned from game one. And you should be better than you were in game one. Strategy is an

important part of games. You want people to improve and get better. And you want people to notice and see that they get better. And a key part of doing that is having access to these bad cards so that the lesser players can mistakenly play them, learn from them, and then in future games not take those cards, not play those cards.

Okay. Next. People like finding hidden gems. So another big thing about, obviously some of the time we want to make cards that are apparently good. You know, the reason we want to have some apparently good cards is you want to get people excited. You want to get people open to the practice and go, yes, I got whatever it is that you want. And so you definitely want some cards that are obviously, obviously good so that everybody gets to celebrate getting them. They just know that it's a good card.

Planeswalkers, for example, we tend to make good cards. So we want you to be excited when you open a Planeswalker, because Planeswalkers, on average, are good cards. But part of the fun of Magic is discovery. I talk a lot about how Magic is a game of discovery. So part of doing that is you want to make sure that we put in things within the game that allow the players to discover stuff. Well, one of that thing is you want some of your good cards to not be so apparent that

they're good cards. You want to have some cards that might even seem like bad cards or mediocre cards. And when you learn to play them, especially in the environment that they're made for, you start to understand why they're good. especially in the environment that they're made for, you start to understand why they're good. And I talk a lot about one of the draws of Magic, and this is true of any game,

is it is very fun for you for self-discovery, to see growth. It is neat when you play to see that you're learning things and see that you can apply stuff you've done before and get better. That getting better is an important part of a game. That getting better is part of the fun of it. And a lot of the whole point of strategy, the idea of having things that you can learn

and get better at, makes games fun because there's mastery over time. And I haven't got a lot into mastery. Maybe one day I'll do a whole podcast on mastery. But mastery basically means there's a human need to feel good about things. I am good at this. That is a basic human desire

that you want to have some sense of mastery. And a lot of people do a lot of things to create a sense of mastery. So one of the things you want to do in your game is you want to make sure there's the opportunity for mastery in your game. And mostly where that comes about is let people learn things with time. As they play, they'll start to learn things.

Like a real common way that people like to play limited or to play draft is that they pick a deck that they want to get good at. And then as much as they can, they try to draft that deck. And then little by little, they learn the nuance of that deck. Oh, this card, while normally good, is less good in this deck. This card that's just okay normally is particularly good in this deck. And what you start to learn over time is how to draft that particular deck, and you get really good at understanding what

is good about a particular archetype that you like to draft and then you become a specialist you gain mastery in that particular deck so mastery is an important part of any game design you want people to feel good about themselves you want people to have the ability to learn about something and usually the way mastery tends to work in the game is a game usually has a lot of components to it. So it's not that people master all of the game, usually. I mean, some do, like chess and stuff. But normally it's the idea that you master components of the game. I'm going to draft a certain kind of deck.

I got to go to that deck. Or I'm going to build a certain constructed deck and play it again and again and again and tweak and tweak and tweak it and then I become really good at that archetype. I understand that archetype. I understand why, how it plays or what it sideboards in against certain decks.

I learn how to play that deck and then I get to gain mastery. And so bad cards are part of the way to help people gain mastery and that you want people to learn that something is bad and that that is a good learning experience. Okay, number seven. R&D is, oh, sorry, hidden gems. Sorry. The final piece is one of the things you also want to do is make cards that people won't realize right away are

good or are good in certain archetypes. And that way, when they learn on it, when they take cards that other people reject, they feel really smart. You know, that's another form of mastery where everybody says this card is bad, but it's secretly not. It's secretly good. And if you're early on, if you're one of the early ones to understand something where other people don't realize it, it just makes you feel real good. And those hidden gem moments of finding something that

other people haven't found is really profound. Okay. Number seven, R&D is only human. So the last thing is, why are some cards bad? Well, it's not that we meant for them to be bad. It's not that R&D said, we're going to make this a bad card. It's, magic's a really hard game to create. Like, one of the things I explain to people is, let's say tomorrow, I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you the next two years worth of sets. So tomorrow, I'm going to give you, so right now, we're at Core 2019. I'm going to give you Guilds of Ravnica.

I'm going to give you Ravnica Allegiance. I'm going to give you Milk, I'm going to give you Core 2020, I'm going to give you Archery, I'm going to give you Baseball, I'm going to give you Cricket, I'm going to give you Core 2021. I'm going to give you eight sets. And then you have a week to look at them, and the next week I need to start building decks with it. And then every day I'm going to send an email to you explaining which cards have been changed. And I want you to make the

best deck. Now, that's really hard. You know what I'm saying? You have all these cards that you're seeing for the first time. You know, none of the cards overlap with current standard. So you're like, okay, I can't even lean on what current standard is doing. None of the cards in current standard

are going to be in that environment. How do I know what to do? This is what R&D does every day. We play the future. And we try to play stuff that isn't out yet. And it's hard. You know, one of the things that sometimes, you know, when people say

how could you miss this and that? And I'm like, look, when you all play it, there's millions of you with the Internet to connect you to share information. When we play something, there's, you know, double digits, but low double digits of people playing. people playing. And so, you know, when you have, what, 10,000 times as many people as we do, yeah, or 10,000, 100,000, 100,000. When you have 100,000 more times people than we do, you might be faster at it than we are. You know, it is difficult designing magic sets. I mean, we do our best and we've learned a lot. I don't think we're particularly bad at it, but I mean, it's hard. We're occasionally going to make a card that we think is either safe and isn't, or is not safe and is. Oh, I guess we think it's not safe. We wouldn't make it, but we're going to make cards that are better than worse

than we thought they were. So for example, something that happens from time to time is we have a promo card that seems weak. And they're like, how does this ever be a promo card? I'm like, well, we have to choose our promo card months and months ahead of time. And so we are using data of the Future Future League from when we played that card. But the Future Future League doesn't know what actually got played. They know what we think would get played. And all it takes is for us to miss one card and then all of a sudden our future information is a little bit off. I mean that's the ongoing problem is we're constantly

trying to predict what's going to go on and we'll be off on cards because it's hard to predict things when you have limited information and you know we're smart and we do the best we can and we catch most things, but things are going to slip through the cracks, you know. For example, we make a card that we write off as being not that important, so we don't playtest it a lot. And all of a sudden, it turns out to be a really important card. And then our playtesting didn't take that card into account because we didn't really think, you know, like one thing about making as many cards as we do is we don't playtest every single card. We playtest the cards we think will be the strong cards.

And as a general rule of thumb, our ability to recognize your strong cards is pretty good. Is it perfect? No. So this is an ongoing game where we miss some component of something. And that means our gauge of the future environment is a little bit off so sometimes they're bad cards because you know we like the promo cards is we pick something months ahead of time and at the time we pick it you know what it is being played but the real world's taking things into account that we didn't take into account maybe there's an archetype that's a little bit stronger maybe there's a sidebar card that we didn't take into account. Maybe there's an archetype that's a little bit stronger. Maybe there's a sidebar card that we didn't think about.

Maybe there's some synergy that we just didn't recognize. There's so many things where things can go just a little bit off. And I'm not talking majorly off. I mean just a little tiny bit off. It could just be this deck has this tweak to it, and with this tweak, all of a sudden it does better

against this other deck than it normally does and then ooh everything changes you know if you can change the decks win percentage from 49 to 51 Wow that might just be 2% but that could be all the difference in the metagame and making the metagame matter because the dominant deck will scare off things that are less dominant than it and it'll just shift the environment so one of the reasons there are bad cards is, look, what we do is really, really hard, and sometimes we miss things. Sometimes we assume something will be more powerful than it is, or miss the fact that something has some synergy, or miss that there's a combo with something.

And so that's an ongoing thing we have to deal with, is understanding that not everything, you know, sometimes there are bad cards because we missed something. Sometimes it's bad cards because we thought it wasn't that bad a card and it turned out to be slightly worse than it was. In case of point with the occasional promo that like, why did they pick that? Who plays that card? Usually if we picked it, we were playing it. But the environment could have changed. The card could have changed. You know, we might have been playing something

and thought it was really good and then realized it was a little too good and we nerfed something. Or we nerfed something that is part of what makes it good. Not that that card was nerfed, but it really relies on this other card that when it got nerfed, it took this along with it. So anyway, it's hard to tell

and so yeah the final thing basically is why they're bad cards sometimes they're just bad cards we didn't mean for them to be bad cards we thought they'd be better cards but the reality is when the dust settles they're not that good of cards okay so that my friends But the reality is, when the dust settles, they're not going to go to cards.

Okay, so that, my friends, is the seven reasons we make bad cards. And the reason I think this is so important, the reason I thought the original article was so important, is a lot of times in games, there's a sense of unfairness, that people worry about fairness. And the idea, for example, is I have one, now, Magic, you gotta pick your own deck, so Magic is a little bit more, I choose if I want things or not want things, right? But in most games, I don't have as much control over the components. That I keep playing a card game, you know,

like take Uno, for example. Red 7 is not as powerful a card as Draw 4. Draw 4 is a really, really powerful card. But, because people don't control when they get Draw 4, that means that sometimes you get Draw 7, you know, Red 7, sometimes you get Draw 4. And that is one of the things

that adds some variance to the game and allows exciting comebacks and allows dramatic turnovers and just makes the game more fun. But why? As I said, why is that there? Because it's serving the game. That

a game doesn't necessarily want everything to be all the same. That it is the variance and the differences that can everything to be all the same. That it is the variance and the differences that can make a lot of the excitement. And like I said, Magic's a little bit different because you build your own deck, and that, obviously, if we make something really bad, odds are you won't put it on your deck.

But also, that's just constructed. I mean, for example, let's take the pauper format. Pauper is a format that says you can only play common. Well, there are things played in pauper, not because they're particularly strong cards overall, but they're strong for pauper. Like, well, at common, if you want to do, you know, if you want to do this effect

and you only have common cards to choose from, well, guess what? This card that you would never play in standard to millionaires is actually really good in pauper. Likewise, there are legendary creatures that are just really good as commanders that might never see play in other formats, but to do the things you want to do in Commander,

hey, it's powerful because it's legendary and it does something that you want to do. Let's say you want to play a particular strategy and you need a good legend for it. There might be a legend that that legend in a vacuum is not that good, but the fact that it really enables this strategy, and it's the best legend to enable this strategy, might make it good. And so the, one of the things in general when you're making games is keep in mind that you have a lot of goals of what you're trying to do. And that the audience sometimes has this false sense of, like,

somehow there's this inherent need for fairness in the game. I mean, you do want players to have some chance to win, but this idea that all the components have to be of equal value just isn't true. That's not how most games work, and that's not what makes it fun. And magic is no different, You know what I'm saying? Like, for example, we play, in early design, we tend to make the cards of equal level only because we want to play them all, because we want to try them out. And then, as we develop the set, as we, you know, do set design and play design, the set, as we do set design and play design, we

purposely stratify the cards. Partly to create balance, partly to help limited, partly to do the slopes I talked about, to help people learn. But the game is more fun when there's a differential. Having the differential, having the variance

actually makes the game more fun. So that's actually, I realized number eight that I didn't list in the first time, but now that I'm looking at it, is sort of the final thing that wasn't in the article is you want some differential in your game. You want to have moments.

Like one of the things, for example, that makes Limited a lot of fun is it is fun. Like the fact that every card in your deck isn't a bomb the fact that some of your cards just you know there are cards that you drafted your deck around and there are cards that barely made it in and that really creates a very dramatic like one of the funnest parts about magic is drawing a card because i need something and it could be as little as a land that I don't need, or a situational card that does me no good right now, or it could be the winning card, or it could be the direct answer

I need. So every time I draw, there's a variance that I don't know about, and that variance is exciting. If I, for example, automatically knew every time what I was going to draw, that would have way less suspense. That would just be less fun. And so that differential adds in fun, makes it fun. But anyway, so why are there bad cards? Number one, all the cards can't be good. Number two, different cards appeal to different players. Remember, not every card is for you.

Number three, diversity of card power is key to discovery. Number four, power levels are relative. Number five, diversity of power rewards a more skilled player. Number six, people like finding hidden gems. Number seven, R&D is only human. And number eight, it adds fun to the game.

So, for all those reasons, you know, a lot of times it's funny when people ask questions. It's really like, why do you do that? I don't understand. And when you break it down, what you find is, and this is what I hope stuff like my podcast and my columns do, is make you realize that sometimes things that you don't think about, that don't seem all that important, or sometimes seem wrong, like why would you do that, actually serve a very valuable

important purpose. Having a differential in the game, having variety in the game, helps the game in many, many different ways. And maybe you've never thought about that, but I'm hoping after sitting with me and listening for the full podcast, you have a little more appreciation

for why bad cards and or bad elements of games have to exist. But anyway, I'm now at work. I think we had a long car break. We did. We had extra traffic today, so you guys got an extra long podcast. But anyway, 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 next time.