Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #639: Top 10 Worst Mechanics

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

I realized I hadn't done a Top 10 list in a while, so I decided to talk about bad mechanics.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I realize I've not done a top ten list in a while. So today is top ten worst mechanics. So a few caveats before I get into my list. First off, this is based not on power level, not on player perception. This is just, as a designer, just my take on what I think

the 10 worst mechanics are. And, look, if I put this list together next week, it'd be slightly different. This is a list I made today, so I do think there's some opinions might change with time, but this was the mood I was in when I made this list.

And like I said, it's not about whether something's overpowered, it's not about whether something is liked or disliked by the public necessarily, although that can factor in. It's more, just as a designer, as the head designer of magic, just mechanics that I think were fundamentally flawed in some way. So I'm going to talk about

what the mechanics are, how they worked, and why I think they are a bad mechanic. So we'll start with number 10, which is probably one of the more controversial ones on my list. Haunt from Guildpact. So here's how Haunt worked. On a creature, all Haunt creatures had an enter the battlefield effect. And then when they died, you exiled them, haunting a creature on the board. And then when that creature died, the effect would go off again.

The enter the battlefield effect of the creature would go off again. Also, there were spells with haunt. The way a spell with haunt works is, when you cast the spell, then you exile it. And then when the creature dies, it's haunted, the spell goes off. Those two things are connected. I mean, if you sort of stand back a little bit and squint, it's haunted, the spell goes off. Those two things are connected. I mean, if you sort of stand back a little bit and squint, it's like, okay, you understand the connection, but the fact that the mechanic just works differently on creatures

than it did on spells, or the fact that on creatures, it's an enter-the-battlefield effect, that when the haunted creature, it's a death trigger. There's a lot trigger, there's a lot of factors there. Okay, so there's a term we use in R&D known as sticky. And what sticky means

is how easy is this to remember? And ideally what you want is you want your things to be pretty sticky that people just remember how they work, that it just sticks to their brain. And haunt is one of the unststickiest mechanics we've ever made. Meaning that if I say to somebody, hey, how does haunt work? You got to stop, okay, hold on, okay.

Like every time I think about haunt, when I'm describing how haunt works, I have to stop and go, okay, let me remember again how haunt works. It is, there's a whole bunch of things. Usually if something's unsticky, what that says is it is not working the way you think it should work. That there's something about it that, you know, between the fact that it works differently and, you know, it's an end to the battlefield effect, becomes a death trigger. There's a bunch of little factors there that just, ah, don't quite let your brain wrap around it. Now, here's the sadness of Haunt to me. I think the flavor is

great. A mechanic called Haunt that haunts a creature and affects them in some way is awesome. I don't think the execution we used on Haunt was particularly good. I have seen other people do takes on Haunt, and I do think if you...

I would love to have Haunt to do all over again with the word haunt not having been used us being able to take that flavor and do it, but the haunt mechanic has a lot of baggage, I don't know I'm, I feel like if we had to start from scratch we could make a really cool haunt card

but I'm not quite sure it works in a way that haunt currently works, meaning I don't think we can just take haunt and get exactly what we need. That requires tweaking a little bit, and then you have to change the name, and then you lose the name Haunt, which is a lot of the coolness, I think, of it. So, anyway, Haunt comes in at number 10 because it was a mechanic that had a lot of promise that really just did not live up to that promise, and I say it's

controversial because it's everybody wants it to work it's the kind of mechanic that like is not far away from being a cool mechanic but you know that that's in some ways why it's on my list it's like it's just far enough away uh that it can't realize its goal of being what it wants to be. And so it's sort of like, it's this, you can see it and you can taste it and it's not that far away from what it needs to be, but it's far enough that it can't be what it wants to be. And that, my friends, is sad. So, haunt number 10 on my list. The one thing I will point out as I go through the list is

some of these mechanics I worked on and some I did not. Like Haunt was in the set I was not on the design team for. I was the head designer at the time, so I oversaw the set. But I did not, I wasn't actively on the design team for the set. And Haunt, we had a lot of high hopes for Haunt. I guess in some level. It is a mechanic that had a very good it was trying to do something pretty cool

the flavor was dead set, I mean they worked with Orzhov it really was a cool thing and so, anyway in some ways it's on my list because it had such potential and didn't live up to its potential in a lot of ways that's something that I...

As someone who designs lots and lots of magic mechanics, in some ways, the ones that sadden me the most are the ones that, like, could have been something but weren't. And so Haunt falls in that category. Okay, number nine. Radiance from Ravnica, original Ravnica. So here's how Radiance works. I think they're all spells.

Maybe a build or two. When you have a Radiance spell, spell with Radiance, you target a creature, and then all creatures that share a color with that creature are then targeted by the spell. So for example, let's say I'm playing Boros. This is the Boros mechanic. And I have a red creature, a white creature, and a red-white creature on the battlefield.

And my opponent, let's say, is playing Selesnya. So they have white-green. Okay, I can hit my red creature, my mono-red creature, and then I will affect all my red creatures. So I'll affect my red creature and my red-white creature. I could hit my white creature, and then I would hit my white creature, my red-white creature, and all my opponent's white creatures.

Or I could hit my red-white creature, which would hit all of my creatures, my red, my red-white, and my white creature, and all my opponent's white creatures. So the idea of... So Radiance had a couple issues. First and foremost, it wasn't really a great Boros mechanic. I mean, I understand that Boros had an army, and so like it, not that it had nothing to do with Boros,

but it doesn't really, it doesn't do the best job of communicating Boros, or really having a flavor of Boros. You know, like, Boros now, if you look at the other mechanics we put in Boros, they're more combat-oriented. They're more about, they say, hey, I want to attack with lots of creatures. Radiance is real subtle about sort of communicating that.

Okay, for starters, not the greatest Boros mechanic. The biggest problem I have with Radiance is that it is really hard to process. So I just explained a situation where I had three creatures, and just trying to track what's going on on the board, or what would happen, or what could happen, is really hard. You know, one of the things that I watch time and time again with people playing Radiance is that they'll play Radiance and then go, Oh, oh, wait, wait.

Like, they'll just misplay it all the time. It's one of those mechanics where people go, okay, I think I know what's going to happen. And then, like, oh, wait, not what I thought. For starters, it hits the opponent's creatures. I mean, that's just kind of where magic was at the time. But that, I think, is a mistake. If it just hit your creatures, that would just kind of where magic was at the time, but that, I think, is a mistake. If it just hit your creatures, that'd be a little cleaner.

But the fact that your opponent's creatures can get hit also makes the math and the complexity even higher. And then, I mean, the funny thing is when we first made Radiance, Radiance originally, when first turned in, cared about color, creature type, and converted mana cost.

So you want brain melty. The current version is a little melty, brain melty, but the original version was, I mean, you couldn't even understand what was happening. And so, I mean, that's my biggest take on Radiance, is I think that it's one of the things you look for in a mechanic, is you want people to be able to plan with it, think about it. Like, heaven forbid my opponent reads, let's say you

read your opponent as having a Brady's card in their hand. And then you want to understand what's happening. Like, okay, let's assume he has that card. Now let me look at all the possibilities of what could happen on the

board. It is just really hard. And even for you, the person playing where you know you have the card in your hand, just like, okay, what exactly could I do? I can do this or that. And in a multicolor set, one of the things about multicolor cards is they sort of split the prism,

if you will. They hit a red-white creature. It affects all red and all white creatures. Anyway. It's not that there isn't some coolness about Radiance. A lot of these mechanics, by the way, that are on my list is, it's not that a lot of them, at their core, don't have something interesting going on. I think Radiance is trying

to do something fun, and I like the idea of creating extra targets and things. But in execution, the way the mechanic played out, it's just super, super hard to track. And in a way that's not particularly fun, most of the time with Radiance, it's not like,

oh, what's going to happen? Let's see, like, those cards, like, red makes a lot of wacky red rares. Like, who knows what's going to happen? Let's find out. But that's not really, Radiius isn't really meant to be that. It's meant to be something where you understand what's going on, except you often don't.

Anyway, so Radius, in my mind, was playing around interesting space. It shouldn't have been the guild mechanic, and having seen it and played with it, it ended up not playing particularly well, and not kind of doing what it wanted to do. So there were moments, I'm not saying Radiance, like

any mechanic I see today, you might have had a wonderful one. I've had moments with Radiance where I did something really awesome. You know, it's not that Radiance doesn't have potential to be a cool mechanic, but it's just it just leads to too much complication in a way that isn't particularly fun.

Okay, number eight. Ripple. This is from ColdSnap. Okay, so Ripple was a mechanic. Ripple had a number. And then when you cast Ripple, you looked at the top N cards of your library. So Ripple 4 would be, when you cast it, look at the top four cards of your library.

And if there are any other cards with Ripple in it, they go off. You cast them for free. And note that any card that has Ripple on it has Ripple, meaning it would then again Ripple in it, they go off. You cast them for free. And note that any card that has Ripple on it has Ripple, meaning it would then again Ripple. So the Ripple came about

because we decided that we were going to do a small set in the summer in between Ravnica and Time Spiral. And so we did this thing where it's a lost set from the Ice Age block.

Ice Age only had two sets and it's a lost third set. And we decided that we were going to try to make a set where you would draft it by itself, a small set that you would draft by itself. So one of the ideas we played around with was, well, how do you make a small set by itself? And, oh, what if we had a lot of draft me's, meaning cards that had a mechanic or something that said, hey, you want to have a bunch of these in your deck. And so Ripple was an attempt to do that. The problem was, the way Ripple ended up playing out is, any one Ripple card by itself, by the nature of what Ripple could do, had to be pretty weak. So people would pass Ripple cards, because unless you had a bunch of Ripple cards, it wasn't particularly good. Meaning one person could collect them, and then when you had enough Ripple cards, it wasn't particularly good. Meaning one person could collect them and then when you had enough Ripple cards, it was

just crazy. So it was really a feast or famine mechanic where it just you would never play it or it dominated games. That's not great. It also caused a lot of repetition of play, which is so I cast a Ripple card.

Okay, I drafted, you know, nine Ripple cards of the same Ripple card. Okay, I've drafted, you know, nine ripple cards of the same ripple card. Okay, well, I give them an opening hand, and then I have enough in my deck that probably once I go off, I cast all of them, or most of them, you know what I'm saying? And so it's like,

it's sort of like, if you did it, then you would do the thing. But every game would be that thing. That's what would happen. You know, that every game was kind of like, okay, I drafted enough Ripple things that gets in my deck, and odds are I draw it, because I have

so many in my deck, and then every game plays out the same, because I'm going to do the crazy Ripple spell that's going to always play out the same. You know, I mean, there's a little bit of variance of, do I hit six of them or seven of them, whatever, but I'm going to hit a bunch of them and then often win the game, and so and if I don't hit my ripple,

if my ripple somehow fails me, if I look at the top four cards and even though my deck is full of them, I just don't happen to hit one, then wah, wah, wah. You know, it's... It just didn't end up being... Well, I like, once again, I like the goal of what I was trying to do.

I appreciate the... I do appreciate the idea of us trying something different, and we want to affect the draft, and, I mean, we got there, like, most of these bad mechanics, we got to a place, we got there with the best of intentions. We were honestly trying to do something

that we thought would be fun, and dynamic, and different, um, but Ripple's a good example of, okay, we did what we set out to do. Now, is that fun? Is that something you want to do? And the problem with Ripple is basically, it's something you do during draft. There's not a lot of decisions. It's not like, oh, there's some really interesting decisions. It's like, either I choose to do it or I don't. If I do it, I take every

single one I see. If I don't, I take every single one I see. If I don't, I don't draft the card at all. And so, okay, it's a drafting thing. The draft is kind of on or off. And then in gameplay, it's repetitive gameplay. It's not particularly, you know, compelling gameplay. So it's just one of those mechanics that we're trying to do something, but just in the way it plays out,

it does not lead to fun games. Not that you can't win with Ripple. Drafting Ripple could win you the game, and if your goal was, I want to win the game, and I don't care how fun it is, okay. But that's the people who make the game. We want you to, like,

one of the things that I always said, this is my 20 lessons, is you want the fun way to be the way to win. And I just don't know how fun Ripple is. I mean, Ripple, I will say this. Ripple is one of those mechanics, the first time you do it, you feel great. Okay, I drafted it, and I drafted them all, and it goes off.

Oh, it went off! The first time you do it, it is awesome. Even the first time it's done to you, it's kind of awesome to see. But, the fourth time, the eighth time, the sixteenth time, it gets tiring. So, it just, you know, in the end, it's

not a mechanic that really sort of lives, like, you want a mechanic to be something that the hundredth time you play it, it can be fun. And this is just like, oh, okay, whatever, you got your ripple. You know, it's, I mean, I played games with ColdSnap where, like, okay, okay, yeah, okay, you beat me. your Ripple. You know, it's... I mean, I've played games with Cold Snap where, like, okay, okay, yeah, okay,

you beat me. You drafted Ripple, you know, and it's not, I don't know, not lots of fun. Okay, number seven, the Processors from Battle for Zendikar. Okay, so the Processors were cards that usually they were on creatures

that entered the battlefield, but they could trigger it other times, I think. But basically it said, okay, if you can take some number of cards that your opponent has in exile and put them into their graveyard, it triggers an effect. And this came about because we were trying to make the Eldrazi these alien, weird creatures that just function unlike anything else. Once again, I think we got to an unfun mechanic in...

This mechanic... It's not that this mechanic is unfun, I guess. That's a little unfair to this mechanic. My biggest strike against it is I think it is messing around in space that it shouldn't mess around in. I think that the exile zone should not just become another graveyard. I really I don't mind things, I don't mind exiles being used as a resting zone. Like, I don't mind cards going, oh, I need to

remove you for a while, I'll put you in the exile zone and then later get you back. That's fine. If the card that puts you there gets you back, I have no problem with it. But once something gets exiled, once something gets sent away, the whole point of it is it's supposed to be gone. You know what I'm saying? If we want you to bring it back, we just destroy it. We put it in the graveyard.

The fact that we're exiling it means we don't want you to get it back. And it's a tool for design to try to control things. To make sure that, oh, well this would be problematic if you had it again. We don't want you to have access to it. So the idea of bringing things back, we don't want you bringing things back. We should not be doing that.

So first strike against processors. Second strike against it is, so it's what we call an A-B mechanic, which means it's a mechanic that cares about something, but in itself doesn't generate the thing it cares about. Okay, processors care about cards in exile. Well, it doesn't make cards go in exile. So, A, it required us to have a whole other mechanic to get cards in exile and to just up the number of exile effects and stuff like that.

And it just was a lot of rigmarole to get to something that I just, I don't think was worth it. In the end, I just don't think processors, like, I think, like, processors were confusing and complex and required a lot of work. And in the end,

I just don't think the payoff was quite there. I don't think it was quite worth the energy put you through. And then on top of that is doing something I don't think we should do. Now, given I worked on this set, this was one of my sets, I signed off on this. I mean, it changed a little. Anyway, I signed off on this. It is going to your opponent's graveyard rather than to your hand or something

so it's, you don't control getting things back exactly, but I still it's just dangerous territory and I'd rather stay away from it, so processors, number seven number six, Annihilator from Rise of the Eldrazi okay, so Annihilator was, went on

Eldrazi, he's a big Eldrazi and it said, when I attack Annihilator had on Eldrazi, the big Eldrazi, and it said, when I attack, Annihilator had a number, when I attack, my defending player, the player you're attacking, has to sacrifice N permanents. So if I have Annihilator 1, when I attack, they have to sacrifice a permanent. If I have Annihilator 4, they have to sacrifice 4 permanents. So my problem with Annihilator is that basically what Annihilator four, they're sacrificed four permanents. So my problem with Annihilator is that basically what Annihilator is, 90 plus percent of the time, is I'm going to win,

but I'm going to win slowly, and as I win, I'm going to more and more remove your ability to stop me. So sort of Annihilator is like, okay, I attack, I make you sacrifice something. Maybe you have a creature you can sacrifice, maybe you've sacrificed your land. But at some point, as I keep attacking, you know, also I have a giant creature attacking, so you're taking damage or chump blocking or something, and I'm just

eradicating all your resources. And the problem is, that because I'm eradicating your resources, you don't have the means to come back. It's really hard. At one point, we did a little bit of the math on it, and yes, over 90% of the time, attacking with even Annihilator 1, even once, means I'm going to win the vast majority of the time. So basically what we did is we made a mechanic that said,

I'm going to win, but slowly, in a way that's not clear that I've won, so you will struggle to try to not lose, although be at a huge disadvantage to do that, and then just slowly watch the game going. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it'd be one thing if I said, okay, when I attack, you win the game. Now, that's not fun either, but at least the game ends.

But it's kind of like, if I attack, I'm mostly going to win the game. You know, I'm going to win the game a high, high percentage of the time, but I'm going to do it in a slow, grinding, soul-crushing kind of way. That's just not fun. Now, once again, I think Annihilator is splashy. I think it definitely makes the Eldrazi in Rise of Eldrazi seem exciting, and the flavor is dead on. These are creatures eating Zendikar. And I think the reason we ended up here

was the flavor was just such dead on. We're like, oh, the flavor's so good. But the lesson of Annihilator is create flavor and it does not, should not trump good gameplay. And if it's got something that's super flavorful, if it's not fun, if it doesn't lead to gameplay that's encouraging

that you want to do, well then you're not supposed to do it. That's why when Eldrazi came back, we didn't do Annihilator again. It just isn't a fun mechanic. And once again, I know there's people who are fans of it, and I'm not, once again, when I say 90%, 10% of the time, sure,

you get your own overdrafts. I mean, there are games in which you don't lose. And maybe because you lose so much of the time, some of the things you remember are the time, oh, the one time you didn't lose, maybe you remember that, that it was, you know, it was a very memorable moment. But it is not, I'm going to win the game mostly, and there's not much you can do about it, but it's going to be slow and grindy. Not an ideal mechanic. Okay, next.

Epic from Saviors of Kamigawa. Okay, so Epic went on sorceries. It was actually one cycle of cards, one cycle of rare cards. And what happened is when you cast the sorcery, actually, is it an enchantment or is it a sorcery? I think it's a sorcery. It was inspired by legendary sorceries, I think it's a sorcery. It was inspired

by legendary sorceries, even though it wasn't actually legendary. I think it was a sorcery. I think the way it works is, you cast the card, it gets exiled, and then every turn, it gets cast again, but you're not allowed to cast any spells anymore. And once again, this is another example of something that

is super splashy. Oh my goodness. I play this and I get, and then every turn it plays for the rest of the game. Oh, but I can't play spells. That's, that is, it definitely makes you sit up and go, what? That doesn't mean it's fun though. We talk a lot about repetition of gameplay. Like one of the things that we try to avoid in R&D is, hey, if I play a deck, I want the deck to play differently. I don't want, like, one of the magic strengths is that two people can play the same deck against each other many, many times, and the game plays out just many different ways. But anytime we do a mechanic that says, you know what, once I do this, just the game's

going to play out exactly the same every time, not great. The other problem with Epic, there was not a lot of design space. It's funny. I'm not against keywording a really, really sexy cycle, there was not a lot of design space. It's funny. I'm not against keywording a really, really sexy cycle, and this was a sexy cycle. But, like, most keywords, for example, barring a few rare examples, tend to have, you know, 10 to 12 cards at least in them. And, like, I don't know how many more Epic cards we can make. They were definitely tricky.

And, in fact, the white one I think is the best one because the white one you go through your library and you get an enchantment, I believe. And that one, at least, there's decisions to be made. Different things can happen. Like, once I cast it, it is not as if every game necessarily... Well, the biggest problem is probably there's an enchantment you want so every time you go and get the same enchantment first,

there's that problem. But at least it had some potential for different things happening. Most of the other ones were like, I'm going to do this exact thing every turn. That's all I'm going to do now. It's all I'm going to do. So it is, by definition, repetitive. I applaud Epic for its grandiosity. I applaud it for trying to do something big. And like I said, in most of these cases, we were trying to do something interesting.

It's not that I disliked our attempt, but I look back at Epic and I'm like, uh, um, I don't know. It is, it is not a mechanic that said, oh, that's something I want to do all the time. You know, it's another one of those mechanics that like the very first time I do it, it's exciting. And then the second time it's just less. And each time you do it, it's exciting. And then the second time, it's just less. And each time you do it, it's less. To the point where you're like, eh. You know, you quickly run out of steam on it. And that's a sign of just not a very fun mechanic. Okay, number four.

The rebel slash mercenary mechanic of Mercadian Masks. So the way it worked was rebels had creature where you could go into your library and get a creature that costs one more mana, and Mercenaries let you get one less mana. Now, Rebels were the broken mechanic. Surprisingly,

going to get the bigger thing and ramping up, playing a one drop and getting a two drop and getting a three drop is better than getting a five drop eventually and then getting a four drop and then getting a three drop is better than getting a five drop eventually, and then getting a four drop, and then getting a three drop. But the biggest strike against these is something I just talked about with Epic is, look, it's just repetition of gameplay. What are you going to do?

I'm going to get my one drop. What's it going to do? Get my two drop. What's it going to do? Get my three drop. What's it going to do? Get my four drop. There's such sort of...

I mean, one of the things we did was we definitely had some that had some utility to it to try to give you some choices of what you go get but the way it tended to play out is you mostly just ramped up pretty quickly because the powerful cards like there was a three drop that was really really powerful you just got to

you know you just sort of ramped up to where you needed to ramp up to and it was one of those games that took a while, required shuffling. Like, every time you use it, you have to shuffle your deck. The games took forever. They played off the same. The mirror matches were painful to watch. It just wasn't fun.

You know what I'm saying? I'm giving a lot of reasons why it wasn't particularly fun, but it just wasn't fun. You know what I'm saying? I'm giving a lot of reasons why it wasn't particularly fun, but it just wasn't a fun mechanic. You know, it just... Like, I understand, like, I... It's one of those things in the beginning I get and, like, I see where it came from.

But the actual execution... I mean, people played it because it was powerful. People did play it. The Rebel deck was very strong. But I don't think people played it because it was fun. I think they played it because it was powerful. People did play it. The Rebel deck was very strong. But I don't think people played it because it was fun. I think that they played it because it won. In some ways, an unfun deck that you feel obligated to play, ugh, that's the worst. It's the worst because then you have all these games that you feel,

like the deck wins, so you feel compelled to play it, but then the playing experience just isn't particularly fun. And, you know, in some level, the worst thing you can do in an unfun mechanic is make it powerful, because then you have to play it. And so this was like a very powerful, not-so-fun mechanic, and that is a dangerous, not-so-fun combination. Okay, number three, the gotcha mechanic from Unhinged. So I worked on a bunch of these mechanics. This is the one of the mechanics that I made. This is the lowest down mechanic that I made, number three. And it tears me. I don't get to make a lot

of unsets. Oh, so the way gotcha works is it went on anything. And if it's in your graveyard, there's a condition that if your opponent did the thing, you could say gotcha and get it back. Maybe if they said a certain word, maybe if they took a certain action, maybe if they laughed, if they laughed. So this is the poster child of make winning the thing that's fun. So, hey, if you say things, I could get back cards. Oh, well, how do I stop from doing that? I guess I just stop talking.

Oh, if I do actions, I better stop moving. Oh, if I laugh, I better stop trying to enjoy myself. Like, holy moly. It's a mechanic that basically says, oh, you want to win? Don't stop having fun. Literally like, oh, clam up and stop kidding with your fans. Sit still and don't laugh. And, like, it's almost like I made a mechanic to suck the fun out of Unhinged. And I don't get to make that many unsets. And so that, that hurts me. It pains, it pains me.

And even, by the way, so when we were playing in playtesting, our attitude at the time was, we're having fun. We're not going to stop talking. We're just going to try hard not to say it. So even when you play kind of the funner way, where you're not, like, shutting down, it is also kind of a brutal mechanic. Like, talking about repetition of play,

like, there's a card called Number Cruncher, where you boomerang a creature, you unsummon a creature, and you have to get them to say a number to get it back. It is not that, if you can get your opponent to talk, it is not hard to get them to say numbers. Like, for example, just saying, what life total are you at? You can get that card back three or

four times. Because people are so ingrained to answer that question without thinking about it, they just will. Little tip if you're a player. But that doesn't make it fun. So even if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, then just you're casting the same spells many, many times. And that can be quite frustrating.

It's a mechanic that sucks the fun out of the environment it's in. And even when you're playing it somewhat honestly, it's not a particularly fun mechanic. It actually is a little bit overpowered. Like, if you are good at getting your opponent to do the thing they're not supposed to do, and I was when I played, it is a crazy powerful mechanic. Like, too powerful.

Okay, that is gotcha. Number two, Rhystic from Prophecy. So the way Rhystic worked was they were spells and effects that said, oh, if your opponent pays a certain amount of mana I think most of the time it was three it stops basically it's spells and activated abilities that are cheaper than normal

but the opponent has the option of spending mana to stop you so there are a lot of things in Magic that we know the players aren't real fond of and the biggest things tend to be things that shut down my opponents so they can't do things.

Land destruction, card denial, counter spells. And not that we don't have some of them in the game, but we have to monitor them to be careful because it's just not fun. Like, what you want to do is say, I play my cards, you play your cards, and they answer each other, but we've got to play our cards.

Saying, oh, you don't even get to play your cards, not that much fun. So, you know, we've been very careful, for example, with the counter spells. We want a little bit of counter spelling, but we don't want, you know, once upon a time, there were stuff like the Drago deck for, like, I have 23 counter spells. I'm going to counter everything you do, you know. And you just do nothing because I counter it. That's not particularly fun. So now we make counter spells a little more utility.

I have a little bit of means to counter the right spell, but I'm not counting everything. So the Rhystic mechanic basically said, oh, what if I stapled a counter spell onto every card? But I'll make it a colorless counter spell just to make sure my opponent can cast it. That's really what Rhystic is. It's like a built-in counter spell.

It's like, oh, well, instead of me having to worry my opponent's playing things to stop me from doing what I want to do, it's built into my own mechanics. And, I mean, so William Jock is the creator of this mechanic. And I know where William was going. William is a very, very spiky player. He really much, like, there is players

that really get a lot of enjoyment out of, I know my opponent has a counterspell and I'm playing around the counterspell and I have to sort of be careful how I use my mana and a little of that is fun and there's definitely players who are like that's what they love about magic. It is not what the majority of players love about magic. And Rhystic sort of said, let's take this

nuanced thing that the spikiest spike players enjoy and make everybody have to care about it. And then the set also had stuff like abilities that, you know, tapped out your mana. It's like, oh, but if I tap out my mana, I can't do Rhystic. And anyway, it is a painful

mechanic. It is not... And it's a good example how, when designing sets, you have to be able to figure out if the thing you like about magic is something the majority like about magic. Not that you can't make individual cards. You can. But you've got to be able to figure out if the thing you like about magic is something the majority like about magic. Not that you can't make individual cards, you can, but you've got to be careful of making whole mechanics that are a little bit too narrow

in their focus. If they don't make a mechanic that's like, oh, well these small portion of players will really enjoy this and nobody else will enjoy it. In fact, it'll be not fun for the majority of the audience. You've got to be very careful of mechanics like that. And Rista clearly falls in that space. It is definitely something that, like,

it is super mental and super game-tracky and it's just very operational, and that's not how most people play Magic. So while a little of that is fun, I think having it on mechanic is just a bit much. So, while a little of that is fun, I think having it on Mechanic is just a bit much. Okay. The final mechanic. Bands with Others

from Legends. Okay. Let me first start explaining Banding. No, this isn't Banding. But it connects to Banding. Banding is an ability. It works differently on attack and defense, of course. Yeah, the story I always tell, the real quick version is,

I had judged the 1995, not had judged, I was a judge, I judged. I judged the 1995 World Championship. And we're talking the best of the best players. And we, during the limited portion,

we had a big limited portion, the number one question I got, I mean, by far, but like all the other questions combined than some, was about banding. And I'm like, if the best players in the world don't understand banding, it's not a good sign. Anyway, the way banding works is if I have a creature with banding or on attack,

I can have a group of creatures, as long as all but one of them have banding that can band together on attack. And what that means is, when damage gets assigned, I, the controller of the creatures, get to choose where the damage goes. So, for example, I attack with a 1-1 and a 3-3.

Let's say my 1-1 is banding. You block with a 4-4. Normally, well, normally you could only block one or the other. You could block the 1-1 or the 3-3. Probably you'd block the 3-3 or the 1-1 through. With banding, if you block one, you block both of them because they're considered one creature for purposes of blocking.

If you block one of them, you block all of them. And then what happens is, okay, well, I do my damage to your creature, a 1-1 and 3-3, I do four damage, so your creature dies, and you do four damage to me. But I choose, because of banding, I'll put it all in the 1-1. So now what happens is, we get in a fight, we kill your creature, and you just kill the 1-1. That's kind of banding. On defense,

banding works the same, except your band of creatures need only have one bander in them, so you can block with four creatures, and as long as one of them is banding, your whole team has banding. And same thing, you get assigned defensive blocks. There's a lot of them is banding, your whole team has banding. And same thing, you get to sign defensive blocks.

There's a lot of nuance on banding, a lot of weird interactions with banding. Like, if you say to yourself, oh, I understand banding, start putting in Death Touch, or Trample, or just other kind of First Strike, and see if you understand that the interaction starts to get complicated pretty quick. Anyway,

Bands with Others isn't even banding. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Bands with others says, okay, so let's say I have bands with wolves. That means, okay, now first you go, oh, I get it. I can band, but only with wolves. Nope, that's not what it is. I can band only with other creatures that also have bands with wolf. So it means that I can band with...

Like, it's banding that only works with creatures that have the same kind of bands with others. And so what that means is it's a banding, and banding's already complicated, that most of the time doesn't even work. Most of the time, I have to have two creatures with this mechanic for it even to work together. And the only time I've ever even had bands with other creatures

band with each other is Master of the Hunt makes wolves that have bands with wolves, and you can make multiple wolves so they can band with each other. That's it. That's the only time I've ever used bands with others. Not that I haven't had cards with bands with others in play I had, but just, so it's a complicated mechanic.

It's a mechanic riffing off a complicated mechanic that's not even that mechanic, that doesn't even do what you think it does on the surface, that just never, ever comes up. On my Storm Scale, I rated this an 11 as a joke, because this is just,

at least a lot of these other mechanics I've talked about, there's something they're trying to do, or there's some flavor they're trying to hit, or there's some redeeming quality of it. This is just, at least a lot of these other mechanics I've talked about, there's something they're trying to do, or there's some flavor they're trying to hit, or there's some redeeming quality of it. This is just, I mean, my best guess at how this came to be was the Legends people

made something, and the developer said, oh, well what you made is kind of like a limited banding, and they're like, okay, well either, and then have a whole different whole different mechanic, but just something completely different, we'll tie it to banding, and they well rather than and then have a whole different whole different mechanic but just something completely different we'll tie it

to banding and then go okay well it there are creatures that band but only with themselves and um I don't know I I it and it's funny if you look at

Legends there's a bunch of bands with others it is um I'm not sure why they were so enamored with it because it is it it it never

comes up you know and even when it, because it is... A, it never comes up, you know, and even when it does, it just is... Like, the fact that... I don't... If I went to all the magic public and asked them to describe banding to me, I believe 5% at best,

and probably lower than that now, because banding hasn't been a thing for a long time. You know, 1% maybe now. Like, a tiny, tiny people could tell me what banding does. And I believe an even smaller percentage could tell me what bands with others does. So we're talking about a mechanic that like some tiny, tiny,

tiny portion of the public even understands how it works. And then it barely ever happens. So maybe it doesn't matter if you don't understand how it works. It never ever happens. But anyway, bands with others. So I'm now at work, but let me just recap. But anyway, Bands with Others. So, I'm now at work, but let me just recap.

So, my 10 worst mechanics from today. Number 10, Haunt from Guildpact. Number 9, Radiance from Ravnica, original Ravnica. Number 8, Ripple from Coldsnap. Number 7, The Processors from Battle for Zendikar. Number 6, Annihilator from Rise of the Old Razi. Number 5, Epic from Saviors of Kamigawa. Number 4, the Rebel Mercy mechanic from Arcadian Mask. Number 3, Gacha from Unhinged. Number 2, R from Saviors of Kamigawa. Number four, the Rebel Mercy Mechanic from Arcadian Mask. Number three, Gotcha from

Unhinged. Number two, Rhystic from Prophecy. And number one, Bands with Others from Legends. That, my friend, is my top ten worst mechanics. So anyway, hope you guys enjoyed today's show. I said, I hadn't done top ten in a while. But anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means.

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