Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #647: Designing Library Effect

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

This episode is another in my "Designing _____" series where I talk about how we design certain basic effects. In this episode, I talk about effects interacting with the library.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in my designing series. Today is designing library effects. So I'm defining this as anything that interacts with the library in some way. So it's everything from card drawing, to card filtering, to tutoring, to impulsing, to milling. The whole works. Everything that interacts with the library. Okay, so we're going to start with card drawing. That's probably the simplest way to interact with the library.

You do it every turn. Okay, so card drawing is something that every color has some access to. The most obvious way is cantrips. has some access to. The most obvious way is cantrips. And what a cantrip is, is a card that just says draw a card as a bonus effect. So the idea is do something and, hey, draw a card. The idea is it offsets the card as a cost. Usually we do cantrips on small effects, things that, well, the reason we originally made cantrips was to allow us to do effects so small that you wouldn't net a card. Since then, we have definitely started adding cantrips onto cards that were full cards, but just making them more expensive. In general, it costs about two generic mana to draw a card as a tacked on cantrip effect. So take

any effect that you'd want to do, take what the effect normally costs. Traditionally it costs about two more. Sometimes it really I think costs like one and a half more. So if you have something that's under costed sometimes we'll get away with just adding one. But

usually if the card you're doing to is costed properly already you're adding two to it. Every color is allowed access to cantrips. I'm going to get into sort of what the colors do when it comes to card drawing and certain colors aren't particularly good at card drawing but every color is allowed to replace the card that it costs.

So even white which is the worst at card drawing is allowed to have a cantrip effect that essentially replaces the card that you're spending to get that. Okay, so let's walk through various card drawing abilities per color. Okay, we'll start with blue, which is the card, I mean the most card drawing color. Blue is the color of knowledge. So blue has the most efficient and best straight up card draw, meaning that blue just gets draw and cards and being whatever number you want. Blue can draw as many cards as it wants.

We've done X effects where blue draws. We've done large effects at high rarities where blue will draw like seven cards. Blue really is allowed to draw as many cards as it wants, and it doesn't need other colors have to sort of jump through hoops to draw cards. Blue needs to jump through no hoops. Card drawing is just a core fundamental idea of blue. Now, one of the things that we're careful about with blue and card drawing is we tend to prefer to make a lot of blue's card drawing sorcery speed. And the reason for that is blue's general nature is to sit back and not do anything and only do things as a response. So when you give blue instance, and not that we don't, we do, it's just, it is more powerful in blue because of the ability

to not be proactive. You kind of can just sit back, and with an instant card draw, it's sort of like, I'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait, and then the end of your turn, when it's just about to be my turn, if I have extra mana, okay, I can spend and draw cards. We tend to like to make card drawing sorcery speed more often in blue just to sort of make blue do something. We still do make instant card drawing and it does exist. So the default usually to draw two cards, which is

the basic sort of increment we tend to do at low rarities, divination. So as a sorcery it's two and a blue. As an instant it's three and a blue. So that gives a good example of how much more powerful instant is in card drawing in blue and that it's an extra mana to convert it

you know draw two sorcery to instant is a full mana anyway blue is a lot I mean really there's no restraints to blue card drawing blue can do as much card drawing as it wants it can do as an extra effect the curiosity ability

which is an ability of whenever a creature deals combat damage to the opponent you get to draw a card we do that in blue, it's also done in green by the way occasionally we'll do card draw equal to damage dealt that's done in blue where when you attack,

instead of drawing a card for dealing combat damage to an opponent, you draw cards equal to the amount of damage dealt. That's usually done in high rarities, but that's blue. Blue also will do all sorts of effects, you know, where a lot of times, for example, when we make gold cards and we're trying to have blue combine with somebody else, a common thing we'll do is the other color has some kind of destruction effect and then blue gets to draw cards based on something, power, toughness, converted mana cost, something other thing that's being destroyed. So anyway, blue, unfiltered,

gets to draw cards. Like I said, oh, the one thing we do do is we gate at rarity about how many cards blue can draw. Usually at common, we tend to put the cap at two. Every once in a while, we'll let it draw three at common, but that's about it. If you're drawing more than three cards, you're going to be at uncommon or higher. And normally, if you're doing X spells or something where you're drawing seven plus cards or have potential to draw seven plus cards, we tend to do that at rare. Okay. The card that's number two in

card drawing is green. Now green's rule about card drawing is it needs to be tied to creatures. So you could draw cards equal to the highest power of creatures you have or the number of creatures you have, or like Curiosity, where one of your creatures has to deal combat damage to an opponent to draw a card.

Sometimes we will put card drawing on creatures, although usually we want you to care about the creatures in some way. Blue, for example, one of the things we'll do quite a bit is just make cards that tap to draw cards. Usually when green does that, there's a little more interaction. We don't tend to make green card drawing normal like blue, just it happens to be on a creature.

We don't do that as much. Normally the card drawing somehow interacts with green. And the way to think about green card drawing is, if you have no creatures on the battlefield, green has trouble drawing cards. That green's card drawing, one of green's weaknesses as a color is,

it's over-reliance on creatures. And so, you know, it's card drawing really, really, much like it's creature destruction, is reliant on its own creatures. Black, the way black does card drawing is that black, it must come at a cost. And what that means is beyond mana, there's a secondary cost that black has to pay. The most likely is life. Black, you know, paying life to draw cards is something you'll see most of the time

in common. Once again, kind of the two to three card limit at common, that's not just a blue thing, that's just all colors. No colors really get to draw much more than two or three cards at common. If you're drawing more than three cards, odds are you're uncommon. If you're

potentially drawing seven or more cards, usually it's rare. Now, black doesn't necessarily have to pay life. Sometimes it could sack permanents. It could sack creatures. Usually we're careful with what black sacrifices for other issues. So black doesn't tend to sacrifice enchantments because we like giving it, you know,

make deal with the devil enchantments. So it doesn't tend to sacrifice its own enchantments. We will let black sacrifice artifacts, occasionally land, and we often let it sacrifice creatures. That's pretty flavorful for black. So anything that's allowed to sacrifice can be traded for cards. And

yeah, usually black card draws a lot like blue in that it doesn't make you jump through hoops per se. It just makes you pay extra, additional costs. Where green makes you jump through hoops per se. It just makes you pay extra additional costs. Where green makes you jump through hoops to be creature tied, black does not. Red is next. This is the order of how well they are card drawing.

Red is not great at card drawing. One of the things that we do let Red do, the one, there's two card drawings that Red gets to do. One, well, there's a bunch of card filtering that Red does where it has the ability to occasionally go up in cards. I'll get to card filtering in a little bit. The one kind of pure card advantage thing that Red can do is what we call impulsive draw. And what impulsive draw means is

we let Red exile some number of cards and then it has a small duration to cast them. Either it does a small number and it can do it by the end of the turn or we let it draw a little bit more and it's by the end of your next turn. The reason we say end of next turn if it's more cards is to give the opportunity of mana to cast them. So if it's just one card, we tend to give each other end of turn. The reason we say end of next turn if it's more cards is to give the opportunity of

mana to cast them. So if it's just one card, we tend to give you till end of turn. Excel a card, okay, till end of turn, you can cast that card, or play that card technically. It's a land, you can play it. But if you're doing two, three, usually a little bit more cards, we tend to let you do it till the end of next turn, so you have access to mana. White does not do a lot of card drawing. The little card drawing we've done is we tend to give white card drawing in very narrow situations where you have to build your deck around the narrow situation. So one of white's weaknesses is white is the color that has the most answers. So we make it so that white has the least card drawing, or just card advantage in general,

so that white doesn't, you know, if white could plan ahead and know what it's coming against, it has the answers. But if it doesn't quite know what to expect, it runs out of steam. And so while it has the answers in its deck, it's not always drawing all of its answers. And the one thing we've let white do is we've toyed around with the idea of saying, okay,

if you're very narrow, every time you play an aura or something in which, okay, in order to make it work, I have to dedicate to a narrow theme, which makes it harder for me to have all the answers. Now, we keep experimenting in this space. I know there's a lot of pressure from the commander people. They want more card drawing in white and red. I mean, impulsive draw came from that desire. We've been looking and trying to figure out how in white to allow a little card advantage, but in a way that's inherently white. It's trickier in white since the lack of card advantage is part of white's identity, more of its weaknesses. So that's something we've been working on.

Okay, next. Scrying. So any color can have access to scry. Scry is looking at the top of your library. Scry N. Look at the top N cards of your library. You can put any number of them back in any order and any of them on the bottom of the library in any order and any of them on the bottom of the library in any order. Usually scrying numbers tend to be smaller, one and two. Blue is the best at scrying because blue in general is the best at library interactions and card manipulation.

So blue is the color that can have the highest scrying numbers. And even then, we don't tend to go too much above three and four. Usually scry one and two is what we tend to do. Scry three and four, blue's the color that'll do that. We've jumped around a little bit. In theory, white probably, I mean, philosophically, white should

be a little better at scrying than we tend to do white, just because white's the color we're planning ahead. So, we have arguments about white. I think white should be able to be at scrying than we tend to do white, just because white's the color we're planning ahead. So we have arguments about white. I think white should be able to be... I personally think white should be second in scrying. We're still having some arguments about where that goes. The other thing is we don't tend to do above scry 2 for anybody, and everybody has access to scry 2.

Really, only blue does scry 3 and above. I personally think that we should let white occasionally have scry three. Maybe we have, but I do think white's the color that makes sense to be the number two color in scrying. Red is supposed to be the worst at scrying. Normally red's supposed to have scry one.

Red is not particularly good at planning ahead. And scry is kind of planning ahead. But we do let Red at Scry. I think he has the occasional Scry too, just because everybody occasionally has Scry too. But Red is supposed to be the worst at Scrying.

And I think it goes, well, in my order, it's supposed to go Blue, White, Green, Black, Red. I don't know if White is always quite there. And I think we're a little kinder giving Red Scry than at times we should. Like I said, red is the least about planning ahead. So giving a lot of scry doesn't make too much sense.

Okay, next let's talk about tutoring and impulsing. So tutoring, okay, tutoring means I go into my library, get the card I want. There's two basic places, well, there's a couple different places you can tutor. You can tutor to your hand, you can tutor to the battlefield, you can tutor to the graveyard, you can tutor to exile. Normally if you tutor to exile, then it has to tell you what to do within an exile.

That's a very limited category. And tutoring to graveyard, really, black and blue are the only two colors we've really done this in. Black and two-draped creatures to the graveyard and blue can two-draped instants and sorcerers to the graveyard. We don't use that effect very

often. Most often we do to hand or to the battlefield. So for this one, let me walk through all the different card types and then talk about who does what. Okay, so let's start with creatures. Okay, who can tutor creatures to the hand and who tutors them to the battlefield? Well, black is the color that can tutor for anything, but it's only the hand.

So black obviously can get creatures and put them in hand. Green is the creature tutoring color specifically. Green can get creatures to the hand and can get creatures to the battlefield. Green is the one color that goes in the library and brings creatures straight out to the battlefield. Every once in a while, we occasionally let red do it temporarily. I go get something, it comes, and then it goes away. We don't do that a lot, but red and thin can do that. So red can do the battlefield for one shot, and then it goes away.

Green is the one that can go get it permanently and put it on the battlefield. We let every color tutor for creature types, like tribal stuff that's itself. We've let white tutor for like angels and tutor for soldiers. We've let red tutor for goblins. So you are allowed to tutor for anything that is a creature type that's basically solely your color or primarily your color's creature type. It's usually a characteristic or iconic race for your color, meaning something you're heavily associated with. And even then, we don't do tons of those. Like I said, green really is a color that does creature tutoring.

The other colors really dabble in it. Blue does the least amount of creature tutoring. I mean, we've done a little bit of merfolk tutoring and a little bit of wizard tutoring, but in general, blue does the least amount of creature tutoring. Next, lands. Green is also the best at land tutoring, or land fetching, as we call it. So green can go get lands and put them on the battlefield. Green can go get lands and put them in the hand.

Every other color, we allow it to get its own land type to hand. Every other color, we allow it to get its own land type to hand. So we've let white get plains and blue get islands and black get swamps and red get mountains. Other than that, other than getting their own basic land, green is really the only color that gets other lands. And sometimes green gets basic land. Sometimes green gets any land. It depends on what we're trying to do. And sometimes it goes to hand.

Sometimes it goes to the battlefield. That is sort of a knob that we can turn to see how strong we want to make it. The reason it might matter is sometimes we'll have a mechanic like landfall where there's something that's tracking when cards get, you know, when land enters the graveyard. I'm sorry, when land enters the battlefield. And we, in those cases, are more likely to do more tutoring into play or fetching land into play. Next is artifacts.

Blue and white are the two colors that tutor for artifacts. I mean, black, once again, black can tutor for anything. So black can go get a land. But if black's getting a land other than a swamp, it's because it's getting a general

like demonic style tutor and it can go get whatever it wants. When black tutors, because they can get anything, it doesn't need to show the opponent. Anything else when you're tutoring, you have to make sure that you reveal the card to your opponent so they know that you're getting the thing that you're allowed to go get. So if green says go get a creature,

well, I have to show you the creature because you have to know that, in fact, I got a creature and not some other card on my deck. So one thing about tutoring is it involves revealing. So you always have to, other than blocks, go get anything. It has to reveal. Anyway, artifacts is blue and white. Black can get them in the sense that black can go get anything.

Red occasionally will tutor for an equipment. Usually it puts it on a creature when it does it. It's like a creature that will enter and go get me equipment. But other than that, red does not tend to tutor for artifacts. And green is the color that most hates artifacts. It does not tutor for artifacts. Enchantments. White is the color that most often tutors for enchantments.

Occasionally we'll let black tutor for enchantments in an enchantment heavyset. Black is number two in enchantment tutoring. Usually in a place where enchantments matter. That's not many places. Then we have planeswalkers. White tends to be the color to go get planeswalkers.

Black obviously can get anything. But white's the color specifically that goes and gets Planeswalkers. Instants and Sorceries. Blue is the color that most often gets Instants and Sorceries. We've let red do a little bit of tutoring for Instants and Sorceries. When we break them up, we let blue tutor for Instants and red tutor for Sorceries. But both of them, we've allowed some access to each. Like I said, blue will get instant sorceries to the graveyard.

Sometimes it'll do a thing where some go to hand, some go to graveyard. That's a common way we get stuff in the graveyard with blue for instance and sorceries. Black, once again, to tutor and go get anything. What am I forgetting? I said creatures. I said lands. I said lands. I said artifacts. I said enchantments.

I said planeswalkers. I said instances. That is it. Now, impulsing. So, impulsing is looking at the top end cards, end being a number of your library. Look at the top three, top four, top five. And what it means is, well, a general impulse is

just look at them and take whatever you want. So blue tends to do that. So interestingly, as a general rule, because we've been trying to lessen card drawing, we've been trying to do less tutoring in general. And so we do more impulsing nowadays. And our rule of thumb is, if the color could let you do it as a tutor, we let you do it as an impulse. So if I was going to search the top five cards in my library for an artifact, or sorry, if I was going to search my deck for an artifact, I can search the top five cards from an artifact in white or blue, for example. The one place where we don't do that is the black demonic tutor style effect.

We tend to do library only. That impulsing, meaning looking at the top end cards and taking whatever you want, is a blue thing, not a black thing. Other than that, when you're tutoring for a specific thing, we let you impulse for whatever it is that you were doing. So all the stuff I just said, green can impulse for a creature, or it can impulse for a land, or it's often a creature or a land. White or blue can impulse for an artifact.

White, sometimes black, can impulse for an enchantment. Green can impulse for a land. Any color can impulse for its own color land. White can impulse for a planeswalker. And blue or red could impulse for an instant or sorcery. So anything that can impulse, anything that can tutor for that can impulse for it. We've sort of extended that over. Once upon a time, impulsing was mostly a blue thing.

Green dabbled with it back in the day. But as we were trying to lessen shuffling, we've really upped the amount of impulsing we do in general. And now every color has some access to it. Now, one of the things about impulsing is there, so well, I'm sorry, I'm confusing. That's card filtering. We'll get to card filtering in a second.

So anyway, impulsing, blue gets to do generic, you know, go get anything impulsing, and then the other colors follow how we do it when we're doing Tutoring. And we, often when we do Impulsing, it's more likely to go to hand. But we do do a little bit of Impulsing to play. oh the other thing is sort of what I will call hunting is when you reveal until you get something

so that is variant on impulsing so impulse is I look at a certain number of cards and I find something or I don't deck hunting is when I keep flipping until I get the thing that I'm looking for so for example Cascade, the mechanic Cascade hunting is when I keep flipping until I get the thing that I'm looking for. So for example, Cascade, the Mechanic Cascade, where you were looking for a card that converted mana cost lower than the one you cast looking for a spell. The deck hunting, if you will, is most

often seen in black because there's a risk involved that if you don't find it, you can burn away your library um and so the most common place that we'll do it these days is in black um we occasionally let it happen in other colors um we do less and less of it now because what we realized was um what deck hunting makes you want to do is only put one copy of the thing you're looking for in your deck. So that way, when you go look for it, you're guaranteed of finding it. This is what happened with Cascade, for example. So we've tended to moving away from deck hunting more into impulsing because if I...

Let's say, for example, I'm looking at the top six cards for something. Oh, well, I don't want to miss. So if a card says, hey, impulse for this specific subtype of something, then you want to make sure you hit it. So you want your deck full of it. So for example, like Oath of Druids was a card that said, oh, keep flipping until you find a creature. And the way Oath of Druids tended to be played was

you didn't play with any creatures in your deck except the one giant creature you wanted to get out. So as soon as you use Oatho Druids tended to be played was you didn't play with any creatures in your deck except the one giant creature you wanted to get out. So as soon as you use Ortho Druids, you always got that same one giant creature. But if you impulse for creatures, what happens then is, oh, I don't want to miss. I don't want one giant creature in my deck, and I miss and I get nothing. So what I want to do is have a lot of things in my deck. So the impulsing sort of requires you to play a little more. Like the whole point of the hunting style cards is that we want you to play a little more, like the whole point of the

hunting style cards is that we want you to have a deck full of that. But the actual hunting kind of discourages that and the nature of if I can guarantee I'm going to get something, I'll guarantee it. So instead of having my deck full of it, I have only one of it in my deck. So we tend to do more Impulsing now than hunting just for that exact reason. Although every once in a while, like I said, in black, especially when we're trying to make a card that has a than hunting just for that exact reason. Although every once in a while, like I said, in black, especially when we're trying to make a card that has a little bit of a danger to it. Okay, next, filtering. So what filtering means is I'm going to draw some

number of cards and then I'm going to discard some number of cards. As we'll see with red, that can also go backwards. Sometimes you discard and draw. Okay, so the base effect is what we call looting. Looting is draw a card, discard a card. Sometimes when you loot, you draw more cards. Like you draw two, discard two. And because of filtering, sometimes what you draw and what you discard aren't the same number. For example, one of the ways blue can draw cards is it combines filtering with card drawing. So it says, you know, draw three, discard two. So it's going up a card in the process. Anyway, the thing with filtering is that you are drawing some number of cards and you're getting rid of some number of cards.

The cards you're getting rid of often go to the graveyard. They're discarded. Sometimes they go to the library. Sometimes they go on top of the library. Occasionally they go on the bottom of the library. Filtering basically says you're going to get cards and lose cards. It'll tell you you're almost always going to get cards from the library, usually top of library, and you're going to lose the cards, usually to the graveyard, sometimes the top

of library, sometimes the bottom of library. Top of library is more about I'm putting away, I'm sort of taking away future draws, if you will. So if I take a card and I put it on top of a library, next turn I'm getting that card back. So I'm not losing the card per se. I'm losing a turn of opportunity using the card and I'm losing a card draw because next turn instead of drawing a new card, I'm drawing that card again. The ability to put cards on top of a library, we used to do in blue and green.

We don't do it in green anymore. We do a little bit in blue. So when we do bounce effects, we sometimes do bounce to library, which means take something, usually a permanent, well, it has to be a permanent, it's on the battlefield. Take a permanent battlefield and put it on top of its owner's library. We also sometimes do filtering where you have to choose and then some of what you filter is you put back things on top of your library. So sometimes filtering will

interact with top of library. You put stuff back on top of library. Red has the op or Red has a variant of looting that is known as rummaging. Rummaging is simply backwards. Rummaging is discard a card to draw a card. We were trying to find more ways to get card flow in red. We liked the idea that red searched for things, but red's more reckless about it. So blue carefully searched for things because it values knowledge, so it draws first before deciding what to discard. Red is reckless, so it'll discard something before it gets to see what it draws. We also do what we call winds of change

or windfall effects in blue and red. That is when you discard any number of cards and you draw a card equal to the number of cards you discarded. We allow you to windfall yourself and we allow you to windfall the opponent. Sometimes you'll do both. Red also occasionally gets Wheel of Fortune. Wheel of Fortune is where, usually Wheel of Fortune affects everybody, where everybody discards their hand and draws a brand new hand. In red, it is a sideways way to get card advantage, because if you have less than seven cards,

you will be going up cards. Now, you're also potentially putting your opponent up cards, because if they have less, they will also. And Wheel of Fortune tend to be universal. We don't very often... We sometimes let you win to change yourself. We don't often let you Wheel of Fortune yourself. So, red, like I said, one of red's rules in general when we do card drawing is

if it's discarding cards, we let it draw one extra card to replace the card that you cast. So red can go up one card in its filtering to offset the cost of the card you're filtering with. filtering to offset the cost of the card you're filtering with. If it's at a filtering effect and not a card itself, then it has to be even. So for example, red can draw three cards, discard two, because the one card that's going up is the cost of the card that you cast the spell with. We let red do that. So red can break even, but we don't let red go up in card advantage from card drawing. Red gets its card advantage in

destruction in other ways. As far as the other colors, blue and red are the only ones that really do straight up filtering. Once upon a time, we let green do filtering. Back in the day of Sylvan Library and stuff like that, we really

have moved away from that. So green doesn't really do the card filtering anymore. Every once in a while, the one place where we let green do a little bit of card filtering is what we call mulching, where you're looking at some number of cards on the top of a library,

and then you get to take, usually you're looking for land, sometimes creatures. And then everything you don't find goes to the graveyard. It's a trick we use in a graveyard focus set where we want you to care about things in the graveyard. We use mulching as a way for green to help get stuff into the graveyard. And so that is a trick we use sometimes. And that is, I'm not sure quite what to call mulching but it's

I mean it's kind of essentially impulsing where the impulse cards, normally when you impulse the cards go to top or bottom of the library where in mulching the cards go to the graveyard, you're losing the cards we sometimes let

Red, we've let red do a little bit of mulching, not tons. Looking for like goblins or things. But really green's the one that does most of the mulching. We do let red discard cards as a cost. One of the ways reds can get stuff in the graveyard is,

I mean this isn't library focused, but we do, we do have discard effects that we put into red, self-discard effects as well. As far as any other filtering, oh, blue has a lot of flexibility on the kind of filtering you can do. A very common effect we'll do in blue is where you draw two and discard two, or you draw N and discard N, you draw two and discard two, or you draw N and discard N, but you draw N minus one if you discard the right card. So, for example,

and we've done this with most card types at this point. Like, let's say it's an artifact focus set. Oh, well, draw two and discard two. Or, you know, draw two, discard two, or discard an artifact. So the idea is, if you have an artifact you can discard, now you're going up a card.

And we let blue do that. That's a common thing we'll do in blue. And like I said, blue really messes around with all sorts of different kinds of filtering. We every once in a blue moon... Like I said, green does more mulching than filtering, really. Okay, let's get to milling. Okay, so milling is when you force target player,

the target player could be you, to take some number of cards off the top of their library and put them into the graveyard. So this is a forced removal of cards from the library straight to the graveyard. Everyone's in a blue moon, we will mill to exile. Usually there's a reason we do that. That's not something we do very often.

The vast, vast majority of the time, we mill to graveyard. The main milling color is blue. Primary milling color is blue. Secondary is black. is black. We and the mulching ability I said in green is kind of

the way we let green mill itself. Because green doesn't tend to mulch other people. Green usually just mulches itself. Blue and black can force other people to mill cards from the top of the library into the graveyard.

It's also an ability that you see a lot in artifacts. There's not a lot of artifacts, I'm sorry, there's not a lot of effects that have a strong artifact connection, but milling first showed up on an artifact, Millstone, back in Antiquities, and there's a lot of milling effects that show up on artifacts, especially repeatable milling. Blue tends to have more of the one-shot milling, but repeatable milling will often show up on artifacts. So that's not a color per se, but it's one of those abilities that has some history in being an artifact, that's thought of as being an artifact thing. Sometimes with milling, when we're milling something,

we will reward you for what you mill. We do that occasionally. So it's like target player mill some number of cards. And then if something is hit, it triggers and something happens. Um, uh, a common thing when we want to mill ourself, mill yourself, we will do things where you look at the library and then, uh, there's some reward for what you're looking for. So it's sort of like, hey, you're trying to do this thing. Oh, but yeah, by the way, put the cards in the graveyard.

We do that sometimes when we're trying to get more self-milling and colors outside of blue and black. But like I said, milling is primarily blue. It doesn't show up in mono black a lot. It usually shows up in mono black in sets where milling is primarily blue. It doesn't show up in mono black a lot. It usually shows up in mono black in sets where milling has a stronger sub-theme. And sometimes it shows up when black is trying to sort of toe the line and do something that's dangerous. Sometimes for people, milling will be done there.

Okay. I think that's most the main effects. One of the things to keep in mind as we sort of go through this is that the library is an important resource. Everybody obviously gets access to the library. Really the thing we try to sort of divvy up between the colors is who cares about what and how they care about it. And so a lot of the separation of the different colors is trying to keep that identity. So the larger sense of it is blue is the color that values information. So it really, as you'll notice today, you know, as I run through all the different things,

blue is the one that most often often like blue can do card drawing. Blue can do cantrips. Blue has the biggest scry. Blue has the best impulsing. Blue tutors the best. Or not. Black can go get anything. Blue definitely tutors

for a lot of different things. Blue tends to do the best filtering. Blue does the best milling. So blue is 100% the color that both interacts with library the best. It is the most library interactive of colors. Number two is black. Black is the one that gets a straight up tutor. Black gets card drawing.

I mean, given it has to do it at a cost, but it gets card drawing. You know, we, it gets milling. So black is the number two card drawing. Black is the second best at doing the card drawing. The, if you notice, when we go to Ravnica, one of the things that Dimir does, which is blue and black, is that Dimir is the best color at interacting with the library. Dimir is the best color at interacting with the library. Dimir is the

milling color. You know, the ability we had in original Ravnica, which was transmute, is a tutoring ability. You know, blue and black are definitely number one and number two when it comes to interacting with any sort of library interaction. Number three with library interaction is either green or red. It depends how you want to look at it. Green has obviously more card drawing than red, but red has a little bit more, red has rummaging and winds of change and wheel of fortune stuff. So both green and red have some interaction with the library. Green also can mulch. Green does a little more tutoring out of the library than red, although green and red both have some tutoring out of the library.

So those are three and four. I think green is probably a smidgen ahead of red, but they're close. So it's a very close three and four. White is number five. White is the least interactive of the library. Now, white gets a little bit, you know, white has some very narrow card drawing. It gets cantrips.

It has a little bit of impulsing. I do think, by the way, that it should be better at scrying. That's my two cents here. That's not quite reflected. I do like the idea that white plans ahead better than other colors, so Scrying to Me is planning ahead to a certain extent. But white is the weakest at library interaction,

and so while a lot of the stuff we talked about today, it does some, and probably the place it shines is it actually tutors for the most unique things. I mean, black can get anything, but white can tutor for an artifact or an enchantment or a planeswalker.

And sometimes it does subsets a lot, like equipment and things. So white is the one that has a little bit of ability to plan ahead, although once again, it doesn't tutor for anything. It doesn't tutor for creatures. It doesn't tutor for spells.

So it is a little more the king of tutoring for sort of not land, not creatures, sort of other things and not spells. Okay. It goes and gets the other permanents, I guess. It's good at non-creature permanents or non-land. Anyway, so that, my friends, is looking through all the colors. Anyway, so that, my friends, is looking through all the colors. Like I said, there's a lot of different effects and there's a lot of nuance. One of the things, hopefully if you're listening to this series,

you're sort of interested in understanding sort of how we design things. Like one of the things that we try really hard to do is we like to slice things up pretty thinly so that if I make a card and I say what the card is you can read it and go oh I know I know what color that is supposed to be and so that is a you'll notice that as I do my designing podcast that I want like we really want cards to be such that if I said to you in a vacuum here's the effect you can tell me the color that's going to be. And the way we do that is by really slicing up a lot of the effects. If you'll notice today, you know, every card gets card drawing to some extent in some ways. Here's how it does it. Everybody does some impulsing. Here's how they do it. You know, a lot of today you'll notice that every color or most colors

have some access to the stuff I'm talking about. Some are better at it. Some are more efficient at it. But, you know, access to the library is such an about. Some are better at it. Some are more efficient at it. But, you know, access to the library is such an important part of the game. We don't really keep like, every color has some ability to interact with it. Some better than others. Some, this is their strength. Others, it's their weakness. But even

white, which, look, the library is its weakness. It still has some tutoring. It still gets some cantrips. It still gets some scry. It still does some stuff in that area, even though it's the weakest. Okay, guys, I'm now at work. So I hope you guys, the feedback I've been getting on this series is very positive. People seem to like it quite a bit, so I will continue doing it, although I must say there's only so much material to do, but I will keep doing the design series as long as there's stuff to talk about anyway I hope you guys enjoyed today's but I'm now parked

so we all know what that means this is the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic I'll see you guys next time