Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #920: Managing the Rules with Jess Dunks

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

I sit down with Designer and Rules Manager Jess Dunks to talk about the challenges of managing the rules and dealing with me as head designer.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Home Edition. So I've been using my home time to talk with lots of cool people working at Wizards. And so today I have Jess Dunks, the Magic Rules Manager. Dun dun dun. Hey, how's it going? So, um, okay, so part of what I, one of the things I've been trying to do with the interviews is let people see there's a lot of moving pieces to magic. And I spend a lot of time talking about a very narrow band of it. But I like people seeing other aspects. And so I think on paper, people somehow think that, like, the head designer and the rules manager are like adversaries.

I mean, I've made jokes about that in the past, like when Tayback was the rules manager and stuff. But really, look, we work together. We have the same end goals, which is let's make magic awesome.

And so I just want to sort of talk about what you do and like what it entails to make the rules work because that is quite a heady task.

More so than I think the audience has any idea. Sure. rules work, because that is quite a heady task, more so than I think the audience has any idea. Sure. Do you want me to just start talking about it and describe it? Yeah, well, so if you had to describe somebody in a couple minutes, what do you do? What job do you have? What exactly is your job?

Yeah, my job lives on the editing team for Magic. I work very heavily with designers and our digital partners. And we work together to make both the words on the cards work and the large comprehensive rules document that we have work. And we also put together rulings that you see on cards in the release notes and on Gatherer when you look at cards. The majority of my job is to make sure that the large machine that is the magic rules continues to function properly as we make new cards that do new things and new rules have to be added to them. Okay, so...

Go ahead. Okay, so... Go ahead. Okay, so this is where you and I come into, you know, where our jobs interact, is it is my job and my team's job to do things we've never done before, because part of the fun of Magic is, hey, this latest set does a new thing and has a new mechanic or whatever.

And so I often come to you to figure out, like, what am I... Because to you to figure out, like, what am I... Because I have to think downstream of me. What am I setting you up for? If we did this, what problems might it cause? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's... That conversation kind of continues

and it's also many people, and it continues as we make new sets that do new things uh and i actually to be honest i kind of like it the newer the thing is the easier it is to work with if something is is completely and totally new uh it's much easier to decide how how does this work uh so so for example if we say uh uh we look at dungeons from AFR, they were a completely new thing where we got to kind of define the entire space around how they worked for that set. Whereas with something like reconfigure, it's a new way of doing a thing that already existed. And that that creates more more issues for making sure that all of the old things still work the same way with the new things.

So what do you, when I come up to you and say I have something new, what are you most afraid I will say? That's a good question. I mean, honestly, when you come up to me and say you have something new, I don't know if afraid is the right word. something new i'm i don't know if afraid is the right word uh i i guess i'm like if you're asking me like what's the most difficult uh the answer is going to be stuff that that uh stuff that requires me to just rewrite whole sections of movies so if you're saying i have something new uh what is it well we have

this uh we decided that we want to change how all of equipment work for all you know for all the pass cards it's going to be very hard to do uh but hey we have this new way of doing things it's going to be much easier to do uh so my fear is going to be that you come up with an idea that requires us to change how a lot of past magic works or kind of work around it. But like I think a lot of people have this idea that I want to keep everything the same

and don't want to do new things and I actually really enjoy both seeing new ideas come to life and figuring out the challenge and the puzzle of making them work in the rules. So I don't know if afraid is the right word. I actually enjoy working with you on new stuff.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's really interesting is a lot of what I get from you is not don't do this. It's if you did it this way rather than that way, my life would be much easier. Yeah. Magic is very flexible it is and the magic rule system it's very intricate there are a lot of moving parts uh but it's actually it's honestly it's it's fairly stable uh the magic rules we could just crush it my my job is to make sure we don't uh but you know as long as we're watching out for the parts that could cause problems as we make new cards uh i want to do new and fun exciting things so i think there's a lot left that magic uh much stuff that magic

hasn't done yet that we can do that's going to be fun exciting gameplay um so i don't i don't want to say i know that uh the youth in the past talked about the kind of like oh we can't do that thing uh but no i want to say yes we can as much as possible yeah the interesting thing for our conversations is it really is never yes you can or no you can't it usually is here's the cost or here like here's what doing it means here's the issues we have to solve like you give me like the way i think of it is you're a resource and you're telling me what problems i'm making for people downstream you being one of those people but you know when i do this mechanic what problems am i

creating and a lot of times you'll give me advice like oh here's a way you can get what you want that doesn't cause any problems or as many problems um that's a lot of the reason when you and i chat it's sort of like hey early on i have a lot of flexibility there's a lot of ways i can do something and so okay which path gets me to where i want to go what's the cool mechanic but also you know in a way that the system works and um right a lot of sort of our relationship i think is of like i actually have a decent understanding. I mean, not as well as you, but I understand generally how the rules work. And most importantly, I know the areas that cause problems.

Like I know where I tried to do something in the past and you or a previous rules manager are like, oh, we can't do that. In fact, I just did a podcast that people can listen to a week or two ago where I talked about what I call the non-tournament design space, which is what, you know, unsets Acorn. Like, for tournament rules to work, we can't do A, B, and C, but that's kind of fun, but that's why we make it, you know, in this space and not on tournament cards. Right. And, for example, one that you brought up was how hard something is.

And so the example I gave there, we can talk through a little bit. So Last Strike, ironically, was created by Mark Gottlieb when he was the rules manager, but he had his designer hat on. And then when he put his rules manager hat on, he goes, oh, yeah, we can't make this. So I want to talk a little bit. Let's get into the rules. Why is Last Strike, which seems so easy. It seems so simple. Like, everybody can understand it. Why is it, like, why is get into the rules. Why is Last Strike, which seems so easy, it seems so

simple, like everybody can understand it. Why is it, like, why is rewriting the rules so hard? Talk a little bit why that would be so hard to put into the rules. Sure. So Last Strike is a fantastic example of something that players can look at, immediately understand how it works, and they get it get it but when you try to build it into the machinery of magic and could cause uh issues uh when we look at first strike and how first strike is built into the magic rules uh and double strike alongside it uh the rules uh players tend to think of it in terms of okay well here's my first strike combat damage step and here's my regular combat damage step and then obviously well, here's my first strike combat damage step, and here's my regular combat damage step. And then obviously, following that, there's my last strike combat damage step.

And that's very straightforward. But the rules don't actually look at it that way. The rules say if there's a creature with first strike, then we have an additional combat damage step. And then the way it defines which creatures get to deal damage in each of those combat damage steps isn't creatures with first strike do it here creatures with double strike do it here it has a long uh kind of flow chart of okay well creatures with first strike deal damage at this point and then as we get into the next combat damage step creatures that had first strike in the last combat damage step and creatures with double strike now and it's a long

list of which creatures get to do this if we add another combat damage step and add last strike after that that basically blows that entire model up and we have to rebuild it from scratch because it wasn't frankly designed with the flexibility of adding more kinds of strikes when it was initially made. And the combat rules are way more complex than you would think, just most players would think, frankly, of just trying to play through magic, which is why something like that works so well in a silverboard set, like an unset, but doesn't work particularly well in tournament play is because we have to be able to account for every single corner case. And there are some corner cases that just wouldn't work particularly well in tournament play is because we have to be able to account for every single corner case.

And there are some corner cases that just wouldn't work with. I have a metaphor that I like. This is a metaphor that people, I've used in the past that's been very, let's say I have a house and I want to do some remodeling. So I bring in somebody who's an expert who's going to do the remodeling

and I say to them, I want to knock out that wall. He might say, oh, no problem. Sure. Yeah, we can knock out that wall. Or he might say, oh, no, no, that's a bearing wall. If we knock out that wall, the house collapses. So yes, I could do it, but it's a lot more work and it's gonna cost you a lot more money because I have to account for the bearing. Like something's holding up the rest of the house. I can't just knock it down. And somebody who's an expert understands where the bearing walls and where they aren't. And so you're sort of the expert here on the rules.

You're like, oh, no, this is a bad, you can't just knock this rule out. This will cause infinite problems. It's holding things up. And that's a lot of sort of what happens when you say, well, what about this? You can't just take something out because other things are dependent upon that to work. Yeah, I think that's a fantastic way of looking at it.

I actually really like that metaphor because something like combat damage has a lot of those bearing walls you're talking about. But there are other places where you or another designer will come to me and say, hey, can we do this variant thing? And they expect a lot of resistance. And I'm like, yeah, that's easy. Let's do it. That's no problem. I'm always taken aback, by the way, when I have a really weird idea or something and you're like, yeah, sure. I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't think it'd be that easy. and you're like, yeah, sure.

I'm like, oh wow, I didn't think it'd be that easy. Yeah. And a lot of that comes down to kind of that, that metaphor you just built about the houses, the houses and the load bearing walls. You know, if we have to take something out and kind of rebuild that structure, that's a lot of work. But if it's just kind of a new thing entirely,

if it's an addition to the house, instead of taking out one of the rooms and making it look different uh that's much easier to set up uh than than uh old things and a lot of the stuff that you come to me with is is new stuff uh you know sometimes it's not so there's variations on old stuff uh but you know we want to make as many cool things as we can. So, uh, we, we should try to, my philosophy on it is we should try our best to make those things work. Uh, and I think it's more conversations like the one you and I had, uh, you alluded to earlier where I get to say, well, here's another way we could make that work come in handy. Um, cause I don't want to be the guy that just says yes or no to things. I want to say, that sounds fun. Let's see what we can do in that space. Yeah, and usually the interesting thing about the conversations we have is it's, right,

it's a tactical, how do we tackle this problem? And it's like, hey, I want to do something. And you're like, okay. And a lot of the conversations also are me explaining what it is I want to do. And sometimes you're like, oh, well, there is a way to do that, but not the way you're doing it. Here's a different way to do it. But we, we can get your goal, but not your means of doing it. Like, you know, maybe the way you're doing it's problematic, but there's a different way we could do it. And that's one of the interesting things to me is like, a lot of times I'll come talk to

you and I go back to my team and then it's it's like, okay, here's the options we have available to us. And a lot of those conversations, like, a lot of the conversations are more about, hey, if we do path A, here's the problems. If we do path B, here's the problems. And then try to figure out on our end, you know, what we want to explore. what we want to explore. But like I said, the interesting thing to me about having worked with... I mean, my relationship

with the Magic Rules is different than your relationship, but obviously, I have a long-standing relationship with it because I... Part of having to make new things is I have to understand what's there.

Like, for example, one of... See if you can hear a little trivia quiz. What part of the rules causes me, the designer, the most problems? I swear at the most. What is the part of the rules

that is the biggest problem from a design standpoint? Oh, that's a good question. I'm actually not sure, but I'm interested in the answer. What do you think is the most problematic? I would say layers. Oh, sure. Just so the audience understands, in order for things to happen, there has to be an

order for things to happen, right? That the game has to understand in what order things go. So that is called layers, meaning, oh, first this happens, then that happens. Because in order for the system to work, and I always say to the audience, kind of think of it like a computer program. There has to be exact answers. You can't be fuzzy.

There has to be an exact answer for things. So in order for it to work, layers just says, look, this happens and that happens and that happens. So every once in a while, I invent something. I or one of my designers invent something. But the reason it can't work is, oh, the layers are wrong.

That it won't happen the way you want it to happen because the way the layers play out. Which is a very invisible thing mostly to, you know. So if you don't mind my digressing about it a little bit, one of the ways I like to explain layers as a concept is if you think of like clear paper that you use on like a projector to display something on a wall uh you have if you think well okay effects that make things copies are on one of those clear things and we put that on top and that's a layer that affects that make things a different color is a different layer and that affects that make things a bigger power and tempest is a different layer we stack those on top of each other those are the kind of how those layers of effects are are viewed by the game and the game rules, we look down at an object

like a permanent on the battlefield after all of those things have been applied and say, well, what does it look like right now after all these layers have been applied? And that's kind of how I think of layers working. Let's say, for example, I wanted to make a card

that said, all flying creatures are blue. Is that, I'm trying to think of one where I'm messing, I'm. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't work the way you want it to. So explain, explain why all flying creatures are blue doesn't work. Okay, so, so all flying creatures are blue. So all creatures with flying are blue is how it, and it ended with that is,

uh, uh, the, uh, the problem is that, as I mentioned, you have those, those,

the game goes through layers and it, it applies everything in one layer before it applies everything in the next layer. And so the layer where we determine what color things are happens before the layer where we decide what color things are happens before the layer where we decide what abilities something has so all creatures with flying are blue would work okay for things that are printed with flying on them uh that thing would become blue but if we have something else that says that gives flying to a creature because it's in a later layer,

it's in layer six as opposed to layer five, because it's in a later layer, when the game is looking at the color layer and says, it needs to determine what should be blue, it doesn't know that that thing's going to gain flying in the later layer, layer six. It just sees the things that already have flying printed on them and that sounds like a very straightforward thing to say well why why do we need these layers uh but i i i don't have the time in the podcast to really explain why all of those layers are necessary but because of the the mechanics that

we've built and the way that we've built the game of Magic, the layers actually are necessary and they make things work intuitively most of the time. Unfortunately, they preclude some designs from being Magic cards, like the one that you just described, because the game goes, well, what has flying?

And it doesn't see things that are going to gain flying later on from other effects. Yeah, so that, so here's another, I'm just pointing out some areas to me the audience might enjoy just areas that I know we can't make things because it causes rule problems. So another big area that this is connected to is

things where it has to know what it will be but it's not now. Like for example, people always want to make unrathable creatures, right? Make creatures that, like, it'll know what's going to happen and prevent it, but, like, it only can prevent things that it knows at the time. It can't look ahead to things it doesn't know yet. Yeah, so this is a pretty consistent issue that comes up in designs in various ways is that the magic game rules by and large are

really really good at looking into the past and seeing what has occurred already but they're really really bad at looking into the future and seeing what might occur when when another event occurs and this is largely because we have a very robust system of replacement effects which are actually the thing i think is most frustrating about about trying to put together magical stuff these replacement effects look at an event and they say what event is about to happen oh okay well we're going to do something else instead so a replacement effect might say uh if you would gain two life instead draw a card uh and then the game goes okay so uh you're going to gain two life instead of gaining two life gonna have you we're gonna have you draw a card uh and then that event happens that means that

the event of gaining two life never actually occurred from the game's perspective but that means that putting together effects that care about that is hard so if if I were to have an effect that said counter-target spell that would cause you to gain life, that's harder to put together because the king can't know for sure if that's actually the event that will happen when this spell resolves. The game only knows what it will

attempt to do, but doesn't know if that's actually going to happen. Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting is a lot of times the problem isn't the rules can't handle it. The problem is what will happen isn't what the players think will happen. It's not intuitive. And that's usually, that's a big deal breaker for me,

meaning when the rules will just won't work the way people expect them to work, well, then people will just play them wrong. Like we try really, really hard on the design end. Like intuition is, well, then people will just play them wrong. We try really, really hard on the design end. Intuition's important. I want people... I want the game... I mean, I'm sure it's important for you as well to make that happen. But one of the things that really... one of the biggest

problems I have with the rules is it's not that it doesn't work. It's, oh, it doesn't do what you think it would do, and then I know the players would play it wrong, and it would cause constant confusion, because if things don't work intuitively, that's a huge problem.

And you and I wrestle with that a lot of, well, here's what would happen. I'll give a good example. I love power-toughness switching. It's a fun effect. I love it. But, love of God, it just doesn't do what you like. The reason we really don't do it much anymore. If you notice, like we'll do plus, you know, plus and minus and like, like we'll do it in other ways, but we were very, very careful when we let you do it in very peculiar situations because it just doesn't work the way you think it'll work in so many situations.

Yeah, that's true. Uh, power club just come just because a fantastic example of things that don't work uh but one of one of my favorite things about the conversations that we do have is exactly figuring out exactly how that's going to play out when you say here's a new mechanic i want to i want to put together and i get to say okay well that mechanic means this weird thing might happen is that okay and and we go, oh, wait, well, maybe not. And then we figure out how we can kind of get around that problem. Because I agree with you. The game being intuitive is an integral part of it being fun to play.

And we should keep it that way as much as possible. Yeah, the funny thing is, if you tell me it doesn't work intuitively, I have issues, okay, we got to fix it, because I don't want it to work non-intuitively. The area that's the, here's the actual, the biggest conflict between't work intuitively, I have issues. Okay, we got to fix it because I don't want it to work non-intuitively. The area that's the... Here's the actual, the biggest conflict between you and I, I think, is when it's a corner case that will never in actual play happen, but, like, the game system has to resolve it.

And I'm like, that's never going to happen. Can we just have the fun part that's going to happen? And you're like, no, no, no. The game has to know what's going to happen. Right. And that's... Like, you're like no no no i the game has to know what's going to happen um right and that's like for example to be honest there's a lot of uncards are just cards i try to make and the reason they got stopped had nothing to do with people would get it they'd understand it it would work fine it's just like but the rules the rules don't handle 99.9 really well right uh yeah there are a lot of cases for especially with those end cards where the

truth is it works just fine in the vast majority of circumstances but the magic rules aren't built to have fuzziness the magic rules are built like you've mentioned like a computer system they they have to get an input and then they have a result and when something in the middle doesn't quite work right it's like when you ask a calculator to divide by zero, it just stops functioning properly. So in a lot of those cases, I understand where we're coming from and why people want to, why designers specifically want to make something work a certain way

and they're okay with it not working in the corner cases. But part of my job is to make sure that those corner cases actually do function properly or at least have an answer, even if it's not an intuitive one. Yeah, and one of my things is, I don't really, the non-intuitive corner case that is a theoretical thing, I don't really care if it's non-intuitive. If it doesn't actually come up, if no one's actually going to happen, it's fine if people want to talk around and discuss the weirdness of it

because it doesn't actually impact play. That's one of my pet peeves, is, like, where I get stopped not because of anything practical, but it's just because of, like, the higher system, you know. Yeah. I mean, that comes back down to that card you mentioned earlier, where you want to give

all creatures, we make all creatures with flying blue. That's not a card anybody has trouble understanding. Because we've built to the system in a very specific way and that effect just doesn't work and that's that by the way it's really hard for the art whenever on my blog i say the rules didn't allow this they get really upset they're like like the rules should allow anything i'm like well one of the givens of the rules is we want a we want consistency right we want when something happens one way it'll happen the same way in a different circumstance because the rules is we want a, we want consistency, right? We want when something happens one way, it'll happen the same way in a different circumstance

because the rules are too big for people to know them all. But the idea is if they can learn the generalities of how things work, then you have a working, like most people can have a working knowledge of the rules and that, oh, in most cases I can figure it out. If I understand these principles, I can understand how the game

works. And yeah, there's always weird cases and like one of the, I can figure it out. If I understand these principles, I can understand how the game works. And, yeah, there's always weird cases. And, like, one of the, I mean, I'm the silver border rule manager, so I do what you do on a smaller scale, where people ask me weird questions all the time, and I have to figure out, okay, how does that work? I get weirder questions, probably at a higher percentage than you do, although you get weird ones, too, just because the questions are coming from more bizarre places.

But, I mean, one of the things that I've really learned is, I can sort of fill myself in your shoes, is when somebody's trying to ask something, I'm like, okay, get with the going. And I'm like, oh, how is that supposed to work? And I want to be consistent, right? Like, we want to make sure that whatever we say, it works the same way when you're doing something else. Um, and so it's, right. It's, and I, the way I'm most in your shoes is someone asked me some sort of unquestioned, I'm trying to solve it. And I often will talk to you and I'm like, how would the real, how would the normal rules

handle this? Cause you know, I, I have an odd given that I'm saying is okay to have, um, you know, Yeah, that's, that's, uh, uh you know yeah that's that's uh uh that that's actually a really funny thing is that when i first got hired uh i remember the first time you sent me a question about something related to uncards i was just like wait what is this about i don't understand what question i'm getting right now and then i had to realize that what card you were talking about because uh you uh you asked me a question about something related to an un-card, but you didn't tell me that it was an un-card first.

Oh, sure. What is this text? I don't understand. Yeah, I have to tell you the card I'm talking about because sometimes I get in the weeds, right? Because we're trying to figure something out and I'm trying to solve something and it's about an un-card,

but I get in the weeds. And then you don't know, because I also contact you a non-un-thing. So you don't know that I'm necessarily contacting you about an un-card, but I get in the weeds. And then you don't know, because I also contact you a non-un-thing. So like, you don't know that I'm necessarily contacting you about un-things. So I've learned to be clear when I talk to you. Oh, I mean, it's hilarious in retrospect. It's just at that moment, I was just like,

I don't, did we print a card that does this? And then I realized we're talking about the Zen card. I'm like, okay, well, we can build a consistent answer off of that. Here's how that would work if we did that in this other case. And then we get to an answer and it works great. That story from when I first got hired was funny to me. Yeah, I remember that on my end that you were just very confused and I'm like, oh, wait, let me explain what's going on. So I can see my desk, so I'm not too far from work.

So I want to ask you this question before we wrap up for today, which is, what is the funnest part about being the Magic Rules Manager? The funnest part about being Magic Rules Manager is that I get to interact with the Magic Rules in a way that really no other human gets to. When I was a Magic Judge before this this i was very involved in uh magic rules making sure that they were uh enforced and the game worked correctly at a high level at pro tours and events such as that but when i got this job as the rules manager it really gave a new perspective on it where i get to help develop a system that makes this incredibly fun game work properly and we get to say what do we want it to

do uh that's that's when somebody says hey can this work and the answer is well maybe what do we want it to do let's build rules that make that work that's probably the most fun part of my job for me is to say yes we could do this weird crazy thing let's do it and uh and that's why i think that drives to the philosophy of just like yeah let's figure out how we can do it and uh and that's why i think that drives through the philosophy of just like yeah let's figure out how we can do it as opposed to just saying no we can't do that yeah one of my uh my favorite thing i mean just having worked on magic for so long is there's cards that i like that i'll be told we can't do and then i i just wait for the next rules manager to see can they can they do this and like, for example, the card where you take over your opponent's turn.

Mindslaver. Mindslaver. I first pitched during Tempest. It was supposed to be Volras Helm. It ended up becoming, I mean, we changed the card. But I didn't know who the rules manager was at the time. But they were like, you know, taking over the opponent's turn,

it cannot be done. And then, you know, when we were doing Mirrodin, I had a different rules manager, and so I presented again, and he's like, wait a minute, I think we could do that. And what I've learned working with rules managers is, like, different rules managers think slightly differently.

And, you know, like, whenever we present a new problem, it's like, okay, it's a problem to solve. How do we solve that? And it's neat working with different rules managers because each one has been a little bit different in how they think of things, you know? And so, like, I think it's neat, like, just interacting with lots of different rules managers

of something that for some person, like, that's impossible, it can't be done, to somebody else's, no, no, no, maybe we could do that. Yeah, well, some of that comes from, and I know we're short on time, but some of that comes from the fact that as the game progresses and we get more rules and more mechanics sometimes the game gets better at doing things so when we introduced devil face cards for example that opened up a whole new way of

making cards that do fun things in the game and then we did we have other other things where you might ask a question where years ago the answer would be no and now the answer is actually we've already built the foundation and framework for that with this other mechanic we just build off of that and do something new uh and i i really enjoy that as well so i hope we keep doing new things right i i promise you we will keep doing new things um but uh so as a final note i mean one of the things that's fun i mean reason i wanted to have you on is just I have a lot of fun working with you. You know, it is, it is, I know in the past I've made fun of sort of making an adversary relationship just because it's funny that, you know, like the rules manager and the head designer butting heads because it's funny. You know, Tayback and I used to play that up just because it was a fun story, I guess.

But really, it's, I mean, our job, and you do a lot of things beyond just interacting with me in fact I'm sure our interaction is a tiny tiny portion of what you do I just throw I force you to have to reinvent things but a lot of your job also is fine tuning

things or we're doing something we've done before but there's one card that does something slightly different you know there's a lot of how do we make this one thing work rather than the whole set? Like you and I talk systems, because usually I'm trying to do a whole new thing. But a lot of the rules is here's one card. How does this one card specifically have to work

based on the systems and the rules and stuff? Yeah. I mean, I've enjoyed all of our interactions. We've done a lot of stuff with making new things. I mean, I haven't worked with Wizards that long, so a lot of the stuff that we've worked on, we can't talk about yet. But I'm very excited for stuff that we've worked on together.

Yeah, I'll do a little teaser story before we wrap up for today. So when we decided that Unfin Infinity was going to have some, like, some of it was going to be Acorn and some Black Bordered, I made a team to sort of figure out, like, what's where. And you were one of the people that I was on the team with. Me, you, Emma,

and Tayback. And Emma was there to talk about, like, constructed, you know, legacy play and stuff. And Tayback was the editor. And you, obviously, were the rules manager, and it was sort of like, can the game do this? Can the game do that?

And it was a lot of fun. You would surprise me. Sometimes I was sure the game couldn't do it. You're like, eh, no problem. Game can do that. And other times I was sure it was easy to do. Oh yeah, that's a problem. So it was very interesting.

It was a fun game internally. I was always trying to figure out whether you thought, you would say whether we could do it or not. Yeah, I definitely remember surprising you with things. There were even cards that were so surprising to you that

you asked me multiple times. You would ask me and then later on you were like, I marked this one down as you said it was okay. Did you really say this? So, later this year, you you guys I mean I think there'll be some cards that are

that are not acorn that will surprise people and then vice versa there'll be some cards that are acorn we're like

why in the world is this acorn and it's like well this is a little rule that you know so but anyway maybe at some point

I'll have you on once that thing is known you and I can talk about why is this this and why is that, and we can talk through the nuance of what is and isn't doable. I would love that. That sounds fantastic. But anyway, I can see my desk. So we all know what that means.

It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I want to thank you, Jess, for being with us. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. I had a lot of fun. And to all you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.