Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #938: Double-Faced Cards

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

For this podcast, I look at the history and design evolution of double-faced cards.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk all about double-faced cards. It is something, basically I feel that it is, it's more so than a mechanic. In fact, it's larger than a single mechanic. It's a tool, is what I would describe it as. And so what I mean by this, when I say double-faced cards, let me explain exactly. I'm going to talk about cards today in which both sides of the card have something on them other than there's no back, per se, that the back of the card has a face on it. So when I say double-faced cards, I mean both sides have a face

on it. From rules purposes, I think we define double-faced cards. So I'm going to talk today about all the cards that have things on both sides. A few of them might technically not be double-faced cards from a strictly rule standpoint. But from my standpoint of thinking of the resource of being able to print on the back, that's what I'm talking about today. So today is a history of where that came from, and then sort of the evolution of how we've used it, and a little bit of talk about where it's going.

Okay, so the origin of double-faced cards actually doesn't start with magic. It starts with a different game. So we make another trading card game at Wizards of the Coast called Duel Masters. It is a game that I and four other people designed many years ago for the Japanese market. And it is sold, right now it's sold only the Japanese market. We have brought it to the U.S. a couple times. It never really took off in the U.S., but it is very popular in Japan. The trading card games are very, very popular in Japan. There's a lot of them. Here in the United States, we have, there's some, I'm not saying there's none,. There's a lot of them. Here in the United States, we have,

there's some, I'm not saying there's none, but it's a lot less. Where in Japan, they became quite the thing, especially with kids, and there's just a lot of them. So we decided that we wanted to make one for the Japanese market, and we made a brand new game called Duel Masters. I think I did a podcast on Duel Masters specifically. But anyway, so one of the things about the market is there are a lot of competition. There's a lot of trading card games. And it's marketed mostly at younger kids. And so they're always looking for exciting things, how to differentiate yourself.

And so at some point they realized that they could print on both sides of the card. Then they could make cards in which it didn't have a back. Now the way that Duel Masters did this is they had a separate zone. So the idea was you didn't put the double-faced cards in your deck. You put them in the special zone and then cards in your deck got them out of the zone. That's how it worked in Duel Masters. Okay, so anyway, Duel Masters had made this. It was a thing. It was relatively popular. Okay, so now we come to magic.

So we are working on Innistrad. And one of the goals of Innistrad that I laid out was, we were doing a lot of horror tropes. But the one thing that we were doing that magic hadn't done much of was werewolves. And I think at that point there had been two or three werewolves. There had been very few werewolves up to that point, and none of them were at all memorable. We had not really done a good werewolf. And so one of the things I said to the team was, okay, like part of the key to us succeeding

is I just want to make an awesome werewolf. I want to make a werewolf. He goes, that, that's a werewolf. And so I gave the team the challenge of coming up with the best way to do werewolves. And we came up with a bunch of ideas. I came up with an idea that's kind of the precursor to Day Night. Richard had an idea, but Tom Lapilli had worked

on Duel Masters, and he had seen the double-faced cards, and he's like, well, what if we use the double-faced cards? So one side could be the human, and one side could be the werewolf, and you could change back and forth. Now, we tried a bunch of different things. We tried my

day-night thing. We tried, I don't remember how Richard's thing worked. We tried, a bunch of people had ideas. We tried. And so different things. We tried my day-night thing. We tried, I don't remember how Richard's thing worked. We tried, a bunch of people had ideas. We tried. And so we tried, we tried Tom's. And I'll admit, the first time, I was a big, I was a big skeptical. I'm like, wow, this is, you know, this is a pretty big departure. Magic had never not had a back.

But one of my rules in design is try things. Don't worry about the practicality. That the earliest playtest is about, is it fun? Like, do we like it? Because one of the things, if you start worrying about practicality, you just eliminate things, and this way you get stuff that, like, you try things,

because even if you really like something, you always can adapt it and stuff, and so I don't like limitations to stop me early design. I want to try things. Let me find cool things. And so like, okay, Tom suggested that. Let's try it. And it was fun.

It was very fun. And it was by far, I mean, it was fun. It was exciting. There's something really dynamic about having. So the original plan was we were following in Duel Master's shoes. We were going to make one-sided cards that went into your deck, and then when you cast that one-sided card,

it went and got the double-sided card from outside the game and put them on the battlefield. Similar to how Duel Masters had done it. The problem we ran into was, at the time, the way our printers... I think we went to our printers and said, okay, we want these two cards to appear together

because one card fetches the other card, so they need to appear together. And I think what they said is they could guarantee us a 90% rate, meaning 90% of the time when you got the one card, you'd get the other card. But 90% wasn't good enough for us.

We needed to be really, really close to 100%. And so we started looking at other options. One of the options is just, we did some research, and what we found was 90, I don't know, it was like 94% of people playing Constructed Magic played with sleeves. So we said, okay, well, maybe we could, you know, most people probably could just play,

we could just give them the double-faced card. And we said, okay, well, most people will play with sleeves. And then we came up with the idea of the checklist card. Well, if they're not playing sleeves, we'll make a card that has all the names of the cards on it, and you can check off the card you're playing, and you can use that as a one-sided signifier of that card. And that's how you could play with it if you didn't have sleeves.

Anyway, by the way, we would later change that to something where you write in the thing rather than do checkoffs. That ended up being a little more pretty to look at. But anyway, so, okay. So I, what happens is when I think I have something I want to do that I know is kind of bigger than design. And what I mean by that is

we were at, we wanted to do something that involved, for example, printing. Like printing on both sides. I mean, Dual Masters had done it. Like we knew it was possible., Duel Masters had done it. We knew it was possible. We knew printers could do it, but I knew that once I was interested in doing it,

I needed to sort of let Aaron, my boss, and other people know, hey, I'm seriously interested in doing this. And trying to get other people, it was a bigger problem than just, a lot of times, oh, we've got to solve this, but it's all magic and rules and editing. Like, sort of R&D could solve the problem.

But this was bigger than that. We had to get production involved. Like, there were larger issues at hand. And like I said, it wasn't that we didn't know we could do it because dual metrics had done it. But what did it mean for magic? Like, there's things magic had done. It was making magic change things about how magic functioned. And it wasn't that the printer couldn't print it, but what problems would

it cause for us and our production and the way we make magic cards? That was one of the big issues we had to think about. So pretty early on, so design used to be a year long. This is before we got to vision design and set design play design so when it was design and development design was a year long so I would say maybe four or five months in

I think we started design in like September and like February so maybe it's six months in five, six months in I go to Aaron and say okay Aaron I'm convinced

we want to do this now at the time we had the single-sided card that fetched the double-sided card. That's where we first went to Amware. We then found out that, okay, they can't print them next to each other, so we ended up with the double-faced card. But we had to go through a bunch of rigmaroles

to sort of figure out how to do it. Everybody, like, so, on the printing side, like, once again, it was a doable thing. They had to figure out how to change things. And the other thing that's important to remember about Magic is when you're a game that makes, you know, an expansion every, or a product, you know, every month, every other month, like, when you're constantly churning things out, you have a well-ordered system. You know, a lot of things are automated. You have a lot of things to allow you to sort of consistently put something out. So when you do something different,

it can really change things. It can really cause a lot of issues that you might not even think about. Not because it's not a thing that can be done. It's just not the way it's normally done. And that can, you know, it can cause some complications. So anyway, we got in there. we talked, we learned that, okay,

we need to just make double-faced cards. We came up with the idea of checklist cards. Okay, so we think we got it figured out. We think we know how we're going to do it. Production signs off. We can make it. We physically can produce it. And then what starts happening is we start getting some feedback from other people in R&D

and a little bit elsewhere in the company, but mostly from R&D of, okay, are we supposed to be doing this? Like this is, I know, for example, Eric had taken over for development. So I had handed off design and they were in development. We had talked to production during design because I was making sure we could do it.

But anyway, I handed it off to Eric, and Eric starts getting people saying, this isn't the thing we should do. You're breaking a rule we shouldn't break. The back is an important thing. Now you're making people play with sleeves. There's logistical issues. Lots and lots of issues that came up.

And there were some die-hard people in the pit who were like, this is not something we should be making. We are crossing a line we should not cross. And Eric got a lot of pushback. So I remember Eric comes to me and says, I'm not sure what I should be doing here. I know you believe in it. I know this is your vision.

I know this is what you want. But I'm getting a lot of pushback from people that think we are making a mistake. And so I say, Eric, we are not making a mistake. This is the right thing to do. You know, hold strong. So I ended up going to Aaron, and I talked with Aaron.

I said, Aaron, look, it's the right thing. We're doing something cool. I think the players are going to like it. I understand it's different. I understand it's pushing in a place we haven't gone before. But, you know, look, Magic is all about us pushing boundaries and trying new things. And Duel Masters did this. It was very successful in Duel Masters. You know, like, maybe we try this and it's a bomb and we never do it again.

But we should try it, you know. And the funny thing is, at the time, I said, I go, look, if it's successful, this opens up a whole new avenue for us. There's a whole slew of design space. Because, by the way, at the time we had made the original ones, we had figured out other ways to use it, like modal double-faced cards, which I'll talk about later. Like, we had figured out we could do that. Like, I knew from the very first of making the cards, once we started

on that path, it was clear there was a lot of space for a lot of other things going on. So anyway, I go to Aaron, I say, Aaron, 100% we should do this. Aaron goes to Eric and says, we're doing it. Whoever bugs you, send it to Aaron. I say, Aaron, 100% we should do this. Aaron goes to Eric and says, we're doing it. Whoever bugs you, send it to me.

We're doing it. So anyway, it ends up, we finally sign off on it. We're doing it. We print it. Okay, so my next favorite story of the Double Face Cards is we're at the party. So for years at PAX, which is a game convention in Los Angeles, not Los Angeles, in Seattle, that we would hold a party

where we would premiere the upcoming set. And so we had a party for Andestrad, and the whole room's decked out and flavored, like gothic horror and this and that. And at one point we're having a big reveal, and we do the big reveal, we have this magic card that, like, you know, gothic horror and this and that. And at one point, we're having a big reveal. And we do the big reveal. We have this magic card that is, like, I don't know, four to six feet large. Like, a pretty big magic card, right?

A giant magic card. Maybe it's, like, six feet. A giant magic card. It's very big, very tall. And then we, like, so, like, the music comes on, and, like, the card is covered. And a spotlight goes on the card and the card reveals and I think it's the vampire that turns into a bat I think

we reveal the vampire and then like music happens and the card rotates and you see the back and it's a bat and we're like ha ha a double-faced card and the audience had no idea

what we were doing they're like oh that first card okay that's interesting oh you're showing first card, okay, that's interesting. Oh, you're showing us the second card. Okay, that's interesting. Like, no one understood that we were showing a singular card. Because the idea was such a crazy idea that, like, even though we physically showed a card and showed it rotating and it was on the back, no one said, well, that, you know,

oh, they're just showing us multiple cards and one was on the back of the other. Like, no one got the idea. And I remember I had a copy of the card with me because I actually predicted this could be a problem. And so I remember talking to people, like reporters and different people, and like showing them the card. I'm like, see, here's the card.

This is on the front and this is on the back. And like, I remember the dawning of like, oh, there's something on the back. Like people were like, like It was such a crazy idea that people couldn't fathom that's what we were doing. And when I told them, they were very excited. It was a very exciting idea, but it definitely was something that was sort of like, it was, nowadays we make a lot of double-faced cards. Maybe it doesn't seem quite as shocking.

But in its day, at its time, it was quite revolutionary. So anyway, we make them in Innistrad, and we make them in Dark Ascension. So the original ones we make are the transforming double-faced cards, as we call them now. At the time, they were just double-faced cards. So what that means

is you cast the front side, and then you do something to get to the back side. For the werewolves, we came up, we didn't name it, but the werewolves basically had the early version of day-night, which was, you know, at the beginning of the turn, if on the last turn you cast no spells, they became the werewolf, and if you cast two or more spells, they became, they became, and the idea And the way it worked was it looked at the last player's turn

whether they did that. But anyway, we made the werewolves, we made a bunch of other cards, you know. We made the... Oh, the reason by the way that I really fell in love with the double-faced cards is the realization of how much dark transformation meant to horror.

Oh, it's an innocent girl. Now she's turned into a demon. She's possessed by a demon. Or it's a vampire that turns into a bat. Or it's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We realized all these cool transformational things. And so we did that. It came out.

Huge hit. Everybody loved it. I mean, not everybody. 90% of the audience loved it. 10% hated it. Hated it with a passion. So there was an audience. There was a small portion of the audience loved it. 10% hated it, hated it with a passion. So there was an audience, there was a small portion of the audience,

but there was a loud part of the audience that really, really, really did not like them. Much akin to kind of what happened behind at Wizards is most of us liked it, but a few people really didn't like it. The same happened with players. But, and the funny thing was, so Innistrad Dark Ascension, Avacyn Restored

was the third set in block. We purposely did not do double-faced cards in that set because there was nervousness about it, and we're like, well, we're doing new mechanics in that set. We don't need to do it. We're not going to, because, like, there was enough worry about it that we didn't do them. And then, ironically, the number one complaint,

the number one complaint about Absinthe Restored is wear of a double-faced card. So anyway, they go over pretty well. So next, Magic Origins. I remember Sean Main, who is the lead designer for Magic Origins, came to me and said, I have a neat idea, but I just want to know whether it's something we can do. And he talked about having planeswalkers that are the legendary creatures on the front, and they turn

into their planeswalker. Because we were trying to show the origin story of the five main members of the Gatewatch, the beginning members of the Gatewatch, although Liliana joined shortly after the other four. But anyway, we wanted to show those five and so he said, look,

the coolest way to show sort of before and after is show a legendary creature card and have it turn into a Planeswalker. And I said, absolutely. I go, that's an awesome execution. You know, there's no way to do, like, nothing we could do would be nearly as awesome as that. And so we did it. So in Indusriding Dark Ascension, there was a slot dedicated to the Double-Faced card. So Magic Origins, for the first time,

had Double-Faced cards that were there, but not every pack had a Double-Faced card. They were rare, or Mythic Rare. I assume they were Mythic Rare. So anyway, but they were a huge hit. And to this day, people keep asking us to do more of them. They really like them. Okay, next.

The next time we do double-secretaries is not until we return to Innistrad. So Shadows over Innistrad. So basically, Shadows over Innistrad did what we had done in Innistrad. I think we changed the rules so the mana value at the back matched the mana value at the front.

And the other thing we changed was we put more in per pack. I think we put one per pack in Innistrad and it was like one and a half per pack, I think. It was more than one per pack. I don't think it was two. I don't think it was two. But it was somewhere between 1.5 and two.

My memory is 1.5, but it might have been. It changed a bit. And then Eldritch Moon, which was the second set in the Return Edit did something brand new with double-faced cards. Meld.

So we had been trying to do a mechanic where you took cards and put them together. I made a card in Unglued called BFM Big Furry Monster that had a left side

and a right side and you had to cast both had to be in your hand and you cast them together and they enter the battlefield as a singular giant 99-99 card. Biggest thing ever. And we've been trying to do something of that kind, and I know in, like, New Phyrexia, we

had cards that, like, snapped together, and we tried a whole bunch of things. Finally, I think it was Kanego that figured out, oh, one of the ways we could do that is if the front are normal cards and the backs are the left half and the right half, when both are in play, they can transform and snap together, basically. And once again, by the way, I don't know if they technically transform. Same as with the Planeswalkers. Transform means it stays in play and it changes its state.

Sometimes what we do is we have it leave the battlefield and come back as the other side, which is a little bit different in how the rules interact with it. And so it's not technically transforming. The Planeswalkers weren't technically transforming. I don't think Mutate is technically transforming. Or not Mutate, sorry, Meld. M weren't technically transforming I don't think Mutate is technically transforming or not Mutate sorry Meld Meld

Meld Meld's technically transforming but anyway we introduced and also for the first time I think we had werewolves that started as werewolves

and turned into Andrazi so we did something a little bit different with the werewolves and it's a good example one of the things we started realizing with the double-faced cards

was there's a lot of flavor that came from them. The fact that you saw two different pieces of art and two different sides meant you really got to tell a story. That was kind of cool. Okay, so next up is Ixalan. Ixalan realizes that they're trying to do something kind of cool. There's this exploration theme that's going on. So they come up with

the idea of double-faced cards where the backside is a land. And because you had to jump through a hoop to get there, we could do very sexy lands. Like we did a land that's basically Gaea's Cradle, which is a very overpowered land. And so the idea is through different means you can come and find something and that leads you to this legend. I think they're all legendary lands. And once again, they were at higher rarities, they weren't one per pack, we had learned from Magic Origins how to

do this, but anyway, I think Ixalan's a good example where we start to realize, in Magic Origins 2, where, hey, maybe we have a cool thing to do with the double-faced cards that are not a major, they're not a huge part of the set, but there's a splashy part of the set, they're a cool part of the set, that we're willing to dedicate some space to do that. So, obviously, we did that with X-Line. Next up is

Core 2019. That has one double-faced card, and the only set that has one double-faced card. It had Nicole Bolas, the Ravager, which was, it was a set themed on Nicole Bolas, a Core set, and so we decided to give a Bolas, here's the legendary creature before he's a planeswalker, and he turns into a planeswalker. And that was, be aware, whenever we do double-faced cards, we have to make a dedicated sheet to double-faced cards.

So doing one meant there was an entire sheet that all it had on it was Nicole Bolas. And same with when we did the Planeswalker. So if it's a major part, it's something that we can do. As you'll see, as we go along with double-faced cards, we just kind of learn they're very flexible and there's a lot of different things we can do

with them. And so it is something we're always wondering. But we have the technology now. We can do a lot. We can do a little. There's a cost associated with it. So if it's a little, it really, really has to be of huge value to the set. Just to do it, just to do it is not something we would do. Okay, so next up is Zendikar Rising.

So way, way back when we first made the cards in Innistrad, we realized that there was other ways to do them. So modal double-faced cards say, hey, transforming you play the front side and it can cards say, hey, transforming you to play the front side and it can turn to the back side, sometimes back to the front side. Modal is, look, you play the back, you play the front,

and it's not the other, and that's what it is. It's kind of like a split card, except that split cards can't do permanence. And split cards have a much smaller space because it's half a card, so you have to do very simple effects. Modal double-faced cards allow us to have a lot more flexibility, and I realized when I was playing

around with them that there was so much space in them that I spread them out across a whole magic year. So Zendikar Rising had land on the back. Different things on the front, but always land on the back. And I think all the lands below rare tapped for one color, and they entered colorless. And then the mythic rare ones, you lost life, I think, when they entered, but they entered untapped. Anyway, so then in Kaldheim, we used them to represent the gods. So the front side was always a god, a legendary creature that's a god. And the back side was something else legendary. It could be an artifact. It could be an enchantment.

It could be a creature. It could be a planeswalker. It could be all sorts of things. So the idea being they were all things that are associated with it. Like, you know, the all-seeing father of the gods had his raven and the keeper of the bridge had the prismatic bridge and, you know, the god who's known for his hammer has his hammer.

Stuff like that. And then we got to Strixhaven. Strixhaven originally was going to be spells on the back, but then we realized that adventures had gotten made in Throne of Eldraine, and they were kind of close to that. So mostly what we did in Strixhaven is played up the oppositeness,

and we had the deans, and we had different things that represented the conflict of the two sides. I think we did make a mistake on the deans that they're too complicated, that the cards didn't relate to each other. The version we had turned over, they were opposite, but they were correlated to each other in a way that the finished didn't relate to each other. Like the version we had turned over, they were opposite, they were opposite, but they were correlated to each other in a way that the finished product wasn't. I think they were trying to make them more friendly for Commander, but they ended up being a little too much.

We did learn that there's limits how much information you can put on both sides. That just because it fit doesn't mean that that was okay. Then Midnight Hunt of Crimson Vow, so Indescribe Midnight Hunt, Indes at Crimson Vow. So Innistrad Midnight Hunt at Crimson Vow. So both those sets were our third return to Innistrad. Those mostly did what we had done before. The two big differences is we had the day-night mechanic.

So there's this external mechanic that could dictate changing size and things. So that was a little bit new. And we had the Disturb mechanic. There's a mechanic that you could play it out of the graveyard as the opposite side. So like Meld, like one of the things you're seeing is, not only are we doing double-faced cards, but as we evolve, we're finding new ways to use them, like modal double-faced cards.

We're finding mechanics that work within them. So like Meld and Disturb are both like mechanics that kind of only work on the double-faced cards. So like I said, double-faced cards are bigger than mechanics. They're a tool. And now there are mechanics that work specifically because we can't do them without double-faced cards. Then we get to Neon Dynasty.

So in Neon Dynasty, we had these sagas that turned into creatures. In fact, when I turned over the file, I had them as single-faced cards, and I made a note that said, look, these can be done as double-faced cards, but we're doing a lot of double-faced cards. Do we want these to be double-faced cards? Set design looked into it, and they were just

so much cooler as double-faced cards. It allowed them to have the creature do more on the backside. One of the challenging of double-faced cards is, from a game design standpoint, they are so attractive. They allow you to do a lot of things design-wise that you can't do on a single side. Creatively, they let you tell a much more inclusive, comprehensive story, you know, because you get two pieces of art,

and you get transitions, so something happens. So Neon Dynasty ended up doing them as double-faced cards. So we did have quite the run there from Zendikar through Neon Dynasty, seven sets in a row had double-faced cards. So what is the future of double-faced cards? The future is bright for double-faced cards. They become, like I said, one of the goals for me as the head designer is I'm supposed to find new tools for us to use.

I want to go out and find things we've never done before that not only lets us do something, but has a lot of space in it, right? I want to find things that let us have infinite new space. And double-faced cards have been one of the deepest wells that I have discovered. Once again, Duel Master created it, so we got it from Duel Masters.

But as far as bringing it to Magic, it's one of the things that has proven to be very, very deep. In fact, one of the running jokes is that we do transitional things all the time in Magic. That there's a lot of things that are single-sided that could be double-faced. Like, Monstrosity is a good example, right? Like, you have a creature,

and it turns into a different creature on the back. Now, we use plus one, plus one counters to mark this and that, but, like, that could just be the other creatures on the back that Monstrosity just turns into the other creature. Same with Adapt, which is a version of Monstrosity. So, like, there's a lot

of things we do that could be double-faced cards. And so, one of the things now that's happening is, almost every set, we're like, okay, this thing that could be a double-faced card, is it supposed to be a double-faced card? And, I mean, it's something we're really trying to figure out. Like, clearly

there's things that can't be done without it. There's some mechanics, like Meld or Disturb, that clearly there's things that can't be done without it. There's some mechanics, like meld or disturb, that, like, you really can't do it without the double-faced card. So if you're going to do meld, you have to have double-faced cards. So sometimes it's like we want to do something,

and, like, okay, the nature of what we're doing can't be done not on double-faced cards. So clearly in those cases, if we want to do it, then there'll be double-faced cards. The trickier thing is, like, in Neon Dynasty,

where, you know what? We probably could do it as a single side. It would limit kind of what we can do and restrict our design space. Like, for example, if we had done the Saga creatures as single-faced cards, we'd have to simplify what the creatures could be. Right? The backside of the creature.

So could we make Kiki-Jiki? Maybe not. Maybe that wouldn't have fit. Maybe we could just make French Vanilla things. So there are limitations when we don't do it. So one of the things whenever we can do it single-sided, single-faced, we have to sort of ask ourselves, what are we gaining? Is it worth it? And look at the set. And one of the things we do understand is that double-faced cards come with an honest-to-God logistical

issue that we shouldn't ignore. Just because a lot of people play with sleeves does not mean that everybody plays with sleeves. There are a lot of people that don't play with sleeves. And so, even if we say something like 94% of constructed play with sleeves, that's

6% that don't. 6% of magic players is a lot of magic players. And, you know, and that's not even kind of limited, which is a whole different issue of people playing. So, it is something that we're very cautious of. Like I said,

the reason if someone said to me, we can never do Devil Face cards again, I'd be sad, because there's a lot of really cool things we can do with them. And, I mean, you guys have just seen some of the things we can do with them. There's a bunch more things we can do with them. I've explored the space, and I'm continuing to explore the space. One of the things that's interesting about them is

we keep discovering kind of new ways to use them in ways we hadn't thought of before. And so, I do think that AA cards are a really interesting vein. I get it comes with a cost. I do get that having seven sets in a row was a bit much. That wasn't, or not seven sets in a row, sorry. Six out of seven sets in a row, because Dungeon Dragons didn't have them. But six out of seven is a lot, especially in the standard, having six sets in standard.

Was that right, seven? No, six, six, six. I did count. Okay. Anyway, it is something that we have to be careful with. Ironically, one of the things that I've become is I'm the one that keeps asking, does it have to be double-faced cards? I'm the one in Neon Dynasty that said, does it have to be?

Can we do it without it? And so I'm really challenging about when it needs to be and when it doesn't need to be. It's always kind of cooler with double-faced cards creatively, and it allows us a little more flexibility um but we do want to be careful like it does come out of cost we do understand that um but it also freezes up to do cool new things so like we we will see more double-faced cards it is something we're going to do uh you know i i i don't think we'll i don't know we'll have quite as many quite as often as we did for the last two years. But it is something we will do again.

You will see more of them. They will be part of sets. It is something that does add a lot to Magic. And the survey, just so people are aware, while there are a small percentage of people that don't like them, they are wildly popular. People as a whole really, really do like them. And even the naysayers, some of them have come around over time

because we've done a lot of cool things with them. I remember there were some people when we made modal double-faced cards that wrote to me and said, I've never been a fan of double-faced cards, but I love modal double-faced cards, so I guess I like them now. So I have some of that. So anyway, so that is the history of double-faced cards.

And there's a lot of cool stuff we've done. And it was an interesting task, or an interesting adventure getting them made. And then along the way. So anyway, guys, I'm now at work. 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. I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye.