Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #963: Build-Arounds

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

In this podcast, I talk about designing cards that are meant to inspire players to build decks around them.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work. Okay, so today's Drive to Work, the topic is based on a question I got on Twitter. So I was asked how we decide how to make our build-arounds, and both what rarity we put them at, what car type we put them in, like how do we decide how to make them. So first I will explain what build-arounds are, and then I will explain how we put them at, what card type we put them in, like how do we decide how to make them. So first I will explain what build arounds are and then I will explain how we make them. That is today's topic. Okay, so a build around is a card designed to encourage the player when building their deck to build a certain theme or strategy into their deck. Like a build-around says, hey, to maximize me, your deck wants to be different than normal.

You want to lean into something. Maybe it's a certain creature type. Maybe it's a certain color or color combination. Or maybe it's a certain mechanic or style of play. Like it's doing something that says, hey, you want to function a little bit differently. Like when building your deck, you want to build your deck a little bit differently because if you do this thing, I will give you some reward

that's worth it in your deck for doing that. That's a build-around. So when talking about build-arounds, really we have to talk about what format we're making them for. We make lots of build-arounds for lots of formats, but in order to explain that, I need to walk through it. Oh, another thing before I get into how we do it, I also want to explain that there are different kinds of build-arounds.

I guess I should explain that first. So there are what I would call Timmy Tammy build-arounds, which is, it just lets you do something you're excited to do. Oh, I've always wanted to have a deck built around this creature type, or I always, you know, it just sort of says, hey, this thing that you think would be fun, this card says do that thing. That's kind of a Timmy Tammy build-around.

A Johnny Jenny build-around does one of two things, usually. Either it says, here's a goal, but it's a weird goal, and you have to figure out how to accomplish it. A good example for that might be Laboratory Maniac, right? Where it says, if your library is empty, if you're going to draw from your library and you can't because it's empty, you win the game. So it's like, okay, how do I get to the point

where I can win the game with Laboratory Maniac? So some Johnny-Jenny build-arounds are like, how do I do that? Another style of Johnny and Janney build-arounds are, I'm letting you do something weird. You know, you can take a creature from the graveyard, put it onto the battlefield for the turn. It can't attack or block, and then it dies again. This is seance. And like, okay, what do I do with that? Well, why do I want creatures

to come back from the graveyard if I can't attack or block with them? What's the point of that? And then it's like, okay, well, what could I do? Enter the battlefield effects or death triggers. You sort of figure out, how do I take advantage of that? And then a spike build around is usually messing around with

resources, usually, and it says, okay, if you can figure out how to optimize me, I'm a powerful means to drive a deck, to do something powerful in a deck. And so it's sort of like, okay, how do I optimize this engine? How do I optimize this system to get the most power out of it? So there are a lot of different kinds of build arounds. And like I said, as I will talk today, build-arounds are fun. Like Magic is, at its core, a game in which it's a deck-building game, right? There's that we want you to say, like, you get to customize your deck. You get to put whatever you want into your deck.

So what's really fun is to throw cards at you that sort of say, okay, here's an interesting thing. Now go do this thing. And sometimes it's very obvious. Sometimes it's not so obvious. It kind of depends who's it's targeted at. But, you know, build arounds really sort of throw the gauntlet down and say, do this.

Okay, so when figuring out how to make a build around, there are a couple of things to think about. So I want to talk about by format because build aroundounds have different functions and different formats. And different formats have different needs and rarities and all sorts of stuff. So I'm going to walk format by format.

And then if I have time at the end, I might talk a little bit about how you just make good build-arounds. I'll get to that at the end part. Okay, so first let's start with limited. So the idea in limited is, and more drafts than sealed. Builder rounds are hard to make work in sealed. They just are.

You don't have any control over anything. In draft, if you open up a builder round in pack one, oh, well then you can draft around it as it goes along. So builder rounds in limited are more about draft than sealed. I'm not saying it's impossible to make one in sealed, but they have to be very, very broad to make any sense in sealed because you'd have so much less control over what you have. But for draft, Build-A-Rounds are very interesting. And the most interesting thing about Build-A-Rounds is

one of the things that we're trying to do when we make a draft is we want it to be an experience that you can do again and again. Yeah, we want the first draft to be fun, but we want the fifth draft to be fun. We want the tenth draft. We want the 40th. We want the 100th. We want every draft to be fun. And one of the tricks to making drafts last longer is build-arounds. Because what build-arounds do is there are cards that say, well, actually, there's a couple different build-arounds in Limited. So build-around number one is what we call the signpost uncommon. And what that is, is we want to encourage you to do something, usually in two-color combinations, sometimes three, sometimes one, depending on the stat.

But traditionally, they're two-color combinations. And so what we'll do at uncommon is we'll make a cycle, usually of gold cards, that are those two colors that then encourage you to build around something so they're those are builder runs playing in theme right oh in this set um you know uh green blue is all about the mechanic of the set you know it's uh whatever the you know it's kicker or whatever or landfall whatever the mechanic of the set is and like okay we want to build around that so we want you to build a landfall deck. So blue and green might have a landfall effect on it or may have an effect that helps you get lands in addition. So what we tend

to do in the signposts is we want to sort of message what the strategy is. And we often want to encourage you to build around that strategy. So not every gold post uncommon is a build around. Some of them are just very strong within their theme. But we like often to make ones that say, hey, I care about this thing. Like, for example, oftentimes we will have a creature type matter in an archetype. Like in Kanzit's Arc here, I think white-black was warriors. So, hey,

the white-black card might say I care about warriors. I aid warriors. I give warriors plus one plus one. I do something positive for warriors. So it says if you open that in the first pack, oh, I want to care about warriors. Okay. I'm going to prioritize creatures that are warriors. That's going

to value to me. When I look at a card, if it's a warrior, I now treat it higher than I normally would. Now, that is a sort of in-theme build-around. There also are, and when I think of build-arounds, this is what I normally think of, but the goalposts are build-arounds. The other thing I'm thinking about is what I would call other strategy build-arounds.

What I mean by that is spider spawning from Innistrad is a good example, where there's just this thing. Spider spawning says, hey, if you do this thing, I can win the game for you. But you have to kind of dedicate your deck to doing this, and then I can help you win the game with this. I can make infinite spiders. But in order to do that, you have to jump through this hoop. So the nice thing about build-arounds that are sort of more niche

build-arounds in Limited is it says, hey, let's say you open this in your first pack and you pick it. Okay, you're going to go on a journey. You're going to do something you've never done before. You're going to have a new draft experience. I'm going to make you care about something you don't normally care about. And because you care about that, the lens of the draft is different. The way you draft is different. The way you think of things is different. And that makes for a very fun experience. So let's say I've done all the main themes of the set. Now, ooh, I got this card early. Now I can build around this card. I've never done that. So in limited, build arounds usually at their core, want to be uncommon. And the reason for that is, if you're at uncommon,

you will show up usually in a draft two to four times as an uncommon. I mean, it's capable of showing up once, but I mean, usually about two to four. Now, if we put you at common, you show up like six to eight times in a draft. And it can be a little more or less depending on other factors. Sometimes, like, we'll swap out a common for a double-faced card and stuff. So it can vary a little bit. But what we find is not only are builder runs a little more complicated than we want a common. So they also don't fit a common from a complexity standpoint.

But they come up a little too often. So normally what we want to do is we want to make uncommons that say, I have a strategy, you want to do something. Like a real common one we'll do is a milling card that says, oh, if you build around me, you can have a milling strategy. Now, most sets don't have a straight up milling strategy. A few sets do, but most don't. So it's sort of like, okay, you know, oh, if you get me, I, you know, I give you this plan.

It's something you can do. And sometimes the build-arounds play into normal themes. Like, if it's a set with landfall, maybe landfalling into milling is an uncommon card that you can try to build around to mill somebody out if you want. If you're doing a landfall deck and, oh, I can put this in and maybe I can make a milling landfall deck rather than a traditional deck. Other times it's doing something tangential. It's sort of like, oh, here's something that's in the set but not the focus of the set.

Now, normally build-arounds, especially limited, want to be something that the set shows up in some value. Oh, before I get to that, I said that normally we don't do common. There's one exception to common. We do occasionally what we call collect-me's. And so what a collect-me is, is something that gets stronger in strength. For example, seven dwarves was a card in the Throne of Eldraine. And

oh, the dwarves make each other more powerful. So that's a common because, oh, maybe I want to try to get as many dwarves as possible and have a dwarf deck. That is something you could dream of doing. So collect means tend to be done in common. Other than that, the base build-arounds are done in uncommon. But we do have build-arounds in higher rarity. So let me talk through those.

Usually an uncommon build-around is something that's core to the draft experience. And what I mean by that is whatever it's telling you to do, that that thing exists in enough volume that it's potentially doable. Once again, there's variants and things. But if I have an uncommon that makes you want to care about something, I want to make sure that is viable in the draft.

So we have what we call trap cards, build around trap. And what that means is that if I make a card that looks like, oh, okay, you want to build around this, but then the set doesn't really allow you to do that. It's what we call a trap card. And so we want to be careful how often we make things that are traps. So we don't want people like drafting the first card going okay I'm going to care about goats and then there's no goats in the set right that that is not a fun experience

but here's the here's the tricky part about that sometimes we want to make cards for larger magic and not for the set that it's in for example let's say we're in a world and there's a creature type that doesn't show up all the time, but it shows up on this world. We might want to have a card that cares about that, a lord that cares about that. But it might not exist in enough volume to be a draft strategy or might not exist. Like usually if it's a draft strategy, it's centered in colors.

Okay, well, if I want you to draft, you know, in Throne of Eldraine, there's a fairy draft in blue and black, right? I talked about Contra Terkir and warriors in white and black. Minotaurs were in black and red in original Theros. Like, there are things, there are definitely themes where

there are, like, creature types you want. Now, sometimes, though, it might be like, oh, hey, Theros does this neat thing where there are satyrs. There's not a lot of satyrs, but there are some satyrs. Okay, maybe we want to make a card that lets you build around it for constructed.

Not for limited, but for constructed. But in limited, it would kind of be a trap, because there's just really not enough there to make it work. So what we tend to do there is, when things are traps, we get them out of uncommon and we put them normally at

rare. Mythic rare, the only reason we'll put a builder on a mythic rare, well, there's a couple reasons. One, the reason we put it at mythic rare is that there's a card we made for constructed purposes that's a really good card that was going to be

really fun for constructed, but just is problematic and limited. It'll just wreck games and limit it. And so what we'll do is we'll put it in Mythic Rare just to minimize its ability to affect limited. I mean, obviously it's going to have some effect on limited, but being a Mythic Rare, it shows up half the time, or less than half the time.

Anyway, it shows up far less than a rare. And so it allows us to, like, so in that case, if we have a card that's really, really meant for constructed, but we don't want it messing up limited, we will put it at mythic rare. Also, sometimes there's something that's just super splashy and feels big and grandiose that, once again, is more of a build-around for constructed than for limited.

And usually it's something that feels exciting, it feels unique, it feels special, but it's not relevant for limited. And usually it's something that feels exciting, it feels unique, it feels special, but it's not relevant for limited play. Now, if it is relevant, maybe we'll move that down to rare. Rare has the interesting spot of, we do want build-a-runs at rare some of the time

to matter for limited, but there are cards we want to make that don't matter, and so we have to push those up. I haven't gotten into constructed limited, but there are cards we want to make that, like, don't matter, and so, like, we have to push those up. So, I haven't gotten into constructed yet, but one of the things to think about when we're designing for limited is we always have to think about what we call casual constructed, and what I mean by that is, so, the number one way people play magic, especially, well, this is probably true on digital and on tabletop, is what I call cards I own, which is I'm going to build a Magic deck, and I'm just going to build out of what I own. I don't know, I might not know what formats are, I might not know

anything about sort of rules of deck construction, other than maybe the super basics, maybe, and even then, maybe. I'm just sort of building something out of what I know. and maybe. I'm just sort of building something out of what I know. Not what I know, what I have. And so limited play mirrors casual constructed. Casual players, and once again

casual means multiple things. In this case I'm talking about less enfranchised players. Players who, hey a set comes out and they buy hey, four or five booster packs. They're not buying a box of booster packs. They're sort of, they sample and graze. And like, every time a set comes out and they buy, hey, four or five booster packs. They're not buying a box of booster packs. They're sort of, they sample and graze. And like, every time a set comes out, maybe they buy a few packs and then they find cards

they add to their deck. But it is not something in which a brand, you know, they're not reinventing their decks every time a new set comes out. It's sort of like they have anything they play and new sets are just new cards for the thing they play. And then once in a while, maybe there's something new in the new thing that inspires a new deck. But a lot of the time, they're just sort of adding to what they already have. And casual play, or not casual play, sorry, limited play and casual play line up a lot.

That in order to make limited work, it's like I'm playing sealed. I'm opening up six boosters. Well, that's a lot like I bought six boosters, you know. Now, given the casual player can mix in with what they already have, so it's a little bit different. But there are definitely themes and things in how we build it. When we are thinking about limited, we are also thinking about casual constructed.

And so, in general, when we build build-arounds, one of the questions we always ask ourselves is, is this a build around that has limited applications? Can you do something like this in limited? Can it work in limited? And if the answer is yes, then most of the time we will stick at it uncommon.

If the answer is, oh, this would be really fun, the casual player would really enjoy this. The people that would have fun that are just lightly building things, but this might inspire them. And that's especially true... The other thing about Constructed, as we get into Constructed,

is when you're thinking about Constructed, you're not thinking about just the set. Like, if I'm thinking about Limited, let's say, for example, I have a card that cares about fairies. I have to ask myself, oh, how many fairies are in the set? If there's a lot of fairies in the set, if you're throwing an Eldraine, okay, we could have an uncommon card that cares about fairies. But if fairies are in the set, but there's not a lot of fairies, you know, maybe I want to do

a rare card because in Constructed, hey, I have access to lots of fairies. I've, you know, depends what format I'm playing, but I have access to things in the format. So, you know, I, when we're making something for constructed, we can think bigger picture. We can think, oh, well, while this might not be easy to do within the set, it's easy to do in standard, in pioneer, in modern, in pauper, in commander. You know, we have to think larger goal. What can people do with that? What can people do with that? And a lot of sort of what goes to uncommon or rare, mythic rare, is really based on where things are going to fall, right?

Now, if we think something will be successful and popular in casual play, and it has some utility in limited, we'll try to push those to uncommon. Uncommons have a much larger reach with casual by unfranchised, once again. Casual means multiple things. So somebody who doesn't buy a lot of magic, the uncommons are much more impactful. If you only buy six packs of expansion, well, those uncommons are

on some level as unique as the rares, because you're probably only going to see one uncommon. Maybe, maybe you duplicate, but you're not going to see one uncommon. Maybe, maybe you duplicate, but you're not going to see a lot of uncommons if you're only opening six packs. Okay, so now let's get into Constructed. So the biggest problem with Constructed is a problem I will call

the Commander Divide. So Commander is a popular format, but Commander is not the majority of play so in tabletop from the data we have and once again we have a lot of what we call the invisibles people that we don't monitor

from the best we can tell from the data we have in tabletop the most played format is Commander now that two things one is that doesn't mean that Commander is the most played format is Commander. Now, two things. One is, that doesn't mean that Commander is the most played format. It's not.

That if you add up all the other formats, that makes up a larger share of Magic in tabletop than Commander. There's a lot of people that play limited formats, that draft, that play Standard and Pione and modern and pauper and infinite formats. And all those formats added together in tabletop exceed Commander. Commander is not the majority of play. It might be the mostly format, but it's not the majority of play. In addition, in online and digital, which is a lot of people play Magic digitally,

online and digital, which is a lot of people play Magic digitally, you know, Commander doesn't even exist on Arena and has a role on Magic Online, but a smaller role than it does in Tabletop Magic. So, here's the issue. Commander for build-arounds

really wants the build-arounds to be sitting on legendary creatures. The reason? Well, the very nature of Commander is variance. It's a 100-card deck, singleton, so the chance to see any one card in your main deck is limited. You will play many games where

you never see the card. So it's really, really hard to build around it, because you don't have any assurance that it's going to show up in the 99. But, as a Commander, you can build around that. That's the one card you know you have access. So commanders are where you want build-arounds

to exist in commander, right? So for purposes of commander, we want our build-arounds sitting on legendary creatures. But, for other formats, we want the exact opposite. So, for example, if I'm going to play a 60-card four but for other formats, we want the exact opposite. So, for example, if I'm going to play a four of,

a 60-card four of format, standard, modern, pioneer, etc., I want consistency, especially if I'm playing competitively. I want consistency. If I'm going to build around something, I need to make sure that I get that early. So the way you do that in the 60-card 4-up deck is playing four copies of it. So if you're going to build around something, you need to put four of them in your deck.

And sometimes, maybe even more than four. Maybe there's multiple effects that do this. Maybe you're going to clone it or something. What you want, though, is you want duplication. And then, because dead cards are very problematic in constructed formats, you want to make sure that the duplicates aren't dead cards. So them being legendary is a negative outside of commander. You don't want them to be legendary.

If I'm going to do something, you know, I want to have access to them. So, and another problem with legendary is anything that stacks. So let's say, for example, I'm going to make a card that says all my warriors get plus one, plus one. Well, I want to get multiple of those out. If I get two of them out, all my warriors get plus two, plus two. If I get three of them out, they get plus three, plus three. So being legendary actively works against what they're trying to do.

So there's this real conflict. Let's say for example, I make, let's say warriors are a big thing in the set, and I want to make warrior matters. Well, the legendary, the people in commander say oh, please, please, please make that legendary.

I want to have a warrior commander. I want to make a warrior deck in Commander. But the people who are playing other formats that want to play a warrior theme go, oh, no, no, no, no. Don't make that legendary. I need four of them. I want them to stack. I want to

take advantage of that. And so there's this tension where some of the audience wants one thing and some of the audience wants another thing and they directly contradict with one another. And so part of that is having to figure out what build-around wants to go where. Who is this build-around for? If we're making a build-around for Commander, okay, yeah, we want it to be legendary most of the time.

It is very hard to do a build-around in Commander that isn't legendary. It really kind of has to be the Commander. But if we're building a build-around in other formats, in 60-card 4-0 formats, we need to make sure that duplicates mean something. We want to make sure that if you draw a second one, it's not just a dead card. And so anyway, there's a lot of tension there. The other thing about Commander is one of the feedbacks we've gotten from the players

when doing build-around in Commander is players, A, want us to reinforce themes in a set. So if we're going to introduce a new theme, they're like, oh, make sure there's a Commander. So if I want to play that theme in Commander, I can play that theme. Now, one of the problems sometimes is some themes don't exist in enough volume that it's easy to port over to Commander.

Oh, like, for example, when Energy showed up in Kaladesh. Well, if you want to play an Energy deck, you need cards with Energy, and the only Energy cards are in this set, and there's just not enough volume for a 100-card singleton format. Now, some of those things over time, you know, like Slivers, for example, early on, would have been very hard to play in Commander, because in Tempest, they introduced

Slivers, there were, what, like 20 Slivers maybe in the whole block? That's just not enough Slivers, and they were all 5 colors. But, over time, as we make more Slivers, you know, oh, eventually you can get to the point where there's just enough Slivers, you can pull off a Sliver Commander deck. So, some of those themes over time can get to the point where there's just enough slivers, you can pull off a sliver commander deck. So some of those themes over time can get there.

But other times we introduce a theme that either has backward compatibility or cares about... For example, let's say in Theros we had Constellation that cares about enchantments. Well, Magic has made lots and lots of enchantments, so if you want to make an enchantment deck, it's not like you're limited to what Theros has to do to make enchantment decks. And so when we do stuff like that, players are really like, okay, whenever you do themes that I probably can play in Commander, or even ones that maybe it'll take a while to get there, you know, please make Commanders that can do that. So there's that request. So they want

build-arounds of themes from the set. And the other big ask is when you make new legendary creatures, could you try to give us, the commander audience, a new challenge? Like, if you're going to make something that's going to plop in a deck I already have,

that's less exciting. And, you know, what they really want is, hey, when you make a legendary creature, think about how can this provide a different direction. And even if it's playing in the theme we've already played before, can it be different colors?

Can it have different kinds of motivation? Can it reward slightly different things? Can the payout encourage a different style of deck? You know, a reward that gives all your creatures plus one plus one is a different animal than draws you a card. You know, the kind of deck you build where your creatures plus one plus one is a different animal than draws you a card. The kind of deck you build where your reward is pumping your creatures is a go-wide strategy. It's something with lots of creatures in it. Where someone that's rewarding by drawing a card leans more toward a control strategy and stuff like that.

You really have to think about when building build-arounds for Commander, what are you asking the player to do? And because you know you're going to get it because it's your Commander, there are definitely some things we can do where we can encourage things that might be harder to do outside of Commander because there's an assurance of getting it that just doesn't exist in other formats in the same way. It just doesn't exist in other formats in the same way. Okay.

As far as rarity goes, our default for legendary is rare. Rare and mythic rare. We do do uncommon legendary creatures in a set where the theme matters. We, as a default, do not make our build-arounds legendary. But from set to set where it matters, like Dominaria had a legendary matters theme, and legends were a big deal, so we did make our signposts that are legendary.

If there's a reason to make them legendary, we can. But as a general rule, uncommon by default is not legendary. Build-arounds are not legendary. Builder rounds are not legendary. And rare and mythic rare is where they can be. Again, commanders throw some wrinkles in this depending on where we're putting things and such. But, okay, other formats.

If you're going to build for a more competitive, something that there's tournaments played with, standard, pioneer, modern, legacy, vintage, etc., you want to make sure that your build-arounds A, are achievable in the format you're playing. So one of the things we want to make sure is that if we're going to make a build-around, we want to make sure that there are things,

there's enough material there that you can build around it. And ideally, what we want to do is have enough things that it's not, like we don't want one, if you want to build this deck, there's only one way to build it. We don't want that. So one of the things

we tend to do with build-arounds in normal constructed, and we do this in limited a lot, is we like making mono-colored build-arounds. And the reason for that is it sort of, like in draft,

it gives you more options. Like if I have a cool, if I open spider spawning well spider spawning I guess you want blue but maybe it's a bad example. If I open a card that's you know a mono black card that says build around something maybe maybe the draft will encourage a second

color, maybe that thing shows up in that color but some of the time it's like oh I just want to care about this. Maybe I can go in a different color. Maybe that thing shows up in that color. But some of the time it's like, oh, I just want to care about this. Maybe I can go in a different color. Maybe I'm obviously in the color that the card is, but maybe I can go in a second color, you know, maybe different drafts, I get to go in different colors. So that opens it up. And in Constructed, maybe, oh, I can build this with this color or with that color. It just opens up options. Monocolor is nice in that with build arounds. It gives you some flexibility for how to interact with it. And one of the goals with a build-around is we really want players to do different things.

The success of a good build-around is that it's not generating a singular deck, but multiple decks, ideally. Okay, so what makes a good build-around? Since I'm not too far from work and I promised I would say this. So here's what makes a good build-around Since I'm not too far from work and I promised I would say this. So here's what makes a good build around. Number one is clarity of purpose. You want to make sure that the build around is communicating what it is it wants in a way that's very straightforward. The goal is not to hide it. The goal is to be very loud about, I want you to do thing X.

And the second thing when building is, is right. It's very being conscious of what you're asking for and what's around it and where you're pushing it. So that's why I don't want to make a trap and put it in uncommon, right? I don't want to,

look, the draft can't support this. So I don't want to put that in uncommon. I need to be conscious of that. And so in build arounds, I really want to think what are players going to do with this?

And then I love when building a build around, the more flexibility you build into it, the more ability for players to have some ability to think about how they want to use it, the better. Now, there's some narrow, there's some niche builder rounds. I'm not saying those don't ever exist. Sometimes it's fun to just go all in on, just do this thing. Sometimes what we find is Timmy Tammy builder-arounds are a little more like Goblin King. We're playing goblins!

Go get all your goblins, right? Where something like a Johnny Jenny build-around might have a little bit more of it's a puzzle you have to solve. Not that the Timmy Tammys can't have some puzzle aspects to it. Hey, there are a lot of goblins. Choosing which goblins might be a fun puzzle for them to

build. But it's a little bit Timmy Tammy build around is a little bit more directional. But that's what makes a good build around is it excites the player and it tells them oh, the other thing that build around needs is a reward. You need to say okay if you're willing to jump through this hoop

the build around, I'm going to make sure that's worth your while. So you want a very clear hook, a very clear thing to build around, and then a good payoff that really makes you happy for doing that. And another thing that's really important when doing a build around is being conscious of the gameplay itself. Like a good build around, if the player is doing what you're telling them to do, it should be fun.

I talk about this a lot of times, that you as the game designer, whenever you make a card, are saying, hey, if you do the thing I'm asking you to do, it should be fun. I talk about this a lot of time, that you as the game designer, whenever you make a card, are saying, hey, if you do the thing I'm asking you to do, it will be fun. So in a build around card, what you're saying is, I'm asking you to jump through this hoop, but if you jump through this hoop, you'll have a good time. And part of that is the payoff. Part of that is having a potentially, you know, a payoff that means enough that it's worth jumping through the hoop, and that just the gameplay that you're asking to go through is fundamentally a fun thing. Now, we've made Magic a long time.

We have a lot of idea of what players enjoy, but having the right payoffs is important. Okay, another thing I realized I did not cover that was an original question from the person who posted this on Twitter was, how do we decide what card type? I talked a lot about rarity, but I did not talk about card type. So sometimes the format dictates it a bit. Commander being the great example. Mostly my buildarounds are on creatures for Commander, because

they need to be legendary creatures. Occasionally, occasionally we make a Planeswalker or another legendary card that's not a creature that we say this can be your Commander. We do that infrequently, but that happens every once in a while. The big question really is, the number one question about where to do it, well, there's two big things, I guess.

One is flavor and one is mechanics. So flavor, so for example, when we made the Mirari, it was in Odyssey, it was an object in the story that was like, the whole story revolved around. It was the driving force of the story. Well, we knew we had to make it. We can't say everybody's chasing the Mirari, but sorry, Magic players, you don't get a Mirari. And we knew we wanted to be something potent. Basically, it's an artifact.

I don't remember exactly what it costs, like five or six, I think. Six, I think. And then whenever you cast Ancient or Sorcerer, you can pay three to copy it. It just copies all your spells. So the idea there is that was driven by flavor. That was like, we want something, we want it potent, you know,

because it drives the story, we want it to have a real big impact. And a build-around really can have that giant impact. Because a build-around, let's just say, do thing X, get thing Y. And thing Y can be a big reward. Copy all your instants and sorceries is a big reward. So that's something,

ooh, that sounds exciting, I want to do that. So sometimes, whether it's an artifact or an enchantment, occasionally a land, sometimes a planeswalker, you know, build-arounds can go on a lot of different things. But they A, are guided by the slaver, which is, okay, where does it make sense that this thing we want to do, where does that make sense?

So a lot of times it's flavor. Some of the times, though, it's mechanics. We're in Theros. Well, I'm more likely to make my build-arounds enchantments. We're in Kaladesh. I'm more likely to make my build-arounds artifacts. You know, Theros has this reoccurring enchantment theme. It has constellation. It has all these things

that interact with enchantment. So I want you to care about enchantment. So it's more likely to make things that are enchantment. So I'm pushed in that direction. Where Kaladesh is about the inventor's fair and it's all about doing weird, wacky things with artifacts. So build-arounds are the build-around wacky things.

So there it made sense that they were on artifacts. And once again, it's a good example in each case where there's flavor and mechanical reasons to want to do that. Now, from a purely mechanical standpoint, artifacts and enchantments aren't that different from each other. Once upon a time, they were a little more different. Now we've started making colored artifacts. We keep closing the gap between them.ically speaking they're pretty similar um the real question from a mechanic standpoint

is is there any reward for it meaning is there synergy for that thing in the set and um how easy is it like how often we expect the opponent to have the answers to that so for example in kaladesh i and like a kaladesh standard for example i in Kaladesh, like Kaladesh standard, for example, I expect people to have artifact removal in their deck, standard. Like main deck, I expect artifact removal. That's just like, oh, we're playing in a world where there's really power artifacts. I expect people to have that. So when I'm thinking about what I'm doing, certain environments, I can expect that the answers come there. And when you're building your build around, you want to make sure that the answers for the build around exist.

And the more powerful the build around, the more powerful the output, the more answers have to build into it. One of the reasons, for example, we like to put some of our most powerful build arounds on creatures is creatures are the easiest thing to answer. Most people play with creature removal. Creatures are such a foundational part of the game that players are going to Most people play with creature removal. You know, creatures are such a foundational part of the game that players are going to have to run some creature removal. And

creatures also have more vulnerabilities in that direct damage can kill them. You know, if they get in combat they can die. Sometimes, for example, a common thing we'll do on a creature is we'll make attack triggers, for example. Okay, in order to trigger this thing, this creature has to attack. Well, that now makes it vulnerable, now that there's answers built in

within the gameplay itself, that if I have to attack my creature, and you have enough creatures, you could block with it. Now, given I don't have to attack with it, but, you know, if I want to get the effect out of it, I have to find ways to attack. So it encourages me when building my deck and thinking about how I play to do that. You know, that is the big things about build-arounds, is how and where we use them, how we make them, is shaped by what set they are in. And another thing is, there are different players that enjoy different things. So I like, you know, I and the other designers,

like to make sure that we mix up where our build-arounds are. You know, some people, for example, just have endless joy. They love artifacts, and they love just the idea that I have a powerful object, and it's doing this weird thing. Other players just really love the feel of enchantments, and I've changed the nature of the world or something, you know. Or emblems from Planeswalker, whatever. There's lots of ways to do it, but we want to make sure that there's a mix. That's another thing. Not only do we want to maximize each thing for what format it's in and how it's going to get played and how it's going to get answered, we also want to mix just because there's different people that like different kinds of things. That's one of the

reoccurring things in Magic is every player enjoys different aspects of the game and so our job is to take the things people like and do them in a lot of different ways so if you're the kind of player that enjoys build arounds and you're the kind of player that enjoys artifacts here you go there's some artifacts that are built around or there's some creatures that are built around or you know whatever the combination is the real thing of today hopefully that you understand is whenever we're talking about any subset of magic today's build around or you know whatever the combination is um the the real thing of today hopefully that you understand is um whenever we're talking about any subset of magic today's build arounds but any you know it is really about looking at what tools are available how it gets played how it gets used

how it gets answered um and that is very definitional in the decisions like any one card when we make it, we have to think about... I did a whole podcast on use case. What is its use case? How will it get used? How can we expect it to be played? What is the feeling the card's going to get?

What other cards want to go with it? And then, based on that, you're going to choose rarity from that. You're going to choose card type from that. You might choose color from that. There's a lot of decisions you're going to make because it's maximizing what that's doing in the place that it's doing it. And that, my friends, is how you make a build around card. So anyway, I want to thank for the question. Like, so by the way, if you have questions or you want

to hear podcasts, please use my social media. Talk to me on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Instagram, on TikTok. Talk to me wherever you, wherever you enjoy my social media and Talk to me on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Instagram, on TikTok. Talk to me wherever you enjoy my social media and communicate with me and let me know topics you'd like to hear. I'm in the 900s of topics. I've talked about a lot of topics. I'd love to hear new topics. So you guys have things you would like to hear.

This literally was someone asked a question. I said, it sounds cool and they made a podcast. I can do that. And I have a lot of podcasts to record. So I really encourage everybody out there on social media, if you want to know things, let me know. Let me know topics. Now, not every topic I necessarily have 30 minutes on. Not every topic I'm allowed to talk about.

Not every topic is as easy to structure as possible. But I love hearing ideas. And when I get things that I'm capable of doing, I will do them. Anyway, 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. Bye-bye.