Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #986: Costing Cards

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

In this podcast, I talk about how we go about costing cards.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is based on a conversation on Twitter. So somebody was talking about how do we cost cards. And sort of the question was the process by which we do it. And they outlined a bunch of different ways. So anyway, it inspired me to talk about how do we do it. And they outlined a bunch of different ways. And so anyway, it inspired me to talk about how do we cost cards. And so that is today's topic. So I'm going to talk all about how we cost cards. I should stress that we're starting to get a little

bit out of my area of expertise. But we do make cards in vision design. We do cost them. So I mean, I have some working knowledge of how we do this, but this is not, I'm not an expert card cofter. But anyway, okay, so the first thing I want to explain is I think there are three myths about how we cost cards that I want to sort of address. Myth number one is this idea that there is a singular way we cost cards. That like there's a formula or there's some sort of like precise way and then every time we cost cards we use the same structure. Not true. We cost cards a

lot of different ways which I will go over today but it is not a uniform thing. It's not as if there's a single way to cost cards. The second thing is the myth that cards are costed in a vacuum, in the sense that I sort of figure out what the card would be optimized for itself, and I don't think about anything else around it. Not remotely true. As you will see today, there are times where we sort of cost them in a vacuum, but that's not when we're getting their final cost. As you will see today, one of the big themes is when you cost cards, it matters other cards

that we expect to be played with it. That matters very much. And the third myth is the idea that you just cost cards once and then that is it. As if there's only one true cost of the card, you figure it out at one point in time and then it never changes. The reality is trying to figure out the cost of something actually takes a lot of time and evolves over time. It is not as if our first stab at what the cost is is always the right thing. A lot of costing is playtesting and figuring out if what you thought might be right is actually right.

what you thought might be right is actually right. Okay, so to explain card costing, I'm going to go back a little bit and talk about sort of when and how cards get made and how they're costed at the time they're made because it changes as the process goes along. Okay, so the earliest card costing will happen in exploratory design. So what happens in exploratory design is we are usually testing areas like, oh, you know, here's a theme of the set. What mechanics make sense for that theme?

Or we're returning to a world and we want to reinforce something. You know, exploratory is always sort of looking for the new space and the new thing and trying to understand the parameters of what we could do. So part of that is there's a lot of mechanic building that goes on in exploratory design where you're trying to test things out. And the card design in exploratory is mostly proof of concept, meaning here's an idea for a mechanic. I made some cards with it to sort of feel out the mechanic. One of the things that's very true, by the way, is you can theorycraft, meaning you can talk about mechanic in concept, but it's not until you actually go to make that, you know, you make

the mechanic and you see the actual challenges of making it when you try to make a card out of it, that you really first begin to understand the dynamics of what are the challenges of making it when you try to make a car out of it, that you really first begin to understand the dynamics of what are the challenges of the mechanic. You know, some things that might feel really easy to design are not. So an example is, I can't remember the name of it. There's a mechanic for the Dimir, Cypher was the name of the mechanic. And the idea was, it went on spells, and then when you cast it, you then sort of exiled it, and sort of connected it to a creature, and then that creature, whenever it dealt combat damage to an opponent, did that effect. And in a vacuum, Cypher felt like really cool, and really something that was,

oh, we can make infinite cards with this. But as we started to make cards with it, what we realized is it had to be an effect that you wanted as a whole card. And then it had to be an effect that made sense after combat, like a lot of effects. For example, things that affect combat, you don't want after combat. So, for example, giant growth is a very uninteresting effect if I get the giant growth after I've built damage to my opponent. Oh, I hit you, and now, after it doesn't really mean much, I get bigger, is not exciting.

And so it was one of those mechanics where the dynamic of how the mechanic worked and the kind of effects we needed ended up shrinking a lot of the space. And so we realized it was a lot trickier. Anyway, sorry. So in Exploratory, we're going to design cards,

proof of concept. Now, we do have to cost them because we do want to play them. We do playtesting at every level of design. And so this is, when I talk about designing in a vacuum, this is the one time. Exploratory design, sometimes early vision, is the one time you cost in a vacuum. And what I mean by that is, well, you don't know anything yet. Like in exploratory design, there's no file yet. You're just sort of making a vacuum. And what I mean by that is, well, you don't know anything yet. Like in Exploratory Design, there's no file yet. You're just sort of making a card. So when you're costing those cards, you're just looking at what exists. Like a real common tool when you're costing cards

is to use a database, right? To go look at, for example, let's say I'm, I have a new mechanic and I want to put it on a 2-2 flyer. Okay, well, the first thing I want to do is go look at, in blue, let's say. Well, go look at blue. What does a 2-2 flyer cost in blue? What have we made? And you want to look in the more recent time, you know, the last couple years, because things will evolve over time. Something we did back in the, you know, the late 90s just might not be relevant to how we cost things today. So when you're costing originally, let's say I'm costing a card in Exploratory, A, I have

some general sense of what cards cost. I've cost a lot of cards and I've been around. I'm not great at it. I will say that play design, because they cost things all the time, have a general sense. Like if you're messing in a space that they already understand or in a space that's not too far away

of what they can extrapolate to, they have a pretty good sense of what things will cost. On every exploratory and vision design team, we have a play designer specifically to cost cards when we first make them. And the thing about, well, let me finish exploratory, then I'll get into vision. So anyway, in exploratory, I'm going to make a 2U22 that flies. I would go look at other things that fly. Another thing about it, there's always a play designer

in Vision. There's not always a play designer in Exploratory. So a lot of times in Exploratory, I'm just using a card database to figure things out and make my stab at it. The other thing about Exploratory is I want to get into the loose ballpark, but being exactly right isn't important yet. Because all we're trying to do in exploratory is show off things.

And so usually the way we cost cards in exploratory design is just looking at other things that are similar. Okay, so I have a 2-2 flying blue creature with an ability. Brand new ability, but an ability. Okay, well let me look at what 2-2 flying creatures cost. Let me look at 2-2 flying creatures with an ability. And just get a general sense of where we cost that, especially over the last couple of years. When we get to vision design,

the thing that changes in vision design is that we're starting to build a file. In exploratory design, everything's done in a vacuum. So you cost in a vacuum. But once you get into vision design, you are now building a file. Now, the very, very early stuff is kind of cost in a vacuum. You have you get into vision design, you are now building a file. Now the very, very early stuff is kind of cost in the vacuum. You have nothing to cost against. But once you start making

a file, you now start having things you care about. So in limited and casual constructed, one of the things we care about, and we care about this, I guess, for all things, but when making a set, you want to have what we call a curve. And what that means is, if you look at the creatures in any one color, you want to have usually one or two one-drops. You want two or three two-drops. You want two or three three-drops. You want, you know, two, one to two, four, two, or depending on the color, two, three, four drops.

You maybe want a fifth drop. Maybe in certain cards you want a sixth drop. You know, you want to have it such that in Limited, for example, when somebody is playing cards, there's a smooth progression. For example, let's say we costed everything at three mana. Well, you wouldn't have anything to do in the early turns, and you would just start clogging up once you got to three mana. And then you'd start having awkward turns at four and five mana where, if everything costs three, where it's like I'm

wasting my mana to a certain extent. So one of the things we try really hard to do is we want to curve things out. So what that means is when you're making a file, you're always conscious of just not what this card is but what the other cards are around it, right?

You know, if I'm making a creature, I want to be uncurved, or I want to figure out what we're doing. The other thing is, there are a lot of costing things. So one of the big divides is what I'll say, common and uncommon from rare and mythic rare. The rule of common and uncommon is rare and mythic rare. The rule of common and uncommon is you cost for limited. That doesn't mean you can't make a constructed card a common or uncommon. Sometimes the cost for limited and the cost for

constructed are the same cost. But the rare mythic rare is where you put cards that costed at the level they would need to be costed for constructed, causes problems in limited. So one of the inherent issues we always have to deal with is the power level of limited. And when I say limited, I also mean casual constructed. One of the things we do when we build limited, the reason we spend a lot of time on limited, and by limited I mean both sealed and draft, is that the sort of casual play, and by limited I mean both sealed and draft,

is that the sort of casual play, the I buy a couple boosters and I play with what I get, and, you know, the cards I own format, as I like to call it, that is a very low-powered format that tends to be, hey, what do I own? And that mimics sealed in a lot of ways. So when we're costing for sealed, and to some extent draft, we are also costing for sort of very casual constructed.

Anyway, if you're costing a card at common or uncommon, you need to make sure that the cost makes sense in limited. Like I said, there are some effects that you can cost in limited the same cost that you can cost in constructed. Something like giant growth can cost the same. You know, there are certain effects that what they're going to be in Constructed is what they're going to be in Limited. But there's other things like Removal. So, for example, in Constructed, Removal is pretty cheap. It's one or two mana, usually.

And if it's three or more, you're getting something else for it. It's an ETB on a creature. It's something in which there's more value beyond just the kill spell. But in Limited, you will play kill spells that cost five, six mana. So a lot of times, when we're making stuff for Limited,

we cost it... Like I said, it varies a little bit, but we always have to keep Limited in mind when doing commons and uncommons. And then rare and mythic rare is where we can put things that are disruptive to limited. Things that don't matter for limited that play just fine in limited. A lot of times, for example, we can make a good creature that the nature of the creature is not going to cause problems in limited. And so that's okay.

Other times, like, no, that's a bomb in limited or will cause a lot of issues. In those cases, then we put them on higher rarities. But anyway, so when you're designing in vision, mostly the issue, so another big issue that comes across is the goal of vision design is not for a balanced environment. You're not trying to figure that out yet. The goal of vision design is that you want to test the cards. You want to make sure that the cards all get played. So what we do for costing in vision is we cost them sort of at the cusp of we'll see play. Every card is costed so it'll see play. Now we can't do that once we get to set design. Why can't we do that? There's a couple reasons. One is you want some sort of, well, the first reason is a power level reason.

So I'm going to use a metaphor. This isn't exactly how we do things, but it is the easiest way I've learned for people to understand how we do it. So every set has a certain amount of, let's call them power points. You only get to be so powerful. So, every set has a certain amount of, let's call them power points, right? You only get to be so powerful. The general idea is, if you don't want power creep to happen, you want the sets to have roughly an equal power level. Now, there are shifts and flux. Not every set's exactly the same as other sets.

There are some sets that are a little higher on the pendulum, some a little lower. But in general, there's an average amount of sort of power a set can have. When I say power points, we don't actually assign things power points. But if you think of it in the way that every card got assigned them, you can get a general sense of we only get so many power points. So if we're going to make a card stronger, there's another card in the set that has to be weaker, if you want to think of it that way, that there's an overall balance. And that balance is, you have to think as a whole, you have to be holistic in thinking about balance. And that that balance is... You have to think as a whole. You have to be holistic in thinking about balance.

You can't just make two cards stronger and have the balance of the set be the same. That if you're going to make certain cards stronger, other cards get weaker in response. And that is sort of the thing that we have to keep in mind. Anyway, what that means is that there's not... We don't have enough power points to make every card at the playable level. We can make cards, and we have done this in the more recent time.

We've stopped making cards sort of not at all viable for limited. Some of them are niche, and some of them are synergistic in a certain way, meaning you'll play them certain things. But anyway, when we cost for vision, we make it a much flatter power curve, and we cost everything at the level by which you'll play it. Now, another thing to remember in vision design is, when I build a deck in a playtest in vision design, I'm not trying to build the best deck. I'm trying to build a deck that lets me experience the most things.

So, for example, one of our rules is you don't tend to play more than two of the same card. So, lesser cards, what we call a collect me, that is sometimes, usually these are a common, where you want to have something where you want a lot of the card. The card gets more powerful. Seven Dwarves is a good example from Throne of Eldraine

where, oh, hey, if I'm going to play Seven Dwarves, I want to play as many Seven Dwarves is a good example from Throne of Eldraine, where, oh, hey, if I'm going to play Seven Dwarves, I want to play as many Seven Dwarves as I can, or up to seven. And so Collect Me's, we let you play more, because the whole point of them is to see how they play at larger numbers. But other than Collect Me's, usually in Vision playtests, we say don't play more

than two of the same card. If I get three of the same card in Sealed or in in draft, and basically, even if the card is really, really good, one of the best cards in the set, I'm not supposed to play the third one. I'm supposed to play a card that I don't know, or not don't know, but a card that I haven't played in stat. In general, the other thing that I tend to do when I'm playing Envision playtests is I will always choose to play two different cards than the same card twice. The only reason I actually, I sometimes play the same card is if I'm trying out a certain strategy

and I want to see if that strategy will work, sometimes the key cards that matter I'll play two of. But normally what I do is I'm trying to understand the dynamic of what cards are, how they play, are they fun. So I want to play a lot of different cards. What that means is costing all the cards at a similar band isn't forcing odd behavior on me. I'm not trying to maximize my choices. When you get to set design, they will. The other thing, by the way, is you want... Oh, so here's another really important thing to understand about costing.

We have to cost cards at full amounts of mana. So for example, if I want to cost a card, I could cost it with a mana value of one or two or three or four. I can't cost it at two and a half. I can't cost it at two and three quarters. I can't cost it in two and four fifths. And here's the tricky thing. Some cards, that's the correct cost. So one of the challenges when costing cards is that not everything lines up, so it's maximized at the point it is. And what that means is that some cards, so when you look at a set, there's what I would call sort of the average default power level.

There's above average and below average. So when we cost cards, we get to make some cards in the set default power level. There's above average and below average. So when we cost cards, we get to make some cards in the set above the default. We get to make some cards below the default, and then some sit at it. And the thing to remember in a trading card game is you are going to make the same effect many, many times. You know, I talked about giant growth before.

Every set is going to have its giant growth. You know, green is going to have an instant, and sometimes sorcery, that boosts power and toughness. And that is just going to be a thing green does, almost always a common. Sometimes a bigger version, uncommon or rare. But, you know, it's going to have a common giant growth in almost every set.

Not every giant growth is going to be of the same value. There's always going to be an ebb and flow to how we do effects and how we do costing because in any one set, you know, we want in magic, magic to constantly change. One of the ways we do that and one of the ways we keep power creep from happening is that any one mechanic will be on its own pendulum of being weaker and stronger. So let's say I'm doing graveyard set. Okay, probably in that set, the cards that are graveyard specific are stronger than normal. That's the theme of the

set. We want you to play that. We want constructed maybe to be about that. So we will lean into what the theme of the set is. We will lean away from things that maybe were a previous set or something that we're concerned about or something which we want to sort of trend downward so other things can trend upward. Maybe certain things fight things we're trying to push. So there's a constant change. So when you're costing cards, you're always keeping in mind that dynamic of the set. So, you know, cards aren't always costed the same. Cards aren't always costed in a vacuum because let's say I'm costing my giant growth. You know, it might matter in the set I'm doing, is it a more combat-oriented set? Is it, you know, or maybe it's a set more about the graveyard.

So maybe I'm doing a flashback giant growth, although we don't do a lot of those. But, you know, whatever it is, I'm twisting and pushing things to match what I'm doing in the set. And that's going to influence how I cost things. So anyway, in vision, we tend to cost things with a flat power level so that we can experience them. Okay, so now let's get to set design. In set design, they want to start getting the file closer to what an actual... They want to start balancing the file. They want to start figuring out the environment.

And so to do that, they need to figure out sort of where they want things to be. And that's when they start sort of gradiating the costing. Like vision, it's all flat. It does not want to be flat in set design. You want to figure out what you're pushing and you want to make sure the things that are more important are the cards are pushing you in that direction. And that's another thing to understand about costing is, the cards are pushing you in that direction. And that's another thing to understand about costing is, and this is another example where costing isn't in a vacuum, you cost certain things because you want to push players in certain directions.

One of the big things, and I talk about this all the time, it is the job of the game designer to figure out where the fun play is and then make the game design to influence the players in that direction. One of the ways to do that is costing. That if I have a bunch of cards in the set, and certain cards are more aggressively costed, you're going to highlight those cards. You're going to draft those cards first. Those cards are going to shape what you build.

And so that's a very important tool. So when set design starts costing, they figure out where do they want to push you, right? They want to get their costs such that the cards that are most going to influence you are the cards that are pushing the right themes that are going to make you play the way that will lead to the fun version of what's going on. And so a lot of what goes on as they start to balance things is they want to figure out where the fun is. And this is why playtesting is so important. Because the more they playtest and the more they see the patterns that they like,

the more they go, oh, we want to reinforce this. Let's make this effect cheaper. Oh, this is doing something that we don't quite want to do in this environment. Let's make that more expensive. So like I said, there are cards above and below average. But it's not picked at random. The cards above average are pushing in directions you want to push the environment. The cards that are below average are cards that are pushing and not in the direction you want.

And so you want to discourage those things. And so a lot of costing in set design has to do with sort of figuring out, it's shaping the environment and making the costing push in the direction you want. Another big thing, and I explained this in vision, but let me explain a little more detail now. So I want to make a card. When I make a card, I have to look at the hole I'm putting the card in and what goes around it.

Let's say, for example, I'm in set design and the hole is for a three drop. Well, I kind of want to make a three drop, but let's say I make a really cool card that I really like, and when I figure out when I cost it, that the way it costs, like, I can cost it at two and a half, or I can cost it at four. Because I can, whenever you're making a card, you can tweak power toughness,

you can tweak other effects on it, and so for example, there's a card called Mechanical Fabricate in Kaladesh. And the idea of fabricate was that you could choose between having plus one, plus one counters or having one, one artifact servo tokens. And the idea was that it was always the same number. Oh, it's fabricate three.

I can choose between three plus one plus one counters or three servo tokens. The problem is, in a vacuum, the servo tokens are a little more powerful than the plus one plus one counters. So in order to encourage you to sometimes think about the plus one plus one counters, we had to give you something to the creature,

flying, first strike, lifelink, something in which the power of the creature gets stronger the bigger the creature is. So there's an interesting choice to make between, oh, what do I want? But what we found is by the time we sort of built those correctly, there wasn't a lot of give. That getting them to the right place and the right power-toughness combinations tended to force you to a certain combination. Oh, well if I do this and make it two, three and have this ability and cost it at four mana, oh, that's a sweet spot. I've made the

card so it's very close to costing exactly four. Whereas if I cost it at three, it doesn't really cost three, it costs two and a half, so it's a little weak. So sometimes you make cards and they sort of push in the direction in which they lock you in a certain place. And so when you do that,

you want to prioritize the ones that are at the cost that you need. So sometimes when you design a card, it can't be at any cost. Now, other effects are much easier to move around. Like there's a monstrous in original Theros where you, when you have something, you can, monstrous means you pay a cost, put some number plus one plus one counters on it. You can do this once and then it's permanently changed.

And, you know, monstrosity is very easy to put on a lot of different cards. You have the flexibility of how many counters you put on it. You have the flexibility of how big the original creature is. So it's a lot easier to make monstrosity cards at different levels. So some effects are very flexible. Some effects are not. So what happens when you're making cards, and this happens both in vision and set design, sometimes you make a card and it's in such a manner that you really don't have a lot of choices where it's going to go. So if I make a card and I have a slot for a three drop, but I make a four drop because that's the sweet spot of the card, that means I now have to move things around to make the three drop. Maybe

I can take one of my four drops and change it to make it a three drop or maybe it's I have to do a combination of things to get there. Maybe there's no way to make a four drop into a three drop and I make a four drop into a five drop and I can make one of my five drops into a three drop. And when I say make it what I mean is change power toughness, change whether it has an ability or not. You can craft the cars to change their sizes. So a lot of costing also has to do with adapting it to fit what's around it, to fit within the limited thing. Now, likewise, there also is this adaptation that happens in constructing. So let's say I'm making a card for standard,

for a particular deck in standard, let's say. Well, I want to play that deck with that card, and I'm saying, is this card doing what I want? Like, maybe that card would go in the deck if it's the right cost. Like, oh, this deck kind of doesn't have a good three drop. If this card's in that theme and a three drop, wow, the deck really wants to play it. But if you make it a four drop, now it's fighting with a really powerful card, and maybe it doesn't make the deck because the four drop's better than the three drop. So when you're making constructed cards, same thing. You always have to look at the format that you care about.

The same is true for Commander. The same is true for Commander. The same is true for Modern, for Pioneer. Whatever it is we think we're caring about, you really need to go and look and figure out about how that is going to work. And then you want to put that in in a place where it's fitting what the constructed deck would want. And that's another example where, let's say I'm filling a hole and like, oh, I want to make this card for standard. And the right cost for standard really is being a three drop.

But if I'm filling a four drop, maybe I got to move stuff around. So, you know, the big thing to understand is that the costing is conditional in the sense that you're always sort of caring about what's around it. And you're caring about its function and what it's trying to do.

Another thing that I didn't get too much into, but I'll mention here, is another tool of costing is colored mana. So not only can a spell cost two or three or four, but one of the ways that we can tweak a little bit is if something costs three and a red, that's different than two red red. Two red red is a little bit harder to cast if you're concentrating on one color. So for constructive purposes, it is nice because there is pressure between, do I want to play one color, do I want to play two color? In Limited, you kind of, by nature, you can't really play one color easily. Unless the set is set up to help you do that, the nature of how colors break out. Like, only 20% of the

cards are any one color. Well, unless I'm, you know, unless I'm one of the sole drafters at the table drafting that color, I often don't have enough cards to play just one color. So, at common and uncommon, we're careful about how we use the double color mana. We will

use it at high enough cost. Usually, of course, at five or above, we use it at high enough cost. Usually it costs at five or above we feel pretty used to double cost and sometimes maybe uncommon on four. We want to be really careful below that. Usually if you cost two or three and you have double-colored mana, usually that is either for constructed or if the very powerful card unlimited. Sometimes we'll use that to adjust things in limited so the cards don't splash beyond where they're supposed to. So we do use double colored

mana sometimes to prevent splashing. Okay, so, you know, when you're making your cards and you're costing those cards, you are thinking very much about the use case. You're thinking about what else is in the file. You're thinking about what else might be in the deck if it's for constructive purposes. Now, the next thing is play testing. And this is me getting to the idea that cards, like, it's not as if we can just sit there. Like, a lot of figuring out a cost is looking at what we know about magic at large. You know, a lot of the play designers, and then, I mean, I have this to a lesser extent, but if you cost magic cards long enough, you start getting a sense of what things cost. Now, whenever we delve into new space, you're making educated guesses

because we haven't exactly done that thing before. You can compare it to things we have done. And some new mechanics are pretty comparable to old mechanics, and some new mechanics aren't remotely comparable. Normally when you're costing things, you're making a stab at saying, well, this is the closest to what we've done before, and here's how we costed that. But this is why playtesting is so important,

because what you'll find out is a lot of times we're just off. For example, when we made buyback way back in Tempest, when I originally costed cards, I costed the buyback cost at two in my first pass. My thought process at the time was, oh, it's like drawing a card. And if we're going to make a cantrip where you get to draw a card, we add two to it. That's what we did back in the day. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm kind of making this,

you know, if I buy it back, I'm kind of making the cantrip. But what I didn't take into account was, hey, 40% of the time, I'm drawing a land if it's a cantrip. You know, some of the time, I'm drawing a card that might not be useful to me. But pretty much if I'm buying it back, I'm not just drawing a card,

I'm drawing this card, and I already know this card has value because I cast it once. So it turns out that I'm drawing a card that's a little bit more valuable than a random card, so I can't cost it like a random card. But the idea was, I went into it, and the logic I had at the time, oh, I'll cost it like a cantrip the time oh it cost like a cantrip this is kind of like a cantrip if I pay the buyback I get an extra card made sense but when we started playtesting you're like wow it's way better than an extra card it's a very useful card and so what

we found was like playtesting showed that the cost was not remotely close buyback costs were a lot more like for example there was a um a card where you drew a card, Whispers of the Muse and like originally it cost two it was insanely broken and then it cost three, still too good four, still too good what did we end up costing, six? we ended up costing a lot and the point was

you don't really know costing until you play with it I mean we make a stab at it like one of the goals for costing is when we play in a playtest, we want it to be as realistic as we can, but we usually don't want, and we don't want it to break things. Like, one of the things you don't want to do in a playtest is if a card is under-costed, a lot of times all you learn is that card is under-costed. It just warps everything around it. So when we're costing originally, mostly what we're trying to

cost for is just be enough in the ballpark that is not going to be disruptive and then in playtesting you'll start to get a sense of where things should be now again i stress this again part of playtesting is not just figuring out the i the ideal version of the card but what is the card doing for the set is it pushing in the direction we want is it kind of fighting the direction as we want? Like, you know, is the card sort of aiding what we're trying to do? Now, obviously, if a card's completely fighting what we're doing, maybe we change the card. Maybe we don't leave the card

in. But there's other times where the card, like, is helping, like, Limited kind of needs certain effects, so we do want the effect there, because Limited wants it. But, we don't necessarily want it to be too good, because of what it's going to do to the Limited environment. So, like, we want it there it but we don't necessarily want it to be too good because of what it's going to do to the limited environment so like we want it there but we don't want it aggressive um and so a lot of play testing is figuring out where things naturally want to be and uh another thing that'll happen during late set design is play design gets involved

and play design in conjunction with set, starts to figure out what are the cards we're pushing for constructed. We call them the constructed shots, right? What are the cards? Now, as with anything, we don't know necessarily. Like, we're building a system complex enough that we can't solve it. So we don't definitively know. I mean, we know the cards that we think have the best opportunity to be the constructed cards. And sometimes there's cards that are pushed enough, like, well, we'll be surprised if it's not a constructed card, but we don't necessarily know everything around it. Like, the environment that we're testing is not always exactly the environment

that will come to be, because a million players, you know, millions of players are going to figure out things that we might not figure out, because we made a complex system complex enough that we don't want to be able to figure it out by ourselves. you know our our play design team can crack it well millions of players will crack it in two minutes right uh you know we want things that have the opportunity that take time to figure out uh and and then so that is another big part of costing is playing with cards figuring out what you want the card to do and then adjusting the cost based on your goals, based on what you're trying to do. And that's where colored mana starts to come in. That's when we can...

And then, like I said, rarity sometimes matters. Sometimes it's like, oh... For example, there's a thing called a trap, we call for draft. And what a draft trap is, is it's a card that if you take early on, you're like, oh, here's a cool thing I can do in the draft. This will be very exciting. Except the things you have to do aren't in the draft. The draft can't support it. So if you take that card early, you're sort of getting trapped into something that won't work.

So what we try to do is we don't put traps in at uncommon. So if you see an uncommon card, kind of what we're saying is, hey, you can draft around this. There'll be things there that you can draft around. If we put it at rare or mythic rare, kind of the message is, look, this is more for constructed than limited. We're not saying you can't do unlimited,

but we're not guaranteeing that it's going to be easy to do unlimited. And in some cases, it might not be doable at all unlimited. For example, Dominar United has a cycle of Lords. It is very, very hard to do themes for creature types if that's not a major theme on the set. Every once in a while, we do a creature type base set.

But normally in most sets, there's maybe one or two creature types that are supported. Usually we like to have an archetype that's a creature type just because people like playing creature type themed decks but when you make a cycle like Dominator United there's five of them it's not a creature type themed set that means there's just not

going to be enough support for those but people like playing creature type cards they're very popular in lots of constructed formats especially casual constructed formats, especially casual constructed formats. And so we want to know that we can make those in a way that those are fun, but we have to stick them somewhere

so people can open them. It was a cycle. Cycles are hard to fit into Mythic Rare. We do occasionally, but it really has to be a powerhouse cycle to be Mythic Rare. So we put them at Rare because we don't want to put it on Common.

We don't want to be a trap in limited. But we have to put it somewhere because we do want people to open them. And we do want people to play with them. So anyway, that's what I said. When you're costing cards, you have resources at your hand. You can think about rarity. You can think about the mana value. You can think about colored mana.

You know, there's a lot of different things you can think about. You can think about the mana value. You can think about colored mana. You know, there's a lot of different things you can think about. But like I said, it is... Hopefully, my point of today's podcast is really to reaffirm my three big points that I started with. There's no one way to cost cards. It matters what else is around it and how you're using it. And things will change over time as we learn about them.

And so costing is not a one-moment thing. It's an evolution of trying things, experimenting and playing with them and learning over time in conjunction with understanding the environment and the ways it will be played where the right cost is. So anyway, guys, that in a nutshell is how we cost cards. Anyway, I'm now at work. And so we all know what that means. It means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic.

I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.