Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #990: Top-Down Design

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

In this podcast, I walk through all the various things that have to be done when doing a top-down design.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so in the past I've had podcasts talking about the difference between top-down design and bottom-up design. Top-down design is when you start with flavor and then build mechanics, and bottom-up is when you start with mechanics and build flavor. Now, if we do our job right, you know, maybe you're not supposed to even know the difference between the two. It's just sort of technically about how we design it. But anyway, I wanted to talk today about how to do top-down design. So I was going to walk through all the different things you have to care about when doing top-down design.

So sort of it's a how-to top-down design day. Okay, so the first thing that you need to do when doing top-down is you want to understand your source material. So what top-down means, once again, let me explain this real quickly. Let's say I take a set and I strip all the names and art off the card. I just call it card one, card two, card three. There's no art. In a bottoms-up set, you can look at it and you can sort of, you can see the structure. You're like, oh, it's a multicolor set or like you can, you don't need the names and

flavor text to understand the structure. But in a top down set, the flavor defines the structure. I mean, if you strip off all the names and flavor text from it, that it would just seem like, it would seem random. Like, I don't know why these things are together. They don't necessarily feel like they go together. And that's top-down because you're using the feel of the things. The reason it makes sense, the reason it holds together, the reason it's organized the way it is, is because of that top-down element. So the first thing you need to do when doing a top-down set is you want to understand your

source. So the first thing you need to do when doing a top-down set is you want to understand your source. There are two main sources when we talk about sort of top-down. Number one is sort of a cultural source. Examples of that would be Theros, Kaldheim, Kamigawa, Amonkhet. It's borrowing from a real-world place and from a mythology. The things that it is doing come from historical sources, if you will. The other large category is what I'll call genre-tropic.

Genre-clumping, I guess. So the example there would be Innistrad, Throne of Eldraine, Strixhaven. You know, we're doing Gothic Horror. We're doing fairy tales. We're doing Magical School. Like, we're taking things that are popular in genres and

we're pulling from that. Now, sometimes there's a combination of them. Kamigawa and Neon Dynasty both had elements of sort of Japan and Japanese mythology, but also borrowed a lot from Japanese pop culture. So anyway, so the first thing you want to do is you want to understand where it is you're pulling from. And that means that usually there's some reading to do. there's some things to watch, you know, there's some self-education that has to happen. And in addition, we normally like to have at least one person on the team, usually more than one, what we call a SME. So S-M-E,

a subject matter expert. So when we're working on something, we want to make sure that somebody who's on the design team, and like I said, sometimes more than one person, who knows that material really well. For example, when we did the Dynasty, when we were tapping into Japanese pop culture, we wanted to have experts that really knew Japanese pop culture. And in addition to the people on the team, we also have consultants that we give, people who are experts in the area that we consult with in addition to the members

of the team. And usually the consultants go even deeper than the people on the team. But I mean, when we go to make a magic set, what we do is we put out a questionnaire in R&D talking about who knows this material, who really knows what this is. And we make sure to include some of those people on the team.

But once again, those are the most knowledgeable people who work at Wizards, who have, you know, design background. That's why we also have outside consultants so that we have people who can look at what we're doing and give us notes. consultants so that we have people who can look at what we're doing and give us notes and we can go deeper in making sure that we're hitting some of the, what we call the deep cuts, which are things that maybe the average fan might not know, but

the mega fan, the super fan would know. And we want to make sure, like 100-handed one is a good example of a deep cut from Greek mythology. If you just studied Greek mythology in school, maybe you've never heard of the 100-handed one know, if you just studied Greek mythology in school, maybe you've never heard of the hundred-handed one. You know, but if you were

someone who really knew Greek mythology, you would have heard of them. Okay, so we figured out our source. So the first thing to do is make sure that we have the subject matter expert and the list of books, movies, TV.

Like, what are the things that fall into this so we can understand what it is we're referencing. Okay, next up is you have to understand the components. And so one of the earliest things we'll do in a top-down set is we'll get in a room, usually with a whiteboard, or these days sometimes we're online with a document, a Word document open, and what we do is we say okay what are all the things that are part of this thing? So Innistrad is a good example. Innistrad was gothic horror. So we're like okay well what would you expect to see in gothic

horror? You know we listed all the different monsters, we listed you know the idea of found weapons, we listed the idea different monsters. We listed, you know, the idea of found weapons. We listed the idea of places. I mean, normally what happens here is you're listing the people, places, and things. You're listing what creatures you might find. You're listing the objects that matter. You're listing, you know, all the component pieces. You know, but the components is like,

I want to make sure when I am doing top-down that we know all the things people would expect to see. What are the things that are iconic to the source material? What are the things that are just really are resonant to it? You know, we want to make sure we get all the pieces to it because a lot of the card design in a top-down set is just making sure that you represent things, that you want to make a list.down set is just making sure that you represent things, that you want to make a list. And this is true, for example, when I was doing Infinity, right?

That was a top-down set about carnivals and amusement parks and circuses. We just made an exhaustive list. Like, what's everything you expect to find in a circus? What is everything you expect to find in a carnival? What is everything you expect to find in an amusement park? And then we also wrote down even science fiction because we were playing around with some science fiction tropes as well. So we're writing everything down.

And the reason you want to write all the components down is you want to understand sort of what are the tools you're playing with? What are the elements that you're playing with? And then you want to make sure that everything on your list, or most things on your list, show up on a card somewhere. Now, what happens sometimes is some things just make perfect cards. I can use Infinity here as a good example. Oh, well, I want to do performers.

That was really easy. We had a lot of creatures. We can make performers. I want to do rides. Well, that's easy. We had attractions that literally did rides. Now, sometimes things get a little trickier. Like, for example, games. There are a lot of iconic games, you know, knock down the milk jugs or throw a dart at a balloon. And the problem we

ran into there was while we had games in the attractions, the games were mini games and the flavor had to make some sense to the mini game so it was a little bit harder for us to find ways to directly do stuff so what we did is we found ways to put it in the art of stuff for example grabby tabby is stealing all the milk jugs from the toss you know the ball at the milk jugs so it's not a card about that specifically but we get reference it. And that's one of the things you always do when you make your list is you try to make as many things as possible as cards, but then when you're going to card concepting, sometimes if you can't quite find specific cards where the whole card represents that, maybe a card concept can nod toward that or reference it in

the art, for example. But anyway, you want to get a really exhaustive component list. You want to understand everything that's going to make up your thing. And that is something we always do very early. And that list is something we keep coming back to. I know that when I work on a top-down set, I'm always like, normally we make a list and then I'll go back to it. I'll mark off things as we do it uh and then usually at some point I will go back and say okay what are the highest ranking things you know what are the things we have like for example I'll just use infinity because it's on my mind um we had done rides and we had a list of we had more rides than we had ride cards so I knew that everything was going to get done like for example we ended up not having

a place for petting zoo so we we ended up making one of the employees work at the petting zoo. We didn't have a place for like first aid. But I did circle log flume and say, oh, we, that is so iconic to the experience of amusement park. We need to figure out how to have a log flume. And so I actually tagged a card as log flume and we didn't know what it did for the longest time. So that's part of making your component list is so you understand what am I filling in? What am I missing? What do we need to maybe fill in other places like card concepting? And so we want to make sure to be conscious of that. Okay. the next thing we want to do is tropes. So to understand tropes, what that means is there's a whole website called TV Tropes that does a great job of listing tropes. So what tropes are is in entertainment, and this could be movies, TV shows, books, sometimes in songs. There are certain sort of story elements that are just ingrained in the way we tell stories.

And so when I tell a certain kind of story, odds are I'm going to touch upon some of these things that you've seen before. So, for example, Strixhaven, which was top-down magical school. One of the things we want to do is like, oh, trick save is a good example, by the way. So not only was it magical school, but when you do magical school, you get a subdivide. That means you get to do not just magical school tropes, but you get to do sort of magical tropes and you get to do school tropes. Now, a lot of magical school tropes already wind that in. So what I mean by tropes, for example, is there are certain iconic archetypes, like the class clown or the overachiever or the goth. They're just

things you see pop up again when you see stories about schools. Or, for example, the idea of even magical schools. The idea of, I'm in a class where I'm learning spells and, oh, the spell gets out of control. You know, there are certain... Or I'm in a magical class that deals with magical creatures and the magical creatures are harder to deal with than you might expect because they're not normal creatures.

There are certain things that you'll see that show up again and again in different things that fall under that trope space. And so one of the things you want to understand when you're making the set is not just the component pieces, but also what the specific tropes are. For example, in Innistrad,

yeah, we want to have zombies, but we also want to have the shape of the zombie outside the window, where they're lurking outside the window, and you can see a horde of zombies. That is a trope that is used all the time in zombie movies. So the idea of the tropes is we will go to places like TV Tropes or places where we can find a lot of tropes, and we'll also think about it.

Neon Kamigawa, for example, a great example of a trope is the giant sword. And I don't just mean a big sword. Like crazy, bigger than makes any possible sense that it's a sword. And in Japanese pop culture, the giant sword is one of the tropes. And you want to understand that because A, you can do stuff like make a card out of it, or B, sometimes if you can't make a card out of it, you can weave it into card concepts.

And sometimes tropes can make awesome cards. So for example, in Neon Dynasty, there's a card called You're Already Dead. So there's a trope in Japanese pop culture where there's a samurai who has a super sharp sword. And he attacks somebody and he sliced them through with his sword. But it's so clean and so sharp that the result of him slicing through them hasn't happened yet. Meaning they haven't realized they've been sliced through. And so the idea is, you know, it's a trope that gets shown up a lot.

And we were able to make a card out of it and name it after the trope. And so that is something that really helps bring it in. It's like one of the things we always look for in a top-down set is, can I make something that I can't just make anywhere else? Is there an object? Is there a trope? Is there a creature? Are there things we can do here that we can make cards

that that card just wouldn't show up anywhere else? And that those are some of the greatest things you can do top-down when you're making cards kind of unique to the environment you're making. Because they really, A, they're making cards kind of unique to the environment you're making. Because they really, A, they're making something new that you haven't made before, and B, they really hammer home the environment you're trying to make. And a lot of doing a top-down set is, you know,

you want the audience who has familiarity with the thing you're doing to recognize and bond and get excited by that thing. For example, when we're doing Throne of Eldraine, we're doing the fairy tales. I want to make sure that, you know, oh, you can look and go,

oh, I get it. It's Goldilocks. It's Cinderella. It's Pinocchio. That you can, a lot of the fun of us doing top-down is us taking tropes in our own direction. For example, our Goldilocks is a bear hunter. Okay, that's not the Goldilocks you

necessarily read growing up, but you get the archetype, you know, like, oh, what if we did our twist on Goldilocks? What if the bears aren't the dangerous part in this equation? What if it's Goldilocks? And that's a fun, you know, one of the neat things about top- Down is you can subvert things. You can do your own version of things. There's a lot of fun that you can play around with it. You know, just as we can take fairytale elements and put our own spin on it, we can do that with everything. Like all Top Downs we do, you know, in Theros we're doing Greek mythology.

Yeah, we made gods because gods are core to Greek mythology, but we've got to make a lot of our own gods. I mean, some of them are analogs to the Greek gods, but some of them are really our own creation of us sort of reinventing. Like there's twins in Theros, twin gods, that represent sort of opposite ends of the spectrum, which was kind of cool. Anyway, so you want to understand the tropes. Much like the components, you want to weave the tropes in.

Okay, next up is the themes. So, okay, we're doing Innistrad. What kind of things do you expect to see in an Innistrad set? What do you expect to see in an Amiket set? What do you expect to see in a Kaldheim set? Like, what are the things that you expect to see? And a lot of times the themes play, like, in Estrad, for example, we wanted the idea of death to be a theme. We wanted, you know, we wanted to play in the space of,

you know, we wanted monsters to be a theme. Like, we wanted to figure out how do we get those themes in a way that spread throughout the set. So in Est know, we wanted monsters to be a theme. Like, we wanted to figure out how do we get those themes in a way that spread throughout the set. So in Ishrad, we want monsters to be a theme. So we said, okay, what are the monsters you expect to see? We found four of them. So we had vampires and werewolves and zombies and spirits. And then we also realized that humans were important

because humans were the victim. I'll get to conflict in a second. But anyway, then we made five, we took five creature types, put them in ally colors and spread them throughout the set and really had the structure built into it so that the monsters and the victims became part of the structure of the set. Likewise, we wanted death to matter, oh we made a whole mechanic, morbid, and we brought back flashback. Like, you know, we really did things that made death and the graveyard a focus. Next up, conflict.

Okay, in order for any world to work, and this is not just top-down worlds, all worlds need a conflict. But when designing a conflict for a top-down world, you want to make sure that you're tying in to the essence of what your source is. I will use Neon Dynasty as an example of this. Okay, we're doing pop culture, Japanese pop culture and Japanese mythology. So what is a core conflict that comes out of Japanese pop culture? a core conflict that comes out of Japanese pop culture.

And one of the big ones was that there's this dichotomy in Japanese culture between a fascination with new technology and ancient tradition. Modernity versus tradition is what we called it. And we were able to really form a whole conflict out of that. We built the set off that conflict and then half the set represented one side and half the set could represent another side. You know, in Throne of Eldraine, we built the set out of,

we actually had two different influences that related. One was Camelot, and that's kind of English fairy tales, if you will. And then we had more fairy tales based off the continent of Europe. So stuff based in, like, Germany and Italy and France. Stuff you would find, like, in Grimm's fairy tales. Anyway, and then in that particular case, we pitted them against each other.

The conflict was the two different things fighting each other. In Kaldheim, we made ten worlds based on the nine realms of Norse mythology. And then the conflict was between the realms. So it depends on where, but normally when you're building conflict in a set, it's important that...

We're a game about conflict, right? You're fighting your opponent. So you need to have reasons why conflict is baked into it. Fighting is an important part of the game in which the core mechanic is fighting. So you need to have reasons why conflict is baked into it. You know, fighting is an important part of the game in which the core mechanic is fighting. So you want to make sure that there's a conflict in there that you're representing. Who in this world is fighting?

Why are they fighting? And how do you represent that? Okay. The next thing that you want to get is what is called tone. And the idea there is what exactly, these last two are sort of tied together, tone and emotion. So what tone means is

I want the world to have a feel. I want you, as you're approaching the world, you the audience, you the player, I want you to be able to interact with it in a way that it evokes something. Now, specifically, I want it to evoke an emotion out of you, and I'll get to that in a second.

But I want the world, like, you need to figure out, is it sunny? Is it dark? Is it scary? Is it hopeful? You know, different worlds have different feels to them. And what you want to do is you want to make sure that every magic set has a tone. I mean, the funny thing is, in each of the things I'm talking about here, every magic set has components. Every magic set will tie into some sort of tropes. Every magic set has themes and a conflict. The key to all of this is tying

these elements into the set that you're making because you want to be making sure that your set is oozing the top-down flavor that you're trying to play into it. And so tone plays a really important role because tone is all about sort of what is the world, like what is the essence of the world? So, for example, Innishrad is dark and creepy, and you want a sense of hopelessness, and you want to be scared. Where Theros is brighter, and is about ambition, and is about building oneself up, becoming a hero. Amonkhet was really playing into the harshness of the world,

and how that there was beauty and there was order, but there also was something underneath it that was intimidating and a little bit of a sense of unease. Throne of Eldraine really wanted to play into the sense of... Oh, Throne of Eldraine, by the way, makes a good example. Let me talk to this real quickly about structure. We realized with Throne of Eldraine, by the way, makes a good example. Let me talk to this real quickly about structure. We realized with Throne of Eldraine, because we were playing in interconnected territory,

one of the things we found about fairy tales, when you play fairy tales, is the same component pieces show up in different stories. The big bad wolf is the one in Little Red Riding Hood, but also in The Three Little Pigs. Prince Charming shows up in Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, and Cinderella. You know, the evil stepmother shows up. There's certain archetypes that show up,

and one of the things we realized when structuring Throne of Eldraine was we wanted to lean into that. One of the cool things about that structure was it was neat if I recognized all the component pieces but then I could put them together in my own fairy tale. If I want the evil stepmother to ride in a pumpkin

carriage or Pinocchio to ride in a pumpkin carriage. The evil stepmother is in the same story as the evil stepmother. If I wanted Pinocchio to ride in the pumpkin carriage I can do that. And so different sets sort of play in different spaces and how we structure it. Pinocchio to ride in the pumpkin carriage. I can do that. And so, like, different sets sort of play in different spaces and

how we structure it. I guess I didn't really list structure, but structure is also an important part, is how are you putting this together? How are you building it? What is the set trying to do? Hey, call time is set up in different realms because the source material has different realms. Whereas something like

Innistrad, it's much more of, it's the monsters versus the humans in your conflict. But different monsters fight in different ways. And the monsters don't fight each other, for example. That the conflict was very monsters versus humans. So you don't see inter-monster fights. That's not what the world's about. So that's not what we build. So that's not we builds.

But anyway, the tone you want is the tone is going to give a sense of making people feel like they're in the world that these stories are taking place in. And the stories have particular tones to them. Okay, the final bone is emotion. So one of the things about game design is you are trying to evoke something out of your players. You want to evoke emotions. Part of having a great experience, a play experience, is that you, the player, feel things. That it's not just ho-hum. It's like you get it. Now there's lots of emotions. I can make you excited. I can make you scared. I, you know, like there's a lot of things you can go through. And the idea of doing top-down is saying,

okay, what emotion am I trying to evoke? Okay, in Innistrad, I'm doing gothic horror. I want you to be afraid. Can I build mechanics in a way? Like one of the things about dark transformation that we love, especially the werewolves, was this idea of, I know this thing is going to happen. I know these humans are going to turn into

werewolves, and the werewolves are going to beat me if they, you know, I'm afraid of them becoming werewolves. Or Morbid said, oh, if something dies, my opponent could do something to me. So maybe I want to be extra careful. So every time something dies, I become afraid because something might happen.

And that, you know, we really sort of built the structure and built how the set was done to make the players feel afraid. Theros had a sense of accomplishment, of achievement. That you start as nothing, but you go on quests. And with the help of the gods, you fight monsters. You know, gods, heroes, and monsters was the theme. And we really wanted a sense of achievement. So the structure of Theros was about building up.

That had an enchantment theme. And you had a lot of auras. And there were counters. And heroic made you want to target your things. So over time, your things got better. And the monsters themselves would get better. Devotion would mean you'd build up over time. So all the mechanics were building up towards something

because we wanted to get the sense of achievement. And that's the other thing that's important is all these component pieces don't live in a vacuum. They live with each other. What I'm trying to get out of the emotion should evoke the conflict, should evoke the tropes. All the things should be together. Amiket is a good example where

we were trying to do something where we were making things not match on purpose. That the world looked so beautiful, but the element of the world and the things it told you about felt uneasy. So you're like, everything looks okay,

but I know it's not. I know from the card names. I know that something card names, I know, like I, I know that something's wrong, even though with my eyes, when I look at it, it just looks really beautiful. Um, and that created a sense of unease where there's a disconnect between what you're seeing and what you're feeling. Um, there's a lot of different things like that, that we can play into. Um, you know, strict saving was all about, about, you know, magical schools. And so we really, the structure leaned into education, right? That the factions were based on different things you learn in school. That this is the history faction. This is the math faction. This is the science

faction. And that really grounded in a way because, you know, you have, you know, the players have been to school. You've lived through these different things. And that it's something people are familiar with, but it gave us a unique way that, you know, the math faction could use fractals. And like, there's a lot of fun visuals that tie into math that aren't things we ever used before in a magic art. Maybe we won use again you know like it was something really unique and that one of the things that you want to do and this is true of any world in that when the world team builds the world when the design team builds the mechanics and the structure we want to do something that feels unique we want to do something you haven't seen before you know i talk all the time that like my job is to keep making

magic sets and disguise it just enough that you're like, oh, this feels different from every other magic set I played, right? Like, 80 to 90 percent of magic sets are exactly the same, and it's that 10 to 20 percent that you add on that you, like, oh, well, in this set, I care about this quality, or in this set, this theme comes through, or I'm evoking this emotion. You know, each set, the way we do it and the way we sort of make it matter is that we care about some quality that we don't normally care about, or we care about it more than we normally care about it, or there's something we normally do care about that we don't care about. You know, sometimes absence can help create a theme.

But that's the big thing is we want to evoke out of you, the player, something. And that means the world have to really think about how they structure that. So hopefully what you realize today, like the big lesson today, and in some levels, components, tropes, themes, conflict, tone, emotion,

other than the source, the source is unique, I guess, to top downs. But other than that, everything is something all magic sets do. All magic sets have to have component pieces. They have to have tropes in them. They have to have themes and conflict and tone and emotion. So it's just a matter of when we're pulling, where are we pulling from? Now, I will let you know, even when we're pulling where are we pulling from now i will let you know even when we're doing a bottom upset usually we're pulling from somewhere so for example i mentioned tropes you would think well if i'm not doing top down where do tropes come from well the reality is even in a bottoms up we try to find some memorable elements. You know, for example, let's say we're building, I'll take Ravnica.

So Ravnica, City of Guilds, the original Ravnica. We were doing a faction set that's based around multicolor. It's as bottom up as you go. If you strip all the words off those cards, you get, it's a faction, a two-color faction set that will come through very loudly. But a couple things. One is we want to give flavor to the factions. And so the factions are playing into something, you know, so there's trope space in where the factions play.

You know, Dimir is sort of this assassin's guild that's mysterious and wants everybody to underrate it. You know, you've seen stuff like that. So like each of the guilds had trope space that we can play into and we have to set it somewhere. So one of the things we tend to do is every world we do has some real world basing to use on. So a lot of Eastern Europe was for Ravnica.

Now it wasn't a top-down Eastern European set, you know, we weren't necessarily playing into Eastern European mythology, but we did use a lot of the shape language of the city and the architecture to sort of build a look and feel to it. And so even when something's bottom up, there'll be components there like we're not, I guess there are exceptions, but normally if we're building a world, we're using something as an influence. Like one of the things that happens early in world building is they'll make what's called a mood board where what they do is they go through real world pictures

and pop culture pictures to sort of get a sense of here are things that exist that put together, combined make a feel for what we want for this world. So even when it's a bottom-up set, there are still component elements that have a little bit of a top-down feel. It's more so in a top-down set. And in a lot of ways,

when I talk about bottom-up for top-down, I'm talking a little bit more about the mechanical structuring. The mechanical, like, it's really a term about building mechanically. So, in some ways, when you're building a world, the world building, they are a little more top-down, I guess, if you will, in the sense that there's a lot more of finding existing things they can build off of,

where mechanics, when we're in a bottom-up set, there are trope space we'll find. And so we want to make sure we do a little of that trope space. But it's not quite as much. Anyway, guys, I hope this was educational. Yeah, the one thing that was really interesting is

that I have a little bit of time before I get to work here. The one thing we have found is that genre tropes make a little bit easier time for building top-down sets than cultural historical tropes do. So I will use Amonkhet as my example. So Amonkhet made use of sort of historical Egyptian and then Egyptian mythology. But the problem we ran into is sometimes your audience doesn't know the source material that well. Egyptian

mythology is not something the average person do. Camelot, the Camelot part of Thorn Eldraine had a similar element. Like, you know, one of the things we'll do is we'll make a list of all the component pieces. And then what we'll do is we'll go around and we'll talk to people at Wizards and try to

get a gauge of what is familiar to people. So one of the problems we found with both Egyptian and Amun- Sorry, that's Amun- With Egyptian and Camelot is the general knowledge wasn't very deep. The classic example I use is the Green Knight, who's one of the villains of Camelot. I mean, not the main villain, but a decent-sized character. And we ended up not putting him in Throne of Eldraine because not enough people knew who the Green Knight was.

And that's not, that's not that obscure a character or anything. That what we found was like with Throne of Eldraine, with Camelot part of Throne of Eldraine, was like, okay, they know Excalibur and maybe Lady of the Lake and Merlin and Morgan Le Fay. And there's a lot of knight tropes they know that are generic knight tropes that happen to be true of this setting.

But they know from just seeing lots of things with knights in it and playing magic. But it just fell off very fastly. Same with Egypt. People just didn't know. The average person didn't know Egyptian mythology. I mean, I'm not saying nobody. People that do know it.

But when we're trying to make something, we want to make something that the majority of players will recognize because, like I said, the set only holds together if you understand and recognize the source material. If you don't know the source material, it seems very random. So sometimes in Top Down, some of the

challenges have been when you pick something that not enough people know, and that can happen in both. Camelot is an example of a genre story, where Amun-Ked is an example of more cultural. You want to make sure you're picking something that people know. And sometimes we supplement. Like one of the things that we did with Throne of Eldraine

was that we very consciously, we knew that fairy tales were much better well-known than Camelot, so it was a good companion piece to it. Okay, Camelot only has so many things people might know, but fairy tales go pretty deep. The average person knows a lot about fairy tales just because of the way they seep into pop culture pretty often. So anyway, not every top-down set is the same.

Different top-down sets have different challenges. Sometimes it's very easy to make cards out of the component pieces. Sometimes it's more of a challenge. Sometimes elements are easy and other elements are hard. So top-down has its challenges. Not everything I named today are like they vary from set to set how hard or easy they are but anyway that's all the elements

so anyway I hope you guys enjoyed our launch through what all it takes to make a top down set anyway guys I'm now at work so we all know that means means at the end of my drive to work instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic I'll see you guys next time