Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #179 - Banding

Episode Date: November 26, 2014

Mark Rosewater talks about the history of banding and explains its fate.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is a topic inspired by BlogTog, my blog. So we were talking about banding. It's a creature-keyword mechanic that came out in Alpha that we do not do anymore. And there was a lot of discussion about it, and so I thought I would talk a bit about it. For starters, I thought I'd explain what it is. Because there's a lot of people who apparently don't know what banding is. Because we haven't done banding since 1996, I believe.

So we've not done banding in a while. So first, I want to explain what banding is, talk a little bit about sort of creature keywords, and then I'll explain why we don't do banding anymore. And hopefully that will take up 30 minutes. Okay. So let's start at the beginning. What is banding? So banding was an ability found on mostly white creatures,

although there was a rare green creature in alpha. And here's what banding means. In certain situations, on attack or block, they're different part of the reason banding is confusing you can create a band what a band is, is a bunch of creatures that are banded together

and what that means is they must attack or block if they attack, they must be blocked together, meaning if you block any one of them, you are blocking all of them and on defense all of them have to block a single creature together. Well, why would you want to do that?

The reason you want to do that is a creature in a band, the controller of the creatures decides where damage gets assigned to them. Normally, okay, another thing I've got to keep in mind here is ever since Magic 2010, we've changed how blocking works with multiple blockers. So, let's, let's walk through this one a little bit. So, right now, um, let's say I, let's say you attack me with a 6-6 creature, and I have a 1-1, a 2-2, and a 3-3. What happens? a 3-3. What happens?

I block with all three of the creatures. You, the attacking creature, get to decide in what order to stack them, if you will. And then, you do all the damage to the first creature, and then if it's lethal, then you get to go to the second creature. If it's lethal, you get to go to the third creature. So with a 6-6, you would probably

put the 3-3 first, then the 2-2, then the 1-1. And so you do 3 damage to the 3-3, then 2 damage to the 2-2, then 2 damage to the 1-1. So I would destroy your 6-6, you would destroy all 3 of my creatures. And that is how it currently works.

Go back to the beginning of the game, the way it used to work in early days of Magic is, you would attack with your 6-6, I would block with all 3 of my creatures, you then would assign your 6 damage however you wanted to assign the 6 damage. You didn't have to assign all of it to one creature before going to the next creature.

So you could just say, I assign 3 here, 2 here, 1 here. There were a few tricks you could do where you would assign 1 to everything and then pyroclast and stuff. There's a few age-old tricks you do not do anymore. But anyway, so when I talk about banding, it's tricky because I'm not used to

banding with the new system. So as I refer to it, I'm going to talk probably a little bit more about the old system only because, I mean, I'll do the best I can. But if I slip a little bit, it's because I'm used to banding with the old system. I'm not really banded with this new system. Although,

for all intents and purposes, it works pretty similar. Although, you get to assign the damage. I assume... I don't know. I don't know if modern banding means if you get to assign the order since you assign the damage. Maybe that's what it means. I don't know. I've not done banding with modern blocking.

Following the essence of what banding is about, I, the person controlling them and not the other player, get to assign where their damage goes. So I assume I get to order things. I don't even know. This is how complicated banding is. I don't even know how banding necessarily works with the new rules. My assumption is you, the person controlling the band,

get to pick the order by which the damage happens so you would order the creatures in the order that you wish I assume that's what happens so if you have a bander what happens is if you attack so the rule is with attacking in order to create a band of creatures all creatures in the band must have banding except for one creature

so the idea is let's say you have a 6-6, and I have a 1-1 bander and a 2-2 bander. I can attack with my 1-1 bander, my 2-2 bander, my 3-3, let's say. And that way, if your 6-6 wants to block my band, it has to block all of it. And obviously it does 6 damage, so you can't just block one creature of it. So normally a 6-6, there's not a lot of things that can outright kill a 6-6. So if I attack, usually one of the things I attack with is going to die to the 6-6. But here, oh, if I attack and I ban, well, yes, you're going to be able to kill something of mine.

I will be able to kill your creature because my creatures are banded together. Now, so on attack, it's all but one has to have banding. On defense, it's all, only one has to have banding. On defense, it's only one has to have banding. So you can block any number of creatures, and as long as one of the creatures has banding on defense, they block as a band. So where did this mechanic come from? So Richard, when he made Alpha,

basically what he was trying to do is, white's flavor has always been, it's the army color, which is, it has lots of little tiny creatures, and the power comes, not that any one individual creature is powerful, but when banded together, they can become very powerful. And the idea was, Richard really wanted to make sure that when your army of creatures got together

and you went up against the giant beasts of the opponent, that you could take down the giant beasts without losing your entire army. That was sort of the idea behind banding. And it was basically a very flavorful thing. You know, your creatures are banding together, obviously. Now, here was the problem that, and now, for example, I'm, you can just clearly demonstrate me trying to figure out how banding works with modern blocking. Back in the day, there was a lot of confusion. So, for example, let me give you a situation.

Now, I'm using the rules from back when banding, so not the current rules, so be aware. But the situation is, back in the day, this is when you assign damage individually. You assign your damage. It's not, I order them, although probably this works similarly. But anyway, so if your opponent has a 6-4 trampling creature, you have four 1-1 creatures, one of which has banding.

They attack with a 6-4 trampler. What do you do? So a little exercise for you. What do you do? They have a 6-4 trampler. You have four 1-1 creatures, one of which is banding. Okay, the correct answer is you block all

four creatures, block the six four trampler. Then you assign all six trample damage, all six damage, including any of the trample damage, to one of your one one creatures, not your bander, obviously. So what would happen is, their six-four trampler dies,

one of your 1-1 dies, your remaining three 1-1s, including your bander, survive. That's how banding would work. And that's the idea, which is, I'm trading a 1-1 for your six-four. That's pretty good. So what banding said is, if I have a lot of creatures, especially on defense, banding ended up being... One of the issues with banding is it was not particularly strong on attack

and it was really strong on defense. Partly because of the rule that said on attack you had to have all but one bander, where defense you only needed a single bander. Which meant that if you just had a single bander in play and you had a bunch of creatures you could block with, your opponent, like the math your opponent had to do to understand, you know, there's a lot of different things that you could do.

And so usually you did not want to attack into a bunch of creatures, even tiny creatures, if there was a bander there. Which, kind of the role of it, although it was very powerful in defense. Okay, so what happens, Richard made banding. Okay, he wanted to sort of get this reinforced army flavor. So, let me tell a little story. This took place in the summer, I think August of 1995. I got flown, this was before I was a full-time employee at Wizards.

I got flown to Seattle, and I went to the Red Line Hotel, Red Line Inn, I think, right by the airport. And it was the place where we had the 1995 World Championships. Now, this was the first time. 1994, the World Championships had been held at Gen Con.

So this was the first time we were hosting our own World Championships. For those that know their history, it was the one where Alexander Blumke from Switzerland defeated Mark Hernandez from France to win, to become the second ever World Champion. Mark Justice and Henry Stern were both semi-finalists, both losing in their semifinal match. Team USA won the first ever, I mean, this was the event, I've talked about this before, where there wasn't actually a team event. There was no playoffs, but I tracked the team scores based on the individual, and we awarded a winner based on that.

So Team USA won the first ever team event. Handily, too, by the way. And the team was Justice, Stern, Mike Long, and Pete Lyra. Obviously talked about that in the podcast. Okay, so I was a judge. I had been a judge at U.S. Nationals, the one

where Justice defeated Stern. And I'd been a judge at local stuff, at regionals and stuff. But this is the first, like, big-time stage. World Championship. I'm judging the Magic World Championship. These are the best of the best players from around the world.

I think there were 17 or 18 countries represented. You know, I mean, the previous Magic at Worlds, I mean, a few countries had sent teams, I think France and Belgium and a couple, but there was a handful of countries that had nationals, maybe four or five. But this year, whole bunch, all there, World Championships.

So what was the number one rules question I got? The number one rules question was, how does banding work? Or variations, obviously, thereof. So what happened was, one of the things we had done is we had done a sealed portion, which, by the way, was a giant seal.

There was a big debate at the time. Limited gameplay was very... There was a lot of heated debate about how much skill there was in any kind of limited format. And so to sort of offset that, they gave the players, I don't remember exactly how much, but a huge amount of cards.

Normally, for example, when you play at a pre-release, you have six packs of cards, six boosters. I mean, they gave them something like 30 boosters. Way, way, way, way more than a normal person would ever get, just to ensure that everybody would have something. Obviously, there's variance when you give people 30

packs. There's people that get better stuff when you give people 30 packs, you know. There's people that get better stuff than others. So the variance was still there. I just meant that everybody had something, at least, I guess. Anyway, the number one rules question among the best of the best players in the world was how does banding work?

So the issue was that banding was just very complicated. And like I said, it was a couple things I talked about the types of complexity A, it had comprehension complexity which was, it said banding and back in the day, we didn't put reminder text so it just said banding well what does that mean? oh, so it was this pretty complex idea

I don't even know if we can easily write out banding without going to microtext on a card but back in the day, I don't even know if we can easily write out banding without going to microtext on a card. But back in the day, you didn't even have that. So for starters, there was just basic complexity of what does it do. Then there was board complexity. A single bander, especially on defense, like, oh,

okay, you know, there's a lot going on. It really makes it hard to attack. Having one bander, if you had a group of creatures and a single bander, it made attacking very complicated and hard to do. Now, there's also a strategic complexity with it.

That part I don't mind. I like strategic complexity. So, okay, so what happens is we put banding. Banding is in alpha. It goes into a lot of the early sets. I think Mirage Block was the last one to have it. Tempest, which was my first set I first did,

we actually had it in the design. In fact, there's a creature who I believe has regeneration or had regeneration and banding, which was pretty good, right? I have a Banner that can Regenerate. That's a pretty good combo. And we had to change it after we got rid of Banding. I think we changed it to First Strike.

And like, well, First Strike and Regeneration, that's not really a combo. Like, either you survive with First Strike or you survive with Regeneration. Not the greatest of combos. But anyway, that's what that card used to be. So we decided around Tempest that it just wasn't carrying its weight. So let me talk a little bit about that.

Also, by the way, real quickly, let's do a little history of alpha and creature keywords. Because most people, a lot of people assume there's things in the game that started in the game, and that is actually not the case. So let's walk through the creature keywords a little bit, and let's see if you can identify which creature keywords were in alpha. Okay, so white has lifelance, has protection, has flying, has first strike. Okay, so flying, vigilance, first strike, protection, and lifelink. Which one of those were in alpha? Okay, a little tricky.

I mean as a keyword. So it turns out that flying was in alpha, First Strike was an alpha, Protection was an alpha. Vigilance, the card Serra Angel had Vigilance essentially on it, but it was not keyworded. That wouldn't be keyworded until, I think, Onslaught. I mean, we had creatures that didn't tap to attack, but we did them infrequently, and it wasn't keyworded. Lifelink wasn't an alpha. The first card that is even pseudo-Lifelink shows up on a black card in Arabian Nights called El Hajaj. And then the card that really put it on the map, although it's technically not Lifelink, was a card called Spirit Link in Legends. Okay, how about in blue? So blue has Flying,

obviously. It has Flash. It has Hexproof. It has Island Walk. So which were those? Oh, those were in Alpha. Obviously Flying and

Island Walk. Land Walk showed up in Alpha. Obviously Flying and Island Walk. Land Walk showed up in Alpha. In fact, I think Alpha had Forest Walk, Mountain Walk, and Island Walk. It did not have Plains Walk. That didn't show up to Legends. No, it did have Forest Walk. It had all of them with Plains Walk. Plains Walk, the idea was it's not easy to sneak through the plains, so Plains Walk was a pretty infrequent ability.

Flash did not show up until Time Spiral, although things that could be cast as instant were done pretty early. The earliest one I remember, Alliances definitely had some cards, the creatures that could be cast as instant. some cards, the creatures that can be cast as instants. And Hexproof, in Legends there was some stuff that kept you from targeting. I think the earliest was in Legends

where you could think that it couldn't be targeted, I believe. Let's go to Black. So Black has Intimidate, has obviously Lifelink, has Death Touch, has Flying. So Flying, yes. Death Touch, no.

Death Touch didn't show up until Future Sight. Oh, also Lifelink, by the way. I mentioned it in white. Lifelink also didn't show up until Future Sight. Future Sight, we finally said, you know what? There's a bunch of keywords we need, and we made them in Future Sight. We reintroduced them in FutureSight. Or we introduced them in FutureSight.

Oh, because the idea of FutureSight was showing the future. So we thought it was funny to take things we knew we were going to keyword, officially show them in the future in FutureSight and then have them show up right away in the next couple of sets. What else? Oh, Intimidate is a new version of Fear. Fear was also not keyworded. Fear got keyworded, hmm, Acadian Masks is my guess. But Fear was, there was a card called Fear in Alpha,

which essentially had Fear. And then, I think it became Masks, we finally keyworded it, and then Fear changed to we came to math, we finally keyworded it and then fear changed to intimidate eventually, um, to broaden it out so that different colors could have it. So intimidate is, is essentially fear, but where it's not named. So whatever color I am, I can look at artifacts and colors that match me, which is so on black, it's like fear, but on, you know, you can put it on other colors. Red has haste, first strike, Double Strike, Trample. So, which are those?

First Strike and Trample were the only ones in Alpha. Haste. Haste showed up. I'm trying to remember when Haste showed up. Haste showed up five, six years in, on Slidy, somewhere around there. The Nether Shadow, which was a black card in Alpha, did have Slidy, somewhere around there. The Nether Shadow, which was a black card, and Alpha did have,

essentially, a haste. It was a card that came out of the graveyard and could attack right away, so it had haste. But more traditional haste cards didn't show up for a little bit.

Double Strike was actually created by somebody during the first You Make the Card. We were getting people turning in ideas for abilities, and it was a green card,

and green really didn't have First Strike, so double strike didn't make any sense for green but someone turned that in and we were like that's a really good idea so we added it to the game and green oh trample, trample was also trample was in alpha in green we got reach we got trample, we have vigilance

we have death touch. So the new ones there are reach. Reach was not in alpha, although giant spider, the ability essentially was in alpha, but it was not a keyword ability. That also got keyworded during future site. That actually got

keyworded, by the way, not because we needed to keyword it for keywording purposes, but because the rules wanted it. That if reach was keyworded, by the way, not because we needed to keyword it for keywording purposes, but because the rules wanted it. That if reach was keyworded, flying could have a reminder text that says I can only be blocked by creatures with flying or reach. Anyway, so that's it. We did it.

Also, oh, indestructible, which is something that shows up in white and green, that also was a keyword. That first showed up in FutureSight, but not as a keyword. Or, I'm sorry, first showed up in DarkSteel, but not as a keyword. That first showed up in FutureSight but not as a keyword. Or on a site. First showed up in DarkSteel but not as a keyword.

And then later it got keyword. In fact, in Magic 2015 I think it got keyworded or 2014. Anyway, recently it got keyworded

and became a keyword. Now, there were some keywords that... Banding is not the only keyword from Alpha that really hasn't

made it all the way through. Beside banding, there was flying, first strike, trample, and protection. There was land walk, which we do a little bit now, but we phased out. There was something that was called land home. Although, oh, actually, that wasn't

a keyword in Alpha. It exists in Alpha. Land home is, was on like what was the original sea serpent called? It was like actually, that wasn't keyworded in alpha. It existed in alpha. Land home is was on like what was the original sea serpent called? It was like, if I can only attack if a defending player has an island and if I have no islands, I have to sacrifice it. It was trying to flavor something that had to live in the water.

What else did we actually got the things from alpha? There was not tons of keywords in alpha. Oh, regeneration. Regeneration also started in alpha. Regeneration's a tricky one. We're not super happy with regeneration. Both regeneration and protection have issues.

We're trying to figure out how best to make use of them, but protection has a similar problem to banding in that there's a lot of different things going on. In fact, it's like four keywords in one. And regeneration has a problem that ever since Sixth Edition rules, it kind of doesn't really regenerate. It's not like it goes through the graveyard and comes back.

You essentially are putting a shield on it that buffs it and the flavor's kind of off from the word. Awesome word, but the mechanic now doesn't function like the flavor intends it to, which means people play it wrong. Okay, sorry. Off my little alpha keywords. Okay, so we decided that banding was a little too complicated,

and so we pulled it from Tempest. So let me talk a little bit about why. Because one of the things that happened, like on my blog, the reason this whole thing came up is someone asked, somebody asked me if I could explain, the actual question was, could you explain banding in a few sentences? And I was like, no, I don't know if I can. You know, and banding is complex. And so somebody said, oh, here you go. And they, they came up, they had a thing in like three sentences. And my point was, oh, you just didn't explain a lot of stuff. Yeah, everything you said,

mostly was true, I believe, but there were things you didn't explain. Like, for example, they didn't explain how you get in a band, how you do it offensively, how you do it defensively. You know, they explained kind of how banding worked once you were a band, but they didn't explain how one got into a band, which obviously is important. And so I started sort of explaining that it's complicated. And so let's talk about this. Why do we take things that... Obviously, banding added something to the game.

There was flavor. There was strategic moments that were very cool. You know, that whenever we take something away, I get the following complaints. I enjoyed Thing X. Here are examples where Thing X was really strategically interesting. Why did you take something strategically interesting from the game? That seems to be to the detriment of the game.

And the answer, I have to say, is... I mean, there's different reasons we take the game. This issue has to do with confusion, which is if the majority of the audience has trouble understanding something, there's a lot of negative that comes along with it. You know, if every time people use something, if they mostly get it wrong, that's the problem. And if they mostly get it wrong, that's telling you something. When I was head judging, not head judging, when I was judging the world championship,

and the number one question I got was banding, I'm like, these are good players. These are players that know their stuff. These aren't beginners. These are the best of the best, and they are having trouble with it. That is a very scary sign. And as I interacted with more people, what I found was people did not know how it worked.

I'm not saying nobody, clearly some people did, but a lot, the majority, did not know how it worked. And that's a pretty big negative. That when you have a mechanic that people can't... Usually the sign that people keep playing it wrong means there's something about it that's hard to learn. If it's easy to learn, they'll learn it.

You know, I can see somebody flying in about two seconds, and odds are for the rest of them playing magic, they're not going to have lots of flying questions. It's a pretty intuitive mechanic. Once you hear it, you're like, ah, I got it. Ah, okay. You know.

Now, there are mechanics like trample that are a little more complicated. Trample has some issues. But the general gist of trample people seem to understand. And, I mean, I guess, I don't know. The biggest thing Bending had going for it was its flavor. But the biggest strike against it, probably the biggest strike against

it was that it didn't work consistently. It wasn't really one ability. It was kind of like multiple abilities that were similar. And that was the big trouble. So, like, when I attack, it was kind of like multiple abilities that were similar, and that was the big trouble. So like, when I attack, it's, it has a similar function when I block, but it's really different

in the way I have to set things up, so that it just functions differently. If I just needed one banner to attack and one banner to block, at least then I go, okay, this is how you make a ban. But the fact that that wasn't the same caused problems. Anyway, anything that's in the game,

I mean, I guess we make things that have very little redeeming value. But most things we make have some redeeming value. It's not that there aren't, like, I had plenty of games that I had played, I understood banding, and I had plenty of games where neat things would happen because I had banding. Where cool interactions happened because I had banding. Banding, at least back in the day, once upon a time was a very good foil for trample.

That if you had a trampling creature, the answer to trampling was banding. It was a nice answer. That you could stack all the trample onto the one creature, and essentially the bander would keep it from trampling. So when we take something away, it's not because there isn't any goodness there. It has to do with the following issue. Magic is a complicated game. I know it's very easy

when you've been playing something for a long time and you internalize things to kind of forget how hard it is. But one of the things that will bring you back, if you want to understand how hard magic is, teach a new player. And what you will find is, there's all these things that you take for granted

that you just know how it works. It's just so dirt simple. And watch a beginner struggle. And they will struggle with things that you forget were even a thing you once struggled with. You know, there's all sorts of things. Like, you know, and magic tries very hard as much as we can. I mean, gameplay is important.

And there are clearly things we do that require a little more learning when you learn because we need it for the gameplay. You know, I know creatures think they can attack other creatures, but it's much better gameplay if the defending player chooses when creature fights happen. I've actually made other games where creatures can fight other creatures, and it gets very hard to keep creatures on the board. It's especially

having any sort of utility creatures that if you can just attack my creatures, it's hard for me to keep utility creatures. It doesn't let you have buildup or have interesting defenses. And so that's an example where people kind of want to do something, but what we make them learn actually is better gameplay. But anyway, the game is a complex game.

And it's only getting more complex with time, because what happens is, as we work on the game and develop the game, we find new things. We find new keywords that we think are worth it. We find equipment or planeswalkers or, you know, we just keep finding new, nuanced things that we can do that we really think add to the game. And so, if we're going to add things, that means we also have to subtract things. The way, the metaphor,

I use this in another podcast, is the idea of you're checking your bag and you only get so much weight and that if you go over the weight, there's stiff penalties to pay. That they, you know, it's like $25 a bag, but if you're over,

it's $100 a bag. It's four times as expensive. And so complexity is a lot like that. Once you sort of go over the bar of complexity, there's a certain amount that people can absorb and handle, and then once you start going past that, right, the game becomes incrementally harder to learn. And so we really have to toe the line and try to make sure.

And, like and remember, Magic if you took all the current best selling games all the games that are like very big successful games Magic, if Magic is number one is really close to the number one most complicated game there is we have almost 15,000 different cards

there are tons of formats to play our game. Our rules is literally the size of a phone book. Our rule book is the size of a phone book. We don't even give you the rules. It's too intimidating. Like when you first learn, we're like

we give you access to the rules, but we stopped trying to explain the rules on a sheet of paper because it was too hard to do it on a sheet of paper. And what too hard to do it on a sheet of paper. And what we learned is we started teaching you essence of the rules and elements of the rules because if we try to teach you everything, you shut down.

In fact, when I tell people, when you teach people how to play, do not try to teach them everything. That's how complicated magic is. Teach them what they need to know to get through the first game. You know, make the first game fun. You know, magic is a game that you, like a lot of games when I teach somebody, I say, you know, know to get through the first game. Make the first game fun.

Magic is a game that you... A lot of games, when I teach somebody, I say, if you're going to make a game, if you're a first-time game designer, my rule to you is make a game that by the end of the first game your audience completely understands how to play the game.

I'm not talking strategy, but they know the ins and outs of playing the game. That they, at the end of their first game, could teach another individual who hasn't played yet how to play the game. That's the simplicity you need in a beginning game. Later on, I'm not saying all games have to be that simple, but I'm saying when you're starting out,

I recommend a little game designer tip that you want to make, when you first start making games, just like when you first start painting pictures, you don't want to make the most complicated picture the first thing you paint. You want to do something simple. Make a game, you know, I also say when you make a game for the very first time, make a short game. Make a game that you can play within 15, 20 minutes. Don't make a game that takes an hour. Let's say 15-20. It could be 1-20. The game can be very short. It's better to have a game

where you play lots of times but short than have a long game. A, it's much, much easier to find playtesters, and that's really important when you're first starting to play. And, also, it allows people to adjust how long they want to play. If your game requires you to play an hour,

then people have to buy into playing an hour. If the game takes five minutes, people can play an hour, but they can also play five minutes. Anyway, see, my banding podcast is all over the place. Although, real quickly, one of the things I decided about this podcast is that I like having a topic so I can focus on things. But I go where I go.

I'm not, I mean, I feel like before the day is over, I've told you plenty about banding. But that part of the fun of the podcast for me is, like, when I write my article, it's outlined, it's planned. Like, everything I'm trying to tell you is pretty orderly. But when I, like, do my podcast, one of the things that I have fun with is, I'll do a little bit of structure. I'm not saying that I don't ever make outlines or anything, but one of the things I enjoy about it is that I think when you talk to people,

that there's a train of thought that you can comprehend and follow when someone's talking that you really can't follow when you're reading them. And so when you're reading, you have to be a little more structured so people will follow you. But when you're talking, that's not true. So I'm doing a podcast. I kind

of want to play to the medium. And so I enjoy bouncing around a little bit. I mean, I feel today's a good example where everything I talked about had a tangential tie to banding. But I, you know, I definitely have, I mean, there was probably not 30 minutes of pure banding content. So I'm hopping around a little bit.

But let's get back to banding. So there are things... One of the things you have to do as a game designer is understand when something you're doing isn't holding its weight, when it's not... A lot of weight metaphors today. When you have something that isn't... that the pluses are not outweighing the minuses.

And the problem that people run into is the following is, I understand banding. I had fun with it. It was fun for me. You are just making the game worse for me. And the answer there is, clearly, different people, like, one of the big negatives for banding

was people not understanding it. Well, if you understand it, then it's less of a negative for you. So it's quite possible for some people, banding was people not understanding it. Well, if you understand it, then it's less of a negative for you. So it's quite possible for some people, banding was more pro than con. The reason we removed from the game is because for the majority of people, it's more con than pro. But obviously, there's people out there, it was more pro than con. I get why they're unhappy. We're taking something that, for them, enhanced the game.

But the game is not just for a single individual. The game is for a group. And, you know, you don't play Magic by yourself. You play Magic as a community. And that, you know, there's a responsibility for us as the game makers to make the game the best game for the entire group and not just a single individual. Are there people that can handle the game having even more complexity than it has?

Absolutely. But what I would prefer is, then take formats that allow more complexity. Play formats that allow more cards. Play formats that give you more restrictions, or more things that make you have to play differently. That doesn't mean the game itself needs to do that. That it is... And game itself needs to be, needs to do that. That it is,

and, as I always explain, is, what we are trying to do is cut down on the comprehension complexity and the board complexity. The strategic complexity we're not trying to cut down on. You know, playing Magic and playing it well is really, really hard. And the best Magic players in the world keep continuously

winning because they are the best at playing Magic. And that, you know, it is something you can grow at and it's a skill. I mean, it is a very skill-testing game. Nothing we are doing is keeping it from being very, very skill-testing. But that said,

there's more to games than just testing the skill of the absolute top player. There's also making it enjoyable for the lowest of players, for the average player, for anybody who wants to play our game. And remember, my job is to make not just you happy, but everybody happy. And that I have to make decisions sometimes that maybe, personally, for you, would not be the right call,

but is the right call for everybody. And I get, I get, I get there are people that love banding and banding was awesome. And my argument is, the fact that we took banding away is just we're not adding any more banding to the game.

The banding cards exist. If you play in a format with banding, you can play those cards. It's not that we took it away from the game, because we didn't, but we did remove it from, we're not adding it to the game, which meant we removed it from standard, did remove it from, we're not adding it to the game, which meant we removed it from standard,

we removed it from, you know, from modern and formats that are more recent. And we're not adding any more, meaning we're not adding any more to the game. So we've ceased the amount that'll get added to the game. And as an ever growing game, you know, as we do that obviously it creeps more and more out of the game.

But anyway, that, my friends, as I pull into the parking lot, is everything you probably ever wanted to know about banding and more. And a few things that probably weren't even banding. So anyway, let me end today by saying that I'm having trouble figuring out how to end.

Somehow my beginning worked so well and everybody loves it and I nailed it right out of the gate and that's the way I start my show. I'm trying different things to end my show. No matter what I do, I don't like this, I don't like that. So I'm going to experiment around a little bit.

There's a gap. One of the problems is I record like, I don't know, seven, eight weeks ahead of now. So when I do something, you guys are going to hear me do something for a while before you can respond. But you guys first started hearing me responding, me going I'm parking my car, that means it's the end

of Drive to Work, and you don't seem to like that. So I'm not quite sure what to do. So I don't know. So I'm going to experiment with things, but I'm going to say to you, if you think you have a good way for me to end the show, let me know. I mean, obviously, there's a gap here, so you're going to hear me experiment for a little while

as I try different things. But I'm interested to figure out how you want me to end the show. So, I'm going to try something today, which is probably going to be pretty silly, but I'm going to try to see how it works. Okay, guys, you ready for the silly one? Okay. I parked my car. You know what that means.

It's time to end. Drive to work. What do you think of that one? Okay, we'll see. Anyway, thank you guys very much for joining me today. It's, uh, ooh, I had a long drive. I gotta get going. I got some work to do. Gotta be making magic. So I'll talk to you guys next time, and I hope you enjoyed

everything just in whole of banding. Bye-bye.