Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #340 - Subtypes

Episode Date: June 17, 2016

Mark talks about the subtypes of Magic.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, last time I talked supertypes, so that means it's subtype time! Rachel's all excited. She says, subtypes? We're talking subtypes today! Okay, so there are a lot more subtypes than are supertypes. So just for those that somehow didn't listen to my supertype podcast, on every card there's a card type. We have seven card types in Magic right now. Artifact, Creature, Enchantment, Instant,

Land, Planeswalker, and Sorcery. We used to have Interrupt and Manasaurus I guess technically. And Tribal. I guess I didn't label Tribal yesterday. I talked about why Tribal wasn't a supertype yesterday in the last podcast. Okay, so now subtypes.

So when you have a card type, supertypes come before. There are six of those. I talked about them last time. And subtypes are what come after. Usually of the card type, you have an em dash. And then you have an em dash if there has a subtype. So there's lots of different subtypes. In fact, I'm going to go through today. There is a whole bunch of subtypes. So today will be everything you've ever wanted to know about

subtypes, but we're afraid to ask. Okay, so we're going to start with artifacts. So there are four artifact subtypes. We'll begin with Clue, a brand new one. So Clue showed up in Shadows of Innistrad. So basically, there were things that could produce a Clue. Oh, so let me explain this about subtypes, which is important, is you only get a subtype, well, creatures can have subtypes and planeswalkers can have subtypes. In fact, creatures have to have subtypes and planeswalkers have to have subtypes. Other than those two card types, everything else is just because it means something. And the rule is we don't do subtypes unless they mechanically are relevant. So one of the things that will happen from time to time is I will want something to be mechanically relevant,

meaning I want to use a subtype, so I will make cards that reference it so that it is mechanically relevant. Well, I'll get to a few of those. Clues. So in Shadows of Innistrad, we have the investigate mechanic. And what it does is

it produces clues, which is a creature token type. But because we had cards that wanted to care about, you know, when you sacrifice a clue and such, we needed to give them a subtype had cards that wanted to care about, you know, when you sacrifice a clue and such, we needed to give them a subtype. We also wanted to be able to reference them, so it helped a lot to be able to say it's a clue token. I think the reason it's a subtype,

it's an artifact subtype clue, is so that we can mechanically make relevance of them. Otherwise, we could just name the token type. Like for example, um, poke it, uh, poke it. Poison is a token type, but it's not a subtype. It's just, we've named the counter. It's a counter. Um, this, I guess it's an artifact token, a little bit different. Um, but anyway, in order to make it relevant, we had to give it a subtype. So clue is an artifact subtype.

Next we have contraption. Oh, the bane, the bane of my existence. Um, so for those that don't know bane, the bane of my existence. So for those that don't know, the quick version of this is we made a card in Future Sight called Steamflugger Boss that I think Aaron Forsythe made. The idea behind it was we wanted to make a card that just used mechanical verbiage you'd never heard before. That was kind of the joke.

So originally, I think when Aaron made it, it erected a monument. And then we ended up changing to assemble a contraption. And all would have been well with the world. It was cute and goofy, and it did something that didn't make any sense because it was a future shifter card from a possible future world.

And then Aaron wrote an article where he talked about making that card and then gave out the secret that there was no intent to ever do it. We were never planning to assemble contraptions. And you're not supposed to do that. Because as soon as the audience knew, it was never going to happen. The audience demanded that it happen.

So it is on my bucket list, my magic designer bucket list. I have vowed before I retire, which is not in the near future, so a little bit of time, I will figure out contraptions. The problem is we wrote the rules for them, assuming it was a joke. And anyway, the rules are a little weird. It is an

artifact subtype, so contraptions are artifacts. We know that. And what they do, how they work, creatures assemble them. We know that. And what they do, how they work, creatures assemble them. We know that. Note, note, it's not that players assemble them, although I guess players could also assemble them. But creatures have to be able to assemble them because that is, it talks about when riggers assemble. Anyway.

But contraptions right now, right now, are only on one card, reference on Steam Plugger Boss. Next, equipment. So equipment showed up in Mirrodin for the first time, and then quickly became an evergreen thing, so we do them all the time now. Equipment is the, we made them as an artifact version of auras. The idea was, we really liked the idea that there's things that, you know, I can get a sword, and then I can give the sword to one of my creatures, you know, that I can make objects, or, you know, get objects and give them to my creatures. Equipment has some rules with it, so it needed to be a subtype. Whenever you

have rules associated with things, subtypes allow you to also have some rules. We try not to have any rules built into creature subtypes anymore. We used to, but we try not to do that. You can still have some rules built into other subtypes. We just do them a lot less. Next, fortification. So two of the four artifact subtypes, the four artifact subtypes are clue, contraption, equipment, and fortification so two of the four artifact subtypes the four artifact subtypes are clue contraption equipment and fortification two of them come from future site uh meaning two of them

exist only on future shifted cards so the two of the super private two of the subtypes are from the future that maybe we'll do so fortification is basically a land version of equipment. The idea being equipment is defined as only going on creatures. You can only equip things to creatures. And so we decided to make fortifications, which was, hey,

maybe one day we will make the equivalent of equipment, but for lands. And that is what a fortification is. We have not yet realized that future world. What are the chances of us doing fortifications? They are rules-wise sound, meaning they work just fine. Obviously, they use the same rules as equipment, so they work just fine.

It's a matter of finding a world where the flavor fits it. The problem in general is it's hard to get rid of lands. We have lessened land destruction because we don't want you making it too hard for people to cast their spells. So in general, land destruction has gone down, which means destroying lands is harder.

So fortifications are tricky because we can't do anything that's too problematic because they're not... I mean, I guess you can... It is an artifact. You can destroy it as an artifact. So there are some answers.

I do believe we will come to the world where it makes sense. I think that it's, in my mind, more a win than an if. I do think at some point we'll make fortifications. But it will need to be the right world and the right time. I mean, my guess is one day we'll be working on something

and just go, you know what? It's time. Fortifications time has come. We should make fortifications. Okay, next, creatures. So creature subtypes basically are creature types. Technically, they're subtypes, but when you think of, you know, zombie or vampire or goblin or elf or human or whatever, creature subtypes are more evolved than any other subtype. Every creature must have a subtype. In the rules, for a while, that wasn't true, and a lot of artifact creatures didn't have a subtype. And then we said, okay, you know, this is confusing. Fine. All creatures have a creature subtype.

And we spent a lot of time and energy sort of flavoring them and who has what subtype and where. Then during Onslaught, we came up with what we call race class. So now most humanoid have both a race subtype and a class subtype. Race would be like goblin or elf or human. Class would be like a knight or a soldier or a wizard. Sort of the job you have.

And race class is based off of how D&D does functions. That you have both a race and a class. Like I am both an orc and I am a fighter, for example. The tribal card type came about because

we wanted to share creature subtypes with other subtypes. So, one of the rules about subtypes is you can only be a subtype for one class of card type type with the one exception what's that excuse me uh the one exception being instants and sorceries are allowed to share uh a um subtype um so tribal existence so we were allowing non-creatures to use a creature subtype that's why tribal exists in the first place we wanted to say this enchantment, it's a goblin enchantment.

This artifact is an elf artifact. We wanted to be able to do that. We since realized that we were adding a lot of complexity in words for little gain. And so we since decided not to use tribal. But anyway, that is why. As far as creature subtypes go,

I mean, I could do an entire podcast on creature subtypes, uh, and I'm trying to. So, um, the basic thing to understand is that we do race, class, and humanoid things. We have iconic, uh, creature types, uh, which mean big, splashy ones. We do, at rare usually, uh, white is angel, Blue is Sphinx, Black is Demon, Red is Dragon, and Green is Hydra. It took us a while to come to some of those. We got the Angel, Demon, Dragon happened very early

in Magic, although Demons went away for a little while. But the Hydra and the Sphinx took us a while to find. We also have what I call the characteristic classes, which are for white, it's human. For blue, it's merfolk. For black, it's either vampire or zombie. For red, it's goblin. For green,

it's elves. Just the most often used of these smaller creature types. So characteristics are the kind of ones you see a lot at common, where iconic are the ones you see only a few times, but often at rare. You know, like most sets have an angel,

if an angel makes sense in the world we're in. We try to shape worlds. Creature types is a big way why we shape worlds, that certain worlds only have certain creature types. So part of the way we give a definition is this world, this combination of creatures exists, or this world, that combination. Creature subtypes started in the game.

Richard wanted the flavor of them. I mean, he did make use of them mechanically right away. Goblin, merfolk, and zombie all had a lord in alpha. So it was a component of the card that was included. Originally, it was summon the subtype rather than creature M- so like a goblin wouldn't be creature M-goblin, it would be summon

goblin. But it was confusing that creatures didn't say creature on them and so we wanted to make sure that the creature card, when we said destroy card creature, I was like, what's a creature? Well, how about we label the things, you know, so all the card types now label actually what they are. But anyway, I'm not spending a lot of time on creatures. Like I said, I could spend an entire podcast on creature subtypes. It is a very meaty topic, but we're

going to move on. Okay, to enchantment. Okay, there are three enchantment subtypes. There's auras, there's curses, and there's shrines. Okay, so aura, when magic first began, there were, I guess we use, I'm not sure what the current terminology, for a long time we referred to them

as local and global enchantments. What that meant is a global enchantment just sat on the battlefield, you know, crusade, or glorious anthem, or it just did something. It just affected whatever it affected. Sometimes yours, sometimes your opponent's, sometimes everybody's. But it just sits there and does a thing.

A local enchantment was something that you would enchant something with. An enchant creature being the most common. So an alpha, the card type didn't even say enchantment on it. It just said enchant whatever you could enchant, like enchant creature being the most common. So in Alpha, the card type didn't even say enchantment on it. It just said enchant whatever you could enchant, like enchant creature. So when 6th edition rolled around, we decided that it was weird that the creature card type didn't say creature on it. And the enchantment, or, you know, the enchantments that were local didn't say enchantment on it.

It said enchant. But anyway, we decided in 6th edition to just put the words on them. And when we did that, we needed to come up with a new way to have local enchantments. So what we ended up doing is giving a subtype to enchantments called aura. So now, what'll happen is it'll say enchantment aura, and then in the

rules text, it will say enchant creature. We move the enchant creature down to make it, uh, it's now an actual ability. And it'll say whatever enchants, and then, but anything that's a local enchantment, essentially, is an aura now. It's a subtype

aura. It's something we use all the time. It's our first, I guess, evergreen, other than the creatures, I guess. But the thing about the creature subtypes is every single, there is no creature subtypes is every single... There is no creature that's existed

in every world we've ever visited. Even human, which is the most common one, didn't show up in Lorwyn. So those... A lot of them are evergreen in the sense that goblin and elves and stuff

we most often use. But we don't use them every set because not every world will have a goblin or have an elf, for example. So auras are, as our first of all, our evergreen subtype. Next, we have Curse. So Curse was an Innistrad.

Curses are enchant players that you put on usually your opponent. Every once in a while on yourself, you're being clever, but usually you put them on your opponent, and then just bad things happen to your opponent. It was part of the flavor of Innistrad, the idea that we were in gothic horror world, that you could curse your opponent and then just bad things happen to your opponent. It was part of the flavor of Innistrad, the idea that we were in gothic horror world, that you could curse your opponent. Curse is a big part of the horror genre. Enchant Players had started

as something I had done in the unsets and I decided it would be fun to use Enchant Player here, so Curses, Enchant Players. The rules manager at the time we made Innistrad with Mergotlieb, he did not want me having a subtype curse, so I specifically made some cards that reference curses.

In fact, I only think there were like two in the first Innistrad block. But by just having a couple, it allowed us to then have the subtype. So the funny thing is it's not that I wanted necessarily to make the cards that cared about it. I just really wanted it to be a the subtype. So, the funny thing is, it's not that I wanted necessarily to make the cards that cared about it, I just really wanted it to be a named subtype. I wanted, because if I didn't do that, then I wanted to be able

to have curses that didn't necessarily say curse in their name. I think Innistrad ended up having curse in the name of all of them, but I wanted the ability to make curses later without having the restriction of having to say curse of whatever. And so anyway, one of the secret weapons I have is we can't make subtypes unless they're relevant, but I can make them mechanically relevant

by making cards that care about them. Note, by the way, if I did not subtype it to be curse, I would be unable to make cards that care about curses. By having a subtype, I now can care about it. Even if all the names say curse in it, I don't think I can reference names. I don't think I can.

You can reference a specific word, like a whole name, like a card name, such and such. But I don't think you can reference just a singular name. It's an interesting question. That's an interesting question. That's an interesting question. I think the reason

we can't do that is because in languages with translation they don't always match one for one. So in English it could be the same word but in another language

it wouldn't be the same word. For example, one of the problems that's come up that's been mentioned to us is English just happens to have a whole bunch of different words

for the undead. You know, there's like 30 words for different kinds of undead. And there's other languages we translate into that there's like, there's one word. And so, you know, when we start dicing up and dividing up all the different kinds of undead, it gets tricky for some languages. And so sometimes words and titles where it's unique in English, it's not unique in another language. Okay, the third enchantment subtype is Shrine.

So the three subtypes are Aura, Curse, and Shrine. So Shrine is from Champions of Kamigawa. We made a cycle of Shrines, and the reason they are subtyped is the cards need to care about one another. That when you... The way they work is they count the number of

shrines in play to figure out how big their effect is. And so, we wanted them to work on each other. So there was a cycle of them. So if you get out the red shrine and the green shrine, we wanted them to look at each other. So in order for that to happen,

we had to give them a subtype. So, those are the three enchantment subtypes, aura, curse, and shrine. Okay, land. Okay, so land has basic land subtypes and non-basic land subtypes. So basic land subtypes you might be familiar with. There are five of them. Plains, islands, swamp, mountain, and forest. Those are important because we often will reference them.

We'll often say, go in your library and get a forest, or this creature is as big as the number of swamps you have. We'll mechanically reference individual card types. And so I talked about basic being a super type. That's important. But the subtype is also important because we do refer to them. In fact, it is so important that sometimes when we make dual lands, we will put land subtypes, basic land subtypes on them.

And those are pretty powerful. People really like when we do that. And the reason we don't always do it is because it is so powerful that it actually has a cost associated with it. Okay, now we get to the non-basic land subtypes. So first we have desert. So desert showed up in Arabian Nights on a card called Desert. The funny thing is, I don't think...

Oh no, desert was referenced because there was camel, and there was somebody that had desert walk, and there was a creature that was immune to damage by... Camels had banding, and camels and any creature they banned with were immune to damage from deserts, because deserts could damage you. I mean, your opponent's desert could damage you. And then we had Desert Nomads, I think, had Desert Walk. So anyway, desert was the first non-basic land subtype

that showed up in the very first expansion, and just made reference to deserts. I don't think we've done any desert. We keep talking about having a world. Does deserts make sense in this place? We keep talking about finding a place where deserts make sense. But we have not done that yet. But it pops up.

We know it's a subtype. Next, Gate. So Gate is from Return to Ravnica. So we wanted to do some common dual lands. And so the idea is we wanted to do common, enters the battlefield tapped dual lands. The problem was that rare, we also wanted to do shock lands, and that those lands were strictly worse than the rare lands. The problem was that rare we also wanted to do shock lands and that those lands were strictly

worse than the rare lands. And not that magic doesn't do strictly worse, but we kind of tried to avoid it within the same set. So we said, okay, is there some way to make these not strictly worse than the rares? And we said, oh, how about we sort of care about something about the world of Ravnica?

And we decided that these represented the gates of each of the guilds. And then we had cards that cared about the gates. So the common cards meant something. Yeah, they're not quite as strong as the rare ones, to be fair. But they are at least not strictly worse than the rare ones. They do something that the rare ones don't do. And gates... We had gates originally in Return of Ravnig and Gatecrash, and then

both those sets and Dragon's Maze had cards that cared about gates. In fact, I think the lands got reprinted, I think, in Dragon's, I mean, not Dragon's, Dragon's Maze. So I think there were gates in all three sets, and there were gate matters in all three sets. Dragon's Maze. So I think there were gates in all three sets and there were gate matters in all three sets. Okay, next, Lair. So Lair is from Plane Shift. It referred to, we made five dragons that were three-colored dragons and we wanted lands that were connected to the dragons. I'm trying to think why we subtyped it. I mean, we subtyped it so you would recognize they were the lairs of the dragons.

We must have mechanically cared about it somehow. It's not jumping to mind how we did. But lairs, I think that's only been used, I think only in Plane Shift. Next is a locust. So locusts first showed up in Mirrodin. We had a card that we wanted to care about how many copies of that card there were. But rather than look at the name of the card, we put Locus so that we would allow ourselves to later make other cards so we could care about it.

Ended up being pretty good and constructed, so we sort of backed off from making any other ones in that block. The original idea was maybe we'd make other Locuses in the block, but the first one was strong enough that we didn't. A cloud post, I think, was the first one. But when we went back for Scars of Mirrodin, and we knew they'd be in modern together, but they wouldn't be in standard together, we made a second locust. So, so far, every trip to Mirrodin, we made a Locus. Okay, next, we have Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower. So these were what we call the Urzatron, made in Antiquities. They were three lands.

So all of them tap for one Colossus, except the Mine and Power Plant tap for two Colossus, and the Tower taps for three Colossless if all three are in play. So if you have a mine, a power plant, and a tower, you actually tap for seven mana total. Two, two, and three. This was made during antiquities. It was made as an enabler to help you with playing more expensive artifacts.

Didn't originally have a subtype, but rules-wise, I guess we realized that we needed to care about what they were, and so they ended up going back and they ended up putting... So the weird thing is I think they have... I don't know if it's hyphenated. I think they have Urza's as a subtype

and then either mine, power plant... power hyphen plant or tower as subtypes. So technically, I think Urza's is its own subtype and then either mine, power plant power hyphen plant or tower as subtype. So technically I think Urza's is its own subtype and mine power hyphen plant

and tower are their own subtypes. So they have two subtypes as I believe they technically were. There's nothing else that has the Urza's subtype and remember

it's a land subtype so I can't just go stick it on I mean there's a bunch of Urza's artifacts but I can't you can't have a subtype. So I can't just go stick it on, I mean there's a bunch of Urza's artifacts, but I can't, you can't have a subtype on two different card types. Mine is sorcery.

So Urza's is stuck on land. But if we made another Urza's related land in theory, we could put Urza's on it. Okay, next. We get to planes. So planes only show up in plane chase.

And all of the planes have a subtype because we want to reference where they're from. I don't know. I assume there might be... I'm not as familiar with plane chase as I could be. It is possible... I mean, first of all, they were done for flavor purposes. That we wanted to know where the planes were

part of the fun of plane chase is you're running around the multiverse we're going to go hey this is from this plane hey this is from that plane and we wanted to

sort of make reference to it and we also were including some planes that people knew and some planes that you've never seen before

so having the name was important it does allow us to mechanically care. I don't know, like, we could make a card that says, or we could make, well, I see. There's only one plane and play at a time. I imagine we could, in a set where we cared about it, make a card that says, like, whenever I'm on a Ravnica,

you know, the plane of Ravnica, I have a boost or something. You mechanically could care about the planes. I think the subtypes on the planes was more of a flavor thing than anything else. That we just wanted to make sure you kind of knew which plane it was. Because it's pretty important to the flavor that you know what the planes are.

And I think that was the place to stick it where it made sense. Okay. Next. Planeswalkers. So planeswalkers are kind of like where it made sense. Okay, next. Planeswalkers. So planeswalkers are kind of like creatures in that they have to have a subtype. The subtype of a planeswalker is their name. So any Jace planeswalker will have Jace

as a planeswalker subtype. This is mechanically relevant because there is a rule about having multiple copies of the same Planeswalker in play. And it uses the Planeswalker subtype as a means to monitor that. So if I have a Jace in play, no matter what Jace, Jace the Mind Sculptor or something, and I play Jace Balerion, it looks and says, oh, you have two Jaces in play because it looks at the subtype. There are currently 32,

as of this podcast, there are 32 planeswalker subtypes. How do I know that? Because I ran a head-to-head and then a second head-to-head. So I happen to know they're exactly, currently right now,

they're exactly 32 unique planeswalkers that all have cards. Could I name all of them? Probably not. I could try to go through my head-to-head to name them all, but I'm not sure me trying to name 32 planeswalkers has much value here. But all the planeswalkers do exist. One of the questions we get is why, for example, Sarkin Ball, we say Sarkin as his planeswalker subtype. And some planeswalkers, we just use their first name. Some use their last name.

The people ask why. I think it has to go with what the planeswalkers most often refer to. Like, people don't tend to call Sarkin Vol. They call him Sarkin, even though Vol technically is his real name. So I think it has to do with what people sort of vernacularly call them. If they call them by the first name, we use their first name. If they call them by the last name, we use the last name. We use whatever we think is most used by players. Okay. Next, we have

Instant. Okay, so there are two instant subtypes, arcane and trap. Okay, so arcane is from Champions of Kamigawa block. So I invented a mechanic called splice. And the idea of splice was that you could attach it to spells. So the flavor was, I liked the idea that you could graft your spell onto other spells, but then it didn't go away. So it's

sort of like, hey, this effect gets grafted onto other spells, and that is like, originally the idea was you could do it out of your graveyard, and eventually we changed it to being out of your hand. Um, and we had talked about maybe just being able to do any instant or sorcery, but I think at the time we were nervous.

Like, we just were a little concerned, so we decided we would make a subtype to care about. And we ended up making Arcane. To the best of my knowledge, I think, maybe a supplemental set made an Arcane card or two, but the only sort of standard, you of standard Black Border set

or standard legal set that got made that had Arcane in it was the three from Champions of Kamigawa box. So Champions of Kamigawa, Betrayers of Kamigawa, Saviors of Kamigawa. It did some good things and bad things. The good thing was, developmentally, we knew what we were getting into. We knew all the cards you could, you know, splice onto.

But because the subtype required you to be from champion... Sorry, I'm yawning. Because I had to be from champions, it was very, what we call, parasitic. Meaning, it really, like, you couldn't go outside of champions. Like, let's say I wanted to play splice. Well, all the splice cards were in champions block, but I needed Arcane cards. All the Arcane cards were, you know, so it really became a block deck, because so many of what you needed to make it work all came from the same block. And we try, we do parasitic things eventually, but we're trying to be careful.

Champion was a little too parasitic. Okay, the other subtype is trap. So trap was from Zendikar. So we wanted to have cards that sat in your hand. The idea was we were trying to make an Indiana Jones kind of world, and Indiana Jones is famous for having all sorts of traps. An adventure world, both D&D and Raiders of the Lost Ark, they were big inspirations for this world. Traps are commonplace. There's lots of treasure, but there's traps.

And so we wanted to recreate that feeling. We had made both quests and traps. And so I wanted both of them to be subtypes. And so I made cards for each of them. But what happened was, during development, the quest mattering cards ended up getting killed. And so because there were no quest mattering cards, they didn't end up making a subtype out of quests. That's why quests doesn't have a subtype. But I made some trap cards and at least one of them survived. So

trap did get to be a subtype. So I would have liked if one of the quest cards stayed because I would have liked to have the subtype quest but anyway, so that is why Trap became a subtype we didn't do Trap so we returned to Battle for Zendikar because we were focusing on the war between the Eldrazi and the Zendikari

I hope if we win, win when we return to Zendikar 3 when we go back to Zendikari. I hope if we win, win, win the return to Zendikar 3, when we go back to Zendikar, which I hope we do, the plan is it to be a lot more of what the original one was, which is Adventure World.

And I hope we have stuff like traps and stuff because we want to get away from the Eldrazi and get more into the, like, you know, all the tropes of Adventure World. Okay. So, that is... I've now gone all the tropes of Adventure World. Okay. So, that is, I've now gotten through the whole list of subtypes. Um, so,

for those that are curious, um, artifacts have four. Clue, contraption, equipment, fortification. Creatures have infinite number, all of them. I don't, I don't know the total number of them, but there are a lot of creature types. In fact, we've retired some creature types. So there's creature types that exist on cards that aren't even supported anymore. There's three enchantment subtypes, Aura, Curse, and Shrine.

There's five basic land subtypes, which is Plains, Island, Swamp, Mount, and Forest. And there is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There's eight non-basic land subtypes. There is desert, there's gate, there's lair, there's locust, there's urzas, there's mine, there's power hyphen plant, and there is tower. There are 32 current planeswalkers,

although that list grows every time we make new planeswalkers. And there are two ancient and sorcery subtypes, arcane and Trap. So, I'm almost to school. The interesting thing about subtypes is they are an important tool. One of the things is, and most people don't realize this,

which is, I'm not allowed to refer to... So, here's what I can refer to. I can refer to things written on a card, and I can refer to names in their entirety. I can't refer to pieces of names or parts of names. I can say a card named blah, but I can't say any card with such and such word in its title. So one of the reasons subtypes are so important is

if I want to care about something and it's not already unified in some way, a subtype really is my only way to care about something and it's not already unified in some way, a subtype really is my only way to mechanically care about it. Ironically, I can't have a subtype unless I care about it.

So it is interesting in that there's a... There might be a few exceptions with things like planes, but pretty much in normal cards, subtypes, if you see a subtype, you can know with assurance that somewhere something cares about that subtype.

Because if it wasn't something that mechanically cared about it, we wouldn't have the subtype. Now, it's interesting because sometimes I want the subtype as much for flavor as for mechanics. But I don't control the flavor, and so if I want it lifted, I need to make sure it's mechanically relevant. It is important. One of the things I sometimes remember that's super important is I'm constantly trying to find new hooks for magic, new mechanical ways to care about things. That one of the things, so there's a,

I don't know if I've done a podcast on this, so there's terminology I use, linear and modular, and it has to do with how much it encourages you to play other things. So, for example, if something is, all your goblins get plus one, plus one, that is very linear. It encourages certain other cards. It says, hey, maybe you want goblins in your deck. And modular means it doesn't do that.

It's like, it's a naturalized, it doesn't say anything, just it's a functional card maybe you'll put in your deck. We like to have linear things. What we find is less experienced players really, really like linear mechanics and linear cards because it kinds of tells you what to do. More advanced players, more enfranchised players care less and are more like, I'll figure out what to do. But anyway, linear mechanics are very popular. So one of the things

I try to do is make sure to make linear mechanics in most sets. The thing is, there's only so many things on a card I can care about. You know, I can care about a card type or I can care about a power or toughness or I mean, there's a few things I got to care about. But one of the nice things about subtypes is it allows me to make something brand new that I can care about specifically for that set. And so you'll notice that a lot of the, like when I went through supertypes, a lot of the supertypes, or actually there weren't that many supertypes, but when I talk about something like a creature type, that's still a subtype. What's a good example here? A lot of things I do vary, like we'll make them and then we use them as a general purpose. One thing about subtypes is that I often make

them specifically for the purpose of mechanically carrying. That it's one of the big tools I have of a designer of trying to find a new hook within a set to make mechanically relevant that it's it's one of the big tools i have of a designer of trying to find a new hook within a set to make mechanically relevant and really subtypes are the one thing it's hard to make a new car type i mean not that we've never do it but it's it's something we do very very infrequently um but subtype is something that we can make and so um it is probably one of the most important tools i have as a designer to sort of make new things and make new areas for people to care about. And so when it goes to the subtypes, you'll notice

that these subtypes in a lot of ways are showing off a lot of mechanical relevance for a specific set. Oh, this set wanted to care about, you know, Zendikar wanted to care about traps and, you know, champions wanted to care about shrines and arcane and, you know, you can almost see sort shrines and arcane and, you know, you can almost

see sort of the flavor we were going for based on which subtypes were connected to which worlds. So anyway, subtypes, there's more of them, but needfully so, and it's an important part of the card that I will continue to use and make more of. And so that, my

friends, is everything I have to say about the subtype. So anyway, I'm now at my daughter's school, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.