Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #366 - Ravnica Showdown

Episode Date: September 16, 2016

Mark's first podcast of a series where he pits two designs against one another.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today, so I got a cool idea for my blog. So, they suggested that I do a showdown between the mechanics of original Ravnica and the mechanics of Return to Ravnica. So today, my first effort, if you guys like this, maybe I'll do more of this, but I'm going to call it Ravnica Showdown. If you guys like this, maybe I'll do more of this, but I'm going to call it Ravnica Showdown. So what I'm going to do is for each of the ten guilds, I'm going to compare the two mechanics that we used each time in the original Ravnica and then return to Ravnica block. And then I will judge one the winner. Okay, a couple caveats before I begin.

First off, I'm judging them on design. Not power level, nothing developmentally, not creatively. I'm judging them on design. So be aware. That is my, I'm a designer. I'm a head designer. I'm judging them on design. That's what I'm judging them on.

Caveat number two is, this is my opinion. I don't know. I guess that's always the case in my blog, but my opinion or my podcast. Okay. So let's begin. So I'm going to go in order that we go in the order when we write them. So we start with white and blue, which is Azorius. Okay, so first up, we have forecast versus detain.

Okay, so forecast was an ability that worked while it was in your hand. It allowed you to activate things to have effects while it was in your hand. It allowed you to activate things to have effects while it was in your hand. And then usually you could play it and it would connect and do something that was related to the ability you could do in your hand. Detain was an ability, it was a keyword action, I guess,

that would keep a permanent from attacking, blocking, or activating for the turn. I don't think it affected lands, but I think it affected everything but lands, I believe. Might have just been creatures. You mostly detain creatures, but I think you can detain permanent. Anyway, okay, so it's forecast versus detain. This one's a tricky one.

This one's a tricky one. Forecast. So Forecast was inspired by Eternal Spawn of Evil. Infernal. Infernal Spawn of Evil from Unglued, which had an ability that you could reveal it from your hand and say, it's coming, and they would lose a life because they were so afraid that it was coming. Forecast proved to be kind of a pain to design.

The biggest problem with it was you wanted to have an effect that you could do repeatedly. So it had to be kind of a small effect. And you wanted the larger effect of the card to be relevant to the thing you did as a small effect. Um, so it had a really tight design space. Um, it also ended up being, uh, it didn't end up playing quite as cleanly as we hoped. Um, the other problem is when I do something in my hand, other than black with discard effects, there's really little you can do to stop it. So it became an effect that was hard for the opponent to deal with. It really had a lot of design constraints.

Um, detain, on the other hand, was pretty straightforward. It's pretty usable. Detain, on the other hand, was pretty straightforward. It was pretty usable. Detain can easily come back as a mechanic, where Forecast will be a lot harder to bring back. So when I have to look at the two, I'm going to give the first one to Detain.

So Return to Ravnica scores the first point. So right now it's Ravnica, zero. Return to Ravnica, one. That's the idea. I'm going to score this as we go along. Because it's a showdown! Ravnica showdown! Okay, number two. Dimir. Okay, so Dimir had Transmute in original Ravnica and

Cipher in Return to Ravnica. Okay, so Transmute was an ability that you could activate it in your hand and you could discard it to search for a card in your library with the same converted mana cost and put it in your hand, and you could discard it to search for a card in your library with the same converted mana cost and put it in your hand. Cipher was a mechanic that, it went on instants in sorceries, mostly sorceries, I think,

where you could cast a spell, and then you could cipher it and attach it to a creature, and then, oh, I'm sorry, you cast it for the first time, and then it attach it to a creature and then... Oh, I'm sorry. You cast it for the first time and then it went on to a creature and then that creature, whenever it dealt combat damage to something, would have this effect.

So, cipher... I made cipher. Cipher was something that showed such promise. It really... It really was a neat idea. I loved the idea that you had spells that you could turn into

saboteur effects, but wow, did it not play out as well as the... That's one of those mechanics where the idea was so awesome, was so beautiful, but the execution was so ugly. So the problem we ran into was, okay, these were effects that were on combat-related things,

so they had to be something that was, because it would happen after you dealt combat, it had to be an effect that was generally useful. So that ruled out, for example, any effect that affected combat, because it only happened at the end of combat. So the amount of things you could use for Cypher were kind of narrow. Plus, it was a blue-black mechanic, because it was in Dimir, and blue and black don't have as much of that.

Like, if it had been moved to a different color, it would have a better chance than it did in blue and black. So Cypher had the problem of we literally, like, ran out of things to do. We were stretching. Like, normally you do a mechanic and you're like, okay, I don't know if I could return with this mechanic because I used up all the space.

And Cypher was kind of like, we used up all the good space and started to make some of the not so great space because we ran out of space. That doesn't often happen with mechanics, where it's such a small amount of space that we run out before we finish. Now, Transmute, on the other hand, is not great either. Transmute is a tutoring mechanic. And one of the things we learned is tutoring is fine in moderation. The problem is if you're tutoring all the time, it just creates a reputation of board state.

That games end up playing out the same. And so the one problem with Transmute is, at least in Constructed, Transmute was more like, it was just played played as I need a tutor to get my powerful broken card and I'll play other transmute cards merely as replacements to go get the powerful broken card and so it ended up not playing all that well so to me I have a problem here I have two mechanics neither of which really played out that well so which is the better mechanic

so I think the thing I've said to myself is, let's say I wanted to do more of these. The problem is there's not a lot more Cypher stuff I can do. Maybe a little bit. I mean obviously we add effects and maybe there's one or two effects we had that we didn't have before. I can make more transmute cards and probably the key to making transmute work would be being careful about the transmute costs and stuff. I think the idea is you would make cards that you often wanted to use as is and made it a later game you would trade them. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is I think I can make more transmute cards. It would be problematic,

and development would have a lot of issues with it. But I don't know how to make more Cypher cards. Cypher is just... It ended up being a very shallow mechanic. So this is a close one. Neither is great. Neither I want to bring back. But in Ravnica Showdown,

I have to pick a winner. So I'm going to go with Transmute. Only because Cypher really ended up being not great for design. So that is Ravnica 1. Return to Ravnica 1. It's tied up. Okay, next we get to Rakdos. So Rakdos had both of these mechanics were pretty good.

Hellbent and Unleash. So Hellbent was a mechanic that said, if your hand is empty, I get a bonus. And Unleash was a mechanic went on creatures that said, when you play this creature, you may choose to put a plus one, plus one counter on it. But if you do, it can't block. Meaning, do you want to be more aggressive and not be able to be defensive?

Or have the ability to be defensive but be less aggressive? Both these mechanics were interesting mechanics. So Hellbat was interesting in that it really sort of encouraged you to be aggressive and play out your hand. That was the idea of it, is don't save anything back. Ractus is all about sort of going for the throat, so it's like, okay,

hold nothing back. And Hellbent was fun. There wasn't any things we could do with it. Unleashed was interesting. Unleashed really had a bad first impression from the players, but as they played it, they started to realize the versatility, and it actually was a pretty cool mechanic in the players, but as they played it, they started to realize the versatility, and it actually was a pretty cool mechanic in the way

it played. So these are both mechanics I would consider bringing back. I think that Unleash, I feel, is a slightly better design. The problem with Hellbent in general is that it can't really matter till later in the game,

and so it's so weird. For Rakdos, you kind of want things that, I mean, it did the right thing in that it encouraged aggressive play. But one of the things we tended to find is that it didn't necessarily go into Rakdos. I mean, you would build decks around it in Limited, but in Constructed,

I don't know, it didn't quite blend as easily as we wanted. There were decks that used it, not as Rakdos-y. But anyway, it's close. It's close. I think I'm giving the edge to Unleash. I think Unleash is just a slightly more elegant mechanic and one we could bring back a little easier

and one we could design more cards with. So they're close. This one's close. Just like Dimir was close in the other direction where neither were particularly good. Raptors, I like both mechanics. I think I like Unleashed's design a little bit better. Okay.

Ravnica Block, one. Return to Ravnica Block, two. Dun-dun-dun. Okay. We move on to the fourth match, Gruul. So, Gruul is Bloodthirst versus Bloodrush. A lot of blood in the Gruul. So, what Bloodthirst was was a sab a lot of blood in the Gruul so what Bloodthirst was was a saboteur mechanic

what I mean by saboteur is if you deal damage to the opponent creatures that care that you damage the opponent and Bloodthirst always came in with a number of plus one plus one counters if you damage your opponent so the idea is if I was Bloodthirst 2 you know let's say I'm a

I don't remember the exact stats but I'm a 2-2 and I'm a Bloodthirst 2, I come in as a 4-4 if you damage your opponent this turn. And it led to a lot of cool aggressive things. It made the Gruul deck be very aggressive. I think that was a pretty cool mechanic. Blood Rush allowed you to exchange creatures. There is an ability on creatures that allowed you to discard them to essentially turn them into giant growths that match the power toughness of the creature. And occasionally it also granted abilities. But the idea is I have a 2-2 creature that I can discard to give plus 2 plus 2. I pay some mana and discard to give plus 2 plus 2 for a creature. Okay, this one's easy for me only because Bloodthirst is a really solid mechanic.

It's not that Blood Rush was a horrible mechanic. I wasn't super thrilled with it being a Gruul mechanic. Not that it didn't fit Gruul style of play. It just is not the kind of card that I think a lot of Gruul players enjoy. They kind of want to play their creatures and attack with them. So Bloodrush to me didn't quite hit Gruul as strongly and as firmly as Bloodthirst. Also, Bloodthirst, we've already brought it back once. We brought it back in a core set. It's just a nice, good, solid mechanic. It's the kind of mechanic that I know we'll bring back again and again.

It's a very good mechanic. Like my Storm Scale, it's like what I call a three. Like, of course we're doing it again. It's a strong mechanic. It's up there with a lot of other to-be-classic mechanics. So if I have to pick one, I will pick Bloodthirst over Blood Rush. Now, by the way, I have some issues with Blood Rush. It's not necessarily a bad mechanic. I do think it had some fun gameplay.

Blood Rush, by the way, also is more limited in what you can do with it because you have to match the power toughness to the boost. It's a little more closed in how much you can make. Obviously, there's a lot of design space. So one of the things that I often explain is there's two different design space crunches. One is overall design space. Cipher this problem.

Just if you can make as many cards as you wanted, how much space is there? And there's that problem. The second problem is it's limited, not because there are not a lot of options, but once you do one thing, it cuts off other options. So, for example, once I make a 2-2 that gives plus 2 plus 2, well, now a 2-3 or 2-1, eh, not quite as interesting.

And so one of the problems with this mechanic is it's not that it chews up forever design space. It chews up space in that set. It's hard to make a lot of blood rush. I mean, the reason it was a good guild mechanic is maybe you can make eight of these. There's not a lot you can make. And it starts stepping on itself pretty quickly

because the range that you want for giant growth isn't that big. And so you have to figure out the statue on the creatures and the amount of ranges and just getting the variety you need is tricky. It's hard. So it is just the kind of mechanic that I would not want to bring it back for a major mechanic just I don't have the space within the set. Just getting the variety you need is tricky. It's hard. So it is just the kind of mechanic that...

I would not want to bring it back for a major mechanic. I don't have the space within the set. Not that there's not a lot of options. You know, plus two, two, one, two, three, two, two. Those are all interesting options. But I can't do all of them in the same set necessarily. Okay, next we go on to Selesnya. So Selesnya is green, white.

So by the way, real quickly, Azorius was white-blue, Dimir was blue-black, Retrovus was black-red, Gruul was red-green, Selesnya is white-green. Or green-white, I guess in the order we normally say. So it has Convoke and Populate. Okay, now this is an embarrassment of riches. These are two mechanics, both of which I think will come back, both of which have a lot of design space to them,

and both of which are just really cool mechanics. Convoke we've already brought back once in a core set. Convoke was designed by Richard Garfield in original Ravnica. He designed for Boros, for those that haven't heard that story, and I moved to Selesnya. I felt it was a little better fit for Selesnya.

Convoke is just clean. It's another of these, you know, Stormscale 3 things where it's like, okay, we're just going to keep doing this mechanic. It's an awesome mechanic. You will see this mechanic again. It's just a nice, simple, clean mechanic. It's a good mechanic. Populate, to me, is more like a 4 or 5 on the Storm Scale. It's good. I think we'll see it again.

The reason it's a little higher is it has more... You can't just plop it in the set. I could put a single Convoke creature in the set and it would play just fine. But a Populate card, I can't just put a single Populate card. I have to have a set that supports it. I have to have a

set where the colors that use Populate have enough token making that it gets supported. So Populate has a support issue, meaning it can't just exist in a vacuum. Like some mechanics sort of, you can just have one of them, they're fine. They work without any sort of internal support.

Other mechanics require a little more internal support. Populate's one of those mechanics. It's not something that's that hard to do. We like making tokens. It's not like making a set with a lot of tokens is hard. And there are sets where we just make sets that have a lot of tokens that populate would fit into. But it requires

a little bit more maneuvering. And convoke to me is such a pure beautiful mechanic. Like I said, populate is good but convoke is great. So I have to give the edge to convoke. Okay, so convoke wins. So that means

original Ravnica, three! Return to Ravnica, two! So, so Convoke wins. So that means original Ravnica, three. Return to Ravnica, two. So, so far, I had Detain over Forecast, Transmute over Cipher, Unleash over Hellbent, Bloodthirst over Blood Rush, and Convoke over Populate. Once again, be aware that these races are different, and some of them, like the Dimir race was clearly, I'm not happy with either of these.

I have to pick the worst, the best of the worst. And Celestia was like, these are both awesome. I have to pick the worst of the best. So not every guild, certain guilds have proven problematic. So Dimir is one of those guilds.

Dimir is a very hard guild to design. So I'll tell you when the other, there's two guilds that have always been really hard to design. One is Dimir. I will let you know the other one when we get there, but we haven't got to it yet. Okay, so I have a lot of traffic today. One of the things that's interesting is I always try to gauge my podcast because the goal is I want to finish the podcast as I get to work. And the problem is when I run into traffic, like today, I have

a very specific thing. I'm going to talk about 10 matchups between 10 guilds and so, like, I'm going to talk about ten matchups between ten guilds. And so, like, I'm not even to my halfway point yet. So, if I'm adding extra material, that's because I'm trying to make this end when I actually get to work. One of the challenges. Another cool thing that I do sometimes is

I'll talk about whatever topic I want. Some topics are open-ended, so if I have more time, I'll just talk about extra things. This one's a little more close-ended. So, I have more time, I'll just talk about extra things. This one's a little more close-ended. So, anyway, that is why, as we get to the second half, I might give more detail. Okay, anyway, next up is Orzhov. Orzhov is Haunt versus Extort. So Haunt from original Ravnica, Extort from Return of Ravnica.

Orzhov is white-black, for those who don't know. Okay, so Haunt was a mechanic that went on spells. Not just spells. It went on spells and creatures. And the way it worked was, when the card went to the graveyard, so it was a creature when it died, or it was a spell when you cast it,

you would connect it to a creature. It would haunt a creature. And then, when you cast it, you would connect it to a creature. It would haunt a creature. And then, when that creature died, the haunt effect would happen. Now, this mechanic had a bunch of issues. One is, it was both on permanence and non-permanence, and they didn't work the same. They worked similarly, but not quite the same.

Like the idea that when you... Spells happen when you cast them, but the creatures happen when they die spells happen when you cast them, but the creatures happen when they die, not when you cast them. Haunt also is one of those mechanics. So there's a concept I call stickiness, which has to do with... Actually, stickiness means something different.

What's the word for what I want? I don't know the word here. There's a word for how easy something is to, maybe grokkability is the word I'm looking for. How easy it is to sort of get something. And that certain things are easy to understand, just you get them and they click and you understand them right away. But other things are hard to grasp onto, they're not quite grokkable. And what happens is you keep reading them like, what? What does this do again? How does this work? And your brain just can't keep it. Haunt had this ungrokkable ability where people would read it and then they would forget it again. Because it didn't quite make logical sense. It didn't quite have the

resonance. And so people kept forgetting how it worked. Even now, I had to think really hard about how this mechanic worked. Like most mechanics I can just spit off and, okay, how does Haunt work again? I have to think really hard about how this mechanic worked. Like, most mechanics, I can just spit off and, okay, haunt. How does haunt work again? Like, I have to think about it because haunt was just, it had a neat flavor to it. Okay, I'm haunting things, you know. Orzhov is the guild of the ghosts, the ghost council and stuff. But it just never quite clicked.

It wasn't that it was particularly hard to design. but it just never quite clicked. It never... It wasn't that it was particularly hard to design. It was... I mean, basically what you were doing is you were doubling down effects as death triggers. And so on spell, like there are spells that then turn into a death trigger and there are creatures that have an enter the battlefield effect that then turns into a death trigger.

Or was it... Actually, no, no, they weren't into the battlefield, or were they death triggers themselves? I don't remember. This is Haunt for me. Anyway, Haunt's one of those mechanics that there's a small portion of the audience that really liked Haunt, and they always ask me

if we're bringing Haunt back. And I know the vast majority of the audience had no idea how it worked and didn't understand it and weren't able to grok it, and it never quite clicked. So Haunt is one of the biggest mistakes in its execution. Haunt is the kind of mechanic like Chroma where there's something cool at the core of it, but we just missed it. We just designed it wrong. So I feel like we're not going to bring haunt back as haunt.

But maybe one day we'll go, let's see if we can take the basic idea, which is a cool idea, and see if we can just from scratch rebuild it. Anyway, the other mechanic was Extort. What Extort said is, when you have an Extort creature in play, or one on permanence, if you have one of these in play, whenever you cast a spell, is it a white or black spell? I think it's whenever you cast a spell, but it might have been a white or black spell. Is it a white or black spell? I think it's whatever you cast a spell, but it might have been a white or black spell. You can pay hybrid white or black, so you can pay white mana or black mana to make the opponent lose a life.

So the idea is it turned all your spells, all your spells basically had a rider of paying extra white or black, and then your opponent got to lose a life. And the idea is that Orzhov likes to play bleeder decks, which is decks that slowly control the game, and then just death by a thousand paper

cuts that you lose, not because it does any big thing to you, but it just little by little plinks away at you. And so Extort was made to go in that space. Extort has one or two issues. We designed it with the hybrid mana, which makes it really hard to

now use Extort anywhere but in white-black. So it fit fine for Orzhov, but we made it hard to bring back. But, and there's some developmental issues, but I'm doing design and developmental issues. So anyway, it's clean and clear, this one, because I felt like Extort was a fun mechanic. I can see us bringing it back, maybe again in Orzhov.

It's hard to bring it back anywhere else. And Extort has a few issues, but nowhere close to the issues of Haunt. So Extort gets my vote over Haunt. So right now it's Ravnica, original Ravnica, three! Return to Ravnica, three! Okay, we get to Izzet. So Izzet had replicate. Replicate went on spells, instance of sorceries, and you had a replicate cost

and for every time you paid the replicate cost, you copied it. So you could copy it as many times as you wanted. And then return to Ravnica had overload. Overload was a one-on-a-fax where you could pay the overload cost instead of hitting onenica, I had Overload. Overload was a one-on-one effects where you could pay the overload cost. Instead of hitting one target, it hit all targets. One of my big things in Izzet so far is neither mechanic feels super Izzet to me.

Izzet's all about sort of creativity and doing cool things. And I guess, I mean, Izzet ended up having a, just in the nature of the color it's in, has often cared about inst incense and sorceries. And so the mechanics tend to care about that. But I don't know. I've never been super happy about them feeling Izzet-y. As far as mechanics, I think Replicate is just a stronger mechanic than Overload. Overload is a much more contained design space.

Because you have to pick effects that you can do globally, especially at common, where replicate is a lot easier to do. There's a lot of small effects you can do at common, and there's a lot of cool splash effects you can do at higher rarities. Replicate's another mechanic that I know we're bringing back. We're overloading, maybe, but it would have to fit the environment,

where I know we'll do replicate again. So replicate wins. So Richard Ravavnica 4, Richard and Ravnica 3. Okay we get to Golgari. So dredge versus scavenge. Dredge, so dredge was cards that you, if they were in your graveyard, you could mill a certain number of cards from your library into your graveyard, and if you did that, instead of drawing a card, you could draw this card instead. It allowed you to replace draws with this card. But you had to mill a certain number of cards to do it.

Dredge ended up being broken, but it spawned decks, and it was a very interesting mechanic. Scavenge allowed you to have creatures that were in your graveyard that you can remove from your graveyard to put a number of plus-and-plus-one-counts equal to its power. Usually its power top-discs were the same. So it's a 2-2 that you could spend some mana and remove from your graveyard to put two plus-and-plus-one-counts on something. The idea was you were using the bodies of the dead creatures to sort of supplement

your living creatures. Both of these felt very Golgari. So Golgari, by the way, is the other troublesome guild, along with Dimir. Both Dredge and Scavenge had issues. Dredge more developmental issues, I guess.

It's interesting. So I'm going to do something most people won't predict. Because I said coming in, this was a design... I'm judging it on design, not on development. I think Dredge was really inventive and really cool. I mean, I made the mechanic with help from Brian Schneider, who added in the milling part that I didn't originally have. It really went and made weird and quirky and different decks.

I like when magic mechanics can do that and just make you think of the game in a completely different way. Scavenging to me was okay. It's more functional. Scavenging is definitely a mechanic we're more likely to bring back just because it's more functional. But wow, Dredge really, like, really broke the mold and did something really cool and different. And if I'm going to judge mechanics based on their design, not their development, their design, I think I have to get the edge to Dredge here.

Dredge is way less likely to come back than Scavenge. But it's not always just a matter of which mechanic could come back. Scavenge can come back because it's safe. Dredge can't come back because it's dangerous. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't occasionally make the dangerous different mechanic.

Okay, return to Ravnica 5. I'm sorry, Ravnica 5. Return to Ravnica 3. We get to Boros. So we have Radiance versus Battalion. So Radiance was a mechanic that said,

whenever I target a creature, I then also target any creature that shares a color or a creature type with this creature, I then also target any creature that shares a color or a creature type with this creature. I believe that's how it worked. And then, oh no, was it just color? I think it was just color.

We played with a creature type for a while, but it ended up being just color, I believe. And then Battalion is if you attack with three or more creatures, something happens. Or if you attack with this creature and or more creatures, something happens. If you attack with this creature and two other creatures, something happens. So Radiance is...

Either Radiance or Haunt is the worst mechanic in original Ravnica block. It's by far the worst guild mechanic in that Radiance really didn't make a lot of sense being on Boros. I mean, I get why we did it, but in retrospect, it's the one I feel least connected to the guild. Haunted at least is flavorful. It wasn't executed

great. And Battalion just nailed it. It was really good. I mean, it's a mechanic I know will come back. It's just a good, solid mechanic. Made by Sean Main in The Great Designer's Search 2, by the way. So anyway, easy pick picking here.

Battalion clearly goes over Radiance. So not even close. Radiance is one of the worst mechanics in the first block. Battalion is an awesome mechanic for the second block. No contest. Okay, so original Ravnica, five. Return to Ravnica, four. Comes down to the Simic.

So Golgari was black-green, Boros was white-red, red-white, and Simic is green-blue. So Simic's a lot of fun. I really enjoy playing with Simic. And both these mechanics I really enjoyed, which was Graft and Evolve. So Graft was a mechanic that the creature came

with a certain number of plus-one, plus-one counters, and then whenever another creature entered the battlefield that you cast, you could move a plus one, plus one counter to it. And then some of the cards could affect things that have plus one, plus one counters on them. So if you Grafted onto one of your creatures,

you could use this to affect them. But Graft creatures also have plus one, plus one counters, so it allowed Graft creatures to affect one another. Evolve was a mechanic designed by Ethan Fleischer, also in the second grade designer search. And what Evolve did is it said whenever I play a creature,

if the creature has a power or toughness higher than the Evolve creature, it evolves and gets a plus one, plus one counter. Both of these are really fun. I had a lot of fun playing Graft. I had a lot of fun playing Evolve. So this one's tricky.

This is another embarrassment of riches, and I really, really like both mechanics. So I'm going to get to nitty-gritty to pick between them because I really do like both mechanics. So Graft had more small issues than Evolve did. Graft had the problem, like one of the things that we have to think about is Magic is not just played in paper. It's also played in electronic forms.

It's played in Magic Duels. It's played in Magic Online. And the way we set it up is called all sorts of problems for digital executions. That it just makes endless triggers. Because the way it worked is there was one card that cared about that you might want to graft on your opponent's creatures. So we worded the mechanics so you could graft on any creature, not just your own creatures.

So that meant in any kind of digital format, every time a creature is played, it creates a trigger. And it causes some issues there. Graft also was tricky. It was a lot easier to do in green than it was to do in blue.

We were playing around in a space like... Blue and green can both get bigger. That's why evolve is not particularly problematic for blue or green. But granting counters is another thing. I mean, we let blue move counters. The reason we were okay with

Graft was that blue can move counters on something blue does. So the idea is, oh, well, what does Graft does? It moves counters. And blue can have counters and blue can move counters. And it's one of those, it was a bend, you know, it's not that it's a blue can move counters, and it's one of those, it was a bend, you know, it's not that it's a complete break for blue, but it's a little weird for blue, that really it was blue boosting a lot of other things, and like I said, it's

a little, I'm looking for little tiny things to pick on, be aware, so Graft in my mind had a few small design issues that I normally have to worry about. And so, for example, if we brought graph back, I probably would have to tweak it a little bit. Like, it probably wouldn't be called graph. It would be graph-like,

but it would have a few tweaks on it to fix a few of the problems we had. Where Evolve could just come back and just be Evolve. Everything about it is very clean. So I'm going to pick Evolve over Graft, but once again, much like my Convoke over Populate, although that was in some ways an easier pick for me,

because while Populate's a good mechanic, Convoke's just a better mechanic. Graft and Evolve are both really fun. I like both of them. I think Evolve, for some really small technical reasons, is a slightly better mechanic. It's more likely that we'd bring back Evolve as Evolve than bring back Graft as Graft.

That said, as a Johnny player, I mean, Graft really did tickle my Johnny sensibilities, and I really did enjoy Graft. So it's with a heavy heart that I picked Evolve over Graft. Not because I don't really like Evolve. I think Evolve is the right... in fact, I've been mostly talking about Graft. Evolve is a fun mechanic. It started from Ethan Fleischer. He proposed it in his Bridges on a Search 2. I kept giving notes on it. Originally it went really wide and we ended up narrowing down sort of one execution. Originally, like, it was

a mechanic where, like, whenever you play other creatures if such and such is so, different things would happen. Or whenever you play a larger creature it wasn't always plus one, plus one counters. It created other effects. And we narrowed down to, like, just getting bigger is enough. And this, like I said, it's a fun mechanic. It really made

you thought about how you played. You used, you know, it really made you thought about how you played you used you know it really made high power low toughness and low power high toughness things

something that were interesting it allowed us to make some vanilla cards that just were a bit different from normal so it was it's not that

I like Evolve a lot I like Graft a lot I just have to give a slight edge of Evolve over Graft okay so what does that mean it means at the end, we have

original Ravnica five! Return to Ravnica five! Showdown in Ravnica is a tie! If only we had an odd number of guilds. So yes, it turns out, I didn't plan it that way. I literally just sat down and I decided who would win each one. And it

turns out, it ended up five to five. So, I guess the two sets, we'll have to see. Maybe one point, maybe one day if we ever go back to Ravnica again, we'll have maybe return to Ravnica Showdown.

And then, bah, bah, bah. Anyway. So real quickly, let me recap since I'm close to work. So Azorius, I picked Detain over Forecast

just because Detain is a more solid, repeatable, easier to use mechanic to design, easier to design for mechanic. I picked Transmute over Cypher in Dimir, Black Blue. With a heavy heart, neither mechanic really is things I thought we'd bring back, but

Cypher is so limited in what you can do with it. I picked Transmute just because it's slightly easier to design for, even though tutoring mechanics aren't really something we're doing these days. In Rakdos, Black Red, I picked Unleash over Hellbent. This is another one where I enjoyed both mechanics. I think Unleash just is a slightly better mechanic and has a little more design space than Hellbent.

In Gruul, I picked Bloodthirst over Blood Rush. This was easy. Not that Blood Rush is a horrible mechanic, but Bloodthirst is such an awesome mechanic, and Blood Rush, to me, is an okay mechanic. It's the kind of mechanic that I don't know it will return, but could return if the environment is right. It's not a bad mechanic, but it's not a great mechanic,

where Bloodthirst is a great mechanic. Selesnya, Green-White, I picked Convoke over Populate. This was a tough one and I really like both mechanics. They're both fun. I think both will come back. They both are super Selesnian. It was an embarrassment of riches, but Convoke is just the stronger mechanic. It's just a better mechanic.

I made Populate. I will openly admit that Convoke is just a slightly stronger mechanic. I don't mean power level. I just mean aesthetically, design-wise, it's just a slightly better mechanic. Orzhov. I picked Extort over Haunt. Haunt had a very neat idea. At its core, it's a cool concept that wasn't quite executed right and just was so un-grokkable that it failed miserably. Extort

has its issues. I'm not saying Extort is a perfect mechanic. It's a tricky one to bring back because we tied it so closely to white and black. But Haunt to me was a huge failure and Extort was not a failure. So Extort, while being merely a good mechanic, definitely trumps Haunt, which is a poor mechanic. In Izzet, blue-red, I picked Replicate over Overload.

Replicate, while I have some issues with whether these are, how is it-y they feel. Replicate is a solid mechanic, a kind of thing we'd bring back. It has good gameplay. There's a lot of design space in it, where Overload is a lot more narrow in what we can do, especially at Common. Golgari, Black-Green.

I picked Dredge over Scavenger. This one's an interesting one. Scavenger is the more repeatable mechanic, but it's more repeatable because it's safe. And I think Scavage, while okay, is more of what I call a workhorse mechanic, where Dredge is... Even though Dredge broke,

even though Dredge went horribly wrong, I am proud of it. It's a neat mechanic. I love that Magic just occasionally makes things that come from left field and makes you play the game in ways you've never thought before. And Dredge has brought, I mean,

it's brought a lot of happiness to a lot of players. I'm sure it's brought a lot of frustration because it's too good. Like I said, there's plenty of developmental issues. If I was judging this overall, not on design, I'm judging on design, I would not pick Dredge. But I did, because from a pure design standpoint, I just had to pick the out-of-the-box, cool, really neat mechanic

over the kind of, you know, workhorse, run-the-mill mechanic. In Boros, Red-White, I picked Battalion over Radiance. This was another easy one. Radiance is my pick for the worst mechanic of original Ravnica block. It's not even... It's not Boros at all. It's not particularly a good mechanic. It was very confusing.

Just knowing what happened when you did it. It was the kind of mechanic where you go, Okay, I'll cast it. Okay, what happens? You know. And that's not ideal. It's not ideal that... It's just too complicated for you to actually figure out what happens.

Like, I better cast it. Okay, what's going on? And Battalion is a good, solid, strong mechanic. I know it'll come back. I know we'll see it again. So that was an easy pick. So Battalion over Radiance was a very simple pick. The final one was in Simic, Green Blue. I picked Evolve over Graft.

That was a really tough call. This was one where I liked both mechanics. I enjoyed how both played. Both were a lot of fun. Evolved beat out Graft on some small technicalities. If I would do Graft again, I would have to change the name and tweak a few things.

Graft Fall, I mean, it was very popular the first time out. It's not that people didn't like Graft. It's not quite like Chroma in that way. But it's the kind of mechanic where we made some mistakes in the back and then we'd have to fix. So, we're Evolved. We could bring back as-is. It's a quite like Chroma in that way, but it's the kind of mechanic where we made some mistakes in the back and then we'd have to fix. So, Revolve we could bring back as is. It's a cool mechanic. So I picked Revolve over Graft. But once again, a hard pick. I really do like Graft.

For all the people out there that are going to yell at me for picking it over Graft, from a technical design standpoint, Graft just has a few issues. Revolve does not have those issues, So I picked Evolve over it. So once again, it means Transmute, Bloodthirst, Convoke, Replicate, and Dredge one, and Detain, Unleash, Extort, Battalion, and Evolve one. So it was a tie in the Ravnica Showdown! It was a tie! So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. If you enjoyed my Showdown podcast, I'm happy to do more showdown podcasts where I take, I don't know, two blocks, two other blocks,

and face them against each other and see what wins between the mechanics. So if you guys are interested in it, let me know. But anyway, I'm in my parking space, 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. See you guys next time.