Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #46 - Instants and Sorceries

Episode Date: August 9, 2013

Mark Rosewater talks about Instants and Sorceries in Magic.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so one of the things I've been doing in this podcast is a couple of what I call meta-series, where I talk about related topics over a long period of time. One of my meta-series is my card-type meta-series. So I talked about planeswalkers, I talked about artifacts, I talked about creatures. So today, instants and sorceries. So I did give some thought to having instant and sorcery

be separate, because they are their own card types. But I realized that they're so intertwined and that a lot of the discussions about them are so connected that I felt I'd be repeating myself if I did them separately. So I decided to join them together into an instant and sorcery podcast day. So, okay, let's go back to the beginning.

Whenever I talk about card types, one of the things that I learned early on as an interesting way to understand things is to go back and say, why? Why does this thing exist? And it's fun to just take everyday normal objects. For example, a fork, a knife, and a spoon. You know, why are these the objects we eat with? And we sort of step back and think about it. You start realizing how you got to where you got.

So let's do the same with Instants and Sorceries. Okay, Richard Garfield, he's making magic. Why does the game want Instants and Sorceries? I think there's a bunch of reasons. First off, I think when you say we there's a bunch of reasons. First off, I think when you say we're having a bunch of wizards dueling,

you expect stuff like people throwing things at each other, right? Like lightning bolts and stuff. You'd expect that to happen. Part of it is there's a flavor you want

that it captures. But mechanically, there's another very important thing, which is that one of the things that goes on in a game is you want a lot of decisions, and you want a lot of... You want a lot of things to happen, but you also want to be careful that you don't gum things up.

And permanents are awesome, but one of the downsides of permanents is, well, they're permanents. They're always there, and as you keep playing them, you can get the board state to get more and more crowded. So one of the nice things about instants and sorceries is they're won and they're done. That they do their thing, they have an impact, but then they go away. They are over very quickly. Now, you can have instants and sorcerers that do very powerful effects.

They can have huge effects on the game. It's not that they can't be very powerful, but the point is, they're temporary. They do their thing, it happens, and then you move on. And that, you know, you don't have to have any memory, really, of the spell. I mean, you'll see what happened because of it. But it's not like it's another permanent on the board that you have to continually monitor. Also, and this is another important thing that has to do with instance, is

one of the very important things about a game is if so they call open information games. Chess is a famous open information game, which means everything's known. Everything is known in chess. You know what your opponent can do, they know what you can do.

And when there's a lot of open information, there's a lot of pressure on the player to not miss anything. And so what happens is open information games tend to be very taxing because the better players are like, okay, I know everything, I have to not miss anything. And one of the nice things about putting what we call hidden information in is that there's things that you, the player, can sort of make guesses

might happen, but you don't know. And that it's nice that when you don't know things, it allows you to sort of say, okay, I don't I'll monitor the best I can, but I don't know everything, so I can't think out eight turns ahead, because I don't know what my opponent's going to do. You know, and by the way, the hand in general is ahead, because I don't know what my opponent's going to do. You know, and

by the way, the hand in general is hidden information that I don't know, even permanence and stuff, I don't know what you have in your hand. You know, instants are particularly nice in that they allow surprise moments at any moment of the game. Like, for example, combat without instants

would be, I mean, a known thing. They have their abilities, I have my abilities. Now, maybe I have to track the board to understand what's going on, but it's a known quantity. As soon as you throw instance in, Nod's like, oh, well, he's attacking with that. What does it mean? I should win that fight. Is he bluffing me? Oh, does he have something in his hand?

You know, it makes combat and other things much more interesting because just the potential... Let me talk about threat a second, because this is important. In games in general, one of the reasons hidden information is very valuable is that one of the ways you influence games is not necessarily threats, but implied threats. And this is very important. as you influence games is not necessarily threats necessarily,

but implied threats. And this is very important in that one of the things that's a lot of fun in games is that the reason information is a lot of fun is one player has information the other player does not. And one of the things

that is fun is you can make computers play two games against each other, but mostly it's humans playing games against each other, but mostly it's humans playing games against each other, and that one of the fun things for humans to do is to try to read the other person, you know, to try to pick up a sense of what they're doing. And like I said, this is something, you know, computers are bad at, because it has a lot to do with sort of just reading

somebody and a gut sense of another person, And it's a whole bunch of things. Body language, just watching what they're doing, you know. And that one of the real funs of games is one person pitting themselves against another person, you know. And part of that has to do with bluffing, has to do with reading people, and has to do that you want your game... Not all games do this, but I think it's fun

when your game has an element of the person that's brought into it, and that I'm trying to sort of gauge you as my opponent, as a person. That there's this sort of human relationship going on, and that one of the fun things about magic, and instant sorcerers do this as well, is, okay, I attack my creature. You block, or you're thinking of blocking,

but you're like, okay, I can read what's on the board, I attack my creature. You block, or you're thinking of blocking, but you're like, okay, I can read what's on the board, I know what's going to happen, I know what would happen if nothing else interfered, you know. So, for example, you have a 3-3 and I attack with a 2-2. Now, in your head, you're like, okay, we both know that that creature's going to die, that there's no

reason to attack with that creature. Now, one of two things is true. Either he has a trick, he has a giant growth or something, or he wants me to think he has a trick and he's trying to bluff me. He's trying to get through because I might not block because I think he has a trick, even though he doesn't. And all of a sudden, like just the existence of instance, even if the instance isn't there, that's one of the beauties of this, is that the implied threat of things can make things happen. For example, and let me show you other places this shows up in magic design.

We talked about morph, okay? So morph is a card, a creature, that you can play face down as a 2-2. And a lot of people, we talked about playing off-color morphs, where I put a morph into play that is a 2-2 but it's of a color I can't turn up. I can't turn face up. And one of the things people miss is that they go, well, whatever

so you can just play it as a 2-2. No, no, no, no. I can play it more as a 2-2. If I play a face-down morph guy I know that I can't turn it up. You don't know I can't turn it up. And so the implied threat of a face down 2-2 when it can turn into other things is different than just me playing a vanilla 2-2. Meaning if I just had grizzly bear in my hand and put a grizzly bear into play, that is a very different thing psychologically than me putting a face down morph into play.

Even if it happens to be that is just a grizzly bear because I can't do anything other than have it be a 2-2. My opponent doesn't know that and because of that there's extra value to the card. And this human element of having implied threats is very important

and a big part of some of the dynamism of magic. Or of any game, but of magic since we're talking about magic. And that, some of the instant sorceries do very well. I'm not saying only instant sorceries. Other cards, obviously, are hidden in your hand,

and they also have that. But, instants are particularly nice because they bring this element to every moment of the game. Okay, so let's, let's get the big question out here, which is, okay, so when the game started, Richard actually had three spell types.

There was Instants, there were Sorcerers, and there were Interrupts. So what were Interrupts? Real quickly, I'll tell you what Interrupts. When Richard first started the game, the timing of the game was not as locked down. I mean, I know right now that Magic has had 20 years to kind of fine-tune its rules, and it's a pretty lean, mean fighting machine right now. I mean, not that there aren't areas that couldn't be leaner, but Magic has done a lot in 20 years to consolidate its rules. Early Magic, a lot of the rulings were like, this works this way, and this card works that way, and things were band-aid together. Like, card by card. The rules kind of worked different ways, different cards needed it to. And when Magic first came out, Richard knew that he wanted spells that responded to other spells.

But he didn't want all spells to respond to other spells. At least that was his thought at the time. So interrupts were a way to go, well, I want to do counter spells. I want to do stuff in which you play a spell. Then I go, wait, wait, wait, I want to stop this before you do anything else. But when the 6th edition rules came around, once they had the stack, it's like, well, here's the order by which you can respond to things. The idea was, I can do a counter spell, and that either you respond to my counter spell or not,

but then my counter spell resolves, and now we go back to the stack, right? And so the 6th edition rules sort of said, well, we don't really need interrupts, and interrupts went away. But we did make a mechanic called split second in time spiral block, which had a lot of the feel of interrupts, kind of like, I'm doing this, sorry, you can't do anything about it, you can't respond to it. So a lot of interrupts early on was, like, why do this? And the weird thing was, there were things like Red Elemental Blast

and Blue Elemental Blast that counter-spelled but also destroyed permanents. So it allowed you to, like, I destroyed this, but you couldn't respond to me destroying it, which at the time was quirky. So anyway, Incident Sorcerers got made because Richard wanted this one-and-done moment and

wanted some surprise and different things. Okay, but why sorceries? Why not make every spell an instant, every non-permanent an instant? And the answer is, it goes to the root of what makes games games. So I've talked about this multiple times, but I will talk about it again. A game is not made to be easy. Most things, you know, the designer of most things are trying to make them as easy as possible. But that's not the point of the game. The point of a game is to challenge the player. In fact, game players come to games because they want to be challenged.

Usually mentally, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally. But usually you're in for a mental challenge and what you, the game player, says is okay game designer, what you got? and you want to test yourself now sometimes you're testing yourself against the game itself sometimes you're testing yourself against other players playing the game a lot of times both

but the issue is that you are trying to see what you're capable of doing. Sorry. So what that means is that you, when you buy into the whole game experience, you are buying into making things not as easy as possible. You are buying into limitations. So why do sorcerers exist? Because limitations are good. You know, limitations have a lot of value.

One of the biggest things they do is they force you to make decisions at times when you don't know everything. So, for example, one of the downsides of instants in general is that the correct thing to do with an Instant usually is hold it until you absolutely need it. Wait until you know you need it, and then use it. Where a Sorcerer says, no, no, no, no, no. You've got to decide. It's your turn. You want to use it now?

Because, you know, you might not be able to use it later, or it might not be relevant later. You know, there's moments when you have to choose to use it, and that you could make mistakes. I could choose to not do something, and by the time I have a choice to do it again, I can't do it, or it's not relevant anymore, or the card, I had to discard the card, or whatever. And that sorceries

create limitations that make you have to make decisions. And, being that's what games are about, is forcing you to have to make decisions decisions and work within limitations sorceries are like on some level why are there instants I mean now I'll get to that in a second I mean instants do some good things

but sorceries exist because you want limitations in games you want to force players to have to make choices you know choices are good and you know you want players, or actually, this is my own terminology. I actually mean decisions and not choices.

So one of the things I talk about, I did a column on this, is the difference between choices and decisions. And I used the wrong word. Let me correct myself. So a choice means an option. And R&D talks about it. So a choice is how many choices you have.

Well, you know, Naturalize has two choices. You can destroy an artifact, you can destroy an enchantment. You know, Cryptic Command has, I don't know the math of it, but you have two out of four, whatever that math is. You have a whole bunch of options of what the card can do. You can do these two, or these two, or these two, or these two, you know. There's a lot of... Decisions are when you sort of have to, like, come to a forking point.

Where, like, oh, I have this sorcerer in my hand. Now I have a decision. Do I want to play it now? Or risk that it'll be relevant a turn from now? And that choices are good, but choices can get you in trouble. Because you don't always want to give

your players too many choices. I'm not saying you don't want to ever give them choices. And it's nice to have some cards that are flexible. And we do. But choices are very powerful. And we have to charge you for choices. And if we, the game designer, give you too many choices, we are not doing you a favor. We are making the game too hard.

So one of the things... Let's jump around here. One of the things that comes up a favor. We are making the game too hard. So one of the things, let's jump around here. One of the things that comes up a lot, a common mistake is the, you're dumbing down the game thing where people are like, you know, why are you taking away choices from us, you know, and sometimes decisions from us. And the answer is that magic for all, all this talk about how we're simplifying things, magic is a complex game. A very, very, very complex game.

For example, for example, so it took them years to teach a computer to play chess at a level good enough that it could play against, you know, high-level chess players. I mean, a year. I mean, decades it took them. You know, Big Blue and such. And chess is whatever. There's 64 squares,

and each person has, what, 24 pieces? And, you know, there's only six unique pieces. Like, the number of options in chess is a computer can actually map it. It is a finite number of choices. Finite in the sense of, like, really finite, not like giant finite, but, you know, smaller finite. Whereas magic, magic has 13,000 pieces

that all interact in very bizarre ways, you know, and, right, there's an element of bluffing and reading and all sorts of stuff to it. There's lots of things. How long before we can build a computer that can beat a top-level Magic player? I mean, it'll happen one day, obviously, but we're far away.

We're far away. A computer can play chess pretty good, but it can't play Magic pretty good yet, and that's because Magic... Chess is a complex game., chess is a very complex game, but magic is way, way, way, way more complex than chess, in the sense that there's just so many more factors and decisions that have to be made. Like, in a chess game, how many moves, I don't know, 50, 60, 70, I'm not sure how many moves in an average chess game, you know. But how many, you know, decisions are there in a chess game, you know. And the answer is under 100 usually, you know.

Now, each decision in chess is very important and such. But in magic, you're making decisions constantly, all the time. You know, one of the things, for example, that is funny is, is like the first decision you have to make is, what am I playing? What am I, what am I putting in my deck? I have to make a deck. So, before the whole thing begins, I got to make a deck. That is super complex. But let's just say someone gives you a deck. Fine, you didn't even make the deck. Someone gives you a deck. Okay, next decision is what order to play things in. You know, I get cards, I get mana, well, what order do I play things in? That, that is a pretty big, just that game is pretty complex.

And a lot of people mess that up. A lot of people do not play the things in correct order. And just because you can play something, just because you can cast it, doesn't mean you're supposed to cast it. Next, after that, then we have permanence in play. Making decisions about permanence in play.

That's even more complex than casting stuff out of your hand. Partly because there's more options. Partly because it's repeatable and you're making decisions all the time. You know, you have decisions about when to attack and block and when to use activated abilities and all sorts of stuff. How to tap your mana. That's a whole complex series of things. Okay, and now we haven't even gotten to your opponent yet.

Now there's making decisions based not on your own criteria, but on your opponent's criteria. What do they have in play? What are they doing? You know? And then on top of that, the next level is not basing things

on what they have done or what they have, but what they could do. You know? A big part of magic, for example, I know my turn, and we've chatted about this

quite a bit, of how when you get really good, like, watching what your opponent does. Not in what they play, but in how they think and how many seconds they take to do something. To try to gauge, what are they thinking about? How long do they think about this?

Oh, well, they made me stop at this moment. That implies they have this kind of spell. You know? And so there's all this, like, on the top level, just trying to read your opponent and look at their gameplay and understand from their gameplay what their deck is and what the cards are in their hand. Okay? So add all that up.

That is meta, meta, meta, meta complex. I said mega. Mega, mega, mega, mega complex. That, the idea, I mean, if we are trying to simplify the game, it is not because we ever have any belief we're going to get it to a point in which it's simple. It's because it is a crazy complex game that we're trying to keep from being too

complex. The analogy I always use is the analogy of fire, and that sometimes I feel like people external are treating it like we're trying to build a campfire, and we have some kindling down, and like, oh, be careful, because you might blow the fire out. And I'm like, no, no, no.

Here's the analogy. It's a five-alarm fire burning down the building. R&D is using every scrap of water it can to keep the fire from engulfing the building. And I feel like people are like, oh, be careful. Don't put it out. There's not really a fear of it going out. Nothing we're going to do

is going to make magic not very complex. Anyway, my little side, my little side bridge. Back to instance sorceries. Okay, so, um, there are a lot of decisions to make in magic, and that sorceries help enhance decision making. So, why do

instance exist? Instants exist for a couple reasons. Number one is, there are some cards that we cannot make that are not instants. One of the reasons cards are instants is they don't make sense otherwise in being instants. A good example might be a damage prevention spell, or

a counter spell, like reactive spells in general. Well, how do I react to you if I can't play it at the time the spell you're playing, I have to react to it. Well, if I can't play it at that moment, if you play a spell and I want to counter it, well, unless I can do it right then, it has no value. So one of Instance's things is that it allows you to play spells

at times you would need to play spells. Another thing it does is it opens up some possibilities for interactions. Instants definitely give you more options, more choices in when you can do things. And once again, this is the difference between instant sorceries. Instants give you more choices, but they don't always give you more decisions. And that's where sorcery and instance split.

And what I'm saying is, if I have a spell that does something, let's say I have a spell that's going to destroy a creature. Well, I just wait until the moment in which I need the creature to be destroyed. You know, like, you're attacking,

like, oh, okay, it's about to do damage to me. Before it does damage, I'll destroy it. Whereas, a sorcery, I have to say, oh, I don't know what he's going to attack with. Well, what do I think he might attack with? Like, what is the biggest threat? You know, you have to sort of, with an instance, like, I wait to see what the biggest threat is. But with a sorcery, I have to make decisions before then because I don't know. And so, you know, instancesants give you more choices and more

options, but sorcerers tend to make better decisions. They force you to sort of make more decisions. Now, instants, I mean, one other thing that's tricky is, pretty much the rule of thumb from when you make something a sorcery versus make an instant is,

could it be a sorcery? You know, pretty much anything you make a spell, you say, okay, could it be a sorcery? Now, some of the time you go, no, it doesn't even work. It's a counter spell. It can't be a sorcery. And other times it's like, well, when do you expect to use it? So giant growth is a good example. Now, you could make giant growth a sorcery, and occasionally we do, but you know what? Giant growth really is about combat. You know, that is its major role. And so, well, it kind of needs to be an instant because the time in which it's really designed for, it needs to be an instant.

Another example, like I talked about kill spells before. Now, kill spells can be sorcerers, and often we mix them up to make some sorceress an instant. But, you know, sometimes you want some flexibility. You know, I mean, it's not that flexibility is bad, you know, flexibility is good, and flexibility is more powerful. So, another game design tip here, which is, your audience will always ask for power. For example, or mostly will ask for power, there's a few exceptions. For example, when people look at cards, whenever

we preview cards, I always tend to get the same questions. Question number one is, couldn't that be cheaper? And the answer there is, yes, it could be cheaper, but, you know, there's a meta structure going on. We have a power level we're trying to keep. You know, making one spell cheaper means one other spell would have to be more expensive on a general sense. You know, that we can't just make a spell more powerful in a vacuum because we are trying to keep the whole set at a power level, not just any one individual card. The second most common question I get after could be one cheaper is I'll make sorceries and go, well, couldn't that be an instant? And the answer there is it could be, but what's the role of what it's trying to do?

You know, increasing choices, like I said, can lower decisions. Could be, but what's the role of what it's trying to do? Increasing choices, like I said, can lower decisions. And so it depends on what the card is trying to do. Now, if the card is trying to be used at a time when instant is valuable, okay, yes, very often we'll put instant on there. And sometimes we'll shake it up. Every once in a while we'll say, normally we don't give you the option as instant.

For example, there's certain abilities we tend to do at Sorcerer's Speed. One of the most classic is card discard. We make you discard a card. And the reason we do that is it's not a lot of fun to not let someone play their card. You know, that I draw a card and you go, oh, before you even have a chance to play it, I make you discard it. Unless it's an instant, I won't be able to play it. That's not a lot of fun. Now, every once in a blue moon, we've made discarded instants.

It's a rarity, but we do do it. That's not a lot of fun. Now, every once in a blue moon, we've made discarded instants. It's a rarity, but we do do it. But in general, that's the kind of thing where, you know what, it's just less fun if we let you cast an instant. Because the correct thing then is to deny the person the opportunity. Because if I can keep you for, like, for example, I draw a card. If it's a permanent and I hit you in your draw step, you cannot play that card. You don't even have the opportunity to play the card. If it's an instant, you can. But if it's a sorcery or a permanent, anything but an instant, I've just got the card without you having a chance to respond. Now if I do, my discard is a sorcery, well

that means on your turn, you have a chance to play it. You know, and then one thing about discard is um, and it's funny, stone rain is the same way. Land destruction, we do it with sorceries as well. Because one of the things about the game is we want to make sure you have a chance to play the game. We want to give your opponent means to stop you,

but what we've learned is if we make magic, if I have too much ability to keep you from playing, the game is just not fun. Now, I don't know, for those who haven't been playing a long time, when magic first came out, for example, there was a car called Sinkhole, which caused BB to destroy target land. And then there was Stone Rain, and there was

uh, what's the one? There's a green one. Ice Storm. Um, and so there was a bunch of ways to destroy things. Stripmine came around in Antiquities, and um, so early on in Magic, there was a means in which we played a deck where you almost

never had land. It's like, I just never let you have land. Maybe at most you had one or two land, but you just didn't have land at all, and eventually I destroy all your land. Well, you know what? Sitting there where my opponent does stuff and I can do nothing is just miserable. Same way with

a counter-spell deck where like, okay, I counter that, I counter that, I counter that, I can't do anything. that wasn't much fun either and we want land destruction and counter spells you know uh to be viable options meaning we want them to be tools we want them to exist but if we give that too high a power level it just makes a non-interactive deck um and so one of the things we do with sorcery sometimes is we say, what are effects that, you know what, we kind of want to hold them back a little bit. I don't want a stone rain instant because that way I play my land,

you just blow it up before I can even use it. I draw a card, you make me discard a four, I can even use it. And so those kind of things tend to get sorcery on them. Another reason we use sorcery sometimes is where we think the card will confuse the player and make them play incorrectly. For example, a lot of times when we grant haste, we make it a sorcery.

For example, let's say we make plus two plus O in haste. We tend to make that a sorcery. Now, it could be an instant. And the reason you might want to make it an instant is, hey, plus two plus O in haste. We tend to make that a sorcery. Now, it could be an instant, and the reason you might want to make it an instant is, hey, plus two plus O is valuable. You might want to surprise him in combat. But since haste is there, we kind of, like, people, it just feels weird.

They're like, well, you want to use the haste. Well, how do I use haste if I'm playing it as an instant? Well, you can't. You missed the window. And some people, you know, less experienced players, might even think that, well, it says haste, so I must be able well use the haste. So we have to be careful sometimes when we choose whether things are instant or sorcery

that if we think people might play it wrong, we'll also make it sorcery to help encourage that. And, once again, sometimes it's sorcery because we're trying to make the decision an interesting decision. You know, hey, you can do this thing, but you know what? You've got to choose on your turn to do it. You can't can do this thing, but you know what? You've got to choose

on your turn to do it. You can't just do it when it's convenient. Here's wrath of God. We're not going to let you just blow up things whenever you want. You've got to do it

on your turn. You've got to gauge, is this the right turn? Do I want to wait until next turn? And by next turn, do they come up with an answer? Can they make me discard it?

Can something happen? And that sorcery is, like I said, leads to excellent decision-making. And so sometimes part of making something a sorcery is saying, is this card more interesting if we make the player? Will it have more play value if we make the player have to make the decision? if we make the player have to make the decision. Now, the other thing we'll tend to do is pretty much, I would say categories fall into three clumps. There is pretty much must be a sorcery as the default.

There must be an instant as a default. And then there's effects that are like, well, it could go either way. So the first example, like I've talked about, is stuff like land destruction, card denial,, like I've talked about, is stuff like land destruction, card denial, and things where we're like, you know what, we really don't want an instant speed. We might make an exception

once in a blue moon, but look, that's what we want. The opposite side is like counter spells I've talked about, which is look, it's got to be an instant. You can't have a counter spell that is instant. It doesn't work. And the middle ground is stuff like creature destruction where, look,

it is valuable as an instant but it's valuable as a sorcery in that, you know, sometimes we'll give an instant and sometimes we'll give a sorcery and try to mix it up. And that one of the things that is fun

from a design standpoint is to try to understand how to use a sorcery instance so that you maximize what the cards are doing. You know, that you can, sometimes you want the instant because the gameplay is better. Sometimes you want the sorcery because you force better decisions. And you make the player have to make decisions that create better gameplay.

And so win some of the instant and win the sorcery actually is an important skill from a design standpoint of understanding where you want it to be. Now, it's also a tool for the developers in that sometimes if you're trying to weaken something or strengthen something, you can shift it between instant and sorcery. And the other tool from a design standpoint is one of the things the game is very good at, one of the tools of design is to say,

you know what, we're going to make rules and limitations. And not only does that help the player have limitations, because that's an important part of the game player, but also it says, every once in a while, you know, we can break from the default. And one thing that's kind of neat is to say, oh, well normally we make

you know, Wrath of God a sorcerer. Normally Wrath of God, you know, mass creature destruction is a sorcerer. Normally Wrath of God, you know, mass creature destruction is a sorcerer as a default. But, hey, every once in a while we make an instant, and now that's an exciting card. That's a card that has some value that you're not used to. You know, we have to charge

for it, but, you know, it allows us, like I said, one thing I find very funny is I will write columns, and I'll lay down the rules. I go, here's the rules. Here's the rules for whatever the thing the rules is for. And by the way, I did do an article on sorceries where if you go and look, I lay out, here's all the effects that we tend to do at sorcery speed.

I mean, I was going through my head and I realized that that's something better in written form where I can think about it and write it all down. When I do stuff off the top of my head, I'm doomed to forget things. So you can go read that. There's an article, I don't remember the name of it, but if you look at Rose of Arts Sorcery, I'm sure you'll find it in our search field. Okay, so the, by having the, having a choice for the designer, it definitely also means that sometimes we can, you know, oh, I know what I'm saying.

I was talking about how I do articles and I write rules. And when I do that, people will always write and say, well, you broke the rule here, or, well, then break the rule. You said you can't do this. And what I'm trying to say is,

guys, magic is about having rule defaults, but we're a game that breaks the rules. We're a game that just does, you know, that does things, like, part of the point of our game is, the reason we make rules is so that we have the flexibility to later break the rules. And that part of the fun of the game is, if you make a rule and hold fast to it, when you finally get to break it, it's kind of fun, because, you know, you realize it's something special you don't normally get to do.

And that's one of the big things with the trading card game in general, is that you can't let everybody do everything all the time. A, like I said, you lessen some of the decisions, but also, you kind of take away some of the fun. Part of what makes having a game that breaks its own rules is to hold fast to the rules. The rules are important. Just because the game breaks its rules doesn't mean the rules aren't important.

They're very important. And just because we break a rule once doesn't now mean, okay, now we can break this rule. It means, no, there's a hard default. We break rules as exceptions for special cases. And that, you know, I know one of the things that's funny is once we break a rule,

once we make a card that does something that we've never done before, the player base is like, okay, you got a precedent, now you can do this. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, just because we did something might mean, like, for example,

a very common thing is we'll do a block structure in which, let's say we do a graveyard set. Okay, well, normally, you know, black and green and white are the three colors that have some graveyard interaction. Blue and red don't have that much. But, you know, we've done, we've carved a little bit of space out for blue and red so that when we need blue and red to have graveyard space,

there's something that they, in fact, can do. And so, it's very important that we don't do that all the time. It's kind of like when we need it, we do it. And so sometimes we'll stretch something, and people go, oh, that's awesome, you should do this. I'm like, well, no, no, no, no. That was for this purpose. And maybe in the future we'll find another need to do it.

I mean, another classic example is a lot of people like the red vampires in Innistrad. And I'm like, okay, that was fun, and they served a purpose in Innistrad, and I'm glad we did them, but that's not our default. Vampires are black, you know. Every once in a blue moon, if there's a reason and a purpose for making them red, we'll consider making them red, but just because we did a set and we had red vampires does not mean, okay, vampires are not red now, you know.

That the game, essentially the way it works is, when the pendulum swings, that, you know, you can loosen one part of the game, but you have to tighten up everything else. You know, I talk a lot about how, you know, in story writing, and especially on TV, that like, you can break a rule, but it's important when you break one rule that you hold fast to the other rules, that you don't want to break too many rules at the same time, you know, that one of the things that grounds magic is that every year we to the other rules, that you don't want to break too many rules at the same time. One of the things that grounds magic is that every year we do the same things,

and then one or two things we do different, but everything else is the same. So you have a basis for grounding, but that you can appreciate the things that are new. Okay, so I'm almost to work, so let me wrap up my instant and sorcerer talk. I think the instant and sorcerer is a very valuable part of the game. I think they, like I said, they add a lot of important sort of splash

in a way that is here and gone that's kind of cool. And, like I said, I mentioned this very, very early on, but it's an important one, is one of the things that Richard did when he made the game is he said, okay, I got two wizards dueling. And it's like, well, what do you expect people to do? What do you expect there to be? And one of the things you expect is just giant, huge effects. But you can't do giant, huge effects every turn.

The same way you don't want to break the same rule all the time. That it's kind of neat to have a giant effect because normally the giant effects aren't happening all the time. And it's neat to have something where like, because normally the giant effects aren't happening all the time. You know, and it's neat to have something where, like, okay, some major thing's happening. And it's a one-time thing, but it's a huge effect. You know, um, I mean,

creatures in general, I mean, there are creatures with ETV effects that are equivalent to large spells, obviously. Um, but most of the time, creatures are, like, they come in, and they're supposed to have, you know, an incremental change over time. Like, they do this thing, and, you know, hey, if there isn't enough turns, they really can matter. But on any one turn, they just do a small thing.

You know, and that permanence in general tend to be smaller things. And if they are larger things, usually there's some buildup to get there. Or they're really expensive, so by the time they happen, it's a big thing, but they do the thing late in the game. they're really expensive, so by the time they happen, it's a big thing, but they do the thing late in the game. But anyway, I do believe that Richard wanting to make a lightning bolt, I don't even mean the card lightning bolt,

just to make a spell called lightning bolt was very important. And that instant sorceries, I also believe, open up a very important creative space. Not my area of expertise, so I didn't spend a lot of time talking about it, but the thing that I saw as a throwaway in my first thing, that is very important creative space. Not my area of expertise, so I didn't spend a lot of time talking about it, but I do, the thing that I saw as a throwaway in my first thing, that is very important, the fact that, you know, the amount of things you can do with sorceries and instants.

Like, another problem we run into that instant sorcerers solve from a creative standpoint is, for a long time, for example, planeswalkers weren't even on cards. And even now, you know, they're on cards, but they're, you know, planeswalkers are mythic rare. And so if you want to have a planeswalker show up or a character show up, you know,

one of the things that's really nice is instances of sorceries allow you creatively to show a lot of the things that no one else can show you. Because a permanent has to show the permanent. If I have a creature, I've got to show you the creature. I mean, maybe, maybe someone's interacting with the creature. But even then, usually for a creature to be a good illustration, it's just the creature, I've got to show you the creature. I mean, maybe, maybe someone's interacting with the creature, but even then, usually for a creature to be a good illustration, it's just the creature. And instant sorceries allow us creatively to be able to show other elements.

And so, I mean, to recap, I mean, instant sorceries have huge mechanical needs. They allow us to have impacts on choices, on decisions. They allow us to help interact in different parts of the game. They have a nice surprise value. But in the same sense, they don't clutter up the board. So anyway, instant sorcerers do all sorts of good things. They creatively do good things.

It's, like I said, I mean, all the card types are good things. That's why they're still there. But that's today's instance of sorceries. That is kind of the value of what they do, but I am now at work, and so it is time for me to go in, but I enjoy talking to you about Incident and Sorceries, and I hope you've been enjoying

this meta-series. So anyway, I bid you adieu for today, because it's time to go make the magic.