Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #55 - Land

Episode Date: September 20, 2013

Mark talks about lands 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 today I'm doing another part of my meta-series on card types. So I've talked about planeswalkers, I've talked about artifacts, I've talked about creatures, I've talked about instants and sorceries. So today I'm going to talk about land. Bursaries. So today I'm going to talk about land. So I did an entire podcast talking about the mana system. So a few of the things that I need to talk about really were talked about there. So I'm not going to get too much into why land was used. A lot of times I start these by talking about why does this card type exist? Well, lands exist because it's needed for the mana system. I did a whole podcast on the mana system. I think the mana

system is really important, and so I don't feel a great need to repeat that. Go listen to my podcast on the Manus system if you don't understand why land exists. But today I want to talk about sort of what is required. When we make land, you know, how is land designed, and what is the role of land? I'm going to borrow a lot today from an article I wrote

called This Land is My Land that I wrote during Non-Basic Land Week many years ago. I have a few things I'll add to it, so there'll be some extra stuff there. And as always with the podcast, I will go deeper in explaining things because I have a little extra time. Okay, so let's start. Land. So land's, in my mind, I should say, other than maybe planeswalkers, land has the narrowest design space. And part of the reason for that is there's a bunch of restrictions.

Oh, you say, a bunch of restrictions? Let's talk about those. Okay, so, in the article I listed five restrictions. I actually believe there's six, which I will get to today. Five restrictions. I actually believe there's a sixth, which I will get to today. So, okay, number one. The most important rule about land is that it is not allowed to be strictly better than a basic land. So what, my friends, is strictly better? It's a term that we use in R&D that I think gets used out by the public, but not necessarily the way R&D uses it. What R&D means by Strictly

Better is two cards that have the same mana cost, in which one of the cards just has more function than the other card, and in the vast, vast majority of normal play, that added bonus is just, just good. It just does more. So, for example, if I had a 2U22 creature, and then I had a 2U22 flying creature, the 2U22 flyer is considered strictly better. Now, yes, there are things that kill flyers that wouldn't kill the ground 2-2,

but magic always has exceptions. If you say, oh, but, you'll never have anything mean anything. So strictly better means in most cases. Not that, you know, yes, I can come up with a scenario where the tutu ground creature is better to have than the tutu flyer, but I'm working to get there.

That is not normal magic. In normal magic, the tutu flyer is better. Having an invasion is better. So, when I say that no card can be better than a Basic Land, what that means is, Basic Lands come into play untapped, and can immediately tap for a color. So, if

you can do that, if you come and play untapped and immediately tap for a color, you need to have some drawback if you're doing something in addition to doing that. And obviously, if you're just doing that, then you're a Basic Land, and so.... And obviously, if you're just doing that, then you're basic land. And so, now once again, as I make these rules, I will say the caveat I always say,

which is we break our own rules. When I say it's a rule, you can give examples where we've broken the rule. We break our rules. But I'm giving you the default rules. Every once in a while, we will break our own rules, but we do it for a purpose and a reason. And so when I explain the rules, I explain our defaults.

You know, Magic is definitely the kind of game where if there's a reason, sometimes we will break our rules. And we have made lands that are strictly better than basic lands, but it's not something we normally do. So when I talk about strictly better, let's talk a little bit about drawbacks. Because one of the challenges of making lands is that most of the time, you need a drawbacks. Because one of the challenges of making lands is that most of the time, you need a drawback. Because otherwise, it's strictly better. Okay.

The first drawback we give lands, or maybe this isn't even a drawback, but it's the one way we can make lands in which it doesn't need a drawback, I guess, however you want to look at it, is lands that tap for colorless mana. And... Oh, oh, by the way,

I realized that I just had these out of order. So number two, number one was it can't be strictly better than a basic land. Number two is it must produce mana. So let me explain that one before I get into... I realize that these might have been out of order,

now that I think about it. Lands have to have an identity. It is important that lands have an identity. And what happened was, when Magic first came out, Alpha had 15 lands. It had the five basic lands and the ten original dual lands. And the dual lands really were just extensions of the basic lands, right? The basic lands were, hey, I tap for a forest.

I'm a forest, I tap for green. And the dual lands were like, I'm a bayou, I tap for green or black. I'm both a forest and a forest. I'm a forest. I tap for green. And the dual lands were like, I'm a bayou. I tap for green or black. I'm both a forest and a swamp. And so everything there was pretty straightforward. We're lands, we tap for mana. We got to Arabian Nights, Richard really played around with lands

that there were lands that didn't produce mana. There were lands that had static effects. There were lands that tapped to do things. And he really started playing around with it. But I think what happened was he played around so much that he started to lose identity. And one of the things that we realized is it's important. In design, it is very important that you're able to maintain and keep a sense of identity. And the reason is, is things will blur together. When you start getting really technical and looking at the game, things will blur together. When you start getting really technical and looking at the game,

you can do a lot. One of the habits of designers that I have to warn them about is, it's very easy to get clever and to do things with one mechanic that just make it look like another mechanic. For example, during Onslaught Block we brought back cycling. And one of the things we figured out was that you could do cycling triggers from the hand, and that, ooh, those cycling triggers could be larger effects. So you essentially could create something where there's a smaller effect, but you could pay more to get a larger effect. Hey, that's kicker. It's like, look what we can do. We can make cycling look like kicker. And the problem with that is that the definition is very important. That if

everything just sort of blurs together, your game loses cohesion. And I want Kicker to feel like Kicker. I want cycling to feel like cycling. I don't want cycling to feel like Kicker. If you're not careful of creating delineations, then you just get soup. And that important part of any game, especially Magic, a game in which we are trying to sort of constantly reinvent itself, is if you don't have strong identities

you will lose yourself. That part of the restraint of designing Magic is not just doing things because you can do them, but doing them because there's a reason to do them. Just because is not a reason to do something. And it's a dangerous, it's a bright

light. It attracts the designers like, ooh, something we haven't done before. Or something we have done before, but not this way. And I work really hard to say to them, look, things have a definition. If you break your definition, it's why I'm a color-blind purist. I'm very much a purist about

car types and what they mean. But anyway, I was one of the people that laid down the law that says lands produce mana. Now, technically, they can go get you access to mana, fetch lands are fine. But the lands have to have a strong identity that says, I'm about mana. That is part of my identity. If I'm a land and I do not get you mana, well, then why am I a land? Why am I an enchantment or an artifact or something else?

And so that is one of our rules. I say that because let me go back to talking about the downsides. So first downside, or how we want to think of it, is tapping for colorless mana. That means I'm not strictly better than a basic land because I'm not tapping for colored mana. And that tap for colorless means that I have room to do extra on it. So if you think of basic lands as the baseline, it's like if I make a land that taps for a colored mana, well, that's the baseline.

If I go above that, I need to have a drawback because I can't be better than basic land. If I'm below that, I'm allowed to have an extra ability without needing the drawback because there's a little extra room. Now, mind you, be careful. I will teach you the lesson of Rashaddenport. So during Mercadian Masked Block, we decided that we wanted to have more

taffy-colored lands to give people some choices. Because Mercadian Masks had a little bit of a monocolored theme. It followed... It followed... Where's the saga? Anyway, it had a bit of a monocolored theme. And we liked the idea of having lands that Tap for Colors,

that you could help with. What am I saying? Yeah, okay. So, I'm getting lost for a second here. Oh, Roshan Park. So, I made a bunch of lands that Tap for Colors did a small effect. And at the time, I'm like, oh, what's a small effect a land could do? Oh, tap a land.

You know, it's been a man to tap a land. Oh, that seems like, oh, what's a small effect a land could do? Oh, tap a land. You know, spend a mana, tap a land. Oh, that seems like, okay, that's flavorful. And little did I know that I created a monster. And what that means is sometimes you have to be careful because what seems like a little ability can sometimes really be a strong ability. And in general, my lesson there is messing with other people's mana is powerful. Mana denial is powerful, so be careful. Okay, so number one drawback, you cannot tap for Cullis.

I mean, you can tap for Cullis and not a colored mana. Number two drawback you can have is you can enter the battlefield tapped. E-B-T, E-B, e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-B-T, which sounds like itty-bitty, which is cute. So, enter the battlefield tap just means that you can come and play tap. The reason that that is such an awesome drawback, in fact, our favorite drawback, is it's very simple, doesn't take a lot of words to explain what it does, and it happens right away and you're done. One of the things about magic in general is, and I'll get to this later, but I'll bring it up here in this part, is that lands have this problem of people tend to think of their lands separate from the rest of their cards.

In fact, people clump their lands together and play their other cards separate from their lands. And the reason they do that is that lands, mostly the only function of lands is mana. So you just sort of keep them together. What happens is if the lands have functioned beyond just mana, it can be dangerous because it's easy to forget they're there. Especially if it has a global effect or something where you have to constantly remember it. And so we're careful about that.

The End to the Bath Hill tap is nice that you get it out of the way right away. One of the things about drawbacks in general is, one-and-done drawbacks are the best. They're the cleanest. They happen when you play them. You're conscious of it when you play it. You do it, and then done. It just does its thing. An ETBT land is like,

I pay up front my cost, and then it's fine. The biggest drawback of an Enter the Battlefield tap land is that it is bad for aggro decks, for decks that want to be faster. Because the drawback really is you get to use the mana more slowly. And for decks that's trying to be fast, that's really bad. And so, while those decks are...

While the drawback is a very clean drawback design-wise, there's a style of cards that it doesn't work well on, and that if you're intending the land to be used for more aggressive means, it's not a good drawback. Next, Life Payment. This is another pretty easy

drawback, and then there's is another pretty easy drawback. And then there's a couple ways to do this. The simplest one is just you pay some life when you play it. You know, the lands from Ravnica Block and return to Ravnica Block, definitely like, I mean, they have an option. You don't have to pay them. But if you want to have them untapped, well, then you pay the two life, and they come in untapped.

And that's pretty straightforward. It's a life payment. You know, you change your life total. It's very fast and simple. A lesser version of that is cards that every time you tap them, you pay a life, a City of Brass type things. Those are a little more memory issues. It's easy for people to forget, especially on mana,

that, oh, wait, I have to, you know, I had to pay a life to get this. It's clean and simple and easy to write. We do do them. We do do painlands, but it's something we want to be careful of. You know, and it's easier to have painlands in which they play a major role than have a singular painland that doesn't have a major role, although stuff like City Brass

is important enough for color that usually remembers there. Okay, next is what we call Depletion Lands. What Depletion means is you don't get to use it every turn. Essentially, Depletion Land is, I tap it, and then I mark it, and then it doesn't untap. Usually

the way we do it is like, if you tap this land, put a counter on it. When you go to untap it, if it has a counter on it, instead of untapping it, remove the counter. And so what it does is essentially you get it every other turn. So also stuff like Safari's Isle where it phased in and out, where you got it every other turn, but it had a slightly different technique to do that.

The problem usually with this drawback is it is intensive in the logistics to track it. That is just a lot to track. And so we don't tend to do too much because of that. If we find a clean way to do it, it's the kind of thing we think about. I mean, if phasing was something we did regularly, phasing's a little cleaner. That's because it doesn't require counters.

In general, I mean, we like counters. We use counters. But we want to be careful how many things have counters. And lands, in general, you've got to be careful. Speaking of counters, another way to use counters on lands is the gemstone mine approach is limited number of uses.

Where if a land comes into play with a certain number of counters, they can reduce whatever. You can use the colored mana, sometimes all choices of colored mana. But that's all you get. You only get so many uses and then you're done.

Also, there are cards that have a cost of one play other than life payment. Most common, that is either sacking or bouncing a land. It's pretty flavorful, and those lands sometimes can tap for multiple amounts of mana because you're going down

a land. I'll get to that rule in a second. I'm talking about how much mana your land can produce. Other ones, another drawback is cards that can't produce mana by themselves, reflecting pool type stuff, are like, well, I'm very useful, but I need other things to make me useful. And then a corollary of that is

things that need other permanents and stuff in play, you know, the cards are like, oh, as long as you have so many or don't have so many lands in play, you know, as long as you have so many or don't have so many lands in play, you know, as long as you have five or less lands, you can do this. And, you know, things that sort of reference what other things there are. The first one I talked about was more like, until I get other things, I can't do something. And the other one tends to be, I can do something up to the point where I have a certain amount of things and I can't do it.

So it can hit both sides. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of land drawbacks. I mean, one of the challenges of making lands is that there's not a lot of clean drawbacks. I mean, the reason we constantly go to enter the battlefield tapped is it's such a nice clean drawback. I mean, life payment and taffer call lists are the other ones that are at least pretty clean.

And like I said, it's tricky, because you don't want lands to be complicated. Part of the appeal of lands is that you have your magic deck, you have your 60 cards, or 40 if you're unlimited, and 60%

of your deck, basically, is spells, and those are complicated. There's a lot going on. And so 40%, roughly, gets to be your land. And then most of the time, your land, you don't... I mean, you have to think about it when building your deck. And obviously, you have to worry about what colors you have and stuff sometimes.

But pretty much, like, I get my land. I use my land to play my spells. And that we don't want the land... The fact that the land doesn't have a lot of baggage on it, a lot of things you have to remember, we consider to be a good thing. You know, we definitely could pile a lot more onto the lands, but I feel that would do a disservice.

I feel like the lands being simple and easy is a big part of the lands. You know, and one of the things I love about land, this is one of the things that's awesome about land, is we talk about variance of play, and then I love the fact that there are times when you are just begging, you are begging, you are calling to the gods and saying, please, please, let it be a land, you know, and other times, you draw a land, you're like, no, not a land, anything but a land, the fact that this card type can go from, like, you desperately need it and you just wish it to be there

to times when you're dreading it showing up. It's kind of awesome that the land does a very good job of creating that kind of variance. I mean, I talked about this already, but I think that's important. Okay, so number one is you can't be strictly better than a basic land. Number two is you have to be connected to land in some way,

to mana in some way. Number three, lands cannot produce more than one mana. Now, there's exceptions to this. I talked about earlier that if you have a drawback where you have to bounce or destroy other lands, sometimes we let you tap for two mana. But that's only when we create equity, so you're not going up in mana. So why does this rule exist?

And yes, yes, we've broken this rule in the past. The way this rule exist? and yes, yes, we've broken this rule in the past the way this rule exists is mana is the what's the word I want to use? it is the safety net of the game, if you will it's a very important tool to say you know what? you can't do too much too fast

that we sort of regulate how quickly you can sort of evolve as a planeswalker during the game. And when we start letting you break that, and in the past we have many times, it just causes problems. For example, let me talk about Ancient Tomb. So in Tempest, I made a land, or the team made a land,

which you paid two life and tapped it and got two mana. And we're like, okay, two life, get two mana, that's a pretty substantial cost. And the answer was, no, and got two mana. And we're like, okay, two life, get two mana, that's a pretty substantial cost. And the answer was, no, no it wasn't. In fact, Randy Buehler and Eric Lauer, the CMU, Team CMU, built an entire deck for the Tempest-only Pro Tour, built around basically abusing that one card,

because it is so powerful. And that just, one of the lessons we learned time and time again is, if you let people have mana, it's quicker than they're supposed just, one of the lessons we learn time and time again is if you let people have mana quicker than they're supposed to, it just gets degenerate. And so, once again, all these rules, we can break them for proper reason, but this is the rule that says,

hey, we get burned every time we do it. Be really, really careful. Playing with fire. Okay, number three. No, that was number three. Number four. Lands that make colored mana tend to come in cycles.

And once again, I guess even Teferi's Isle was part of the Mega Mega cycle, so we do occasionally do them out of cycle. But pretty much what happens is we like to have balance in the game, which is, you know, we roughly like to have as many red cards

as green cards as blue cards. Now, in the last, which is, you know, we roughly like to have as many red cards as green cards as blue cards. Now, in the last five years, we've loosened that up a little bit at higher rarities. You know, Mythic Rare doesn't always have an exact even, and part of that is just the numbers. It's hard to always make it even, so we sort of said, okay, well, we'll try to average it in the larger scope of the game, but, you know, any one set. But at lower rarities, at common, at uncommon, there's the same number of every, you know, of red cards, of green cards, and such.

And the thing about lands is, usually if we have a land that produces red, we're like, well, you know, it's not really fair if the land produces red, and we'll balance it out. So, most of our land, when we do them, come in cycles of five. Meaning that the land, if it's a single color, it produces for all that

color. And if it's a dual color, it tends to follow some cycle. Either, you know, Ravnica had a large ten-card cycle. Sometimes we'll do five-card cycles with allies or enemies. Every once in a while, we'll do a four-card cycle that hinges around the same one color like we did in Torment. And there's a couple different ways to do that. But it is true that when you're making lands and you're thinking about colors, you tend to have to think about cycles.

Next, lands cannot do colored abilities without requiring colored mana. So, one of the things to remember about lands and artifacts too is that they do not require colored mana to get into play.

Any land and any artifact can be played in any deck. Now, the reason you don't often play all lands and all decks is a lot of times they have a function for one deck. If I tap for red, well, I kind of want to go on a deck that needs red. I'm kind of a waste if I'm on a deck that doesn't need red. And so the mana part of it tends to self-regulate. But the problem is, let's say I create an ability on a land that was something unique to a color, or something that one color doesn't normally do. Well, that gives people access to something that they're not supposed to have. Like one

of the problems with Stone Rain is land destruction was not supposed to have. Like one of the problems, one of, with Stone Rain is land destruction was not supposed to be something that everybody had access to. But Stone Rain just said, hey, I'll give everybody Stone Rain. And you know what? Really, really cheap. And so one of the things

we have to be careful about with lands is make sure that we respect the color pie with the lands. It is very easy with lands and artifacts to mess with the color pie. And so one of the simple rules is, okay, let's say I want to do direct damage on a land. Fine. Require red mana. You know, if you red mana to the activation cost, it's like, well, I can't use that unless I have access to red mana. And if I have access to red mana, then I'm fine. And so you've got to be careful when making lands to make sure that you are not,

you're not exceeding the role of the color's domain. Okay, now rule number six. This was not in the article. Because you get added bonus here on Drive to Work. Don't require too much focus. Okay, so this rule I explained a little bit earlier, but I'll go into detail, which is that lands by their

general nature don't have as much scrutiny. You tend to keep them separate from the rest of your cards. You tend to clump them. Literally you lay them on top of one another. And that if you make a land that requires too much attention it will cause problems

because people's natural nature is to not spend a lot of time and energy on land. But you say, but if we just did more of that, then players would learn. And my answer to that is, whenever I talk about how something's difficult, I always get the answer of,

well, players just need to learn. And here's my response. A response from Morrow. Part of what we are doing when you're creating a game is you're creating an overall experience. And that in order to understand the experience, you have to realize that the experience is made up of smaller experiences that create a whole. For example, you know, if I want to go to Disneyland or Disney World, they spend a lot of time and energy figuring out lots of different things so that your entire experience has a certain feel to it. You know, that the reason they're hiding little Mickey shapes everywhere

or just they're doing a lot of random surprises or they make a lot of ability to interact with kids. They do all sorts of things that each one by itself is a separate unit to say, hey, here's this nice little thing. And that when you put them together, it creates an overall experience. There's a feel when you go to a Disney property. And the same thing is true for your, should be true for your game, which is when you come to Magic, I want to make sure that all the things come together to create the right feel.

Now, that is both positive and negative. What I mean is, in a positive way, you want to make sure there's the right things there. For example, if I'm doing a top-down set, Innistrad or Theros, I want to make sure I'm paying attention to the details. I want to make sure that every little nuance is playing to the top-down feel I'm trying to get. And if I make one zombie that just

is a little too speedy, then it breaks the feel of zombies being the slow, plodding tribe that I have to be very careful. And the same thing holds true for overall sort of feel and complexity of the game, that its complexity does not tend to come from, here's one super complex idea. I mean, we've weeded those out, you know,

we don't tend to do, here's 20 lines of text on the card, you know, ice cold or something anymore. And so where complexity really comes from is just saying, oh, this is okay. Oh, this is okay. I mean, it's kind of like another metaphor I'll use is, let's say you're on a diet and you're like, okay, I only want so many calories. Well, that comes from looking at all the things you eat and saying, oh, each time you eat,

do I want to eat these calories? And that if your attitude when you're on a diet is, oh, I'm just going to eat these few potato chips. Just three potato chips, that's fine. It's not a problem. Three potato chips. And later on in the day, you're like, oh, I'm just going to have this one piece of candy.

It's a little tiny piece of candy, you know. And that if each time, like any one of those in isolation might be okay. Maybe on your diet you can have a couple potato chips or maybe on your diet you can have a piece of candy. If that's your one treat to yourself, hey, that might be okay. But if you're doing it constantly, then you're undermining what you're up to. And the same is true for complexity. If I keep saying, well, they could learn this, well, they could learn that,

then what you're doing is you're cheating on your complexity diet, if you will, that you are throwing at the players more than they can handle. And part of making sure that you can do that is holding firm and saying, this is complicated. And another part of keeping the game simple, like I said, lands are a big part of keeping the game simple. When you draw a land, especially, you know, a basic land, it's like, okay, I've got a land, I know what it is, I can play it, I can not play it, but I know what it is. Not a lot of mental energy here.

Once I've grokked the concept of land, and you need to understand that pretty early to play Magic. And so, we do try to keep lands from having too much complexity on them. Lands are not the place to put lots of complexity. Now, that doesn't mean we never have a complex land. That doesn't mean that, you know, but it's a general rule of thumb. And that's kind of what today is, is talking about lands and saying, how do we treat lands? Because lands are, lands serve such an important function in the game that the mana system is very important that we don't want to put too much weight on them. You know, that's another important thing in your game design tip for the game designers out there, which is you have to weight your design such that you evenly distribute the elements that are necessary.

What that means is, let's take complexity. is let's take complexity. Complexity is easier if you spread it out so that everything... Now, once again, you've got to be careful not to make too much complexity because it'll make it too hard. But when you're doing complexity, you want to be very careful

to make sure that you're weighting things so that the... Like, you don't want one element of your game to handle too much. And, for example, the cards are doing a lot with the mana system. I'd rather not use those to also convey other complexity. I'd rather that be simple, that you get land and land does what it needs to do. And that when you're designing something,

it is possible to put too much stress on any one system. Now, I do like when game systems can have double functions and that instead of having ten things, you can have five. Some of that is good, but you also want to be careful not to say, okay, I have ten things, and of the ten things I have to do, one element of the game system is holding up eight of them. That's problematic. You want to sort of spread the wealth of how different elements of your game

are helping you. And then if you put too much stress on any one piece, you will blow out that piece and cause problems. The other thing, by the way, and this is important too, is that players will grok rules to components and that if

each component is one rule to them, and video games do this, by the way, in which I'm going to teach you how to do something, so I give you the basic thing, and then I keep adding one element, and that one element does one thing. And the players, one for one, can say, oh, I see, the spring's in the game.

Well, the spring lets you do blah blah blah. You know, and that having the ability to sort of grok the game because each component is tied to one idea is very important. And that's another thing when I'm talking about card types. Each of the card types is trying to convey a certain thing, you know.

And then land is about mana. Land's about getting your mana in. I'm not saying you can't add a little extra bonus to that. It can do a few other things. But you want to be careful. And, by the way, you want to have your functioning lands at higher rarities I don't like common lands

doing all that much I much prefer if I'm going to do that to push it more up to uncommon and if I have something that's a little more complex than that I will push it up to rare

or mythic rare although we don't do a lot of mythic rare lands you have to be pretty special to be in mythic rare land because the need to keep it kind of simple and the need for the... Mythic Rare likes to be a little splashier, and so it's kind of hard to do simple and splashy lands.

I mean, it's possible, but it's tough. So what else can I talk about lands? Oh, here's another thing that people always ask about, which is rarity of lands. And this is what I like to call a sticky wicket. Because lands serve so many different functions. For example, lands are the backbone of the mana system. That's true. But lands have also become a big attraction to sets. become a big attraction to sets. Meaning

when we put in a good cycle of lands it just draws attention to the set. It makes people happy to buy boosters of the set. And one of the challenges is, and like I said we have competing needs in some level.

One side is the kind of the design side of just make the game as easy to play as possible, give everybody all the resources they need, and make that happen. The other side is there's just business concerns of,

you know, look, if we want to keep making magic, we have to sell magic, and we want people invested in it and buying packs, and that, you know, part of, like one of the things

I explain all the time is, I have resources as a game designer that are almost insanely unheard of. You know, right now, I will do pre-design for a year. Then I will do design for a year. And then there's another year in which development's working, but I get to peek in and make notes and, you know, and give further feedback. So that means almost three years I get to work on something. Three.

For those that aren't game designers out there, especially in the non-video game world, nothing. Three years? Three, it's insane. And the reason that I have the ability, and I have a team of designers. Right now I've got six designers working on Magic. And the reason I have a team of designers. I have a team of designers. Right now, I've got six designers working on Magic. And the reason I have these resources

is because of the financial, the fact that the game is able to make the money it is, and that it, you know, that because it sells so well, it allows us resources. And because we have resources, we are allowed to make the game as good as it is. And that if Magic sold a quarter of what it sold now, look, it would, the game would, it would reflect in the game as good as it is. And that if Magic sold a quarter of what it sold now, look, the game would

reflect in the game, because I would just have less resources to work on the game. I might have less time. I for sure would have less people. And that the reason lands sometimes are sitting at rare is because, I'll be honest, sometimes it's important to be able to sell, to get people excited for sets,

and sell the sets. And there's a balance balance that's why we always try to make sure in a set that requires certain land restrictions that we'll have common lands or uncommon lands it's a reason why we've worked very hard not to put utility lands at Mythic I mean everyone's able to do a splashy land at Mythic

but you're not seeing dual lands at Mythic so I mean it's a balance. Like I said, it is tough that one of the hard parts about making Magic, or making any game, but I'll talk about Magic, is that there's lots of different forces at hand doing a lot of different things, and that

you know, I have to make sure the game plays as well as it can play, and that the game sells as well as it can sell, and that both of those things are important and that if I neglect either one of those things, it causes problems. And so my job is to find a way to make both true. So anyway, I have come.

I'm here at work. And so I had fun today talking about land. Like I said, land is tricky because it is so important in so many different ways but there's so much subtleties and things you have to worry about it so anyway I hope you enjoyed hearing about land today

and I guess it's time to go make the magic