Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #83 - Rarities

Episode Date: December 28, 2013

Mark turns in one of the longest episodes yet, taking a step away from his Theros epic series.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, normally when I do this podcast, I do them in order. I mean, the order you listen to them is the order I record them in. But, so I just finished my series of Theros podcasts, and it went long, long, long, long, longer than I've had any series ever go, I mean, any design series. I've done long-term stuff over a period of time. But as far as consecutive things, it's the longest I've ever done. So I thought I was going to break it up a little bit. So after I was done, I'm going back and I'm taping some stuff.

So even though you're listening to this before the series is over, I've already done the whole series. So during the series, at some point I talk about how I always meant to talk about rarity. So I decided that I'm going to talk about rarity. But if you get to a podcast later and I say, ooh, someday I should make a podcast about rarity, you all can chuckle and you go, ha ha, we all know you've done one on rarity. Okay, so most of what I want to talk about today is how do we decide what rarity different cards are. Now, for those in the know, if I asked you how many rarities there are, what would you say? If you said three, you'd be wrong because you'd be forgetting about mythic rare. There's common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare.

But if you said four, you'd also kind of be wrong because you're forgetting about land. Basically, land has its own rarity. But if you said five, well, you'd also kind of be wrong because we have stuff like the time shifter cheat that's its own rarity, the purple mana symbol. So if you said six, you'd kind of be wrong because we have tokens and there's another rarity.

Anyway, rarity is a very complex thing. But for today, I'm mostly going to be talking about the four basic rarities we make cards in, which is common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare. I'm not going to talk a lot about basic landmaking today. Okay, so when you look at rarity, there are five things that I think really determine what rarity something is. five things that I think really determine what rarity something is. And those five things are visibility, complexity, splash, impact unlimited, and specialness.

And I will describe what each of those means and talk about how they come into rarity. So let's talk about visibility, which actually is one of the most important ones, but in some ways the least misunderstood. Sorry, the most misunderstood. If it was the least misunderstood, it would be understood quite well, wouldn't it? Okay, so let me first start talking about a concept I've talked about a few times, but it's very, very important to this conversation, so I'll talk about it again. It's called AsFan. So let me explain.

So let's say, for example, I had a multicolored set, and in the multicolored set, I had 100 gold cards. Now, or not 100, like 150 gold cards. Okay. Now, let's say in one version that the 150 rare cards, gold cards are all the commons and most the uncommons, over half the uncommons. In version B, the gold cards are all the uncommons and the rares and the mythic rares, but zero of the commons. So basically the way it would play out is, in version A, the Aspen has to do with, there are, on average, 10 commons in a booster pack, 3 uncommons, 1 rare. That rare, 1 eighth of the time is a mythic rare.

And the 15th card is a basic land. So now, if you open version A, because Aspen talks about how often you'll see something. So let me describe this. So if you open version A, all 10 of your about how often you'll see something, so let me describe this. So if you open version A, all 10 of your commons are going to be gold, so you're going to see that. So 10 of your cards are gold, and then half of your uncommons are gold. So that means at least one of your uncommons most likely will be gold statistically, maybe a second one. Okay, so that means in version a you open it up there is 10 to 13 possible gold cards now let's open up version b version b none of the commons are gold but all the uncommons and rares mythic rares are gold that means you will get four gold cards but never more than four

so version a you have at least 10 and can go as high as 13. In version B, you have 4 and always 4. Okay, that's the same number of gold cards in the set. It's just one of them pushes it toward common, one pushes it higher up toward rare, mythic rare. So the difference is, the as-fan of the first case is an as-fan of 10 to 13. You'll have 10 to 13 gold cards. The as-fan of version B is 4. You'll have 10 to 13 gold cards. The Asfan of version B is four. You'll have four gold cards. Now that is a huge difference. You know, 10 is two and a half times four, right? That's a significant difference. So the total number of something you have is not nearly as important

as where they show up in rarities. That's what Asfan is all about. Because when we talk about things, we want to talk about not just how much shows up in the set as a whole, but when you experience the set by opening booster packs. And remember, that is how players experience sets. They open booster packs. You know, that when you see something for the first time, that's what you are seeing. And the experience of opening up a set in which, you know,

ten of your cards are something versus four is very different. And sometimes that was me using an example which is very, very high. You know, something that high, not that we've never done that, we have, but that's a very high As-Fan. Usually when we're talking about an As-Fan, we're talking about like an As-Fan of one or two. So now, there is one other thing when I'm talking about As-Fan I should mention is, Rarity is the most common way to determine Aspen.

There is one other way, and I'll bring it up because I guess it's important, which is sometimes we substitute in a slot for a particular thing. The best two examples are in Innistrad, you got one less common, but you got a double-faced card that was every single booster pack had one slot for a double-faced card. So that single booster pack had one slot for double-faced card. So that is a way for us to control Aspen that's locked. In Innistrad, what was the Aspen of double-faced cards? One. And the other example would be in Time Spiral, we had a time-shifted sheet,

and every pack had one card from the time-shifted sheet, which I also believe took place of a common. So there are a few other ways to deal with Aspen, but rarity by far, by far, by far is the biggest one. Okay, so when I talk about visibility, what am I talking about? So there's a quote I say a lot, but it's very apropos to today's discussion, which is, if your theme is not a common, it's not your theme. And what I mean by that is, in order for the audience to understand what you're doing, you have to make sure the thing that you are about shows up in enough frequency,

has enough visibility that your audience recognizes it as being the most important thing. Because here's something important. Another lesson on humans. Whatever they see most is what they consider it to be. And what that means is, the way perception works is, I can say it's about thing X, but if thing X doesn't have the impact of thing Y, then it's about thing Y to people, because that's what they experience. It's not intent, it is what actually happens.

Meaning, no matter what you do, when you design a game or whatever, write a book or whatever you do, it does not matter what you, the person creating it, mean to do. It matters what the end user experiences. And that's a very important lesson because when you are building a set, I can say

the set is all about legendary creatures, but then if I make, you know, and Champs Kamigawas, this example, we made every single rare creature a legendary creature. But the problem was, how many packs did you have to open before you realized this? Because you can open a pack and not get a,

your rare cannot be a creature. You can open a couple packs and your rare is not a creature. You can open a couple packs and your rare is a creature, and it's legendary, and you're like, oh, I got one of the legendary creatures. Maybe you open two creatures, and you go, oh, I happened to get two. At what point do you open enough packs, you're like, oh, wow, every single rare I've gotten as a creature is legendary.

That must be important. You might have to open ten packs before you figure that out. Well, guess what? There's some people that don't open ten packs. If you want people to understand your theme, you have to give a visibility to your theme. You have to have an as-fanded of your theme high enough that people are going to recognize it. So what that means is

when we're trying to figure out a theme, one of the things we always do is the very first thing we do is we go with common. And we play with all commons. We call it all common playtest. Why do we do that? Because I need to make sure that the commons carry the weight of the theme of the set. If the commons aren't carrying the weight,

then it's not going to be representative of what we need to be representative of. And that's one of the biggest roles of rarity, is to represent that visibility of what you want. Now, be aware, sometimes you want low visibility on things, and you sneak those at higher rarities. Sometimes, for example, you want to do something, but you're afraid it'll pull focus. For example, in Theros, I would not want to have done the enchantment artifacts at a low rarity. That's not the thing the set's about.

I mean, the set has an enchantment theme, and it made sense that these were enchantment artifacts, but I would not want to put them at a low rarity. That's not the thing the set's about. I mean, the set has an enchantment theme, and it made sense that these were enchantment artifacts, but I would not want to put them at low rarity. Because I don't want to mislead you early on thinking that some of the enchantment artifacts are what the Theros is about. No, it's something, I put them at rare, you don't see them too often, probably not going to see them right off the bat, and when you finally see them in the scope, you go, oh, this is a

pretty rare thing. I don't see that all that often. And that is important, that visibility works both ways. Sometimes you want things very visible and you stick it at low rarities. Sometimes you don't want it visible, stick it at high rarities. And that rarity is a tool. I talked about this when I talked about

the making of a trading card game, and one of the lessons that Richard learned early on was, in a game in which you put the game together, you choose your pieces, you don't control the order i mean one of the things that's important with trading card games is it's random the person is i the game designer do not or do not have any control of the order or the experience of my user because i don't know what they're going to open when but the one thing

i do have is i have rarity as a tool that I can't determine exactly what they see, but through rarity, I can, I have a lot of control of how quickly they see certain things. That if I put something heavy at a present and common, okay, I have no guarantee the first pack necessarily they're going to see it, or if our aspen's high enough, they should.

But I do know that very quickly they will get the sense of this and notice it. And one of the things that's very telling is a lot of times when we're talking about the set having a theme, we'll talk about the as-fan of the theme. Are people going to notice it? Is that something that's going to impact? And like Shadowmore, for example, I was very big on trying to get over the halfway mark because I wanted half your pack to be hybrid

because I felt like that would really have an impact and you realize oh this set's about hybrid um same with torment when we were talking about how many black cards to have we that's the unweighted set with more black cards than other colors like how many black cards I think actually our as fan was too low in torment on black cards that we we didn't go far enough that I don't think enough people got the shtick opening up just a couple booster packs. Okay, so that is visibility. Next, complexity. Okay, so complexity is, it's simple. Do people understand, you know, how hard is this to understand? And what we've learned with rarity is we want the, we want to stick the most complicated stuff, interestingly, at Rare. Not at Mythic Rare.

Mythic Rare has a slightly different role. I mean, I'll get to the roles of the rarities in a second. But Rare is kind of where we stick things where, like, this is as complicated as we want it to be in the game, but it's complicated. We don't want complicated in common. Probably one of these days I will do a podcast on New World Order. And really, really quickly, New World Order is one of the ways we realized that we needed to help keep the set approachable for beginners is to control how complex common is. And so we have this thing called New World Order. And basically if something is too complex, then New World Order says, oh, oh, I'm not sure you're supposed to be a common.

And it's a system for us to constantly remind ourselves, is this thing too complex for common? And by the way, when I talk about complexity, there's many kinds of complexity. There's complexity of what the cards do. Can I read the card and understand it? There's complexity of board play. Do I understand how the impact of the board? And there's what we call strategic complexity. Do I understand the impact of the board? And there's what we call strategic complexity.

Do I understand the impact on gameplay of how I'm supposed to play this to strategically play it the best I can? And all these things matter as far as where you stick them. And I will say that complexity of comprehension, which is, can I read it, is the most important thing in common. Although New World Order really, really plays up board complexity. That's another thing that until New World Order we weren't paying as much attention to. So anyway, the idea essentially is common is supposed to be the simplest cards. That I read it, I get it, and the effect on the board is easy for me

to understand. Uncommon is the stuff that's like, okay, it's a little bit more complex. It still has to be simple enough. Because one of the things about in general is different people, the focal point for a booster pack, let me talk about this concept real quick. When people open a booster pack, there's a certain focal point, meaning where does their

attention go? What we find is the more casual a player you are, and actually casual is dangerous because casual can mean two things. What I mean here is an enfranchised player just buys lots and lots of packs from playing a long time. A casual player in this regard means someone who usually is less enfranchised and plays less, buys less magic. Now, there also is casual versus competitive play. That's a different market. Having the same word mean two things is confusing. I know that. I'm talking about lightly enfranchised, not competitive. I'm talking about casual right here. So the casual player buys less cards, and because of that, their focal point is different. Essentially, your focal point is, at what rarity do I not have the cards? And so to an enfranchised player, that is

rare, and sometimes if they buy a lot of cards, it's mythic rare, which is, what am I looking for when I open the pack? For a more casual, less enfranchised player, that is rare, and sometimes if they buy a lot of cards, it's mythic rare, which is, what am I looking for when I open the pack? For a more casual, less enfranchised player, that often can be the uncommons. And that's why one of the roles of the uncommons is to make sure that we have things that are exciting for the casual player. Um, okay, so, complexity definitely scales as we get higher, we get more complex as we get higher. Okay, next complex as we get higher. Okay, next let's talk about splash.

And that has to do, and the reason I bring up sort of the focal point is, we want to make sure that not every pack, but a lot of packs, well, I'll take it back. We want some splash in every pack. The splash isn't always on the rare. I guess we always want splash. Every pack wants splash. The Splash isn't always on the rare. I guess we always want Splash. Every pack wants Splash.

The question is kind of where you stick your Splash. And there's different kinds of Splash. The kind of Splash you want at common is different than the kind of Splash you want at rare. And so the cards where you go, what? You know, what? Oh, my God, I can't believe they printed that. We don't tend to do those at common. We want those more for the rares, sometimes

at uncommons and certain type of cards. But one of the things is, we want the focal point to be an exciting experience as much as we can make it. Now, once again, the way it works is that we're making different cards for different people. We know that we might make a niche rare for Johnny,

that if someone else, Timmy, opens up, he might not care about it, and so to him, it's not a good card. So the rare isn't always splashy to everybody all the time because the cards are aimed at different people and we have different kinds of players. But we want to make sure that our higher rarity things are always splashy to somebody and that part of the role of common is also to stay out of the way of the higher rarity. Let me give you an example. If you'll notice, we have caps on how big we make creatures in common. Now, every once in a blue moon, we break that rule.

You know, rise of the dros or something that have a few giant creatures in common. But normally, the way it works is, you know, like white tend not to have much higher than three power at common. Black, we usually three or four power common at the most. Red, three or four power common at the most. Blue is usually a little smaller, except we'll have a serpent or something. So normally it's two or three, but we'll have one serpent for blue. And green gets to be a little bit bigger. Green actually usually has a six power, five, six power creature, and has a couple fours sometimes.

But the reason that we sort of cut it off is we want to make larger things exciting. And if Common just gave you eight, eight flyers, well, then an eight, eight flyer wouldn't be exciting. And part of the rules of rarities is to allow the higher rarities to have some of that splash value and be exciting. And let me stress this.

It is very important when you are making your stuff that we have to think about the overall experience. Meaning, when I talk about rarity, I'm like, what do I want each booster pack to have? Well, I need people to understand what's going on the set. That's visibility. I need to make sure people can rock what's going on. That's complexity. I need to make sure that people they can rock what's going on. That's complexity.

I need to make sure that people are excited about what's going on. That's splash. And now we get into the next category, impact unlimited. So limited has become a big part of how many people play Magic. Not all people.

So real quickly, for those that might not know, limited means that I sit down, I open up, I do not bring any that i sit down i open up i i do not bring any cards with me i open up sealed booster product and with those cards i build a deck i might do sealed where i just open my own cards i might do draft where we draft the cards there's a couple different ways to play limited um but the idea of limited is i'm dealing with what i have available to me and sometimes with with drafting, I have some control, but I'm not ahead of it. Constructed means I build my deck matching whatever format is the constructed format at the time, and then I come with a pre-made deck. So rarity is very

important to limited because the way you can control your limited game is through rarity. It's a very important tool for design development to craft the limited game. And so another thing that determines rarity is do you want it in limited or do you not want it in limited? If it's something that's very important for limited it needs to go at common. If it's something that you don't want in limited, that's a bomb that you think that would be problematic in high numbers, then it's got to go to rare or Mythic Rare. So let's talk about Uncommon. Uncommon has actually a very important role in Limited.

And what that role is, is that in Limited, Rares don't happen enough that you can use them to control anything. Rares are kind of this spice that gets thrown in, but it's very random. You just don't know when that stuff's going to happen. And it's fun, and it adds a nice element to Limited. So I think Rare's sort of an important purpose in Unlimited. I do think that you want some bombs. I do think

you want some of that, ooh, I don't know what it's going to get. They create some excitement and can cause some fun play. They can do good things. But, Unlimited is what you can depend upon, meaning you're not going to see every Unlimited card every draft, but you will see them often. And so what we tend to do at Uncommon is we tend to do the cards that focus our themes. The idea being if pack one, pick one, you get one of these Uncommons that we use it

to help guide you through drafting. That, oh, here's a neat idea, and I got this early, and now I can think about this thing, and I can consider doing it. A good example, a very famous example of this might be spider spawning, where if you open up spider spawning, all of a sudden, here's a strategy you could try. Now, it's not something you would necessarily try if you don't know you have spider spawning. I mean, maybe there's a green-blue archetype you could try, but spider spawning, like first pack really said, oh, I'm going to go down this path and do this thing and we try to do that often sometimes we make uncommons

that plan the themes that are already there and sometimes we make uncommons that have a special theme that the idea is that you sorry, driving around debris in the road you sometimes that you have a theme that's unique to that one uncommon,

that it's not a draft strategy we put people to do often, but hey, we make a few of them that's fun, and when you come across it, you might want to draft it. So uncommon serves a very important role there in that it helps us make things that we don't want too prevalent. Because one of the things is, if there's certain things you put at common, well, then you have the problem of, you know, you have the problem of it appears too much.

You know, that things at common very much will guide the player in their limited play. And what you want to do at common is have a gentle touch, meaning you kind of want to give them tools, but you don't want to direct them too much or else it becomes prescriptive. And if the answers are a common, then they'll keep happening too often. If the defining qualities of your limited, I mean, there's a balance.

You want enough tools to make sure you can do what you want to do. In fact, in general, the idea a common is you want your common things mostly to have some dual purpose so that multiple decks could use them, where uncommon is the kind of place where you put something that you want to drift to somebody and that they clearly can get and use. Now, commons will also have the lower end stuff. A very common example is we'll have some tribal goodness that we want and then we'll make some cards we have to have some creatures that are like you know, we call sea level

that are, eh, you know maybe playable but not first picks and stuff and that stuff will drift a little bit and that if there's a tribal thing that you care about, oh, well I'll value it a little bit higher and maybe I take the goblin that, you know, is not valuable as much to you because you don't value the goblin that, you know, it's not valuable as much to you because you

don't value the goblin-ness of it. Okay, the last thing today, it's funny by the way, whenever I'm driving, I'm always gauged where I'm at and there's a lot of traffic right now, so I'm nowhere near work and I'm chugging along with my thing, so I'll come up with some extra content today for you. Okay, so specialness. So this is the fifth quality. So another thing has to do, sometimes rare,

so one of the things we want is we are trying to craft a world and that there is, this is where rarity comes in for flavor, which is if you ask the creative team, in this world that you've built, how often does thing X happen? You know, let's take a particular thing.

Now, there might be certain creatures that are very plentiful. They're all over the place. You know, that in this world, oh, yeah, yeah, those things, there's lots and lots and lots of elves in this world. But other things might be, oh, well, how about this one elf? Oh, that one elf? Well, there's one. It's legendary. There's a guy who's one of them. And there's a mix sometimes with spells.

The idea is, is this something that a lot of mages know how to do, or is this a pretty specialized spell? And one of the things for rarity is, rarity has to dictate and show kind of how unique and special to the world something is. And common shows that it's plentiful, and mythic rarity shows that it's unique. Okay, so now let's talk about, okay, we have these five attributes. We have visibility, complexity, splash, impact on the minute, and specialness. Okay. So, let's examine a little bit where cards will go

because now that we have the determiners, we've got to figure out where a particular card will go. Okay. So, let's, I'm going to come up with some cards and we're going to talk about where they would go. I'm going to make these up off the top of my head. Okay, so I have a card that says 2R sorcery, deal 4 damage to target creature. What rarity would that card be? Okay, well think about it. It's generally functional.

It's the kind of thing that, you know, it's creature kill, so it has some use. It's pretty simple to understand. I'm doing forward damage to a creature, I see direct damage all the time. So, okay, let's walk through. Visibility. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that this one doesn't matter too much. It's not tying in anything, but it's not also something that you can't be very visible. So, it doesn't matter too much for visibility. Complexity. It's pretty simple.

It's simple in complexity. Splash. Eh. Magic does direct damage all the time. I mean, there's nothing unique about this. We've done 4 damage many, many, many times. The costing is not such that it's an amazing, you know, it doesn't hit players, so it's not, there's nothing particularly, you know, awesome as far as

Splash goes. Impact Unlimited. Um, it's important in Limited that you have, um, creature control. It only kills one creature,

so it, um, one of our rules, uh, is that if something kills more than one creature, uh, we red flag it for

New World Order, meaning it usually goes to uncommon or higher. Ah, but this card just kills one thing, it only kills creatures. Uh, Specialness. Eh, nothing special. Ah, but this card just kills one thing. It only kills creatures.

Specialness. Eh, nothing special. We do direct damage all the time, you know, and there's a world, I mean, in a world in which magic, you know, magic gets used, hey, direct damage is a pretty basic element of red. Okay, so I look at all those things,

and I'm like, okay, you know, visibility doesn't matter, low complexity, low splash, low specialness, and, you know, it's definitely something that Sealed would like. It's common. That card is common. Okay, so now, let's try a different card. My card says, whenever a goblin enters the battlefield, I will do an elf, but I just did a red card. We'll do a green card. Whenever an elf enters the battlefield, um, you may search your library for a basic land

and put it into your hand. Okay. Well, what rarity is that? Okay. So let's look at visibility. Um, well, that is, um, it is tribal. Uh, it depends how tribal the set is. Um, so it is something where, um, the visibility would vary on what the impact is on the set. Complexity, it has some complexity to it. The comprehension complexity is not too bad.

You get what it says on the surface. But what it means for both the strategic gameplay and worrying about the board to a certain extent, I guess it's more strategic complexity. So, okay. certain extent. I guess it's more strategic complexity. So, okay. Visibility, it's somewhere in uncommon to rare. Complexity, it's somewhere in uncommon to rare, probably. Splash. It's pretty splashy. I mean, it's a pretty cool card. It allows you to mana ramp with elves, and elves already mana ramp, so elves often want It allows you to mana ramp with elves, and elves already mana ramp,

so elves often want to be in a mana ramp style deck, and this helps that. So it's pretty splashy. I'd say it's pretty splashy. Impact Unlimited. Well, once again, it's a tribal card. If your set has a strong tribal theme, this would work well. But if you don't have enough elves to support it, let's say at common you only had three common elves and two uncommon elves, you might not have enough elves to support it.

So how much does tribal matter? And specialness, it's pretty special. I don't think that the idea of things that make use of your elves is not something that's overrunning. It has a little bit of specialness to it. Okay, so I take all this into account, and I feel like, okay, this card seems to fall to be a rare, but it could be an uncommon in the following circumstances, which is you have a strong tribal theme of which elves are a component, which is you have a strong tribal theme of which elves are a component and you want this to be a draft card that you want to draft around me,

that you want something that you think people open, they'll do something fun and they'll have this. Now, the other thing that makes me think it stays more toward rare, something I didn't talk too much about, so see, I discover things as I do my podcast, is it does something that we are not super fond design and development are not super fond of happening a lot

which is it causes shuffling so every time I play an elf, I have to go through my deck get it to land, but I then have to shuffle oh, well, we don't want you to shuffle every turn that's not great and so one of the things we'll do with rarity is sometimes if there's something that we just don't want you to shuffle every turn. That's not great. And so one of the things we'll do with rarity is sometimes if there's something that we just don't want to happen a lot,

so this is a new category, category six. If R&D doesn't want something to happen, we push it higher in rarity. I mean, one could argue this has sort of a cross between visibility and, well, I guess it's his own category. Which is just, how often does R&D want you to experience something? And if it's something that we like shuffling, that we just don't want to have happen too often, we'll put it at a higher rarity. So I'm pretty sure that card would be rare. It could be pushed at uncommon in a very, very particular circumstance.

But odds are that would be a rare card. Okay, next card. It is Gothric, Lord of the Manor. He makes all your creatures

are plus one, plus one when attacking, and plus two, plus two when defending. Okay. So, let's look at that. Now, first of all, Gothar, it's a guy. It's a legendary creature, right? There's not a lot of Gothars out there.

It's one guy. Okay, so it's a legendary creature. So let's look at that. Visibility. Well, we don't want you feeling like legendary creatures are all over the place. We don't want that in common. The visibility over the place we don't want it in a comment the visibility needs to be high

higher rarity complexity oh well it affects the board state and it has a different effect on attacking versus blocking so

you have to remember two different things it's kind of complex it definitely has a board complexity to it splash oh it's pretty splashy all your creatures

get plus or minus attacking and get plus two and defending and okay that's pretty you know that it's pretty splashy. All your creatures get plus or minus attacking and get plus or minus two in defending. Okay, that's pretty, you know, that's decently splashy. Impact Unlimited. This would have a huge impact on Unlimited. That's not the kind of thing we want. We don't want you getting a lot of these.

You know, the idea of I have multiples in play, that would be pretty daunting. And Specialness, it's a legendary creature. It's supposed to be pretty special. Right? Okay, so the rule of thumb is our default for legendary creatures is they are mythic rare. Why? Well, they're pretty unique. There's one Gothar.

And here he is. And, um, you know, so we tend to put it at mythic rare. Sometimes, sometimes we push it down to rare. Why do we do that? Oh, another thing I've... Well, here, see, this is why I talk,

because I come on things. Another reason that we'll stick it at rare sometimes is what we call squeeze, which is sometimes you're trying to do something and some rarity gets all filled up. So let me talk about squeeze. The two rarities that get squeezed the most are uncommon and mythic rare. Uncommon actually is the most squeezed thing,

and the reason is that sometimes you move commons up to uncommon because it's just a little too much for common. And so, especially with New Order, uncommon a lot of the time takes the overfill from common. Things we kind of want are common, but it's just a little bit too much, so we move it to Uncommon. Meanwhile, if we get things at Rare that seem a little simpler, or we want to have some impact in Limited, we push it down. So Uncommon gets stuff pushed up from Common and down from Rare. Whereas Common, like every once in a while, we'll realize we have a simple uncommon

we'll push it down but that doesn't happen nearly as much complexity tends to push up and not down so uncommon by the way people always ask me this what is the hardest

you know what rarity causes me the most problems and it's uncommon uncommon is always tight always always always tight we often want to do some cycles at Uncommon.

The New World Order pushes some stuff out of Common and it always is tight. Now, also, the other problem is Common has more space

or just more cards at Common than Uncommon. And so, Uncommon, I mean, I've never had a set in which Uncommon wasn't super tight.

The other one that gets pushed a lot is Mythic Rare. And the reason is there's a lot of gets pushed a lot is Mythic Rare. And the reason is, there's a lot of things sometimes that fight for Mythic Rariness. Usually, well, all our Planeswalkers, by default, Planeswalkers are always at a high rarity. Legendary Creatures are often at Mythic Rare.

And usually by default they're at Mythic Rare. And then there's just things that seem super, super splashy, and like, oh, this just seems're at Mythic Rare and then there's just things that seem super, super splashy and like, oh, this just seems like a Mythic Rare.

It seems, it has this potential for awesomeness is what I say for Mythic Rares. I-405 North Accident. Aha! I now understand

why I'm in traffic because there is an accident. See, you listen to my podcast, you think we have accidents left and right. I'm not moving to Seattle. That's a dangerous place.

So, oh, here's a funny thing. You don't know. I'm talking about the future. Okay, guys. I am an omen, much like the Greeks of Theros. I foresee the eighth podcast of Theros being a crazy long podcast because

of an accident. The longest podcast ever. Except maybe today. Oh, this will be odd if today's is longer than my longest ever, since I make a big deal that it's the longest ever. Hopefully it will not be. Also, hopefully I get to work quicker than last time. Anyway, yes, there's eight podcasts

of Theros, and the last one is the longest podcast I've ever done. It was a rainy day. There was an accident. So anyway, you have upcoming, you can expect a super long podcast. Now, today, by the way, I, so for those that care, I have to take two freeways to get to work. The first freeway is called the 5, and the second freeway is called the 405. Usually second freeway is called the 405. Usually, the 405 is the halfway point. When I get there, I'm halfway to work. Well, I'm still on the 5. I haven't even gotten to the 405 yet, and we are 35 minutes into this. So, aye, aye, aye.

This is the problem of not going in order that, anyway. Okay, let's continue on. Let's hope I get to work before we break any records. Okay, so I was talking about oh, why things get squeezed at Mythic Rare. Okay, so

there's legendary creatures, there's just powerful, exciting things, and sometimes we have so much, especially in the small set that only has ten mythic rares. So Dragon Maze is the classic example. It's like, oh, there were ten guilds and each of them had a maze runner. Okay, awesome, awesome, so we have ten legendary creatures. Okay, we have ten mythic rares, but wait, but wait, every set has a planeswalker. Oh, well, we can't do ten legendary creatures and do a planeswalker when we have 10 slots.

Ah, so that forced us to sort of put some legendary creatures at lower rarities, and we ended up doing the cycle of maze runners at rare so they could all be the same rarity. Anyway, okay, so let me try another one. Okay, so my card is... Let's see, we'll do a blue card now. We'll do a blue card. And the blue card says, whenever you play an instant or sorcery,

it's a 2-2 creature, that says whenever you play an instant or sorcery, you may spend two to draw a card. Okay, so where does that go? Okay. So it depends. Okay. So let's go through the same.

Visibility. Doesn't need to be super high visibility. Complexity. A little bit of complexity. It requires you understanding we cast spells and there's additional cost to get an additional effect. Splash. A little splashy. It's pretty cool drawing cards.

Whenever you say draw cards, that's cool. And you can draw multiple cards, in theory, so that is splashy. Impact Unlimited. Card drawing is valuable for Unlimited. Now, this particular one needs you to cast Instants of Sorcery, so it's somewhat to control the limited.

If it was creatures, it would be a little more of a problem, but it's Instants of Sorcery, and the mirror activity of limited restricts you a little bit. Specialness,

eh, I don't get a lot of this guy, but, you know, we have some flexibility. Okay, so the interesting one here is, this is another type one where, okay, so it's not common.

Multiple card draw usually is not a common. Maybe everyone's thought maybe draw two cards is common, but not something I can continually use during the course of the game to get this constant card advantage. That's not common. It's not mythic rare. I mean, this card's just not splashy enough to be mythic rare. So we come down to, is it Uncommon or Mythic Rare?

Well, once again, and this is how you can see how things are not always set in stone. If, for example, this is the kind of card that might make a very interesting build around the Uncommon, right? If the set has enough Commons and Uncommons that we think you could do something with, it might be like, oh, get this card early, I'm like, oh, maybe I want a deck where I prioritize and have a little bit more instant sorcerers than normal. And if the set has some themes

that can reinforce that with a few cards that let you build that deck, well, that might be an interesting uncommon. But, you know what? We also could cost it a little aggressive and maybe make it the kind of thing that's a little more of a card not for limited but for constructed.

There's some move between common and uncommon. Uncommon and rare there. To my gut, this card, I would default to uncommons where I probably would stick it. The fact that it cares about common... Sorry. The fact that it cares about

instants and sorceries means that it is self-limited somewhat in Limited, and that you would have to sort of stretch Limited to make it work a little better, which is fine, which means that the power level is kind of checked by the format. And once again, one of the things that happens is when we make a card, we will go around, and it's a very common thing to go what rarity is this two of the most common questions

asked is people will say a card and go either what color is this or what rarity is this and so a lot of what I'm trying to do today is

explain to you sort of demonstrate like you know sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's not so here's one I'll give you, which is, I have a creature, I have a, we'll make it a, what is it?

Goblins, I'll make it a human. Human Shaman. And it says when I enter the battlefield, it's a 1-1 creature, it says when I enter the battlefield, I do one damage to all creatures. It's a Tremor Mage. Maybe we made this card. So what rarity does that card go at? Now, this one's interesting, okay? So it's Red Flag in New World Order because it can kill multiple things.

But it's one damage. It's not nearly as devastating. It might kill a few things, but oftentimes it can kill nothing. Well, I made it a 1-1, didn't I? It kills itself. That right there is poor design. Okay, it's a 1-2. So, okay, is it mythic rare? No, no way is it mythic rare. Is it rare? No. So you're between common and uncommon. The reason I tend to lean toward common is it's not going to have a giant impact. Now, that said, I could craft an environment where there's more one-toppedness than normal, and then, oh, now it becomes an

actual more of a board sweeper, and I want to push it more up to uncommon. So another lesson you'll get here is that rarity is determined not just by what it does in a vacuum, but by the environment that it's sitting in. And that this card in certain places would be, oh, you know, there's not that many one toughness things. Okay. It'll kill a few things, but it's not that big a deal. And okay, fine. That can be common. Or it could be, oh my God, this is a major game player. It's going to very much impact Limited. We, for other reasons, made a lot of toughness small. Oh, wow, no, no, no, this can't be common. It would be too disruptive as a common.

You know, we don't want people having lots and lots of this card. Anyway, so I am on the 405 now. The traffic is moving along. I think the accident was north of the 405, so I'm hoping. Here's my goal today. See, this is what happens when you mess with time, is my previous record before I started my Theros was 51 minutes. And so, in the eighth podcast of Theros,

I made a big deal that I passed the 51-minute mark, and then I made an even bigger deal when I set my new record. So I'm hoping that I get to work, ideally under the 51-minute mark, but that's looking dodgy right now, but at least over to, I don't want to, like, have it happen,

and I'm all excited about how this monumental thing, and then, you know, podcast feedback actually broke it. This is the danger of messing with time. The other thing, by the way, is I picked a topic where I planned to talk about, but it's funny that you're getting more about rarity than I had planned. That's one of the side things of doing this podcast for you guys, I mean for me and you, is that I have a topic I know I'm going to talk about, but I never know when I'm going to get long accidents or things like that. And so I just sometimes get longer podcasts than I'm expecting.

So I get to go on and talk about different things. So for example, if this was a normal car ride, I would never have gotten to the point where I make up cards and talk about them. That's just, I mean, maybe that's the coolest part of this whole podcast. I don't know. So speaking of which, I did two red cards. I did a white card. I did a blue card.

I did a black card. No, I did a green card. I've not done a black card. Time to make a black card. Okay. So the card is Target Player Discards Two Cards at Random

from Their Hand. What rarity is that? So let's look. Visibility? Eh. I mean, it depends on what the impact that? Select look. Visibility? Eh, it depends on the impact of the set is. Complexity? I believe that random is more complex than they choose. Only cause

you have to then figure out how to do something randomly. There's complexity to that. I will admit that randomly cards in hand is easier than other randomness because your opponent can pick one. But it still requires you getting what's going on. Splash. Random has a little bit more...

Random is swingier, so swingier tends to be a little splashier to some players. Because if I make you choose two random cards, I'm never going to get the cards I most want, where if I make you randomly, ooh, I could get your land, or I could do stuff like that. Next is Impact Unlimited. Unlimited can handle discard, as long as there's not too much discard. This would be a sorcery, because discard is sorcery. So, eh, limited can handle it no matter what. Specialness. Black does discard all the time.

This is nothing special. We tend to do chosen discard over random discard, so there's a little bit of specialness to random discard. Also, I didn't name this, but the sixth quality is something R&D wants to do a lot. Random discard is something that we get very nervous about because if you randomly discard, I can't hit land. Now, because it hits two cards, I can cost it and make it something you can't play later, so hopefully I get past the point where you need the land, or the early parts where you need the land.

So in general, my thought process to this card is that if I just had to discard two cards, easy common. No problem. The fact that I'm making it do it random makes me a little nervous. I feel like random is a little tiny bit more complex. It adds a little bit of splash value. It makes it a little bit... have a little bit more range of what it could do.

So my gut is that I probably don't do it at common. I would do it at uncommon. That just there's a bunch of little factors that sort of eke it up a little bit. So, and like I said, I'm hoping by demonstrating cards that as I sort of walk through how different cards carry a different amount.

Okay, so let's try this card. It's an artifact, and it is a 2-2 creature that taps to let you look at the top card of your library. Your library, not anybody's library, just your library. To tap, look at the top card of your library. Okay, so where does that go? Okay, so we start with visibility. Now, and you'll notice that visibility is very much about theme of set. So, is this

two things. One, is this an artifact set? There are a lot of artifact creatures in this set. Or, is artifact roleplay a big thing? And two, does carrying by the top of your library mean something? You know? So, for example, let's say this is an artifact environment that has Clash in it. So Clash is a mechanic from Lorwyn, where each player looks at the top card of the library

and compares it to their opponent. And then if it's higher, then the Clash will be on a card, as a writer on a spell. And then each person reveals the top card of the library. If you use the higher converted mana cost, you get an extra bonus to your spell. Okay, so let's imagine an environment in which, you know, the artifacts are higher than normal,

and one of the mechanics we're using is clash. Oh, well, this guy might want to be common, you know, that he fits, you know, that in artifact-ness he could fit, but that, and, you know, he ties in one of the mechanics of the set. Okay, there's a world. So visibility-wise, I can imagine being common, but also, let's say that there isn't a lot of artifacts. He's a special artifact, and there's no mechanic that cares about top of library.

Like, oh, now he becomes something that's less, you know, less, you don't want as much visibility. Complexity, there's a little bit of complexity in strategic complexity, which is I'm making you look at something that you then have to react to and do something with. It's easy to understand how to do it, but it is something that can slow people down a little bit because they have to look and think and, you know, it, well, the action is fast. The actual thing you have to think about is not. Okay. Next is impact unlimited. Once again, it has to do with whether I want this effect, like it matters. If it matters, maybe I want it to come. And if it doesn't, probably I don't. Specialness. I mean, it's a little special. It's

more special than vanilla creature and than a French vanilla creature. And it's not the kind of ability we stick on artifacts all the time, so it's a little bit special, but artifacts have done this before. It's not super special. Okay, so I look at that, and I'm like, okay, I think default, that's an uncommon to me,

meaning I normally would do that uncommon, but in a set that really, I mean,, that's an uncommon to me, meaning I normally would do that uncommon, but in a set that really, I mean, in order for it to be common, two things would have to be true. Number one, I'd have to care about the top of my library. That has to be a pretty somatic thing about the set, that something has to care about it. Probably a mechanic has to care about it. Number two, our default on artifacts is we don't do too much stuff at common. Every once in a while we'll do, like, usually we do mana fixing at common, and sometimes we'll do an artifact creature, and sometimes we'll do a piece of equipment or two. So it's a simple artifact creature. It could be common.

But my gut is if it doesn't matter, I make it uncommon. Okay, so I'm getting near. I just got off the freeway, I make it uncommon. Okay. So, I'm getting near, I just got off the freeway. So we have a few minutes. It looks like I'm going to actually break my previous record, but I'm not going to break my new record, I think, which hasn't happened yet. I'm not going to break the future

record. Okay. So now, let's talk about the role, now that I've explained all this, let's talk about the role of each rarity now. So what's the role of common? The role of common is to give high visibility on the world, to make the game approachable and easy to understand. It's in your New World Orders there.

And to not undercut the specialness of the higher rarity things to make sure that the set has splash in it. So that's the role of common. It's the workhorse stuff, it's got to show you what the set's about, it's got to define the theme, it's got to be something that's pretty easy to play and is approachable and that allows us to do what we need to do at higher rarities. Uncommon, oh and also common is very much about having the meat and potatoes to make limited work.

Uncommon is very much about the higher-end stuff you care about for limited. It's about stuff that you want to have decent visibility on, but for complexity reasons, usually, it's not uncommon. It's also a place for things, if you get pinched at rare, it can sometimes serve as some simple stuff for rare. Another thing Uncommon will do, by the way, sometimes, I didn't talk about this, is if we have a set in which we're trying to play up a theme, let's take Mirrodin, for example, or Scars of Mirrodin, you know, an artifact set, what we'll do is we'll lower the rarities. So in an artifact

block, we take things that are normally uncommon and make them common, and things that are normally rare and make them uncommon. We make sure that the simplicity is there, but we want to just feel like the thing is happening more, and so what we define as rarities will vary depending upon what the focus of the set is.

Oh, uncommons are also about splash value for more casually enfranchised players. Rare is about splash value for enfranchised players, and also for less enfranchised players. Rare is about splash value for enfranchised players and also for less enfranchised players. The rare is always exciting. It also has to play up a little bit of the specialness

and it's a place to put things that we don't want to mess up limited. Things that are problematic and limited but that we really want someone to get their hands on. That's what rare is for. Mythic rare is for super you know, super splash. We use it especially for special myths. Like I said, all of our planeswalkers and most of the legendary creatures go there.

It's also when we have things that are just, we want to blow things out and just do things that have a large scope to them. We don't do that all that often, Mythic Rares where we stick them. So as you can see, each rarity has a function, has a role, that when someone comes to me and says what rarity is this, I have a lot to work with in defining what the rarity is. Now, hopefully what you'll realize today is it's not hard and fast, it's not like no matter what, this card has to be a certain rarity. Most cards have a little bit of flexibility. There are a few cards that couldn't be one of two rarities.

I mean, sometimes things are so, so, so basic that it's weird for them to be uncommon, so they kind of have to be common. Some cards are just so clearly a mythic rare, they have to be mythic rare. But other than the real extremes, most uncommons probably could be either a common or a rare, depending on which side of the line at uncommon it sits. So anyway, we have surpassed my previous record.

And so, anyway, I don't know. I always feel bad when there's accidents and things. I don't want anybody to get hurt. I don't want anybody. But I will say that my podcast has made me much more tolerant of having, like, for example, if this was a normal day and I was driving to work and I was this late, like I'm saying, it's over 50 minutes to get to work. I should be working 30 minutes.

I'd be kind of upset. Like, ugh, really? But instead, I get to talk to work. I should be working 30 minutes. I'd be kind of upset. Like, oh, really? But instead, I get to talk to you guys and I like doing my podcast. So one of the upsides for me is my podcast makes me much more tolerant

with all my traffic. So I thank you. I thank you guys for that. I see wizards, so we're going to wrap this up. So hopefully today what you realize is is rarity is an important tool.

It does a lot of good stuff for us. It helps immensely. It is definitely something that is used with a whole bunch of different goals in mind. I'm hoping that walking through today gives you a little

better understanding of why we do that. Anyway, it is time to me to bid you do because I'm driving into Wizards. I got to pull my parking space. But anyway, as always, I love talking with you guys. I'm doing my wrap-up while I drive here because I need to end this as soon as I can.

But anyway, let me take a peek. So I see that we are at 54 minutes. So this is an all-time record. Currently, as far as you know, it's a brand new record. We broke a record. So thank you guys for joining me to the longest ever drive to work.

I had a good time talking to you guys today, and I hope you have a little better understanding of rarity. And it's time for me to stop talking about rarity and start making magic. Have a good day, guys.