0:00

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what

0:03

that means. It's time for the drive to

0:05

work at home edition So

0:07

I'm here today with a jaydeen clown parents

0:09

to talk all about Play

0:12

design of outlaws of Thunder Junction. I've

0:14

had jaydeen on before but We're

0:17

back. We have another set to talk about so hey jaydeen

0:20

Hey mark, how's it going? Okay,

0:23

so we're gonna talk all about the

0:25

challenges of doing play design

0:27

for this set So I think

0:29

the thing we want to start with is

0:31

committing crimes That's the most kind of out

0:33

there thing that we you know normal magic

0:35

sets don't care about that normally So usually

0:38

I know the thing that you we don't normally care

0:40

about is the one that usually play design has to

0:42

look at the hardest yeah,

0:45

so the biggest

0:47

challenge for us with crimes comes

0:49

from limited where Crimes

0:51

are super awesome. Everybody we talked

0:53

to love them And you know, there's just

0:55

something that happens in a game of magic

0:58

removing stuff So on some level

1:00

we are really excited about crimes wanted it

1:02

to be a big presence in the set, but that

1:04

means There's a

1:06

lot of power points and interaction which can

1:08

be really challenging for us You know kind

1:11

of what removal spells we make where they are

1:13

on the curve how much of them they are

1:16

exist in the format something play design spends

1:18

a lot of energy on and Making

1:20

a set that where crimes are something

1:23

that gets rewarded is something

1:25

that can be pretty challenging for us How

1:28

much did you guys have to worry about as fan of

1:30

crime? So that's something you needed to worry about or was

1:32

that mostly okay? It

1:34

was mostly okay, especially because of

1:36

the bonus sheet given that we're

1:39

doing like one extra crime of pack

1:41

and it's pretty powerful We didn't really have any

1:43

troubles with enough ways to commit

1:45

crimes The biggest challenge for us

1:47

and this kind of will paint the story

1:49

of how we set Set

1:52

out to handle the whole limited Format

1:54

for this was just committing

1:57

crimes as a game and can it is going to

1:59

be most powerful accomplished with removal

2:01

spells, something that is already going to

2:03

be a very strong thing to do

2:05

in games and magic. So we had to

2:08

put a lot of energy into figuring out

2:10

how crimes could feel satisfying without just feeling

2:12

like the game is snowballing. If you are

2:14

getting your crime triggers, how is the game

2:16

continuing in a satisfying way that isn't just

2:19

you beating up on your opponent? How

2:21

do we build in comebacks and

2:24

stuff like that? So one

2:26

of the first places we went to

2:28

was, okay, what are some non-removal

2:30

crimes that we can get people to play

2:32

with, put in their deck, and feel strong?

2:35

The desert lands was one of

2:37

our best solves for that. Getting

2:39

targeting on your land slot is

2:42

a way to enable your crime

2:44

without actually removing a creature. Yeah,

2:46

we had those in very early, but we were... I

2:49

was very dubious when we made them whether they'd stick around

2:51

or not. There was a big question of whether they were

2:53

okay. I was happy to see that they made it. Yeah,

2:56

they're very novel. There was some stuff

2:58

going on with like, do we really

3:01

like that in the game of limited? You're kind

3:03

of starting at 18 life with players have this

3:05

stuff, but we enjoyed it

3:07

for the most part and think it's

3:09

a pretty novel limited experience. Okay,

3:12

I'm gonna move on to the next mechanic. And one

3:14

of the things we'll talk about as we

3:16

talk about new mechanics, obviously they start interconnecting.

3:18

So let's talk a little about Spree.

3:22

Spree, some of the time, most Spree cards

3:24

I think can commit a crime. I don't

3:27

know if 100% can, but most of them

3:29

can. Yeah, most of them

3:31

certainly can. So they play well with

3:33

crimes in that way. Another

3:35

of the things that spring from crimes

3:37

is that your board in Outlaws of

3:39

Thunder Junction is kind of less

3:42

stable than it maybe is in other sets

3:44

because your opponents are going to be playing

3:46

lots of ways to target your stuff, which

3:49

can mean satisfying big

3:52

turns or like doing cool things can be harder

3:54

to set up because you can't get your stuff

3:56

to stick around. So a lot of what Spree

3:58

is adding to the set. is something that

4:01

allows you to make really big plays and really

4:03

big turns without having to set up too hard

4:05

for it on the battlefield. You just have to

4:08

get a lot of mana ready to cast your

4:10

Spree spell for a lot. So that

4:12

ended kind of some of that aspirational gameplay

4:14

or just kind of really big comeback turns

4:17

when your opponent's been ahead. That was really

4:19

nice for the set. You

4:21

also Spree does something that I

4:23

know you guys appreciated. It's

4:26

one of the knobbier things we've ever

4:28

made. That every single ability has its

4:30

own mana cost. So you guys have a lot of ability

4:33

to adjust things you don't normally get adjusted to

4:35

this sign-tuneness. Oh

4:38

yeah Spree is play

4:40

design bread and butter. We're just

4:43

really having a great time messing with

4:45

the numbers. Is this

4:47

card better at one base,

4:49

two, three, four? Is it better at

4:52

two base, one, two, three? I

4:54

think those were some of the most fun discussions

4:56

we had with how much mana do we pull

4:59

up to the front to make all of

5:01

the modes cheaper versus how much is on

5:03

each mode. It just varied a

5:05

lot card from card but just very

5:07

granular discussion and knobs could take us

5:09

through an entire meeting. The

5:12

other thing that's cool about Spree is I think

5:15

we try and make sure that at least one of

5:17

the modes was a crime but not all of the

5:19

modes are necessarily crimes. So you sort of sometimes can

5:22

opt into crimes if you need crimes or not. Yep

5:25

you can get some crimes in there. A

5:27

lot of especially the lower rarity stuff the

5:30

default case will be you're committing a crime,

5:32

you're getting your triggers, life is good. Some

5:34

of the higher rarity stuff gets

5:37

more complicated in some ways. I think a

5:39

lot of the ways the mode ordering can

5:41

matter gets pretty cool. There's

5:43

a green rare that adds cards to your

5:46

hand and then puts them into play. I

5:48

think just kind of the cool stories that

5:50

Spree modes get to tell. Free

5:52

fun or fun to work on. Yeah

5:55

I mean Spree is

5:57

something I mean obviously there's some new elements to

5:59

Spree. But Spree is a kicker-ish mechanic, so

6:01

you guys have a lot of experience with

6:03

additional costs. Yep, we've

6:06

done a lot of big differences being able

6:08

to do all the modes instead of just

6:10

some. Most of the time,

6:12

tons of different modes is choices for us, but

6:14

we've worked with stuff like this before. It's not

6:17

too challenging for us. Okay,

6:19

so let's get to the next mechanic, plot,

6:23

which is a very subtle mechanic. I'm sort of

6:25

curious, how hard was plot for you guys to

6:27

balance? Plot

6:29

was, I think, the hardest mechanic of

6:31

the set for us. A

6:34

lot of the other ones, like crimes, we

6:36

know where the challenges are and what we have

6:38

to solve, and it's a lot

6:40

of work, but we know what we have

6:42

to do. Plot is the much harder thing

6:44

for us, which is just unexplored

6:47

territory. We first have to figure out what

6:49

the problems are or what issues are going

6:51

to come up in gameplay, and then we have

6:53

to solve for them. So

6:56

plot in the set is kind of working

6:58

sort of like Spree to

7:00

counteract some of the snowballing of crimes.

7:02

It's letting you set up for later,

7:04

deny your opponent the opportunity

7:06

to interact with your board, and kind of

7:09

double or triple spell later and say, you

7:11

don't have enough mana to use removal spells

7:14

on all this stuff in one turn. This

7:16

is how I'm going to beat your Tons

7:19

of Removal spell crime deck, which

7:21

is really cool, but it's deceptively powerful.

7:23

So the hardest thing we ran

7:26

into was that getting

7:28

the right rates on the plot cards

7:31

often led them to read pretty

7:33

unexciting, but the cards were at the

7:35

correct power level. So trying to figure

7:38

out the right designs that would not

7:40

lean too hard into plot strength so

7:42

that they still got to be cool

7:44

and play fun and not just be

7:47

a pile of denying your opponent the ability to

7:49

do things was pretty challenging, but the cards were

7:51

a ton of fun to work on. And I

7:54

think it's one of my favorite mechanics we've done

7:56

in a while. Yeah, I

7:58

thought it was my favorite mechanic. The

8:00

interesting thing from interacting with the public about

8:02

it is It

8:04

has a lot on the surface that looks like for

8:06

towel, but boy. Oh boy. It plays

8:08

very differently for towel Yep,

8:12

it does play pretty differently from for towel

8:15

We did Learn one

8:17

lesson from for towel. We included a card

8:20

in the set that can interact with the

8:22

plot zone That was something we kind

8:24

of wish we had made in for towel the ability

8:26

to Deal with a

8:28

card that had been foretold we made

8:30

it for plot. So that's pretty cool But

8:34

yeah, just in general plot is there's so many

8:36

possibilities you can use the cards in so many

8:38

different ways We experimented with

8:41

really plot heavy decks We experimented

8:43

with plots just kind of as

8:45

standalone pieces of other decks. That's

8:47

where we ended up thinking they

8:49

were the most fun and Constructed

8:51

but just in general a really

8:53

cool mechanics How in general does

8:55

you bring an interesting question which is How

8:58

do you figure out whether a mechanic is something

9:00

you build around or whether it's more support mechanics

9:02

that just you play some of? But it's the

9:04

deck isn't built around it Yeah

9:08

Ultimately play design position here is

9:10

like we try most things like

9:12

anything that can be a cool

9:14

deck We want to be a

9:16

cool deck So we spend

9:18

a lot of energy like hey would this be

9:20

cool if you play 30 of these cards together

9:24

And we see what the gameplay is like and

9:26

if it's something we like something that we could

9:28

think could be fun at high Levels of standard

9:30

we will try and make that happen if

9:33

it kind of becomes pretty clear The deck is

9:35

to one note not that fun to play

9:37

again very challenging to balance

9:39

We'll dial it back and say okay.

9:41

This isn't something we're going to make

9:43

a package for constructed Okay,

9:47

next up the next mechanic

9:49

we'll talk about is saddle How

9:52

hard yeah So

9:55

saddle was I think Deceptively

9:57

hard for us. We didn't think it was going

10:00

to be that hard. The

10:02

biggest challenge for us was in

10:04

getting the gameplay correct for Limited.

10:06

It was kind of awkward alongside

10:08

crimes where saddle requires a bit

10:10

of a base to set up,

10:12

feel good about tapping multiple creatures to get

10:15

an attack in if you're going to use

10:17

the saddle ability. And it can

10:19

be challenging to set that up in the face

10:21

of removal spells. Just kind

10:23

of the, I want to attack with

10:25

my saddle creature, I want to saddle

10:27

it up, but I have to tap

10:29

another creature, pay my

10:32

saddle cost, and then my opponent can remove

10:34

my creature was just something

10:36

that happened a lot in the set

10:38

and was pretty unfortunate for saddle. So

10:41

trying to maneuver the cards around that

10:44

and make sure that they could still be

10:46

fun to play with despite the number of

10:48

removal spells in the set was their biggest challenge. Do

10:51

you think saddle being similar to vehicles ended

10:53

up being a plus or minus

10:56

for you guys? I

10:59

think the positive, it certainly was

11:01

easier to think about how

11:03

much of a cost it is to hazy,

11:06

like saddle cost crews, like a pretty

11:08

good analog. So we have a good

11:10

idea of like what kinds of creatures,

11:13

how much the difference between saddle

11:15

two and saddle one was, but

11:17

it still had enough differences that it

11:20

wasn't completely free. Battling only being on

11:22

your turn in attack triggers is certainly

11:25

somewhat different, but the biggest difference is

11:27

just that these are fully functional creatures

11:29

without saddling them and you don't want

11:31

to saddle them necessarily as often as crewing.

11:33

So it's kind of like a softer version

11:35

of crew for us and it's

11:39

close enough that we got to copy some of the

11:41

works. Yeah, I mean, one of

11:43

crew's biggest issues is it's just hard to get a lot

11:45

of vehicles in your deck, you know, that because

11:48

they need creatures, but the saddle is nice and

11:50

that it's a creature. So if you

11:52

just get the creature by itself, you still can play it where

11:54

it's not true with the vehicle. Right.

11:56

You can play it all battle back if you want

11:58

to and your saddle thing. work just fine.

12:01

All vehicle decks are less good

12:03

at that. Okay. Next

12:05

up, let's talk outlaws or

12:07

batch of the set. Yeah.

12:10

So this one's pretty straightforward for us.

12:13

Just essentially a typo mechanic.

12:17

It's referenced on some cards. Reasonable

12:21

limited theme. Not a ton to

12:23

say. I think we put some energy into

12:25

getting some outlaw stuff to hit in constructed

12:28

or at least be a plausible deck

12:30

you could build, but not terribly different

12:32

than other type of strategies we've seen

12:34

in the past, other than some of the

12:36

tie-ins to crime. But most of

12:38

that just comes with how crime worked.

12:41

The mercenary tokens were

12:45

I think the

12:47

most interesting part of outlaws in this set,

12:50

at least from the perspective of play designs

12:52

work on it, where that tap

12:55

plus one plus O ability and limited

12:57

mattered a lot more than people necessarily

12:59

thought it did at first. And

13:02

it really enabled like attacks on boards

13:04

that otherwise would kind of be quads and

13:06

where something that we just kept

13:08

thinking were stronger and stronger as we continue

13:11

to develop the set. Yeah,

13:13

it's interesting. That's the very first thing we tried. We

13:15

liked it. We didn't change it. And it's I'm

13:17

always amazed when the first thing we tried to make it a print

13:20

that I always I'm always impressed for that happened because it doesn't happen

13:22

a lot. Oh,

13:24

so here's another thing I want to talk about. A

13:27

lot of times when we talk about what play

13:29

design does, it's very within the set like like

13:32

you think about limited or you think about the

13:34

set sort of in a vacuum type

13:37

of things do something very interesting. One of the

13:39

things that I know play design does is we

13:41

have to come to you early and say hey

13:43

here are type of themes coming up. Can you

13:45

make sure sets before that have some things in

13:47

it so that there's some stuff that gets added

13:49

to it that are just in that set? Yes,

13:53

definitely. So I think

13:57

with outlaws it was easier than most

13:59

times. just kind of we had had

14:01

some of these types coming up LCI had

14:03

some pirates running around for outlaws that kind

14:06

of made it a bit easier and just

14:08

in general these are types that we use

14:10

a lot in magic so it wasn't too

14:12

hard to find them but I do think

14:14

we picked a couple of

14:17

the types from previous sets that were like all right

14:19

let's make sure this is there for outlaw stuff coming

14:21

up. Yeah to give the

14:24

audience a sense of contrast like we've

14:26

already said for example that we've been seeding

14:28

some stuff for bloom burrow that's a lot

14:30

harder a lot of those animals don't necessarily

14:32

show up so easily whereas rogues and

14:34

warlocks like we do those every set almost

14:36

so it's the the type

14:38

of demands really depend on what you have to support.

14:42

Yeah and something like outlaws which is

14:44

a bunch of job typos and can

14:46

show up across like a variety of

14:48

creative elements is generally

14:50

a lot easier for us than getting

14:53

specific animal types on cards. Okay

14:57

next up deserts and

14:59

deserts matter. Right

15:03

so I think the single best thing the

15:05

deserts did for the set was just to

15:07

add that bit of criming kind of for

15:10

free and in ways that matter

15:12

less than removing a full creature to help

15:14

the crime triggers happen we

15:16

talked about that a little bit earlier. Land

15:19

scenes being constructed are pretty

15:22

hard for play design we don't like

15:24

giving out a lot of interaction for

15:26

lands land destruction is not very fun

15:28

so we don't push it at a high rate

15:31

but so when we make a deck

15:33

where a lot of the power is going to be

15:35

concentrated and things that we kind of don't

15:38

really let you interact with very profitably

15:40

we have to be very careful and

15:43

we had just done another land

15:45

theme in LCI. So

15:47

we ended up making deserts not

15:50

like a huge shot there's some stuff there I'm

15:52

excited to see what people do with it but it

15:54

is not something we took a ton of time on

15:56

in FSL. How about limited? Yes.

16:00

limited it definitely matters. Again,

16:02

just kind of how contested

16:04

the deserts are for the, sorry,

16:06

the dual land deserts for the

16:08

ability to commit a crime

16:12

means that you can't dependently count on a

16:14

lot of them. But

16:16

there's some fun build around on common more than

16:18

there is like an actual deck. Occasionally your green

16:20

deck will pick up one of the Desert Matters

16:23

cards and care a lot more about desert. More

16:26

than you'll like set out and draft

16:28

a really dedicated desert set. Okay,

16:33

next up. The

16:35

set has a little more legendary creatures than normal. Is

16:38

that challenging for you guys or not really?

16:43

It's somewhat challenging in that it

16:45

impacts kind of what we can

16:47

use for standard decks. A

16:50

lot of the decks that we make, we don't

16:52

want to play a ton of legends because when

16:54

you have like your creature

16:56

base is five or six different legends that you

16:58

want to play a lot of copies of. That's

17:01

not the most fun experience. So we try

17:03

and make sure the legends are

17:05

aimed at a variety of different places

17:07

rather than kind of all pointing towards

17:10

the same deck. Which

17:12

is kind of just challenging on our real estate

17:14

when we want to create a certain deck or

17:16

a certain play pattern and have to make

17:19

sure we get enough non-legendary spots

17:21

to create it. But it's mostly

17:23

just a administrative challenge

17:25

in terms of getting the planning

17:27

correct more than it is really

17:29

difficult for us to work with. We

17:32

pretty well understand the legend type and

17:34

how we should rate

17:37

those cards at this point. Okay,

17:40

next up. And you mentioned this

17:42

before, but we'll go to the more depth. The bonus sheet. What

17:45

are the challenges of adding a bonus sheet to a

17:47

set? Especially in play design world where, you

17:49

know, playbooster world where the

17:52

cards are played limited? So

17:55

the most challenging part for play design is just that. The

17:57

cards are less than the most challenging. flexible,

18:00

like kind of as we're working on limited, a bonus

18:03

sheet is inherently going to be just a

18:05

ton of reprints, which means that we do

18:08

not have as much control over their power

18:10

level as we do on every other card. And that

18:12

is just something we have to

18:14

work around. OTJ specifically, the

18:17

challenge was that the bonus sheet

18:19

was just a bunch

18:21

of pretty strong limited cards, cards

18:23

that can make crime strong spells

18:25

and removal spells in

18:27

particular make up a lot of the bonus sheet

18:29

and it was just quite

18:32

powerful. So trying to work the rest

18:34

of the set around the bonus sheet

18:36

being a source of powerful cards was

18:39

the biggest challenge, making

18:41

sure that all the crime rewards felt

18:43

reasonable. We did really appreciate

18:45

the diversity of removal spells or

18:47

just effects in general ways to

18:50

commit crimes that the bonus sheet

18:52

allowed kind of varied up the patterns

18:54

a lot just there's such a

18:56

higher depth of card how different cards and

18:58

we would be able to achieve with just the

19:00

main set here and kind of helped

19:02

us make sure games in it feel too

19:05

samey. So one thing

19:07

I'm curious, a lot of times like pass

19:09

bonus sheets tend to be a

19:11

lot more like all enchantments or all artifacts where

19:13

this one, the crime theme

19:15

allowed a little more variety. Was that helpful

19:18

or problematic just because it's had so

19:20

much removal? In

19:23

general, I think it is helpful more

19:25

flexibility kind of gives us more control

19:28

over what the final product is going

19:30

to be like. The particular theme of

19:32

a lot of removal was especially challenging,

19:36

but not too bad and I think

19:38

there are some cards that

19:40

aren't removal spells that we were able

19:42

to find for the bonus sheet. So in

19:44

general, I think it was a little bit

19:46

easier than some of the more prescribed bonus

19:49

sheets. Okay,

19:51

so we've hit all the mechanics. So

19:53

now interested in like

19:55

as what are some general things when

19:58

working on the set what was the... challenges

20:00

that weren't necessarily mechanic based, but

20:03

what were the big challenges of the set, just

20:05

as a larger sort of piece in the puzzle

20:07

of standard and other formats? Yeah,

20:10

one of the really interesting things for standard,

20:12

like we've talked about this at a couple

20:14

points, but so much of the mechanics

20:16

of the set are really backwards facing

20:18

work with magic. There's tons of cards

20:21

in magic that commit crime. There's

20:23

tons of outlaws kind

20:26

of in magic. So one of

20:28

the first things we had to do was go

20:30

through the entirety of

20:32

legal cards in SSL and make a post

20:34

that was like, all right, here is a

20:36

bunch of cards that are going to be

20:39

legal and standard that are really strong with

20:41

the OTJ themes. Here's some cards you should

20:43

think about when deck building. And

20:46

that's not something we always have to do with

20:48

sets. It really depends on what

20:50

they are, but OTJ in particular was

20:52

just so backwards facing we needed to

20:55

be pretty comprehensive in trying to

20:57

find the cards that were going

20:59

to work well with them. Yeah,

21:02

just for the audience, one of

21:04

the things that's interesting from my end of things is we

21:08

are trying to find more backwards compatible themes

21:10

because they play better in larger formats and

21:13

things like Commander and Modern stuff like that. And so OTJ

21:17

is kind of a peak in the future, that

21:20

we're trying to find things that are brand new

21:22

themes, but things that you can use lots of

21:24

cards in. And so this is

21:28

us really sort of digging into that because that's an

21:30

ongoing problem on my end of the things is how

21:32

do you make brand new things and make brand new

21:34

decks, but that you can now build a Commander deck

21:37

right out of the box. That's tricky to do. Okay,

21:43

my next question for you, Jadim,

21:45

is one

21:48

of the things that people have been asking a lot

21:50

about is speed of limited formats. How

21:53

did you figure out what speed this format wanted to be? stuff

22:00

like that for this format

22:02

were just really centered around

22:04

how important crimes are and

22:06

how much removal is in the

22:08

format. So I would

22:11

say in general one of the

22:13

biggest challenges of this format was

22:15

snowballing and trying to make sure there

22:17

was enough opportunity for players to catch up

22:19

when they fell behind. When

22:21

that's not true that's a pretty characteristic

22:23

of a fast format, a format that's

22:26

faster than many players enjoy. As

22:28

soon as you stumble on turn two or

22:30

three you feel like you can never catch

22:32

up. So that was an

22:34

inherent problem in this format, just kind

22:36

of the nature of crimes and being

22:38

like, all right here's my crime card, you

22:41

play something, I kill it, I get a benefit,

22:43

I keep putting you further and further behind as

22:45

we play turns. So most of

22:47

our journey

22:50

with this set was trying to slow it

22:52

down, make sure expensive permanence

22:54

could matter in games. I think you'll see

22:56

if you look through the set a lot

22:59

of like five and

23:01

six mana creatures at common

23:03

and uncommon that are somewhat good

23:06

in some way against a removal spell, trying

23:09

to make sure players have the tools to

23:11

stabilize and get something really impactful on the

23:13

board if they manage to make it to

23:15

turn five or turn six and

23:17

hopefully make sure the format is not end

23:19

up too fast. So

23:22

here's a question, I happen to know

23:24

the answer to this but I'm sure I'd like the audience would like to know,

23:26

which is there's two ways to solve

23:28

problems when you have a lot of removal, meaning

23:31

you could adjust the removal so it's not

23:33

good against certain things or you can adjust

23:35

the creatures so there's more answers to the

23:37

creatures which you

23:40

tend to prefer in trying to fix

23:42

that the problem is on the

23:44

spell side, on the removal side or on the creature

23:46

side? So it's

23:48

just really really hard in

23:50

general kind of if you adjust it

23:53

on the spell side you run into the

23:55

problem where rare and mythic

23:57

cards are too impactful and limited and

24:00

players feel like their deck

24:02

doesn't matter too much and it's just all about

24:04

what rares or mythics you end up with. So

24:07

you kind of need to make sure the

24:09

removal spells are strong enough to answer whatever

24:12

your opponent might have so you feel like

24:14

you have agency to deal with these bombs.

24:17

And on the other hand, if you

24:20

overcorrect on the creature side, you end

24:22

up with players feeling like uncommon are

24:25

as strong as rares or mythics can

24:27

be kind of too many single cards

24:29

overrunning games and not making

24:31

for the most fun experience. So it's

24:33

honestly, there's no good answer to this

24:35

question. We just have to kind of

24:37

thread the needle perfectly and do

24:40

some of both trying to get that right

24:42

balance of players feel like

24:44

they can answer everything that matters, but

24:46

also feel like some cards can survive

24:48

and you're not just priced into playing all

24:50

of the cheapest stuff because it interacts

24:52

the best with the removal spells. Now

24:57

another thing that's really interesting about play design is

24:59

you guys work in a vacuum in the sense

25:01

that you're making guesses of what the

25:03

players will do long before the players have access to

25:05

the cards. And then when the set

25:07

comes out, you get a watch what

25:09

the players do. Now the set's

25:12

not out yet, so obviously you don't quite know what's

25:14

gonna happen, but what

25:17

are you watching? Like what do you wanna see

25:19

about this set? Yeah,

25:22

I mean, this might not be the most satisfying

25:24

answer but I am really curious

25:26

to see how fast this format ends up. Our

25:29

process is like very probabilistic. We

25:31

don't always know to a

25:35

great degree of certainty how things are gonna go. So

25:37

I am curious to see how this plays

25:39

out. I would say

25:41

other than that, mostly just how plot kind

25:44

of plays or what players do with plot

25:46

is the thing I'm the most excited to

25:48

see. There's a lot of cool

25:50

stuff you can do and I'm curious to see

25:52

how it shakes out. I

25:54

know one of the tensions always is we make really

25:57

cool things like, please let the cool things work. Please

25:59

let the cool. things work. Definitely.

26:05

Yeah it's always frustrating when there's something happens in the

26:07

meta game and like all this cool thing doesn't happen

26:09

because whatever random and I don't know that's that's

26:12

always frustrating. Any final

26:14

thoughts like looking back on sort of

26:16

the play design of the set? Anything

26:19

we haven't talked about the episode are interesting like something

26:22

this set made you think about you don't normally think about? My

26:26

only other real big thing was just

26:28

this was one of our first playbooster

26:30

set and trying to

26:32

figure out how that limited environment

26:34

worked was another puzzle piece for

26:37

OTJ just really trying to get a

26:39

handle on how the changes in the

26:41

booster affected limited and that was something

26:44

we spent a lot of time on

26:46

here. Yeah I

26:49

wrote an article earlier

26:51

this year talking about sort of looking

26:53

at all the changes and it is

26:57

neat it's an ever-evolving thing and one

27:01

of the things I say this all the time when I

27:03

have play designers on but I

27:05

find your job so so hard

27:07

that I have great respect for

27:10

trying you know millions of

27:12

players will try something you're trying to predict

27:14

and you know that's that's a very challenging

27:16

job so I'm always amazed by how well

27:18

you guys do. Our

27:21

inside joke is that our job

27:23

is impossible we just gotta you

27:25

know do the most what we can.

27:27

Yeah it is it is like

27:30

I said someone who's just done this forever like it

27:32

is so daunting seeing the inside and seeing the outside

27:34

as far as like trying to predict what's going on

27:38

the thing the audience also doesn't know is you

27:40

just miss a few things you don't have to miss much for

27:43

the meta games to be very different than you think it is

27:46

and it just is like one card

27:48

you didn't think about the combos with this other card

27:50

you didn't think about it all of a sudden you

27:52

know the environment is just very different than you anticipated

27:54

and anyways I'm you have my utmost respect. Appreciate

27:58

it. Anyway, well

28:00

we are almost out of time here. Um,

28:04

what here? I'll leave with this. If

28:06

you want to give one piece of advice for

28:08

people playing limited in this format, what is your

28:10

piece of advice? Who

28:12

has a good question? I'm

28:18

gonna go with try all the stuff,

28:20

see what clicks for you, and the

28:23

plot cards, they're probably a little stronger than you

28:25

think they are. Yeah,

28:27

the other thing I, I'm from playtesting is, the

28:31

spree cards, most

28:34

of the time when you play mode cards, you're used to

28:36

using the same mode a lot, and spree

28:38

does not play like that at all, because how

28:40

much mana you have will dictate what you can

28:42

do, and so be

28:45

very open-ended on what the spree cards can do for

28:47

you. Don't get locked in like, my spree card must

28:49

do this thing, because spree cards play really differently than

28:52

most mode cards, because of the flexibility of what you

28:54

can do. That's

28:57

my, my, uh, but yeah, the plot's all totally good.

28:59

Oh yeah, definitely. Okay, well thank you so much,

29:01

Janine, for being with us. Um, it's

29:03

always fun having you on, it's all play design, and so

29:05

I'm sure I'll have you on when the next step comes

29:07

along, but once again, thanks so much, this

29:10

was great. Definitely.

29:13

So, uh, to everybody else, I'm at my desk, so

29:15

we all know that means, it

29:17

means that I ended my drive to work, so instead of talking

29:19

magic, it's time for me to be making

29:21

magic. So I'll see you all next

29:23

time. Bye-bye.