You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Maybe it was offered smugly as a way to jam an argument past your defenses. Maybe it was offered as the voice of reason, a voice for sanity in an important debate quickly spiraling into esoteric gymnastics. “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…” Each . dripping with implication. But there are actually a lot of reasonable ways to finish that thought. And tonight I’d like to explore one that doesn’t rely primarily on emotional manipulation.

First off, let’s try to establish some common ground. I won’t ask you to agree that there’s some small, possibly ridiculous-to-you to consider chance that it actually isn’t a duck. Not after we both agreed that it both walks and talks like one (and I do agree that it does). But can we at least agree that someone thinks it might not be a duck? Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation (tongue-in-cheek self-reference: If it sounds like your having this conversation…) At that point, it may not even matter if the person is unreasonably and against all decency hedging about or straight up denying duckhood.

So back to the original question: If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, why shouldn’t you call it a duck?

Before we can answer that, I have to ask, what’s your endgame? Why are you trying to figure out if you should call it a duck? Are you looking to take action that depends on whether or not it’s a duck? Are you trying to satisfy intellectual curiosity? Is it pissing you off that someone else has the nerve to suggest it might not be a duck? Depending on where you hope to end up – on the duck issue and in life in general – your ability to understand when and why to reserve duck judgment could end up being crucial.

Say for instance, you want to call the thing in question a duck so that people understand why you want to treat it like a duck. That makes sense, but you may be making life unduly difficult for yourself. Because as cut-and-dry as the internally-rhyming walk/talk argument seems to you, it isn’t. Ducks do a lot besides walk and talk. They fly. They bite your fingers when you feed them bread. They push insurance. The thing in question, walking and talking the way it does may prefer Geico to Aflac. It may have maternal instincts towards a kitten. Or the reality of external objects may be a crock of shit. Do you really need to get into all of that, just to say “I love duck, and that looks enough like one that I’d like to cook it up and eat it?”

If your ulterior motive in trying to assess duckhood is to figure out whether or not to eat the ducklike thing, your threshold for proof is probably significantly lower than definitive.

But when you present your case to someone who obstensibly has input in the outcome (otherwise, just explain your position to them while picking duckish bits from between your teeth), if you make the argument: “I’m going to eat that duck because it’s a duck”, you are inviting them to voice their doubts about whether or not it really is a duck. And because “It IS a duck” is such a needlessly definitive statement, you are opening your position up to seemingly inane and inhuman objections from people who don’t really get what’s going on and may be unethical monsters. At first, you probably said “I’m gonna eat it because it’s a duck” out of intellectual sloppiness. It’s an easy mistake to make. One we make all the time and aren’t called on because the issue at hand is non-controversial. But you said it this time and the other person didn’t agree with you, possibly because they don’t want you to eat the duck. Or maybe because they’re just earnestly taking your position at face value and responding to it as you presented it (a good habit by the way, right up there with liberally calling judges at Magic tournaments).

The thing is, as long as you’re still willing to continue to honor the discussion, there are no unforgiveable or irrevocable mistakes. You can change your mind when you start to think you were wrong before. You can apologize for shitty things you said. You can get better.

Or you can roll your eyes and check out while definitively stating, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…”

Before you may have just been sloppy, but at this point, you and you alone are making the conversation (whose motivation is to figure out what should happen to the duck-thing) ratcheting up the burden of proof. If you want everyone to let you eat that duck thing now, you better make an unassailable case. I ask you to take my word now because I actually think this duck-thing needs to get ate. You will fail. And it will be frustrating. Because people will make seemingly inane points that have nothing to do with operating in a world that can never provide certainty, where language is always overly reductive (even when everyone agrees on them except the crazy people), where objectivity is impossible, and where probability is a practical, rational person’s best friend.

Stop.

And breathe.

You are not forever stuck looking for duck-proof or resenting everyone who is undermining it.

Reframe your argument in the most forgiving way possible. A case you are capable of and comfortable making. The most lenient case that you find convincing. Something like, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, I’d like to treat it like a duck until something happens that teaches me I need to check more boxes than just walking and talking.”

At this point, the other person will either agree with you that enough boxes have been checked, in which case they will be on board with you eating the duck-thing, or they might prefer figuring out if the thing has sex like a duck or whatever and will inform you of this preference. At any rate, you are now involved in a manageable, sensible, and likely resolvable coversation. And you have a much better understanding of where the other people in the conversation actually stand and whether or not they are ENEMIES or just enemies (a.k.a. people who mostly agree with you).

On the other hand, if you want/need to call it a duck because it makes it easier to sleep at night while eating whatever you want in front of people with wool-covered eyes, you probably aren’t ready for that conversation or this one. And your opinion on the matter just became much less relevant.

The success rate of any give strategy is bound by the random elements in that strategy. It will often be correct to include a random element in your predicitions (for instance, when the most successful strategy available to you does not fully disambiguate the choice), and in this case, it is impossible that at its limits the most successful strategy will be 100% predictive.

A continuation of the previous post’s rules for prioritizing strategy anticipation (basically cascading tiebreaks for picking the strategy of making your next choice):

1. More successful over less successful.
2. Generating less ambiguous information about opponent over generating more ambiguous information about opponent.
3. Higher EV of ambiguous set over lower EV of ambiguous set.
4. Less complicated over more complicated.
5. More information to be gained (less previous data points) over less information to be gained (more previous data points).
6. Generating more ambiguous information about yourself over generating less ambiguous information about yourself.

While considering yesterday’s post, I was worried that I was too cavalierly dismissing short-term randomness, i.e. the system I conceptualized last night and in this post deprioritizes any strategy that randomly lost a round even though a random outcome doesn’t seem to provide information about the strategy. Recently, I realized that an A.I. following the above priority list may not need a step prioritizing accounting for randomness accurately. Basically, as newly-generated strategies increase in sophistication they will individually incorporate better and better methods for accounting for randomness.

Of course, it may be that without such a step, step 4 above would preclude any randomness-resistant strategies indefinitely as they are necessarily more complicated than an otherwise similar non-resistant strategy. And that the system does need some pressure that ensures more sophisticated strategies are considered, especially as misassessment of strategy incurs higher and higher costs.

The steps above provide enough structure to decide between already known strategies and to kick out to new-strategy generation when none of the known strategies historically outperform randomness.

The next system needed is one that will intelligently generate new strategies or sets of them so that the enormous set of currently unknown strategies doesn’t need to be brute-force filled in and then brute-force priortized according to the above list.

More on that in a future post. And again, I hope at some point to get to the end of my rambling process and to find time to go back and polish up my thoughts. Input towards that end is always appreciated.

A game exists when one or more players believe they can make strategic choices that perform better than random choice long-term. A game ceases to exist when all players no longer believe they can outperform random choice long-term. This is not to say short-term randomness can not be utilized by a player in a game. In fact, short-term randomness is the default position when none of a player’s strategies suggest a non-ambiguous choice. If the player devises a new strategy to resolve the ambiguity, randomness is avoided and the player is still playing. Also, as long as the player believes that their short-term randomness will produce information that yields a strategic choice that player is still playing the game. It should not be assumed that a player is not acting strategically just because they are being outperformed by random choice. As long as a player believes they can and endeavors to outperform random choice, they are playing the game.

A player cannot be unaware that they are choosing to quit playing the game, as playing is a function of intention not success. A closed game is one that a player can fully quit, i.e. the player is able to excuse themselves from future choice-making and continued impact on the game. Most of what we consider games are closed. An open game is one that a player cannot fully quit, i.e. they are unable to excuse themselves from choice-making and continued impact on the game. In some sense, and with a few dramatic exceptions, life is an open game. Instead, if a player wishes to quit an open game, they must consciously decide that their choices will be made randomly without the intent of making a strategic choice in the future based on events taking place while they have de facto quit. Fully extricating ones’ self from a closed game is non-reversable. De facto quitting within a game (closed or open) is reversable; however, if the quit-reversing condition is strategically informed, i.e. if the quitting player was aware of possible conditions upon which he or she would begin playing and choosing strategically again, the player did not quit, but instead made the strategic choice of short-term randomness.

Because a player can quit within a game while continuing to make choices that effect it, and because an unfamiliar strategy can appear sufficiently random, it is possible to be unaware that a player has quit playing. No matter. Whether they recognize that the player has quit or not, as long as the other player(s) within the game still believe they can make strategic choices that outperform randomness, a game still exists. In other words, any player must assume there is a non-random element to the game from which they can make strategic choices. The point of games is that non-random elements are exploitable given sufficient strategic sophistication.

Some games present an exploitable environment. In chess, without either player knowing anything about the other, the player who is more aware of the strategies dictated by being black or white is at an advantage. Similarly, in poker, without any interpersonal information, the person with the best strategic understanding of position, expected value, and the like is at an advantage.

On the other hand, some games present an unexploitable environment. In Rock, Paper, Scissors for example, there are no inherent advantages to any play and no opportunities for exploitable gaps in strategic understanding of the environment. Without acknowledging the other player and parsing them strategically, a player cannot outperform randomness long-term. Many games are mixed and strategic deficits re: parsing the environment or other players can be offset by strategic advantages in the other. Rock, Paper, Scissors is interesting in that while it is a game, i.e. while at least one player still thinks they can win by outperforming randomness, it is singly about parsing the other player’s past choices in an effort to predict their future ones.

Using Our Understanding of Games to Break Rock, Paper, Scissors

Assumptions:
1. If there is no point at which the game necessarily ends, randomness will negate itself over time and does not need to be accounted for.
2. When our strategies do not disambiguate a choice, the choice should be made randomly within the ambiguous set.
3. Given (1), we should assume that if we are winning, our current strategies are sufficient for winning. While winning, we should not look to adopt new strategies unless that is part of our current winning strategy.
4. Given (1), we should assume that if we are not winning, our current strategies are insufficient for winning. While not winning, we should not look to maintain our current strategies unless our new strategies integrate them.
5. A new strategy that provides a less ambiguous next choice is preferable to a new strategy that provides a more ambiguous next choice, as it is closer to providing a non-random, unambiguous choice.
6. A strategy is any process for parsing past events that yields predictive choices, i.e. choices whose value derive from how accurately they predict future events.
7. A new strategy is any strategy which has not previously been used to predict a future event.
8. A strategy, being definitionally non-random long-term, yields predictable choices.
9. Any correctly predicted strategy is easily countered.
10. Our opponent is operating strategically. If they are not and are not unintentionally non-random (thus presenting an exploitable environment), we can not outperform random. This situation is not worth considering.
11. Given (10), any randomness must be short-term. Given (1-4), short-term randomness should not be accounted for.
12. Given (9-10), our strategy must be correctly predicting our opponent’s strategy and countering it.
13. We can only evaluate whether our opponent is using strategies we are already aware of.
14. Given (3, 12), we should assume that if we are winning, our opponent is using a strategy we are already aware of.
15. Given (4, 12), we should assume that if we are not winning, our opponent is using a strategy we are not aware of.
16. Given (12, 14), we should evaluate which of our strategies, if used by our opponent, best accounts for her or his past choices, then counter that strategy next round.
17. Given (12, 15), we should generate a new strategy which provides our opponent the least ambiguous next choice possible, then counter it.
18. A given strategy is more likely to be too complicated or sophisticated for a player to use than to be too simple for a player to use.
19. Given (18), a simpler new strategy is preferable to a more complicated new strategy, as a given player is more likely to be capable of the simpler strategy.
20. In developing new strategies, we are bound only by our ability to parse past information in different ways.
21. A program for playing Rock, Paper, Scissors is bound by its ability to perceive new ways to parse past information.
22. The primary work of developing a program to play Rock, Paper, Scissors is providing it with ways to procederually generate new ways of parsing past information. Once generated, strategies are easily evaluated re: how well they predict an opponent’s choices.

2 Grim Lavamancer

4 Goblin Guide

4 Snapcaster Mage

3 Vendilion Clique

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Spell Snare

3 Magma Jet

4 Searing Blaze

4 Mana Leak

3 Cryptic Command

1 Mountain

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Arid Mesa

4 Sulfur Falls

3 Steam Vents

3 Mutavault

4 Misty Rainforest

1 Island

1 Dryad Arbor

I’ve played about 10 games with this list, enough to feel confident offering it as a V.1 and enough to make some informed comments about some of the choices and play patterns.

Mana Leak over Remand: It’s possible that the deck really wants a 3/1 split, but it’s a definite fact that the deck wants to play efficient answers that are rarely useless and buy enough time for the aggro cards to end the game. Remand works best when it’s caster is Timewalking her or his way a strong mid- or endgame. While we can topdeck the win here, and inch closer to victory with every fetchland or Dark Confidant flip, we are still looking to compress the game as much as possible. We don’t want the Lightning Helix replayed next turn, we just want it gone. Etc.

4x Searing Blaze!?: There are very few decks this card is dead against. Even if you’re bouncing it off a Wall of Omens, it’s still Lava Spike, which is still in line with Plan A. And when this card is good, it’s actually the best. Having the full boat with Snapcaster to rebuy is it’s own full-fledged game plan against something like Zoo. Also, can’t say enough about cards that are so well-rounded game 1 but make for easy sideboarding.

Dryad Arbor: The idea is that when you’re in an attrition fight, you probably want another land that can fight. It may be more cute and clever than right, but if you can explore in V.1, when can you? In the games I played, this surprise attacked, surprise blocked, protected Delver of Secrets from an edict, and cast spells. Wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t make the final cut, but worth trying yourself.

Which do I play first: Goblin Guide, Grim Lavamancer, Delver of Secrets, or Mutavault? Assuming they’re all in your opening hand…

1. First off, are you on the play and in the dark about what you’re playing against? Always lead with Goblin Guide, a.k.a. “You’re an aggro deck. When in doubt, shorten the game!”

2.Otherwise, if you think you’re playing against creatures, make sure Lavamancer will be active as soon as he needs to be. If you think you have a window to lead with Delver (prioritized over Guide so that you get more flip chances and can fly over blockers, giving you more options on how to play your burn), then take it. But don’t get caught with your pants down, you may find yourself forced to waste turns, mana, cards, and/or damage because you waited to long to play Lavamancer.

2. If you think you’re facing a creature-light control deck, lead with Delver (again for more flip chances), then Guide, then Lavamancer. Once you have an active Lavamancer, get as much damage out of it as possible. Attack if you don’t have cards in yard to burn. When you do, spend them. It’s unlikely that you will “need” them later.

When to cast Vendilion Clique: On turn 3 obviously! But there is less reason here than with most other decks to try to break up your opponent’s hand after his draw step. Basically, the cards you care about are the ones that keep your opponent alive longer. Walking your Clique into open mana (when you could’ve just left Mana Leak or Lightning Bolt mana up) needlessly makes your opponent’s counterspells relevant. Avoid throwing away threats please. The default speed for Cliques in this deck is “fashionably late”, a.k.a. “The cool kids don’t show up until EOT.”

**Make sure that coming out of this pack, player’s have a sense of the three groups in the conflict. Prisoners and wardens are natural enemies, but it’s probably too hard in one handful of cards to explain what the natives are fighting about. Still, each faction does get an identity in the following cards.

**Interestingly, one of the subthemes that seems to have snuck into the Watcher’s camp is leaving the opponent with options and some measure of control. Maybe these guys are noble reformers, and not sinister Shawshank-type wardens.

**Feature the blight mechanic aggressively.

**Present creatures that subtly adapted for a blighted world, but who’s text boxes are stand-alone striking.

**Wish I could find a better connection between blight and assault, thematically if not mechanically.

**Make the light/dark dichotomy a central focus, featuring it on the rares, on the kind-of-exciting ritual variant, and even having the one drop commons kind of mirror each other.

**Show off dig. I originally had Bottomless Shaft digging as well, but that ability is only so eye-catching.

**Putting morph through it’s paces without doing anything overly complex with it.

**Featuring as much splashiness as I could. I’ll test this theory as I move on to designing for the other worlds, but I can’t imagine that using the packs rare/mythic and mythic slot for anything but two mythics could be right. Unless you just can’t get there on two awesome cards, cuz including an underwhelming mythic would probably be suicide.

**Playing up the evolution theme hard, but avoiding being one note. To that end, there are three evolve creatures, two of them being simple common implementations who still manage to stand out. The Cave Bear, which is a slight variation on one of Ethan’s earliest designs, resonates because Grizzly bear resonates. Players can see this card, identify with it quickly, and get a clear picture of what the sets about. The Proto-Atlantean achieves this effect not with its stats, but with its typeline. If the evolve ability word wasn’t upfront enough about what kind of world we’re in, the Merfolk Fish should complete the explanation. The land, a functional reprint, plays up the theme of explosive growth and change while more subtly feeding into players’ ability to summon dinosaurs more quickly than normal.

**I wanted white cards to convey mechanical adaptation. As the world around the primitive humans grows more threatening, they learn to cope through artifice and enchantment.

Anyway, onto the cards:

Questions 1–3 refer to the following card:

Fast Guy
Creature – Human
3/1
Lifelink, haste

1) Which color is most appropriate for this card?

a) white
b) blue
c) black
d) red
e) green

Black is the only color that has pie access to both abilities.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr284

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

2) Which rarity is most appropriate for this card?

a) common
b) uncommon
c) rare
d) mythic rare

This cards is either a common or uncommon. Haste and lifelink are both black abilities, but they are secondary abilities according to the article linked below. Secondary abilities are those that show up at higher rarities or are costed less efficiently. We don’t know the cost on the card, and I’m not sure what we’re supposed to assume on that except that cost is more of a development knob. Of course, as I’m rereading that article, it’s not exactly clear whether Mark Rosewater is working through his thoughts and process on where and how primary the abilities should be, or if we are seeing a settled discussion.

Reference:  http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr284

My answer: B

My feeling: Uncertain

3) You are changing one of Fast Guy’s keywords to another one. Which of the following combinations would result in a card that could not be monocolored?

a) first strike, haste
b) flying, haste
c) lifelink, shroud
d) lifelink, vigilance

First strike and haste show up in red, flying and haste in black, and lifelink and vigilance in white. Lifelink and shroud don’t pair up anywhere.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr284

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

Questions 4–6 refer to the following card:

Deflecting Mage
Creature – Human Wizard
1/4
Flash
When Deflecting Mage enters the battlefield, change the target of target spell with a single target.

4) If this card were a hybrid card, which color pair would be most appropriate?

a) white-black
b) blue-red
c) black-green
d) red-white
e) green-blue

Blue and red are the only colors that regularly access the spell (not damage) redirection effect.

Reference: None. If you have a suggestion from the Rosewater catalog, I’d be more than happy to add it in, but I didn’t bother finding one.

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

5) If Design wanted to change this card’s rules text but keep it a hybrid card, which of the following options would not work?

a) flash; shroud
b) double strike
c) : Switch Deflecting Mage’s power and toughness until end of turn.
d) : Target player gains 2 life.
e) : Target player discards a card. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.

Flash and shroud are shared by blue and green, double strike by white and red, switching power and toughness by blue and red, life gain (non-lifelink variety) by green and white. Targeted discard belongs solely to black.

Reference: None

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

6) Design often makes creatures that have flash and “enters the battlefield” triggered abilities like Deflecting Mage. Which of the following abilities would we least likely pair with flash?

a) Counter target spell.
b) The next time target instant or sorcery spell would deal damage, it deals double that damage instead.
c) CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target attacking or blocking creature.
d) Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.
e) Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.

These least and most likely questions all operate on spectrums, so the first step in answering them is seeing if your items are spread out and easy to put in order (or even check if one item stands out in the direction your looking for), or if they’re clumped tighter and require a more nuanced sequencing. These cards are huddled rather closely together: A-C only work at instant speed, D is pretty pointless without flash, while E is the only effect that can really stand on a non-flasher. But from another angle, every effect but B has been done on creatures before (I’m assuming on C but that’s irrelevant because…), but more to the point B is a clunky and unwieldy ability that only works on your own spells, so B is very unlikely to be put on a creature.

Reference: None. But I do have a thought on the relationship of these questions to design columns from Dailymtg.com. I don’t mind if the answers come straight out of Rosewater’s columns. I don’t mind if they must be derived and deduced from the things he says. I don’t even mind if some have the questions have clear source material while others do not. But I kind of mind testing my googling skills. Everything I could find an article for was either easy (because of near to exact wording) or satisfying (because I figured it out after reading something) to answer. But if I couldn’t find an article related to a question I wasn’t confident answering yet, especially if my lack of confidence was related to needing to know design’s current policy on the issue, it was just frustrating. And I’m not sure what it was testing. Given the right set of questions (which these were definitely close enough to), there should have been no problem linking to articles for each or specifying when there was no related article. And to be clear, I’m not saying this because I wanted a higher score, I simply want to know what Wizards intends my score to reflect.

My answer: B

My feeling: Mostly certain. I don’t think the reasoning is very solid either way. What I don’t like about saying B is that it renders the “pairing with flash” part of the question a kind of red herring, because it hinges more on the awkwardness of making this one-shot effect at all. (Permanent versions of this ability are obviously fine).

Questions 7–9 refer to the following card:

Return to the Æther
Instant
Return target creature you control to its owner’s hand.

7) Other than blue, which color is most appropriate for this card?

a) white
b) black
c) red
d) green

White has self-bounce portion of pie.

Reference: None

My answer: A

My feeling: Certain

Which rarity is most appropriate for this card?

a) common
b) uncommon
c) rare
d) mythic rare

There is nothing uncommon about the effect in white or the overall complexity of the card.

Reference: None

My answer: A

My feeling: Certain

9) Which of the following changes are we least likely to make?

a) Make the card a sorcery.
b) Change “target creature” to “all creatures” and “its owner’s hand” to “their owners’ hands.”
c) Change “target creature” to “target permanent.”
d) Change “you control” to “an opponent controls.”
e) Change “owner’s hand” to “controller’s hand.”

All of the other changes are reasonable, but E is the only one that could cause the card to violate the rules of the game.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr68

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

Questions 10–12 refer to the following card:

Mystical Fighter
Creature – Human
2/2
First strike
[Mana]: Regenerate Mystical Fighter.

10) If this card was a multicolored card, which combination of colors couldn’t it be?

a) white-black
b) black-red
c) red-green
d) red-white
e) green-white

Red and white both have first strike, green and black regen. Red-white is the only pairing above that doesn’t offer one of each.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr284

My answer: D

My feeling: Certain

11) From a design perspective, what is the most significant problem with this card?

a) It’s inelegant for one ability to require mana to activate and the other to not.
b) To make first strike have more impact, the power should be greater than the toughness.
c) To make the regeneration happen more often, the creature should have a lower toughness.
d) Humans don’t regenerate.
e) The two abilities don’t complement each other as the use of one tends to decrease the use of the other.

A is just wrong. B is true to some extent and is definitely a trick that can be used to accentuate first strike, but isn’t that big a deal as any Knight can tell you. C is even less relevant than B; 2/2′s will have ample opportunity to regen. D asks us to answer a big question about mutants like Wolverine and an even bigger one about the nature of humanity. Fortunately, E shows up in the following links discussion of Ranger En-Vec.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr68

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

12) If Design wanted to change this card to green/blue by changing first strike to another keyword, which one would notwork?

a) flash
b) flying
c) islandwalk
d) shroud
e) vigilance

Green is covered by the regen that’s still on the card. Of the listed abilities, vigilance is the only one blue doesn’t have access to.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr284

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

Questions 13–15 refer to the following card:

Nasty Demon
Creature – Demon
5/5
Intimidate
Whenever Nasty Demon deals combat damage to an opponent, that player discards two cards.

13) Which color is most appropriate for this card?

a) white
b) blue
c) black
d) red
e) green

Demons and discard are both solidly black abilities.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

14) Which rarity is the most appropriate for this card?

a) common
b) uncommon
c) rare
d) mythic rare

Demons are generally rare. That level of repeatable discard on an evasive creature is also generally rare. Both rules have been broken, but rare is the most likely.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

15) As a Demon, which change is Design most likely to make?

a) Add flying.
b) Increase power and toughness.
c) Add a mechanical downside that has potential to harm the controller.
d) Change “combat damage” to “damage.”
e) Change the effect of the triggered ability to make the opponent discard his or her entire hand.

For a while I thought flying was the answer. Then I noticed the card already had evasion, leaving C as the best answer for a Demon. They don’t all have drawbacks that harm their controller, but many do and it’s definitely a Demon thing.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

Questions 16–18 refer to the following card:

Mimsy Borogove
Creature – Human
2/2

16) Which mana cost is least appropriate for this card?

a) 
b) 
c) 
d) 
e) 

As described in the link below, blue is the weakest creature color. So, while neither black nor red have ever had a vanilla bear, they are still more likely to get one than blue.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/78

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

17) This card is known in R&D slang as a “vanilla creature” because it has no abilities. Of the following reasons, which is the least important reason that Design creates vanilla creatures?

a) To increase the number of creatures in a set without pulling focus from the set’s main themes.
b) To create cards that are easier to cost.
c) To lessen overall board complexity.
d) To make cards that are easier for beginners to learn.
e) To provide a baseline that helps players evaluate more complex creatures.

All of the answers besides B have an effect on game play and the way Magic players of all levels receive it. B only serves to make making the game easier, which is not irrelevant, but certainly least important on this list.

Reference: None

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

18) If we wanted to make this card a “French vanilla” creature (a creature with one or more keyword abilities but no other rules text) and keep it at common, which keyword is the leastappropriate?

a) double strike
b) lifelink
c) reach
d) trample
e) vigilance

Double strike is too powerful to put regularly at common.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr284

My answer: A

My feeling: Certain

Questions 19–21 refer to the following card:

Take It and Suffer
Enchantment – Aura
Enchant creature
When Take It and Suffer enters the battlefield, destroy enchanted creature. Take It and Suffer deals damage to target player equal to that creature’s toughness.

19) If this card is black, which change is Design most likely to make to this card?

a) Add “nonblack” to the enchant ability.
b) Change the damage so it is equal to the creature’s power rather than its toughness.
c) Change the destruction to a sacrifice effect.
d) Change the damage to loss of life.
e) Make the card an instant or sorcery.

Unless there is an ulterior motive for making this removal spell an enchantment, there is no reason for it to be one and making it one just adds another layer of reading and comprehension. The card doesn’t have to stop being an enchantment if some unlisted tweak is made to it, which could lead to some alternative reasoning along these lines: Of the others, A and D are the most likely changes. Is it more likely that Design change A or D and make some other tweak to keep the card an enchantment or that they make it an instant or sorcery. My test-taking instincts eliminate that line of reasoning but my logical stinginess allows for it.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr68 This reference only covers the reasoning on E.

My answer: E

My feeling: Fairly certain

20) Could Design change this card into an Equipment with only minor tweaking?

a) yes
b) no

This question is lazy and yet deceptively hard to fix, especially depending on what they want the answer to be or what kind of thought process they want to select for. Design could certainly change the card into an equipment simply by changing its card type and adding an equip cost. They could even make it an equipment that does something by changing its trigger from ETB to “when equipped…”, even if that something is something extremely negative and almost never desirable. Even along that line though, it raises the question of how much tweaking is encompassed by minor tweaking. And at the back of it all, there’s this: with only minor tweaking, could Design reasonably change this card into an equipment? Which, despite the added assumption, is how many, myself included, will and will want to read the question because that seems like what the question should be about.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr68

My answer: B

My feeling: Fairly certain

21) Design wants to change this card so it destroys other types of permanents yet wishes to keep it black. According to black’s portion of the color pie, which card types is it mostappropriate for this card to destroy?

a) artifacts
b) enchantments
c) lands
d) artifacts and lands
e) artifacts and enchantments

Black has the ability to kill lands and creatures, not artifact nor enchantments.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

Questions 22–24 refer to the following card:

Annoying Bell
Artifact
Annoying Bell enters the battlefield with three charge counters on it.
T, Remove a charge counter from Annoying Bell: Target player puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.

22) In an artifact block such as Mirrodin or Scars of Mirrodin, which rarity is mostappropriate for this card?

a) common
b) uncommon
c) rare
d) mythic rare

This is a direct analog for common cycle in Scars of Mirrodin.

Reference: Tumble Magnet

My answer: A

My feeling: Certain

23) Assuming this card is for an artifact block, what is the most significant reason this card wouldn’t be turned into an artifact creature?

a) Its ability couldn’t be activated on the turn it was cast.
b) As artifact blocks tend to use +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters, to avoid confusion between different kinds of counters, we normally don’t put charge counters on creatures.
c) It’s much easier to untap creatures and thus much easier to activate the ability more than once during the same turn.
d) It’s much easier to return creatures to their owner’s hand and thus it would be too easy to “refill” the counters.
e) Artifact blocks like to play up the tropes of artifacts and “millstones” are a popular artifact trope.

There are design rules against mixing counter types on cards to ease trackability. Additionally, none of the other reasons are compelling.

Reference: None

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

24) A player loses the game when he or she draws a card with no cards left in his or her library. What’s the most important reason for this rule?

a) It encourages players to play with larger decks.
b) It gives the game an interesting win condition.
c) It keeps the game from continuing indefinitely.
d) It makes long games more exciting.
e) It makes draw effects that target a player more flexible.

The answers besides C are interesting side effects but the decking win condition is only necessary to make sure games can resolve.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/73

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

25) Which of the following is true about planeswalker design?

a) A planeswalker must have exactly three abilities.
b) A planeswalker cannot activate its “ultimate” ability on the turn it is cast.
c) A planeswalker must have at least one ability that adds loyalty counters and one ability that removes them.
d) A planeswalker must have a subtype that isn’t shared by any other card.
e) A planeswalker cannot have any card types other than planeswalker.

A through D have already been violated.

Reference: None

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

26) Which of the following blocks could most appropriately be called an “enchantment block?”

a) Tempest block
b) Urza’s Saga block
c) Mercadian Masques block
d) Invasion block
e) Odyssey block

Urza block had a major enchantment sub-theme despite being an artifact block, as featured on cards like Replenish and Academy Rector. None of the others were especially enchantment heavy.

Reference: None

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

27) If Magic 2012 needed to take an uncommon white card from Magic 2011 and reprint it as a common, which of the following cards is R&D most likely to choose?

a) Ajani’s Pridemate
b) Celestial Purge
c) Roc Egg
d) War Priest of Thune
e) White Knight

White has had the destroy enchantment effect at common many times before and the artifact version is currently at common. None of the other cards are good common candidates.

Reference: None

My answer: D

My feeling: Certain

28) Which of the following is not an example of a modular mechanic?

a) cycling
b) echo
c) flashback
d) infect
e) kicker

Infect is the only mechanic in the above list that puts a lot of pressure on you to play other infect cards.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/111

My answer: D

My feeling: Certain

29) Which of the following enchantments are we least likely to print?

a) All creatures with changeling have flying.
b) All creatures with echo have deathtouch.
c) All creatures with exalted have lifelink.
d) All creatures with infect have first strike.
e) All creatures with landfall have haste.

Another spectrum question where everything is lumped pretty close together and the nuances are tangled. For instance, there seems to be almost no synergies in the keyword pairings above, but exalted is particularly unsynergistic with an ability that wants more than one of your guys fighting. On the other hand, echo stands out from the rest as the only keyword that is a drawback, making it much less likely that Design would create an Echo Lord. Finally, landfall is not a keyword at all, but an ability word with no rules meaning which I’m pretty sure means it also can’t be referenced to by other cards. Which would make E the clear winner. Unless – and maybe I’m just being nitpicky – someone thought it was more likely that design decided to adjust ability word rules so that they could be referenced to allow for cards like this, than to make a lord for a drawback keyword. Replace echo with cumulative upkeep; does that change your opinion at all?

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr342

My answer: B

My feeling: Fairly certain B is “wrong” and E is “right”.

30) Who is most likely to build a deck themed around The Wizard of Oz? (The description of the five answers are hereand here.)

a) Timmy
b) Johnny
c) Spike
d) Vorthos
e) Melvin

I answered this one too quickly and never really looked back, choosing Vorthos because that player type is interested in the story and in cards and decks that are evocative. The first problem is, I’m pretty sure Vorthos is, as a Magic player, interested in the Magic story and the way its told on cards and in decks and on the ways he or she can share in that storytelling, not how those pieces can be repurposed to tell non-Magic stories. Second problem, there’s almost a direct quote about building a deck around a movie in the section in the first link above describing the Johnny subtype, deck artists. That said, the second problem alone would just make me think this is an awkward question, so fortunately I think the answer I submitted is wrong on multiple accounts.

Reference: Links in question above.

My answer: D

My feeling: Very likely, but not certainly wrong.

31) Which of the following abilities is R&D most likely to put on a common creature in an upcoming set?

a) : CARDNAME deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
b) : Prevent the next 1 damage that would be dealt to target creature this turn.
c) : Tap target creature.
d) : Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.
e) : Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.

A lot of the debate I’ve seen on this question has hinged on the fact that tapping (c) does not usually appear on creatures without an additional mana cost. Whereas the other abilities, especially A, B, and E appear most often without extra mana costs. This is true and there are of course exceptions. But more importantly, how relevant are extra mana costs on the abilities to the discussion. Adding them on is largely a development knob. If that’s the case, then creatures with some cost-variation of C show up at common in pretty much every set while all the other abilities show up there a little or lot less frequently. I’m inclined to think the actual full cost of the ability isn’t relevant to the question, but it would be nice if that was clear.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Fairly certain

32) You’re designing a rare card by starting with each of the common cards below and changing only numbers in that card’s rules text. Assuming the mana cost will change to fit the power level of the card, which card is least likely to make a compelling rare?

a) Raise the Alarm
b) Divination
c) Last Gasp
d) Tremor
e) Giant Growth

Last Gasp, no matter the scale, is always just spot removal and nothing to write home about.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

33) “Each person’s life unfolds according to a pattern. Accepting this fact is the key to harmony.” Which color has this philosophy?

a) white
b) blue
c) black
d) red
e) green

This questions seems tricky, even after going to the tape. Life following a pattern seems very green. According to the link below, white values harmony more than anything. But white also strives for harmony through acts in the world, not be accepting an unfolding pattern. And green has the lion’s share of card titles that actually include the word. The cheap, Princeton Review trick for answering this question is to key in on the word harmony and go with white, but the white sense of harmony doesn’t seem to jive with the above quote, even or especially after reading Rosewater’s articles on the colors. It’s not that I don’t think there’s a right answer to this question and ones like it, I just don’t think that most of the people who answer it correctly will do so because they thought about the question better.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr57 , http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr43

My answer: E

My feeling: The soft side of 50/50

34) Which of the following mechanics would be most at home in the Golgari guild (black-green) from Ravnica?

a) flashback
b) madness
c) morph
d) shadow
e) storm

Mechanically, green and black share the graveyard, suggesting flashback as the obvious choice. But flashback is an all-spell mechanic and the Golgari guild is all about life and death and living and dead bodies and, as mentioned in the link in the question, when combined they have a tendency towards irrepressible growth. On top of that, in both Odyssey block and Time Spiral block these two colors showed a similar affinity for madness creatures. All of which suggests madness is a strong candidate. At a second glance however, flashback pairs very nicely with dredge, Golgari’s original mechanic. Then again, each guild only has one mechanic; are we looking at one that would replace dredge or sit alongside it in a second visit to Ravnica? No way to figure that out from the question above.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr199

My answer: B

My feeling: Slightly favoring flashback (A) as the desired answer

35) Which effect is usually seen on more sorceries than instants?

a) direct damage
b) life gain
c) power/toughness pumping
d) returning permanents to their owner’s hand
e) token creation

Nothing tricky to this one. Tokens have flash only a little more often than creatures do.

Reference: None

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

36) Which of the following is not true about Magic sets?

a) Design should make sure there are large, all-upside creatures for Timmy.
b) Design should make sure there are build-around enchantments for Johnny.
c) Design should make sure there are spells with swingy effects for Timmy.
d) Design should make sure there are cards with unique effects for Johnny.
e) Design does not need to design cards for Spike as they will gravitate toward whatever the best cards are.

As most cards are designed with limited play in mind, most cards are designed for Spike.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/67

My answer: E

My feeling: Certain

37) Which of the following characteristics of a Magic creature card is most relevant to design?

a) color
b) creature type
c) mana cost
d) power and toughness
e) rarity

Mana cost, power and toughness are usually flexible throughout the life cycle of a card. Creature type can be extremely important in tribal blocks, or just an interesting way to make sense of a card, but often won’t determine much. It’s hard to know what kind of creature (as far as complexity, impact, power, and coolness) to design without knowing the rarity. But color probably wins out by shaping all of the other options besides rarity as well as access to keywords and other color-pied abilities.

Reference: Couldn’t find a source to settle this while taking the test, and I’d like one even though I’m pretty sure I leaned the right way.

My answer: A

My feeling: Fairly certain

38) Which of the following abilities is R&D least likely to put onto a green creature in an upcoming set?

a) All creatures able to block CARDNAME do so.
b) CARDNAME can’t be blocked except by two or more creatures.
c) [Mana]: CARDNAME gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Activate this ability only once each turn.
d) Vigilance
e) You may have CARDNAME assign its combat damage as though it weren’t blocked.

This comes down to two options, B and E. E is an iconically green ability, but there is some concern about its mental unwieldiness (not on my part, I consider it a very clean ability). B is characteristically red, and has shown up on green cards recently with a red bleed (i.e. Summit Apes required a mountain). There’s no special reason for them to bleed B into green again anytime soon.

Reference: None

My answer: B

My feeling: Fairly certain

39) Which of the following is the least likely reason a card would move from common to uncommon during design?

a) The card is too complicated.
b) The card needs to show up less often in limited.
c) There are too many cards doing what the card is doing at common.
d) The card is likely to show up in tournaments.
e) There’s no space for the card at common.

D just doesn’t make sense internally. There’s no particularly reason to make any card more or less common for contructed play. Sure, moving rarity affects the ultimate price, but Design isn’t a secondary-market singles dealer.

Reference: None

My answer: D

My feeling: Certain

40) From a design standpoint, what is the most important advantage of the variance of the draw to Magic?

a) It’s a catch-up feature.
b) It adds randomness, which creates greater variety of game play.
c) It allows a player to beat a more skilled opponent.
d) It creates suspense in the late game.
e) It enables the creation of cards that manipulate the library.

Two of the options above have a significant impact on design and while E is certainly true, the variety provided by randomness actually allows Design to create most of the cards they make and be certain that they will be relevant to someone in some situation that will occur.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/37

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

41) According to current design standards, which of the following is least likely to be a common card?

a) A white instant that gives protection to target creature.
b) A blue Aura that stops enchanted creature from untapping.
c) A black sorcery that causes you to pay life to draw cards.
d) A red instant that states target creature can’t block this turn.
e) A green sorcery that destroys all enchantments.

B, C, and D present no problem at common. The last white instant common to give protection is from Kamigawa block. There’s a green common in Scars that gives protection from artifacts. The last common tranquility is Spring Cleaning (conditionally) in Llorwyn or Patrician’s Scorn in Future Sight. The decider for me is that protection is an inherently more complicated ability.

Reference: None

My answer: A

My feeling: Fairly certain

42) According to R&D, which of the following is the least parasitic mechanic?

a) affinity
b) cycling
c) infect
d) splice
e) threshold

Cycling is the only mechanic listed (barring something like Astral Slide or Lightning Rift) that doesn’t encourage you to play more cycling cards (I mean, except for the fact that when you play cycling cards you realize how good the ability is). Even threshold, which only suggests that you more actively try to fill your graveyard, rewards you for piling up because each threshold card looks at the same ‘yard.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr253

My answer: B

My feeling: Certain

43) “I believe that block had a lot of problems because it was just too parasitic without enough backward compatibility.” Which block am I most likely talking about?

a) Urza’s Saga block
b) Mercadian Masques block
c) Odyssey block
d) Champions of Kamigawa block
e) Lorwyn block

Someone pointed out to me that there’s a case for Masques block with it’s rebels inbred-ness, but Kamigawa takes the cake with multiple parasitic mechanics in addition to creature types that don’t really fit in anywhere.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr253

My answer: D

My feeling: Certain

44) According to R&D, what is the flanking mechanic’s biggest shortcoming from a design perspective? (See all creatures with flanking here.)

a) Flanking not working against other flankers wasn’t intuitive to many players and thus was often played incorrectly.
b) Flanking creatures were all conceived as humans riding horses, thus limiting the types of creatures R&D could design.
c) Flanking only worked on attacking and not on blocking, limiting the number of interactions it created.
d) Flanking was priced such that players didn’t actually pay anything extra for the flanking ability.
e) Flanking didn’t include a number, eliminating the ability to design future versions using increments greater than -1/-1.

This one has sparked much debate and while I was trying to answer it, I settled on the answer I was least unhappy with. E caught my eye first as a perfectly reasonable design shortcoming until I read Rosewater’s comments about them testing that switch for Time Spiral Block and decided it wasn’t actually an improvement. D is a development issue. A definitely seems like a design problem, assuming players actually had a problem with using the ability. I couldn’t find anything in the literature to support that claim, and I’m not going to assume it’s true just because it’s a test option. Because many test options are supposed to seem viable to trip you up if you don’t know the subject matter. Furthermore, the simple reminder text that accompanies flanking is much clearer and more illuminating than that which accompanies madness. And, as far as I can tell, C is just not true. Flanking works when blocking much like flying does in that it’s only relevant against flying attackers. If there’s enough flankers in an environment, flanking becomes an integral part of blocking.

So I’m left with B, which I’m not crazy about cuz it’s not a hard rule locking Design in (they made Sidewinder Sliver), and it’s more of a creative issue, but if you look at the flankers, every other one is a man on a horse. Which could possibly have cut off some interesting designs. But was probably just a trope everyone was and is happy to go along with.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr342

My answer: B

My feeling: No clue where this one is at.

45) The philosophy of four of the five colors is stated below. Which color is missing?

• “Morality? There’s no such thing as morality. It’s a construct of the weak to justify their actions.”

• “What value is there in thinking about tomorrow? Who knows if we’ll even be alive tomorrow?”

• “Everybody is trying so hard to change everything that they sometimes miss that things don’t need to be changed.”

• “Any problem that is understood can be solved.”

a) white
b) blue
c) black
d) red
e) green

First quote is clearly black, second red, and fourth blue. The third quote may have tripped me up because of my gut reaction to it. To me that quote is about status quo which is right in line with white, especially on cards like Rule of Law, Ghostly Prison, etc. To most other people I’ve spoken with it’s about greens acceptance of the natural order, the pattern according to which life unfolds, so to speak. It definitely seems more laid back and green, looking to accept that sometimes change isn’t the bee’s knees, whereas white is more about actively resisting change. But green is equally accepting of change, so again, who knows.

Reference: Same as 33

My answer: E

My feeling: This should probably be A, but I’m pretty 50/50.

46) Which of the following cards is least a Johnny card?

a) Clone
b) Devastating Summons
c) Fauna Shaman
d) Mortician Beetle
e) Near-Death Experience

D and E are clearly build-around cards. Fauna Shaman is tricky because it actually succeeds as a Spike card as well, but importantly for this distinction, Fauna Shaman doesn’t do anything without other cards, and puzzling out the right cards to pair with it is a Johnny thing to do. It really comes down to A and B. Clone isn’t the most exciting Johnny card, but it doesn’t do anything without help and demands that Johnny figure out what to pair it with. The first question Devastating Summons asks is am I a good deal, which is a question for Spike. Some time after that, Summons asks Johnny to figure out how to make it a good deal, but I think that first impression is a big hit.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/67 Only a weak argument for Clone’s Johnny-ness

My answer: B

My feeling: Comfortable but nowhere near certain

Question 47 refers to the following card:

Those Pesky Dead
Enchantment
Whenever a creature is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put a 2/2 black Vampire creature token onto the battlefield tapped.

47) What change is Design most likely to be make?

a) Change “creature” to “nontoken creature.”
b) Change “the battlefield” to “anywhere.”
c) Change 2/2 to 1/1.
d) Change “Vampire” to “Zombie.”
e) Remove “tapped.”

All of the other changes could be made, and D and E even want to be made, but without changing A and preventing this card from infinitely feeding on itself this card just can’t get made.

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr68

My answer: A

My feeling: Certain

48) One of R&D’s ongoing concerns is board complexity. We’ve coined the term “virtual vanilla” to refer to a creature that, after the first turn it enters the battlefield, functions as a simple vanilla creature for purposes of evaluating the board state. (Avoid getting hung up on obscure combinations of cards that could make the card not function as a vanilla.)

Here are ten creatures:

• Æther Adept

• Ambassador Oak

• Bog Raiders

• Canyon Minotaur

• Gravedigger

• King Cheetah

• Riptide Crab

• Rotting Legion

• Squadron Hawk

• Vulshok Berserker

How many of the ten creatures are virtual vanilla?

a) four
b) five
c) six
d) seven
e) eight

This question is straight up problematic because the logic of the wording clashes substantially with the intuitive reading of it. As written, vanilla creatures are a subset of virtual vanilla creatures as they satisfy the requirement of being vanilla after the first turn they’re in play. Still, and it’s not the question asked, but there’s a sense that the term virtual vanilla was conceived to cover creatures that weren’t actually vanilla. Upon reviewing the list there are three clearly non-vanilla creatures and then Canyon Minotaur who is logically virtual vanilla but intuitively not. I went with the logical answer, because it is my instinct, when faced with questions of this kind, to choose the answer that allows me to say this answer is THE logical consequence of this question. Also, I’d rather assume they were giving me logically sound questions. But even if D is right, this question is just asking the test taker to consider too much that isn’t relevant to the exercise at hand.

Reference: Self-referential question

My answer: D

My feeling: Mostly certain, very unhappy

49) R&D often likes to use cycles for its designs. Which of the following cards is not part of a five-card cycle?

a) Angel’s Herald
b) Dawnglare Invoker
c) Martial Coup
d) Rest for the Weary
e) Steppe Lynx

At least this one is easy. Martial Coup is part of a three-card Naya cycle.

Reference: None

My answer: C

My feeling: Certain

50) From a design standpoint, what is the most realistic threat to Magic’s long-term health?

a) complexity creep
b) creative limitations
c) running out of block themes
d) running out of design space for individual cards
e) Mark Rosewater

Rosewater talked specifically about this in the following column.

Reference:http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr321

My answer: A

My feeling: Certain

Going to sleep, now that I’m done going over this. I’m sure I’ll have more reactions when I find out the scoring tomorrow. But my first impression is that this test doesn’t quite achieve the goals of testing design know-how, although it certainly gives a ballpark measurement. Also, I can’t really tell without knowing how many people took the test, but there’s a good chance that there weren’t enough questions to get a properly distributed and unchunky bell curve, and Wizards may be forced to make the cut prohibitively high to weed out all but 100-ish competitors.

A few of us wondered why this wasn’t the first cutting mechanism, but I think the logic is simple: Assuming Wizards was just using the first round of essays to cut out the unwilling-to-write, both stages are easy to grade. Grading the multiple-choice test is almost automatically done by computer; then it’s just a matter of deciding a cut off. Word counting the essays is also fairly automatic. But with the sequencing they chose, Wizards gave the people who were willing to write 2,500-3,000 words (and by proxy, put in the desired effort) a better chance of advancing to the third stage. Everyone the writers were competing against in the multiple choice test was also a writer. If the tests had been done in the other order, writers would’ve been competing against non-writers as well and had a harder time reaching the threshold.

Also, two straight rounds of deadline writing is intense.

I’m Billy Moreno. I started playing Magic in 1995 when I was 13, then lost track of it for a number of years before rediscovering the game through Magic Online. At that point I quickly immersed myself in competitive Magic, eventually spending about three years on the Pro Tour “gravy train”. During my time on the Pro Tour I found a lot of friends and made the professional contacts that got me started in game design almost five years ago.

I worked for Brian David-Marshall at his game design studio for a few years, creating new games, developing the Chaotic TCG and lead designing the second expansion of that game. After that I worked briefly for Upper Deck Entertainment designing and developing their unreleased Marvel Superstars game before being laid off when they dismantled the division.

Even though I am at heart a very competitive, spike-ish game player, I am able to empathize with a wide variety of viewpoints and gaming needs while working from a design perspective. In my years in game design, I have worked on games intended for girls, youths, mass consumption, fans of particular IP’s and have felt comfortable with each.

Similarly, while I have focused on Magic as a competitive game for the last decade and have turned my designer’s eye in other directions, I have recently reached a point in my relationship with Magic where I am eager to work on the game as a designer and not a player. To that end, I feel both my design experience and intimate knowledge with the game at its most cutthroat, competitive, and broken would serve me well during this internship.

1. You are instructed to move an ability from one color to another. This ability must be something used in every set (i.e. discard, direct damage, card drawing etc.). You may not choose an ability that has already been color shifted by R&D. What ability do you shift and to what color do you shift it? Explain why you would make that shift.

My first step answering this question was imagining why color-shifting an ability might be necessary and what criteria might apply. For instance, if a color seemed less competitive and less represented over a number of blocks and that color could not become more relevant just by upping the power level of its cards within reason and within its current share of the pie, that situation would seem to warrant shifting a/some abilities to that color. However, not every ability can be moved to every color because each has a philosophy and culture that isn’t openly compatible with every ability (i.e. green and non-flying creature removal).

The first shift I spent time thinking about was discard to white. Balance and variants set a precedent for White to have equalizing discard in the same way it has symmetrical creature removal and land destruction. But White can also justify targeted discard in the same way it does targeted creature removal, i.e. with restrictions on use (Second Thoughts), trade-offs that benefit the opponent (Path to Exile), or reversibility (Pacifism). Unfortunately, that shift didn’t satisfy my first criteria.

Alternatively, it seems like too long since Black has been a featured color in Standard decks. My instinct is that this is because Magic has become much more about winning with creatures and other permanents rather than with spells. Black excels in spell-heavy environments because it pairs efficient discard with aggressive creatures that aren’t great against other creatures. With most games won on the board now, Black has one leg to stand on (targeted creature removal) and struggles against resilient creatures or powerful non-creature permanents like planeswalkers. So, I would give Black the ability to destroy enchantments and planeswalkers. This ability can be flavored black with non-black restrictions, additional life/sacrifice costs, or bargaining clauses.

1. What block do you feel did the best job of integrating design with creative? What is one more thing that could have been done to make it even better?

For my money, the best way to integrate design and creative is not through evocative mechanics or individual cards, but by creating an environment that produces the desired patterns of play. Rise of Eldrazi pitted aggressive level-up decks against spawn-based battle-cruiser decks. The cards and the mechanics combined to lead players who didn’t have any vested interest in the story into these decks, so they ended up reenacting the war at the center of Rise of Eldrazi repeatedly. Kamigawa block, especially the first set, also did an excellent job of persuading players to play out the central struggle.

But I think Alara block did the best job leading players through evolving play patterns that mirrored the creative story. During Shards limited, the shards were the primary unit for building decks. There was some variation, but because of the color fixing and the shard-based mechanics, players usually placed themselves in a Shard and hunkering down. Fittingly, the five Obelisks were highly valued here.

As the shards collapsed in the background of the second set, design added five-color fixers, rewards for being able to generate five colors of mana, and brought back domain. In Conflux limited, players followed the incentives and ended up in four- and five-color decks as the definition of the shards broke down.

Finally, in Alara Reborn, hybrid mana costs and an abundance of two-color gold cards pushed players into aggressive allied-color decks that mirrored the post-Conflux shape of Alara. What’s more, anticipating ending up in two colors forced players to reevaluate the shards in the first set and notice how they were made up of two allied-color halves (for instance, Jhess and Valeron making up Bant).

I do feel Alara Reborn could have superficially, with names especially, done a better job of identifying those sub-shard pairs.

1. R&D has recently been looking at rules in the game that aren’t pulling their weight. If you had to remove an existing rule from the game for not being worth its inclusion, what would it be?

Currently, the active player has priority on an empty stack, which makes perfectly intuitive sense, but also retains priority after taking an action which, in addition to not being that intuitive, is largely invisible and ignored. In fact, it comes up so little in game play that Magic Online doesn’t even have a setting for toggling “priority retention” on and off, instead allowing retention with a much-less-than-universally-known hotkey.

The natural rhythm for taking an action in Magic is to make a play and then check if your opponent has a response. Most stacks are that simple and most players are habituated to the pattern. When a player learning the game runs into a situation where he/she wants to builds onto a stack as the active player, there is a good chance they will check with their opponent after taking their first action, which can be a frustrating learning experience when that opponent opts to do nothing and knows the rules well-enough to stop the learning player when they attempt to play something else on to that stack.

Further, while there is a strategic difference between the active player retaining priority or not, it is similar to the differences between combat before and after the M10 rules change, i.e. neither situation is especially more skill-testing. The real differences are these: certain infinite loops in corner cases (probably involving Split Second) become easier to breakup and cards like Fork put more of an onus on the defending player by not forcing the active player to show his hand right away.

After changing this rule, the active player would always have priority on an empty stack and on a building stack whoever didn’t play the last action would have priority, a situation that matches players natural inclinations much more closely.

1. Name a card currently in Standard that, from a design standpoint, should not have been printed. What is the card and why shouldn’t we have printed it?

Searching for an answer to this question and not having a card in mind to start off, I took the most logical step and started scanning through the Standard format on Gatherer. I doubt the following cards are the only ones I’d have a problem with if I made it through the whole list, but I only made it halfway through the B’s before finding at least two cards that I think miss from a design perspective.

First, Archive Trap. My play group often teased each other about walking into the various Trap cards. For most of them, the triggers were hard to avoid or not worth avoiding or didn’t feel like something the player should be punished for. But mostly they allowed players to be especially vigilant if they chose to. Some, like Arrow-Volley Trap captured the Trap/caution dynamic very well.

Archive Trap, on the other hand, wasn’t a Trap at all. You couldn’t keep any eye out for it. Either you drew cards that searched your library, or you didn’t. Didn’t matter if the trap-player was tapped out, it only mattered if he’d drawn the trap or not. Archive Trap fails as a design because it doesn’t capture any kind of booby-trap mentality.

Second, Broodwarden. Rise of Eldrazi really delivered with the Spawn tokens. And while Spawn-based strategies operated well enough without targeted help of this kind, I understand the impetus for a spawn lord. But Broodwarden makes my spawn feel suddenly very un-spawn-like rather than capitalizing on their fodder-ness like Magmaw and Mortician Beetle. Even having Broodwarden in my deck makes my spawn feel less expendable. Much like Archive Trap, there’s nothing overtly offensive about Broodwarden, but on closer inspection it fails to deliver the right kind of gameplay for the mechanic it’s supposed to work with.

1. What do you think design can do to best make the game accessible to newer players?

I think the best way for design to make the game accessible to newer players is to maintain a rules-teaching philosophy towards rarity. Whereas, experienced players are more concerned with learning strategy and figuring out how to play better, new players’ primary challenge is figuring out how the game works mechanically.

As they are learning the game, players are going to have the highest amount of exposure to commons and so most of the examples they store in their memory for reference to be used for figuring out new and more complicated cards are going to revolve around commons. For that reason, it is very important that commons cleanly deliver the building-block concepts of the game, from keywords to more general functions. A common flier should often not do anything else so that a new player can confidently associate his experiences with that card with flying and not have to worry about whether his creature was unblockable because of flying, protection from artifacts, or trample. Commons are not just responsible for providing clean examples of keywords; a common like Rampant Growth simply captures a game mechanic that is used in a number of variously complex ways.

At the uncommon level, cards should integrate keywords and mechanics, providing examples for players who have mastered the building blocks alone and are now learning to combine them. As clean looking as a creature with the text box “death touch, trample” is, it doesn’t belong at common because the interaction of those two abilities clouds the understanding of each of them individually.

The rare and mythic level, from a teaching perspective, are the home for cards that require and thus teach a deeper understanding of the game rules and what possibilities they allow.

1. What do you think design can do to best make the game attractive to experienced players?

Where new players are primarily preoccupied with learning the mechanics of the game, an experienced player can actually be defined largely by the fact that the mechanics of the game are mostly second-nature and no longer provide opportunities for learning and discovery. An experienced player instead gets his or her kicks by figuring out not just how to do things, but how best to do things; that player is on a journey of strategic discovery.

As much as skill-testing stinkbombs are maligned by experienced players, these cards are designed especially for them; obviously bad cards are signposts pointing towards the less-obviously bad. By including obviously good and bad cards, design helps experienced players start filling in the ends of their gradient, giving some initial shape to each players’ strategy map.

Besides these obviously good and bad cards, though, it is important that design provides cards that are situationally good and bad, effectively multiplying the individual cards in the set by the number of situations those cards could show up in and giving experienced players a huge strategic landscape to map out.

In short, the best thing design can do for experienced players is to keep mixing it up, keep making cards that do new things (cards and mechanics without analogs are naturally harder to get a handle on), keep making enough obvious cards and plenty of more subtle ones, keep shifting the power levels of different colors, and keep experienced players guessing.

Ironically, despite clamoring for mechanisms to smooth draws, decrease mulligans, and eliminate mana screw, experienced players would not especially enjoy any of those in the long term. Those variance factors fit in just right with satisfying the experienced players need for an environment that encourages sustained discovery.

1. Of all the mechanics currently in Extended, which one is the best designed? Explain why.

The best mechanic in Extended is hybrid mana, introduced in Ravnica block and currently appearing in Shadowmoor, Eventide, and Alara Reborn. The mechanic has a huge impact on design space while also being very elegant and intuitive for players.

One of the world design ideas I was discussing with friends was one based on encouraging mono-colored play. The biggest hurdle for mono-colored play is the draft format. With five colors in the game, only two lucky players could go through the draft without directly competing with anyone. They’d be at a huge advantage against the players either splitting colors or being forced into drafting a second one.

The use of hybrid mana in Shadowmoor and Eventide eliminated that problem while fostering a mono-colored environment. Rather than leaving two or three players to fight over cards in a single color, that block’s hybrid mana spread out the fight by allowing cards to be played in two different mono-colored decks. The dispersed competition meant that there were less terrible or great seats to be in, everyone had similar opportunities to navigate themselves into the right “colors”. As players developed more sophisticated understandings of what options hybrid mana allowed them, they were rewarded by more in-draft control and more powerful decks on average.

The use of hybrid mana on cards like Flame Javelin, where colorless mana could replace colored costs inefficiently, also added an artifact-like dimension to color spells, clearly demonstrating the kind of trade-offs necessary for getting off-color effects.

The use of hybrid mana in Alara Reborn had a similar, if less dramatic, impact on that format, especially the cycle of “blade” bears. Hybrid mana allowed those cards to maintain shard identities but encouraged people to play solidly two-color decks to gain more consistent access to those aggressive two-drops.

1. Of all the mechanics currently in Extended, which one is the worst designed? Explain why.

I briefly considered arguing against some less obvious offender, but no mechanic sticks out for its combination of unfun-ness and impact like Cascade.

It’s not that Cascade is completely unfun. In fact, the mechanic was built around the idea of generating thrilling once in a life time moments like blindly cascading into exactly what you need in a game you couldn’t possibly have won otherwise. And, as it was released, Cascade does provide some of those moments. But often when you play with Cascade fairly and blindly, you don’t get exactly what you want or need. And after a lot of playtime with and against Cascade it actually seems like you’ve added a lottery mini-game into the game of Magic you were trying to play. Winning the lottery isn’t especially satisfying when you are trying to measure your skill or your success at achieving some other game goal. Losing that lottery is especially frustrating as most players want the game to seem mostly about skill. Other random elements are also frustrating in this regard, but usually do a better job of hiding themselves in the flow of the game.

Cascade also misses out as a design because it is not clear what the mechanic means thematically. It often seems tacked on and unintegrated. For instance, Demonic Dread changes combat math by getting rid of a blocker and then it cascades, rather than changing combat math by giving your creatures haste until end of turn, then giving you the opportunity to cascade into a cheap creature. Furthermore, because you can cascade into anything, casting cost aside, the relationship between the Cascade spell and its Cascade destination is even more ambiguous. Ultimately, Cascade just doesn’t click often enough and doesn’t encourage players to experiment with it in fair ways.

1. Choose a plane to revisit other than Dominaria or Mirrodin. What is a mechanical twist we could add if we revisit this plane?

The competitor in me, the guy who thrills at a mental challenge, really wants to revisit Kamigawa. That block stands out for its insularity, its parasitism, and its incongruity with the rest of the multiverse. Most Magic sets have the tint of a European heritage and the vocabulary of the multiverse is almost-wholly anglicized even in off-color sets like Mirage block. Kamigawa breaks that mold in spectacular fashion, featuring mechanics like Ninja and Bushido. Those names feel like they wouldn’t really fit outside of a Japanese-themed block. Even though the Ninja ability could make sense on a wide variety of creatures, the name itself makes it near-impossible to bring back the mechanic without revisiting Kamigawa.

Even the Kamigawa mechanics that aren’t hamstrung by their names are hard to work into other sets because they demand to be major themes with a lot of space devoted to them. Whatever the other shortcomings of Arcane and Splice are, the big hang-up is that you can’t put them in a set on just a couple cards each. They don’t play off anything else and having just a couple opens up almost no exploration space for players.

If I were to revisit Kamigawa, I would make salvaging Splice and Soulshift my first priority. I would expand Splice to be able to work with other spell subtypes, tribal seems like a natural fit given the deep tribal identities already built into the Kamigawa story, including not only Spirits, but Rats, Snakes, Goblins, Soratami, Demons, Ogres, and Humans. Tying Splice to Tribal allows us to jettison the parasitic Arcane type, and create Splice and Tribal cards that can incidentally show up in non-block decks. Similarly, I would want to look at expanding Soulshift outside of the Spirit type, giving it the same kind of exportability.