Inquiring Minds Want to Know, Part 2

Boyd Christensen: In the days of yore, Magic has pitted many of its colors against one another by establishing cards that have equal but opposite effects, for example, White Knight vs. Black Knight, Roc of Kher Ridges vs. Phantom Monster, or Blue Elemental Blast vs. Red Elemental Blast. This mirroring effect sometimes puts in a twist to better represent the colors' attributes. Serra Angel vs. Sengir Vampire for example. While not helping to establish a true difference between the colors, it did help make a flavor of yin vs. yang if you will. Will this flavor of walking the same path but for very different reasons, resurface at any point? Or will it be lost in the strands of differentiation?

Mark: We still do cards with that kind of flavor, but not in as great a number. I know that Richard, for one, is a big fan of reflections. I do believe that we are at a low ebb right now, and as I love to say, I believe the pendulum will eventually swing the other way.

Anonymous:You always talk about the color wheel and the flavor of each color. But how did those colors' identities come about? Why is blue knowledge? Why is white orderly? What about the other colors and their significances?

Mark: Richard did not create the colors as much as he organized old ideas in an orderly fashion. At the heart of the color wheel are age-old philosophies and conflicts. The genius of the color wheel is how Richard created a nice sense of balance. The colors preexisted Magic. The color blue, for instance, has long been associated with the elements of air and water, which in turn, are associated with the mind and thought. (As an example, I am a Gemini, which is an air sign. As such, I am supposed to be very fluid in my mentally and thoughts.)

Robert Davis: Why is it that every major ability, except counterspells, seems to be shared among two or three colors? Black is the best at creature destruction, red is next, then white. White is now supposed to have the most efficient weenies, with green coming in second, and either red or black next. I understand that countermagic and bounce are blue's hallmarks and, really, the only things blue can do effectively. But countermagic really hoses red, and there isn't much a red mage can do about it. It seems like red gets hosed very effectively by both blue and white, and there's nothing red can do about it. Because it seems like each color gets a lesser version of the power as you go around the color wheel (the only thing black creature removal usually worries about is whether the creature is black -- red you have to burn it for as many points as its toughness, and white usually has very specific conditions), why isn't countermagic shared around the color wheel? The reason blue magic really irks me a lot of the time is that there is no answer to it except another counterspell, which you have to be playing blue to get. I think other colors should get counterspells, just a lesser version, perhaps usable on only one or two different types of spells. Is this possible?

Mark: First off, there are numerous abilities not shared with other colors, such as discard is unique to black, land searching (like Rampant Growth) is unique to green, and damage prevention is unique to white. The list is longer than you might think. In addition, there are numerous abilities like direct damage that sit squarely in one color and have very specific bleeds to other colors (Drain Life effects in black for example).

As for counterspells, we have bled them in the past. Illumination and Withering Boon in the Mirage set bled limited counterspells to white and black (blue's allies) respectively. The reason we don't bleed it more is that much of blue's identity is defined by the fact that its "permanent removal" is preemptive. All the other colors have destruction effects to deal with problem permanents. Blue does not.

We do want other colors, especially blue's enemies, to have answers to counterspelling, but that does not need to be other counterspells. The "can't be countered" ability on cards like Scragnoth and Urza's Rage is a move in this direction. In addition, blue's biggest enemy is speed as blue decks usually take time to set up and stabilize.

In short, the game is best when each color has its own distinctive way of handling different problems. If every color had the same answers, I believe the game would become much more repetitive and a lot less fun.

James Harmon:Do you have any concerns or reservations that R&D's current philosophy regarding the color wheel could, in the long run, have the negative effect of limiting card design and stagnating game play?

Mark: Your question plays into a common misconception about creativity. Restrictions do not hinder creativity -- rather they help it thrive. Blank slates are very daunting, but established hierarchies allow for much greater exploration. As an example, I feel I get much more creative on MagicTheGathering.com theme weeks because I'm forced to think in a direction I might not naturally think. Oh, it's Zombie Week. What can I do for Zombie Week? The color wheel is a great tool that aids us in design, not an albatross around our neck that slows us down.

Adam Harrison: I sometimes feel that R&D considers tourney players more than casual players when designing cards. I know you'll say R&D caters to both, but if you really valued the casual players, wouldn't you still be making cards like Chaos Orb and Raging River? Those are the kinds of cards that add flavor and fun to the game, in my opinion. A hundred thousand variations on Goblins get tiring.

Mark: If anything, the last few years have found R&D leaning more and more toward casual players. The Onslaught block, for example, used a theme that has always been popular with the casual players, race decks. And we have definitely been pushing the boundaries more about what is acceptable for the game. I do acknowledge that having the constraints of Magic being a tournament-viable game does give us some restrictions, but I feel R&D has really made steps toward trying out new ideas. I think you're going to be especially pleased with the Scourge set and the Mirrodin block. There are some cards coming that I expect to make the players do a double take the first time they see them.

Kenneth Nagle: Is gender ever going to matter? For example, will we ever see female Elves being functionally different from male Elves?

Mark: During design, Unglued had a card that cared about the gender of the card. If I remember correctly, it was an attractive female creature that had to be blocked by males if they were able to block -- the flavor being sexual allure. The reason the card was scrapped was that the only way to determine gender was the art and on too many cards the sex of the creature is vague to say the least. (As an example take a look at Radjan Spirit.)

Nathan Otto: Hey, I have a question about Dwarves. I happen to have a Dwarven Bloodboiler deck, but I can't play with it in Standard because there aren't enough good Dwarves! How come you didn't include Dwarves as a theme in the Onslaught set? You have one Dwarf, so they have to exist there.

Mark: For the Onslaught set to work, we had to focus on a small number of creature types. In red, it was felt that Goblins are more beloved than Dwarves and thus Goblins was the chosen type. I wrote an entire article about the plight of the Dwarves (during, of all things, Cephalid Week). I feel your pain, and I promise you that the Dwarves will have their day in the sun again, just not in the near future. Sorry.

David McDougall: With recent comments about how you have the honor of having the most cards banned and restricted, second to Richard himself, I'm curious about which cards you have made. Is there a way for us to look up who designed which cards? You have made a lot of my favorites, and I like trying to guess at which ones are your creative offspring.

Mark: I'm often asked why designers aren't credited on the cards like the artists. There are a number of reasons.

1. We often don't know who the designer is -- I create thousands of cards every year. While I have a pretty good memory, I can't remember everything I made. Also, cards get tweaked all the time in development making remembering that much harder.
2. Many cards aren't designed by one person -- Oftentimes design is a collaborative process. This means that some cards are the product of a group of people working together. During the design of a set, it is not uncommon for one designer to tweak the work of another designer.
3. Multiple designers can design the same card -- One freaky thing that happens in design is when two people on the same day turn in almost the exact same card. During Tempest design, Mike Elliott and I were doing this at least once a week.
4. There are disputes -- There are some cards that multiple designers remember making. Sometimes, this is due to #3 and other times, a designer hears a card and the subconsciously creates it years later unaware where the idea came from.
5. Design credit pulls focus -- There are numerous people who work to make a single card. Even if a single person designed it, there was a team of developers who tweaked it, a creative team who concepted it, an art director who assigned an artist, and an artist who painted the illustration. A lot of work goes into making each card.

As I have a column, I'm much more likely to share design stories than some of the other designers, but we do try to make sure that each of the designers has a chance to tell some of their stories when the appropriate set rolls around. Richard Garfield recently wrote about Arabian Nights, Mike Elliott wrote about designing Legions, and I'm hoping to rope Brian Tinsman into talking about the Scourge set in a few months.

The short answer is that if you pay attention, you'll get glimpses here and there of the design of certain cards, but there is no grand system for crediting each individual card.

David Brain: What do you do with ideas that clearly don't belong in Magic, or even in another Wizards trading card game (TCG)? Do you try and force them until they do? (For example, there have been several attempts at a pseudo-Auction mechanic in Magic, an idea that doesn't really work but feels as though a designer refused to admit defeat.)

Mark: A good designer should never force a mechanic. If it's meant for Magic, it's meant for Magic. If not, we can always use it in one of the many other games we design.

Troels Vastrup: Every block introduces new mechanics and then uses those mechanics on cards that are just variants of basic spells (like Stone Rain, Giant Growth, Dark Banishing, and so on). For example, Lay Waste is Stone Rain with cycling, Earth Rift is Stone Rain with flashback, and Shaleskin Plower is a "morph trigger" Stone Rain. Some think that that is boring and take it as proof of "R&D has run out of ideas." Comments?

Mark: That's like faulting a carpenter for using wood and nails. The basic effects of the colors are the tools of a Magic designer. The creativity comes in how you use them. Sure, Skirk Marauder and Firebolt both hail from Shock, but I'd be hard pressed to call them the same card. Every house has a similar foundation. A good carpenter is judged not by the wood used to build the house, but by the finished product.

Ken Scott: With the rebalancing of the color wheel, where does that leave artifacts in terms of flavor? Is there anything that is inherently artifact as opposed to any of the colors?

Mark: In our talk on the color wheel, we have brought up the topic of the role of artifacts. We are still fleshing out what exactly artifacts do that sets them apart from the colors. Thus, while I don't have an answer I can tell you we're thinking about the issue.

Spencer Bogan: Why is fast Magic worse than slow Magic?

Mark: I think you're taking a comment I made out of context. I was talking about how fast combo is worse than slow combo. My point was that Magic is about interactivity. Fast combo is just solitaire and thus not interactive. I have no problem with fast Magic strategies as long as they allow interactivity.

Yannick Van Doosselaere: Which did you vote for (or would you have voted for): Llanowar Elves/Utopia Tree or Birds of Paradise/Vine Trellis, and why?