Nuts & Bolts #17: Finding Your Mechanics, Part 1
Back in 2009, I started an annual article series called "Nuts & Bolts" where I gave practical advice to players interested in designing their own Magic set. While the primary audience for these articles mainly includes amateur Magic designers, they also give a technical behind-the-scenes perspective on how we make Magic sets, which I hope will be interesting to people who just play Magic and have no intention of ever making their own cards.
This is my seventeenth year of doing a "Nuts & Bolts" column. Here are the previous sixteen installments:
Nuts & Bolts #1: Card Codes
The first article is the most technical, as it explains the system we use to make sure everyone is talking about the same card.
Nuts & Bolts #2: Design Skeleton
The second article introduces the most important tool in designing a set: the design skeleton. It makes use of card codes, which is why that article came first.
Nuts & Bolts #3: Filling in the Design Skeleton
The third article talks about how designers fill out the design skeleton with the common cards.
Nuts & Bolts #4: Higher Rarities
The fourth article talks about filling in the design skeleton's other rarities.
Nuts & Bolts #5: Initial Playtesting
The fifth article discusses how to use playtesting to gather feedback and improve a Magic set.
Nuts & Bolts #6: Iteration
The sixth article talks about the concept of iteration and how it can be used to incrementally improve your set.
Nuts & Bolts #7: Three Stages of Design
The seventh article explains the three different stages of design as defined in 2015, including the individual priorities of each stage.
Nuts & Bolts #8: Troubleshooting
The eighth article answers a number of questions about common problems that can happen from early to mid-design.
Nuts & Bolts #9: Evaluation
The ninth article talks about how we look at a Magic set as a whole and figure out how to fine-tune it.
Nuts & Bolts #10: Creative Elements
The tenth article discusses how we weave together mechanics and creative elements. I go over top-down and bottom-up designs, along with how card names, creature types, and flavor text affect design.
Nuts & Bolts #11: Art
The eleventh article talks about the importance of using art in later playtests and how to incorporate it into a set.
Nuts & Bolts #12, Part 1: Limited (Mechanics)
This twelfth article was broken into two parts. Both talk about how to build a set's Limited environment. The first article focuses on making sure your mechanics work for Limited play.
Nuts & Bolts #12, Part 2: Limited (Themes)
The second part focuses on building a set's mechanical themes for Limited play.
Nuts & Bolts #13: Design Skeleton Revisited
R&D revamped the design skeleton, so I went through the updated skeleton we use for every Magic set.
Nuts & Bolts #14: Initial Ideation
My fourteenth article covered how we build the initial ideas for Magic sets.
Nuts & Bolts #15: Structural Support
Here, I talked about what we call "structural support," a practice where we make sure sets have all the elements they need to work properly, especially in Limited play.
Nuts & Bolts #16: Play Boosters
Last year, I walked through all the changes to our design skeleton that came about because of the shift from Draft Boosters to Play Boosters.
This brings me to my seventeenth "Nuts & Bolts" article. I'm going to go deep on a subject that I've briefly touched on in the past. How exactly do you make a mechanic from scratch? How do you come up with one? How can you tell how much design space it has? How should you decide how much space it takes up in your set? What rarities should it be at? How do you balance it or get a rough estimate to playtest with? All this and more will be covered today and next week.
What Is a Mechanic?
Before I go into how to make a mechanic, I think I should define what exactly a mechanic is. A mechanic is a mechanical means of interacting with one or more aspects of the game—a card type, zone, game action, etc.—that usually shows up on multiple cards. When players talk about a "mechanic," they are most often referring to a named or labeled mechanic, which is named so players will recognize that multiple cards do the same thing. But mechanics do not need to be labeled. Most Magic sets have unnamed mechanics, usually to build cohesion between archetypes.
Named mechanics fall into two main groups: keyword mechanics and ability words. Keyword mechanics are mechanics where words are replaced with a one- to three-word name. For example, "As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may pay {M}" is the keyword kicker. "You may cast this card from your graveyard for {M}. If you do, exile it" is the keyword flashback.
In each of these cases, the keyword represents the long string of words. Most of the time that longer string of words is defined in reminder text, but higher rarity cards often omit this. There are also some evergreen keywords like flying that we often don't get reminder text.
It's important to note that a keyword has to represent a specific line of text. Any variance has to be listed with the keyword. Both kicker and flashback, for example, have a cost along with the keyword. That allows for variance between different cards with the same keyword, but only on the thing it specifically lists as different. Some keywords, like scry or surveil, will list a number which indicates how many of something it interacts with.
If a keyword is used as a verb, like scry, it is what we call a keyword action. It's still a keyword mechanic, but these are used in the middle of lines of rules text in a way that normal keyword mechanics are not. We like to label keywords because it helps players recognize what cards do and provides players with a shared vocabulary to talk about the game. Also, and arguably most importantly, keywords can be mechanically referenced in rules text. I'll get to this in a second.
Another important aspect of keywords is that reminder text can be less technical than normal rules text. Reminder text is written so that the players get the gist of what a mechanic does. It doesn't have to be written in the very mechanical way of normal rules text. Magic's rules language has to be very precise so that the rest of the game can interact with it. For keyword mechanics, that technical language needs to exist in the comprehensive rules, but it doesn't have to be on the card. By doing this, we can save space in a card's rules text.
Ability words, like landfall, are used to flavor already existing rules text. That's why it's written in italics, similar to flavor text. For rules purposes, any card with an ability word could leave the ability word off without changing the effect. So, why do we use ability words? It's for most of the reasons that we use keywords, namely ease of comprehension and communication. But ability words don't have the same mechanical restriction as keywords, so they don't need to match exact text.
The best example of this would be a mechanic that has a shared input but not a shared output (or vice versa). I'll use raid as an example. All raid cards care if you attacked with a creature this turn, but they vary in what the card does if you've attacked.
Technically, you could keyword the input for raid (attacking this turn), but you couldn't keyword the output (the effect you get for attacking) without extra rules text. Plus, it just looks weird. Here's what keyworded raid would look like on
At the beginning of your end step, if you raided, return target creature card with mana value less than or equal to Alesha's power from your graveyard to the battlefield. (You've raided if you've attacked with a creature this turn.)
In the case of Alesha, keywording raid adds extra words that eat up space for rules text. There are three easy ways to recognize an ability word:
- Ability words are italicized.
- The rules text makes sense if you remove the ability word.
- There is no reminder text.
The biggest difference between keyword mechanics and ability words is that only keyword mechanics can be referenced. We can make a card that says, "All creatures with trample get +1/+1," but we can't say, "All creatures with raid get +1/+1." This is for technical rules reasons. For casual, non-rules-compliant cards, you can do stuff like that, but not if you're trying to exactly replicate how real Magic cards are designed.
How Do You Come up with a Mechanic?
There are a bunch of ways to design a new mechanic.
Spontaneous generation
This is when you come up with an idea in isolation. Usually this comes about because you had an experience in a game that inspired you or you were thinking about Magic, then connected Magic to something new. Flashback is a good example of this. I used to judge the feature matches at the Pro Tour, and when someone got behind, I would come up with effects that could help catch them up. This let me play out a hypothetical match. Flashback was one of those ideas. While most people think that this is where most mechanics come from, it's not. It can vary by designer, but most ideas come from one of the following categories.
Doing something you've always wanted
This is related to spontaneous generation. Have you ever played a game of Magic and wanted to do something, but couldn't? Okay, make it. The clause "can't be countered" came about because I wanted a way to make cards that, well, couldn't be countered. When I first started playing Magic, I didn't have anyone else to play with, so I made two decks, one mono-green and one mono-blue deck to play against one another, and my mono-green deck needed a way to deal with the blue deck's counterspells. That's where the card
Expanding on an existing card
Do you like a Magic card and wish there were more cards like it? Why not turn it into a whole mechanic. We do this all the time. A classic example of this is changeling, which was me turning
Name an existing quality
Many mechanics are just us formalizing something Magic already does. This is an offshoot of the point where we take something that exists and flesh it out as a full mechanic. The difference is that the mechanic might have existed on many cards. Flurry from Tarkir: Dragonstorm is a good example of this category. Many sets have cared about casting your second spell, but it wasn't until Tarkir: Dragonstorm that we named it.
Design to your set's theme
This is a very common category for mechanics in design. Most sets start with a broad theme. We think about whether that theme would be fun to play, then create a mechanic that delivers on it. For example, when I was working on Innistrad, we wanted death to matter, so I suggested a mechanic that makes death matter: morbid.
Fill in the gaps of your set
This category is where the most ideas for mechanics come from. When we make a Magic set, each new mechanic fills the design skeleton. A lot of Magic mechanics are made because they fill in the gaps of what needs to be added. For example, in Kaladesh, we wrote down a list of what we needed. We wanted something focused on the battlefield, that could go on creatures and cared about +1/+1 counters or creature tokens. I came up with fabricate in that meeting as I was spelling out all the requirements.
Solve a problem of your set
This is related to the last category. As you're making your set, you playtest it. Many times, something is not playing right, and you need something to help address the problem you're having. Bestow from Theros is a good example of this. The set cared about enchantments and, because of heroic, needed a certain amount of spells that targeted. Bestow was created as a means to solve this problem.
The important thing to remember is that each mechanic will add limitations to your set, so you can have one or two mechanics that can do almost anything, but those will dictate what other mechanics your set will need.
How Much Design Space Does Your Mechanic Have?
A lot of players have asked me this. Here are the questions I go through when trying to figure this out.
How many card types can this mechanic go on?
Is this something that can go on any card? Just permanents? Just instants and sorceries? Just creatures? The more card types the mechanic can go on, the larger the design space.
How many colors can this mechanic go on?
Does this mechanic make use of an ability that's restricted to certain colors? If so, how many? I have an article where I go through most abilities and effects in Magic and note what colors they appear in. We are a bit more willing to do light color pie bends when a mechanic goes into all the colors, but knowing how many colors can use your mechanic is important. The more colors, the greater the design space.
How many rarities can this mechanic go on?
The biggest aspect of this question is complexity. Common cards only get to be so complex. You have to understand whether this mechanic is simple enough to go on common cards, and sometimes if it can go on uncommon cards. We do make mechanics just at higher rarities, but that inherently restricts how many cards can be designed.
When can this mechanic be used?
Can you only use it during your main phase? Is it only during combat? Can it be done on an opponent's turn? The time window for casting a spell will dictate access to certain effects. Note that this category isn't quite as clean as the previous ones, as each choice can limit different effects. For example, counterspells have to be on instants, but we tend to do discard effects on sorceries. The best way to figure out which effects go on which types of cards is to look up existing cards and see if there's a consistent usage.
What restrictions does this mechanic have?
Does something about the nature of the mechanic impact what type of effects you're allowed to do? For example, if it triggers at the end of turn, it's not useful with many combat-related abilities, such as temporarily getting power and/or toughness boosts or abilities.
What strategic ramifications does this mechanic have?
This is a trickier one to judge for a more novice designer. I specifically have a play designer join Vision Design to judge mechanics in their infancy and walk through potential play-balance pitfalls. A good example would be flashback. We have a standing rule that we try to limit how many "on-board tricks" we allow (i.e., players walking into a trap where all the pieces are in public zones), so we tend to avoid making flashback spells that are both instants and relevant in combat.
Once I've walked through all these questions, I'm able to sketch what I call the outline of the mechanic. For example, here's my outline for a made-up mechanic I'm calling rumble.
Rumble goes on creatures, centered in red and green. I expect it in every rarity but don't expect a lot at common. It triggers at the beginning of combat, so it will mostly want combat-oriented outputs. It probably needs a mana input, so it will be more of a mid- to late-game mechanic.
Once I have this, the next step is to start designing cards. We'll do this in a meeting and/or as homework. We tend to start with the lowest-rarity version of the mechanic. The goal is for the designers to explore the space. If it's early in the process, we'll often have designers build a 40-card deck with some designs of the new mechanic so we can playtest it. The goal of all of this is to see how many different types of designs we can make and get a sense of how the mechanic plays. That second part is important because it will help you understand which designs with the mechanic show the most promise. We'll get to fleshing out your mechanic (i.e., figuring out what all can go on cards with it) next week.
Finding a Good Mechanic
This topic is meaty enough that I'm going to need two articles to cover it. Next time, I'll talk about how you explore a mechanic's design space, determine its rarities, calculate its as-fan, iterate on it, and about the types of balancing required to avoid disrupting early playtests.
As always, I'm eager for any feedback you have on today's article or any of the concepts I've been walking you through. You can contact me through email or social media (Bluesky, X, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok) with any feedback.
Join me next time for part two of this article.
Until then, may you have fun making your own Magic cards and mechanics.