Tweak in Review

So what does this mean? It’s a complicated topic that the Creative Director and his team are putting some attention towards. Look forward to future sets to see the outcome.

Now, on with today’s column.

Day-to-Day

How many of you have seen the movie “Backdraft?” Remember the scene where Kurt Russel runs out of a burning room with a child tucked under his arm? Seconds after he makes it to the hall, a ball of flame explodes from the room behind him. That image represents how the average person sees the job of a firefighter: they’re running in burning buildings saving orphans. The truth is the average firefighter probably runs into a burning building only a handful of times each year. This is not meant as a knock to firefighters; I respect anyone whose willing to run into a burning building even once. My point is that a firefighter’s day-to-day job is more about mundane activities, like say upkeep of the firetruck, than heroic rescues.

The same goes for Magic designers. Designers do spend some of their time coming up with radical new cards with interesting, offbeat abilities. But a lot more of our time is spent making the basics work. Rares are fun, but a set lives or dies on its commons. So what does this have to do with land destruction? (As a quick aside, do you notice how many of my columns require me to assure you that I’ll eventually get to the assigned topic?) Well, land destruction is one of the basic abilities we include in every expansion. As such, it’s a perfect example to explore a time-tested R&D staple -- the tweak.

Tweak in the Knees

A tweak is a card that does exactly what a previously printed card does except with one tiny change. As an example, Stone Rain is a red sorcery that destroys a land. It was designed by Richard Garfield and appeared in Alpha. Examples of tweaks of Stone Rain would be:

• Raze (from Urza’s Saga) – it’s cheaper but destroys one of your lands
• Lay Waste (from Urza’s Saga) – it also cycles
• Devastate (from Prophecy) – it also deals a point of damage everything
• Dwarven Landslide (from Apocalypse) – if kicked it can destroy a second land
• Earth Rift (from Odyssey) – it has flashback

The purpose of a tweak is to capture the essence of the old spell but still have some element that makes the card seem new. Ironically, this is one area where my Hollywood skills come into play. Hollywood is all about rehashing the old in a new, improved form. One of the more entertaining aspects of this is in something known in Hollwywood as the “three-beat.” A three-beat is where you take a new idea and sell it by condensing it down to a cross section of two old ideas. For example, Spy Kids would be pitched in Hollywood as James Bond meets The Goonies. Smallville is Superman meets Dawson’s Creek. And A Beautiful Mind is Good Will Hunting meets Sybil.

Magic design, believe it or not, is actually quite similar. A designer sits down to create his commons. Early in the process, the designer has to create cards that fill some of the basic staples of the game (creature destruction, card drawing, combat tricks, etc.) but in a new way. Thus begins the “tweak” process.

#1) Block Mechanics

The first place the designers look for tweaks is the mechanics of the block. The designers need cards using the new mechanics anyway, so it’s a perfect fit. Let’s take Odyssey as an example. The new mechanics were flashback and threshold. Earth Rift was an obvious marriage. Stone Rain meets flashback. The design team also fiddled around with a threshold Stone Rain, but none ever saw print as we didn’t find a version we liked.