Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1117: Top 20 Mechanics, Part 2

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

This is the second of a three-part series talking about the 20 best non-evergreen mechanics of all time. It's based on a talk I gave at MagicCon: Chicago.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for Drive to Work. Okay, so last time I talked about, I started talking about the top 20 mechanics of all time. It was based on a speech that I gave at Chicago Comic Con. Besides that, not Comic Con, Chicago Magic Con. I didn't give speeches at a Comic Con. Anyway, I made it up through 15.

So we're going to start today with 14, which is Raid. So Raid, like number 15 was Prowess, goes back to Khans of Tarkir. So we were trying to come up with a mechanic for the Mardu. The Mardu is red, white, black. And we knew that we wanted, we knew that they were aggressive. It was the aggressive, of the, red and white are the most aggressive colors. And then black is sort of in the middle. So we knew that the Mardu wanted to be the aggressive tribe. And one of the themes of Kanzasarqir, sorryir is that all the clans are tied to combat.

It was a very combat-oriented set. So we were trying to figure out how do we reward you for attacking. And we looked at a whole bunch of things. We could give you attack triggers. We could give you saboteur abilities, meaning when you deal damage, something happens. We could care to end your turn if you're tapped. There are a lot of

different things we looked through. But sometimes, one of the tools I talked about, bluntness. If I want you to attack, I could do things that encourage you to attack. Or, the raid solution is, I can just say, if you've attack. I can do things that encourage you to attack. Or, Raid's solution is, I can just

say, if you've attacked. I can just bluntly say what it is that we care about. And Raid was nice in that it was just very straightforward. The way Raid played out is, mostly when you cast a spell,

it says, you know says you get a reward if you've already attacked this turn. For example, creatures get bigger. They come with plus one, plus one counters if you've attacked this turn. Or spells get stronger if you've attacked this turn. And the idea of the raid spells

is they do something. So even if you haven't attacked, they're functional. But it definitely encourages aggression, encourages attacking. And yeah, I mean, the real lesson of Raid is that not everything has to be super subtle. We like making subtle things. You know, it's fun sometimes to do something where you sort of figure out what it is you're supposed to do. But sometimes, you know, a lot of good mechanics have

just come from being very straightforward. We want you to attack, we're going to literally tell you on the card, hey, we need you to attack. But Raid, yeah, Raid is one of the most sort of direct mechanics. I like that. Okay, number 13 is Changeling. So we were making Lorwyn, original Lorwyn, and one of the challenges was it was a typal set.

There were eight creature types we cared about. So we cared about Kithkin, we cared about merfolk, we cared about goblin, we cared about elemental, we cared about elf, we cared about fairy, we cared about giant, and we cared about treefolk. And that's a lot.

And one of the problems we were finding early on is when each card sort of like, I mean, whether or not it had a typo effect, it usually the creatures would all be one of those eight types. And then the issue was, okay, well, if I'm a merfolk card, the merfolk player picks it up. The Kithkin player doesn't want it.

The goblin player doesn't want it. You know, one of the issues we went into was that if only one player wants a particular card, it doesn't lead to a dynamic draft environment because every time you draft, they get the card. It always goes to them. And that one other thing that's important is that you need

to have people fighting over things. You need to have sort of a connective tissue between your mechanics. What I'll refer to as glue. You want to make it such that this card, yeah, it works in this deck, but it also works in that deck. And we had tried a bunch of different things. We tried a thing where you chose, like, pick a creature type. But with eight creature types that were relevant, it could become

kind of confusing. We tried some cards that had both, or, sorry, preferred to more than one. And a few of those actually made it in the set. So, like, oh,

I care about goblins and elves. Okay, well, now the goblin player's interested and the elf player is interested we talked a little bit about team ups it's a goblin and an elf but in the end we end

so one of the things that's another important thing to realize when you're designing magic mechanics is hey we've made a lot of cards and sometimes the answer to your problem exists on something we've made a lot of cards. And sometimes the answer to your problem exists on something we've already made. So it turns out the solution to our problem existed on a legendary creature card

we had made in Champions of Kamigawa. So there's these creatures called the Moonfolk. And Onslaught had a typal theme. So Moonfolk had the ability, spend one, and then you could choose a creature type and they could become that creature type until end of turn. Well, we were making a legendary moonfolk, so we decided to just take that to the nth degree. And the idea there was, what if it just had everything?

You don't just spend one. And so, Misfurmed Ultimis came around. And the idea was, Misfurmed Ultimis came around and the idea was Misfirm Ultimis is just every creature type and that solution was really elegant and I know sometimes when we have a card that's kind of very novel that people get upset that we're making

that card less special because we're making other cards like it but we don't really have the luxury we've made 27,000 cards we have to make more magic cards. If something is cool, excuse me, if we make a cool effect,

we can't, like, well, only this card can do that cool effect. We're going to use it other places. And Changeling is where we did that. We said, okay, what if we just make the cards that go in every deck that anybody can care about and they became something

that helped you sort of cross, I mean, it made it easier to play more than one creature type everybody wanted the changeling so it's something people could fight over and it just changed the dynamic of what was going on

changeling has proved to be such a good type of glue that we've used it a bunch of other times. We haven't found anything quite as useful. We've experimented with a lot of stuff, but there's something about it that is simple. Now, the one problem with Changeling, I will, is it makes it hard for us to care

about how many creature types you have. For example, there's a card in Infinity called Embiggen. And you get plus one plus one for every super type, card type, or subtype you have. Well, the problem was a Changeling would get like plus 200, 200. So we ended up on Embiggen, said target, what did we say non what creature we said, we

oh, we did the I'm blanking on the name of it, it's the creature that looks like a giant tumbleweed while I'm blanking on it it'll come to me in a second, but anyway by saying non that it didn't affect changelings.

And so we have to sort of... The existence of changelings makes it a little bit harder to count creature types. So we have to find ways to do that. Okay. Next up is Monarch, number 12. So Richard Garfield created a game called Vampire the Eternal Struggle, originally called Jihad,

but then called Vampire the Eternal Struggle, based on a role-playing game called Vampire the Eternal Struggle. And one of the main mechanics in the set was called the edge. And the way the edge worked was it was an ability that it granted you, the player, but there's only one edge, and players would have to attack each other to get the edge worked was, it was an ability that it granted you, the player, but

there's only one edge and players would have to attack each other to get the edge. And so the idea is you're trying to steal the edge and get the edge. I thought the edge was a really fun mechanic. I wanted to do something in magic with it. And so the original plan was I was going to do something in Ixalan. So Ixalan originally was a three-sided conflict. The dinosaurs, there were the dinosaurs,

well, it changed a bit. There were pirates and, anyway, the conquistador vampires were there. Anyway, that was the plan. We were going to do an edge mechanic in Ixalan. And then Sean Main came to me. Sean came in second, in the second grade design research. He was making the second conspiracy. He'd made grade design research. He was making the second conspiracy.

He'd made the first conspiracy. He's making a second conspiracy. And he said that they really wanted to make a mechanic that was kind of, that was an edge mechanic. Could they do that? So I said, okay, let's make it. We'll see what we're going to do. You know, we'll see.

You know, I said, okay, go ahead and make it. And then we'll compare notes. We'll also do some advanced work on Ixalan. In the end, they made the Monarch. It was a really cool mechanic. It really helped. So this mechanic does something that's an important part of mechanics, which is encouragement. Sometimes you need your players to do something,

and you have to sort of give them an incentive. It's kind of like Raid, which was more about being blunt. This is similar. So one of the challenges we have in multiplayer formats, Commander especially, is there's a lot of disincentive to attack. That as soon as I attack, I make myself vulnerable and I make an enemy. And there's a lot of things that really, like a lot of multiplayer play without some incentive just makes people sit around and sort of watch each other and build up until they can do something dramatic. And you need interplay early on.

You want people, you want what we call inertia. You want the game to end. And so coming up with mechanics that make players attack in multiplayer is important. And basically for this slot, I really wanted to talk about how we have to think about lots of formats. I wanted to pick something that really talked about what was really fun for multiplayer play. I looked at other things, goad, there's a bunch of mechanics that really encourage people to attack. But in the end, I talked to the casual play design team and I said, okay, what mechanic does the best job of

making people want to attack? And they said the Monarch. And so I picked it. It's an example, by the way, of a couple things. It's nice how one of the advantages of being a game designer and being aware of other games is you can understand mechanics that work well elsewhere that you can adapt

to figure out a way to work well for you. You know, Monarch is not exactly the edge, but it definitely, you know, it owes its existence to understanding the fun dynamic of it. And they're making our own version, but there's a lot of advantage to that. And it really is a mechanic that sort of says, hey, come on, we want to do this thing, think about it.

And I like how it does it through a reward. It's sort of like, well, I want to be aggressive because there's a reward for it. And the reward will help me win. Okay, so I guess I'll do it. I like how that plays out. Okay, number 11 is Living Weapon. So Living Weapon first showed up in Mirrodin Besieged. So Scars of Mirrodin Block, the flavor of it was in the Weatherlight Saga,

in the final section in Invasion Block, Urza has a master plan that comes to fruition where he destroys all the Phyrexians everywhere. They're gone. Yawgmoth and clan are gone. The only problem there is they're good enemies. We like them. So Brady, Damiroth and I sort of had a plan to bring them back. So the idea was we went to Mirrodin. We were actually quite subtle about the fact that the Myrren that the Phyrexians were there Karn had accidentally brought in some oil unawares and

the novel, in the first couple pages of the novel you see the villain of the story like find some oil we don't even talk much about it, it's just there wrote briefly but the idea of the Phyrexians, so we came back to Myrden the original plan was Scarves of Myrden was going to be New Phyrexia and then only the end of the Phyrexian, so we came back to Myrden. The original plan

was Scars of Myrden was going to be New Phyrexia and then only the end of the block did we realize that New Phyrexia was Myrden. But we decided that we were missing a fun story of watching Myrden fall to the Phyrexians. So the idea was we go to Myrden, Scars of Myrden

and the Phyrexians are like 10% of the cards. By Myrden Besiexians are like 10% of the cards. By Mirrodin Besieged, they're 50% of the cards. And then we didn't tell you the third name, the block of the third name. It was either going to be Mirrodin Pure if the Mirrodins win, or it was going to be New Phyrexia if the Phyrexians win. It was New Phyrexia,

by the way, for those who don't know that. Anyway, we did this cool thing in Mirrodin Besieged. Half the cards were Mirrodin, half the cards Phyrexian. So when you showed up the pre-release, you chose a Mirrodin pack or a Phyrexian pack. And then you got cards that were all Mirrodin

or all Phyrexian. Part of doing that meant we wanted a mechanic for each. Mirrodin's got a mechanical battle cry where when you attack, it does more damage to the creatures attacking with you, a plus one plus zero. But we needed a mechanic for the Phyrexians and a lot of trying to figure that out was figuring out, okay, what the core of the Phyrexians is the idea that they sort of slowly take over other people's stuff. And during the course of Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Reciege,

you saw a lot of classic Mirrons be taken over by the Phrexians. The Phrexians sort of make you their own. That's why they're scary. A scary and cool villain. So one of the things is we liked the idea. So the Mirrons, when we first were in Mirrodin, it introduced equipment. It's the first time we'd ever done equipment. And so we wanted to do a riff on equipment.

The problem we run into is when you build like a deck, especially a seal deck, roughly about 40% of your cards are your land, about 40% are creatures, and only 20% are non-creatures, non-land. So in sealed, that's about seven cards. Well, that's not a lot of cards. And in those seven cards, you need stuff like removal, card draw. There's a lot of functional stuff you need. And so it's kind of hard getting creatures in, or sorry, getting non-creatures into your deck. hard getting creatures in, or sorry, getting non-creatures into your deck. So the idea, and I think this is Eric Lauer, the idea was, well, what if the equipment came sort of pre-equipped?

So we had, Living Weapon uses germ tokens, and the idea is when you put them on the battlefield, they get equipped to a 0-0 germ, but all of the living weapons had a bonus, a plus N plus N. So the idea is, when you play the cards, they started as a creature. Now, if that creature dies and you lose the germ, okay, it's equipment. You can equip it to something else. But because it starts as a creature, you can play it as a creature. you can play it as a creature. We've done this a couple times. We did it sort of unnamed in Neon Dynasty. It's a named mechanic in Phyrexia Olbi 1 called Firmiridon, where it came the Tutu Rebel. But it really, one of the things that we're always looking for is trying to find opportunities for overlap. We want to have equipment, but we kind of needed to be a creature. Well, how do you do both? In this technology,

the idea that it comes pre-equipped is very valuable, that it acts a lot like a creature, but it has extra utility. And so that is what I like about Living Weapon. Okay, next up, about living weapon. Okay. Next up. Devotion. Okay. So,

this story begins all the way back in Dissension. So, we were doing Dissension. So, Dissension was led by Aaron Forsythe. In fact, his first lead, I believe.

First design lead. And so, Aaron made a card Phosphorus Feast is what we would later call it. And basically you reveal your hand and you gain life for every green mana symbol on cards in your hand. And I saw that and I thought it was awesome. But I thought it was so awesome. I'm like, Adam, I'm not Adam, Aaron, this is a mechanic. Like caring about mana symbols is really cool.

So I said, let's hold on to this and do it somewhere where we can blow it out as a whole mechanic. So a year later, we were making Future Sight. And I had to make a bunch of future shifter cards, meaning I had a hint at mechanics to come. And I had real faith in caring about mana symbols. So I put Phosphorus Feast in the set as a future shifter card. Just hinting at, oh, one day we'll care about mana symbols. Then a year later, we made Eventide, and Shadowmourne Eventide had a hybrid, a very heavy hybrid theme.

About half the cards were hybrid. And caring about colors of mana symbols works well in a hybrid set. So we put, we ended up calling the mechanic Chroma. Chroma is Latin for color. And so we put this in, and we had all these cards that counted different symbols in different places. And I was expecting a huge response.

I thought it was a really cool mechanic. And then when we got the market research back on the set, it was kind of like, wah, wah, wah. Like, no one was that excited. Like, yeah, it's okay. It wasn't hated or anything. It's just kind of, they were indifferent. And when you make a mechanic, you don't want people indifferent. You want people to really love it. But we try things. They don't work, you know. So anyway, flash forward to Theros. We're making original Theros,

and we like the idea, one of the concepts about the world that we really are interested in is that the power of the gods is intrinsically linked to the belief of their people. The more followers you have, the more people that believe in you, the stronger you are.

And the idea is, even take tangible form, you need enough people believing in you. And so we were trying to figure out, we liked the concept of devotion. How do we make devotion? What mechanic? And I think it was Zach Hill, who was on the team, who recommended bringing back Chroma. And I admit, I'm like, okay, I like Chroma. I back Chroma. And I admit, I'm like, okay, I like Chroma. I think Chroma is inherently fun. So he said,

okay, let's go back. Why did Chroma fail? Let's look at Chroma. Number one, it was very, there was no flavor to it. We called it Chroma. It means colored in Latin. That didn't really mean much of anything. It was all over the board. You know what I'm saying? This card cares about cards in your hand. This card cares about cards in your graveyard. This card cares about cards in your graveyard.

This one cares about cards on the battlefield. It wasn't very focused. And because of that, it was hard to build around. Like if I want to care about cards on the battlefield, then I want to play creatures. But if I want to care about cards in my graveyard, oh, maybe I want to play spells because I can get spells that are easier than get creatures.

Anyway, we said, okay, let's try revamping this. So what we did is we said, okay, A, we're going to give it a better name. Devotion. Way better name. More flavorful. And we're going to focus in on what we're doing. It's not on your hand. It's not in your graveyard. It only looks on the battlefield.

And that way, you know, you don't have to worry about your spells. You worry about your permanents. And it allowed us to make some permanents that were heavier and colored mana. But anyway, this time, people really liked it. And it's a really good example of how execution matters. That it's not that the basic idea of caring about colored symbols,

mana symbols, was bad. In fact, my gut instinct that people would like it was correct. But, hey, you don't make cards people can play or don't make it easy, you know. You want things to have flavor. You want things to be built around. You want things to encourage people to do something.

And Devotion did a great job of saying, okay, what you want to do is play a lot of the same color, get a lot of cards that have a lot of mana symbols, and get them all on the battlefield. And it's a nice thing that encouraged some multiplayer play that was fun and constructed. But anyway, the real lesson to take home here is that part of our job as designers is not just making cool mechanics, but doing them the right way.

Okay, next is Convoke. So Convoke was designed by Richard Garfield for Tempest. It did come out in Ursa Saga. We'll get to that in a second. So what happened was, I think Richard was... Oh, not Tempest. Not Tempest. Sorry did come out in Ursa Saga. We'll get to that in a second. So what happened was, I think Richard was... Oh, not Tempest, not Tempest, sorry. For Ravnica, original Ravnica.

I'm conflating two different mechanics. He made it for original Ravnica. Although he made it originally for the Boros. I think Richard's idea was... Richard was really fascinated by the idea of alternate costs. What else could you spend that's not mana? And a lot of costs are tricky because you start the game with them.

Well, life costs, I have life, so it's not, I don't have to earn life or get there. Like, cards in hand, why start with cards in hand? And so Richard was trying to find what is a resource that will grow with time that you don't start with, but it's something that you have some reliability to happen as time elapses. And what Richard realized was the answer was, oh, sorry.

For some reason, I keep talking about a threshold. Richard was trying to figure out, right, other ways, other costs of manna. And so his idea was, what is something that evolves with time? And the answer there was, well, with time you get creatures on the battlefield, right? That your creatures are a resource and you can attack with them, but what if you had a secondary use for them? And because you're not attacking with them, you're giving up a resource to use them. It's not a free resource. It's not something that you just have. It's something you have to actually spend. And so the idea was, you know, another thing that's important is when we make

magic, we have what we call the curve. And what that means is in order to play a game of magic, you want to have things at different levels. You want to have one drops and two drops and three drops and four drops and five drops. And the idea is, hey, no matter what turn it is, I want to maximize how much mana I have so that I'm doing things. You want some cheap things so you can do stuff early in the game. You want some expensive things so you have powerful effects later in the game. And you want to mix. And one of the challenges in general of making expensive creatures is that you can't play them until late game. If I have a 6-mana 5-5 Trampler, for example,

well, I can't play that until I have 6-mana. And now there's ways maybe to speed up mana, there's ways to ramp and stuff, but in general I can't play that until I have 6 lands, usually. And that's hard to do. But the idea of Convoke is, well,

I'm going to build up creatures as I evolve. I'm going to play my one drops, my two drops. And at some point, my opponents will have enough stuff on the board that maybe my one drops and two drops don't have fun. There's not much I can do with them anymore. Maybe I can swarm for an attack at the end, but there's not a lot. But Convoke gives them this extra meaning,

something new. And now, I have a creature that normally would be expensive that normally would take a lot of mana but using creatures as a resource, I can get it out earlier and that's something that's very useful and very handy so I ended up moving Convoke to Selesnya, I liked the idea a little more of cooperation we worked together

Red and White had the military theme, but that was a little bit more about aggression. And tapping creatures isn't... Like, they're going so fast, and they're tapping the creatures every turn. That isn't kind of what you want. Like, you're not getting to the state where you have untapped creatures as a resource.

Whereas green and white was a little more go-wide and a little more build-up. And so it just made more sense in the white-green deck than the red-white deck. Convoke is a really interesting mechanic. We've gone back to it numerous times. We put it in core sets. It was the first repeat guild mechanic.

It is just, it is like, I did a separate panel in Chicago talking about the influence of Ravnica. And one of the things we talked about in that panel is a lot of Ravnica mechanics are kind of like, oh, we only need 8 to 12 cards. We can do things that aren't necessarily, you know, amazing mechanics, things that sort of are functional

and reinforce the flavor. But Convoke probably, like, especially from original Ravnica block, is the big hit. It's just a really strong, cool mechanic, something we keep coming back to. I think it's even something we're talking about making deciduous. I mean, it's just a solid, cool mechanic. Something we keep coming back to. I think it's even something we're talking about making deciduous. I mean, it's just a solid, solid mechanic.

Okay, number eight, proliferate. So we go back to Scars of Mirrodin. I talked about Mirrodin Besiege a little bit ago. Scars of Mirrodin was the beginning of the Phyrexian invasion of Mirrodin. And so we were really trying to give a definition to the Phyrexians. And the idea I liked, the metaphor that I was playing with, is that Phyrexians are diseases.

They're viral. They're relentless. They're, what else were they? They're adaptive. You know, they're just going to, like, one of the cool things about the Phyrexians is that they sort of invade a world and then sort of change the world. They infect the world. And it was just, the disease as a metaphor worked really well.

And so we were trying to figure out cool things to do. So one of the things we wanted is the idea that they spread things. So in the set, we had a main mechanic called Infect. What Infect did was it did its damage to creatures in the form of poison counters and did the damage to creatures in the form of minus one,

minus one counters. Sort of incorporating what mechanical wither that we've done in Shadowmoor. So the idea I liked is that they're spreading disease. That's why creatures get weaker. That's why players get weaker, because poison's going to kill them if they get too much.

Um, so I made a card called something like Disease Spreader or something. And it just, if you had a poison, it gave you more poison. Your choice. And if a creature had a minus one minus counter, you could give it another minus one minus counter. So the idea is, you just spread disease on anything that was flavored as having disease. So you pick and chose what you spread. And it was a fun card. So I made a second one and then a third one.

I made a vertical cycle. And then, we're having so much fun with it, I just made a mechanic out of it. So it just took minus one minus one counters and poison counters and spread them. And then, Mark Lovis was on my team and he's like, well, why limit it? Why make it, like, you know?

And so we ended up spreading it to any counter, which worked nice because the Mirrens had a charge counter theme, and so you could play proliferate cards with the Mirren cards. And anyway, it ended up working really well. It's a very versatile mechanic. It's a very popular mechanic. It's a very popular mechanic. I believe in every set we've used it, it's been one of the top rated mechanics.

And I think the thing about it is one of the things we look about in a mechanic is we like flexibility. We like there's lots of ways to use it. And, for example, the three main sets that used it, Scarves of Mirrodin Block, it used it with Poison and minus one, minus one counters. War of the Spark used it

with plus one, plus one counters and Loyalty counters because it was a Planeswalker set. And the Fractured Albion, again, used Poison counters but introduced a new thing, Oil counters, which were a brand new kind of counter.

So each of those three sets, Poliferate just functioned really differently because what it was caring about was different. Poliferate, the biggest challenge of Polyphorate is, it's very, very

efficient plus one, plus one counters. So, we can't put Polyphorate in the set where we're being too aggressive with plus one, plus one counters. For example, in War of the Spark, we were very careful with plus one, plus one. Like, one of our whole mechanics, which was Amass, which I talked about last time, you know, if you Amass an army, we get one counter, but you don't,

it's not like you're spreading on all your creatures so it's a little more concentrated but we have to be careful that's one of the challenges of proliferate is it's synergistic but it can be too synergistic if counters are too much of what you're doing so you have to be careful okay the final mechanic

I'm going to talk about today I've been booming through mechanics is I'm going to talk about today. I've been booming through mechanics. As I'm going to talk about... Actually, no. I guess it's 30 minutes. Okay. I will leave... I don't know.

I'll talk about one more. I'll talk about one more. Monstrosity. So, Monstrosity, we made also an original Theros. One of the lines was, it was, Gods, Heroes, and Monsters was our little tagline. And so, the gods used devotion. The heroes used a mechanic called heroic.

And we needed a mechanic for the monsters. And one of the things about the whole set was that things upgraded over time. That you, the hero, would grow and change. You, the god, would get more devotion and get better and get stronger. We wanted the monsters to also do that. And once again, one of the challenges in general is if your monsters are too expensive, they don't hit the board until late in the game.

And we wanted to hit the board a little bit earlier. So the idea we came across was pretty simple, and so much so that it is just something we keep going back to, which is, what if they could upgrade once? Like, we've done once-a-turn mechanics. What if we did once-a-game mechanics? What if you could do this once? And the idea was, okay, I cast the creature,

and I can cast the creature and drop it as a three-drop, or a four-drop, or a five-drop. I can make it something a little bit smaller, and then, later on, when I have enough mana, you know, I have six mana, seven mana, eight mana, later in the game, then I can sort of convert it into the giant version of the monster. But the idea, then I can sort of convert it into the giant version of the monster. But the idea is

I can play kind of a medium-sized monster for the beginning part of the game, and if it's still around when I have enough mana, I can make it into the giant monster. And the idea of once per game was very valuable. We had done it on individual cards, but I don't think we'd ever done it as a mechanic.

And the idea of changing over time, of you play the cheap thing and it becomes the larger thing, is definitely a theme we've played with in other places. It is pretty powerful, it's pretty potent, the idea that this thing that starts as less threatening becomes more threatening with time. And it played really well in Theros because, like I said, the heroes were getting stronger, the gods were getting stronger, like I said, the heroes were getting stronger. The gods were getting stronger.

It was nice that the monsters were getting stronger. Monstrosity is also one of the few mechanics where we brought it back and we changed its name to Adapt. Now, technically Adapt is slightly different. If you got a counter on the creature by some means other than Adapt, you shut off the ability to do adapt, which wasn't true with monstrosity. And, if you ever remove the counter, meaning, let's say I adapt, it got bigger, and then I move the counters elsewhere, I could adapt again, which wasn't true with

monstrosity. But anyway, I think monstrosity was definitely a very valuable... It really made us rethink a little bit about how we could do creatures and how the one-time changes and... Anyway anyway a very good mechanic and definitely uh shaped how a lot of design went after it okay guys i am now at work i have seven or six mechanics left so um it's looking like this will be a three-parter uh anyway i hope you guys are enjoying this like i said i'm

trying to add a little content that wasn't quite in my talk online. I did do this talk online. If you want to watch it, you can. It's on YouTube on the Magic Channel. But anyway, guys, I'm at work, so we all know what this means. This means I'm at the end of the drive to work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.