Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1121: Top 20 Evergreen Mechanics, Part 1

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

During my MagicCon: Chicago talk where I listed my top 20 mechanics of all time, I also showed a slide for my top 20 evergreen mechanics and said that one day, I'd do a podcast on it. Today is that day. This is part one of two.

I'm playing my driveways. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so at MagicCon Chicago, I did a talk called the 20 Top Mechanics of All Time. I then turned that into three podcasts. But in the talk, one of the things I did was I said, I'm not going to count every one of the things I did was I said I'm not going to count evergreen mechanics when picking the top mechanics but I put up a screen of the top 20 evergreen mechanics

and then said I'll probably do a podcast about that sometime. Well guess what today is that day at least the start of that day I'm pretty sure this is more than one podcast but I'm going to talk about the top 20 evergreen mechanics of all time. Now, I will state that I spent a lot more time making my list for the talk and that I threw this together.

I think this list is decent, but I didn't spend as much time on this one as I did on the other one. But I do think about evergreen mechanics a lot, So I do have lots of thoughts on evergreen mechanics. So number 20 was hexproof. So during Future Sight, I was making future shifter cards, cards that showed the future. And I thought it might be a fun opportunity to get some keywords. There are a bunch of keywords that we use all the time, or, I mean, mechanics we use all the time that weren't named. And so I thought it'd be nice to just go through and name some of them.

And we, I ended up, I tried to, I tried to do a whole bunch, and I ended up getting, I think there were four. ended up getting, I think there were four. I think that's when Reach and Death Touch and Lifelink and Shroud all got named. Shroud's important. So Shroud was an ability that says I can't be the target of any spells or abilities. Nobody. Nobody can target it. So we made Shroud in Future Sight, and then what happened was no one played it correctly. Everyone were like, well, I understand it can't be targeted by my opponent's spells and abilities, but clearly, clearly I can target it. It's my thing.

And Shroud is supposed to be, no, nobody can target it. But no one, or not nobody, but a lot of players just didn't play it that way because it just didn't intuitively seem like they should be able to target their own thing. That's how people play. And so we finally said, okay, instead of having everybody play it wrong, we'll just change it. So instead of Shroud, we've changed it to Hexproof. And Hexproof means nobody but you can target your creature with spells or abilities. The reason Hexproof's number 20 is that...

Oh, I really, really quickly, before I get into Hexproof. In making this list, I purposely chose to do evergreen mechanics that I thought we used all the time, but I avoided what I call sort of mostly game actions, like draw or discard. So I didn't put those on my list. Just a little copy of that. Okay.

So anyway, hexproof has proven to be a little non-interactive. That when you put hexproof on something, it's hard to deal with. At least you can't deal with the spells. Now, obviously you can deal with it in combat. But if you sort of put hexproof on a creature with evasion, it's near impossible to deal with, and it's not that hard to put evasion

on things. So, we're very cautious with hexproof. It hasn't gone away for a couple reasons. One is, temporary hexproof is quite interesting and valuable, a way to sort of protect things. And conditional hexproof can be interesting. Like I have hexproof when I'm untapped. And there's a small subset of things that we want to have hexproof. A classic example is, let's say we make a combo piece. Something that says, okay, you know, whenever you do this, get a counter. When you get 20 counters, you win the game. It's not much fun that someone invests all this time and all this energy

and works toward this goal and the last second you just destroy it, right? So we'll put hexproof on those. There are certain things where hexproof is valuable. So the reason we haven't got rid of it is there are places and times and uses for it that are useful, but it is hard to use as a general thing. We just don't want to put hexproof on lots of things. So that is why it's number 20 in my list. Number 19, First Strike.

So First Strike is one of the mechanics today that goes all the way back to Alpha. It was in Alpha, Elvish Archers, and I think there were a few others. White Knight, Dark Knight had First Strike. So First Strike, so Hexproof means you can't be targeted. First Strike means that I do damage to you

before you do damage to me. The reason that First Strike's all the way down here at 19, people are like, why so low? Is we've learned that Hex, not Hexproof, we've learned that First Strike has a problem. It is too good defensively. That if I

get a First Striker out, it really shuts down the board. It's hard to deal with a First Striker. Without being able to destroy it with a spell, it's hard with creatures to deal with a First Striker. So you'll notice, we do use First Strike, but a lot of the First Strike we use these days tends to be

either on your turn turn or on attack or as an attack trigger. We like aggressive first strike. Aggressive first strike is an evasion ability, sort of. It makes you hard to block. So we like aggressive first strike. We don't like defensive first strike.

But that's baked into first strike. So we... I'm not never. We do occasionally. Usually if we put first strike on something, it's something that we want to be a little more on the aggressive nature. We don't make a lot of defensive first strikes anymore. And so it's a good mechanic

in that it's flavorful. It just is one of those things, and we've learned that over the years, that the differential between attack and defense banding is not on this list but banding had the same problem where banding on offense was kind of interesting I mean it was confusing but from a gameplay standpoint it played well but banding on defense was just brutal and it would it just shut down boards and so one of the things we've learned in general when making mechanics is you really have to think about how defensive it is.

Mechanics that end up being too defensive just don't make great evergreen mechanics. Okay, number 18, Defender. So when magic first got made, there were walls in it, like wall of stone, wall of wood. And the wall creature type just had built into it, can't attack. The can't attack was, defender means can't attack. So walls had built into it that. So occasionally we make a card that said,

you know, target creature becomes the creature type of your choice. But we have to say not walls, because walls had baked in mechanics to it. So we finally said, okay, let's... And the other one was legends. Before legendary was a super type, it was a creature type. That was the two that had baked-in rules to it. So we said, okay, let's stop doing that.

We turned legends into legendary for creatures. And we said, okay, we're going to make a brand new mechanic called a fender, which basically means you can't attack. All walls will have defender. So no wall will change how it works, but will pull out that can't attack from the keyword. So now if you make something a wall, it doesn't inherently have defender. Although whenever we print a wall, we'll make sure that it does. Defender has its time and its place. Defenders are

interesting in that if the defender doesn't have a way to attack, like some defenders have a way by which it can attack. But if a defender can't attack, we can count it not as a creature from a design skeleton standpoint. And a lot of ways you can think of it more as a way to protect yourself, more so than a way to do damage. And players generally like Defender in the sense that, I mean, it's a drawback. Like, players don't like drawbacks, and Defender is one of the few drawbacks that people are okay with. And there is some love for Defender matters, like wall matter stuff,

where like, oh, my walls can attack. There's just something there that people enjoy. Okay, number 17 is reach. So reach was another one of the mechanics that got made during FutureSight. Reach lets you block flyers and... Reach lets you block flyers. The reason we keyworded it was that it was very hard to, my reminder

text from flying, when Reach didn't, it's not that, Reach, the actual mechanic goes back to Alpha. Giant spider in Alpha had basically Reach. The ability goes all the way back. It stems from the fact that Green basically doesn't have flying, or doesn't have very much flying.

And so Green needs answers to flying. And so Reach was a nice, clean, like Green doesn't fly, or doesn't have very much flying. And so green needs answers to flying. And so reach was a nice clean... like green doesn't fly but it has answers to flying. And the reason reach became a keyword was it allowed us to write flying in reminder text very cleanly. Oh I can only be blocked by creatures with flying and reach. It is interesting in that there's not a lot of mechanics that are subsets of other mechanics. Meaning if I have flying, I basically have all the abilities of reach. Now, technically, there's things that affect flyers that wouldn't affect a reach creature.

So it's not 100%. But it's a lot of the subset, a lot of what reach is. So reach is valuable in that it helps us deal with evasion for flying because there's a lot of infrastructure of flying in making a set. So reach is valuable there. All sets have reach. It's secondary in red. I mean, it's something we do need and use from time to time.

It's pretty key for green. In order for flying to do what flying does, we need answers for flying. But it's a little bit ho-hum. It's not the kind of mechanic we can cycle out. Um, and so it is definitely a mechanic that like doesn't excite anybody. It's just more there for you. Like, it's never like, oh, we're making a cycle of creatures and each one gets a keyword. Like giving something a reach is functional, but it's never exciting.

Okay. Number 16, mill. Okay, so Richard Garfield in the game of magic built in an alternate backup, which is, okay, what happens if no one wins? Like what happens if no one does enough damage? Or you get in a state where no one can attack? And the answer was, okay, well, at some point, someone is not going to be able to draw a card.

The first person to not be able to draw a card loses. The act of not drawing a card loses the game for you. And then in antiquities, the East Coast playsearchers, Scafali, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, and Chris Page, decided it might be fun to lean into that by making a card that specifically cared about that. And they made Millstone. And what Millstone does, it actively mills you.

It puts a number of cards. Millstone does two cards. But anyway, over the years, milling has become something. It was an unnamed mechanic for many years. And we kept talking about it for years about what to name it. The problem with mill as a word is mill comes from millstone. And millstone is something you like crush grains with. Like metaphorical.

Like millstone was like I'm metaphorically crushing your brain and your memories like you would crush wheat. Like it's in a vacuum if you don't know the card millstone. If I say the mill you it doesn't make any sense in the sense that the words don't mean anything. We searched for words. The problem we had is any word that made sense for the flavor of

I'm getting rid of your memories in your deck also sounded like I was making you discard cards. And so, you know, if I make you forget or something, like, is that milling or is that just discard?

And so in the end, what we decided was people called it milling. Maybe there wasn't a term that inherently implied it. Sometimes we have vocabulary that you just got to learn and mill's one of those. But once people learn it, it sort of feels natural to people, even though you know, I don't know if the average person even knows that milling means that you crush grain with stone wheels. But anyway, it is a neat mechanic in that a lot of players, especially less experienced players, it is a very impactful thing to do.

Milling two cards means you lost the card. You mill my Ship and Dragon, for example, we gave. Like, oh no, I lost my Ship and Dragon. And the reality is it could have been on the bottom of your deck. Like, more experienced players understand that, like, look, there's some cards you're not going to draw and milling really is just sort of, in some ways, shuffling the

library, which isn't super impactful. Like, milling really doesn't mean anything unless one of two things are true. You mill them out for the win condition, or there's something, there's some graveyard synergies where it can matter. Now, we do a lot of graveyard synergies, and so milling is something that we include where we can. I know in Playbooster World, it's going to be more as a secondary effect rather than a card, as all the card does, because the card can be blank in certain circumstances

and limited. Like, if you're not trying to mill somebody out or you're not specifically playing into sort of a graveyard strategy. But, the idea of

milling as an ETB effect or now an E effect, I guess, enters the battlefield as becoming enters. So, I've got to figure out whether we're just calling those

enters effects. Anyway, so mill definitely has some richness. It is something that certain players get very excited by. Mill strategies are very fun. Whenever we put mill strategies in, there's players that really enjoy milling out your opponent.

It's just a different way to play. And so I put that there at number 16. Number 15 is indestructible. So most of these, while I had a lot to do with keywording a lot of these, I didn't have a lot to do with making a lot of these, a few. This is one, this might be the only evergreen mechanic I just made. There's a few I had a hand in, I guess.

But anyway, this came about during, we were making, we made Odyssey and then we made dark steel or not odyssey i'm sorry mirrodin and then we made dark steel and then um fifth on uh and in dark steel i was having a talk with bill rose one day and bill was saying i was talking to bill about how my strategy of just making new mechanics was you know you just have to figure out, like, what are things that players want, either want or don't want. Like, either things players want and then give it to them or things players don't want

and help them keep that from happening. And Bill said, oh, that's very interesting. So what, okay, what don't players want? And I joked and I said, well, they don't want their cars to be destroyed. And then I'm like, wait a minute, bing, bing, bing. I'm like, okay, what if't players want? And I joked and I said, well, they don't want their cars to be destroyed. And then I'm like, wait a minute, bing, bing, bing. I'm like, okay,

what if we made a mechanic that kept your stuff from being destroyed? That's where Indestructible was born. So it ended up being a mechanic, well, ended up being in Dark Steel. Originally, it wasn't a keyword. It was just vocabulary. Because Indestructible means can't be destroyed.

Okay, you can't destroy it. Enough people thought it was a keyword because we ended up, it ended up becoming evergreen pretty quickly. It's just, it was useful in a bunch of places. And so we ended up making it a keyword just because people were treating it like a keyword and there's some subtle differences

between keywords and not keywords. So indestructible became a keyword. We have to be careful. Like hexproof, keywords. So indestructible became a keyword. We have to be careful. Like Hexproof, you can't just put it on too many things. What we tend to like most is either indestructible as an action, a

temporary action, indestructible end of turn. It's how we sort of mimic what the old school regeneration was. Like, oh, I can become an indestructible end of turn. It's sort of like, well, I won't die. Also, is good conditionally, either in the sense that you're indestructible under certain circumstances

or I have to work and earn my way to indestructibleness. We also have used indestructible somewhat on some gods. We like the idea that the gods are hard to get rid of. The ones in Pharaoh said indestructible. There's some challenges with indestructible permanents, so it's not something we can do a lot of.

But anyway, I put it at 15. So number 14 is fight. So one of the challenges is colors have weaknesses. One of green's core weaknesses is its over-reliance on creatures. So green, one of the things about that is we like the idea that like every color needs to have answers for creatures. And green does not have spells that destroy creatures directly. But we like the idea, like for a long time, green just couldn't destroy creatures and it was problematic. And it had... We played around with things like provoke and things

or lure. We're like, you have to block me. But it caused some weirdness and if you can tap the creatures and they don't have to block. So in the end, what we decided was, is there a way to let green sort of like have a one-on-one fight with somebody, right? Can I,

you know, it's kind of like getting in combat, but it's outside of combat. Just like, can you and I sort of get in combat just right now? And we came up with the idea of fighting. Originally, it was started just as like words on cards, but like we realized it answered a really interesting problem for us,

which is in Limited, green needs answers to other creatures, in Constructed Hoop, especially in Limited. It needs answers to other creatures, and so fighting, which means, you know, I do damage to you, you do damage to me, which is a lot like being in combat, has just proven to be a really useful tool for Green. We also have something we call Bite, which isn't keyworded, which is I just do damage to you. I don't get damage back. Fight is we each damage each other.

Bite is I just sort of damage you. But anyway, fight has been a key part of green and just a very usable tool. Anyway, so I put that at 15. Did I say 15? 15. Oh, no I put that at 15. Did I say 15? 15. Oh, no, sorry. 14. 13 is equip. So in Mirrodin, for a long time, going

all the way back, I think, to like Arabian Nights, like Arabian Nights had flying carpet. The idea that I have an object, and then one of my creatures wants to use the object is a pretty flavorful, cool thing. I have a sword I want to give to my goblin. And for a long time, we had auras. But auras kind of didn't represent things.

In the early days, sometimes they represented magical things. Like, it's a sword made out of fire. But we decided that we liked the idea of just having tangible things. So Mirrodin was our artifact block, our first big artifact block. Mirrodin was our artifact block, our first big artifact block. So we decided, like, what if we made some version of, like, auras, but for equipment. I say for artifacts. And the thing that really differentiated them from it was the idea that if I give a sword to my goblin,

and you kill my goblin, well, the sword's still there. Someone else could use the sword. So we came up with the idea that equipment, you don't put it on a creature directly. You put it on the board. It just sits there. And then, once it's on the battlefield, you can pay to equip it. Equip is the mechanic I'm talking about.

So equipping allows you to take this thing that isn't attached to this body and attach it. And then, if the creature dies, it unattaches and sits on the battlefield. And so it allows us, it sort of fixes one of the creature dies, it unattaches and sits on the battlefield. And so, it allows us... It sort of fixes one of the aura issues, which is... Auras have this card disadvantage. I put it on my creature, destroy my creature. Now I've lost my creature and the aura.

And equipment doesn't do that. So, we put equipment in Mirrodin. They were useful almost instantaneously. And so, they became evergreen at the very next... Champs-Élys to have them in it. Anyway, equip is useful, and it is something that also gives us some nice knobs. The idea that it costs something to play the equipment, it's something to equip the equipment. The cool thing about having the equip cost is if I want to make it something that is hard to equip,

like I don't want you moving it around a lot, I can give it a high cost. Like a real common thing we'll do is we'll do what we call snap-on, where it's equipment that when it enters, it equips itself to a creature for free, and then it has an expensive cost to move it, right? So the idea is it snaps on and it equips four. And what that says is we're going to kind of pick a creature,

and then, look, maybe late game you can move it, but you're not going to move it a lot. Once the creature dies, okay, probably you'll spend man at some point to re-equip it, but it's something where you'll probably keep it on the creature we first have for a while, you know, until late game maybe, or it dies. Okay, next, at number 12 is crew.

I went back and forth on crew and equip, which to put where. So crew goes on vehicles. Vehicles are basically evergreen. They're either on the cusp of deciduous or evergreen. I put them in evergreen just because we use them almost every set. So vehicles are things that you, the player, can kind of climb into and drive or move or whatever. And the way we make crew works is crew has a number,

and you have to tap that much power in creature. So, on equipment. Vehicles first showed up in Kaladesh. The early version of crew was crew N, and N meant tap that many creatures. So crew 2 was tap two creatures.

What ended up happening with that, though, was it just got so much better in decks with, like, tokens than it was everywhere else that they weren't usable. So the interesting story of Kru was we were making a land mechanic in Ixalan,

and I was trying to stay off of Kaladesh, because that was the previous year. They were still working on it. So we wanted you to, like to conquest the land or something. I forgot the word. But you're somehow gaining control of the land. And so we came up with this idea that you had to tap so much power of creature. Meanwhile, they were struggling.

Kaladesh was in development. They were sort of struggling a little bit, trying to balance equipment. Not equipment, sorry, vehicles. And I realized that the tool we had used was actually pretty valuable. So I went to Ian, who was one of the co-developers of, or co-set leads, or I guess it was back then they were developers. But anyway, he was one of the co-developers of Kaladesh. And I said to him, you know, this tool is working really well for us, but we don't need it. Like, we could do something else.

Maybe you want to use this for vehicles. And he did, and it worked out well, and it's pretty cool. The crew is really neat. I like creature power as a resource, because it's something that makes bigger creatures have different value in a way that's kind of cool. And it's neat that, like, oh, a bunch of little guys can crew this, or one big guy can crew it.

I just think that plays quite well. Okay. Number 11 is Double Strike. So this is interesting. I think this is the only mechanic, or sorry, only evergreen keyword mechanic that was made by an audience member.

So during the very first You Make the Card, Mr. Baby Cakes, what did he ever be called? He was an elemental. I'm blanking. The design name is Mr. Baby Cakes. Maybe I'll come to it. But anyway, we were designing, he's a green creature, and so we needed abilities for him.

Somebody turned in Double Strike. Now, green isn't a color that has First Strike. I know there's one in Alpha, but in general, green does not have First Strike. And so, the idea of Double Strike on a creature that in colors that didn't have First Strike felt wrong. But it was so elegant.

It was like, oh, well imagine if you just did First Strike and Normal Damage. Like, we have First Strike damage, we have Normal Damage. What if you just did both strike and normal damage. Like, we have first strike damage, we have normal damage. What if you just did both? It was so elegant and so clean, we just said, okay, we're going to start doing that, and we started putting it in. So the reason that double strike is higher than

first strike, I put first strike at 19, and double strike's at 11, is double strike has, I mean, it has the same defensive issue, but it is so aggressive in nature. Like, if I'm going to block the creature, a lot of times the first strike alone is going to stop the creature.

But if I attack, I get to double my damage. And doubling damage, like, it's like first strike, but has an element to it built in that really, really encourages you to attack. It's also a very clean way for us to double power in a way that's not very wordy. It's a lot of words to try to double something's power, but target creature against double strike is very

simple, and so it's ended up being something that has been just a little bit cleaner and a little easier to use than first strike. We don't tend to put it at common, but it also is a very sexy mechanic. Players, like myself, like doubling quite a bit.

Doubling is pretty powerful. And so it's just a very flashy mechanic. It's also nice that it's nested into First Strike, meaning that once you understand First Strike, it's not hard to understand Double Strike. And so, I don't know. It's just very useful and splashy. Okay.

The final, um, one of today, the top ten today, is Trample. Oh, no, that's number ten. Um, oh, I did a number. Oh, sorry. I did. Okay, I'm going to do Trample today,

and then we'll just do, we'll do, uh, nine next time. I was trying to time this correctly, and I misjudged, but I try to do 30 minutes. So I will talk trample and the next time I will do nine. Okay, so trample is another one of the alpha keywords. Richard made it.

The idea behind trample was Richard wanted some way for larger creatures to sort of be relevant. One of the problems that you find is chump blocking is something that happens a lot. So chump blocking means that you attack with something big. I block with something small. My small thing's going to die. You're way bigger than I am. But I prevent damage for the turn.

And chump blocking strategically is very interesting. And the idea is that a lot of times, like, okay, I'm willing to throw away smaller things, prevent damage from bigger things. But the problem was, if you made something that was significantly bigger, you're making a 7-7, an 8-8, or

something, that chump blocking ended up, like, it really was making it not worth sometimes to play the larger creatures that if i spent all you like in order to get an 8-8 out i'm spending a lot of mana right it's a lot of investment and the idea that i finally get it out and it's late game and late game you have a lot of answers you have a lot of creatures because it's late game then it's like i mean yeah every turn i make you lose a creature but it really it's just inefficient and it makes it

harder to make large creatures. So we were trying to figure out how to make large creatures. And by we, I mean this is Richard, this is Alpha. And Richard realized that if some of the bigger creatures kind of punched through, meaning they cared about what blocked them, that it mattered the toughness of what

blocked them, then all of a sudden this big creature, it has some extra meaning. You couldn't just ignore it. It could break through and do damage. And then all of a sudden, oh, now I'm not just chump blocking it, I have to think about how much toughness is blocking it. If I have an eight-power trampler, oh, well, for every toughness below eight that I'm putting in front of it,

I'm taking that damage. And it really put an oomph onto making big creatures matter. Now, trample is interesting in that it is a complicated mechanic. It is one of, like, there's not a lot of mechanics that were in alpha. I mean, for example, today I talked about first strike. Protection did not make my top 20 but it protection still around although protection is kind of deciduous these days so that's why i didn't put on my list um flying obviously still around um trample i mean there's not not a lot of keywords from the early

days that are still here there's a handful uh not a lot um and i think trample just solves its problem it's very flavorful um there was a period of time we didn't put Trample into the core set. In fact, also in unglued BFM, BFM wasn't given Trample, partly because we were, at the time, we were thinking, oh, the unsets are more, it's a little more beginning place. That's not

really true anymore. It never was true, but we were, and so we didn't put Trample on it. Also, I guess Trample on a 999 just is going to win the game. But anyway, yeah, I guess that's another part of it. Anyway, sorry. So trample is a complicated mechanic, something that can cause peaceful problems, but it is somewhat intuitive once you understand how it works. And it is flavorful and it really does a great job of making large creatures matter. And so it is something, it is a tool that we've used effectively. That is why it made my top ten.

So anyway, next time I will talk to the rest of the top ten. And yeah, one of the things that's interesting for me just walking through and talking through this list is part of becoming evergreen is I mean, a few things started evergreen, but mostly the way you become evergreen is you prove yourself over time. A lot of evergreen mechanics didn't start as a mechanic.

It's just something written on a card, and then over time, we're like, wow, this is pretty useful, and we sort of eventually say, okay, we should name it, and then once we name it, then it starts getting used a lot more. Naming something is super powerful for making it used more. Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed my part one

here. I will have a part two. Anyway, like I said, I hope you guys, some of these stories I've told, some of them haven't, but the history of all mechanics and sort of why they're important, why they're valuable. But anyway, guys, I'm now at work. So I know what that means. It's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.