Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1135: Monocolor Design

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

In this podcast, I talk about how we design monocolor themes for both Constructed and Limited.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work Okay, so today I'm talking all about monocolored design Okay, but before I can get into all the elements of design. I first have to explain a basic principle of the game Okay, so when Richard Garfield first made magic of the game. Okay, so when Richard Garfield first made magic, he had to solve a basic problem of trading card games, what he referred to as the Queen's Problem. The idea is I am playing a game of chess, and if I'm allowed to choose all my pieces, why don't I choose 15 queens and a king? The one king is because it's the winning condition. Why wouldn't I choose 15 queens and a king? The one king is because it's the winning condition.

Why wouldn't I choose all queens? That's not the king. Why wouldn't I choose all queens? Why play a pawn or a rook or a knight? Why not just play, you know, why not just play a queen? All queens. It's the most powerful piece.

And the answer was, he needed to find ways in a trading card game that encourage you to want to play different things. So he ended up coming with two different forces that in different ways encouraged you to play more cards. One was the mana system, meaning that there's a curve that you develop your mana as the game progresses. So that meant is in the first turn of the game, a one drop is very powerful,

where a six drop is useless to you. But late in the game, a six drop is very powerful, and a one drop is not nearly as useful to you. That the idea that the mana evolved over time really made different cards have different values at different points in the game The second thought the second thing that Richard did is he made the color pie Rather than having one series of cards. He made five different cards of sight five different colors of cards and Each color has its own strengths and weaknesses

There are things that white can do the blue can't, or that blue can do that black can't. And the color pie really said, hey, one of the reasons that I'm not always playing the same things is I have to make choices. I have to pick colors. Now in order to make that work, the mana system really pushes against, like essentially there's a tension that Richard designed. It's the mana system versus the color pie. The mana system rewards you for playing as few colors as possible.

In general, one of the challenges when you're playing, you have a randomized deck, you draw, you don't know the order you're getting things And the fact that though there's a resource that Progresses your game, you know land and mana so one of the things that can happen is I Whenever you have cards in your hand that you can't play they're dead cards, right? I have a card that I can't play And when you're playing a game of magic what can happen is early in the game your dead cards are just cards you don't have enough mana to play. And as the game progresses, you can land screw, which is I just don't draw enough land.

And if that happens, I can't play my more expensive spells, I just don't have the land to play them. But there's another problem you can run into which is color screw The idea of color screw is I have enough land But I don't have enough of what I need to cast the spells I want Often when your color screwed I'm playing a two-color deck and I only draw my first color I don't draw my second color. So every card in my hand of that second color is a dead card so that second color is a dead card. So the mana system says the less colors you play the more consistent your draw and one of the big draws of monocolor play is that consistency. The

strength of the color pie is the more colors you play the more the more abilities you get you get access to and the more cards you get access to so the idea is The less colors I play the more accurate my mana is the easier my mana is for me the more colors I played the access to more things I got but the mana system starts causing you trouble And that is a really robust system. It creates a lot of fun tension. But when we're talking about monocolored design, we very much have to think about the mana system because the reason to play monocolored design is the reasons the mana system kind of gives you to play mono color design. So the first part about that,

the first really big step has to do with colored mana. So when you're costing a card, you have the option of how much colored mana you put on the card. The more colored mana you put on the card, the more you're punished for, and the easier it is to get color screwed, right? If I only have only one color, okay,

I need to draw that card, I can get color screwed if I don't draw any of that card. But if I have one mana of that color, I get one mana color pip, I don't need a lot to play. I just need to have some access to the color. But if you start adding two, three, four more color pips, it becomes harder and harder to play. So that is the first tool.

When we're talking about designing for monocolor, the first big thing is understanding the power of color pips. Now one of the things we've learned in general, the way to think of it as a general sense is common and uncommon are more geared for limited and rare and mythic rare are more geared for constructed. It's not that you can't have constructed cars in common or uncommon, but you really have to think about choices. And so when it comes to mana, one of the things in general is, and when we talk about monocolored design, there's two different parts to talk about.

One is constructed and one is limited. I'm going to start talking about constructed. Constructed is the easier of the two to design for. I will get to limited. Limited is actually a lot harder to design for. So that's why I'm going to start with constructed. So in constructed, number one tool I have to design for monocolored really comes down to the mana. And the easiest way to think of it is, I'm gonna divide into different colors, into different mana values. So at one mana value, all you can do is have one color pip, whatever.

One is one. For two and three, adding a second colored mana causes all sorts of challenges in limited, but in constructed, really if you're playing a two drop or a three drop that has two color pips in it, you either want to be playing a mono color deck or what we call a splash. Mostly it's one color and just splashing a second color, maybe splashing two colors.

Although the more colors you splash, the harder it is to play heavy mana things. So if we want to take something and gear it for constructed, the very first tool, the biggest tool we have is how many colored mana pips we put in something. So if something costs two or three and we put two colored mana pips in it, odds are we are more pushing that card for constructed. We're more thinking about constructed.

For limited, you can do multiple colors but usually not a two or three. That if you see a two drop, you know, I'll just use white for my example. If you see white white on a two drop, usually that's not geared for limited. That is geared for constructed. And the interesting thing about that is that white white in a dedicated mono white deck is very easy to play. You need two mana. But in a multicolor deck, let's say a two-color deck, you know, half the time you're going to get color-screwed and not be able to play that on turn two.

So the... Two and three mana, we put double. As you start getting into four-plus, it's a little bit easier to get two. And really if we want to start doing three we start thinking about five and six. But the idea essentially is the more colored mana we do and the lower it is in the mana of mana value the harder it is to play. So let's run through a little bit of why would you play monocolor?

There's a lot of reasons not to play monocolor. You don't have access to other things, but let's walk into why you would. Number one is consistency of mana. That you don't want to miss, you wanna make sure that you're able to play all your cards. And this ties a lot into the ability to tap

into more colored pips. That if you want to play a two drop on turn two, that's white, white, well, if you're not playing mono white, it's hard to be consistent there. So, when we talk about consistency, the kind of deck you want to be the most consistent on is aggression. If I'm playing a deck that's all about beating you quickly, I can't hiccup. I can't stumble.

And a lot of the reasons you're going to play white white in a deck is I get more. The reason that we put extra mana pips is it's harder to play extra mana pips. So we are allowed to put extra value there. White white gets more than one in a white. Because one in a white is a lot easier to play. So white white just we're allowed to make the card more powerful because it's harder to play.

That white white, much like we can give you more power in two in a white versus one in a white we can give you more power in white white and the more concentrated we are the more we can do so the reason you want to play monocolor the number one reason is consistency and the most likely reason you want consistency is aggression that I wanted to hit you fast my my early turns matter, I don't have the ability to miss. That having a stumble early on will cost me the game. And in aggression that means the most. If I'm trying to beat you before you get going, every turn that I delay is crucial. It's a huge problem for me. So I can't. I can't be missing turns.

The nice thing about multi-mono color is you don't miss turns. I mean, you can get land screwed, but you don't get color screwed. Okay, the second reason you'll care about consistency is you are playing cards that are at the rate where the expected value isn't not you won't hit them in time Once again, that might be a two or a three drop that has white white. It has two white in it Or a four and above drop that has usually three or more even a four drop with two You can miss that some portion of the time like you want to consistently hit the two white white card Being in mono white or heavy white will help you.

And once you start getting three colored mana or four colored mana, unless it's a very expensive card, I mean, six white white white maybe, but unless it is something that like, essentially the way to think of it is imagine you usually keep your hand because you have two or three mana. So you're going to get your first one or two usually and odds are you'll get your third mana close to your third turn just because either you keep a hand with three or I have a bunch of turns to draw one mana before I get there. So one and two usually you'll drop on one and two, three will be turn three,

maybe turn four, but then it starts stretching out how often you hit your mana. Meaning that you often don't hit five on turn five or six on turn six, it stretches out a bit. And if you're playing equally in two colors, let's assume you're gonna draw those at 50% rate. Like the idea of you really, really can miss cards that have a lot of colored mana. So the other reason that consistency matters is there are cards that are vital to what I want to do that we have price with lots of colored mana in them. And you're like, okay, the cost of playing these cards is playing heavier of that color. Another reason you might play monocolor in constructed is that you need a strength of

a theme and that theme is located in the color. There's two ways that plays out. One is certain abilities only exist in certain colors or are concentrated in those colors. For example, if I want to play a discard deck I want to make you discard a lot of cards. Well black really is the color that does discard So I kind of probably gonna be a mono black If I want to just counter spell everything you do counter spells aren't blue

Now interesting both of those decks It's not fun to have a deck full of Discard, a deck full of Counterspell, so we've been pushing against those a little bit in Card Power. But there are strategies where I just want to do the strategy and it's there. The most common reason is you're playing a typal deck and that a certain creature type is more located in a certain color. Now the idea of aggression and typal often go hand in hand. For example, I'm playing a merfolk deck.

I kind of want to be aggressive with my merfolk deck and well most merfolk and most merfolk buffers show up in blue. So if I'm playing a merfolk deck, especially I'm trying to play a fafter merfolk deck, I'm probably in mono blue. So typo is another big reason that people go to mono color. They want the consistency. Often that leads toward aggression, but not always. You can play non-aggression typo. If the type really exists heavily in that color, sometimes that's why you'll focus. The last thing of why in constructed you will play a minor card deck, I like to call it being bribed. But what I really mean is there are strong individual cards that really pay you off for

being heavy in the color, if not completely in the color. So let me walk through how we do that. So first is what we call scaling cards. Sometimes they're called count me's. And what that means is I care either about white, I'm just using white as my example. I care about white permanents, white creatures. I care about white things, or maybe I care about planes,

because there's a one-fong correlation between white and planes. So the idea of a scaling or a count me is I care about how many white things, either it could be white permanents, it could be white creatures, maybe it's white enchantments in the right deck, or it could be number of planes,

but it just means I get more powerful the more I have of something. And in constructed, the difference between constructed and limited is, constructed is you optimize every card. In limited, you play cards that might not be optimized, but it's what you got and it's the best you can do. Like a lot of limited play is making do with what you have. But in constructed,

if I can't optimize a card, I don't play the card. So if I have a count me that says, okay, I'm at my most powerful for you having a lot of white things. Well, you kind of want to play in the deck that has all white things. Or if I'm counting the number of planes I have, kind of on me in Dec or all my all my you know Lands are planes that if you're trying to optimize and constructed which is what you tend to do Company card pushes you in that direction it says okay. Well, I'm stronger the more I have and that's all I'm gonna play Another version we could do that is triggered The most common thing will be whenever I cast a white creature or whatever, a white

creature enters the battlefield. The idea of a triggered spell is it's not that I want a lot at once, it's that every time it happens, I get an effect. So once again, I'm encouraged to play a lot of it. Okay, well every time I play a white spell, I gain one life. Okay, I kind of want to play a lot of it. Okay, well every time I play a white spell I gain one life. Okay, I kind of want to play a lot of white spells. Triggered aren't as... the scaling count means push you a little bit more. The trigger stuff, I mean once again, you want to trigger as

much as possible so the more you have that color the better, but triggering will work a little bit better. Like you might actually play a trigger deck in a deck in which you're not all that color depending on what the trigger is. Next is a buff. What a buff says is I reward you having them. All white creatures get plus one plus one. The difference between scaling and a buff is scaling says I the creature, I the card you're playing and better and stronger because of the nature of the other things

above says I make all those things of that color more powerful. I grant them ability. I do something that makes them better. Scaling and buffer just two, two sides of the same coin. Scaling basically says I I want a lot of things, so I'm really strong. And Buff says, I want a lot of things, so they're all stronger. The final category here is, we also can make a reference to a color or a car type.

Meaning, if I tutor for a white card, or I can enchant a white card. There are cards that sort of say, hey, I reference this color and the reason to have more of them is just you increase your choices and options. It's not that I'm counting everything. It's not that I'm buffing everything. I'm only counting or buffing one thing. But the more you have, the more powerful

this is. One of the more powerful things, the thing about tutoring, which is interesting specifically is that if I tutor, I don't necessarily need a lot of my deck because I know I'm getting the specific thing. The thing we started doing more of is what we call impulsing, which is look at the top end cards of your library. If you find something of this subset revealed to your opponent, you get to put it in your hand, put the rest on the bottom. So the idea there is I'm searching for a white creature or a white spell or a white, you know, I'm searching for something that's white.

And the nice thing about Impulse is because I don't guarantee what I get, A, it's more random which makes more variance, which is more fun gameplay, But also I want to be playing more of that thing. What I don't want to do when I impulse is miss. I don't want to look at the top five cards, take a white creature. Oh, I didn't hit a white creature. Now if I'm playing mono white, the chance of me hitting the white thing goes way up because my options, you know, like, yeah, I could hit five planes in a row or something, but the odds of that happening are very low. And so the cards that reference by color do encourage you, especially things like impulse that sort of reward you for having high density.

Okay. So those are the many ways in construction. Now the one other thing I should talk about in constructed is commander. Okay. So in commander, it's very straightforward. We want you to play a monocore. Well, we make monocore legendary creatures that we think are good commanders. The trick of monocore commanders is they come at a huge cost, and that cost is commander is all about you have a hundred card singleton deck, you have access to all of magic or most of magic, well you want to make sure that you can fill out your deck. So if we're going to make a mono-colored thing, we are heavily cutting down how many cards

you have access to. Because all of a sudden, you can only play cards only of that color. No multi-color cards, only mono-color cards of that color and colors. So in order to do that, we really have to reward you. A, we have to play into a theme that is strong in that color that you can build a deck with it. And B, the average power level in general to be a commander has to be like,

there's a lot you're giving up. So it really has to reward you pretty strongly. And even then, monocolor commanders make up a tiny portion of play. Most people who are playing commanders want access to more colors and they play multicolor commanders. Okay, now that gets to limited. So limited is a challenge, but in order to understand limit, I got to talk math. For those that don't know, there's a lot of math in game design, especially in Magic. And so I'm going to talk about playing a default deck for purposes of making things clear to

understand. I'm not going to talk right now about often in, and we have five colors, but often we have some colors cards, including lands, artifacts. I'm going to exclude those for a second. I'm going to talk about as a second. I'm going to talk about As Fans, just about color, not about colors yet. We'll get to colors in a second. But so let's say I'm playing a default and I have five colors and let's say each color takes up one fifth of the cards. So 20% of the cards are

white, 20% black, 20% red, I'm sorry, 20% white, blue, black, red, green. Okay, so let's say I want to play a mono white deck. I only have access to 20% of the cards. That is not a lot of the cards. If I'm playing a two-caller deck, I have access to 40% of the cards. That is literally twice as many cards. And if we're talking about something like limited,

it is almost impossible. It is very, very hard in, or some might say limited, I mean sealed. In sealed, it's very hard to play one color. You literally just don't have the cards to do it. For example, we give you six packs in limited. There are 14 cards per pack. And one of those is a land.

So 13 non-land cards per pack. So 13 times six is 78. When you divide 78 by five, I didn't do this ahead of time, but 80 divided by five, let's see, 80 divided by, I do math in my head. One, 30, 16.

So you have, assuming you had 80 cards rather than 70, make it easier. You have 16 of each color. In order and limited play, you have to play 40 cards, 17 of which are land, so 23 of which are permanent. So in sealed, you need 23 cards and you don't even open up 23 metal color cards Maybe maybe maybe I assume you've even you can get things that are weighted a certain direction

It's not impossible in field, but it's very very hard in Draft you get to choose what you're taking and so you get a focus on one or two colors sometimes more than two But you get a focus so the or two colors sometimes more than two, but you get a focus. So the ability of getting enough to play with is a lot easier in draft. So draft, it's a lot easier. I'm not super easy.

The danger in draft for playing one color is not that you can't get access to it, but if the person to your right who is feeding you for packs one and packs three are in that color, they really could three are in that color they really could cut you off that color and so you might not be able to get enough cards or enough cards of the quality that you need. Being in multiple colors allows you some flexibility if things don't go your way. Okay now there are some tools we can use to get up your ASFan. Tool number one is hybrid mana. Hybrid counts as a monocolor of either color. So let's take Shadamor which is the most

monocolor, most hybrid we've ever done. Basically it was half hybrid half not. So and it was ally for Shadamor. So let's assume we're playing that. That means I have 10% white, blue, black, red, green, and 10% white, blue, each of the five hybrid things. So if I'm playing mono white, I have access to mono white, I have access to white, blue, I have access to green, white. And all those are playable in a mono white deck. So now I have access to 30%.

Okay, I got 10% more. That is enough, for example, in SEAL to be able to play one color. That doesn't mean you want to or have to, and there's still things you give up when you do that, but at least you're able to. The other big tool we have is colorless mana. And you know, if you take something like Myriden, which was our first set, Myriden had half colorless cards in it. So in Mirrodin, you had 10% of each mono color and 50% colorless.

That meant that a mono white deck had access to 60% of the cards. In fact, Mirrodin was famous for being able to splash multiple colors because you had so much heavy. But here's the problem. Shadowmore was too much hybrid We consider mirrored in too much colorless that that you know having lots of colors cause endless problems So a lot of the tools we have to help make it easier to play a mono color in limited are hard to do you know that the They're not things we want to do in large volume. But it is what we get.

I mean, for example, we do make sets that have a theme of mono color. I will use Throne of Eldraine as an example, right? So we wanted you to, the courts were tied to the colors. And we even made a mechanic that the more you played of the color, like you could play the card normally, but if you played all of the color,

then the card got more powerful. So let's talk a little bit through the tools we have in limited. So number one is we do have color pips, but we're more restrained on the color pips Usually at common we do not put multiple colors on a card till we get to five or six mana Like you will not see white white on a card usually At common until we get to five or six mana and the reason for that is it's just very hard and limited to play

Mono color so we don't tend to put those cards in at low mana value. Now there are some exceptions for example in multicolor usual, I mean the definition of multicolor is there's two color pips. We're careful at common what kind of things we do and what resources we have. We usually will use things like cycling or things that allow you or you know one time in cons we used morph. We want to use a mechanic that helps you do something with it if you get color screwed. But as a general rule of thumb when we're doing monocolored themes, A we're careful with like the idea is we let you opt into having more color. Maybe we give you a mechanic you could kick it or reward you like in

Thorn of Eldrin if you play more of a certain color. But we want it, what we tend to do is things that are playable if you only have one man of that color but get better as you have more. So the idea is the card's not dead outside of a monocolor deck, but it's more powerful on a monocolor deck. The other thing we will do is we do like making individual cards that push monocolor strategies, but we don't put them at common.

We tend to put them at uncommon. And the reason we put them at uncommon is draft build around show up at uncommon. We like the idea that you open a booster pack, you take something early and it puts you on a path. One of those paths in limited can be monocolor play. We do like, and it depends on the environment, some things like throwing an L drain. It's a theme and so we're more pushing into it.

Shadowmore likewise, it was a theme. Other sets, it's just uh it's one of the things you could do that like one of the things we like is we have our base draft strategies and then uncommon we like to put extra things that aren't normally what you do but hey you've drafted the set a whole time here's a new challenge. Mono color is a fun challenge that we can give you in draft it's very hard to seal. Mono color is a fun thing we can can give you in draft. It's very hard to deal. Mono color is a fun thing we can do in draft. And so a lot of what we have to do is give you rewards

to try to sort of encourage you early to think that way. And the other thing about limited that's important to understand is we tend to think of in limited purposes, a lot of times constructed, monocoque's like you're playing nothing but one color. In limited, the idea of heavy in a color, meaning I'm mostly white but I'm splashing blue

or splashing green or red or whatever, that's a very common thing we think about in limited, is that you can be heavy in a color. That doesn't mean you're monocolor. It means you're more that color than you're the other color. And normally when you're heavy in a color, you only play cards that you can play later. That I'm splashing. I'm splashing for powerful cards that if I don't get the colored mana I need in the first few turns, I'm okay. You don't tend to play one and two and three drops that require that color, unless it's not time condition. For example, I might splash black for a creature kill that costs

one and a black or two and a black, not because I plan to cast on a second turn. When I draw that later in the game, yeah, I can't play that maybe to turn three or turn four or turn five But it's okay a kill spell useful to me valuable to me late in the game where a to drop It's really about aggression not valuable to me So we also do play into heavy drag heavy color strategies in limited words like well Someone could lean into this and heavy color strategies tend to work well with cards we designed for mono color. They're not completely optimized,

but again, total optimization is more of a constructive thing. Construct is about, I'm gonna build my deck and I have all these choices, so I'm gonna lean into the best version of what the card can be. For limited, I'm trying to get as much value as I can. And in fact, one of the things that's really important when we make mechanics or cards that push toward heavy

play is that they still have a play even without. For example, I was talking about scalings and triggers and buffs. In limited, that can work out even in a two-color deck. Yeah, it's more powerful in a one-color deck, but they're still viable in a two-color deck. If I have something that says, you know, count me. Now, we'll be much more conscious if we make cards that are thinking about limited, we want to make sure the count means mean something if only half your cards are count means or mean something if it's triggering. And so in limited, we do design cards that we might like, that might also have a constructed advantage point. But the upper end of what the power of the lower end, like what the floor of the card is, is something we think more about in cards that

will play in limited. So common and uncommon. And the ceiling, so real quickly, I use these terms in time time, let me explain these terms. Floor and the ceiling. Floor is what is the worst the card can do. At its worst, what is the power level of the card? That's the floor. The ceiling is what is the best the card can do if the card is completely optimized. In monocolored cards, in constructed,

we care about the ceiling, right? We care about, okay, if you maximize this, how powerful can it be? And we really want monocolored cards aimed at Constructed to have a high ceiling. We want the cards to be something that you can have a dream. That if, we want to reward you for what you're doing. You know, you're gonna go through a lot of rigmarole

to have only monocolored cards. You're giving up a lot, but we need to reward you. So in monocolor cards that are deemed to constructed we're talking about the ceiling. We want a high ceiling Okay, but when we're talking about monocolor cards for limited That's when we talk about the floor and what that means is we want to make sure we're giving you cards that even at their worst You still are okay playing and limited that even at their worst, you still are okay playing and limit it. That even if things don't work out for you, even if you don't quite get what you get,

that there's value there. So one of the things, for example, the difference between ceiling and floor. When I'm caring about floor, in constructed, I might make a spell, for example, that says count the number of things, right? Now that card is dead. If I say, here's how powerful the thing is, but I gotta count the number of this thing. In constructed, if I don't have that thing,

if I draw a dead as they say, even if I have the mana, I just don't have the creatures. Okay, I draw cards equal to the number of blue creatures I have. If I don't have blue creatures, that card is dead in my hand. Even if I have blue mana, the card is dead. And once again, that's a great example of high ceiling, low floor.

Because if I don't have blue things, the card doesn't even do anything. That's fine for constructed, because hey, high ceiling. But in limited, we don't want the floor so low. So for example, when we're doing count means in limited, at common especially, sometimes uncommon, we'll put it on a permanent, usually a creature. Usually the thing you're counting, we put it on a perminate, usually a creature. Usually the thing you're counting, we put it on. So if I'm counting the number of creatures that are white

and it's a white creature, I know my minimum is one, right? And we also can pick effects where just having the minimum means something. A classic example of that is like impulse and draw a card. Well, the floor of impulse and draw a card is draw a card because even if I only look at one card and take it, I'm drawing the card. Now, yeah, if I look at two cards,

I have a choice in my card, but the floor of that effect is very good. What happens is you get more, I have more flexibility in what I draw, it's stronger, but the base level, the floor of the ability is really strong. And so that's a lot to do when we're designing stronger but the base level the floor of the ability is really strong and so that's a lot to do when we're designing for monocolor between constructed and

limited that concept is really important the concept that what do I care about do I care about the floor of the effect or the ceiling of the fact and that has a lot to do with where I'm aiming the card at. Okay guys, that my friends is monocolor design. Like I said, there's a lot that goes into it. It's very important. You know, it is definitely easier to do constructed. Constructed is more about making individual cards that make you wanna do it.

Where limited is about making an entire environment where it's viable. And making an entire environment is a lot harder than just making individual cards. That's why Construct is much easier than Limited. But we do like monocolor play. There's a lot of fun there. It adds some variance.

You know, it is something we like the game to have. But hopefully as you'll see today, it just comes with a lot of challenges. It comes with a lot of things you have to think about. Anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed that, but I'm now at work. So we all know that means it's the end of my 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.