Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1137: Designing Typal Cards

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

In this episode, I talk about how we design typal cards (i.e., cards that mechanically care about creature types).

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at college. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about designing typal cards and typal themes. So real quickly, what do I mean by that? What does typal mean? So typal is a word we use internally to talk about cards that care mechanically about creature types.

Now, the term we used to use was tribal. Tribble actually meant two things, caring about creature types or there was an actual card type. The card type tribal since become kindred. Today's podcast, not about kindred, but it's about the typal themes. So when we changed over the word, we broke into two different words just so we can talk about different concepts. So typal is not talking about the theme, kindred is the car type.

Maybe one day I'll do, actually I think I have done a podcast on kindred or back when it's called tribal. Okay, so today is all about designing for creature type matters, basically. Okay, so first off, what I find when I'm talking about my design topics is usually we have to split them into constructed and limited. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they overlap less. This is a good example where designing typal for constructed

and typal for limited, whether are overlaps, have a lot of big differences. So I'm going to start with Constructed because Constructed designs are usually a little easier in concept. I mean there's a lot of execution issues, but we're limited in a lot more moving pieces. Okay, so if you're designing a Typal card for Constructed, the first question you have to ask yourself is what is the card doing?

And there are a couple different uses of it. First up is what I call the one of. And that means we are making a card to let you collect together something that we haven't before or something maybe that we have but we haven't done in a long while. But in a sense there's just one of them. Like I said, maybe it's a card that helps something we've never done before, or maybe it's a card that helps a theme that people like, but we want to get another card out there.

Sometimes that one of could be a commander, although as I'll show, the commander itself has a few different differences we have to worry about. The idea of a one-up design is, hey, I'm trying to help support this type. Usually for one-up designs, they tend to be very focused and I will say higher powered if you do that theme. Meaning we really, when you're just doing one card, that card really has to be enticing for that theme. Now, one of the things that's really cool is, the more narrow the theme is, the more powerful the card can be

within the context of that theme. For example, if I make a card that's really powerful, or powers up goats, well, there's not tons of goats in magic. There's no constructed goat deck. So I can make a pretty powerful goat matters card assuming that the power comes in having a lot of goats. So let me real quickly explain something else

that's key to this. There is a scale when you talk about using typal effects. One end of the scale is I talk about using typal effects. One end of the scale is I need just one of the thing. What we in design call threshold one. Meaning, and that would be like, I'm going to use, I use goats today. Goats will be my example. So let's say I'm making a card and it says, if you have a goat, when this enters the battlefield, if you have a

goat draw a card, that's a threshold one. That just gives me given one goat. If I have a card that says when you enter the battlefield, do X damage to target creature where X is the number of goats you have. That is what we call a scaling card. It scales on the number of goats you have. Now there's a bunch of different ways to do the scaling effects. Scaling specifically means you count them. There are things like buffing where you make all of them better. There are ways to care about having a lot.

But the idea on one end is like I only need one. The other end is I want as many as I can have. So when you're making a one of card, you really want to lean a lot more towards the mini, right? You want one of card is not where you use threshold one. What a one of card is like, I want to reward you and reward you strongly for playing as many as you can. And once again, the weaker the subset, the weaker the overall individual creatures are, both in number, how many are there and an individual power how many tournament level cards of that creature type the less creatures the less overall creatures and the less creatures that are of tournament level the more powerful you can make the effect but again you're leaning into making it

really powerful for having a lot of them you're leaning into the one end of the scale the what I'll call the scaling end of the scale. Now if you're talking a commander, commanders obviously have to be legendary. The one other thing that you think a lot about is if you're going to make something that is typal in commander, you've got to think of colors. So let's say for example I'm going to make a goat thing and we've had goats in, I don't know, red and white maybe. If you're going to make a goat lord, well the goat lord really wants to be red and white. That you want to make sure that your commander that's a one of commander fits.

Now some things exist in so many colors that maybe your creature is in every color. You know, if you made a human lord, for example, whether it's lots of humans Lots of different colors, but we do want to do is you want to look at where it's concentrated Where does it most often show up now some creature types are low enough that they only show up in one or two colors We want to make sure you hit those colors So also let me tell you what color real quick back in the day So the history real quickly is sort of the history of typo themes, a real fast version of it is Richard Garfield

made some cards in Alpha, Goblin King, Lord of Atlantis, Zombie Master, that helped respectively, Goblins and Merfolk and Zombies. Now, in that set, in Alpha, there are two goblins other than Goblin King and even Goblin King I think wasn't technically a goblin yet. There was one Murphok other than Lord of Atlantis and there was one or two zombies I think other than zombie master. So the idea or I think there's one zombie printed as a zombie at the time one later got changed to zombie I think is what it is. Anyway now

when alpha came out you could play the four of wasn't a rule yet so you can play as many as you needed to. So if you want to play Murphodeck, you're just playing a lot of Murphoke of the Pearl Trident. But with time, we started doing more, and we occasionally do the occasional typal card. Then in onslaught, I really pushed to have a, like, I like the idea of the block theme being a typal theme. And so we really played it up. Now what we did in onslaught was each color had its own theme, and like goblins were red, and all the goblins were in red, and all the goblin rewards were in red. But it really made the decks very narrow, because you're only playing them in mono color.

So when we, next time we revisited sort of a larger type of theme with Lorwin, we made sure that every creature type was in at least two colors. So you know, merfolk were blue and white and kithken were green and white and goblins were red and black and such. We had a few things like tree folk were black, white, and green. Elemental showed up in all five colors. You can be in more than two colors, but one of the things we learned is we want to have enough variety. A, we also, when I get into limited, it's very, very hard to build a monocolor deck in limited. So we want to, being in two colors

allowed you to draft it. And from a constructed standpoint, being in multiple colors just made different decks exist. Maybe, you know, let's say goats are red and white. Well, you could have a mono red goat deck, a mono white goat deck, a red and white goat deck. It just gives you choices. Okay. So that is one of design.

And like I said, commander is a subset of that. The other thing is you can make more of a constructed theme meaning I'm not making just one of them I'm making enough of them that I that within the constraints of this set may be unlimited for sure in sort of standard that we want this to be a viable thing. Now there's two tiers of that. Tier number one is it's a casual thing. Tier number two is it's a tournament thing. So for example, when you take something like a Lorwin where we had eight different creature types, not all the creatures were pushed for constructed.

Fairies ended up being pushed for constructed. But for example, if you wanted to make a giant deck, there existed cards, you could build a giant deck, but it wasn't a constructed thing. So when you make a typal themes for constructed, you kind of have to think about, am I making it a casual theme or am I making it a constructed theme? Now if you make it a constructed theme, casual people can play it. If you make it a casual theme, probably it's not going to be played in high-end tournament

constructed. So it just matters matters what you push. And then the thing when you're making it, the other thing to keep in mind is there's two different components to typo. Number one is how many cards are mechanically typo, meaning they care about the creature type, and then how many cards are of that creature type, right? You need a lot more cards of that creature type than you need that care about the creature type because you've got to fill your deck

with them or fill enough of your deck with them. So part of making a set when you have a constructed theme is making sure you make enough. And the idea essentially is you want to overshoot if you can. Now, Commander is very different than standard. In order for a theme to hit in commander I believe you need six and a half times as many cards so it is hard in a singular deck in one set to give commander everything it needs it's just hard to do that. You can't really introduce a theme and have commander be able to play it right out of the gate. But, A, there's a lot of types we go back to. So let's say we do a new type we'll set in Goblins Matter.

Well, Magic has a lot of goblins in its history. So there are definitely type of themes we can do there. The other thing we've started doing more of is batching. Sometimes it's named batching, like Outlaw, where there's five different creature types. We connect together assassins and rogues and pirates and warlocks and, what did I forget, and mercenaries. And enough of those go back, like Rogue especially, that you can sort of build that deck over time.

Sometimes we do sort of what I would call unnamed batching like we did Ninja and Rogue and we did Samurai and Warrior. Mostly that's about there's just not enough ninjas or not enough samurai to do what you need to do. There are a lot more warriors a lot more rogues. It helps you fill it out. But the idea essentially is you need to make sure there's enough volume that people can build what they want to build. For a standard, that's a lot easier. A standard set, we can introduce a brand new theme.

You only need like eight to 10 cards, cause you got four of obviously. And we normally make more than 10, like if we're gonna do a theme, we tend to make a little bit more than 10. But usually with eight to 10, you can usually're gonna do a theme, we tend to make a little bit more than 10. But usually, with eight to 10, you can usually build a standard deck around it. Because you can just play multiple copies

of things you need to play multiple copies of. In Commander, you just need a lot more. So usually if our typal themes are too connective, meaning they're too limited or too linear to that set, Commander can't do those. Maybe, maybe you can do it like, there's enough changelings that sometimes you can sort of make a changeling deck

and then focus on that one thing sometimes. Anyway, so when you're making a tournament theme, you want to think about what am I building, what am I making? And remember in constructed, we can do what we call seeding. And what seeding means is you can think ahead of time about where you put, like what things pre-existed. So let's say for example, we have a goat theme,

we're making a new goat theme. Goats, there's just not a lot of goats in Magic's past. So probably what I want to do is I want to look for opportunities to put goats. I want to look for opportunities where we can do that. For example, you might notice a bunch of animals have been showing up, like, you know, Bloomberg's coming up. We have some animal themes in Bloomberg, so we're trying to

make sure that some more animals exist because Some of the animal creature types aren't quite in volume as other things You know if we care about something like goblins or merfolk or elves magic sons a lot of those Oh another thing another big difference is in our creature types. We have a recall race class The race is kind of like the species. So goblin, merfolk, human. The class is what your job is. You're a warrior, you're a wizard. Class creature type themes are a lot easier to do

because it's a lot easier, like for example, if I want to care about warriors or soldiers or wizards or druids, like there's certain things that magic does a lot or soldiers or wizards or, you know, Druids. Like there's certain things that magic does a lot. And so it's a lot easier to get classes into set because classes are more about what you do. And a lot of the things that creatures do, a lot of the time,

there's some staples we do all the time. There are some specialized classes maybe that show up in certain places. Like pirate, for example, is a class. You are a pirate. So not every set is pirate. So if we have pirate type all, okay that requires a little more effort. Like do pirates make sense? But one of the things when you're building, when you're doing seating and thinking about the larger structure is how easy is it to have this thing? The more you're dependent on the set, the higher we have to worry about the aspen in the set, and the more we have to try to do seeding impossible.

Now, one of the challenges is, for example, Ixalan kind of introduced dinosaurs. It didn't introduce pirates, although pirates hadn't been done in that volume before. So it was hard to seed dinosaurs. This was introducing dinosaurs as a creature type. So there are some challenges sometimes in newer things. Bloomborough, you know, for example, because it uses animals. Magic has some animals and there's certain animals that do have more of a history in magic, but not all of them do. Whereas when like Lorwin did goblins and merfolk and elves,

we were sort of leaning into fantasy types that we knew we had done a lot of. So that's a lot more backwards compatible. But the idea of how backwards compatible your typo theme is, is pretty important depending on where you're focusing it. And the more you're reliant on the set you're in, the more you have to sort of do basic building blocks.

But anyway, the thing always to keep in mind is the typal effects only matter if you have enough individual creatures that are powerful enough that matter there. So that's another issue. Part of seeding isn't just making them, but making the ones you do make make them a little more powerful so they'll be relevant. that matter there. So that's another issue. Part of seeding isn't just making them, but making the ones you do make, make them a little more powerful so they'll be relevant. You

don't have to seed a lot by the way. You just have to seed a few things that are actually tournament viable. Okay. The other thing when we do construct that you have to think about is what we call packets. And the idea there is sometimes what we'll do when we're making typal themes is we'll make cards that are very synergistic with each other so the idea is maybe if you're playing you can put in these connection of cards that might represent like in general there's two ways to think about constructive when you talk about themes. People can go all in, meaning, okay, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to, like, the way typo themes work is all in means pretty much every creature in my deck will be this creature

type. Maybe one or two exceptions for something that's just very powerful in theme, but it is something where you're definitely all in. There are stuff that's a little less where, okay, I have a packet that matters. When I get into limited, I'll talk a little bit more about as then. Sometimes you have packets where it's not that I need

as many as possible, I just need to have enough that it can hit. So sometimes while a lot of the one-ofs play more in the space of scalable, sometimes some of the constructive stuff for tournaments, you wanna make some threshold one stuff because you want some stuff that will work if you have some number of the type.

And that is something that's really important for, it's really, really important for having a theme that could be, play a smaller role, could play a packet in Constructed. The other thing to think about, by the way, is when we build a theme, we also tend to build with it, not only is it all that type, but we will build some sort of

cohesive mechanical strategy to it. The idea being is, oh, I'm making a goblin, a little packet of goblins. Oh, well goblins in this set care about sacrificing things. Maybe that's the whole draft-drucker type of goblins. And the idea is, if you draft nothing but that creature type, the cards will play well together. So that's a good segue into limited. So let's talk a little bit limited. And I will talk about themes as I get more into limited. So first thing when you're doing typo for limited, the real question, are you doing one archetype, meaning is it a minor theme in your set? For example, in Konjunktark here, the white-black draft archetype was warriors.

Okay, it's not a major theme, it's just a minor theme. We like doing typal themes. We don't necessarily do an archetypal-typal theme every set, but we do one in a lot of sets. And we normally have some, we normally have some typal in somewhere. People, it's a popular theme. So most sets have a little bit. Some sets have one archetype. Next is what I would call a light set theme. A good example of that is the monsters from Innistrad, original Innistrad. So the idea is vampires and werewolves and zombies and spirits and then to some extent humans those five sort of are an ally each have an ally theme and

It's something that is there. It's light It's and once again The idea is if you play zombies if I draft all zombies zombies play a certain they will play well together, and I will throw in a few zombie typal cards, but the idea is it's not that if you're playing zombies and limited, you're playing a lot of typal cards, just a little bit, and it rewards you for that, but it's a lighter theme. And it's more about the connective tissue of how that how it plays than it is It's all about playing the typo cards. Then there's a heavy theme something like um, Ixalan for example, you know Dinosaurs were a theme pirates. They're factions pirates and vampires and merfolk There were four factions and a lot revolves around those factions. Lorwin was a heavy set. Like I said onslaught

The heavy sets are hard. We've learned with time Lorwin was a heavy set, like I said, onslaught. The heavy sets are hard. We've learned with time that it is tricky and more of what we've learned with time, once again, is leaning into the themes is normal. Like I said, if we're gonna do a theme, if it's gonna do multiple themes, usually they're two color. If we're gonna do one major theme,

sometimes it's three color. It they're two color. If we're gonna do one major theme, sometimes it's three color. It could be two color, but sometimes it can be as much as three color, depending how big a theme that is going to be in the set. But the key that's important is every two color pair for draft purposes has an archetype. And normally, most of the time we're doing a typal theme, it's in two colors.

There are exceptions. Like I said, tree folk were black, white, green. And so it's a matter of building two things. You want to sort of build your mechanical theme and your typo themes together. So it's like, okay, my goblins want to sacrifice and my goblin typo cards help. They make goblin tokens. They, you know, they do things that reinforce what my theme of my, the deck is.

And then normally they like the gold, the gold signpost on commons normally will do that. They will lead it, lean into the, they'll be the typo connector. It's like the typal theme, but in whatever the mechanical theme of the creature is. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the threshold one versus scaling. The scale, as I talked about earlier. What you want to do is, first off, you want to look at your ASFAN. You want to make sure that you have enough both cards that care typally and creatures that are that type. So cards that care typally, at common in a dedicated theme, you want 2 to 4 in common maybe, and you want to lean toward the threshold one side of the scale.

And what that means is at common, I get rewards because I have one of them. Maybe it's enchant goat, meaning I need a goat to be able to enchant it. Maybe it's when I enter the battlefield, if I have it, something happens. Maybe I target it. Something which it says,

in order for the payoff to happen, I just need to have one of that in play. Why is threshold one so important and limited? Because there's a problem that showed up in Lorwin, it's called the silo problem. What a silo problem is, is I make a card that nobody is interested in, except the one person playing that archetype.

So I make a card all about count all my goats. Look at all many goats. I'm making a red white goat theme. Count all my goats. I need a lot of goats. So most people look at it and go, oh, it's not good unless I have a lot of goats. I'm not in goat colors. I'm not playing goats.

So they don't take it. And then the goat person doesn't have to worry about taking it too late because nobody but them is going to take it. So they can spend their time picking other powerful cards and then this card that's powerful to them, they just automatically get. Cause there's two problems. One, there's a power level problem. Well if they're using all their first picks to get powerful cards and their late picks

to also get powerful cards, their deck is a little too strong. The other thing is there's just no variance. If only one archetype wants a card, then that archetype always gets the card. And so you always are playing the same cards. You want people to fight over cards. Now it's fine that your deck prioritizes a little bit higher than other decks, meaning I could choose to take it earlier. But what we want to do is make sure those cards have value to other players and other drafters so they do in fact take them. So there's pressure for you to go, oh, I'm playing goats. I better take the goat type of things early.

I don't want other people to take them. And the way we do that is by using threshold one, the barrier for playing the deck is a lot lower. If I have a card that says when I enter the battlefield, you know, if you have a goat, do two damage to something. Okay. Well, how many goats do I need in order for that to happen? Not that many goats. You need five or six goats maybe in your deck to have a chance.

A lot of this depends on the mana value of the goats and the mana value of the card that cares and stuff. But for example, let's say I have a four drop that cares. Okay, and my deck has six goats, there's a decent chance by the time against it not always um the other thing we tend to do on common is we make sure that the base power toughness stats like the creature minus the typal effect is good enough for limited so if you're drafting like okay hey this is not a first pick but it's a solid body and limited just to make sure that people are taking that um the other thing in and limited, just to make sure that people are taking that.

The other thing in common is we want to make sure that the volume of the things that are that creature type is high enough. And so, once again, it varies a little bit. Play boosters have shaken things up a little bit. Roughly you want six-ish, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, depending on some other factors. But you want to have enough things that are that creature type that you can reliably get enough of them between the two colors that you're drafting. And you also want enough of them that there's variety, that I'm not always picking the exact same things so that that's what's being played. The other thing in limited is because it's hard to completely have all that creature type you will supplement sometimes with other creatures that will happen. Then at uncommon, uncommon is where you can push more toward the scaling end of the spectrum.

That's the one that your goal signpost uncommon usually is a little more about play a lot of them. And like I said it could be about I count them them. And like I said, it could be about, I count them. It could be about they buff them. It could be about something that the more of them there are, the better, you know, I look at the top end cards and get to take all the certain category. You just want to do themes that say, I reinforce and I reward you for playing a lot of something. And then those things, those uncommons are more likely to be taken by the people that care but because they're uncommon and they show up at lower like

You're not guaranteed to see every uncommon every draft. So the idea that that you'll take it well, you're only gonna take it when you see it, right and Now in play booster world we tend to make more uncommons that push in more directions Because we want the typ of decks to have it I mean obviously they plan to have a larger theme of whatever that type is but we try to make more things that uncommon that work a little bit differently from each other just so that when you draft different decks they play out differently okay the one last other thing to talk about when we talk about limited is what we call

glue. So what glue means is that in limited, it is hard sometimes, especially in sealed, but somewhat hard sometimes in draft to always play everything that's just that creature type. And so we need to make sure there's some things that allow you to sort of have some connective tissue The most the famous most famous type of glue we have got made in the Lorwin. I was called changeling It was based on a card in in

onslaught block I think in legions miss from ultimus and the idea is Miss Form Ultimus. And the idea is, Changeling says, I'm all creature types. So the idea is a card that's a changeling works with any type of card. So the nice thing about changeling is if we put a bunch of changelings in a set, no matter what you're playing, it helps you like, if I'm playing goats, I can take it. If I'm playing goblins, I can take it.

If I'm playing brushwag, I can take it. The brushwag theme. And so the idea of, now there's other ways to do glue. Another way we do sometimes is overlapping types. So a card is two different types or a card might make a token that's a different type than itself. So the idea essentially is, let's say, there's goats and goblins. It's a goblin riding a goat, and on the card it's goat and goblin.

It's goblin-goat creature type. Or it's a goblin that makes a goat token, or a goat that makes a goblin token. The idea being is, sometimes we can make cards that mechanically care about two different things, either by calling them out, either by being them, making tokens a real good strategy sometimes there. And sometimes there's synergy, sometimes we have effects. Target goat or goblin gets bonus. You can have things that affect more than one thing.

That we've tried other things for glue, glue, finding good type of glue is really tough. When we, I promise when we get, when I get to Bloomberg, start talking about Bloomberg, the story of Bloomberg, there's a lot of stuff talking in some challenges there. So when I get to Bloomberg previews, I can talk about some of that. Anyway, yeah, in limited though, like I said, in constructed, it's about sort of making sure people can build up something and constructed pushes more toward the scaling end of things that I want you to play a lot of. The one exception is we do the threshold one stuff when there's packets that people are

supposed to play, not the whole thing, but make it a component of their deck. So we do use threshold one 1 a little bit of Constructed. In Limited we use both and it's a matter of the higher the As Fan the more it wants to be Threshold 1, the lower the As Fan the more it can be scaling and you want to mix in them. You want to make sure that people have enough things that their theme works but not so much not so focused that they're the only ones getting the cards or that the games play out too similarly. So anyway that my friends is in a single car ride the major beats of how to design typal themes. I will say as I to wrap up today typal themes are very popular they're very linear they're very easy to understand they're very directional so it're very easy to understand, they're very directional.

So it is something that we've realized with time is a very, very popular theme. It has a lot of challenges. It's hard to build, it's hard to balance, it's especially hard to get it to play in high level constructed. So it is something that we do a lot because people like it so much, but we have to be careful how we do it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of nuance to making good type of themes work. Um, but like I said, it's something the players really enjoy and so it's something we do.

Um, but anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my little insight into that, but I'm now at work. So we all know that means that this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you enjoyed today's topic and I will see you next time. Bye bye.