Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1145: Power and Toughness

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

In this podcast, I talk for 30 minutes all about every aspect of power and toughness.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for other drive to work. Okay, a little behind the scenes today. So when I get up in the morning, I got to figure out what podcast I'm doing. And normally when I come up with something, I will then check to see if I've done it. Some of the time, so I drive to work four times a week, I only need two podcasts a week,

and I often do interviews on Friday. So I have a lot of time to sort of experiment and stuff. Often if I don't think I've done a podcast well enough, I'll just redo it. I'll do podcasts multiple times to get the one I like. Sometimes I do this thing where I pick a topic and I'm like, do I have 30 minutes on this topic? So when I woke up today, the plan was to do, I was going to do the

Manicost. Everything, 30 minutes on the Manicost. Can I talk for the Manicost for 30 minutes? And then I looked it up and I've done it already. So I decided to do a different part of the card. We're going to do power and toughness. So I only need to do 15 minutes on Power and 15 minutes on Toughness and I'm good. Anyway, so the plan is I'm driving to work. I'm gonna talk about Power and Toughness. Now obviously if you're hearing this, I succeeded. Because if I fail, you just never hear it.

So anyway, here is at least 30 minutes, I guess, on Power and Toughness. Okay, so let's go back to the very beginning. Back to Richard Garfield in the creation of the game. So when Richard first came up with the idea of a trading card game, he actually adapted a game that he already had called the Five Colors of Magic. I'm not sure whether or not the Five Colored Magics had creatures in the common sense. I think it did. So I'm not sure. I've talked to Richard

about this in the past, and I'm not sure whether this was during like pre-magic or post-magic. I know Richard early on contemplated the idea of doing a singular. So most games have an aggressive value and a defensive offensive and defensive value. That's not that abnormal in games, games have those. So Richard, I think originally was thinking of maybe he'd have one number. So the idea that your offensive and defense are the same number. That ended up not happening because there just wasn't enough robustness to it. Part of making a trading card game is you need the ability to make a lot of cards and Having two different numbers helped

Now you can see so early in magic back in on like 96 We made what we call the arc system I did a whole podcast on it, which was our first attempt at like early easy magic So it has three colors not five It was very very simplified version of magic even more so than Portal that will come later which I'll talk about later on. Anyway so it only had one number for power and toughness and a shared number but it you could see how limiting it is. The nice thing about doing power

and toughness is you really get more variety of what happens. So the way I like to think of it is let's talk about like how what power and toughness how the relation represents a creature. For example like in the color pie it's something we actually think about color pie wise. So there's basically three versions you can have. First is your power and toughness are the same. That's what we call square stats. We most often like to do square stats when we can. Square stats are the easiest to recognize, but like I said before, why not be the same number if you lose a lot of variety?

Green is king of the square stats, mostly because green has the largest sizes of creatures. The number one reason we use square stats is the card usually changes or something about the card makes you do math on the card and square stats are easier to do math on. So that is when we think maybe about doing square stats. Then you have power higher than toughness. You're more aggressive. The idea there is I'm powerful.

I'll probably kill things I get in the fight with, but I'm probably going to lose the fight. I will also lose the fight. Not lose the fight, but I will die in the fight. I will defeat the thing I'm playing, but I will lose. And then there is so high power, low toughness. Red is king of that. Then it is probably black. So, high power, low toughness, red is king of that.

Then it is probably black. Then, well, we let white have it at like 3.1, the classic white thing, and we let blue have it in the air, so flyers will tend to do that. But other than small things for white and flyers for blue, white and blue don't do as much as that. Green's kind of in the middle. And then obviously there's high power Sorry low power high toughness and that the idea is hey, I tend to live through fights. I'm not that dangerous

I don't kill a lot of things necessarily And that is primary white secondary blue Black does some of the green does a little bit of red very frequent infrequently does that If Red has a toughness higher than power, usually there's some way for Red to pump its toughness. That's right, pump its power in some way. Okay, so what that means is, when you talk about sort of conflict, oh, before we get to conflict,

let me talk a little bit about some ideas that Richard baked into power and toughness, since we're talking about sort of from the initial design. There's two things that Richard baked into power and toughness. Since we're talking about sort of from the initial design. There's two things that Richard did that really are key to how power and toughness work. One is, so in a game, often your health is something that is, what's the right word for this? It is not, it's persistent damage.

And what that means is, let's say I'm playing D&D, I have hit points, right? Or my creatures have hit points. Oh, I do two damage to the creature. Now the creature instead of 13 is now 11. Like I need to get it down to zero. And any damage I do at one part of the game is just doable later on.

But persistent damage in Magic would mean having to track damage. You have to track player damage, but that's just one set of numbers. But tracking all your creatures, that's a lot of work. You probably have to track damage. You have to track player damage, but that's just one set of numbers. But tracking all your creatures, that's a lot of work. You probably have to use counters. It's just a lot to track. So Richard came up with the idea of

what if the damage was not persistent? Player damage is persistent, but creature damage heals. So the idea is you have a toughness, you get damage. If before the end of the turn, you get enough toughness, sorry, enough damage to match your toughness, you die. You go to the graveyard. But, you know, if I'm a four toughness creature, you only do three damage to me, at the end of the turn I heal. And that way it's a lot easier to track and a lot easier to keep be aware of. And

the other big thing about having non-persistent damage is the numbers get to be a lot lower. If you have persistent damage, you really need high numbers to allow the creature to exist for a while. But when it heals, you don't need the numbers to be that high. So that allowed Richard to have a much more condensed system where the range of things didn't have to be. Another thing I guess I should point out while we're talking power and toughness is one of the things people want is consistency through the system.

And the problem with Magic's power toughness is it is very dynamic for purposes of gameplay, but it is very hard to say because we only have whole numbers, right? It's your 1-1 or your 2-1 or your 1-2. You don't get to be, other than like maybe unsets, you don't get to be 1 1⁄2 slash 1, right? You just don't get to do that. And so, I mean, there's a lot of things, like one of the things, for example, in original Alpha, there was a car called Grizzly Bears, plural, and the idea, or no, Grizzly Bear

might have been 1. No, it's Grizzly Bears, I think. Or Skate Zombies, for example Representing multiple zombies and like the idea that like that even a single bears a two-two is kind of weird Like a human is a one-one. You're telling me two humans can take out a bear I don't think two humans can take out a bear so that it's it's not perfect in the sense that we have relative scale to things And that if you're smaller, you'll die to something bigger but it's not perfect and I know when people want to try to find sensibility in the power toughness it's it's relative but it's not it can't be super exact and we just

don't have that that the fineness of detail there okay so when you're in combat basically one of four things will happen so I attack with my creature oh the other thing Richard did sorry jumping, jumping around here, is not only did he have non-persistent damage, but he also made it such that the opponent decides when combat happens. Meaning you, the player, only attack the other opponent. If they want to block with the creatures, they decide to block with the creatures. Now the nice thing about that is it really, I mean, this is something that players, when beginners learn to play, it's something they have to learn. So there's some

intuitive issues there, but I think it makes for a more dynamic game. Otherwise, what happens is if I can go over your creatures, I'm just, the person in the lead just stays in the lead because the bigger creature just go after the smaller creatures and then you just can't play creatures. But in the system that we have right now, you can build up over time. Maybe you take some hits, but you can build up your army so that you have the ability then to block with multiples and stuff. Oh, another interesting thing, a lot of today is little tiny bits. So when we were deciding about rewriting the rules of how blocking worked, we went to Magic Arena

and maybe Magic Online to get digital data of, hey, how often do creatures block with more than one creature? And it turns out a very small amount of time, a surprising small amount of time. We still want to enable multiple blocking is nice. It allows several smaller creatures to take up bigger creatures. So that is cool.

But anyway, we'll sign up. Okay, so when you're in combat, there are four ways that power and toughness interact as far as creature dynamics. So number one is I attack with a creature that has a power and toughness. Well, I attack with a creature that is bigger than and toughness. Well, I attack with a creature that is bigger than your creature. Meaning, if we get in a fight, my creature will eat your creature.

Now, if you purposely throw a creature out there knowing that the bigger creature would, you're gonna die to the bigger creature, we call that chump blocking. The idea is in that scenario, I, the offensive player, have the advantage. The defending player either can just let me through or they can block knowing that they'll lose their creature

but they don't take the damage. That's another nice thing about the way Richard set it up where you have the ability to let your creature, that you can sacrifice creatures in place of taking damage. And there's a lot of fun strategic elements to that, which are very cool. Second is, I can attack with my creature and my creature can be swallowed by your creature. Meaning, my creature is small enough that I know your creature is going to defeat my creature.

There's two reasons that will happen strategically. One is I might have spells in my hand and I can either actually have a giant growth or something or I can bluff that I have it. Richard put hidden information in the game so that something like that can happen. If you have a 3-3 and I have a 2-2 and I attack with my 2-2, I'm implying that I have some trick in my hand. Maybe I do, maybe I don't, but I'm implying it at least and you have to figure out how valuable the creature is and you know, and there's a lot of fun gameplay in trying to get things through by making people think you have something that maybe you don't have. The other reason that you might do where your creature gets swallowed by your opponent's creature is I need to do damage to you and I have more creatures than you. So I attack with all my creatures, or a lot of my creatures, and you'll kill some of my creatures but because I have more creatures than you, some of them will get through.

And a lot of gameplay, there's some fun interaction of figuring out when I want to attack. I will get to that in a second. Third, we have what we call a trade, which is we both have a power high enough that it exceeds or equals or exceeds the opponent's toughness. Meaning that if we get in a fight, it will be mutual destruction. And that's also very interesting. If I have a 3-3, if you have a 3-3 and I attack with my 3-3, it's like, Oh, do you want to trade my 3-3 for your 3-3? Or even you have stuff like I have a 4-2 and you have a 2-2. Do I want to trade my 4-2 for your 2-2? That, that, that, when you trade is very interesting. And the last one is what we call a bounce, which is I'm going to attack,

you're going to block, and my creature is not powerful enough to destroy your creature, and your creature is not powerful enough to destroy my creature. The reason you might attack in a block is maybe there's some advantage to attacking, the raid or something. Maybe there's some, maybe I have a trick in my hand. Maybe there's something like lifelink or something where I get a benefit for attacking even if I don't do damage to the player. And so a lot of this, the idea of the nice thing about having Power and Toughness being different is you get all four of these opportunities.

That if they were the same, it would always be, either be a trade or I would swallow you up, right? Well, I guess you get three of the four. But you get more dynamism with Power and Toughness being varied. The other thing that's really fun is that there's a lot of ways mechanically to interact with power and toughness. Number one is there are a lot of keywords especially evasive especially I'm sorry evergreen keywords that interact with power. Obviously evasion any kind of evasion interacts

with power since that you hopefully get through and get to do more damage. But then you have stuff like lifelink or first strike or double strike. Things in which how big your power is, like you're more powerful the bigger your power is. A trample is another good example. And that having, there's a lot of ways to sort of interact with power.

The other thing that we can do, another sort of effect we like, is things that interact with power. Like I'm saying, giant growth, the ability to interact with your power and or toughness and make it bigger creates a lot of dynamism in game play. If you block my creature, I can giant growth it. I can grant it, you know, plus two plus own first strike. There's a lot of ways for me to interact with that and there's both

Temporary things like giant growth and there's permanent ways I can have or is that make my creature bigger I can put plus one plus one counters on my creature There's a lot of ways to sort of change the power and toughness So so there's a lot of dynamism like one of the things Like one of the things obviously that I'll always talk about on this podcast is there's a lot of component pieces, right? We got to make magic. We want to make a lot of magic cards. How do we make magic cards?

Well, you need tools that give you a lot of ability to shape things. And power toughness is one of the most versatile. There's a lot you can do with power toughness. The other thing that is very interesting is that obviously when you make the same game for a long time there's a lot of knowledge that gets built up because the more you do something the more you have that to look at. So let's say for example I am in exploratory design or vision design and I'm making a card. I have the ability to go online, look at a database and I I can say, okay, so when you're

making a creature, there's two different ways you can make it. One is you can make it say, I want to make the creature and then after the fact figure out how much it costs. Or sometimes I'm trying to fit the curve and I say, oh, I need it to be this cost. And then I figure out power toughness to match the cost. The one thing I will say is mana value and power toughness are the easiest knobs for balance, because they're numbers.

And in fact, the way our system works, there's a point where we're pencils down, where we can't change things. The very last thing we can change, that there's a window where we can't change text, but we can change numbers. And that numbers become very important. So there are a lot of ways to fix Magic Cards. Changing numbers is not the only way. In fact, earlier on in the process, a lot of time the correct answer is not just changing numbers. But as you

get later in the process where it's harder to change things, numbers are the things you can most easily change. Anyway, so let's say I'm trying to make a card. I want to, for example, I'm making a red 3-3 trampler. What I can do, and maybe has another ability, what I can do is I can look up and say, okay, show me all the 3-3 tramplers that we've made. And I can prioritize looking at more recent cards, because obviously, the one thing about creatures is, when Richard made the game originally,

he overshot a bit on spells power level wise and undershot a bit on creatures. If you actually look at Alpha, minus reserve list issues and minus like rules wonkiness, I don't think there's a creature in Alpha that's unreprintable in the premier set from a power level. There's cars like Landoware Elves that are powerful that we have to think about. But I mean, I don't, like for example,

there are spells and artifacts, there's things in Elves that we, we couldn't come even close. We're not gonna make time walk that's so far away from what we could possibly do. But creatures were a little on the weak side. I think Richard originally overestimated how powerful the creatures were a little on the weak side. I think Richard originally Overestimated how powerful the creatures were because creatures the creatures are your repeated source of damage, right? Creatures really I mean not that the other card types don't matter

They all matter obviously but creatures really have a lot of presence and for example in limited They make up the vast majority of your deck and even in a lot of constructed to make up a good share of your deck Because the repeatable sources of damage So there's a lot of dining rooms built in and power toughness is really showing a lot of constructed. They make up a good share of your deck because they're repeatable sources of damage. So there's a lot of dynamics built in and power toughness is really showing a lot of what can happen and how one of the biggest tools we have to shape creature. So anyway, I'm making it, I can look it up.

If I'm in a meeting, by the way, if I'm alone, I will use the database so I can look and see what we've done. If I'm in a meeting, we have a play designer usually on our, like the early vision design meetings and usually if I say here's what I want to do, people can off the top of their head go oh yeah it's this. Like play designers usually can do power toughness because like I said we've been doing so much there's so much like data to work on that power and toughness is really

understood. Now maybe if we're introducing a brand new mechanic or do something different that's hard to compare, yes it can get more complicated there. But if you're just trying to like, okay I'm making a vanilla, French vanilla or even just a relatively simple creature, ETB effect, something in which we understand the component pieces of it, if you're in the room they can just name they can name what it is. The other thing we do sometimes is, and this happens a lot in when you're designing the file, is okay, I look at the file, what am I missing? I'm missing a three drop in

red. So there I might say, oh, okay, I want this creature to have some kind of invasion or whatever I care about. And then I go, okay, what needs to be two in an hour? I'll give it abilities and then say, okay, given it has these abilities and that cost, what power and toughness is it? So sometimes power and toughness goes that way. Like sometimes you start with power and toughness. Sometimes you end with power and toughness. It depends what you're prioritizing when you're designing. Um, but like there's a lot of, like I've designed magic cards for a long time and I'm, I'm not, I'm good at, uh, costing. So when we make cards in vision, we just put it at a general power

level. The idea is we want all the cards to be equal power level. They're all playable visions about sampling when you play tasks more so than environment. So especially early vision. So you want to sort of I had a general sense of what things cost generally. But one of the things that's really interesting is, so a little history of power toughness over time, is magically I said was the creatures were a little on the weak side. So when alpha came out there was one color that got a two drop two two. That was green, got grizzly bears. And at the time that's it. And in fact in in Alpha, white has Pearl Unicorn, which is a 2-2 for three mana. Red has Grey Ogre, which is a 2-2 for three mana.

And Black Escaped Zombies, which is a 2-2 for three mana. Blue did not even get a 2-2, or not a three mana. Anyway, so even early on, Richard was like, OK, different power and toughness varies for different things. Green was the creature color, and green got a little more value. And then white, black, and red were in the middle, different power and toughness varies for different things. Green was the creature color and green got a little more value and then white, black, and red

were in the middle and blue was at the end. Blue was the least creature colors. What we found with time was that white really, creatures mattered so much that we wanted more cards, we wanted two creature colors. We ended up making green and white creature colors. White is more about the good of the group, more about the army, more about the small creatures coming together. So white became king of the small creatures. So white

has the best curve at like one, two, and three mana. But as you start getting the higher mana, that's when green. Green, white is about going wide, having a lot of small things. Green is about going big, having a few giant things. White has a lot of things that pump its team. Green has a lot of things like it gets mana, helps get things out, and so it can get out the giant thing. And that's why white wants to do things where the things can work together, and green wants like trampoline things where you just, the giant thing goes through.

So anyway, the first two-two we made outside of green was white. And so white got a 2 mana 2-2. That's considered OK. Then I think it was an Innistrad. We contemplated the black 2 mana 2-2. And that was controversial, very controversial at the time. Walking Dead is called. We eventually did make a 2 mana 2-2 at common.

I mean, Inn Indochard, we made that card. Red would be the next fight, and we eventually did make a red 2 mana for 2-2. Red gets that now. Blue, we're still having that fight. We've finally let blue at rare and mythic rare get two mana 2-2, so that has happened. We haven't yet done it at common. So, so there is, like I said, with power and toughness does want to represent there's a lot of flavor in it, right? White tends to have smaller creatures, white tends to have toughness higher than power. Blue also it's the worst of the creature curve, it gets the least amount of power toughness for its cost. We're like white is very good at low at low costs. Blue tends to generally be more toughness than power. Although when it flies, it can get more power than toughness. Black is kind of in,

black originally did a lot more of high power, low toughness. And we started giving it a little bit more of low power high toughness. Black and green kind of are both in the middle in that regard. But we let black and have the four two, the five one, but it also occasionally gets the two five and stuff like that. It's probably a little more aggressive in defense, but it gets some of the defensive stuff. Red is king of the offense.

Oh, black also, by the way, we at common, when magic first started, so when alpha came out, for example, there was only two cards at common that had a power higher than three, none of which had a power of four, by the way. Blue had sea stripper, which was a five, five, had what we called island home, meaning you can only attack your opponent on islands. It was more defensive than offensive. You had to set it up. And there were ways to turn your opponent's stuff into islands, or maybe they're playing

blue. And then green, they're Crawl Wyrm, which was, I've talked about this, my first magic cards that I got, I got a Crawl Wyrm and it drew me into green because it seemed so big. What we realized over time was that we needed to have a little more breadth of creature. Like for a long time at common, most cards cards didn't get above three power and we found that to be a little bit restrictive and so now we do a lot more so now at common it's you'll regularly see four power you sometimes see five power outside of green usually six and up now is mostly in green at common other than we might make the

Sea serpent although sea serpents are more like 5 5. Um But anyway, there is sort of a color and view and like power and toughness means something flavorfully and they mean something sort of from a mechanical level so that is something that we we think a lot about And and has evolved over time that we've we've definitely given more rate to things. We've given better rate to creatures, rate as R&D speak for the value of how good they are versus their mana cost. So the higher rate creature means you get more for your mana essentially. One of the things we're always working with is what is the right range for creatures and we keep finding that we can make creatures a little bit better that spells spells still have a lot of power that that I don't know creatures are are interesting in that

they're repeatable damage but that they're you know I don't know that creatures are very tricky there's a lot of new ones to creatures. Okay, so the last thing I wanna talk about is I wanna talk a little bit about the robustness of the power toughness. It is something that gets glossed over, but I have a little story of where I came to really, where I realized the, I don't know,

the brilliance of how the power toughness system works. So way back when, so I talked about the Arc system earlier on, we eventually did a different beginner game thing called Portal. So Portal, unlike Arc, Portal was closer to Magic. In fact, you can play Portal cards in Magic. Originally you couldn't, but you now can. So it was all five colors. It did have power and toughness, but it was much, much simplified. So at common, I think there were only two creature abilities we

had at common. We had flying and we had haste. And I think that's the only two we had at common. And in fact, I don't even know if we had other creature abilities. There were enter the battlefield effects. There were creatures that attacked triggers. Like Bortle, by the way, is lands, creatures, and sorceries. That's it. No instance, although there's some cheesy sorceries that act a little bit like instance. There's no artifacts, no enchantments, no planeswalkers, no battles.

It is very skinned down, simplified magic. So anyway, the story is, back in the day, we used to go around to different places. We had a van and we would set up a tent and we would teach people how to play. So one time we went, it was a local festival, bumper shoot or something. And anyway, we set up our tent and so there's music going on

and then there's all these tents people can come to. So we are playing with people. And so our decks are very simplified decks. I don't even think they have rares in them. They're like commons, maybe a few uncommons. But mostly they're vanilla creatures, maybe a few flyers, a haste creature or two, you know, and one or two enter the battlefield effects. But I mean, they're very simple creatures.

So in between, there'll be dead spots where like a big band was on, everyone wanted to see them. So we would play each other in between just because we were bored. And the thing that really I found interesting was how much interesting decisions there were in a game there was almost nothing but power toughness. There were minimal things, creatures going on.

There were not a lot of abilities. Mostly it was just, it really, I hadn't really understood the nature of the system. And it was really, really illuminating to me in a way that it's almost something I would say if you want to get better at Magic, try go get some cards. Make two decks that are just evergreen keywords, French vanilla, vanilla or French vanilla. And try playing some games with just those. Because a lot of learning how to get better at combat

is understanding, so one of the core things, a little like a magic strategy, Mike Flores wrote an article called Who's the Beatdown? And the premise of the whole article is when you are playing at any one moment in time, one player is the offensive player and one player is the defensive player. And if you understand whether you're the offensive player or defense player, it changes how you play. If you're the offensive player, take every advantage you can to be offensive. You're trying to win while you have the offense. If you're the defensive player, it changes how you play. If you're the offensive player, take every advantage you can to be offensive. You're trying to win while you have the offense. If you're the defensive player,

you want to do everything you can to turn the tides of the game so that you become the offensive player. But what that means is, one of the things we learn, we look at beginners, beginners are very, very scared of attacking. They don't want to lose their creatures. And so one of the ways to get better at magic is really understanding when you want to attack and when you want to trade, when you want to sacrifice, when you want to chump block, like really understanding the value of when you want to exchange things. And a lot of this is just understanding power toughness. A lot of this is really just the strategy of really realizing the value of power and

toughness. And I like to say, strip it down. In fact, the very first time you play, try just doing haste flying and vanilla creatures like portal. And then you can add in some other French vanilla later. But it really is a lot of getting good at the game is understanding when to say, oh, I'm going to trade with my opponent, but it's to my advantage that I'm trading. For example, let's say we both have four creatures on the board and my opponent has no cards

in hand and I have five cards in hand and I have creatures in my hand. So what that said is trading with the opponent is not good for the opponent. Because if we trade and destroy all our creatures and have an empty battlefield, I can refill it. I have creatures in my hand where they can't do that, or they can do much slower than me because they don't have cards. So trying to understand when you want to trade, when you want to chomp. Understanding the dynamics of that really will improve your magic game. That a lot, like one of the things I've learned, so in R&D I'm unique, or maybe there's a few

other people, but I can say that I'm a better magic player now than when I started in R&D. Most R&D people come from the pro tour where they're playing constantly, they're at the top of their game and they get here and there's a lot of things we care about beyond just winning, so They're at the top of their game and they get here and there's a lot of things we care about beyond just winning. So their edge gets dulled a little bit. But me, I was nothing. When I started, I mean it was very early in Magic and I was an okay player, but not a great player.

And I've learned a lot. I mean 29 years later, playing Magic for 29 years helps you get better. But one of the things that I've learned, other than learning how to mulligan is very important, is truly understanding combat. when to attack knowing when to block I think one of the greatest differential between really good players and less good players is understanding when to block when when to make the trades when to bluff when to do that so anyway I see I, now it works. So this was my, I made it, 30 minutes on Power and Toughness. Like I said, it is a very dynamic part of the game.

It's an important tool for design. And I think if you want to become a better player, understanding Power and Toughness in a really good way of how they interact and when to use it, I think is a very valuable tool just becoming better at magic. So anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed my 30 minutes of talk on power and toughness, but I might work so we all know that means this is 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.