Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #906: R&D Vocabulary, Part 5

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

This is another in my "R&D Vocabulary" series where I explain various lingo R&D uses. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm not pulling away driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, a couple weeks ago, I did my fourth in a series on what I call R&D vocabulary. And so today I'm going to continue with number five of the series and do the rest of the article, the latest article where I bring up things. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, R&D uses a lot of lingo. This whole series of podcasts, this is the fifth in the series, is called R&D Vocabulary. I just talk about different terms to use. I explain them. I talk about where some of the terms come from.
Starting point is 00:00:37 But anyway, it's just me talking about a lot of vocabulary we use. Some of this is official magic. Some of this is sort of slangy. But anyway, let's get to it. So first is enabler. So that's a design term we use when we talk about something that helps a certain strategy. So for example, a lot of times you have a mechanic or something or a theme in the set, and you need cards that sort of enable that theme to happen.
Starting point is 00:01:01 So a good example of an enabler might be, I have cards that reward you when. So a good example of an enabler might be I have cards that reward you when you discard a card. Madness or something. And so the enablers are cards that let you discard cards. Or maybe I have a mechanic that's all about attacking.
Starting point is 00:01:19 An enabler might be something that helps you attack or creates things that attack. Enablers are just cards that sort of help you do what the set wants you to do. And when you're building a set, you need to not just build the things that are doing it, but the things that are sort of happening or enabling those things. Next, fire. So fire is an R&D philosophy that stands for fun, inviting, replayable, and exciting. It's just the four attributes that we're supposed to keep in mind
Starting point is 00:01:47 whenever we make a magic set. I think a lot of people have taken our fire philosophy and expanded it to mean all sorts of things that aren't really what it means. It really, the main point of it is, hey, whenever we make a set, look, there's basic things you have to remember that, yes, you want your set to work.
Starting point is 00:02:04 Yes, there's lots of things you're concerned with. But at the core of it, it needs to be fun. You want players to enjoy playing it. It needs to be inviting. We want people to look at it and get excited and want to play it. It needs to be replayable, meaning it's a game. It wants to be something that doesn't get boring if you play it too many times. You want it to be a strong, good game that you can keep playing and be fun.
Starting point is 00:02:25 And finally, you want it to be exciting. You want something that really gets people jazzed up when they play, and you want exciting moments to happen. And you want people to be excited when they see the card. So anyway, those are things that we keep in mind. Anyway, a lot of people, once again, we will introduce concepts, and then people attach a lot of things to those again, like, uh, we will introduce concepts and then people like attach a lot of things to those concepts.
Starting point is 00:02:48 And that is what fire means. It's just keeping the basics in mind of what we want every set to do. Okay. Flavor word. Uh, these were introduced in Dungeon Dragons, Adventures in the Unforgotten Realm. Uh, so they are italicized words that go before the rule text that just kind of add some flavor they're not technically ability words there's a subtle difference between
Starting point is 00:03:10 ability words and flavor words but they are more just there for flavor the reason they were used in Adventures in a Forgotten Realm is D&D flavor wasn't sort of designed from the ground up to maximize themselves in magic cards so sometimes we do things and it's not always quite as clear what the flavor is, and the
Starting point is 00:03:30 flavor words help communicate that. Functional reprint. That is when we print a card that has a different name, but basically works the same as another card. Usually it has the same mana cost and has the same abilities. So the idea is it does the same thing, it just has a different name. So if you're playing in a format that has both of them, you can now play, you know, eight of them. You can play four of the first one and four of the second one. The only tiny change is if it's a creature, we allow a functional reprint
Starting point is 00:04:04 to have a different creature type, as long as the creature type's not mechanically relevant to the card. So if the mechanic that means something to the card, then it can't change. But if it doesn't, we allow it to have a new flavor, to have a different creature keyword. I understand that means, you know, if I have a goblin that I reprint as a dwarf, okay, there's cards that affect goblins and dwarves differently, but we still refer to it as a functional reprint. Next, helper cards or player aids. So these are things that go into a booster pack that players can use to help them, but is in itself a card that goes in the deck. Examples might be tokens, emblems, daybound, nightbound, the Monarch Dungeons you know, it's things that sort of
Starting point is 00:04:46 help you. Amiket had the Punch-Out cards, as did Ikoria so it's just stuff that goes in the pack that are play aids to help you, but aren't specifically cards that go into your deck Okay, next KSP, which stands for Key Selling
Starting point is 00:05:02 Point. I think this is a business thing I don't think this is unique to Wizards. But when we have to talk about our sets internally, this comes up a lot. Because like, oh, what's the KSPs of the set? What are the main things? Why would people want this set? And you want to make sure that your set has a couple of KSPs,
Starting point is 00:05:18 meaning there's a couple of things like, oh, people are going to be excited because this thing that's unique and different about this particular set. It's not just more magic. People like magic. But it's like, oh, people are going to be excited because this thing that's unique and different about this particular set. It's not just more magic. People like magic. But it's like, oh, well, you know, for example, the KSPs of Kamigawa Neon Dynasty is we're going back to Kamigawa. Or, you know, maybe there's key things.
Starting point is 00:05:38 You know, there's a new creative for part of it. Or there's mechanics that we're doing. Like, oh, it's Sagas that turn into creatures. Stuff like that are KS doing. Like, oh, it's sad because it turned into creatures. Stuff like that or KSBs. Okay, keyword. So a keyword, I talked last time in episode four about ability words. So keywords are mechanics that are named. And the way a keyword works is it replaces a certain amount of text with a word, but it's always the same
Starting point is 00:06:06 language that you replace, with small exceptions, but it's basically the exact same keyword, I'm sorry, the exact same series of words that it's like I'm chopping up, like these words mean this one word means these collection of words
Starting point is 00:06:22 and you replace it. Keywords unlike ability words can and you replace it. Keywords, unlike ability words, can be mechanically referenced. So I can say all creatures with blah, name a keyword. A keyword action is a keyword that's a verb and represents a specific effect. Examples of keyword actions would be create, fight, die. Usually, they're things that happen. Not all keyword actions are evergreen, although there are a lot of evergreen keyword actions. We occasionally will make new keyword actions that are just for a set.
Starting point is 00:06:57 But you can tell they're keyword actions because they have you do something. They're a verb. Okay, next, knobs. So knobs are elements of a card that usually involve numbers that give the play designers the ability to adjust the car for balance purposes uh mana cost activation cost power toughness now there are other knobs like for example instant for sorcery that aren't number related like you know if the card's a little strong you can make it turn from instant to sorcery if it's a little weak you it from sorcery to instant. What knobs are are things that allow play design
Starting point is 00:07:28 to adjust the card for balance purposes. If a mechanic has a lot of knobs, sometimes we'll refer to it as knobby. Play design like very knobby mechanics because they're much more easy to balance. Limited archetypes. So limited archetypes in every set we normally by default have ten limited archetypes. So limited archetypes, in every set,
Starting point is 00:07:46 we normally by default have ten limited archetypes. Usually there's fine, main, and five supporting. Usually with limited archetypes, the default is there are the two-color pairs. Sometimes there'll be three colors, sometimes a mix of two and three colors. Every once in a while, two and one color, because that can really support mono color,
Starting point is 00:08:04 which is tricky to do. But anyway, the limited archetypes have goalposts on commons, usually, that hint at what they're doing. There are defaults for our limited archetypes, like red-white traditionally is an aggro strategy, but not always. Sometimes we do
Starting point is 00:08:19 something a little different, but it's often what we do. Okay, next. Manasync. So, Mana Sync is a design term. It means an element of a card or mechanic that allow players to spend excess mana. So, the idea is, during the course of the game, you're going to keep playing your land. Eventually, you're going to
Starting point is 00:08:35 get to the point where you have more mana than you know what to do with. We want you, in the mid-to-late game, to have other means and ways to spend your mana. We don't want you just having mana and nothing to do with it. And so, that might be a mechanic where ways to spend your mana. We don't want you just having mana and nothing to do with it. And so that might mean a mechanic where you can spend extra mana to kick the card. Kickers, that
Starting point is 00:08:51 classic example. It could be activated abilities on a card that, you know, if you can later in the game activate it, it might add abilities or do something that helps you in that mid game that you couldn't do before that. Sometimes it could be X spells, where you can spend as much mana as you want.
Starting point is 00:09:08 There's a bunch of different ways to do mana sinks, but every set tends to have a mana sink. Sometimes it's a mechanic, sometimes it's not, but it's an important thing for a set to have. Mechanic. So a mechanic is anything that's an element repeatable on multiple cards. Named mechanics are either keywords or ability words. But not all mechanics are named.
Starting point is 00:09:31 So a mechanic refers to something, usually it's on more than one card, although one could argue if it's on one card, it implies it could be on more cards. Sometimes we'll refer to that as a mechanic as well. Okay, Modi slash A plus slash A, slash B, slash C. This is a grading system for how good a card is in Limited. Modi is short for Mahamodi Jin, which was a card in Alpha
Starting point is 00:09:53 that was a really powerful card in Alpha for Limited. It's funny, I don't know if Mahamodi Jin is still a Modi, because cards have gotten better over time. But anyway, it's slang used to grade cards for limited by play design. Mythic Wall. So,
Starting point is 00:10:09 near the end of the process, near the end of set design, we print all of the Mythic cards on an 8.5x11 sheet, one card per sheet, in full color, printed as the card would look when printed, with art, with names, with flavor text, with all the rules text. And then, anybody who wants can leave a note.
Starting point is 00:10:27 There's usually a bunch of post-it notes. And it's just a final look at our mythics. So the mythics are sort of the things that are supposed to be the splashiest. And it's just a chance for everyone to make notes and like, oh, here's little tiny tweaks we can do to make it better. And then the set lead can look at those notes.
Starting point is 00:10:40 They can listen to them or not listen to them. But a lot of times people will give like, oh, here's a great way to just, in a very little way, make the card better in a way that's easy to do that the set designer and the team hadn't thought about. Offline. So we have a lot of meetings. Offline is slang for the time in between meetings.
Starting point is 00:10:58 When you're on a design team, there's usually a lot of homework that you do. And the homework could be doing card designs, looking for repeat, you know, mechanics or repeat cards, reprinted cards. Maybe it's looking for themes. Maybe it's doing homework on whatever trope space we're playing around with and understanding better,
Starting point is 00:11:16 you know, what the trope space is. But anyway, when we talk about stuff you do not in meetings, we refer to it as offline. It's just slang. We've used that slang for a long, long time. Which is funny because now we meet, I mean, because of the pandemic, we're meeting online, but that term existed
Starting point is 00:11:33 long before we were meeting online all the time. Even when the meetings were not actually online. Payoff. So this is an element of a card that rewards the player for jumping through whatever hoops they're jumping through. So one of the things we often talk about is, does this card not
Starting point is 00:11:50 have a big enough payoff? Like, oh, you're making the player do this, but is the payoff not worth it? Because if what you're asking to do is really hard and the payoff isn't worth it, well, the player just won't do it. Probably won't even play the card. So we talk a lot about, is the payoff justified?
Starting point is 00:12:06 Because you want to have fun payoffs. You want to make people jump through hoops. Part of a game design is you want people to sort of have to work at things and try to figure things out, that there's a lot of joy of jumping through hoops to solve a problem, but we just want to make sure at the end of it there's something that's worth making you do that.
Starting point is 00:12:22 And we refer to that as payoff. Next, pencils down. So this is the point in which no more changes are allowed to be made to a design file. It happens, I think, near the end of set editing or partway through set editing. Basically, the set is editing, and at some point they're like,
Starting point is 00:12:40 okay, to finish doing the editing, nobody can change anything. So it's locked. Now we're just making sure that what is written is correct. And the problem is when you change things, it adds a lot in and it's easy to make mistakes. And so editing at some point has to clamp things down and say, okay, no more changes can happen. And that's known as pencils down. Play pattern.
Starting point is 00:13:02 So this is the most common way a card or mechanic is played. A lot of time in design, we'll talk about, do we like the play pattern? Is it making people do things that we like? Not just in the playing of itself, but around it. What does it make them do? How does it make them act? How does it make them play their other cards?
Starting point is 00:13:22 And it's something that we do a lot because we want to understand like in a larger sense. It's not what one person will do, but sort of over time what will many players do? We want to understand, okay, what is this mechanic? What's the play pattern in this mechanic? How would it impact
Starting point is 00:13:37 the game? How will it make the players act in response to it? You know, what might get played that might not normally get played? What might get put in decks that might not normally get played? What might get put in decks that might not normally get decks? Like, how does this particular element warp the play around it? And that's something we talk a lot about,
Starting point is 00:13:52 so we have a term for it. Quick pointing. This is a quick rating system Play Design uses to, like, roughly gauge power level of colors in Limited. It's meant to give them just a spitball idea
Starting point is 00:14:03 so they can understand pretty quickly, like, oh, green might be a little overpowered in this limited environment, or blue might be too weak or whatever. Next, rare pull. So rare pull is something that gets, anybody in Wizards who wants to can participate. We send out all the rares and mythic rares
Starting point is 00:14:23 to everybody in the company who plays magic, who wishes to sign up for this, and then they give their feedback. They rate everything, and it gives us a rough idea of, hey, when the actual public sees the cards, what rares and mythic rares are going to excite them. And over time, because we've taken data from the real world and compared it to data from our rare poles and it is pretty close. If you've ever done any studying on how data research works, that a small
Starting point is 00:14:52 sample size can actually replicate a much larger sample size. For example, like the Nielsen's that do TV ratings, they interview like 1,000 to 2,000 people, but that's representing millions of people. But what we found, I mean, we found,
Starting point is 00:15:07 but statisticians have found, is that a small sample size can usually be, if you're careful with how you get it, can map larger things. And we've found that our rare pulls do a pretty good job of mapping to the audience. Okay, rate.
Starting point is 00:15:21 This is an R&D term for how strong a card is in relation to its mana cost and its effect. And a lot of times, play design is the one that's kind of in charge of rate, but it has a lot of implications in other things. And so, like in the Council of Colors, we're talking about colors, you know, rate can impact how colors are perceived.
Starting point is 00:15:42 And in set design, rate can matter about what gets played and as fan and as played. Anyway, rate is a term we use all the time because the power level and understanding that is important. A rate monster is what we refer to a card where the mana cost is very aggressive for what its effect is. It means that it's really usually
Starting point is 00:16:00 inexpensive given other things that did something similar for this effect. Scalable. So this talks about an effect that can have different levels, usually tied to a number. So, for example, an X spell is a scalable effect, right? Because you can spend different numbers on X. Or maybe you have, like, the shrines from the various Kamigawa sets usually scale.
Starting point is 00:16:27 Like, this effect is based on how many shrines you have. We'll do scalable effects and tribal effects all the time, like, based on how many goblins you have or elves you have. We do scalable effects. Every set has scalable effects in it. So we do them so much that we know what the scalable effects are. So if you say, I need a scalable effect at this rarity and this color, I can just spit them off for you because we do them all the time. Set Skeleton. This is a tool used by Design to monitor the needs and contents of a set. I have posted two different articles.
Starting point is 00:17:01 If you look on my nuts and bolts last year in 2021, I think my nuts and bolts article was my latest article on set skeletons, in which I provide a skeleton that R&D actually uses. Basically what it is, it says, okay, as a default, you know, white
Starting point is 00:17:20 common 1 should be a 1-drop creature. White common 2 should be a 2-drop creature. And it gives rough outlines of what a set needs. Now, given it's the starting point, as we make the set, things will change. It's not like CW01 can be nothing but a 1-drop, but there usually is a 1-drop white creature in the set, and it's representing that normally exists.
Starting point is 00:17:43 And a set skeleton's a really good way to sort of get a rough idea of where things are as you're filling things in, and it helps keep you from forgetting oh, whoops, I didn't put in my giant growth, green common or whatever. Signpost uncommon, I referenced this earlier. Signpost uncommon,
Starting point is 00:17:59 usually it's a 10-card cycle, usually with two-color pairs, because two-color pairs are our default, saying, hey, this is what green-blue is up to in this draft environment. So usually they're gold cards, and they represent, usually they are the colors of the draft archetypes. So if there's 10 two-colors, the sign-on plus the comments are two-color. But anyway, it really sort of says very loudly,
Starting point is 00:18:24 oh, you're going to play a white-black deck? Well, here's what white-black's doing in this set. So if you get it early, it really helps hold your hand to draft the things you need to play that archetype. Staple. These are basic effects that go in basically
Starting point is 00:18:39 every set. Direct damage, counterspells, discards, giant gross. It's just things we always do. So, like, one of the things, I've talked about this
Starting point is 00:18:49 a little bit, but one of the things that you learn the more you do magic design is, I don't know, 85%, 90% of sets
Starting point is 00:18:56 are the same. Like, a lot of magic sets, the core, core structure to them is the same. Now, that 10 to 20% that's different
Starting point is 00:19:04 radically can change things. You don't have to change a lot to really shake things up. And from set to set, we want the sets to care about different things, like, oh, we're in Zendikar. We want to care about lands and land following. We're very focused on lands in a way
Starting point is 00:19:19 that we're not other places. We're in Innistrad. It's more tribal focused, or it's more about death. Because of the nature of it, you might care more, and there's double-faced cards, and, you know, each set has its own sort of feel to it, but no matter what, no matter whether you're on Zendikar, on Innistrad, on Ravnica, on Kamigawa, wherever you are, there's going to be direct damage spells, there's going to be counter spells, there's going to be direct damage spells. There's going to be counter spells.
Starting point is 00:19:45 There's going to be things that just show up every set. And so we might tweak those a little bit. It might be sometimes we add the set mechanics to those effects. Sometime, you know, there'll be a little rider that's enabling something. Or sometimes it's just a reprint or, you know, a nice simple card. It's a counter spell and it's cancel. Or it's shock if it's a direct damage spell. But anyway, staples are a key part of making sure that the base effects get done. And so it's just a term we use a lot. Next up, strictly better.
Starting point is 00:20:17 Okay. So this is a term. So one of the big questions is we're talking about two cards. So one of the big questions is, we're talking about two cards. Usually what Strictly Better means is card A does something, and card B is, does everything card A does but more. So for example, let's say card A is two and a blue for two-two flyer, and card B is two and a blue for 2-2 flyer with ward 1. Well, card B is everything card 1 is, but it's got an extra ability, right? It's got ward, which is just upside.
Starting point is 00:20:55 There's no downside for having ward. So the idea is, oh, well, card B is just, in almost every case, better than A. every case better than A. So, the, uh, one of the, what, one of the things that's confusing, though, is, um, so, for example, I think in my article, the example I used was Great Ogre's a 2-2, no rules to X. Goblin
Starting point is 00:21:16 Chariot, for the same cost, is a 2-2 with haste. And the idea is, okay, well, the 2-2 with haste is just better than the 2-2. It's strictly better. But the Goblin Chariot is a goblin. Great Ogre is an ogre. Well, there's a card called Tivadar's Crusade.
Starting point is 00:21:31 It destroys all goblins. There isn't a card that destroys all ogres. So, like, oh, was being a goblin causing vulnerability that being an ogre doesn't? Okay, yes. But when we talk about strictly better, it's like in most of the practical cases. Not that you can't come up with something. Magic has many, many cards. You probably can come up with something. But the reason we use it is when you are making cards,
Starting point is 00:21:52 a trading card game especially, look, you're going to be hitting a lot of the same ground. I just talked about how you do staples a lot. So, look, there's only so many costs and designs for a particular card. So, look, we're going to make two R2-2s, and not all R2-R2s are going to be the same as others.
Starting point is 00:22:09 It's okay to make a set have a two R2-2 with no rules text and later make a two R2-2 with haste. There can be, like, not every card has to be as equally powerful as every card in existence. There's a lot of different reasons why a card might be in your set. And maybe there's a card at common that's doing something for limited and there's another card at rare that's doing something
Starting point is 00:22:30 for constructed. Or, you know, like, different cards could have different roles. So and even then, even if it's just limited, it's fine if in this limited environment, red is better at this thing and this other limited, it's not as good because in that other environment, there's something else going on. We raise and
Starting point is 00:22:46 lower things as we're playing in the set. Some things are better in certain environments and worse in others. And so that means at any one moment in time we might make a card that there's other cards we've made before. So we call them strictly betters. What it means to us from a design standpoint is, look, we're aware this could be better. Not
Starting point is 00:23:02 every card has to be maximized for what it could be. Not every card has to be the best cost it could have. That you can have cards in which, look, there are other cards in other formats in other places that are better. But this card, for whatever reasons, is not that. And so we are strictly better to talk about, hey, we've made a card. We know that this is better than something we've made before. Next, templating. This is what we refer to the wording of the cards,
Starting point is 00:23:25 how the rule text, how we write it so it's properly written. I did an entire podcast on templating with Matt Tabak a couple weeks ago. So if you want more on templating, really it just says, oh, for example, let's say I'm going to do a direct damage spell. The way we do it, the templating would be card name, whatever the name of the card is, deals some number damage to, and you name the target. So it could be shock deals two damage to any target.
Starting point is 00:23:54 And so templating sort of, what templating does is we want all cards that do the same thing to always do the same thing and for the audience to read it and understand it does the same thing. So templating says, hey, when you're doing effect X, these are the words you use to do that.
Starting point is 00:24:10 And these are the variables that can happen based on, you know, whatever you're doing, who you're targeting, this and that. But anyway, templating is a super important part of it. It's a big part of what editing does. They work with the rules manager. It is what makes sort of the magic of language, as you will, and makes it work, makes it work online for is what makes sort of the magic of language, as you will,
Starting point is 00:24:27 and makes it work, makes it work online for digital, makes it work in tabletop. But anyway, we call that templating. Next, top cards, full card, half card,.1 card, not a card. So this is a grading system Play Design uses to talk about the chances of being, what chances a card has in standard. A top card means they believe it will be in standard. Full card, or top card means one of them
Starting point is 00:24:50 will be the defining card in standard. Full card means they think it'll be in standard. Half card is it has a chance of being in standard. Point one has a long shot of being standard, but it's possible. Not a card means there's no way we think this will be relevant in the format we're talking about, usually standard.
Starting point is 00:25:07 Usually the grading is for standard. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of grading systems. A lot of, I joke a lot that early design is a little more art and late design is a little more science. And there's a lot of systems as they're trying to understand power level, grading becomes a very important part of doing that. Okay, next, top-down. So when you're designing, this means you start from a flavor premise
Starting point is 00:25:30 and you build mechanics on top of it. Innistrad was a top-down design. Amonkhet was a top-down design. Kamigawa, original Kamigawa was a top-down design. The idea is that you are, what makes the structure make sense is the flavor that you're building off of. And so a bottoms-up is reverse
Starting point is 00:25:57 when you are building mechanics. I talked about that last, in episode four. Okay, next, top-lining. Okay, so after the design is figured out what the card does mechanically, there's a creative member whose job it is to figure out what it does creatively.
Starting point is 00:26:14 And that is going to be used to write the art description, to figure out the name, any flavor text. For example, it's a direct damage spell. Is it fire? Is it sonic? Is it earth? You know sonic? Is it earth? You know, original Kamigawa had ice.
Starting point is 00:26:30 Like, what exactly is it? What is it, you know, you're creatively defining what the card represents. And then we refer to that as top lining. Usually the top lining meetings are run by the creative person who's doing it
Starting point is 00:26:41 and then it involves a set lead, often the editor, the art director, and sort of talking about, ooh, how do we want to do this? But it's a process we do, and we talk about top landing. Tribal. So this is a keyword, ability word, theme,
Starting point is 00:26:56 or a set that's mechanically connected to creature types. We make tribal sets, like Innistrad is somewhat of a tribal set, like Lorwyn was very much a tribal set, Onslaught was a tribal set, Ixalan was a tribal set. Also, you might have a tribal mechanic, or you might have a tribal card.
Starting point is 00:27:12 It just, this is referring not to the tribal keyword, although there's a keyword called tribal, that's slightly different. This just means the adjective we use to talk about this is mechanically relevant to one or more creature types. Trinket text.
Starting point is 00:27:29 So trinket text is rule text on card that has minimal mechanical relevance but adds flavor. So the idea is, you know, for example, like, what's the card? Protection from demonsons and Dragons. It's an angel. I'm blanking on the name of the angel. But you guys know it. Like, that text doesn't matter most of the time.
Starting point is 00:27:51 Every once in a while it can matter. It's not that trick or test can never matter, but most of the time, when I'm attacking with my angel, you don't necessarily have a dragon or demon. There's not, you know, in all the cards in Magic, there's only so many dragons and demons. So the idea is it can matter,
Starting point is 00:28:09 but it's more there to add flavor to the card than mechanically matter most of the time. Variance. So variance talks about how often a card or a game or a deck will change between uses. So, for example, high variance means that, let's say you take a deck, you say the deck has high variance.
Starting point is 00:28:29 Every time I play it, it's either gone, low variance means it does the exact same thing every time, and in constructed, you want your decks to have low variance. But in more casual play, you want high variance. This is why, for example, Commander has 100 cards rather than 60, and has one of singleton rules rather than four of. That, you know, it creates a higher variance.
Starting point is 00:28:48 Unsets tend to, we design them to have a higher variance that, oh, we're going to do die rolling and outside assistance and we're going to do things where it's just going to change more from turn to turn. For example, both Contraptions
Starting point is 00:29:01 and Host Augment and Unstable had a very high variance that, you know, what a Host Augment does Unstable had a very high variance. What a Host Augment does depends greatly on which two come together. What a Contraption does depends greatly on what you draw. But the nature of both of the things means it's much higher.
Starting point is 00:29:16 And so from game to game, it'll be very different. When you're trying to make things fun, you want a high variance. When you want to make things more competitive, you want a low variance. I did an article called Variance. It's a two-part that really dives into
Starting point is 00:29:28 this. It's a very... Article I like a lot and talks about the importance of variance. It's a big part of the game. Finally, wheel or table. When you boost your draft, this is something... It means that I open a card. I don't take it, but I want it. So I open up
Starting point is 00:29:43 in boost your draft. I open up my pack I don't take it, but I want it. So I open up in Booster Draft, I open up my pack, I have two cards I want, I take the card that I think other people would take, and I leave a card that I think I want that nobody else wants. And then, if I have worked it out properly, seven people will draft, it gets
Starting point is 00:29:59 back to me, and I get to take the card that I wanted, but I carefully chose the one I wanted that I thought would get taken and leave the one that I thought wouldn't. A classic example of this is I'm playing a multicolor format, and maybe I have a, there's a gold card, and I think I'm the only person in those two colors
Starting point is 00:30:15 playing that theme, so no one else is going to want that card. So I go, oh, well no one else will take it, and it'll come back to me. You can be risky sometimes with it, because maybe that multicolor card really, really, well, no one's going to take it, and it'll come back to me. You can be risky sometimes with it, because maybe that multicolored card really, really is, you want it for your deck, but you're like, well, this other card I know I won't be able to get, and I think no one else is playing my colors.
Starting point is 00:30:33 So anyway, we refer to that as wheeling or as tabling. This is a slang that also might have started on the Pro Tour. We have a lot of Pro Tour players. But anyway, it's a term we use. Anyway, guys, that's all for the R&D vocabulary number five. I hope you guys enjoy this. Like, I, for those that haven't figured this out, I'm a word guy.
Starting point is 00:30:56 I'm a big believer not only in creating vocabulary, but in spreading vocabulary, so more people use vocabulary. The whole reason I did the articles and I'm doing these podcasts is I'd like for players to use this vocabulary if it makes sense in the way you play and how you talk about
Starting point is 00:31:09 things. But anyway, that is all the vocabulary I have to talk about. And I can see my desk! So we all know what that means. It 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, guys. Bye-bye.

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