Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #987: Unfinity Rules with Jess Dunks
Episode Date: November 25, 2022In this podcast, I sit down with Rules Manager Jesse Dunks to talk about choosing acorn and Eternal Unfinity cards. ...
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I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition.
So today I'm with Jess Dunks and we're going to talk all about the line between Acorn and Eternal.
Hey Jess.
Awesome. Yeah, hey, how's it going?
Okay, so what I've done is I made a list of cards that people keep asking me about.
Either they're Acorn cards, people are like, why isn't it eternal?
Or they're eternal cards, like, why isn't this acorn?
So I picked a list of stuff I get asked most about.
So you and I can chat about why exactly it was, how it ended up where it ended up.
Sound good?
Sure.
Yeah, that sounds great.
I'd love that.
Okay, first up is animate object.
So four and a blue sorcery.
You get seven tickets.
Choose an intimate object you own from
outside the game put a power and tufts or sticker on it you may also put a name sticker an art
sticker and or an ability sticker on it put it onto the battlefield as a creature okay this is
an acorn card why why why is this an acorn card um there are a couple reasons it's an acorn card
one of the main reasons is this brings some unknown object into the game.
We aren't a huge fan of that.
You could point to some older cards that do that, like Goblin Game.
We don't really do that anymore in traditional Magic.
Goblin Game tells players to hide some number of items.
But in addition to that, it's just hard to define what this creature is
and how the stickers apply to it and things of that nature.
We actually tried to make this one not acorn, if you remember. I'm sure you do. what this creature is and how the stickers apply to it and, and things of that nature. In retro,
you know, we actually really tried to make this one,
not acorn.
If you remember,
I'm sure you do.
I do try to make this one,
not acorn.
And basically what it came down to is that the words needed to make this
card,
not acorn ended up really long and confusing in a way that would,
I don't even think it was been on the card.
My memory might not be serving me here,
but it ended up, it ended up being something where it's like,
this is not really where we wanted to go with this card.
Yeah, the reason this was, more than anything else,
this was Acorn because how we could template it as an Acorn card
versus how we would need to template it as an Eternal card,
we could just put it in such simple English on an acorn card.
And I mean, we didn't even know if it would fit in eternal, but Matt, the editor, begged
me.
He was like, please, please, please, can we just make this an acorn card?
And so we did.
So it's a good example where it's possible to do it as an eternal, but right, it requires
a lot more words and has a lot more issues and it would be much more confusing
what it did, so that's why this
ended up Acorn.
Okay, next one is one that I was
most shocked by when you said it was
Eternal. So, it is
called Exchange of Words.
So, one blue blue,
Enchantment, when Exchange of Words
enters the battlefield, choose two target creatures.
For as long as Exchange of Words remains on the battlefield, exchange the text boxes of those creatures.
Now, in Unstable, I, for the first time, stole text boxes and stuff.
And so I thought that was clearly Silver Border.
But you said, no, we can do this in Eternal. So what's going on?
Yeah, well, we can do it in Eternal.
The thing about Exchange of Words is it's doing a very specific thing in a very specific way.
We wouldn't be able to do text box stuff at large if you wanted to make a whole set where the main theme is doing stuff up to text boxes.
We might have to have basically just defined how it works
when you have a text changing effects
that swaps these two sets of text boxes.
So we basically said text box has this particular meaning
and comprehensive rules under the hood,
and it could be swapped.
And this is a really good example of cards
where the rules for it,
when we started talking about it
the rules didn't really quite cover it but it was relatively easy to make a couple of tweaks to say
yeah we can cover this and uh the the text on the card i think is fairly straightforward as to what
it does and players understand it without needing that extra rules package to be on the card
yeah that's another thing that's important to understand is for normal magic we make
cards that don't work in the rules all the time it's the question of can we make them work in
the rules not like a lot of the stuff we make doesn't work because the rules have never done
it before so clearly there's no rules for it yeah that's a conversation i have every day when
somebody is like can we do this i'm like well yes what do we want it to do exactly and uh and let's figure it out um
a little off topic but i i just that's one of the things i enjoy is is we'll say does this work in
the rules like well not yet i know but we can do that okay now we'll get you a card that has a
little a little trouble working in the rules but players think players really think it works far
out two and a white, enchantment.
Rather than choose the indicated number of modes for spells and abilities you control,
you may choose one or more modes.
You can't choose any mode more than once.
So this is one of the cards I get asked most, like, why can't we do this in non-acorn?
So why can't we do this?
So the reason we can't do this in non-acorn, that there are a few cards that currently exist
that have modes which are mutually exclusive from one another.
What that means is they literally can't be applied at the same time.
You can't choose all of them and have it work.
A great example of this is Outlaw's Merriment,
which each mode lists a set of characteristics,
including a power and toughness,
and then it creates a token with those characteristics. And the game rules can't handle an object having more than, including a power and toughness, and then it creates a token with those characteristics.
And the game rules can't handle an object having more than one set of power and toughness.
Now, I've seen a lot of people talk about, oh, you could have changed that one card or the few examples of cards that there are that do that and have some different text.
We could do that.
It would make those cards long enough that reprinting them would make them nearly unreadable because the text would be so small.
And also, that's design space we would be locking ourselves off from in the future.
Part of our job is to make sure we're making sure we continue to make lots of fun magic cards.
Yeah, that's something that people have to realize is there's a lot of future-proofing when it's not just a matter of can we do it,
but if we do it, what does it prevent us from doing in the future?
And that's an important thing to think about right well the other side of that too is we try really
hard um there have been exceptions in the past we try really hard not to say okay well we made this
new card that we want so let's go change cards we made in the past in order to make it work
um yeah we want all cards to do what they say on them. Yeah, you've got to be very careful with that. Okay, next up.
Goblin Girder Gang.
Three and a red for a 0-4 Goblin Employee.
It's a creature.
It's got reach.
Whenever you roll a result not stored on Goblin Girder Gang,
you may store that result on it.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I just realized it's the wrong card.
I meant Goblin Blasternauts.
Sorry.
Goblin Blasternauts is the card I meant.
Sorry.
Three red red, creature goblin ploy, five four.
When Goblin Blasternauts enters the battlefield,
open an attraction.
Whenever you roll a six, you may copy the spell,
ability or attraction visit that caused you to roll that die.
You may choose new targets for the copy.
I apologize.
I confused my goblins.
Goblin Blasternauts is the one we had to make Acorn.
And a lot of people are like, why?
Why does this have to be Acorn?
Goblin Blasternauts is trying to do something where
it's copying the ability that caused you to roll a die
and it's a triggered ability.
One of the issues here is, there are a couple of them.
One of the issues here is that rolling the die is part of the resolution of that spell or ability.
As you finish casting it, nobody's responded and countered it,
and now we're actually taking all the steps to do it.
Then, after you're done with that, the trigger ability goes on the stack
and tries to make a copy of that spell or ability.
tries to make a copy of that spell or ability and the numerous ways that we make die rolls in magic uh and choose targets for things and so on um then the timing of magic
those things just didn't work to actually let us make this thing work that way um i could probably
take up a good chunk of the podcast talking about exactly why, but the large problems here are the timing of when you're actually making this copy
and whether or not the item you're copying is actually something that can be copied at that point
because you've already finished resolving it at that point.
Okay.
Next up is Grand Marshal Macy.
So she's one white black for a 2-2 Legendary Creature, Human Performer.
You may choose not to untap Grand Marshal Macy during your untap step.
If you do, put a pause counter on it.
Then you lose one life for each pause counter on it.
Whenever Macy becomes untapped, remove all pause counters from it.
To untap, choose an until end of turn or this turn effect.
As long as Mesa remains tapped, that effect
doesn't end. So this
was an effect I thought maybe we could do
and you were like, no, let's not do this.
Yeah.
Well,
I will say this one wasn't
just a problem for me. There were also concerns about
what this would do. I think there were concerns about
what this would do in some internal formats. There were also concerns about what this would do in some... I think there were concerns about what this would do in some internal formats.
There were some
concerns about this in internal formats, but
I was under the belief that
we... Could we have done this?
If we didn't have... No, no, no. That's not
exactly what I meant.
This would be difficult to do, and the
reason it's difficult to do is because
the concept of an effect isn't
always clear. It's easy to point at a spell or an ability and say this thing i want this thing the spells and abilities
have multiple effects that happen so the word effect can mean a variety of different things
in magic so when you're looking at an effect um you know giant growth is very obviously oh it's
got an effect it gives this thing plus three plus three until end of turn um but what if it gives it
what if a spell gives something plus three plus three and trample well as far as the rules are concerned
that two different effects when does each one start when does it end uh which one is this
applying to those things are not well defined this would have required a pretty big lift of
new rule support to make it work and it wasn't something we were um we're currently set up for the rules kind of at all.
Okay, next up.
It came from Planet Glurg.
XX green blue for 00 legendary creature Alien Ooze.
You may have it came from Planet Glurg. Enter the battlefield as a copy of X different creatures on the battlefield.
Yeah, this is another one I get asked all the time, like, why is this acorn?
Couldn't we just do this?
Yeah,
this is a
really interesting one, and it's something
we have to watch out for as we make Magic Card
templates regularly, is
the game rules don't support
one thing becoming a copy of multiple
other things, and it kind of ties into the
question we had earlier about far out,
is you end up getting a whole bunch of different sets of characteristics.
And on the battlefield, the game can't handle things like
having more than one set of power and toughness.
So primarily, it's just that on the battlefield,
objects only have one set of characteristics,
and that's been a really important part of how magic rules are framed.
And a lot of things are framed around that assumption.
So breaking that assumption breaks a lot of things in how magic rules work.
Okay.
Next up, Magar of the Magic Strings.
He is a one black red for a 3-3 legendary creature, Minotaur Performer.
One black red. Note the name of target creature, Minotaur Performer. 1 black red.
Note the name of target instant or sorcerer card in your graveyard
and put it onto the battlefield face down.
It's a 3-3 creature with, quote,
whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player,
you may create a copy of the card with a noted name.
You may cast the copy without paying its mana cost, unquote.
And, quote, if this creature would leave the battlefield,
exile it instead of putting it anywhere
else, unquote. So I know
of every card in the set, I think this template
went through more changes than any other card
in the set.
Yeah, it went through a lot, that's for sure.
I remember
the initial version you pitched
was somewhat different than that.
And
it went through a bunch of changes.
So this one,
this one,
this is not a core.
No,
this is eternal.
This is an eternal car.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So,
so this one is eternal.
Is the question,
why is it eternal or what?
Yeah.
A lot of people are like,
this seems like the kind of card that might be a corn.
And like,
this is one of the cars that I remember.
The reason we kept rewording it is
you said you thought it could be eternal
I wanted to make some weird
commanders that you would build decks
around that were really weird
but yet were still eternal
and this was my poster child
please please can we keep this eternal if possible
yeah
this one went through a lot of changes
and it is a weird one
it's obviously jumping through a lot of changes. And it is a weird one.
It's obviously jumping through a lot of hoops in its text box with noting things and making a copy of a noted spell
when what you're really trying to do is just look at what this card is
and cast a copy of it, right?
That's functionally what's happening when you look at that card.
So it ended up with a lot of different tabulating changes
to make sure that that could
actually work uh and you know i i as far as why is this eternal well we had to build a couple of
rules to support it uh one actually i think one exactly rule to support it but uh we have been
expanding what we can do with um making copies of objects and and things that you're looking at uh
and saying i want to make a copy of that.
And this was a small expansion to that.
And I didn't think it was out of the question to do.
Matt also didn't.
But I know that we had a lot of pushback back and forth on exactly what this
should say.
And this is where the card landed.
And I think we're all pretty happy with it.
I enjoy playing with it when I played Limited with this set.
But I think it's fine.
I guess I don't really have a better answer than it seems pretty good to me.
I mean, it required you making a rule, but it was something you could do,
and it wasn't that hard to do.
Right.
Yeah, and it wasn't as extensive even as some of the other cards
that we had to make some rules for in the set.
Okay, next up is Nearby Planet.
So it's a land with Rangeling.
This card is every land type, including Plains island, swamp, moan, forest, desert, gate, lair, locust, and all those Urza ones.
Nearby Planet enters the battlefield tapped.
When Nearby Planet enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you pay one.
Yep.
Okay.
This is one where we talked about it briefly, I remember.
And the issue with giving something all land types,
instead of saying, this thing is all land types,
if you set something's land type to a basic land type,
which you are doing with that card,
then what you end up doing is saying,
okay, the rules say it's a basic land type now
it's that basic land type it has the mana ability that goes with that land type and it loses all of
its other abilities which is not what we wanted this card to do right um and it is you know this
is another one where um we could probably have changed some rules to make that work but if we to
do so we're kind of touching some some assumptions about how land types work uh which is a little bit
of a dangerous space that we don't want to get into when we're talking about making changes
especially when it's for one card in a situation like this another big thing about this particular
card was so carmen was the one on the team looking at, she's a play designer, Carmen Handy's a play designer, and she was making comments about how there's some scary things about this for Legacy, so we also wanted to be careful.
So not only were there some slight rules issues, but probably it was more the worry about Legacy that made this acorn than anything.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely has rules issues.
I remember us talking about it briefly, talking about the rules issues,
and I don't think that one came up again,
because we spent a lot of time talking about some of the other cards that are on this list.
Yeah.
I think Carmen really said she didn't want to see it in Legacy,
and it had some rules issues, so we're like, okay, fine.
Let's not push this one.
Fair enough.
Okay, next up.
Scooch.
One and a black instant.
Add or subtract one from target creature's power,
target player's life total, or target die's roll result.
Draw a card.
So this is one I get asked all the time.
This is an acorn card.
Why?
Why is this an acorn card
there are only certain things in magic that we can target um you can target uh objects you can
i'm sorry let me rephrase that it's true but you can target creatures on the battlefield
permanents on the battlefield cards that are in other zones you can target spells and abilities
on the stack and you can target players. You can't target things
that aren't any of those things. So you can't target
a counter on a creature, for example.
You can't say move target counter
for one creature to another. You can move a
counter, but you can't target it because it's not one of those objects
you can target. This is also true for die rolls
and dice. You can't
target a die and you can't
target the roll of a die.
That's not a game concept that the rules
recognize as an object that you can um that you can target so there wasn't a way that we could
structure this card uh that still referred to that thing and had and was able to target it and say
and group it in with the other things and say change this die roll yeah another thing to keep
in mind is this is a modal card with three effects we wanted the three
effects to feel connected and what we would have to do to write it would make them feel like three
random things that have nothing to do with each other and that was the card would just be inelegant
so that that often is the case as well okay next up sola flora uh intergalactic icon
three white white oh sorry go ahead no i just i want to clarify you said it's a modal card um Next up, Sola Flora, Intergalactic Icon, Three White White.
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
No, I just want to clarify.
You said it's a modal card, and you mean that in the sense that it has multiple –
Sorry, sorry.
It's not – you're correct.
It has multiple things you can do.
It's not technically a modal card.
It's a good call.
Yeah, just because we were also talking about Far Out, I want to be clear about the distinction there.
Sorry.
Please continue.
Sorry.
For the longest time in R&D,
we use modal to mean multiple choices,
and then the rules officially made modal mean something, and it's just an old habit of calling something.
It's old slang.
People still do.
This is modal, and what they mean is it has choices,
and the definition is, yeah.
Okay, so now,
solar flora, intergalactic icon,
three white white,
three three three legendary
creature human guest auras and equipment you control attached to solo flora intergalactic icon
affect other creatures you control as those auras and equipment were attached to them
counters and stickers on solo flora affect other creatures you control as those counters and
stickers were on them so she's an acorn and this is another card i get asked why why can't we do
this um this is a really good one to, why? Why can't we do this?
This is a really good one to talk about because this one looks on its face like, oh yeah, it's really obvious what this does.
But when you start diving in and looking at, when you start looking for the problems, especially with equipment and enchantments that could be attached to her,
you start to realize there's some very strange and contradictory effects uh that can occur um there's some very undefined situations especially when it involves uh things that refer to like costs something have that refer to the equipped creature so like if something says
if the equipment has tap this equipment uh and or like tap the equipped creature to do a thing
it wouldn't be clear how that would work
with something like Soloflora.
There are a bunch of other examples
where it isn't clear, at best it is ambiguous,
or just can't work if you have a specific aura or equipment
or a set of auras or equipment that are on there.
And you just end up with not just unintuitive,
but kind of nonsensical result in the rules.
So this isn't something we were able to make work
in a way that made sense.
I don't know that we tried too hard
to look at all the caveats that would be necessary
to make that work,
but there are a bunch of problems
that mostly involve just other equipment in Auras.
And I wish I had looked before we uh had this conversation to
give a couple of examples because i don't remember at this point the specific examples but i know
that that was the main problem yeah and also usually what happens is once you start finding
four or five prop like there's just a point like there's enough problems we're not going to solve
all the problems yes that's absolutely especially with a set like this
where there's just a whole bunch of like one off
different things we have to worry about
okay next up it's a card that I
it's an acorn card that I actually
it shocks me people think this is even remotely close
to eternal but it's called soul performer
two green green
it's for a 2-2 creature elf performer
tap add tap
tap activate only once each turn, while activating
an ability, use tap rather than tapping the
permanent to pay for tap.
I love this card. It's a fun card.
Let's talk a little bit, why isn't this in
normal everyday magic?
Yeah, well,
you know, when you add mana, what you're really
doing is you've got a resource
called your mana pool, and you add mana, and mana just goes to live there.
So if I tap an island, I now have one blue mana that's just floating there waiting for me to use it.
When I tap a creature, it doesn't work the same way.
I don't create a tap symbol that's waiting for me to use it.
That symbol just means the cost of this thing is to tap the creature.
So adding a tap symbol
uh even though it's something where it's like okay that's weird and neat and also i totally
get what it's doing um when i adding a tap symbol is just it's it only makes sense because of how
we think of mana but it's not mana so the rules don't support adding a tap as a resource in that
in that sense.
Tap just means the cost of tapping a creature.
It doesn't mean this is a thing you have.
Right.
I mean, I think people conflate because mana has a symbol and it's a cost and tap has a symbol and it's a cost that they are the same thing and they're just not the same thing.
Yeah, this is a really interesting one because um if
you look at it if you if you aren't familiar with what you just described and some of the intricacies
of of nana and symbols and that in the magic rules uh you got this card it looks like it should work
um but i this was actually when the set came out this was a great example of cards that uh
magic judge friends of mine who were very involved with the rules, I showed it to them, and they're just scratching their heads,
going, I don't understand how this could possibly work.
Well, that's why there's an ink card on it.
Okay, next up, we have Space Balerion.
So Space Balerion is, where is he?
Two white blue.
He's a legendary planeswalker, Jace,
with three loyalty.
He has Space Sculptor.
Space Balerion divides the battlefield
into Alpha, Beta, and Gamma sectors.
If a creature isn't assigned to a sector,
its controller assigns it to one,
opponents assigned first.
For a plus one ability, creatures in each sector can be blocked this turn
only by creatures in the same sector.
Minus one loyalty.
Put a plus one, plus one counter on each creature in the sector of your choice.
And minus five, destroy all creatures in the sector of your choice.
So this is a card.
This is eternal.
And this is the card that people ask me all the time.
Like, how is this eternal?
How is this not acorn? How is this not acorn?
How is this not acorn?
Yeah, I asked myself that question
when I was writing the rules.
No, I'm just kidding.
This one is...
This is an interesting case
where it actually really highlights
something we do in Magic Rules all the time.
It uses a keyword ability
and then some reminder text
that tells you some parts of the keyword
ability that you need to that you need as a player in order to understand what's going on
but all of the the crunchy rules bits are kind of hidden in in under the hood in the actual
comprehensive rules there's a much longer section about what space sculptor actually means uh when
it's on on cards and so the way that we can get all of that information
is to use a keyword ability.
Now, we can't do that all the time
because if you introduce too many of these kinds of words,
then it becomes confusing in a small, as you know,
too many specific words in a small space of time
just can be overloading.
But we can use it to get more information onto a card.
Just like flying flying which is
very resonant means uh you know this creature can't be blocked except by creatures flying in
reach um we don't have to write that on the card every time we're flying on a card you just know
what it means um so we did that and space sculptor um it's a little bit hacky how it actually works
because it really just gives your creatures designations of the different sectors that
they're in or everybody's creatures, I should say.
It doesn't technically divide the battlefield into sectors, as the reminder text implies.
Could we do that? Maybe. That's a really big ask for the one card we have here.
But because I knew that we could get to a way of approximating that and getting this play correct, this is definitely something we can do in Acorn.
But the Reminder text is kind of guiding you
as to what's actually happening.
Well, I mean, but this is Eternal.
It's not Acorn, right?
I'm sorry, I meant Eternal.
Oh, you meant Eternal, okay.
I apologize. I just misspoke.
Okay, so the next...
Here's another card that people seem to think, like,
just should work,
and I don't think it's remotely close to working,
is Trigger Happy.
So one and a red for instant.
Choose a triggered ability of target permanent. triggers you control that ability why why can't this be
eternal uh so trigger happy so
pausing a triggered ability to trigger is a little weird on its own.
Figuring out how we make that work in the rules
support abilities triggering
that way would be new
and novel. In addition to that,
there are a bunch of questions about
things like who controls the ability
when you do that.
I'm sorry,
I know you just read it, but does it target a triggered ability
of something you control?
No, it says choose a triggered ability of target permanent.
You do not need to control it.
So that's another issue.
There are a lot of triggered abilities
where it's not clear what would happen
if another player controls the ability.
And if I choose your ability on your creature um who who controls it
do you control it or do i control it because i had the trigger happy card it'd be a question we
need to answer and neither answer was actually all that intuitive when you start looking all the all
the different triggered abilities that happen uh so that that was one where it's another one where
you go well on its face, it's pretty simple.
We could make that work.
And then when you start diving into it and you start looking at the possible triggered abilities that we could be causing to trigger with this, you go, wait, there's a bunch of head scratchers here.
And just like you described before, once you hit a certain number of those, you go, yeah, this isn't what we should do.
Okay.
Next up is Truss, Chief Engineer.
So it's blue and a black. Legendary creature.
Vidalcan Rogue Employee. 1-3.
When Truss Chief Engineer enters
the battlefield or another creature dies,
put a hack counter on Truss. 2 and
tap. Remove X hack counters from Truss.
Add or subtract X from a number or number
word on target spell or permanent
until end of turn. This effect can't
reduce a number below 1 or a number word below 1. So permanent until end of turn. This effect can't reduce a number below one or number word below
one.
So this is an acorn card.
Now we do sleight of mind where we change
color words and magical
hack where we change land types.
Why can't we change numbers?
Number words...
Uh...
Changing number words is one of those where...
This one's a little more complex. Just in general, we try to avoid text-changing effects for a variety of reasons. I know we allow exchange of words, but text-changing effects have some some weird issues but number words are also weird because of localization
issues sometimes um the subtracting a number a number word isn't doesn't look like it works the
same in another language as it does in english so i think that was part of the issue there as well
um but we just try really hard to avoid the distinction of number words in uh eternal magic and i i i don't recall the
specifics of that conversation but i remember us that being the the reason that we couldn't do that
is well we this is this is uh number word does not a place we want to go so could we make a card
could an eternal card change not number words but, but just numbers? Could it do that?
Well, then we get into the same problem of – we get into some similar problems.
I mean that's something we could potentially discuss, but I feel like here's the thing.
Sometimes this will happen.
I'm currently drawing a blank on why this was an issue, I'm being honest with you.
But I remember it being an issue.
So there's a very good chance that I'm going to think about it 10 minutes after this podcast
and be like, oh, right, here was the reason.
I apologize for not having that in front of me at this moment.
But that happens a lot when I'm discussing something
where I'll go, oh, yeah, maybe we could do that.
And then I'll message somebody a few minutes later and go,
nope, I found the thing.
Here's the reason we can't do it.
Okay, we get to our last card today.
And this is an interesting one.
Tug of War.
Oh, yeah. Four and a green, sorcery.
Players play a sub game
starting at five life and with up to three
permanent cards with different names from
their main game library on the battlefield.
As the sub game ends, the winner
chooses one of the cards they put on the battlefield
as the sub game began and puts it
onto the battlefield rather than shuffling it into their library.
This is an acorn
card. Why?
Why is it an acorn card?
Why couldn't we do this in Eternal?
I mean, there are a couple of templating tweaks
that if you wanted to do it in Eternal, I
would suggest, but the truth is, we can.
Subgames already exist
in Eternal.
Sharazad is not legal in most tournament formats,
but subgames are already supported by the Magic Comprehensive Rules.
In fact, I remember you asking me several times,
well, several is not the right word,
but I remember you asking me once or twice,
hey, we can do this, right?
This is Eternal League.
I was like, yeah, actually, subgames are totally fine.
This requires fewer changes than anything else.
But it turned out that there were other issues
with sub-games as a whole,
and you might have more information about that.
Yeah, yeah.
Sub-games are fine.
Yeah, the interesting thing about this is,
we originally, this was an internal card in our,
when we went to the slideshow,
where we showed the rest of Studio X,
the cards, R&D the cards um it was it was eternal and it was literally the number one comment i got from
the slideshow was what in the world is this doing eternal this should be acorn and what we found was
the vast majority of people just like it felt like it should be Acorn. Like, yes it works in the rules, but that's not the
only determiner.
It just, I mean, part of it is it can
delay tournaments. There's a lot of offshoots
of sub-games.
But the biggest issue was kind of a feel
thing. Like, it just, it didn't
feel right as being Eternal.
But it's a good example where you were
not in any way, you, like, you gave
the thumbs up, I made it Eternal, and it changed not because of anything with the rules.
Yeah.
I was,
I was never opposed to a sub game being eternal.
That was,
yes,
is,
and still remains fine.
If you want,
if you wanted to do it.
Well,
anyway,
I want to thank you.
Like I said,
the,
the,
one of the things that's really interesting about having a product where there's a line between, you know, the Acorn internal line
that this is the only product you ever have done that. So it is, I think it makes people want to
question why things aren't either side. And so I'm glad to have you on today to sort of walk
through some of the more, uh, contentious ones, I should say. For sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I was glad to be here.
Thanks for chatting.
The whole thing, I'll just say real quick,
the whole thing was super fun to go through all of those cards
and try to figure it out
and all the back and forth we had.
And it was a real joy to make this set.
And I hope people have fun playing it.
Well, thanks, Jess, for showing up today.
And like I said, it was fun to talk all this through.
But to everybody else,
guys,
I'm at my desk
so we all know
what that means.
It means it's the end
of my drive to work.
So instead of talking magic
and magic rules,
it's time to make some magic.
So I will see you guys
next week.
Bye-bye.