Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #8 - Cycling

Episode Date: November 19, 2012

Mark Rosewater talks about Cycling.

Okay, pulling out of the driveway, so we know what that means. It's time for drive to work. Okay, today's show, I thought I would try, I keep experimenting with this podcast, because I've never done this before, and I'm trying to do different topics. Early on I was doing a lot of sets I'd worked on, but I realized pretty quickly that while I worked on a lot, I would run out of them. So I've been trying to expand. So today I'm going to try something a little different. I'm going to talk about a mechanic.

Today I'm going to talk about cycling. So why did I pick cycling? Well, for starters, it is a mechanic we've used more than any other mechanic, I mean, barring evergreen mechanics. It is the mechanic that we brought back the most number of times. And so it's an interesting mechanic. It's interesting to design for. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about the history of the mechanic, and then I'd talk about sort of how we designed for it. Mostly what I'm hoping today to be is talk about kind of the evolution of a mechanic

and talk about how, you know, once upon a time when magic first began, we tend to think of mechanics as disposable things. Like you'd have a mechanic, you use it up, throw it away, done. And eventually we got to the conclusion of, okay, that's kind of dumb. Like these are, I mean, not all mechanics necessarily want to be repeated. But when we get a good mechanic that we think there's, you know, a lot of design space for, why wouldn't we want to do it again? that we think there's a lot of design space for, why wouldn't we want to do it again? And we started thinking more of tools.

For a certain job, you need certain tools, and cycling has a nice role it plays, and so a lot of sets really can use cycling. So anyway, let me start with the history of cycling, and then I'll talk about sort of its functions. So, trivia question, who designed cycling? The answer is Richard Garfield. For what set was cycling designed for? The answer, Tempest. Yes. So what happened was, I talked about this in my podcast on Tempest, Richard had not done any design since Arabian Nights. In my quest to become a designer, I got Richard to agree to be on Tempest.

And so one of the things that was fun for Tempest was Mike Elliott and I, who had never been on a design team, were just pouring out design ideas we've had. And Richard, who hadn't designed for a couple years, had pent up a bunch of ideas. So one of the ideas he had was for a couple cards with cycling on them. I think, by the way, I think he actually called them cycling. If not cycling, it might have been called sliding. But I believe we actually called it cycling. I think the name never changed. And in Tempest Design, it was just on a couple cards. I think that Richard's idea was, originally was, they just

went on to cards that were cards you didn't need all the time. They were cards that were, you know, narrow cards. So that if, you know, you put it in your deck and didn't need it, I think the very first one he made went on Tranquility. So the idea is, well, sometimes you want Tranquility, but sometimes it's useless to you. And so I think what Richard really liked with the idea of cycling is just, oh, well, here's the card that's a sometimes card. And then if you don't need it, oh, you can just trade it in for another card. And so it started there. I think cycling two was, at the time, we had kind of come to the conclusion that cantrips had cost two.

Meaning if you get a card over and above, the cost of the card was about two. And so somehow in our minds at the time, like two equaled a card. So anyway, Richard made, my memory is like two or three cards. A tempest design when I handed over the file had cycling in it and it was just on a couple cards. I think it was keyworded just because I tend to like to keyword things. And so a lot of times in files, sometimes I'll keyword things, especially back in the day, even if they didn't need the keyword, just to kind of show people they were connected.

I still do that in design now so that people can recognize a connection between things. And we're a little more likely to keyword than we once were in the actual release product. Once upon a time, each set had two keywords, and so only two things could be keyworded. But in design, I always like to identify things. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was identified in the design file, but in my head was it wasn't going to be something that was going to be a keyword. It was just going to be something on a couple cards. So one of the notes that I got on Tempest Design from development was there was too much in it.

Because the design team all were just dying to make things, and so we stuffed it to the gills. It had lots of stuff going on. In fact, not only was cycling in Tempest Design, Echo was in Tempest Design. And both abilities got taken out. And then Mike Elliott, who did Urza Saga the next year, used both of them. And so both who did Urza Saga the next year, used both of them.

And so both of the Urza Saga keyword mechanics were actually from Tempest Design. Elliott had made Echo and Richard had made Cycling. Okay, so Cycling shows up for the first time in Urza Saga. So we did something interesting with Cycling. I'd like to believe at the time we understood that it was a deep mechanic. Like maybe in the back of our heads we kind of got it was something that there was more. Because we did something very interesting in Urza Saga, which is we did Cycling 2. The only cycling you saw was Cycling 2.

I remember at the time people asked us because, you know, it was Cycling 2, but every single car did Cycling 2. Why did we bother putting the 2? Why not just call it cycling? And then cycling cycles for two. And I think the answer is, we knew that cycling was a pretty deep mechanic. And let me answer this.

I get asked this question all the time, so I might as well answer it now, which is, how do we know if a mechanic is a shallow or deep mechanic? I know recently I've been talking a bit in my column about Overload, and one of my comments is that Overload is a lot shallower mechanic than it looks. There's not as many cards that you can make with it as you think. And the answer has to do with a couple things.

First is, how many different kinds of cards can you put the mechanic on? Like, Cycling is beautiful in that any card can have Cycling. It doesn't matter. Instants, Sorceries, Enchantments, Artifacts, Land, Creatures, obviously. Anything can have Cycling is beautiful in that any card can have cycling. It doesn't matter. Instants, sorceries, enchantments, artifacts, land, creatures, obviously. Anything can have cycling. So that increases it because it can go in any card.

Second is kind of what needs does it have? You know, for example, overload has to have a targeted effect that hits one thing that you would want to pay extra to hit many things. You know, and that is a much narrower subset. that hits one thing that you would want to pay extra to hit many things. You know, and that is a much narrower subset. Cycling, well, cycling kind of wants to be on something that you would want to cycle. So putting cycling on cars that you really don't want to get rid of is not ideal. But other than that, you know, cycling is pretty useful because one of the neat things about cycling is a lot of times early in the game, it's like, I need

land, you know, I got two lands in my open hand and I'm not seeing land. Okay, well, I'm willing to throw away whatever this is to get more chances to get land because if I don't get land, I'm going to lose the game. So cycling is much flexed up. So a big part is how many things can go on, how narrow the effects it happens. Um, and then also like, can it go at common? You know, cycling is a good card in that it's simple, it can go common. If you can't go at common, there's just less things you can do. Um, and how many of the card in mass?

Uh, some mechanics have a threshold to them. And so, you know, like it, it, you're going to have so much because you don't want to have too much in your set. But cycling, yeah, you can have a whole bunch of cycling cards. It doesn't particularly, when we get to Onslaught, I'll talk about integration of it. But, you know, another big thing is how many can you have? How many can a deck have?

And that, things that are way too heavy make it hard to do that. But anyway, cycling plays well in all of these, right? It can go to any card. Its effect can go on most effects. You know, it doesn't weigh against itself, so if people get a lot of cycling cards in limited, it's not a problem, you know. But it's not linear, like I said, until we get to Onslaught, it's not linear, like, you know, have as many as you want.

So anyway, we put cycling into Urza Saga. We made them all cycling too. I mean, we experimented a bit. We had a land cycle. You know, we put it on a lot of different kinds of cards. But essentially, in the first time we used it, it was mostly the way Richard had used it in Tempest Design, which was, let's take cards that you might not always want,

and then you can cycle them away. Now, the funny thing is we made a few errors. The classic error was, horrible my card names, there was a terror, a dark vanishing that you could cycle away. And the problem there was, especially at limit, is like, when are you cycling away a kill card? You know what I want instead of this kill card? Another card.

Now, look, if you're tight on land or late game where you somehow need an answer that that's not going to solve, I mean, I'm not saying there's never situations where you cycle it away, but one of the things we learned from doing cycling in Urza Saga was you have to be careful that putting on a card that people don't want to cycle away, even if sometimes they're supposed to do it, just makes bad feeling. And that you kind of want to put on cards where people, like, sometimes honestly want to cycle it away. You know, not in weird circumstances, but normally they might want to circle away, cycle it away. So anyway, we did cycling.

We put in all three sets. Done. Okay. Flash forward. I don't know how much later, three, four years later, and we are working on Onslaught. So one of the things that cycling does is, one of the things that we like in design is what we call mana smoothing, which says, mana is a big part of the game, and, you know, we want to make sure that we help players who are knowledgeable

understand how to help themselves with mana. So that they can, for example, you know, allow people to push how much land they play. So when they get extra lands, there's a use for that extra land. You know, that the mana could be used in some way. Or sometimes, like with cycling, the mechanic itself just helps get you to land, so if you're a land light, something can get you to the land. And so deck smoothing is something in which, as we said, we want to have some tool for

the experienced player to help mitigate a little bit the mana system. And one of these podcasts, I'll talk about the mana system. a little bit the mana system. In one of these podcasts, I'll talk about the mana system. It is a much maligned thing that I think does so much good that people just don't quite understand. But anyway, that's another podcast. But I do recognize that we do want to do some mana smoothing. So we were working on Ancelot,

and we were trying to come up with, we needed one more mechanic. And I remember at the time, the notes was, we want a cycling-like mechanic. So here's a little story, nothing to do with magic, but it's kind of the thing that inspired me here. So there's a very famous story where Woody Allen, the director, was casting a movie. And so in the script, he put a Daryl Hannah-like star, because he was trying to sort of evoke something, and he wanted to give people an idea of what he was trying to evoke. So Daryl Hannah sees this, and then comes and says,

how about me? I'm a Daryl Hannah-like star, and they ended up using her, and she just does a cameo in, I forget what movie it is, but one of his mid-movies. And the same kind of thing happened for me, which is, well, we want a mechanic like cycling. So I said, how about cycling? Cycling is like cycling. At the time, we never reused a named mechanic. We had reused unnamed mechanics,

like pitch cards we had redone, and obviously cycling. But pretty much, if it was a keyword mechanic, either we had ever greened it, or we had never reused it again. And I was saying, well, how about we brought it back? Like, you know, because I was really into the idea of, look, these are tools. When we need them, use them. We had used it for a while. Hey, just bring it back. Cycling does the job. And the response was, oh, we kind of done before. So I said, well, but I think we can do something different with it. And so the response was, okay, you show us something different

with it, you know, and maybe we'll consider it. So first I came back and said, okay, well, obviously, we did cycling too. We could just do, you know, cycling for other costs, especially, we do cycling for mana costs. And I suggested the idea of, you know, a land cycle, and instead of cycling for two, cycles for C, you know, cycling for other costs, especially we were cycling for mana costs. And I suggested the idea of, you know, a land cycle, instead of cycling for two, cycles for C, you know, of that color.

So the idea is, you know, if I have too many swamps, well, I could cycle it, you know, I could cycle it away because I don't need this color. And they said, okay, well, that's interesting, but that's not really different enough. And then I said, oh, okay, how about if there were things that cared about cycling? And they said, tell us more. So I made the card Lightning Rift. And

the funny thing is, I joke now that, you know, whenever you do Thing X, do two damage and become almost a staple of a lot of sets. But this was the first time we had ever done it. And the idea was, okay, well, here's a card that looks at cycling, goes, whenever something cycles, okay, I can do damage. And I think my original version, there wasn't mana tied to it. But anyway, they saw that, and they go, okay, that's interesting. Uh, but anyway, the, they saw that and they go, okay, that's interesting. Um, and then I pitched the idea of what if there were cards that when you cycle them did a smaller version of the effect.

So it wasn't nothing, but the idea was, uh, card could do big effect or you could cycle it, get the card and do small effect. So kind of turn the card into a split card. Um, I joke that all, all cards are essentially kicker or split cards. And in some ways, cycling was this kicker card that I turned into a split card. And so the idea, so anyway, I pitched a couple different ways to do it. And I think they said, okay, well, those seem different. And cycling seems like it would do good things here.

And so, I got them to agree to put cycling into Onslaught. And during Onslaught block, I mean, we definitely messed around with different costs. There's still mana costs. And although I guess near the end of the block, we did mess around with life costs. Did we? Is that the? Okay. That's where my memory plays. But anyway, we mess around with life costs. Did we? Okay. That's where my memory plays. But anyway, we messed around with mana costs. We messed around with small cycling triggers. We messed around with things that cared about cycling. And then the funny story is at the end of the block, they, so what had happened during Urza's Saga was

I had done a variant on cycling in Urza's Destiny, what I called from play cycling. And the idea was normally cycling is in your hand. If you don't need it, you can spend two. You lose the card and then you replace it by drawing a card. And so the idea in Girls in Cycle was, well, let's apply that to things in play. And so I have this card in play, and I pay two, and I lose the card. I sack it since it's in play, and then I get to draw a card.

And I thought that was very clever, and it came out, and nobody saw it as cycling. Just nobody even thought of it as cycling. And I would write articles talking about cycling from play, and people were like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I never saw that, you know. So anyway, Brian Tinsman

was in charge of Scourge, and so he came up with this mechanic where you could take a card in your hand, and you could get rid of it to go get a particular basic land. So you had a red creature that if you needed a mountain, you could trade it to get a mountain.

And so I said to him, I said, so it's like cycling, but you can get a mountain. And he goes, yeah. I go, well, why don't you just call it mountain cycling? And Brian said, why would we need to do that? He goes, this way it'll sound like a new mechanic. I go, well, yeah, but we have a set in which you give up cards in your hand and you go get cards on your library and there's other cards

that care that you've done that um like it seems like let's integrate it and then i told him the story of the cycling from plan i'm like you know i feel like you know this is supposed to connect to that people won't see the connection uh and, one of the things I've learned is sometimes you have to be a little not so subtle. You've got to be blunt. And so I convinced him to name it blank cycling. And he ended up doing it. So then that was another thing we sort of evolved.

And then I said, oh, well now just rather than cycling for a car to the top of the library, now maybe you can go get something. Anyway, let's flash forward to the next time. So the next time we used it was in Time Spiral. Now Time Spiral didn't use it all that much. In fact, it appears once there's a swamp cycle

around the time shift to cheat. And then all the other cars, there's only six I think, were in Future Sight. I used it in a couple ways in Future Sight. One was I did this thing called Mix and Match where I would take mechanics and put them with other mechanics, and then have the two of them work together. In fact, by the way, I jumped ahead.

There actually is, cycling shows up in four blocks, but it shows up once, not in those four blocks. And the answer is it shows up in unhinged. Mark Gottlieb had made a card called Blast from the Path, and Old Foggy. And Blast from the Path and Old Foggy. And Blast from the Path just was a burn spell that used every mechanic that maybe you'd want on a burn spell.

And so one of the ones on it was Cycling. And that card inspired in Future Sight the Mix and Match cards. Because when I wrote the FAQ for Unhinge, I sort of took all the different things and said,

what happens when this mechanic meets that mechanic? It's good. When this mechanic meets that mechanic? It's good. This mechanic meets that mechanic? Not so good. And I realized it was fun, that it's fun to just kind of take mechanics

from all over and mix them together. And because somehow in the back of my head I wanted Future Sight to be the most complicated set of all time, I said, hey, let's go take some mechanics and mix and match them. And so there's mechanics from all over Magic. And cycling hadn't even appeared until, other than on the time shift sheet in the block, but I used it in Future Sight.

Also, I took advantage of the mountain cycling kind of stuff to hint at the future. I think I had, what was it, wizard cycling? The idea is, oh, it's like cycling, but you go get a wizard. And slivers, did I make sliver cycling? Sliver cycling, my bad. Anyway, I definitely in time spirals sort of upped it a little bit,

mixed and matched it, sort of showed kind of where you could go with cycling. I recognized that cycling was something that had a lot of still potential in it. That was me kind of of where you could go with cycling. I recognized that cycling was something that had a lot of still potential in it. That was me kind of demonstrating where we could go. Okay, so the last block thus far that had cycling in it was Shards of Alara. So Shards of Alara was designed by Bill Rose, the VP of R&D. And so Bill knew that he wanted to do a three-color set.

And Bill was very concerned. Bill is definitely a designer that is very structural. And so Bill wanted to make sure that we'd built into it means by which to make sure you could play your cards. And so one of the ideas that Bill had, and very early, was let's bring cycling back. He felt like cycling, not just cycling, we could bring cycling back and we could bring, you know, land cycling back. You know, mountain cycling, forest cycling and such.

And then they came up with the idea of basic land cycling. So the idea of, here's cars that can go get you whatever basic land you need. And so that was in very early. I mean, because Charging the Ladder went through all sorts of changes, but cycling was one of the first things in the set. In fact, it might be the first mechanic that was in the set. And it stayed all the way through. And once again, I mean, I think basic land cycling

was really the only innovation on cycling in that block. Once again, I might be forgetting something, but I mean, there wasn't any giant leap. I mean, Time Spiral had hinted at places we could go, but we really, in Time Spiral, I'm sorry, in Charge of the Ladder, we really didn't.

And I think the reason was that, so in a set, there are, there's what I call the marquee mechanic, and there's supporting mechanics. And the role of the marquee mechanic is to sell the set, is to go, hey, look at this thing, ooh la la, this is exciting.

And the supporting mechanics are like, they make it run, they make it work. And one of the things that's important is to understand, is your mechanic a marquee mechanic, or is it just a support mechanic? Because you make different choices in how you use the mechanic. If it's a marquee mechanic, or is it just a support mechanic? Because you make different choices in how you use the mechanic. If it's a marquee mechanic, you are definitely making some extra splashy cards,

and you're trying to sort of make cards that you can preview, and something that really will excite people. Whereas the support mechanic, that's not his job. His job is to get in, get out, do what needs to get done, and make it play well. And when you bring back mechanics, and make it play well. And when you bring back mechanics, usually they're support mechanics. I mean, not always. If people really like something and you haven't had it for a while, sometimes the return of

a really popular mechanic, the example, for example, is Innistrad had double-faced cards. That was a giant thing, obviously very splashy. Now, when we bring it back, and we're not going to bring it back anytime soon, by the way, but when we bring it back, and I know one day we will, that was a pretty high-profile thing. It will be a high-profile thing when it comes back. So it's possible that might be a marquee mechanic. But cycling, this was the fourth time we had cycling. Bill's purpose of putting it in the set

was really a support means. Like, I want people to do this cool thing, and I just need to make sure they have a way to do that. And so it really was a support mechanic. And like I said, support mechanics aren't meant to draw attention to themselves. They're meant to make the game play well. And it's possible. Like, in order for cycling to be a marquee mechanic,

we would have to do something pretty crazy with it and go, cycling's back, but man, look at what we're doing with cycling. And the reason I don't think we're going to go all that far is one of the things

that I've learned over time is I like for mechanics to have their space. And the reality is you can stretch mechanics to do what other mechanics do. You know, kicker essentially, and one of my big flaws to me of kicker is it kind of can do anything. And that I want to be able to do something new and not people go, oh, that's

just kicker. You know, I want to build something new. And so we tend to sort of figure out what mechanic does well, and then isolate that mechanic there and have it do that thing. And cycling, each mechanic has an identity to it. And so I feel the identity for cycling is all about sort of opting out of saying, you know, often in Magic you're like, oh, I wish I didn't have this card. And that's what cycling really is. That's what Richard, I think most mechanics, when you get down to the root, is recognizing some moment that happens normally in games where players go, I wish this,

and go, oh, well, this mechanic is going to let you get your wish. And there's plenty of times where I think, you know, you draw, let's say, a really expensive card, and, you know, you just don't have the mana, and you're like, oh, why is this in my hand? I can't use this. Man, if this was just another card, you know, and I think that mentality is exactly, I'm sure Richard probably just had that happen one game and said, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, let's answer that,

you know. And I, the funny thing for me is a lot of mechanics that I've made have been exactly that. I mean, flashback was just me going, wouldn't it be cool if, you know, I could reuse my spell, you know, I could reuse my spell, you know, if I could cast it and then take out the graveyard and cast it again. And that, I think, that cycling, one of the reasons it is such a good mechanic is, A, it has, it answers this natural desire of the game, and B, it is just very, it's very versatile. It has a lot of design space and it does its job. Here's another thing that I think is important to understand is

you... So I talk a thing about lenticular design which means that it's good for the game if you can find ways to get things that are complicated but covered by something that is simple so that the beginning player can't see the complexity and the advanced player can see the complexity. And I think cycling has a very lenticular quality to it,

which is understanding when you're supposed to get rid of a cycling card is actually very complex. I mean, many times there's obvious decisions, right? Like, I'm land shy, and I need my land. Okay, that's not that hard to figure out. But a lot of other times it's like, oh, I've mapped out where I'm going. I understand the board state. You know what?

A random card is better than this card. And understanding when that is so and when that is not actually is a very complex thing. But for the beginning player, it's very simple. You know, and it's simple in two ways. One is, the actual mechanics are simple. I got it. I take this, I throw it away. I, you know, spend two mana, throw this away. Or spend whatever amount of mana I am, throw this away.

And then I get a new card. Okay, the functionality. But also, understanding why you would do it. You know what I'm saying? And that a lesser player could think of reasons why, oh, I see why I wouldn't want this, you know? And they can imagine why they would do it. And that makes for a nice, simple mechanic. You understand what it does, you understand why you would do it.

And cycling does both those things. But cycling does this other thing which is nice, in which that there's a rolling amount of understanding of when to use the mechanic. Like buyback, for example, is another very interesting mechanic where a lot of times the inexperienced player doesn't want to give up options.

So whenever there's extra options, like buyback or like kicker, they are reticent to use the card until they get the extra amount. Which is fine, by the way. They still have their fun. They get to do what they want with the card. But, the better player goes, oh, the role here is not always to use it. The role is to figure

out when it is right to use it and when it's not to use it. You know? In fact, I used to joke that, like, if you're playing cycling correctly, you know, at the end of the game you should never have it in your hand, right? You should figure out the exact time when I shouldn't be cycling back this time because I don't need it anymore. Um, I'm not cycling. Sorry. Bye back. Uh, so cycling, I shouldn't be cycling back this time because I don't need it anymore.

I'm not cycling. Sorry. Bye back. So cycling, to me, is one of the perfect mechanics. I mean, non-Evergreen. In fact, it might be one of the most perfect non-Evergreen mechanics we've ever made because it's simple, yet it has complexity built into it. It helps smooth mana, which is an important part of the game. You know, it helps create a nice dramatic moment. Like, one of the things I talk a lot about is randomness is good for games in general. That you want exciting moments.

You want moments where you don't know what's going to happen. You know, and I'm not against, there's plenty of games in which, you know, there's not a lot of randomness. But I think that part of what makes games fun is not always knowing what's going to happen. And cycling, in addition to everything else I'm talking about, also has this wonderful thing of, I don't know what I'm getting when I trade it in.

I get a little surprise. Every time I use the mechanic, ooh, there's a little moment of, oh, what am I getting? And I feel like that's another important part of the mechanic. In fact, one of the reasons I think it's another important part of the mechanic. In fact, one of the reasons I think it's in some ways the perfect mechanic is

it does so many things so well, but like so subtly, you know, like the randomness is subtle because players anticipate and expect an unknown quality when drawn, so they don't think about that

as being random. You know, it has this nice complexity in it, but it's buried so that you don't quite realize how complex it is. You know, it has this nice complexity in it, but it's buried so that you don't quite realize how complex it is. You know, it smooths mana,

and it does all this wonderful stuff. But anyway, I'm driving up to work right now, so it is time to wrap up here. But hopefully today, I just was hoping to, like, sort of walk you through and say, hey, you know, mechanics are tools. As a designer, you want to understand your tools. You know, that in some ways, the cycling is, I want to understand your tools. You know,

that in some ways, the cycling is, I don't know whether it's the screwdriver, the hammer, whatever it is. It's a useful tool in magic. And the designers try to make use of it whenever we can.

I mean, not too much, but, you know, it's a mechanic that, if you say, well, cycling will be back.

Oh, of course. I mean, cycling will be back to the end of time. And we will always try to find new ways and different things to do with it. But, you know, in some ways, it's the perfect mechanic. So, I'm always happy to use it. Anyway, I'm here at Wizards. So, it is time to wrap this up. So, thank you very much for joining me today. It's time to go make some magic cards.