The Great Designer Search 3

Recently I participated in a contest of sorts, to see if I could be the next Wizards of the Coast Great Designer. I passed the first test, but was unable to achieve among the highest scores for the 2nd test. The 1st test consisted of 10 essay questions, which I have repeated below with my own answers. If you’re interested in the requirements for these answers, they are mentioned here. These answers got me through to the next round, but may not be the best answers you could’ve given. Mark Rosewater, the contest administrator, gave his explanations on the Magic site here, if you’d like to know what the “correct” answers were. Although MaRo doesn’t give answers, he gives you more of an idea of an answer. I hope you enjoy my perspective on the game of Magic, and the suggestions I make. Without further ado, here are my questions and answers fro the Great Designer Search 3:

1. Introduce yourself and explain why you are a good fit for this internship.

My name is Jay Kelly, and I’m a graphic designer, artist, writer, gamer, and creative thinker from Sacramento, CA. I’m married, trying to have children, love watching movies and playing Magic competitively and casually. My wife and I have the same goal of moving to Seattle once a suitable job opportunity arises.

I started playing Magic in 1995, around the release of 4th Edition, and ever since then I’ve wanted to work for WotC. Back then I was only in high school and figured I was too young to be a part of your team, so I spent 5 years in the Marines, used the GI Bill to go to college, and pursued an education that I felt would best prepare me for a job at WotC. I hold one degree in electronics, two in graphic design, and have nearly 10 years of experience designing professionally. Currently I’m pursuing additional experience working with user interfaces, both visual and voice, and some programming on the side. If you’d like to learn more about my professional endeavors, I have a website which I will link below.

www.jayckelly.com

Growing up I played a lot of D&D and computer games in the fantasy genre. When I first learned about Magic I became obsessed with it, wanting to become the best at it, and wanting to somehow become a part of it. Everything about the game fascinates me, the art, the strategy, the storyline, the evolution of game mechanics, the players, the creators, the culture, and the community. It is something that I would hold in the highest honor for the opportunity to contribute to its legacy. I’ve applied to positions at WotC before but have yet to get a call back. I’m hoping this contest will help.

2. An evergreen mechanic is a keyword mechanic that shows up in (almost) every set. If you had to make an existing keyword mechanic evergreen, which one would you choose and why?

Of all the keyword mechanics in MtG, a strong case can be made for the “Crew” ability to become evergreen. Although it’s a relative newborn comparatively, it has enormous potential. The thought and detail put into the vehicle concept, including the border art, would be a shame to go to waste. The flavor and spirit of the ability transcends the sets vehicles were printed in, as other previously printed cards could be viewed as vehicles in their own way (such as the chariot cards from multiple sets, Skyship Weatherlight, and Predator, Flagship to name a few).

Speaking of flavor, since planeswalkers are the only beings that can travel to other worlds, inhabitants of those worlds must have a way of getting around. Every civilization could have their own form of vehicles, and transportation isn’t their only use; they can be used to destroy things as well. The Crew ability could also apply to non-vehicles like towers, bunkers, entire fortresses, hiding places, anything requiring individuals to operate. Wouldn’t it make more sense if Forbidding Watchtower didn’t become a 1/5 Soldier, but instead a 1/1 soldier became a 1/5 when it crewed a watchtower? When you open Crew up to more than just artifacts or vehicles, it becomes an interaction that could make a lot of sense in future sets.

Speaking of artifacts, Equipment cards have become a mainstay in Magic, and rightfully so. I imagine the concept of Crew evolved from equipment much the same way equipment evolved from artifacts. A favorite artifact from when I was learning Magic was Runesword; I loved the artwork, flavor, and mechanics. It made sense, but would make more sense as an equipment. You could say the same thing about many artifacts that could have been vehicles (in spirit).

There is ample opportunity for balancing cards with Crew, as it can trigger an effect, unlike Trample, Flying, or other static keyword abilities, making it versatile and adjustable. Triggers can add perks or drawbacks, so balancing can involve more than just power/toughness, cost, or ETB effects.

3. If you had to remove evergreen status from a keyword mechanic that is currently evergreen, which one would you remove and why?

Although Prowess only recently became an evergreen mechanic, I think it lost a lot of momentum when it did. Don’t get me wrong, ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you how much I love Prowess; I just don’t think it belongs in every set. It’s also the only keyword I could imagine being removed from the current evergreen list, and reluctantly at that.

When Prowess was first introduced in Khans of Tarkir, it belonged to a clan of mostly monks, people who could channel spell power into a sort of Chi energy like a weapon of enhancement. When Prowess appeared in Origins, it still sort of made sense with the whole Mage-Ring concept. After that, it started to not make sense, appearing on soldiers, rogues, lizards, and zombie horrors. The flavor of the ability lost its potency.

Giving a creature +1/+1 is not a new concept. What’s funny is that of all the other abilities that give creatures +1/+1 it ends up being Prowess that gets evergreen status. Exalted seemed like a great ability to fill that role, and with the release of M13 players thought it would start to show up more often, and then it didn’t. But it didn’t matter because giving a creature +1/+1 was going to be in every set anyway in some form or another. My point is that it’s not really needed, not the way other mechanics are needed to help flesh-out the world of monsters and mages. If it wasn’t in the next set that got released, players wouldn’t miss it, and they’d be excited to learn about whatever the new triggered ability is that gives +1/+1 to their creatures, like Explore.

4. You’re going to teach Magic to a stranger. What’s your strategy to have the best possible outcome?

The number one goal of teaching people to play Magic is to make it fun and exciting so they will want to continue playing. My favorite part of the process is when game one is over and I hear the sweet words uttered, “Can we play again?”

When I’m teaching people how to play, I start with very simple pre-constructed decks. Portal had some really great cards for this because it explained even the simplest mechanics. I also like using Duel Decks because they have really great synergy and not too many complex game mechanics. The learner decks are the most important part of teaching new players; if they don’t have a deck to play with and examine it can be too difficult to explain just using words. Ideally it’s nice to include as many of the evergreen keyword mechanics in the starter decks, and as few of the tertiary keywords as possible. In my experience, the hardest concept to grasp for new players is tapping land for mana.

The first card I pull out of their deck is a land, and I explain the concept of mana as a resource they absorb from lands that will rejuvenate at the start each of their turns. Then I explain that to draw upon their resources (lands) they have to signify that they’ve used it that turn by turning it sideways, called tapping. They then can use that mana to cast spells. I explain how the spell costs work, appropriate times to cast spells, card types, combat, summoning sickness, and the rest starts to come naturally.

Generally I allow them to win the first game, which gives them hope and confidence. After the first game, I show them a few more complicated card interactions and more powerful cards, which gets their creative juices flowing for deck building. That is the best outcome: a new player who is inspired to build their own deck.

5. What is Magic’s greatest strength and why?

Magic’s greatest strength has always been that every game is a new experience and not only does it stay interesting and complex, it becomes more interesting every time you play because you discover new things. Designers that have been working for WotC for decades can create cards that they would never expect to be over or under-powered. Players are always on the edge of their seats waiting to learn of sneak-peaks, new releases, rumors of spoilers, forum discussions, and new strategies evolving from decks they’d heard about or seen. Magic has this system of creating a product at an interval that not only keeps the game fresh and new at all times, but also grows and expands with additional formats, exclusive releases, and experimental variations. They are a company that can metaphorically print money for themselves while giving people exactly what they want. They are the goose that lays golden eggs, which makes Hasbro the giant in the clouds.

It has to be extremely demanding to have a design schedule with the amount of products Magic produces, and it still amazes me how well the designs come out. This is exactly what I want to be a part of, a design team of geniuses. Going through design school has taught me that design doesn’t just come out of thin air, there is a formula of drawing from inspiration and combining ideas. I’ve used this formula myself in my own designs. Magic has infinite worlds to explore and reveal which will continually change the game. And revisiting old worlds just doubles the amount of material they can use. I love that any planeswalker can visit any plane and have a completely different experience; the possibilities are exponential. As if the universe wasn’t infinite enough, there has to be a multiverse to explain the potential scope of Magic.

6. What is Magic’s greatest weakness and why?

To examine Magic’s greatest weakness, I have to consider aspects of the game I’m not as familiar with, such as online play, or the Pro Tour. Instinctually I first thought about my own problems with the game, like not enough time, money, or people to play with, which seemed very narrow sighted.

I recently found an article on TheDailyDot about Magic being a bad spectator game that makes some very relevant points I had never before considered. Magic will never be as entertaining to watch as it is to play. Never having been invited to a Pro Tour, the only way to learn about it is to watch clips online. Really the only thing that excites me about the Pro Tour is the outcome: which decks and cards are the best. The players don’t seem to matter. Occasionally I will force myself to watch matches to see if I can absorb some strategy from whoever is playing in the finals, but it’s never as rewarding as just playing more games myself. Playing online would allow me to do that, but then what would I do with my massive paper collection?

I think the number one reason why players play Magic is the hope of becoming the best and competing for the grand prize, which according to TheDailyDot is “a lifestyle very few would envy.” I watched “Enter the Battlefield” on Netflix and could only identify with Shahar Shenhar, and only because I’d played with him before at my local store. I think getting spectators to be excited about the game and its elite players is a huge challenge for Magic that I don’t have a solution for, but if you take away the Pro Tour, the game becomes drastically less appealing.

7. What Magic mechanic most deserves a second chance (aka which had the worst first introduction compared to its potential)?

If a mechanic deserves a second chance, it almost implies that the set it appeared in should also get a second chance, and I would have absolutely no objections to a revisit to the plane of Alara, and bringing back Unearth.

Unearth was a powerful ability that saw a decent amount of play, but was overshadowed by the mechanics of the two blocks it was sandwiched between, Lorwyn and Zendikar. After Alara’s release, Standard was seeing a lot of faeries, white tokens, the beginnings of 5-color control decks, and a sprinkling of RDW utilizing Unearth with Hellspark Elemental and Hell’s Thunder. After Lorwyn rotated out of Standard, for the brief moment before daddy Jace stepped onto the scene, Landfall was the big news, and Unearth just didn’t get the attention it deserved.

The Flashback keyword has already been revisited in multiple blocks, and is a fan-favorite mechanic. Unearth is like flashback for creatures, and I think it would have much the same success in popularity. What I’d love to see is Unearth paid with costs other than mana, like sacrificing permanents, paying life, discarding, or only being allowed to activate when meeting a certain condition, like Spell Mastery or the City’s Blessing, things like that. This can increase the design space for the mechanic, and allow for a more robust balancing. Or if you want to get really wacky, mix it up with Undying and watch everyone lose their marbles.

Unearth wasn’t really explored to its full capacity when it premiered. It was limited to Grixis colors, but all colors see creatures returning from the graveyard (ironically more often in white and green than red and blue). Every set also features some method of recursion. Unearth seems like a very convenient choice to me.

8. Of all the Magic expansions that you’ve played with, pick your favorite and then explain the biggest problem with it.

Without going into detail about all the reasons why Zendikar is, and was at the time of its release, my hands-down favorite expansion, in my opinion its biggest problem was the Trap cards. I think it was an excellent concept with great flavor and potential for future adaptation, but it kind of fell flat on its face shortly after it was introduced. Even with a revisit to the plane, and a premium opportunity to showcase it in Egyptian-inspired and pirate treasure planes, Trap cards failed to reappear. I think this is because Traps are a conundrum. Take for instance Zendikar’s most valuable trap: Archive Trap, which MaRo himself said in a 2009 article about the original concept of the card, “in the end, it just didn’t work.” The card had to be modified and balanced until it could be usable. I actually love the design of trap cards, and it was very difficult to find fault with Zendikar at all, but a Trap card’s greatest pitfall (pun-intended) is that they are simply too conditional to be playable.

By design, an opponent has to trigger a trap, and that trigger has to be something specific, and yet also somehow a mistake that you don’t know for sure if your opponent is going to make, at least not until you know more about their deck. Best case scenario, Trap cards are sideboard cards, potentially powerful responses, but also unreliable. There aren’t traps for every condition (only 20 were ever printed). A strategic player will often lean toward more versatile spells than toward spells with high risk and high reward.

I actually hope we do get to see more Trap cards in the future, but with a better balance of risk to reward. I think it’s the mark of a great designer to be able to balance form and function, which is exactly how Traps premiered, flavorful and fun to use.

9. Of all the Magic expansions that you’ve played with, pick your least favorite and then explain the best part about it.

The Coldsnap expansion was released at a time when the Standard format already had a large number of cards in it, and it came very unexpectedly for me. It was also a time of great change for the format. Soon after the Lorwyn Block rotated in, for whatever reason it stuck around and Standard became enormous. It was actually an interesting and dynamic time for deck-building, but it just felt so out of place. The format became more challenging, making me despise the expansion, but this is what also makes it brilliant. Because it didn’t fit in with the norm, it threw players off, made them question everything about the game again. While standard had a record-breaking number of playable cards, the metagame was also the furthest away from stagnant it had ever been. More possibilities opened up which made the game more exciting and unpredictable. And because Standard rotates so quickly, any abusable card interactions wouldn’t linger to make the format un-fun.

Coldsnap is the first official throwback set in my opinion. It revisited a world from an older set, a concept which would later become a staple for Magic. The cards in the set almost didn’t matter. What mattered was that players could now look forward to other sets getting revisited, albeit that wouldn’t happen until Scars of Mirrodin almost 5 years later.

So just to clear up my point, even though Coldsnap was my least favorite of all the expansions I’ve played, the best part about it was it’s sense of spontaneity and timeliness. It opened up new realms of possibilities while conveniently wrapping up old realms long forgotten. Now all MtG has to do is find the other two missing Homelands sets to complete that block. 😉

10. You have the ability to change any one thing about Magic. What do you change and why?

One thing I would change about Magic if I had the power to change anything would be the Banned and Restricted card lists. I understand its purpose, making the formats fair, but I think there are alternative ways to do this rather than completely removing the cards altogether. “Currently, only the Vintage format uses a restricted list” (banned list website). It doesn’t seem like there is an obvious reason cards don’t get restricted in Standard and Modern formats, instead they just get banned. It feels like skipping a step.

When a card becomes too powerful in a format, the first step should be to restrict it first, then ban it second, if it still dominates the format. Making only one copy of a card playable in an already more limited format makes the card less worth building around, and it doesn’t squash an entire deck. Decks still playing the format-bending restricted cards could compensate the lack of availability with cards that tutor them up, but by then the decks become clunkier and less present at competitive events. So what inevitably would happen is the otherwise banned cards would just be added to decks they go good in rather than built around.

I’m not suggesting we restrict all cards in Standard and Modern instead of banning them. Certain cards only need one copy to work in a deck, like Punishing Fire. But other cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor for example, are supposed to be powerful, are just good, don’t have to interact with other cards, and are not getting the play they deserve. Many of the cards on the banned lists work best because decks played four of them, and wouldn’t be as good as a one-of. All I’m suggesting is a reevaluation of the current banned lists with consideration to which cards could be lifted as restricted instead of banned. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider, and I think it would give players hope, inspiration, and a greater sense of creativity when deck-building.