M13 Playtesting with Tom

I got another chance to playtest M13 live yesterday and with one of my favorite playtesters, Tom. I hadn't had the chance to make many of the changes that followed the original playtest to the cards themselves so we were working with largely the same pool. Tom found a few of the same problems with the set that the last group did, but not all (hence the importance of testing with multiple groups). He did find a bunch more issues however and shared several perspectives with me that were—to put it mildly—revelations for me.

On Fixing
Tom liked the uncommon dual lands, just as everyone has. We threw some theories back and forth whether they'll be good for older formats or bad for them. Ultimately, we don't know Constructed well enough to say. Tom then observed that if you splash a Forest in your WU deck in order to support a pair of Mastodon Calves, that'll make you wonder if you shouldn't go ahead and splash that Prey Upon as well, but if you've got a Fungal Field to accomodate that splash you might not even think about the green cards in your sideboard. Whether that's true for you or not, it instantly struck me as a fair prediction for many many players. It's a fascinating slice of psychology and something to consider.

Cantrips
Tom was also concerned about the cantrips in our set, but not for the same reason Ty was. To him, they felt like cards we stapled a draw onto in order to make them good enough to play. It's certainly true that they'd all be very weak cards if you removed the draw but kept the cost and effect the same and it's even true that a number of cantrips in Magic's history were specifically designed to make an otherwise marginal effect playable. Withstand—the white card in our cycle currently—is a perfect example. Not many modern players will maindeck a Healing Salve, but tack on two mana for a draw and suddenly it's something to seriously consider.

I hadn't thought of the cantrips in our set that way because that's not why we added them. My purpose was to add some smoothing to the set. I think Magic has enough variance that every set should have at least a little something to help games go smoothly. Scry did it for Mirrodin, Cycling has done it multiple times and cantrips—though less obvious—do it too. So the cantrips are here for smoothing. Does that invalidate his perception? Not remotely. Other players will see these cards the same way and that's a factor to consider.

Playables
Mark Rosewater and other very experienced, very wise members of Wizards R&D have explained over and over again that bad cards are good for the game. As a student of Magic Design I've tried to accept that and justify to myself why it must be true, but it's one of the hardest lessons I've tackled. Simply, I've failed to internalize the lesson despite trusting that it must be true. Yesterday, I finally discovered an insight that helps my to understand why bad cards are so important to the game. To give you as much a chance of getting the same idea, I'll explain not just the realization but how I came to it.

Something I noticed while building my second Magic 2013 sealed pool ever is that the set has a lot playable cards. When I open my packs, I sort by color but also by quality: I make a row of cards I'd like to play if I choose that color and a row that I'd rather not. That helps me more quickly choose which colors I want to run and the rest kinda falls into place after that. When I sort my M13 cards, my unplayable piles are much smaller than I'm accustomed to and my playable piles that much larger. For experienced players, that's at least as good as it is bad because it suggests more depth to Limited and allows your skill to matter more.

For new players, it's a very dangerous thing. Not only will the edge go to better players (because they'll have more insight on close card evaluations as well as identifying winning archetypes), making your learning games even more one-sided against you, but the act of building your deck will be much more difficult, even frustrating. I'm glad that bond and our dual lands will help players identify color pairs to go after, but even with your colors chosen, whittling a deck of 30 playable cards down to 23 or 24 is hard for the best of players, much less new ones.

So, independent of arguments I've heard like "bad cards give new players the chance to learn that some cards are better than others and thus put them on the road to real deck-building" and "if every card were good, power creep would be inevitable," I've got a new one that I can actually sink my teeth into: If a format has too many good cards, deck-building becomes harder and players won't have as much fun building decks. The ones that manage that hurdle will lose more games to the experienced players around them. Ultimately, a better overall cardpool dramatically throttles player acquisition. And that's bad.

A Card That Ruins Magic
At some point we realized we couldn't print Sorin's Vengeance if we weren't reprinting Sorin Markov. I already had the basic idea for Wyeth, so I created a card hole named Wyeth's Treachery. It remained blank until I made a final pass so I could print the set out and so I just tossed something in there. The result is a legitimately impressive card and fun to play too. It wasn't even hard to justify it in black. Unfortunately, it ruins the game. That's a bold statement, but Tom's explanation convinced me it's true. If you know your opponent is playing this card and your deck isn't fast enough to race it or controlling enough to counter it, all you can do is remove all the best cards in your deck so that when it does go off, you won't get beat down too badly. That's not fun and it's not something we want players to ever have to do. Adding 3 mana to the cost of Bribery doesn't make the card bearable, it just extends the inevitable. As a final kicker, if you're playing Wyeth's Treachery in your deck and I get mine first, I can find yours and play all of them out of your deck before finally taking your next best card.

You're the Planeswalker
This was my favorite revelation because I had never thought of it, but when Tom put it to words, I instantly recognized that I felt it too. Before there was a planeswalker card type, You, the player, were the most powerful wizard in the game, rivaled only by your opponent, the mighty and unpredictable wizard sitting across from you. No entity in the game could challenge your supremacy, not even the dangerous Lord of the Pit. It's escapism, sure, but it's awesome escapism and it's the reason a lot of players got into the game. Now you've got competition. Is Ajani really working for you, or is just helping you out because he pities you?

Tom went on to clarify that the original planeswalkers from Lorwyn didn't really overshadow the player because they didn't do anything you couldn't do. Garruk Wildspeaker's ultimate was Overrun, which is a cool spell, but it's one you can cast four times if you feel like it and it's not even the most biggest spell in your arsenal. In contrast, Jace the Mind Sculptor could pop off Brainstorms like they're nothing. You're not even allowed to cast Brainstorm. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, tyrant that he is makes you look like a wee lowly lackey. Granted, Jace has been banned and Bolas is Magic's single greatest villain, but the point stands.

Yes, we want planeswalkers to feel unique and powerful and exciting, but never to the extent that they overshadow the player. It should always be clear your planeswalker buddy is here because you're the boss and that you will always be able to outshine him.

Mostly Unrelated
One last thing I want to mention. The subtitle "Goblin's Lair" is no longer appropriate since we've renamed lair to bond. We could just make it "Goblin's Bond", but I've got another suggestion. Lately I've become enamored with the idea of reintroducing Pirates to Magic in this set. I'm not remotely suggesting Pirates replace one of the core races like Vampires did Zombies. What I am suggesting is that everyone loves Pirates and they fit into the fantasy setting like a glove. A stinky glove that you don't know where you got, but it's leather and you look a little bad-ass wearing it. Basically, instead of a Ub Wizard lord, we'll use a Ub Pirate lord and include 3-6 pirates across rarities. Oh and Mr. Blackboot, our new black planeswalker. It's not a big theme, but it's a noticeable theme. A fun theme. Long story short, what do you think of "Pirate's Bond" for the set's subtitle? Other suggestions?